"You must leave that to me, Miss Pomeroy."
"But I wish to know how it will all work, sir," she said impatiently.
"You must trust me, Miss Pomeroy."
"That is not the point, my lord."
"I fear it is very much the point." Gideon's smile was unreadable. "Do you think you can manage to do that, Miss Pomeroy?"
"Do what? Trust you? Of course. I know you will do what you have promised to do. But I wish to know the details, sir. I am involved in this matter. Those are my caves, after all."
"Your caves?"
Harriet flushed and chewed briefly on her lower lip. "Very well, perhaps they do not exactly belong to me, but I am not about to let someone such as Mr. Venable claim them, either."
"Calm yourself, Miss Pomeroy. You have my word that you will have exclusive rights to dig up any old bones that may lie in those caves."
She smiled tentatively. "I have your word of honor on that, my lord?"
His tawny gold eyes glittered behind his dark lashes as he studied her upturned face. "Yes, Miss Pomeroy," Gideon said softly. "For what it's worth, you have my word of honor."
Harriet was delighted. "Thank you, sir. That takes a certain weight off my mind, I assure you. All the same, I really would like to know what you have planned."
"You must possess yourself in patience, Miss Pomeroy."
The music came to a halt with a flourish. Harriet was irritated because she wanted to argue her case further. "My lord, I believe I could be very helpful in this matter," she said urgently. "I know those caves better than anyone else and your man from Bow Street will surely want to discuss the layout of the caverns with me."
Gideon took her arm and interrupted her coolly. "I believe you will want to introduce me to your aunt and your sister now, Miss Pomeroy."
"I will?"
"Yes. I think it is appropriate under the circumstances."
"What circumstances?" Harriet saw the look of anxious expectation on Aunt Effie's face from halfway across the room.
"We have just danced the waltz, Miss Pomeroy. People will talk."
"Rubbish. I do not care what anyone says. You cannot possibly blacken my reputation by merely dancing once with me."
"You would be astonished at how easily I can destroy a woman's reputation, Miss Pomeroy. Let us undo what damage we can tonight by means of a proper introduction to your family."
Harriet groaned. "Oh, very well. But I would really much rather discuss the plans for catching the thieves."
Gideon smiled his brief, fleeting smile. "Yes, I imagine you would. But, as I said, you must trust me to deal with the matter."
Harriet awoke the next morning shortly before dawn. She lay in bed for a while, reliving the events of the previous evening. Aunt Effie had been both thrilled and horrified to find herself being introduced to the notorious Viscount St. Justin.
Effie had handled the situation with admirable poise, however. She had betrayed very little of her flustered condition. Felicity had been her usual straightforward, pragmatic self. She had accepted the introduction with charming grace.
Gideon had managed to compound the effects of his outrageous behavior at the ball by leaving as soon as he had met Effie and Felicity.
The moment he disappeared into the night the entire room full of people had erupted into excited conversation. Harriet was well aware that she had been the focus of several pairs of curious eyes.
On the way home in the carriage Effie had not stopped talking about the incident.
"The local people are quite right to call him a strange and unpredictable man," she said for the hundredth time. "Just imagine ordering up a waltz without so much as a by-your-leave and then singling you out, Harriet. Thank heaven he did not choose Felicity. She cannot afford to have her name coupled with his before she goes to London."
"Actually," Felicity said, "I was quite grateful to him. Now that the waltz has been introduced to Upper Biddleton we shall no doubt be able to dance it again at the next assembly. And it is all the rage in London, Aunt Effie. You told me so yourself."
"That is beside the point," Effie retorted. "I am convinced Mrs. Stone and the others are correct. The man is dangerous. He even looks dangerous. You are both to be extremely cautious around him, do you understand?"
Harriet yawned. "What is this, Aunt Effie? Some concern for my reputation at last? I thought you felt I was safe due to my advanced years."
"Something tells me no woman is safe in that man's presence," Effie said darkly. "Mrs. Stone calls him a beast and I am not at all certain but that she may be right."
"I felt quite safe with him," Harriet declared. "Even when we danced the waltz."
But she had lied to her aunt, Harriet knew. She had not felt safe at all in Gideon's arms. Just the opposite, in fact. And she had enjoyed every dangerous thrill that had shot through her when he had whirled her about on the dance floor.
Harriet knew she was not going to go back to sleep and it was much too early for anyone else in the household to be awake. She pushed back the covers and got out of bed. She would get dressed and go downstairs to make herself a pot of tea. Mrs. Stone would probably not approve. She was a great believer in ladies maintaining their standards, but that was too bad. Harriet had no intention of waking the housekeeper at this early hour and she was quite able to prepare her own tea.
The bedchamber was chilled from the long, cold night. Harriet dressed quickly in a faded, long-sleeved wool gown and pinned a muslin cap on her springy hair.
She passed the window on her way to the door and automatically glanced out to observe the dawn light as it struck the sea. The tide was out and it would have been an excellent hour to hunt fossils. It was too bad Gideon had forbidden her to go near the caves until after the thieves were caught.
Out of the corner of her eye Harriet saw a figure on the beach below her window. She halted abruptly and leaned out to get a better look. Perhaps it was a fisherman, she reassured herself.
But a moment later the figure scuttled, back into view for a few seconds and Harriet knew at once it was no fisherman. The man was wearing a coat and a rather squashed-looking, low-crowned hat pulled down over his ears. She could not see his face, but she saw at once that the man was making his way along the beach toward the entrance to her precious cave.
Harriet did not hesitate. This was an alarming occurrence and needed immediate investigation. The man below was obviously not one of the thieves. They appeared only in the middle of the night.
That left one other all too likely possibility. The man was very likely another fossil collector who was attempting to sneak into her caves.
Harriet knew she had to get down to the beach at once to see what the intruder intended.
Chapter Five
The early morning air was chilled. Harriet wrapped the heavy cloak that had belonged to her mother more tightly around her. She made her way cautiously down the cliff path. The sun would be up soon, but for now there was only a soft, gray light reflecting off the sea.
When she reached the bottom of the path she turned and hurried along the beach toward the row of openings in the cliffs. She could see boot prints in the damp sand. If she could just be certain the intruder was not heading for the one particular cave she was most interested in these days, she could relax.
It would be simple enough to follow the tracks and reassure herself that no one else had chanced upon the passageway that led to the cavern that contained the tooth.
But a few minutes later Harriet saw with horror that the boot prints disappeared straight into a familiar cavern entrance. It could be just coincidence, she told herself uneasily.
Or it could mean that someone else was about to put his grubby hands on her precious tooth. Bloody hell. She had been a fool to allow Gideon to keep her out of the cave until after his plans had been completed. This was what came of putting a man like Gideon in charge of this sort of thing.