Deadly Peril by Lucinda Brant Page A

for breeches, smalls, and stockings once Alec was soaking in his bath. He then busied himself in the closet with the last of the packing of Alec’s clothes—the fur-lined breeches and waistcoats delivered that morning—until he was called through to the dressing room. He found his lordship with a silk banyan thrown over his breeches and open-necked white linen shirt, searching through the grooming implements on the marble top of his dressing table.
    Alec picked up a crystal bottle here, a tortoiseshell-backed boar-bristle brush there, before fiddling with the silver grooming implements from his filigreed etui. When he accidentally spilled its contents amongst the clutter, it was too much for Hadrian Jeffries, who stepped forward.
    “Sir, I’m sure I can find what it is you’re looking for.”
    “Mr. Halsey dropped the travel list here… No matter. Without my eyeglasses, I can’t read it anyway… I thought I’d left a small box and a set of rims…”
    “No need to find the list, sir. I can tell you precisely what’s on it. And your spectacles and the ring are in the middle top drawer,” Hadrian Jeffries stated, wondering why Alec wanted the travel list, why he had suddenly forgotten where his eyeglasses were kept, and why he had mentioned the ring box. He itched to lean across and scoop up the scatter of little silver implements from the etui. Instead he rearranged the hairbrush and crystal jar to where he had first placed them. “I’ll tidy this immediately, sir. If you’ll just let me—”
    “Leave it,” Alec commanded softly. He put a hand to the back of the Chippendale dressing chair beside his dressing table. “Sit.”
    Hadrian Jeffries instantly stepped away from the dressing table and did as he was ordered, cleft chin up and balled fists on his knees. He watched Alec sit on the dressing stool opposite and shove his hands in the pockets of his silk banyan.
    “Firstly, allow me to apologize for not having this conversation with you earlier,” Alec said, aware of the guarded look in his valet’s eyes, as if he were expecting a berating. “I had hoped to put your mind at rest in Bath, and then circumstances dictated otherwise. And in the coming weeks there will be little time for either of us to think beyond surviving. You do realize there will be danger, on many fronts? And I don’t just mean from soldiers. Travel to the Continent always presents a myriad of difficulties. Everything from dealing with corrupt customs officers who want their cut, to intolerable food, and then there are the appalling roads. Though where we’re headed, thankfully most of the journey cross-country is by canal…”
    When Alec paused, Hadrian Jeffries realized it was an opportunity for him offer up a reply.
    “Yes, sir. I do know that. I have some little experience of going abroad, particularly of travel by canal. I spent two years in Utrecht.”
    “Did you?” Alec was genuinely surprised. He had not been expecting that revelation. “So you speak the language?”
    “Dutch? Yes, sir. A little. Enough to be understood, and then some.”
    “Good. Excellent. That will come in useful. Dutch is the language spoken by the inhabitants of Emden, Midanich’s busiest port, and our first destination.”
    Alec paused again, but when the valet offered up nothing further about his time in Holland, he continued, saying apologetically, “Since Tam was otherwise engaged in his studies you stepped up admirably to take on his duties. But you were here, employed in this house, before Tam became my valet, when John held the position…?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Wantage tells me John took you under his wing, and that he was training you to be a gentleman’s gentleman at the time he up and left?”
    “Yes, sir, but please excuse me when I tell you that Mr. Wantage hasn’t got it quite right,” Jeffries said, and continued when Alec put up his brows. “I was a gentleman’s gentleman before I came here to be an