More likely, she’d never been offered the opportunity to study the subject properly at all. Suddenly, his mental picture of a girl learning at her father’s knee morphed into a girl sneaking peeks at her brother’s textbooks, independent and determined and perhaps a little ashamed of her curiosity.
Understanding Erica’s journal was going to require him to set aside what he thought he knew. About cryptography. About languages. About her.
All right, then. The circles might indicate…memoranda, of a sort. Tasks to be done, tasks half done, tasks finished. The leaves seemed likely to pertain to botanical observations, ostensibly the primary subject of the journal. Manicules drew attention to something important. And the little spirals? They alone had no description in the key. He’d have to sort it out as he went along.
Slowly he ran his thumb across the edges of the pages again. This time, the symbols, dotting the corner of nearly every page, sometimes two or three to a page, stood out. With the pressure of his thumbnail, he stopped the movement at the drawing of Hawesdale, which looked much as it had when he’d seen it before. A manicule and a circle, filled half with pencil and half with ink, had been added in one corner. At the bottom of the page, a list of names: the upper servants, Guin’s maid, the family, the other guests. P—? had been crossed out and replaced with Pilkington. Viviane was misspelled.
Nothing more devious than a memory aid. He went on.
Next came nearly a dozen painstakingly detailed sketches of the passionflower, its parts carefully labeled, the corner of each page marked with a tiny leaf, confirming his guess about the symbol’s meaning. The handwriting here was neater, unembellished, the text a mix of English and passable Latin, the observations precise and scientific. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for a botanist.
Following that, a three-part list, the hand rather shaky: Important things, Insignificant things, Things that require further reflection. Dk of R— was included beneath each heading. In the upper left-hand corner, she’d drawn a circle and filled in half of it. Which of these items did she consider completed? Which were yet to be done?
He could tell by the smooth feel of the paper beneath his hands that most of the pages after that were empty, so he flipped again to the front to make a more methodical study. The artistry of the flower sketches could not be denied. Indeed, he could have passed a pleasant evening examining them and making more thorough translations of her notes about the plants’ attributes and uses. A few had been marked with a dagger, its handle shaped like a capital P. Poisonous, he presumed.
The pages of pictures and notes were interspersed with more lists. Guests at another dinner party, in order of precedence, the list marked with a half circle. The steps to a dance, with tiny pictures of footprints to accompany them. The variety of things she had hoped—and in many cases, as indicated by heavy Xs, had failed—to remember brought a wry smile to his lips. Had he really ever believed she might be a spy?
That smile faded when he came to a map, the borders lavishly illustrated with exotic-looking plants, each connected by a dotted line to some tropical land. The places she had hoped to visit when her marriage gave her the freedom to do so? Quickly, he turned to the next pages—several left blank for no rhyme or reason he could discern. But after those came a section of close-written prose in the abbreviated quasi-Latin of the key, the page marked with a spiral—a labyrinth, he’d decided, the wandering path her thoughts took whenever she tried to make sense of herself. For though there were fewer of those mysterious marks than any other, all were appended to what appeared to be diary entries: a complaint about her sister, or some words of mourning for her betrothed.
Over this particular page, however, he hesitated, though the code was not especially sophisticated—something to deter the casual sneak, a younger sibling with prying eyes, perhaps. Leaning on one elbow, he held the book closer to the candle, the better to make out her handwriting. A list of something. Undated. Composed over time, in fact—more than one pen had been used. At times her hand had been firm and steady; at others, considerably less so.
After some effort, he managed to sort out what the page contained: a long catalog of someone’s sins and the punishments to be meted out for them. Lateness, slovenliness, forgetfulness. Erica’s sins—for such she clearly imagined them to be.
~For a wandering mind during Dr. V’s sermon, one hour copying Fordyce
~For neglecting to reply promptly to C’s last, no sugar in tea this fortnight
~For missing dinner three times this week— Query: when mortification inheres to the act itself, may not that prove sufficient?? (cf., inattentiveness at church—perhaps damned already?)
He nearly closed the book at that, jerking his gaze to a spot on the carpet and sucking in a breath that rattled a bit in the silence of his chamber. Such ordinary, human failings. And she imagined herself consigned to hellfire for them.
When his breathing had steadied, he made himself return to the list.
~For sloth…
He made no attempt to decipher the punishment. Sloth? How could such a word even be applied to Erica, whose vibrant energy he had imagined impossible to contain? But she had tried to contain it. Tried again and again. The list of infractions filled the page and spilled onto the next; the punishments grew increasingly dire. He could not go on reading them. He could not look away.
The journal fanned shut around his first finger, catching where the stub of a pencil had been wedged deep between the pages. With trepidation, he opened there to find an unencrypted letter, composed with the dull implement that marked its place.
Dear Sir,
You will not, I hope, be greatly offended at my form of address. I find I have not the slightest notion of the proper salutation to use when writing to a duke. If such was ever a part of my education, I have long since forgot it.
