When he spoke, his voice had lost some of its usual crispness. What had happened to put him into such a state, and the day not half gone? “I wish I knew your secrets, Miss Burke,” he mumbled.
Reflexively, she curled her fingers around her journal where it lay on the bench between them.
“Oh, not just those,” he said with a laugh, reaching to tap its cover, his index finger brushing the back of her hand in passing.
Given their positions, his touch could not fail to call Tristan’s to mind, though the effect could not have been less similar. She drew back, pulling the book more tightly against the side of her leg, braced by the bite of its one remaining sharp corner.
“I thought I knew the game you were playing,” he said, “but I can’t for the life of me figure out your rules.”
“Game?”
“No need to be coy. We’re all anglers in the same boat, here.”
“I don’t—”
“Did you reel him in last night?” He spoke over her, shaking his head, her protests unheard. “A few moments, or an hour, in the darkness—surely you had enough time. Women have ways of making men talk…even the famously tight-lipped Major Laurens, I’ll wager.” His expression was just shy of a leer.
Although her brain had been primed by a constant stream of disjointed disorder, Erica could make little sense of his rambling speech. “What is it you believe I’ve done? Of what are you accusing me, sir?”
“It’s really too bad you’re on the wrong side,” he said with another mournful shake of his head. “I’ve met your brothers in arms, you know. In Paris. A sharp set of fellows, the United Irishmen. Principled, after their way. But none quite as savvy as you…”
Paris. The United Irishmen. Various leaders of the cause had been forced to flee to France. But what had taken the captain into the path of those men? Suddenly she remembered the day of her arrival. Whitby’s story about the suspicious poets. Could he be some sort of spy himself? An agent of the British crown?
“The scream was an inspired touch,” he continued, sounding reluctantly impressed. “At first I wondered why you’d done it. But what defense could he offer, in the face of all those people? And as for you…well, you got just what you came for. Now when you slip away from Hawesdale, everyone will imagine they know why.” His slightly unfocused gaze traveled leisurely down her arm, coming to rest once more on her journal. “What’s next, Miss Burke? Oh, how I’d like to know what you’ve got up your sleeve…”
A chill slithered across her skin, following the same path as his eyes. We’re all anglers in the same boat, he’d said. “Are you saying you believe me to be—? That the Duke of Raynham is a—?” No. Not the Duke of Raynham. He’d called him Major Laurens. The officer. The hero. The…
“Shhh…” Whitby lifted one finger to her lips while stifling his own laugh.
She leaped up, journal in hand. “You’re drunk, Captain Whitby. I’m not sure you ought to be telling me all this. And I’m quite sure we shouldn’t be here alone.”
He rose too, steadier on his feet than she expected, and leaned closer. Too close. The stench of liquor overwhelmed every other scent—as if he’d splashed more of it on his clothes than he’d tossed down his throat. Perhaps his drunkenness was an act, an attempt to get her to say something she’d regret, something she hoped he’d forget? But his pale eyes glittered menacingly, and she guessed he’d swallowed a fair share of the brandy too.
“Frightened?” he whispered. “Don’t be. We’re not really alone.” His eyes darted about before coming to rest on her face once more. “This is the proverbial glass house. Any fool should know that someone’s always watching.”
Ordinarily, she would have looked around her, but instinct told her not to take her eyes off him. Perhaps Mr. Sturgess would come in. Or servants in the kitchen would hear if she—
His bitter laugh sent another puff of brandy-scented breath into her face. “I wouldn’t advise screaming. You’ve used that gambit once, and I don’t believe a lady can claim she’s been compromised twice.”
Oh, what did he want from her? A plea rose in her throat, but she could not shape it into words.
While they had been speaking, the room had been growing steadily dimmer. Whitby glanced upward, and lines of smug satisfaction settled over his face. “You might have got what you came for, Miss Burke. But it doesn’t look like you’ll get away with it, after all.”
With those words, he turned and left as he’d come, each step a shade more deliberate than a sober man’s would have been. Just as the door latched behind him, a rumble of thunder rattled the room from floor to ceiling. So that was what he’d meant about not getting away. Rain once more lashed against the glass, and she shuddered as if struck.
