Did perfect ladies, like Miss Caroline Pilkington, ever think odd thoughts or say odd things?
Erica squeezed her eyelids shut, drew three deep breaths. Her mind might be distractible, but her heart was steady.
Steady.
Steady.
* * * *
Guin raised the fan of playing cards, but not high enough to hide the sudden lift of two delicate eyebrows. To Tristan’s left, Miss Pilkington gave a small cough. Her partner, Sir Thomas, was less circumspect.
“Oh, ho, Raynham,” the baronet chortled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you of trying to lose.”
Tristan looked down at the small pile of cards lying face up in the center of the table, his own uppermost. Trumps, when he ought to have thrown off and let his partner take the trick. Guin’s blue eyes sparkled above her cards, darting quickly to Caroline and back to Tristan.
“My apologies, ma’am,” he said, dipping his head to Guin as he snapped his remaining cards face-up onto the table, conceding the hand. “I will confess to being distracted just now.”
If Caroline suspected herself the cause of his distraction, she gave no sign of it as she gathered the cards to herself and prepared to shuffle. Her hands were pale and smooth, her movements deliberate. Though both her hair and eyes were ordinary shades of brown, no one would hesitate to describe her as pretty. He could complain of nothing in her behavior: She was neither shrinking nor forward, but assured and confident in her manner. She talked knowledgeably but not pedantically about every subject he had introduced at dinner, from the paintings in the Long Gallery where they’d strolled earlier, to the negative repercussions of the Poor Laws. If she did not precisely grieve for his brother, she made clear her regret at his untimely death, and not simply for its effect on her own prospects. She was pragmatic, polished—in short, the perfect bride for a man his position, just as Guin had said.
Lydgate laughed, silently this time, though his red face and jiggling belly made no secret of his amusement. “Distracted just now?” he echoed in a breathless mutter, wiping a tear from his eye. “Say rather, all day.” Tristan made no attempt at denial.
But Miss Pilkington bore no blame—or credit—for his current state.
Thanks to Whitby’s words the night before, he’d spent most of the day observing his guests with the practiced eye of an intelligence officer. His efforts had indeed uncovered several bits of new information: Sir Thomas sighted along a billiard cue no better than he sighted along a hunting rifle; Beresford and Lady Lydgate were indulging in a flirtation; and Lady Easton Pilkington suffered from the megrims when it rained.
Whitby had been similarly occupied. After dinner, rather than take port with the gentlemen, David had taken tea with the ladies. For his sacrifice, he had learned that the five shades of green embroidery thread in Mrs. Newsome’s sewing box were not to be intermingled, even in an effort to help detangle them, and that Lord Easton Pilkington snored, which surely contributed to his wife’s headaches.
With a nod to his partner and his opponents, Tristan pushed away from the card table. “You will excuse me, I hope.” Caroline looked up at him with perfect equanimity and smiled. If she minded his attention, or lack thereof, he would never know it.
He did not think he had ever been less curious about a matter in his life.
His place at the card table was quickly taken up by Beresford, who seemed to understand the wisdom of putting some distance between himself and the baronet’s wife. Nevertheless, Lady Lydgate followed and stood behind him, inches from her oblivious husband, commenting on Beresford’s play with very little subtly and running her fingertips along the top rail of his chair with even less.
How insipid it all was, especially to one who had known real intrigue. Real adventure. Real danger. Cards, billiards, flirtations—oh, he’d known agents to indulge in such diversions. Sometimes to encourage a subject of interest to reveal more than he, or she, ought. And sometimes because espionage was a waiting game and boredom must be countered.
But this…? Well, he very much feared that this was simply life at Hawesdale. The life to which he must look forward if he could not return to the field.
Mustering a pretense of aimlessness, he made his way to the windows facing the courtyard at the back of the house. The rainy night sky absorbed the light. He could see nothing but his own reflection. Leaning closer to the glass, he searched for some sign of life beyond this room and caught the distant gleam of the conservatory, where a lantern still burned, turning the glasshouse into a rough-cut diamond.
Sturgess had promised to send word when Erica left the conservatory. Before dinner, Viviane had reported in notes ringing with amazement that she had left Miss Burke still bent over her journal, sketching, “and likely to get a crick in her neck.” Tristan had assumed that further lack of news from that front indicated that Miss Burke’s behavior had done nothing to arouse Sturgess’s suspicions. She’d not joined the rest of the party for the meal, but at the time, Tristan had attributed her absence to yesterday’s debacle.
But what if she had simply never left the conservatory? He glanced back at the mantel clock. Surely no one as restless as she could bear to be confined in a single room for some fourteen hours?
Turning away from the window, he surveyed his guests. Behind him, the card game went on, his absence no doubt having improved play immeasurably. Near the fire, Mrs. Newsome stabbed at her embroidery. Whitby sat beside her, holding her sewing box but not daring to touch its contents. Lord Easton and the vicar faced one another over the chessboard, though neither appeared to be engaged in the game: Mr. Newsome rattled on about something while Lord Easton looked on the verge of sleep.
