“At least he is not drunk,” Sebastian said.
“He could not enjoy the fame if he were. Nothing like being a dissolute rogue to make one popular. When the book of scandal is written, he will get a whole chapter, and you and I will be reduced to footnotes, despite our concerted attempts to make our mark. Thus does even mild discretion breed obscurity.”
While the girls were pulled away, the young men gravitated toward Castleford like he was a magnet.
“He has a talent for making one feel old and boring, I will give him that. I may go and bask in the glow of his outrageous infamy myself,” Sebastian said.
“No need. It appears he is coming to us. Promise to keep me from hitting him if he unleashes that sarcastic wit of his. I will do the same for you.”
“I need to apologize, Audrianna. I was too bold at your house when I called.”
“You are too bold now. You must not address me with such familiarity anymore. Especially not where others can overhear.”
Roger glanced about and flushed. “Of course. It is just . . .” He labored over his words, keeping one eye on the bodies milling around them. “I should have known that you could not speak freely there. I was relieved to see your notice.”
Notice?
“In the Times,” he whispered. “Did you not receive my response? I left it as instructed.”
Suddenly she understood. She had been placing notices for the Domino. In an effort to be cryptic, she had perhaps been too much so. Roger had concluded, stupidly, that the message was for him.
She had not been to her mail drop in several days. Whatever note Roger had written still waited there.
“I do not know to what you refer. I placed no notice for you.” She had never lied so baldly in her life, but she saw no alternative. And she had placed no notice for him.
“‘A.K. requires a meeting with D to discuss matters most confidential. Send response care of Mr. Loversall of number 7 Portman Square.’ That was not you?”
“Indeed not. Why would you think it was for you?”
He flushed. “You know I was called Dumpfry at school. I assumed . . .” He glanced in the direction of Sebastian. “You could hardly use R.W., could you? That would be blatant.”
“There must be a thousand A.K.s in London. I am sorry that you misunderstood.”
“Zeus. He is coming this way,” Roger hissed.
Sebastian was striding through the tunnel of blooms devised by Daphne, aiming their way. Hawkeswell was with him, and another man that she recognized as the Duke of Castleford.
Roger turned away. “I will—”
“You will stay right here,” she said. “You will be introduced. If you avoid my husband, he may misunderstand your interest and our friendship, and I’ll not be explaining your cowardice to him for the rest of my life.”
Sebastian had come to introduce Castleford to her. The Duke was blessed with a tall, lean elegance and a beautiful face. Yet, despite his almost courtly bearing, he exuded something that raised an alarm in her feminine instincts. As he bent to kiss her hand, warning bells sounded loudly.
Bad. Dangerous. Trouble and heartache, they tolled. Only the most foolish woman would not run and hide if this man cast his eyes upon her. The duke’s smile implied, however, that the world was full of very foolish women.
“I have been negligent in my friendship with your husband, and not done my part to welcome you to society,” Castleford said to Audrianna. “Such a beauty you have caught, Summerhays. I understand your willingness to be domesticated, if this sweet lady was the lure.”
Sebastian could tell that Audrianna viewed Castleford with veiled skepticism, but the flattery still made her blush. As always, she acquitted herself well in the conversation of pleasantries that followed.
That Fellow had not left and had gotten an introduction to everyone too. He did not seem to notice that Castleford had forgotten he was there now. Major Woodruffe kept reacting to the duke’s witticisms as if the duke was watching for it.
Sebastian sidled over and claimed Woodruffe’s attention. “You are an old friend of my wife’s, she tells me.”
“Yes, from years ago.”
“Childhood friends?”
“Not quite that long ago, but a goodly time now.”
As they chatted, Sebastian moved Woodruffe away from the others, just enough for some privacy. “She says that your regiment is in Brighton. I expect we will see more of you this season then.”
The fool brightened at what he interpreted as a friendly overture. “I hope so. I look forward to it.”
Of course he did, the blackguard.
“You will have to forgive me, Major Woodruffe. I am new to marriage, and perhaps more given to jealousy than some of the more experienced husbands that you know. It is possible that you seek only friendship with my wife. If, however, you entertain any other—”
“I assure you that such a thing is the furthest idea from my mind.”
“Come now, Major. We are both men. Such ideas are never far from our minds at all. But if you do anything that causes me to think that your mind dwells long on that particular idea, I will thrash you, I will ruin you, and I will probably kill you.”
Woodruffe just stared at him, aghast at the bald threat. Sebastian smiled.
“The letter was a mistake, sir, I assure you, if she has it and you discovered it,” he rushed to say. “I misunderstood her notice. It will not happen again.” Woodruffe quickly took his leave.
Letter? Notice? What an odd and interesting thing for Woodruffe to say.
Hawkeswell had noticed the private conversation. He left Audrianna to fend for herself with Lord Notorious’s attentions and strolled over.
“He left fast.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“He appeared a little sick there as he ran away.”
