She had not yet been introduced to half the party, most of whom sat too far away for conversation in any case. Across the table a young woman a few years Erica’s elder drew her spoon back and forth through her soup, never lifting it to her mouth. She must be Miss P—something, and the other older couple, each seated in a place of honor beside their hosts, must be her parents. Lord—something, wasn’t it? The one who meant for Tristan to fulfill some promise? She longed to be able to write all the names in her journal to help her remember. So the blond man must be—
“Captain Whitby.” Lady Lydgate turned abruptly and spoke to him. “What was it you were saying about spies in the neighborhood?”
The muted clatter of conversation and silver fell silent as every ear strained to catch his answer. Captain Whitby laughed.
“Why, Lady Lydgate, I spoke in the strictest confidence.” But his scold was delivered with a smile, and his pale blue eyes twinkled. Even on short acquaintance, Erica could guess that it would be unwise to trust Lady Lydgate with secrets. Captain Whitby clearly understood that too.
“Spies?” When Tristan repeated the word, it took on a more serious cast. The inevitable effect of his uniform, she decided, combined with his unsmiling demeanor. Tension crackled around the table like an electric spark.
“Actually, no.” Captain Whitby laid aside his spoon and scanned the assembled company. “Poets.”
A murmur of relieved laughter swelled and subsided. Though she still had not taken a bite of food, Miss P. blotted her lips with her napkin to mask her smile.
“The Home Office received reports of suspicious behavior. I was sent to investigate. A shrewd lady had recently observed two poorly dressed young men patrolling the countryside, speaking in code.” A born storyteller, Captain Whitby paused to allow darting glances of speculation to pass among the guests. “As it turned out, the suspects were merely impoverished poets on a walking tour, spouting lines of verse to one another.”
“O-ho,” chuckled Sir Thomas. “Dangerous radicals, eh?”
“They might be both poets and radicals. Mightn’t they?” The words slipped from Erica’s lips before she could call them back. Captain Whitby resumed studying her, this time with a slight frown notched into his brow, and she felt it imperative to explain herself. “After all, both art and politics seek to rouse a person’s deeper feelings, for good or ill.”
“Very true, Miss—”
She did not wait for another to make the introduction. “Burke.”
Lady Lydgate tilted her head toward Captain Whitby, and the ostrich plumes in her hair waved, giving her the appearance of a quizzical bird. “Trust the Irish to know something of rabble-rousing,” she said, in a false whisper.
Heat flared in Erica’s cheeks and spread right down to the plunging neckline of her borrowed gown.
“And poetry,” Tristan declared from the head of the table without looking at her. Lady Lydgate deferred to his opinion, though grudgingly. Erica suspected he did not often have occasion to defend her country’s artistry.
“Though one is certainly hard pressed to think of an example that joins the poetic and the political successfully,” opined the gentleman she believed to be Miss P—something’s father.
Miss P. at last looked up from her plate. “What about The Wild Irish Rose?”
Another hum rose from the table, punctuated with exclamations of “So thrilling!” and “What trash!”
Erica did not know where to look and as a result found herself imprisoned by Tristan’s gaze. One dark brow lifted. She cleared her throat. “My sister is the author,” she confessed quietly.
The murmur grew momentarily louder then stopped altogether, as it had when Lady Lydgate had spoken the word “spies.” Astonishment, embarrassment, and amusement contorted the faces of the company as they recollected what had been said, or what they had heard, about the book. The captain once more regarded her with a look she could only describe as speculative. “Lady Ashborough writes feelingly of the plight of Ireland,” he said. “Did your family know something of the rebellion firsthand?”
Warily, she nodded. Her elder brother had been a member of the United Irishmen, the group who had organized the uprising. Her younger brother had been gravely injured in it. And Henry—
“My betrothed was killed during the events of late May,” she said after a moment, deliberately vague about whether he was a rebel, a soldier, or an innocent bystander.
Mumbled expressions of sympathy rippled around her. Inexplicably, a few also darted glances toward Miss P., whose father scraped back his chair, lifted his glass, and rose. “A toast,” he proclaimed, “to the memory of those we have lost, and the fortune of those who have returned.” He gestured with his wine toward Tristan, and other chairs screeched across the floor as the assembled company came to its feet to salute their host.
Beneath the clamor, Sir Thomas spoke into her ear. “You and Miss Pilkington have your sorrow in common, you know. She was engaged to marry Lord Hawes before he died. Raynham’s elder brother,” he added when she wrinkled her brow in confusion.
“Oh?” Erica darted her gaze across the table. Miss Pilkington had risen to her feet, she noted, but her glass remained on the table.
“Yes, indeed,” said Sir Thomas, his eager whisper hinting that he had more to tell and, like his wife, would be only too happy to share what he knew. Erica tightened her hold on the stem of her glass. “Rumor has it Raynham intends to step into his brother’s place in more ways than one.”