Without drawing attention to his movements, Tristan crossed the floor and slipped out the door, startling the footman who waited on its other side. He shook his head sharply, putting an end to the servant’s fumbling attempt to make himself useful. In a matter of moments, he found himself standing before the door to the conservatory. He peered through the small, square window in the top and saw Erica perched on a high stool, bent over her journal, which lay open on the table before her, in precisely the posture his sister had described.
Had she been sitting there all this time? Not exactly the sort of behavior he would expect from someone eager to explore the house. But still suspicious. Yesterday, Erica hadn’t been able to sit still for three minutes together—pacing, fidgeting, spilling her wine.
Had all that been an act?
Gathering his resolve, Tristan grasped the door handle and turned it. He made no particular effort to be quiet—the hinges were prone to rust and squeaked, his boot heels rang on the flagstone floor—but Erica did not lift her head from her work or give any sign of noting his approach. Even when he cleared his throat, her journal continued to absorb her entire attention, until he stepped close enough that his shadow must have fallen across its pages and she jumped.
This time, dirt rather than wine arced into the air, the contents of an otherwise empty flowerpot that went spinning across the table when her arm swung out in surprise. Her pencil too skittered away, and the journal slid onto the floor and fell facedown and open at his feet.
No Gaelic blasphemies this time. No plain English curses either.
Just wide-eyed surprise. A sharp breath drawn in through flared nostrils, lifting her breasts. And trembling hands as she fumbled to collect her journal.
Swiftly, he knelt and reached it a moment before she did, his fingertips skimming over its leather spine to grasp the thick paper of its pages. The temptation to pick it up and leaf through its contents made his fingers twitch against its cover.
Then her outstretched hand touched his. Wobbling slightly in her crouched position, she steadied herself rather than immediately withdrawing her fingers. Reluctantly, he lifted his eyes and met hers, warm and golden brown and wide. A day spent in the damp heat of the conservatory ha
d pinked her cheeks and left her skin dewy. A halo of fine red curls framed her face, and her lower lip curved invitingly, rosy and slightly swollen, as if she’d been worrying it between her teeth while she worked.
Exactly how she would look if she’d been thoroughly kissed.
He closed his hand around the book and snapped it shut as he stood. With an impatient flick of one wrist, he slapped its leather cover against his open palm, hoping the sting would restore some fragment of his good sense. How many chances to examine the journal did he expect to get? But he would not learn anything of value from a quick glance. He needed time to study its pages thoroughly.
She rose a beat behind, and before she could extend her palm to demand the journal’s return, he held it out to her. Almost warily, she took it from him.
“I apologize for startling you,” he said as she brushed dirt from the book’s worn cover and turned it over in her hands, inspecting it for damage.
“Hm? Oh.” With one hand she tucked the journal against her chest, while with the other she reached toward the side of her head, the movement furtive, a little embarrassed. Quickly, as if she hoped he would not notice, she plucked a bit of cotton wool from each ear. “Mr. Sturgess recommended it, to muffle the noise of the rain,” she explained. “So I—oh.” Her voice, which had been slightly louder than necessary, dropped almost to a whisper. “Has the rain stopped?”
He made no attempt to hide the smile that had sprung to his lips. “Almost. The locals would tell you it’s mizzlin’.”
She looked as if she were emerging from a trance. Her eyes flickered to the darkness beyond the windows. “Is it—very late?”
“Rather.” As he took a step closer, he glanced around the room, which had always before struck him as an odd, artificial space. Now he saw its strange beauty: the warmth, the windows misted with steam, the profusion of plants creating the sort of lush bower in which mankind’s First Parents had been tempted to sin. “I’m glad the conservatory could furnish some distraction from the weather. I take it you found something worthy of your attention?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded, breathless with excitement. “Passion.”
The temperature in the room seemed to rise a few degrees more. “I beg your pardon?”
“Passiflora caerulea. Blue passionflower.” She nearly brushed against him as she walked past, her eyes fixed on the plant behind him. “I had seen pictures, of course, but never thought to see it in bloom.”
Though he found the glow on her face far more compelling than any plant, he forced himself to turn and look in the direction she had indicated. Some sort of tropical vine had been trained to climb the wall surrounding the doorway. As he glanced over its profusion of green leaves, he did not immediately see the flower to which she referred.
“An extraordinary blossom.” With a delicate touch, she drew her finger along the pale, puckered cluster of petals that drooped from one branch. “And it lasts only a day. I knew I might never have such a chance again.”
Tristan could both understand and appreciate single-mindedness, though at present he was having difficulty concentrating on the flower. His eye persisted in wandering to the woman beside it. Worse, his mind—and a few other organs besides—seemed content to ignore the real possibility that she was a spy determined to ruin him. He needed to regain control, to shift the conversation onto safer ground.
“My sister did not share your enthusiasm, I take it?”
She drew to her full height. He recognized a defensive posture when he saw one. “I would not expect it of her—of anyone,” she said, a little sharply. “But in fact she was a most eager pupil. When Mrs. Dean came to announce dinner, I urged her to leave. I did not want her fervor to fall victim to fatigue.”
He noted Erica’s pallor, the stiffness of her movement. “And what of you, Miss Burke? Surely you must be tired. And hungry. Have you eaten nothing all day?”
