But she didn’t. “Me, a duchess?” She laughed, a shade too brightly. “In any case, he holds out some hope of returning to—”
“The army?” he supplied when she hesitated. Her eyes widened with surprise. “I can spot an officer a mile away—even without his red coat.”
She mustered a weak smile. “It is not, I suppose, the choice most men in his position would make,” she said, hoping to temper what sounded like Remy’s annoyance.
He had lifted his cup halfway to his lips, but at her words, the cup paused in midair. “Oh, I understand his decision. I’m an old military man myself.”
A military man? Suddenly, any number of things snapped into place. Arthur Remington’s erect posture, the carefulness with which he always acted, the extraordinary trust Lord Ashborough placed in the man. And in the back of her mind, a plan began to form…
He spoke before she could put it into words. “But I begin to think he might have a few things to learn yet.” Pausing to take a drink, he grimaced and reached for the sugar bowl. After stirring vigorously, he tapped the spoon on the side of his cup and let it clatter into the saucer. Every noise jangled against Erica’s frayed nerves and made her jump. “You didn’t exactly answer my question about why you’re in such a hurry to leave,” he pointed out, eyeing her once more. “One sunny morning won’t shrink a swollen river or mend a road that’s washed away. You know that.”
She weighed her answer. Because he had it entirely wrong, of course. She didn’t want to run away. She wanted to run to Tristan with every fiber in her being.
“I suppose you’re right,” she agreed, mustering what she hoped was a look of disappointment. “And since we’re stuck here, mightn’t you go to him and see what assistance you could offer? One military man to another.”
“The duke doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who welcomes interference,” Remington said with a sharp shake of his head. “And if it’s help he wants, why not turn to Captain Whitby?”
“I believe the captain has lost his confidence.” She clenched her teeth against the memory of her encounter with the man. “He has certainly lost mine.”
Remington frowned. “I see.” With one hand he pushed away from the sideboard. “Well, I suppose I might just speak with him about one thing and another.” As he moved toward the door, she rose to follow him. “And just where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
“Oh, I think not. Stay and drink your coffee,” he insisted, gesturing toward her abandoned cup with a jerk of his chin.
She feigned a shudder of distaste. “Doubtless it’s passed tepid and moved on to cold.”
“A book from the library, perhaps? Some flower to sketch?”
She shook her head. “Come, Remy. Did you really expect me to sit here waiting with my hands folded in my lap like a lady?”
Remington laughed, but crossed his arms over his chest all the same, making it clear that he did not intend to budge. “If anything happens to you, Lady Ashborough will have my head.”
“Oh, you needn’t have any fear on that score,” she replied airily. “It really only hurts the first time she takes it off.”
He frowned. “Miss Erica, you’re—”
Words tumbled through her mind, all the usual cruelties and criticisms. Shatterbrained, careless, selfish… She batted them away like a swarm of gnats while she plowed ahead, seeking something truer. “Brave,” she finished for him.
Brave enough to master her fears. And brave enough to take what she wanted, just as she’d done last night.
To her shock, he didn’t disagree.
“Remy.” Her voice dropped to a whisper then. How to make him understand that the only real danger here was the danger to her heart? “Please.”
With one foot poised on the threshold, he turned and gave her a sidelong, assessing look. “All right, Miss Erica,” he relented with a sigh. “Come along.”
Chapter 17
“It’s a generous offer.” Tristan crossed his hands behind his back and walked from one window of his private sitting room to the next. The view showed him nothing of the devastation the rain must have brought to Hawesdale: flooded fields and cottages, drowned animals, even people. From this vantage point, it would be easy enough for the Duke of Raynham simply to bask in the sun’s warmth as it spread from the eastern horizon and ignore the rest. “But I cannot accept it.”
When a footman had woken him to deliver the message that Miss Burke wished to speak with him in private, he’d hardly dared to let himself wonder what she had to say. The hurried moments he had spared to dress—he hadn’t taken time to shave or even tie back his hair—had nevertheless been sufficient to leave room for speculation.
He had been unprepared for Mr. Remington’s addition to the meeting, however. Even less prepared for the man’s offer to assist him in catching the spy at Hawesdale Chase.
“Why not?” Even tired, Erica sounded ready to fight if she had to. “I assure you, Remington is up to the challenge.”
Tristan turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the man over his shoulder. “You have experience in such matters, do you, Mr. Remington?”
“Oh, things have come up. Now and again.”
“He’s very trustworthy,” Erica interjected. “And clever. Why, this past spring, he helped Lord Ashborough—”
“Whisht, Miss Erica. His Grace won’t care about that.”
Tristan had heard countless men praised for their honesty and bravery. Remington’s laconic reply told him more of what he needed to know. Too few, in his experience, knew when to keep their mouths shut. “Perhaps,” he said, turning his back on the rugged, sun-kissed landscape, “the rumors are only that: rumors. Perhaps there never was a spy.”
“You don’t believe that.”
