Still, Whitby weighed his words before continuing. “I wonder how much you know about that firebrand you rescued.”
“Miss Burke? But how could she be involved? She arrived in Westmorland only today.”
“Are you certain?”
The simple, quiet question struck him with the force of a blow. Despite his experience in the field, he’d committed two grave errors in the space of a day. He’d let down his guard. And he’d trusted another person to tell the truth.
With exaggerated care, he returned his glass to the table. “So she was not accompanying her sister the novelist on her wedding trip to the Lakes.”
“She might very well be. But it’s not a connection to ease suspicions. Her sister’s work has undeniably seditious implications.”
“Published before the rebellion?”
“After. But written earlier, as her publisher confirms. And the man she married—”
“Ashborough?” He’d persuaded himself the name and title were a fabrication, and his mind was unusually sluggish to grasp the facts of the case.
“Marquess of. But you might better know him as ‘Lord Ash.’” Tristan scoured his memory for the name but came up empty. “Notorious gambler and ne’er-do-well. Earlier this year he came very near to facing his peers over a little matter of treason,” Whitby continued. “And his uncle still insists Ashborough was in Dublin at the start of the rebellion, aiding and abetting the men who have since become his brothers.”
“His wife’s brothers, you mean.”
“Which is to say, your Miss Burke’s brothers. Suspected of involvement in the Society of United Irishmen.”
Along with the man she had planned to marry? Tristan’s lowered gaze caught the gleam of firelight across the brass buttons and gold trim of his uniform, and he recalled Erica’s expression as she’d spoken of the man. Had he been killed by British soldiers? Vengeance could be a powerful motivation for many things.
“But the uprising has been put down,” he insisted.
“Are we certain? The rebels have proved remarkably persistent. And twice now French forces have come to Ireland’s aid. Could a third effort be in the works?”
Tristan laughed dismissively. “I think I would know.”
“Exactly.” Whitby folded his arms across his chest. “But what might change if one of Britain’s best agents in France were suddenly discredited? Exposed? Removed from his post?”
Several of the foulest curses Tristan knew, in a variety of languages, sprang to his tongue. But he found himself reaching for the one whose pronunciation still eluded him. It’s blasphemous, you know. Those cognac-colored eyes, wide with concern for his very soul. Pretended concern?
He contented himself with muttering, “Preposterous.”
“She’s done nothing, then, to arouse your suspicions?” Whitby prodded.
Quickly, he shook his head. Too quickly. Despite the dimness, he thought he could see Whitby’s skeptical expression.
His mind seemed determined to shy away from the evidence before him. He forced it to the fore. An apparently chance encounter in the abandoned cottage. A guest caught wandering in a part of the house in which she had no business. Her spectacular departure from dinner, which, if she’d succeeded in getting away alone, would have provided the perfect opportunity for her to explore while every other guest was occupied for hours. And then, of course, there was her journal…
Her journal. Of course. He could almost feel its worn cover in his hand. Why in God’s name hadn’t he looked into it when he had the chance?
A servant’s muted tap at the door interrupted his mental checklist. “Come,” he barked, uncertain when he had got to his feet.
Armitage, the butler, stepped into the room with a tray extended. “A letter for you, Your Grace. From Mr. Davies. He did not wait for a reply.”
Tristan’s fingers closed around the cold, damp rectangle of folded paper. Armitage nodded sharply, tucked the tray beneath his arm, and left. Without waiting to be asked, Whitby rummaged for a spill and set about touching it first to the fire, then to the candles along the mantel and atop the desk. Soon the room blazed with light from which no print, even the most crabbed, could hide.
Still, Tristan held the letter perilously close to a flame, close enough that a little hiss of steam went up from the paper. What did he hope to find within? Some plausible explanation for Miss Burke’s behavior? An excuse to send her away?
My Lord Duke,
With deepest apologies for the delay, I write to tell you that Kevin has returned from what was, in the end, quite a perilous journey. The River Kent has overflowed its banks, sending water along every stream, crevice, and path it can find. The bridge at Kendal is washed away, but the old toll-keeper informed him that not long before its collapse, a crested carriage accompanied by a baggage coach made it to the other side safe and sound. The two conveyances must have belonged to Miss Burke’s family, as they can by no means be found on this side of the river. However, the destruction of the bridge means they will remain quite out of reach for some days and regrettably must continue without knowledge of her safety. As you requested, word was left at Endmoor against their return.
Your obedient servant,
W. Davies
“What news?” Whitby stood too far away—deliberately so, Tristan understood—to glean the letter’s contents.
With a twitch of his fingers, Tristan touched the paper to the flame. Despite the damp, it caught. When smoke began to curl into the air, he tossed the letter into the fireplace, where it soon disappeared into ash. “It seems my guests—all of them—must resign themselves to the hospitality of Hawesdale for the foreseeable future.”
However long it took for him to unmask a spy.
Chapter 8
When the thunder began to rumble once more, Tristan rose and walked to the window of his bedchamber, though the sky was still too dark for him to watch yet another storm roll in. No gleam of light caught his eye. All of Hawesdale was asleep—even the villain who meant to expose his secrets, endanger countless British troops, and rip from him the only meaningful work he had ever done.