But her reasons for wanting to be able to leave Hawesdale were not at all what Captain Whitby had insinuated. Was the man mad? She, a spy?
The surrounding greenery absorbed her nervous laughter. She’d heard people call her elder sister a patriot, not always meaning the term as a compliment. And her brothers, of course…along with Henry… Well, if Whitby suspected their connection to the United Irishmen, their involvement in the uprising last May, he was not wrong. But how her whole family would laugh if they ever heard anyone suggest she might be a spy. Spies were clever and secretive, while she was famously flighty. Why, forgetting her journal was what had landed her in this mess to begin with, and—
The book tumbled from her suddenly nerveless grasp and landed at her feet, the soft whap of leather against stone lost to the tattoo of rain on the roof. Captain Whitby believed she was a spy because…because Tristan believed she was a spy. Or vice versa. Either way, they had convinced themselves that she’d been gathering secrets at Hawesdale. Military secrets. Diplomatic secrets. And recording them in her journal.
Her pulse hammered in her breast, her ears, her…finger? Raising it to her eyes, she watched a perfect, tiny globe of blood form. A page of her journal must have cut her in passing. Salt and a faintly metallic tang greeted her tongue when she pressed the wounded fingertip to her lips, an unwelcome reminder of Whitby’s touch, a macabre mockery of the last kiss she’d experienced in this room.
Every look Tristan had given her, every word he’d spoken…their encounters spun across her memory like the distorted scenes cast against the wall by a child’s magic lantern. Always, at the back of his mind, he’d been thinking of her as a spy. As the enemy.
He’d even proposed marriage. More laughter bubbled to her lips—decidedly manic, this time—but made no escape. Was there no limit to how far he’d go to get what he wanted? To uncover every secret she kept? Even the priceless gift of these hours in the conservatory…
Any fool should know that someone’s always watching.
Mr. Sturgess, the duchess, even Viviane… Feeling suddenly exposed, she scrambled for shelter, stumbling toward the door, no more steady on her feet than Whitby had been. No, she’d tripped. Tripped over her journal, which lay abandoned on the damp flagstone where it had slipped from her grasp. Once, the mere sight of its worn leather cover had been calming, the doorway to a place where her weary mind might find respite. But now…?
She turned back, resisted the impulse to kick it away, snatched it up instead. Heat flared through her arm, the same pulse of energy that had laid low the nosy soldier in the pub. So Tristan wanted to know what was inside her journal? Inside her? Very well.
After shoving aside a spiky Agave americana to clear a space at the nearest table, she sat down, found the pencil stub, flipped to an empty page, and began to write.
* * * *
The gentlemen dined alone—all but Whitby, who was nowhere to be found.
Neither, as it happened, was Erica.
After last night’s events, which the other men were pretending not to discuss in his presence, Tristan could hardly blame her for keeping to herself. All day he had done his best
to heed Mr. Remington’s advice to let her be. Oh, he’d poked his head into the library once or twice, and considered enquiring of Sturgess. Guin had volunteered that she’d last seen Miss Burke late morning and kindly sent her maid to her chamber to check on her, but the maid’s knock had gone unanswered. Under ordinary circumstances, Erica’s absence would not have occasioned him a moment’s worry. She did not set her watch by the rest of the world’s clock.
But these were far from ordinary circumstances, and he could not shake his misgivings.
Her nonappearance at dinner went unremarked, and perhaps even unobserved since none of the other ladies were present either. Guin was dining privately with Vivi. Sir Thomas only shrugged when asked after Lady Lydgate, and Tristan declined to enquire of Beresford, though he was as likely to know that lady’s whereabouts as the baronet. Mr. Newsome reported that his wife was overseeing the packing of her trunk, despite the resumption of the rain. Thanks to the changeable weather, Lady Easton Pilkington had succumbed to another headache, and Caroline had insisted upon playing nurse to her mother. Pilkington had looked rather sheepish as he had made that announcement, then explained to Tristan in a quieter voice that his conversation with Caroline would have to wait another day. Tristan had only nodded.