The confidence with which Erica contradicted him ought not to come as a surprise. And as she had a habit of speaking hastily, he also knew he ought to exercise caution in drawing conclusions from what she said. Still, he could not help but wonder whether he was slipping, losing the essential ability to mask his thoughts. Or whether, as he feared, the mask was still firmly in place, but she now possessed the ability to see through it.
“Whether I do or not, Miss Burke, it does not change my decision. I cannot allow Mr. Remington to run such a risk on my behalf.”
Her eyes blazed like cut topaz. “Then I’ll do it.”
“Miss Erica—”
“No.” He spoke more softly than Remington, but he had no fear of making himself heard.
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Because I—” He snapped off the first words that rose to his tongue, startled:
Because I love you.
He tested the idea like a man drawing his thumb across a blade to test its sharpness, knowing one careless slip would leave him with a wound. But even the possibility of pain—and it was real, for he doubted she would be eager to hear him make such a declaration—did not diminish the fierce truth of those three words.
“If I may, Your Grace.” Remington’s voice jerked him back into the moment. How long had he been standing there with his mouth agape, while they waited for him to finish his sentence? “You do not strike me as a hasty man. But another day or two of deliberation, and it will be too late. Now is the time to act, before the weather makes it possible for your guests to scatter. If the truth is uncovered, Miss Erica can be cleared of any wrongdoing before the gossip spreads beyond the walls of this house.”
Exasperation puffed from Erica’s lips. “I don’t care about—”
“I do,” Tristan said flatly. Despite all appearances to the contrary. With a wave of his hand, he invited both of them to sit before sinking with surprising weariness into a chair. What a hash he’d made of things. “Continue, Mr. Remington.”
“Miss Erica mentioned a Captain Whitby.” The man still sat wit
h the straight-backed posture of a soldier that clearly conveyed he’d rather be doing than sitting. “I wonder if you are certain he’s not the culprit.”
“If he’s the real spy,” Erica interjected, astonished by the notion but obviously willing to consider it, “he had some nerve cornering me in the conservatory to accuse me of the crime.”
Though her words contained no details of the encounter, Tristan could easily picture it. A screen of leaves and branches for cover. A few well-chosen innuendos. A threat. As if it were a thing disconnected from him, he watched his hand curl around the arm of the chair. A loyal betrayal. The most perverse sort of contradiction he could imagine. Persuaded of Erica’s guilt, had Whitby imagined himself acting to protect his oldest friend? If so, he’d failed, for by frightening the woman Tristan loved, Whitby had earned his disgust and distrust instead.
That did not, of course, make him the culprit they were seeking.
Nor did it make him innocent.
“I believe it would be best if we proceeded without alerting Captain Whitby to our scheme,” Tristan said quietly. “Whatever it may be.”
Remington nodded once. “Understood.”
Silence reigned for some time as he considered how best to proceed. Every plan that presented itself, he dismissed as relying too heavily on evidence acquired from Whitby, the veracity of which he had neither the means nor the time to prove. Remington might be some help below stairs, but he was one man. A stranger. And Erica…
“Tell them all that Whitby was right about me,” she blurted out.
Of course she had been using those quiet moments to form her own absurd plan. “The hope, my dear,” he said, “is to reduce the speculation surrounding you, not increase it.”
At the wry edge to his voice—or perhaps the endearment—her eyes narrowed. “The hope is to catch a spy whose very existence is a threat to your work, and by extension a threat to us all. Is it not?”
To his right, Remington discreetly turned a snicker into a cough.
“Whitby told you of his suspicions.” She leaped to her feet and both he and Remington moved to follow, but she waved them down even as she paced. “You…you believed my journal contained secret information and went to my chamber to find it. Its contents confirmed your hunch.” She paused to look between them, never quite making eye contact. “Spread that story among the guests—Remington must do the same for the staff.”
“How does that help?” Tristan asked. “The real villain will know we’ve got it wrong.”
“Exactly.”
“He—or she—will relax,” Remington explained with a nod of understanding and the beginnings of a grin. “Feel secure. Make mistakes. And you needn’t worry about tipping your hand in the process,” he added. “I daresay no one will be surprised to learn that a high-ranking officer is possessed of privileged information—how privileged need never enter into it.”
“Yes,” agreed Erica. “You’ll simply explain that you’ve…” She tapped a finger against her lip as she considered. “Oh, I know. You’ve left a sensitive document lying about, hoping to catch me red-handed.”
“And hope the real spy takes the bait,” Tristan finished, catching up with her thoughts at last. It wasn’t a terrible plan. But it was the sort of plan over which he’d have very little control, and that unsettled him. “Absolutely not.”
This was not one of the occasions on which Erica crumpled when she met resistance, however. Piercing him with the gem-like intensity of her gaze, she strode forward until she stood before him. “It will work.”
“I won’t do anything to put you in danger—greater danger,” he corrected, seeing her poised to remind him that no one at Hawesdale was entirely safe.
“You won’t be. It will only be confirming their suspicions. Telling people what they expect to hear.” Despite the tilt of her chin, the gleam in her eyes, he could see the soft, vulnerable place at her core. The place in which she believed that all those critics and all those skeptics might not be entirely wrong about her.