Once the sky had lightened to an ominous gray—he could not bring himself to call it dawn—he rang for hot water and thumbed through his clothes, rejecting three coats before selecting one of such dark blue it might have been black. The perfect accompaniment both to the weather and his mood.
As he ascended the stairs to breakfast with his sister, he ticked off each guest, once more weighing his suspicions. Almost to the schoolroom door, he came to the final set of facts Whitby had laid before him, and the most damning: Erica had close ties to known traitors with French allies, and her excuse for wandering in the vicinity of Hawesdale could be neither proved nor disproved while the rain continued.
Unless her journal held a clue…
“Thank you, Miss Chatham. I’m most obliged.”
The last voice he had expected to hear this morning was Miss Burke’s. He knew, of course, how much could be gleaned from an overheard conversation. But it would mean behaving like a spy in his own home, and he had always made it a point never to think of himself as a spy.
Silently, he rocked back onto his heels, out of the swath of light from the partly opened door, into the shadowy corridor.
“For such a small service, gratitude is hardly necessary.” He had imagined the governess to be a young woman, but the voice belonged to someone well beyond the middle years of life.
A moment’s quiet. For whatever reason, Miss Burke did not seem eager to leave the schoolroom. “I hope you find yourself fortunate in your pupil, Miss Chatham. Lady Viviane seems a clever girl.”
“Too clever, sometimes, for her own good.”
The governess’ reply drove all thought of catching an informant from his mind. Miss Chatham’s words were creased with the sort of prim disapproval that w
ould crush Vivi’s spirit. Tristan drew a deep, quiet breath.
Miss Burke laughed. The sound was strange, however. Sharp. Almost humorless. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I was sometimes such a pupil myself, Miss Chatham. Why, on occasion, I surely spent more time concocting schemes to avoid a lesson than I would have spent completing it.”
Miss Chatham found nothing amusing in the younger woman’s response. “You defied your governess?”
“I never had a governess.” That explains a great deal. “My papa was my only teacher.”
“A man is hardly capable of offering an appropriately feminine education.” Censure rang in her voice. He half expected the woman to retract whatever favor she had earlier granted.
“Indeed not,” Erica agreed, apparently unperturbed.
“Lady Viviane Laurens is an accomplished young woman.” Miss Chatham stressed certain words to offer a clear rebuke of Erica’s lopsided instruction. “I did have some hope she would share her father’s fondness for history,” the governess added after a moment. “But she refuses to settle her mind to it.”
Tristan heard the sound of a something being slid across a table. Evidently a book. “Thucydides,” said Erica in a voice of mild surprise. “But not in Greek?”
“No. I generally have found that young ladies’ minds are not well suited to the study of ancient languages.” Tristan forced another calming breath into his lungs. His sister was not just any young lady. “I have limited my instruction to the modern tongues. French, of course, though one does have reservations about it at the present hour. And a smattering of German.”
“I myself never enjoyed reading history. In any language.” A rustle of fabric followed those words. He pictured Erica pacing the schoolroom and wondered, against his better judgment, what she wore today. “Why, there are hardly any women in it. And all those invented speeches.” He could almost hear her eyes roll. “Stirring, yes. But did no one ever wonder what the general’s wife, left at home with a half-dozen children and a household to manage, might have said in his place?”
Tristan bit back a smile, but the governess clearly lacked such power of imagination. “I—I beg your pardon?”
The book thumped onto the table once more. “Perhaps studying war distresses Lady Viviane. Perhaps it turns her thoughts to current events. Her brother is, after all, a soldier.”
Erica’s words, wiser than he wished, settled over him, as chilling as yesterday’s rain. Of course his poor sister did not want to read of battles and generals. The great military conflicts of history would easily turn her mind to the dangers he faced in the present.
“Children cannot be educated according to the dictates of sentiment, Miss Burke.”
Tristan breathed deep one last time, but the influx of air fanned rather than doused the fury that was smoldering in his chest. One hand lifted to rap on the doorframe to announce his presence. He meant to begin with, “Miss Chatham, your services are no longer required…” and go on from there.
“Tris?”
Vivi’s quiet voice behind him almost made him stumble. He dropped his arm and tugged his coat into place, suddenly wishing he had opted to don his uniform. By custom, an officer caught in the act of espionage while wearing it was granted some leniency. A moment too late, he plastered a strained smile of greeting on his face.
Instead of throwing herself into his arms as she had the day before, she hesitated in the corridor’s shadows, head tilted, studying him. “Why are you standing out here?”
“I—”
In the schoolroom, he heard the scuffle of footsteps across the board floor as Miss Chatham came toward the door. “You’re late, Lady Viviane.” The governess stepped into the doorway and fixed her charge with a frown. Though her proportions were ample, nothing about her suggested softness, and her brown hair was liberally frosted with gray. “Oh, Your Grace. I did not see you there.”