Thanks to Captain Whitby, I now know what you imagined my journal contained and why you attempted to steal it from me last night. Only you can decide whether you have now found what you sought.
You will do me the favor of returning it when you are done. It contains things of value to me, if to no one else.
The note was signed with a perfectly ordinary E. How ridiculous that he should spare a pang of disappointment for its lack of embellishment, when the words of the letter itself were so stark. But it too was a symbol, like the half-filled circles and spirals and leaves. A symbol of who she had been when the journal began. And who she had become over the course of filling its pages.
Thanks in no small part to him and what she clearly regarded as his betrayal.
The journal slipped from his hands as he tipped his head back into the pillows and closed his eyes, utterly drained by what could not have been more than an hour’s work. In his years as an agent, he’d decoded and read far worse: blackmail, murder plots, brutal acts of war. He’d been deeply invested in uncovering the truth. But he hadn’t cared about their senders, he realized belatedly. Hadn’t worried for their intended recipients. Not in the way he cared and worried now. Before, he’d relied upon his intellect, his sense of right, his pride. Never before had he ceded any corner of his heart. But the author of this journal had found a place there, that much he could no longer deny.
Was that a sound? He opened his eyes to discover that, for the second time that day, he had called the object of his thoughts into being. Erica stood beside his bed.
Chapter 15
She took unexpected pleasure in the way his gaze cut away and color streaked across the sharp crests of his cheekbones. A visible reminder that he was not actually, entirely in control of everything.
“I’d get up,” he said, his fingers curling in the bed linens, drawing them higher over his chest, “but…”
But beneath that sheet, he was naked. She knew because she’d watched from behind as he’d walked from his dressing room—his undressing room—to the bed, his figure a marble sculptu
re come to life, all gleaming muscled curves and intriguing shadowed hollows. Up close now, she found herself unwillingly fascinated by the way candlelight highlighted the slopes and valleys of his broad shoulders, the notch at the base of his throat, the surprisingly dark hair that dusted his chest and led downward in a neat furrow that drew her attention to the very edge of the sheet and even lower.
Determinedly, she dragged her eyes back to his face. “I seem to recall telling you once before that you needn’t worry about observing the niceties with me. Standing when I stand and so forth. Now you know why.” She nodded toward her journal where it lay in his lap, only the thinnest of barriers between the deepest secrets of her heart and his— Heat crept into her own cheeks. “You’re a spy, aren’t you? And Whitby said you believed I was too. That’s why you came into my room last night. You were looking for my journal. For proof.”
He jerked his gaze to hers. “No. I mean, yes. I was looking for your journal. Because of my work and what Whitby had said. But the moment I laid a hand on it—no, the moment I set out for your chamber, I knew what I wanted to find. What I would find. Proof of your innocence.”
Several times, she had caught herself wondering whether he was telling the truth. A man in his position would have ample reason to perfect the art of lying. But his face now was open, his eyes fixed on hers, not trying to hide. She could see the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat. Though perhaps she shouldn’t, she so wanted to believe him.
“I suspect Whitby said a great many things,” he said after a moment, “or else you would not have”—one hand passed over the cover of her journal without touching it—“left this for me to find.” A pause, and now his eyes were searching, as if she had not revealed enough. As if she had not already revealed everything. “That was your intent, was is not?”
At first, she’d been angry, seeing him with it in his hands. When he’d found it lying in the conservatory, he hadn’t been able to restrain his curiosity. He’d taken the bait.
Then she’d debated with herself whether she was being reasonable—her barrister brother’s influence, no doubt. Tristan was an army officer, devoted to king and country, duty bound to investigate someone he believed to be a threat to either. Knowing as much, she had set out to trap him. The letter she’d written proved as much. Not exactly sporting.
In the end, she settled on anxious. Peering from the doorway of the sitting room, desperate to read him, even as he read what was hers. Trying to follow his thoughts as he moved from page to page, forward and back again. Studying the curve of his lips, up or down, watching for the precise moment when the notch of concentration in his brow morphed into a frown.
Now, however, standing inches from him, her anxiety had escalated to fear. Terror. He might be wearing nothing, but she was the one who’d been stripped bare. All her life, she’d worked to hide it, the internal chaos that threatened constantly to overwhelm her. She’d kept secrets from everyone—even the man she’d pledged to marry. But she’d rashly revealed them to Tristan. No secrets anymore.
He said nothing, and the hard bud of her fear split its calyx and blossomed into defiance. Insolence. The jutting chin. The bold words. “You may regret the lost triumph of unmasking a spy, but you must be relieved I did not accept your hasty proposal.”
With one long finger, he traced a corner of the cover of her journal, where the leather had softened and curled. She watched the movement stir the fine bones in the back of his hand, then allowed her gaze to travel up his forearm, over the curving bulge of his bicep. When he lifted the book from his lap and extended it to her, she reached to snatch it from him, lest he change his mind. But this time he released it without hesitation.