“Mrs. Dean was kind enough to bring me a tray.” With one hand, she gestured toward it, still sitting on the table, mostly untouched. The fingers of her other hand played nervously over the cover of her journal. “After Lady Viviane left.”
“So long ago as that?”
“I knew I had but a few hours with the Passiflora, Your Grace. You see…” Fumbling with her journal, she found a page and extended it to him. With a hand he willed not to tremble with eagerness, he reached out for the book. But she did not release it. So together, they held it while he studied the sketches she had made, different views of a spectacular bloom that made him wonder what it would be like to be the whole focus of her attention. “In light of that, how could I concern myself with such mundane matters as dinner?” She swayed slightly, not quite steady on her feet.
He released the book. “Then you must concern yourself with them now.” Daring to step closer, he set his palm at the small of her back, urging her toward the far door and the kitchen beyond. “Come.”
Chapter 10
The drop in temperature from the conservatory to the kitchen sent a shiver down Erica’s spine. Tristan must have felt it pass through her. She told herself not to ascribe any meaning to his touch—or to its absence, for his hand dropped away as soon as the door swung closed behind them, making her shiver again. He stepped to the enormous hearth, where the fire had been carefully banked, and stoked it into life once more. Almost involuntarily, she glided closer to its warmth. Closer to him.
In the firelight’s glow, the outlines of tomorrow’s breakfast, already laid out by the kitchen staff—loaves of bread under a cloth, a basket of eggs waiting to be broken and coddled, a flitch of bacon—grew distinct. Her stomach gave a low rumble.
“Sit.”
His voice of command was softened by the unexpected coziness of the kitchen. Or perhaps her usual resistance was weakened by hunger. Either way, she sank onto the bench beside a scarred worktable, still facing the fire, and watched him as he moved efficiently around the room, collecting the remains of dinner and liberating a fresh, crusty loaf from its flimsy linen fortress.
“I would not have guessed a duke would know his way around a kitchen.” As she spoke, she turned partly toward the table, allowing the heat from the fireplace to soak into the weary muscles of her back. How many hours had she spent bent over her sketches?
“I have not always been a duke,” he pointed out.
She tried to imagine him as a small boy, sneaking down to the kitchen for a treat. The behavior seemed out of character, but even if he had done it, the staff would never have dared to scold him. “Always the son of one, though.” He stilled. Just for a moment, but long enough for her to realize her misstep. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. You must miss your father a great deal. I did not mean to—”
With one hand, he brushed aside her fumbling apology. “Regrettably, loss is common—as you yourself know.” In the semi-darkness, his eyes glittered and held her gaze. She recalled his words in the library that morning and, once again at the reference to Henry, part of her longed to make some escape. This time, however, Tristan was the first to move, striding toward the opposite side of the room. “We must learn to bear up under our grief.”
Had she borne up under hers? Or had she tried to shrug off the burden? Begging her father for her dowry, pleading with her sister to leave Dublin, hoping to put the past behind her…
Whereas Tristan had been required to confront his past, to return to his childhood home, to assume a role he likely had never expected to assume. She’d seen evidence of his reluctance to come back, but he had done it nonetheless. Folks do say he likes things orderly—always has, even when he was lad. Military life must have suited him well.
“Were you stationed in Paris?”
Dishes rattled against one another as if something had been dropped on them, and Tristan’s head emerged from the depths of a cupboard. “I beg your pardon?”
She managed a feeble smile. “You are
not yet accustomed to non sequitur in my conversation, Your Grace? I had been thinking this must have been a difficult homecoming for you. And I remembered that your sister mentioned you had been in France. Which naturally made me think of Paris… I hear it’s lovely. Or rather, was.”
His answering smile was strained. “Regrettably, Miss Burke, I am not at liberty to satisfy you as to the particulars.”
“Oh.” Despite the ache in her back, she sat up a little straighter. “Of course.”
He came toward the table, bearing stoneware plates and plain flatware—presumably the china and silver used by the family were kept elsewhere, under lock and key. “But you do well to remember that I am a soldier.” After setting down his burden, he gestured with that same arm toward the makeshift banquet now crowding the table. “A resourceful one.”
Did he expect her to believe he spent his days cooking and serving? She took up a cold leg of chicken and pointed it at him. “An officer.”
“It is not the life of ease you imagine it to be,” he said, joining her on the sturdy bench.
A sudden memory of touching him yesterday morning, his solidly muscled chest disguised beneath layers of wool and silk and linen, made her fingertips tingle. Reflexively she reached for her journal with her other hand, finding it on the bench between them and moving it to her lap. “No. No, I haven’t been imagining any such thing.”
“It bothers you.” His voice was matter of fact as he began to pile food on a plate. “That I’m a soldier.”
Did it? She rather suspected it ought to bother her more.
What right-thinking Irishwoman would admit her fascination with an English duke and a British soldier? Surely this was a betrayal of Henry’s memory and the cause for which he had given his life.
But even as she thought it, she knew Henry would have been the very last person to fault her. The person she seemed to be most in danger of betraying here was herself.
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