Her creaky curtsy revealed Erica standing behind her, framed by the schoolroom’s large windows. Today’s gown might have been borrowed from the governess’ wardrobe rather than Guin’s, so plain was its style. But its claret color, combined with her red hair, rendered her a pillar of fiery warmth against the gray morning sky. At the moment, her narrow-eyed gaze was focused squarely on Miss Chatham’s back. Her obvious dislike of the governess put him in charity with her. So much so that he was in danger of forgetting last night’s vow entirely.
Until he saw a leather-bound volume lying on the table beside Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War.
Erica’s journal.
He kept it in his focus a moment too long. She must have followed his gaze, for she turned quickly and gathered it into her arms. The movement restored him to his present purpose. “Miss Chatham, I regret to—”
“I am sorry I’m late.” Vivi brushed past them both, into the room. “I went all the way to the kitchens to remind Cook to send breakfast up here, now that my brother is home.” She sent a smile over her shoulder at him, as if nothing had happened that might alter their old habit. As if dukes regularly ate with children in the schoolroom.
Miss Chatham, however, looked scandalized by the notion. Fine lines deepened into grooves as she pursed her lips. “I’m quite sure, Lady Viviane, that His Grace would—”
“Be delighted?” His voice made the sturdy governess quaver like a sapling in a strong breeze. She made no attempt to meet his eye.
“Why else would he be here?” Vivi said brightly. He ought to have known better than to think Miss Chatham had quashed her spirit.
“Indeed, Your Grace.” Miss Chatham deflated a little and tried to pass it off as another curtsy. “I have a letter to my sister to finish in my room. With your permission.”
With a magnanimous dip of his head, he dismissed her. A more permanent dismissal could wait for a later hour.
Erica hurried after the governess. “I’ll just—”
“Oh, Miss Burke, won’t you join us for breakfast?” Vivi’s offer surprised each of them in turn, though for different reasons, he suspected. Almost to the threshold, Miss Chatham looked as if she had swallowed something bitter-tasting. Erica once more wore a hunted expression. And he…well, he found himself strangely hopeful she would nonetheless accept Vivi’s invitation.
Apparently assuming such a request could not be refused, the slighted governess stiffened her spine and strode from the schoolroom. After making a careful study of the wide-plank floorboards, Erica returned to the table. Vivi tangled his fingers with hers and dragged him to sit between them.
In another moment, a maid appeared with a heavily laden tray and his sister busied herself pouring chocolate and distributing triangles of toast. “I think you must be the only guest in this house who’s awake at this hour, Miss Burke.”
“I have always been an early riser, Lady Viviane. And I”—the topaz gleam of her eyes flashed his way, then back to the plate Vivi had placed before her—“did not stay late at dinner.”
In the nick of time, he disguised the twitch of his lips as an attempt to cool the steaming cup his sister handed him.
“But whatever could have brought you to the schoolroom?”
Erica’s expression looked vaguely apologetic. She must know that houseguests did not typically wander hither and yon and turn up in inappropriate places. Her plot to escape the company last night had proved only partially successful. Had she hoped to make up for lost time this morning, to explore the house before anyone but the servants was awake?
Slowly, she eased her journal away from her chest and returned it to the table, followed by several other items he had not realized she was holding: a small corked bottle of black liquid, pencils, and a couple of rather bedraggled looking quills. “I needed pen and ink, and it seemed a likely place to find them…”
“You might have rung, Miss Burke,” he told her. “The servants will procure whatever you need.”
Her chin rose a notch higher. “I’m used to doing things for myself.”
“You are our guest,” Vivi declared with an airy wave of her marmalade-smeared toast. “You must let us do what we can for your comfort.”
“I hope I shall not be an inconvenience to you for long, Lady Viviane.” She sent another quick, questioning glance his way. “Your Grace.”
Belatedly, he realized he was still holding his cup to his mouth. He choked down a sip of the grainy chocolate, wishing all the while it were coffee.
“I suppose they serve better in France?” Vivi asked, catching his grimace.
France? How did Vivi know where he’d been stationed? Had her father let it slip? Or Guin? Careful not to let his consternation show on his face, he returned his cup to its saucer. “How should I know, Viv?” Turning to Miss Burke, trying to gauge her reaction to his sister’s revelation, he said, “I’m sorry to report that Mr. Davies sent a less-than-encouraging message late last evening.” Erica’s jerk of alarm at the news made all the china on the table rattle. “It would appear that sometime after Lord and Lady Ashborough’s coach crossed the Kent, the nearest bridge was washed away, cutting off all communication between here and the Lakes.”
“You are—you are certain she was not—” Erica’s freckles stood out dark against alarmingly pale skin. Even Vivi’s eyes were wide with worry.
“There was no report of any injuries or accidents,” he reassured them. “But it will be some days before we can expect to reunite you with your sister.”
“Oh. I—” Erica’s fingers played restlessly over the silver, the pens, the cork of the ink bottle before settling on the cover of her journal. “Of course.” With a frown of concentration, she picked up a pencil, opened her journal, and began to scratch something onto its weathered pages.
It was agony to be so near to the prize he sought, yet unable simply to snatch it up and discover the truth. But he knew from long experience that recklessness was not his friend in such an endeavor. He pretended to busy himself with his breakfast, all the while mulling over a plausible excuse to get close enough to see what she wrote.
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