He expects you to keep Percy’s promise to their daughter. Suddenly the words made sense. She knew, of course, that great families generally regarded marriage as a means to solidify status or combine wealth. But she was chilled by the notion that a woman might be passed from one brother to the next, as if she were merely a soulless chattel, not a living, breathing being with feelings. As if she were marrying a title, rather than the man to whom it belonged. She could not bring herself to glance toward Tristan to see whether he looked pleased at the prospect of his impending nuptials.
What business had she with the wedded bliss—or misery—of strangers?
Uneasily, she moved away from Sir Thomas, only to discover that one leg of his chair now pinned the full skirts of her gown to the floor. A jerk of surprise and the next thing she knew, red wine was arcing from her glass into the air. It seemed to hover there for a moment, deciding where—or, pray God, whether—to fall. Her eyes snapped closed.
When she opened them again, it was not to discover that the wine had defied Mr. Newton’s principle and stayed miraculously suspended in midair. Nevertheless, her first reaction was relief. She had managed, somehow, not to spill a drop on her borrowed gown. The linens, however…
Her gaze crept slowly, reluctantly across the table, following a murderous-looking trail that ended at Miss Pilkington. That young woman had sunk back into her chair, looking as if she were the victim of some heinous crime. Bloodred stains splashed across the pale yellow silk of her ruined gown.
Every eye, including Miss Pilkington’s, was focused on the spreading stain. Every hand and pair of lips was frozen in shock. As a result, it was more than quiet enough to hear Erica’s wine glass shatter as it slipped from her nerveless fingers onto the floor. Quiet enough to hear the fabric of the beautiful blue gown rip as she tugged it free of Sir Thomas’s chair leg. And quiet enough that her footsteps echoed as she dashed across the threshold and fled down the corridor.
Chapter 7
Tristan watched David Whitby rise from a leather armchair and walk to the sideboard to refill his glass. “I would have thought you might balk at drinking French brandy, Captain. Given your current line of work.”
Both second sons, he and Whitby had joined a cavalry unit together after school, where quickness, bravery, and an ability to be discreet had brought them to the notice of Colonel Zebadiah Scott. Though neither of them could recollect havin
g ever seen the man before the day they were invited to his office, he had known them well.
They had left that meeting with new orders: to join an elite corps of officers whose task it was not to fight battles, but to ferret out and report the information that made it possible for others to win them. It was dangerous, delicate work, about which they could reveal next to nothing—not even, at times, to one another.
Then Whitby’s identity had been exposed. One day, he was in Paris, playing the part of a disaffected artist with Jacobin sympathies. The next…gone. Weeks of uncertainty had followed, relieved only somewhat by a whispered report that he had been bundled back to London. Now, he was using his years of invaluable wartime experience helping the Home Office uncover domestic spies and smugglers—the sort of lawless men who made it possible for English gentlemen to enjoy a glass of contraband French brandy now and again.
Whitby laughed as he splashed a generous measure of Armagnac into his tumbler. “You don’t suppose I smash every bottle we find, do you?”
Tris smiled into the cozy dimness of the study and lifted his own glass to his lips. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
The leather chair gave a soft sigh as Whitby returned to it and sat. For a long moment, neither spoke, reveling instead in the silence that can only exist between those who know one another’s thoughts and do not require them to be spoken. Dark paneled walls, comfortable furniture, a crackling fire—everything about the space exuded ease. Tristan knew it was unreasonable to miss the cheap, rough quarters he’d grown used to in recent years.
“Will you do it? Will you marry Caroline Pilkington?”
Whitby’s question caught him off guard, not least because he found himself calling his mind back from the memory of Erica running from the dining room and his mad impulse to go after her. He’d made do with sending a footman to make sure she found her way back to her room. Caroline had left too, calm and dignified, eschewing the offers of help from everyone, even her mother. Half an hour later she’d returned, wearing a simpler gown, though no less elegant, unwilling to hear any critique of Miss Burke.
If he’d staged a scene to amplify the contrast between the two women, he could have done no better.
“Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t?” he replied. “She’ll make a suitable duchess.”
“Indeed.” Was it his imagination, or did Whitby’s voice sound clipped?
Tristan had never been disposed to let his imagination run wild.
“Only…” Whitby paused for a sip that left his glass half empty. “I am surprised to find you hurrying to marry. You have time, now, to look about and choose your bride. You will not lack for likely candidates.”
“Simpering misses and their too-eager mamas? I haven’t six weeks to waste in London looking over the wares on the marriage mart. I’d rather be done with the business.” He recognized the word’s crass, unpleasant connotations, but in the end, marriage among those of his class was rarely anything more than a business arrangement.
Most likely, settlements had already been drawn up between their families. All that remained was to obtain a Bishop’s License and the deed could be done within the week. The less time he wasted at Hawesdale, the sooner he could return to the duties that mattered most.
Carefully, Whitby placed his glass on the table beside him, twisting it this way and that in the firelight and studying the patterns cast by the faceted crystal. “You’re going back, aren’t you?”
“I hadn’t really—”
At last his friend lifted his gaze from the tumbler to his face. Demanding honesty.
Tristan shrugged.
“What about your responsibilities here? Hawesdale Chase? Lady Viviane?”
