One way or the other, though, he was going to interrogate Mr. Greasley at the first opportunity. He deserved some reward for being crammed into a coach with the bloody arse and his bloody wife.
He got his chance the next time they stopped to change horses. Lisette and Mrs. Greasley disembarked in haste, obviously eager to find a necessary, and that left Maximilian alone with Greasley, who’d already begun lighting a cigar.
“So,” Maximilian said in a casual tone as soon as the women were inside the inn, “have you ever met Lisette’s brother in France?”
Greasley took a puff or two. “Can’t say as I have. Manton’s a good fellow, though. Treats his neighbors right, and don’t make too much racket like some young gentlemen. That’s probably on account of his having Miss Bonnaud around. Though I’ll have to start calling her Mrs. Kale, eh?”
“Yes.” Maximilian refused to let him change the subject. Taking a stab in the dark, he said, “I met Mr. Bonnaud in Paris, myself. Seemed like a good enough chap.”
“In Paris?” Greasley tipped some ash from his cigar onto the floor. “I thought the two of them had lived in Rouen.”
Maximilian bit back a self-satisfied smile. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said, congratulating himself for obtaining what he needed to know so easily. “I only know where I was introduced to him.”
Greasley glanced out the window. “Ah, there’s the mistress. I’ll ask her. She ought to know.”
“That’s all right.” Maximilian suppressed a curse as he glanced over to see Mrs. Greasley bearing down on the coach. Lisette couldn’t be far behind. “I’ll just ask my wife.”
But Greasley was already shouting out the window, “Where did Miss Bonnaud and Mr. Bonnaud used to live?” He leapt out to help his wife into the coach. “It was Rouen, weren’t it?”
“No, you old fool. It was rue Something.” Mrs. Greasley settled into her seat with a sniff. “Rue is the word for street in French, you know. Not Rouen at all. It was a rue somewhere.”
As Mr. Greasley climbed in beside her, Maximilian leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’s as I told you, Greasley. I met him in Paris.”
“But I don’t think he lives in Paris,” Mrs. Greasley said. “I could have sworn it was Toulon, where she lived before. No, wait. She might have mentioned Paris.” Suddenly she eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t you know where they’d been living? You being married and all?”
“I only met her brother once, in Paris. I assumed that’s where they lived. She doesn’t like to talk about her life in France much.” As he saw Lisette approaching, he began, “No need to bother her about it. I don’t like to—”
“Where is it you and your brother lived in France, Mrs. Kale?” Mrs. Greasley asked as Lisette reached the coach. “I remember your telling me, but I forgot where it was exactly.”
Gritting his teeth, Maximilian leaped out to help Lisette board. She shot him a veiled glance as she climbed in and settled onto the seat. “He lives in a villa, of course. A very nice one on a river.”
Maximilian got in. “Yes, but in what city?” he persisted. In for a penny, in for a pound, and now that it was out in the open, he could use the Greasleys to learn what he wanted to know. They would think it odd if she refused to answer such a simple question. “Greasley said Rouen and Mrs. Greasley said Toulon, while I assumed it was Paris. That’s where you and I met, after all.”
He watched for a telltale reaction to any of those choices but got only a stony stare. Then her expression virtually crumbled right before his eyes.
As the coach swung into motion, she began to cry. “I can’t believe that you don’t remember the first place we met. It wasn’t Paris at all, as you ought to know. Yes, we danced in Paris, but that’s not where we met.”
To his horror, tears—real tears, for God’s sake—began sliding down her cheeks. She dug inside her cloak for her handkerchief, her shoulders heaving with distress. “How could you forget such a thing? I remember every minute of that day!”
Holy God. He could only gape at her, wondering where this pitiful creature had come from.
“You’ve b-broken my h-heart,” she blubbered, very convincingly. “Y-you don’t c-care about me at all, d-do you? M-my brother was right. I sh-should never have m-married you!”
What the blazes? She really seemed upset. How could that be? Was he supposed to do something about this?
