Clandestine by Julia Ross

When you asked me this afternoon to welcome Mrs. Callaway here, her problem didn’t sound so terribly perilous.”
    â€œNo, it didn’t—not then. I’d simply agreed to help find her missing cousin.”
    â€œYou spend too much of your life solving other people’s problems,” Ryder said. “Why not hire a man from Bow Street?”
    â€œBecause this time there’s a personal responsibility, as well. The missing lady’s name is Rachel.”
    Ryder’s hands froze on the coffeepot. “Not the same Rachel?”
    â€œUnfortunately, yes,” Guy said. “Exactly the same Rachel.”
    â€œI see.” Ryder calmly filled two cups. “The mysterious beauty who helped Jack and Anne escape safely to Wyldshay last year, then became your mistress in February—until she walked out without warning as soon as you left to go home for Easter. Of course, Mrs. Callaway knows none of this. And of course you can’t tell her.”
    â€œIt’s disgusting to be obliged to lie to her, even by omission. Yet Sarah Callaway truly believes her cousin to be an innocent. Though I had to disabuse her of some of her illusions, I can hardly reveal all of reality’s rooms—certainly not the secret passages and hidden bedchambers.”
    â€œâ€”which is bound to involve you in some damnable complications. No wonder Miracle’s concerned!”
    Guy briefly contemplated the ceiling as he stifled a yawn. “Miracle simply wants to see me with my own babe at my knee. Like all happy newlyweds, she wants everyone she loves to get married.”
    â€œNot a bad idea,” Ryder said, handing him a cup. “I’m only sorry that my wife doesn’t have a sister.”
    Guy nodded his thanks, swallowed hot coffee, and welcomed the resulting jolt. In the more than forty hours since the bookshop he had hardly slept. The wineglass had been empty for the last six of them. Nevertheless, he felt drunk with fatigue.
    â€œIf she did, the simple fact is that I probably couldn’t hold her affections, any more than I could Miracle’s ten years ago.”
    â€œOnly because you’ve not yet met the right lady.”
    Another gulp of coffee scalded down Guy’s throat. “With the exception of Miracle, I think we may conclude that my judgment about the fair sex stinks. Rachel lied—not about trivialities, but about fundamentals, and for at least eighteen months—to her closest childhood companion, the cousin who loves her like a sister.”
    â€œMrs. Callaway didn’t know this?”
    â€œNo. None of it. Rachel lied to me, also, of course. I always knew it, but I thought that I loved her anyway. Perhaps I still do. Even though now I learn that she fled my protection simply to hide right here in London—in Goatstall Lane, of all places! Obviously, honor demands that I not abandon a lady I made promises to, even if she failed to deserve them. Yet for the last ten years, that’s rather been my pattern. I’m not sure that I want to face what that says about me.”
    â€œNothing much, except perhaps that you’re a little too loyal,” Ryder said. “Jack told me before he and Anne went to India last summer that Rachel was as out of place in that inn kitchen as a rose on a dung pile. You’d not be the first man to be fascinated by that kind of beauty.”
    â€œNor the last, apparently,” Guy said. “But either way, Sarah Callaway is more than safe. Any vague threat that I may pose to her virtue and reputation is barely relevant, compared to the reek of what Jack and I suspect is a far more literal danger.”
    Ryder settled back into his chair and sipped at his cup. “So what does Mrs. Callaway know?”
    â€œShe’s in no doubt that her cousin is genuinely afraid, but she thinks that Rachel’s being persecuted over a failed love affair.”
    â€œAnd you’ll continue to allow her