He wanted to fold her into his arms, to be the shield she needed when her own grew thin or weak. And to draw her tight against him because then she would be too close for him to see into her soul. This beautiful, terrifying transparency that he could never have imagined—this, this was what it meant to look on another person with the eyes of love. It frightened him as nothing ever had. And he could not look away.
He rose to his feet, but he did not step closer. Because she was watching him, and he could tell from the catch in her breath, the slight widening of her eyes, that she had seen it too.
His heart thudded out its alarm at discovering its unexpected vulnerability. His head, meanwhile, was cataloging the dangers—to her most of all. But there were others. Despite Remington’s assurances, would uncovering the guilty party compromise his identity as an agent? A true villain, caught in the act, might be desperate enough to expose Tristan for what he really was—a fellow spy.
How much was he willing to risk?
Everything. Because he knew that all Erica had ever really wanted was someone who believed in her. Someone who loved her just as she was.
“It’s brilliant,” he said and nodded his acquiescence to her scheme.
Bright spots of color appeared in her cheeks, and her lips curved into a smile he had only begun to learn. But in that moment he knew he would fight for the chance to put that expression on her face again. And again. And again.
Remington cleared his throat as he stood. “I’d say it’s a sound plan. I’ll set about spreading the word.”
“And you can begin by forging a suitably interesting document,” Erica said to Tristan before excusing herself with a curtsy. Remington wavered for a moment, loitering on the point of saying something more, before nodding to Tristan and following her out the door.
The mantel clock chimed eight. An hour or perhaps two until he could expect to find the others at breakfast and begin to sow the seeds of Erica’s misdirection plot. But time enough to begin the document she’d asked him to create.
Not that he needed to fabricate such a document. He could doubtless find something that would suffice among his papers. Nevertheless, he seated himself at the secretary, remembering as he did so the sight of Erica in her dressing gown examining the antique desk, looking for her journal. How much had changed since that moment. And how little.
A private smile lifted his lips. He dipped a pen and set its tip to a blank sheet of foolscap, knowing exactly the letter he needed to write. Not to catch a spy. To catch Erica.
* * * *
When he entered the breakfast room, he found it unoccupied except for Caroline and a footman, who slipped out a side door when Tristan nodded his dismissal.
“Good morning, Miss Pilkington,” he said and bowed. She looked cool and elegant in a blue morning gown, her smooth brown hair carefully arranged. Still, it was clear she must have passed a largely sleepless night. The shadows beneath her eyes, the lines of exhaustion on her face, could not hide from the morning sun. “May I enquire after your mother? Is she improved?”
“How thoughtful of you to be concerned,” she said, rising only to curtsy. “She is resting comfortably. I believe the worst has passed.”
“I am glad to hear it.” He glanced past her at the window and back again. “Perhaps the improvement in the weather will give her some reprieve.”
Caroline nodded, though a hint of skepticism flashed through her eyes. “One may hope.” She returned to her place, a half-empty plate before her and a coffee cup that had already been drained. “She’s suffered from these headaches as long as I can remember, but sadly, her condition has been severe and worsening since the spring, in fair skies or foul.”
“To what does her physician attribute such a change?”
“Papa—” She pressed her lips together and swallowed, as if she wished to take back the word. “Mam
a has not consulted one.”
Tristan wrinkled his brow but said nothing. Why hadn’t Pilkington insisted that his wife be seen by a competent medical man?
As he stepped to the sideboard, Caroline resumed pushing her food around her plate. Wordlessly, he filled a clean cup with coffee and brought it to her. She looked up. “You are too kind.”
“Sugar? Milk?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She was still stirring when he said, “I am fortunate to have found you here this morning. I have been hoping for a few moments of private conversation.”
The spoon slipped from her fingers and rang against the thin china of the cup. “My father told me. I am sorry that my mother’s health prevented us from speaking yesterday, as you requested.”
He had taken the chair opposite her when he returned to the table, but she did not meet his eyes as she spoke. Her much vaunted poise and good breeding seemed to have deserted her, as she resumed toying with the spoon. A sign of discouragement, as plain as she knew how to make it. “Miss Pilkington,” he said, “do not be alarmed. I only wanted to—”
“I hope you will wish me joy,” she spoke across him, then looked up, a slight tilt to her chin. She had not quite mastered Erica’s defiant expression, but with a little practice she would do very well. “Captain Whitby and I are to be married.”
He parted his lips to speak, but found no words at the ready. It was not exactly surprise that stopped his speech, for after yesterday afternoon’s encounter in the conservatory, he had been all but certain of the way things tended between the two. Once, he would have declared Whitby the best of men and deserving of her favor. Now, however, such praise did not rise easily to his tongue.
Again, she misread his reaction. “I am sorry. Papa ought never to have told you… That is, I certainly never expected…”
“I understand.” She had not expected, nor wanted, his offer, and while perhaps such words ought to offend him—the second rejection in as many days—this time he felt nothing but relief. “My felicitations to you both, of course.”
The Duke's Suspicion (Rogues and Rebels) Page 21