“Now you’ve gone and done it, man,” Greasley mumbled. “Even if you don’t remember some things, you got to pretend to remember. The ladies put great store on a man’s memory of the important things.”
Mrs. Greasley glared at him. “We certainly do, and rightfully so. Are you saying that you pretend to remember things about me? What have you been pretending, Mr. Greasley? Have you forgotten where we met?”
“No, no, of course not, my angel!” he protested, shooting Maximilian a daggered glance. “I wasn’t speaking of you and me, mind. I’m no young fool like Mr. Kale there. I remember everything. We met at the assembly at Middleton Hall, we did.”
Pure outrage lit Mrs. Greasley’s face. “We did no such thing! We met at your cousin’s dinner!”
The look of a cornered fox swept Greasley’s face. “I-I don’t think so,” he said uncertainly. “That came later. Didn’t it?”
“It did not!” his wife said, then dissolved into tears herself. “L-leave it to a m-man to forget the most important things in a woman’s life. Do I m-mean so little to you? All the years that we’ve sh-shared, did they mean s-so little?”
“No, my angel, no!” Greasley said, flashing Maximilian a panicky look.
Bloody hell. As if Maximilian could do anything about it. Lisette was rivaling Mrs. Greasley for feminine distress beside him. How the blazes had it come to this? Women were not supposed to cry over such things. Were they?
Even though he knew it was just her pretense, it was beginning to upset him. It smacked too much of the strange fits of tears that had often followed the demented accusations Father had flung at poor Mother, tears that had always kept Maximilian off balance.
He didn’t like being off balance. And how could Lisette really be crying, anyway?
My mother was an actress, you know.
Confound the woman. He should have given that statement more credence. Clearly she had mastered the finer points of acting.
With her little ploy, the minx had effectively backed him into a corner, and there wasn’t a confounded thing he could do about it without alerting the Greasleys to their masquerade.
He was half tempted to do so. She wasn’t playing fair and deserved to suffer the consequences. He could certainly make her do so. After all, she’d said she didn’t care if people thought the worst of her. She’d even offered to masquerade as his mistress.
Yet she’d backed away from the door to keep her neighbors from seeing her in her night rail. And blushed as she did so.
Despite all her bold assertions, she wasn’t as immune to public opinion as she pretended. And the gentleman in him couldn’t let her be shamed in front of the Greasleys.
As Greasley continued to profess his great affection for Mrs. Greasley, Maximilian bent to whisper in Lisette’s ear, “Very well, you win. For now. You can stop the tears. I won’t ask them any more questions about your brother.”
With one last sniffle, she dabbed at her eyes, which really were red, and flashed him the smallest smile of triumph he’d ever seen.
Then it vanished, and she stared up at him with a teary-eyed glance that would do her actress mother proud. “Oh, my dearest Max, that is the sweetest apology. I forgive you.”
As he fought to suppress a snort, she tucked her hand about his arm, then laid her head against his shoulder. “And now I confess I’m very tired. I believe I shall sleep a bit.”
The woman then actually proceeded to sleep. Or feign sleep. He wasn’t sure which. But as Greasley managed to assuage his wife’s temper, and intimate whispers became the only sounds in the carriage, Maximilian realized he had vast
ly underestimated Miss Bonnaud’s determination to protect her brother.
Not to mention her ability to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
His eyes narrowed. She was indeed a more talented actress than he’d given her credit for. Had he been too hasty in assuming she wasn’t in league with Bonnaud? Could she be part of the man’s fraudulent scheme?
No, the servant he’d sent to Bow Street earlier would surely have uncovered some connection between her and her brother. Though she’d managed this contretemps well, she’d been flummoxed at the Golden Cross when confronted by Mrs. Greasley. And there was no way she or Bonnaud could have anticipated that he would show up at Manton’s this morning.
Something she’d said earlier leapt into his mind. I could be one of Dom’s men.