“I think the cakes don’t agree with him. Cream icing is to be avoided when the days get warmer.”
Hawkeswell watched the diminishing scarlet coat. “You were an ass, weren’t you?”
Sebastian sighed. “Yes, I fear that I was.”
And it had felt damned good.
Audrianna told her coachman to stop at the corner of Portman Square. She then walked down to the building that held the chambers of Mr. Loversall.
It was not an imposing structure, but then Mr. Loversall was not an imposing solicitor. The few shillings he earned by serving as a mailing address were probably important to him. That was why he executed these duties with all discretion.
She greeted the clerk who filed the mail. She had been in often enough over the last few weeks that she did not have to identify herself as A.K.
The clerk checked the files, then shook his head. “Nothing again, Madam.”
“It has been four days since I visited to claim letters. Are you certain none are there from several days ago? I am very sure that one should be.”
He checked again, and shook his head.
That was odd. Roger’s letter should have arrived right after her last visit. Perhaps he had addressed it incorrectly.
“I was not here Monday,” the clerk said. “I can inquire of Mr. Loversall if he misplaced letters in my absence.”
“Would you please? I know there was a response.”
The clerk disappeared into the solicitor’s office. Mr. Loversall himself emerged, apparently confounded. He gave Audrianna a good look.
“This is A.K.?” he asked his clerk. “She paid for the service? You are sure?”
The clerk confirmed her secret identity.
“This is most irregular,” Mr. Loversall fussed. “Another A.K. arrived yesterday and took what was here. I just assumed if he knew of the arrangement, he was indeed A.K. The correct A.K., I mean.”
“He?” It seemed that Roger had retrieved his ill-considered love letter. “Was he a tall man, handsome, young, with red hair?”
Mr. Loversall nodded on each point, except the last. “Dark hair, Madam. Very dark. My abject apologies for the con
fusion and error.” He glared at his clerk. “If I can make amends, please let me know. I assure you that no future mail will be handed to anyone except you.”
She barely heard him after the first two words.
Sebastian had Roger’s letter.
Audrianna braced herself for a scold at best and suspicions at worst. Instead Sebastian acted so normally for the next two days, so lacking in jealousy, that she began to wonder if perhaps someone else had taken Roger’s letter.
It entered her mind that, having interfered with any assignation, he considered the matter over. Or he may have released any jealousy or anger at Roger instead of her. While that would only be fair, she did not like to think that Roger would pay too dearly for his misunderstanding, conceited and presumptuous though it had been.
She grew tired of waiting for the sword to fall. Therefore, while they strolled through Hyde Park three days later, joining the hundreds of others seeing and being seen during the fashionable hour, she broached the matter.
“Do you have a letter of mine?”
He appeared perplexed by the question.
“A letter addressed to me,” she explained. “Do you have one that I have not seen?”
“I have no letter addressed to you. I do not purloin your letters from the servants. What a rude thing to suggest.”
That reassured her, and she turned her mind to what other tall, dark-haired man might have interfered. Then his words repeated in her head.
“It is not exactly addressed to me. Not in the proper way. Only my initials would be there.”
“Ah.” He waved to a friend who greeted him. “That letter.”
“You knew which letter I meant, I think.”
“I did. Are you sure that you want to talk about this here and now?”
She heard a warning. That concerned her enough that a decision to put off the conversation only lasted a few minutes.
“How bad is it? How indiscreet?”
“Bad enough for me to call him out and be acquitted, if—”
“A duel! You must not!”
“I was going to finish by saying if I thought he was a true rival. You said he is not. I choose to believe you.”
Two days of worry lifted from her heart. “Thank you. I am grateful for your trust. I feared asking you, but it is clear that you are a reasonable man and not given to rash reactions.”
He smiled vaguely at her compliment. “Audrianna, if I had concluded he were a rival, I would not be so reasonable. Just so you know.”
“I do not mean to distract us from the topic at hand, but—I remind you that you agreed that you would accept rivals, and be reasonable. Quite specifically. Once a child was born. That was part of the settlement, in a way of speaking.”
He stopped walking and faced her. He smiled in that bedazzling way. “I did indeed say that you could have lovers. But I never promised that I would not kill them.”
He acknowledged the greeting of a passing matron. They strolled on. Audrianna considered that she should upbraid him for bargaining in bad faith that day, but this truly was not the time.
“How did you know about the letter?”
“Major Woodruffe himself told me about it and said that it was all a misunderstanding.”
“Roger told you himself?” Stupid, stupid Roger.
“Yes, the day of the garden party. How else would I have known where to find it?”
How else indeed? She decided all was well that ended well, and left it at that.
The circumstances of that letter nudged at her the rest of the evening. Their conversation played in her mind at the theater and dinner party that they attended. After he left her bed that night and sated bliss had passed, a few ambiguities in what he had said presented themselves and begged for explanation.