Once they were seated, Tristan ran his gaze around the table at five gentlemen who, if they had possessed any interests in common, had exhausted those subjects a fortnight past. Beneath the table, one booted foot tapped restlessly. For all that their numbers were few, the meal dragged on interminably, course after course. When port at last was served, Beresford sipped at his glass, more abstemious than the parson; if Lady Lydgate was somewhere waiting for him, he seemed to be in no hurry to join her. Pilkington had the nerve to call for coffee.
At last, however, the meal came to an end. Someone suggested billiards, but he was already to the door. “Be my guest,” he said, only glancing over his shoulder. “I’ll join you another night.”
Ridiculous, really, for him to worry. He wasn’t worried about Whitby’s absence, after all, and God knew he was as likely to—
Whitby.
Tristan stopped stock still in the middle of the corridor, closed his eyes, and pulled from the reaches of his mind every word the man had spoken to him since his arrival, every topic they’d discussed. Danger and duty. Rumors and spies. He’d been instantly suspicious of Erica. She’s Irish, Tris. Certainly David Whitby was not the only Englishman who regarded being Irish as crime enough. But surely, surely his oldest friend, his fellow officer, would not have—
Almost before he had opened his eyes, his feet were moving again. Past the empty library, the dark drawing room. He hardly paused. The glasshouse was his destination. He ought to have looked for her there hours ago. Pride had kept him as far from it as the house allowed. Pray God his pride had not been her downfall.
A single candle had been left burning, one flickering flame that sent its hazy glow through the square pane of glass in the unlocked door, deepening the shadows wherever its light was too weak to penetrate.
When he opened the door, the couple seated beneath the orange trees sprang guiltily apart, their hands still clasped as he approached. At last Whitby released Caroline and stood.
“Miss Pilkington.” Tristan bowed and instantly regretted his stiffness. She would misread it as jealousy. “Whitby.”
Instead of fumbling explanations and apologies, silence hung in the room, louder than the rain against the roof. Caroline, too, got to her feet. “I was—I should go back to Mama. She will be in need of another draught. Excuse me.” She started past him, unable to meet his eye.
He wished he could free her, offer his blessing of her choice. But at the moment, Whitby had lost his trust. And Caroline’s father, having twice had his appetite whetted by the prospect of wedding his only daughter to the heir to a dukedom, was unlikely to be satisfied with a mere captain.
Whitby hurried forward to curl possessive fingers around her elbow. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Wait.”
They paused in their flight. Caroline’s eyes stayed focused resolutely on the ground.
“Has either of you seen Miss Burke?”
She looked up then, neither surprised nor, thankfully, hurt by his question. She shook her head. The truth. He felt certain of it. He turned his gaze on Whitby, whose face was a carefully schooled blank. Tristan had worked with him to perfect that expression. “Not recently,” the captain murmured, his pale eyes steady and unreadable.
“Then when?”
A pause. “I can’t quite recall, Your Grace.”
When a man claimed he couldn’t recall, it was almost always a lie.
Tristan could demand an honest answer. But a weak, foolish part of him did not want to press for the truth, only to have his friend respond with a sneer: When? Why, I saw her last night, a little past midnight—as did everyone else. Nor did he wish to risk hearing something even worse.
As Whitby turned and urged Caroline toward the door, Tristan slammed his palm on the table next to him, nearly upsetting some pointy-leaved plant in a clay pot. But the surface beneath his hand wasn’t the tabletop, whose warped, scuffed boards would have felt rough. What lay beneath his fingertips was smooth leather.
He hardly dared look down to confirm his suspicions. It might be any number of things. Vivi had a habit of sneaking novels; she might have brought one to her botany lesson and abandoned it. Sturgess no doubt wrote records or notes in something and might keep such a book at hand. No reason for his mind to leap immediately to…
Erica’s journal.