Ah, yes. She was feeling her oats, trying out her prowess at pretense. And doing it rather effectively.
Well, she’d got the best of him this time, but it wouldn’t happen again, not if he could help it. He didn’t like being made a fool of, and he damned well didn’t like not being sure what she was up to.
From now on, there would need to be an understanding between them. She could pull her tricks on anyone else they needed to fool. But she wasn’t going to pull them on him. There would be truth between them at least.
A smile crept over his face. And he had a way to ensure that, too. Miss Bonnaud was about to find out that two could play her game.
5
LISETTE HAD SERIOUS trouble feigning sleep once Mrs. Greasley started talking again.
“Forgive me, Mr. Kale,” she asked, “but what does a land agent do, exactly?”
Holding her breath, Lisette waited to see how the duke would manage this. He’d been stubborn about taking up her choice of profession, and now she couldn’t even help him with his choice without giving up her pretense of sleep.
“He collects the rents,” Lyons answered handily, to her surprise. “He makes inventories. He surveys the farms, keeps a terrier of the common lands . . .”
As he continued to list an impressive number of duties, Lisette marveled at his knowledge. She could not have helped him with this, to be sure. Papa had always just said that his land agent “managed the estate,” indifferent to what the man actually did. And Papa had only been a viscount. She’d assumed that a wealthy duke with vast properties would have even less need of such knowledge and would know little about the inner workings of his estates.
In Lyons’s case, she’d been wrong. Mr. Greasley asked more questions, and the duke answered every one easily. Astonishing.
As the two men began to talk of leases and enclosures and things that were far beyond her ken, the rumble of Lyons’s voice and the swaying of the carriage began to lull her into a doze. She had been up very late and had risen very early. And they wouldn’t reach Brighton for some time . . .
She came slowly awake a while later to find the coach dark and the duke’s arm about her shoulders. Her head had slid down to the center of his chest, and her hand was on his waist.
Horrified, she jerked herself upright, embarrassment filling her cheeks with heat as he pulled his arm from around her shoulders. “Where are we?” she asked, trying to get her bearings.
“On the outskirts of Brighton,” he said in that low timbre that did something unseemly to her insides.
She couldn’t look at him. She’d been practically on his lap! How mortifying. He must think her the most vulgar creature imaginable.
“You were sleeping very sound,” Mrs. Greasley offered. “You must have been tired, dearie.”
It was said so kindly that Lisette winced. She felt a little guilty about how her fake tiff with her “husband” had led to a very real tiff between Mr. and Mrs. Greasley. Still, they seemed to have patched it up. The woman was leaning companionably against him, and he didn’t seem to mind.
Lisette turned her face to the window. Thank God this nightmare stretch of the trip was almost over. The incident with the Greasleys had proved only too well that she couldn’t necessarily travel with impunity.
The duke had known it, too, and tried to take advantage. She couldn’t fool herself that she’d gained the upper hand with her little performance. She’d just gained a reprieve, that’s all. He could have chosen to drop the facade the moment he realized he might get the truth out of the Greasleys. He could have revealed that she was not married to him and asked them flat out what he wished to know. And in one fell swoop, he would have ruined her and possibly Dom’s business.
Why hadn’t he? Because he was a gentleman?
More likely it was because he could tell that the Greasleys didn’t know enough to help him. Thank God she’d mentioned both Toulon and Paris to them in the past, and thank God the two cities were in very different parts of France. Otherwise, she was almost certain Lofty Lyons would have abandoned her in Brighton to hunt down Tristan in whichever one they’d named definitively.
She’d made a narrow escape. Too narrow.
Fortunately, she had little chance of encountering more neighbors. So once they parted from the Greasleys she ought to be safe from discovery, at least until they were on their way to Paris.
Surely Lyons would never abandon her in France. That would be most ungentlemanly, and he was nothing if not a gentleman.
Most of the time.