The next morning, she waited until eleven o’clock when his breakfast with Wittonbury would end, and presented herself at his door. She waited for his valet to finish, then asked the man to leave.
“I would like the letter,” she said.
“I burned it. I could recite the poetic parts if you like. I have forgotten the rest—where he arranges an assignation.”
Again that note of warning. For all his good humor about this, he did not like what he had read.
“I find it odd that he told you where to find the letter. If he thought someone should retrieve it, he could have done so himself. I cannot hear him giving you directions to Mr. Loversall’s office.”
“He only alluded to newspaper notices. I found the address in one of them.”
Which meant he had read the notice and, because of Roger, knew who had paid for it. “Were there any other letters besides Roger’s waiting for me?”
He looked at her, exasperated, amused, and annoyed all at once. And so she knew.
“There were, weren’t there? How dare you not tell me. I paid for those notices and Mr. Loversall’s service out of my pin money, and if someone besides vain, foolish Major Woodruffe responded, I have a right to know.”
“There was one more,” he said with resignation. He strode into his dressing room and returned with a letter. He placed it in her hand.
“It is still sealed,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was deciding what to do with it. Give it to you, keep it from you, or burn it unopened.”
“Burn it unopened? That was a mad thing to consider.”
“And yet I considered it.”
She broke the simple seal and took the letter to the window. “It is from him! Look, he identifies himself with a drawing of a domino, so I will know for certain.” She read the scrawled message. Sebastian came close behind her and read it too, over her shoulder.
Covent Garden. Church Portico. 2 o’clock, a week hence.
She checked the date at the top. “That is tomorrow. Thank heavens I did not delay in asking you about this, or I would have missed this meeting.”
“You are not going.”
“Of course I am going.”
He snatched the letter away. “No, you are not. He is dangerous. We know nothing about him. He may want to silence your curiosity, not satisfy it. I will go and I will tell you what transpires.”
“That is not fair. Nor is it practical. The last time he tried to arrange a meeting, your presence ruined it. He thinks you are a man who waited for him at the Two Swords with a pistol. The piazza is full of people and he can hardly drag me away in secrecy. Why, a hundred men would be at my beck and call with one shout.”
“You are not going.”
His insistence vexed her. Husbands could be very inconvenient sometimes. “If not for my notices, there would be no meeting at all. You are just jealous that I thought to do as he had done, and realized that a man who posts notices probably also reads them.”
“I am not jealous. I am full of admiration. You posted notices so ambiguous that an old lover thought that you sought an assignation with him. And yet our friend still understood, and here we are. Brava.” He tucked the letter into his frockcoat and folded his arms. “You are not going.”
Arguing was getting her nowhere. She did not want to accuse him of desiring to keep the truth from her. She did not want to believe that. However, this was not some clerk at a powder mill being met. This was the Domino, and she needed to hear what he had to say.
Sebastian had turned very stern. His expression was uncompromising. She moved in close to him. Very close.
She looked up at him. “You only want to protect me, I know. However, I will be safe if you are with me. I knew I had to bring you. That was my intention, to find him so we could both meet with him and learn what light he might shed.”
“You planned to bring me along?” He sounded incredulous, and insulted that she thought he was fool enough to believe her.
“Of course.” She wrapped her arms around him.
“You intended to be a good wife and give me this letter so we could both hear what he had to say?”
“Absolute
ly.”
He frowned down at her. She smiled up at him. He wavered just enough, which annoyed him worse.
“We will talk about it later. I must get to Whitehall.” He extricated himself from her embrace and left.
She went to her chamber, sat at the writing table, and began listing the questions she needed to ask the Domino.
Sebastian would allow her to go with him. She would make sure that he changed his mind.
Nor had she lied to him. She would have shown him the letter and asked him to accompany her. She did require his protection.
She also expected the Domino to demand much more money than she had herself.
Chapter Twenty-one
By morning Sebastian admitted to himself that his wife had vanquished him.
First, she used logic that was so damned good it cornered him. The Domino had arranged the meeting with her, not a man, and would disappear if she were not there. Also, she was the one who would know if the man who came was really the Domino.
After grinding him down with her good sense, she had then turned her feminine wiles on him. A promise had been extracted at the moment of defeat, when he was too preoccupied with pleasure to care about the morrow.
“It would be best if you are not with me at first,” she said as their carriage approached Covent Garden. “He might bolt if he sees you.”
He did not give a damn if the man bolted. She was excited and optimistic, and certain the day would end with her father’s good name restored. He was not convinced it would go that way at all.
He was going to regret not burning that letter the way every instinct had urged. He might regret even more allowing her to be here today. But she wanted to know what he knew, all of it, because she still did not trust him to give appropriate weight to the evidence of her father’s innocence when he heard it.
It was not really the letter he had wanted to destroy. He had wanted to burn this entire episode out of their pasts.
Ravishing in Red Page 22