“My father never spared a thought for the management of Hawesdale. Yet it has been run efficiently and effectively all these years. I have no reason to doubt it will continue to be in my absence. My stepmother and sister are well provided for. Meanwhile…” He paused to finger the fringe of his scarlet sash where it draped onto the chair. “When I consider the greater need, the greater good, what other conclusion am I to reach?”
Whitby took in that information without a hint of surprise. “And how do you imagine your wife would feel about all this?”
“Relieved,” he said, though he had no reason to think Caroline a reluctant bride. At Whitby’s skeptical expression, he explained. “I cannot think it likely Miss Pilkington wanted to marry Percy particularly. She may feel no more enthusiasm at the prospect of marrying me. But I suspect she rather likes the idea of being the Duchess of Raynham. Once we’re wed, she’ll have everything her heart desires.”
“It’s not like you to speak of hearts, Tris,” Whitby protested with a laugh.
Tristan conceded the point with a slight nod and an even slighter smile. “True enough. This brandy has me lapsing into the cant of poets and lovers,” he said, studying his own, nearly untouched, glass. “But aren’t most young ladies brought up with the expectation of becoming wives and mothers?” Certainly very few went about proclaiming their intention to become something else. A botanist, for instance.
He shook off the mental image of Erica’s fierce expression as she clutched her journal. Tried and failed to replace it with a picture of Caroline. They’d just dined together. Why were her features still so indistinct in his mind? “My brother raised Miss Pilkington’s expectations, and his death left her in an awkward situation. I can offer a remedy that will benefit us both. A wife will ensure the smooth running of my household in my absence. And with diligent application and a bit of luck, I’ll leave her in anticipation of the birth of an heir.”
“Diligent application? Good God, Tris. I think I preferred the talk of heart’s desires. You make marriage—and the marriage bed—sound like a godawful chore.”
“An obligation,” Tristan corrected mildly. “One of several duties I’m now bound to fulfil.”
Whitby swore, snatched up his drink, and finished it. “And how will you feel if it becomes something more in the nature of a permanent assignment?”
“Why do I get the feeling you aren’t referring to the sacred vow to remain faithful to my wife ‘until death do us part’?” Tristan eased forward, elbows braced on knees, glass dangling from his fingertips, imagining a lifetime of facing Caroline’s complaisant smiles. “Charming story about the poet-spies, by the way.”
“My hand to God, Tris, it happened just as I said.”
“I know it did. Last year. In Somerset.” Tristan fixed his friend with a stern eye. “So what really brought you to Westmorland?”
Whitby sighed. “Rumors.” He rose but did not return to the sideboard. Instead he paused before the fire, his figure limned by its warm light, his face in shadow. “About you. Where you’ve been. What you’ve learned. Someone knows things you’d rather they didn’t. And they’ve been leaking it out in drips and drops since you came into the title. Much more and Colonel Scott will be forced to reassign you to domestic duty too. With his regrets, of course.”
With one fingertip, Tristan traced the rim of his glass. “Of course.” Whitby knew something of regret. Restlessness. The loss of honor—though through no fault of his own. “So you were sent—or came—to Hawesdale to investigate.”
“An agent intercepted a letter about a month ago, making mention of your return and the possibility that valuable information could be acquired at Hawesdale thereafter. Neither the sender nor the intended recipient have been identified. When I arrived in the country I hoped to be able to nose around without rousing suspicions, talk with your servants, anyone who might have access to your papers or other possessions. Instead I found a houseful of guests, all invited by the duchess to welcome you home, it seems. And all with a little something to hide.”
In his mind’s eye, Tristan scanned the length of the dining room table, reviewing the assembled guests. “Surely neither the Lydgates nor
the Newsomes can be serious subjects of investigation.”
It was Whitby’s turn to shrug. “Did you know that Mr. Newsome’s youngest brother was a naval officer aboard a ship that went down? Rumor has it there are survivors being held in a French prison.”
And probably wishing they had drowned, Tristan thought, as he glanced toward the window and watched rain streak down the glass. But he could not deny that the vicar might have come to Hawesdale hoping to uncover information about his brother’s whereabouts.
“And Beresford?” Though it would be a stretch to describe the man as an enemy, Tristan found himself hoping his stepmother had not been taken in by the youngish widower’s oily charm. A lecher, almost certainly. But a spy?
“Been muttering about bad investments and dashing off notes of hand for his losses at the billiards table,” Whitby told him.
Tristan nodded. A man desperate for money might do anything to save himself, even commit treason. “What about the Pilkingtons?” He had too much experience to dismiss them out of hand. Did Whitby’s suspicions lie behind Guin’s halfhearted endorsement of the proposed match between him and Caroline?
Whitby laughed. “Nothing beyond the fact that the young lady prefers her gowns in the Directoire style, which Mrs. Newsome has hinted may mean she is a republican of easy virtue.”
Tristan mustered a smile and lifted his glass to his lips. “Have you learned anything else?”
Whitby shook his head, but only after the slightest hesitation. Someone unaccustomed to reading behavior or looking for clues would never have noted it.
The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels) Page 7