A shiver skittered down her spine as she remembered the feel of his strong arm about her shoulders. And worse yet, the way his hand had toyed with hers earlier. She should have tugged hers free. Why hadn’t she?
Because it had been so . . . intimate. No man had ever held her hand in such a fashion, boldly but tenderly, too. It had utterly unnerved her. Even now, with her hand still tucked in the crook of his arm and his thigh pressed against hers, she felt that same quivering in her belly that she’d felt when he’d caressed her hand.
She stiffened. Skrimshaw was right. She’d better take care. The duke had been the one to assert he was her husband, and that shifted everything. Now there was no reason for him to treat her like a sister, no reason for them to have separate rooms . . . anywhere.
Her pulse gave a flutter at the thought of spending several nights on the road alone in an inn room with him.
Lord save her. She’d better be careful.
She slanted a gaze up at him. He was looking entirely too unreadable. After her little display, she’d expected him to be a good deal angrier. But he’d conceded defeat and acted as if nothing had happened. It had put her on her guard again. He had something up his sleeve. What could it be?
They reached the coaching inn a short while later. As the Greasleys took their leave, Mrs. Greasley surprised her by murmuring, “Don’t let the man bully you, dearie. If you don’t stand up for yourself at the beginning of the marriage, he’ll be no good to you for anything but grief.”
The sage advice, coming from a woman who clearly had her own husband tied neatly in knots, bemused her. Had Mrs. Greasley noticed more about their relationship than Lisette had given her credit for? Or was that just the woman’s usual advice to newly married women?
It didn’t matter—Lisette only had to survive the duke’s presence long enough to extricate Tristan from this trouble. And standing up to Lyons when he tried to bully her wasn’t the problem. She could manage that. It was when he was being sweet that he was most dangerous.
Was that his current course—to kill her with kindness?
Trying to figure out his game consumed her throughout the next hour, while he went off with the innkeeper to arrange for their room and their passage to Dieppe, have their bags sent up, and ask that a meal be provided. So much for traveling as a regular person. Clearly he had no idea how a regular person traveled.
Then again, he’d changed the rules by claiming to be a land agent. Such men did have some money—they would be able to afford a decent room in an inn, and they would be used to giving orders.
She had to admit it had been rather clever of him to hit on that role. It put him in that nebulous land between gen
tleman and tradesman. He worked for a living, but his position required a certain amount of polish and skill. It meant that his accent wasn’t too odd, his knowledge of certain things too unbelievable. And clearly he had realized that he knew the part well enough to play it.
She only wished she knew the role of wife half as well. Would a real wife let him handle all the arrangements without voicing an opinion? Would she complain that the rooms they were led to were too small?
Thank God there were two of them—a bedchamber and a sitting room. That somewhat eased her fear of being alone with him. One of them could sleep on the settee while the other took the bed. They wouldn’t be quite as much in each other’s pockets as she’d feared.
He must have planned it that way, and for that she was grateful.
As soon as the innkeeper left, scurrying off to arrange for their dinner, His Grace shed his greatcoat, then walked over to the ewer, poured some water in the basin, and began to wash his hands.
The silence stretched maddeningly between them. “I imagine that you find the public coaches very dirty, Your Grace,” she said as she took off her cloak and hung it on a hook, longing to wash her hands as well.
“I find traveling very dirty regardless of the coach.” He dried his hands, then faced her, leaning back against the sturdy bureau that held the washbasin and crossing his arms over his chest.
His unreadable stare made her feel the first tendrils of alarm.
She ignored them. “It is, that’s true.” She walked over to her bag and opened it, determined to appear as nonchalant as he.
“That was a very enlightening performance you put on in the carriage,” he said at last. “I was impressed.”
She didn’t suppose “Thank you” was the appropriate answer. “You pushed me into a corner,” she said defensively. “I didn’t have a choice. We agreed that I would help you find Tristan if you would let me go along. You couldn’t expect me to jeopardize his safety by telling you too soon where he is.”
The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires Page 8