Last night’s surge of triumph at having it in his hands had long since fled, to be replaced with unease. The beginnings of terror. She’s left it lying around before. The memory brought little reassurance. She had, of course, forgotten her journal once or twice, to memorable effect. But this felt somehow different. Call it a hunch. Gut instinct. A good agent relied more often than he’d like to admit on both. And the sight of that journal lying atop the table, half hidden by greenery, was some kind of sign. A message. As if she’d expected him to look for her here. As if she’d wanted him to find it.
Was it a call for help? Had something happened to her?
Or was it a test?
His fingertips still resting lightly on the cover, he looked slowly around the conservatory. Beyond its windows, all was wet and dark. He could see nothing outside. But the single candle burning nearby would ensure that anyone who chose to look in could easily see him. Leaves and limbs, jagged and smooth, cast eerie shadows around the room. The steam that rose from the vents in the floor stirred the air and brought those shadows to life.
“Is anyone there?”
Silence. Not even an echo.
With exaggerated care, as if he feared moving the book would set off an alarm or trigger a blast, he lifted it from the table, tucked it under his arm, and looked around once more.
“Erica?”
Still nothing. He spun on one foot, the rasp of boot leather against the stone floor loud in the stillness, and left the conservatory. He had to find her.
But this search was no more successful than the last. Armitage told him that Mr. Remington had retired early and he’d see no sign of Miss Burke all afternoon. Guin, too, had gone to bed. Outside the billiards room, he could hear the soft clack of ivory balls, some laughter, an oath. Male voices, all. All was quiet in the drawing room, the library, even the schoolroom. He certainly could not tap on her chamber door. Resigned, he descended the stairs to his suite.
The wrinkled pages of the journal whispered to him from the table where he laid it when he went to undress. After he’d crawled into bed, he leaned over the table to snuff the candles. The journal stared up at him, inscrutable. What if she’d wanted him to find it, to read it? What if she were counting on him to discover the truth?
With a muttered curse, he snatched it up.
He studied its binding first, the quality of the leather, the strength of the stitching. When he ran his thumb over the edge of the pages, the contents fluttered to life. Fragments of words and pictures appeared and were gone before he could make sense of them. Before he could rightly be called guilty of reading the thing.
At last, though, there was nothing for it but to open it and find out whether he had been right about Erica Burke. Or dreadfully, dangerously wrong.
For a moment, he weighed the choice of starting at the beginning or opening to a random point. As it was Erica’s handiwork, he suspected that a randomly chosen page was as likely to be significant as any. But his mind balked at such a haphazard approach. With a degree of trepidation he tried to dismiss as unreasonable, he peeled back the front cover and saw at the very top of the first page, in a surprisingly ornate hand,
Property of E. Burke
The tails of letters had been turned to branches and leaves, the E a fantastical bloom. Beneath her name, in a plainer, masculine hand, were the words
To Erica, from Henry
Christmas, 1797
Dublin
A less lover-like inscription he could hardly imagine. But evidently the journal—and at least some of what it represented to its owner?—had in fact been a gift from the man she had intended to marry. As initial discoveries went, it was almost enough to make him lay the book aside.
Almost.
The second and third pages, spread to the light, revealed what any agent would have recognized immediately as a key. A key to a code he did not know. The symbols were common enough: circles like phases of the moon, empty, half, and full; a leaf; a manicule. And something that looked like a tiny coiled spring. Each symbol correlated to an explanation, a word or phrase—in Latin, if he didn’t miss his guess. But not Latin as he’d learned it in school, or as he’d seen spies use the language since. The beginnings of a headache prickled behind his eyes. He had not expected to spend the night translating and code-breaking.
The spelling, the abbreviation, the grammar were all rather…esoteric, particularly when combined with a tendency to ornament the letters and margins with botanical flourishes. It might have been a masterful attempt at disguising her intentions. But somehow it felt more like the handiwork of one who’d been inattentive during lessons. Or perhaps had never really been taught? He thought of the conversation with Miss Chatham he’d overheard, about young ladies and ancient languages and Erica’s somewhat haphazard education. He’d heard people speak derisively of “lady’s Greek,” a simplified version, without the accents. Could there be a lady’s Latin, too?
The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels) Page 17