In that moment of exchange, however, his other hand rose to catch hers. With the lightest of touches, he mapped the sharp angles of her fingers where they gripped her journal, the regrettably tanned skin of the back of her hand, the soft, plump curve at the base of her thumb. He made no attempt to hold her. With the slightest flick of her wrist, she would have been free of his touch. If she turned and walked away, she would be free of him, for he was in no condition to leap up and follow her.
She watched his fingertips skate over her skin. She stayed where she was.
“May I ask one question?” His gaze was fixed where he touched her, and he did not look up as he spoke. She hadn’t the strength, suddenly, to do more than nod.
He must have sensed the movement, however, for he lifted his eyes to her face, his expression at once fierce and uncertain, seeking confirmation. She nodded again.
“I wish to know…” The words came with difficulty, and why not? A clenched jaw was hardly conducive to speech. “The course of…correction you undertook.” Revulsion. Anger. In his voice and in the depths of his blue-black eyes. “Who recommended it to you?” Clearly, he wanted to punish the offending party.
Well, so had she.
“It was my own device,” she said. “Henry gave me the journal, to record my botanical observations, he said. But it gave me an idea. You see, I’ve always been able to recall every flower, every plant I’ve ever studied, and I thought, perhaps, if I wrote down other things, if I kept a schedule, I might…I might manage almost to be a real wife to him. Not”—heat prickled in her cheeks—“not in all ways, of course, but someone of whom he needn’t be ashamed. Surely, I told myself, surely I was capable of organizing a dinner party without forgetting to invite the guests. Or dancing a quadrille without stepping on his toes. So I embarked on a course of self-improvement. I tried…” Her shoulders rose and fell with an unsteady breath. “…everything.”
“Erica.”
His chiding whisper held a bewildering mix of emotions. His disapproval she understood, even shared. After all, every attempt to better herself had ended in miserable failure. But disbelief? No, he needed to understand that this—she tightened her grip on her journal, inadvertently drawing his hand closer to hers—this was exactly who she was.
“Every bit of what you saw in that journal is true. The confusion, the messiness…”
“The artistry, the cleverness,” he countered. “The dreams. You might have done yourself real harm, Erica.” Mournfully, he shook his head. “All in an effort to eradicate a few trivial faults.”
“Trivial?” To hear them dismissed as such hurt worse than anything that had gone before. “So they may seem to you, when they affect you not at all. You who have no difficulty concentrating, or composing your thoughts, or—or—remembering when you last ate.”
“No,” he agreed, a bite of annoyance in his voice, echoed in the press of his fingertips. “Your struggles are not mine. It does not therefore follow that I have no struggles at all. And in a world of men who lie and steal and even kill, I can see no earthly reason for you to—to mortify your flesh like some medieval monk, just because the dinner hour slipped your mind.”
Here in his bedchamber, with him stripped of his uniform, it was easy to forget he was a soldier. That he’d surely seen terrible things. And perhaps even done them. She inched toward the bed, hoping to slacken his taut grip. But coming closer did nothing to ease the tension between them.
“You’re right,” she said, glancing away, no longer able to meet his eye. “A lady’s choices are few, her actions often insignificant, for all that she might hope otherwise. Perhaps that’s why I never aspired to be a lady.”
“Yet you were willing to marry, despite your concerns.”
“I did not want to be dependent on my parents for all their lives, and on my brothers thereafter. Nor could I see myself pursuing any of the options open to a young woman in my situation. Can you imagine me teaching?” A ragged, uncertain laugh bubbled from her chest. “I might plan and organize for days or weeks, then forget to give the lesson. Or daydream during the children’s recitations. Oh, if you’d taken the measure of my pulse the other evening, when I feared you were about to offer me the post of Lady Viviane
’s governess, then you’d—”
Whatever words she’d intended to say evaporated into the ether. Slowly, gently, he’d turned her hand and eased his thumb beneath the hem of her sleeve to stroke along her inner wrist where the skin was soft and thin. “It races even now.”
Yes, of course, she wanted to say. Her heart often rattled against her ribs, as if trying to keep pace with her thoughts. And yes, of course her heart raced now, because she’d cracked open her chest for him and laid everything bare. And yes, of course her heart raced now, because he was touching her, and although the last thing she wanted was to bear the responsibilities of being a duchess, that didn’t mean she didn’t want other things from the duke. Things she’d sworn she would be content never to have. Things she sensed she could have at this very moment if only she were brave.
She held her breath, rose up on her toes, and leaned in to kiss him.
Eyes wide with surprise, he drew back sharply, the back of his head almost striking the ornately carved headboard.
In her life, she’d frequently been troubled by mistakes she’d made. Even in the short history of her acquaintance with Tristan, she’d had ample occasion to feel embarrassment. But never—oh God, never—had she wanted to run and hide from what she’d done the way she did now.
She tried to right herself, fumbled for balance, and might have fallen if not for the fact that the journal still linked them. In the split second during which she debated simply letting go of it, his other hand came up and caught her. One strong arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her against the mattress.
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