Dr. Blanchard was leaving the countess’s suite as Brianna reached the rooms. “Good morning, your Grace.”
Brianna stopped him. “Is she ill?”
“Ill enough to discharge me, your Grace,” he said indignantly.
“You are not discharged,” Brianna said flatly.
“Thank you, your Grace.” He looked over her shoulder at the door. “She is in bed with her usual headache. You go in at your own risk.”
Brianna stepped into the rooms. With a quiet swish of her skirts she moved into the bedchamber. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn against the light. A lone lamp on a dresser beside the bed cast light on the occupant lying in bed with a rag over her eyes. Chamberlain sat beside the bed, his elbows braced on his knees. The two were talking.
“Is she all right?” Brianna asked.
The countess removed the rag over her eyes long enough to view her intruder with a groan and lie back on her pillows. “Did I not tell you that she would be up here,” the countess murmured. “Tell her I am ill and dying and wish not to be disturbed.”
Brianna arched her brow. “Tell the countess that I am standing in the room and she can tell me herself, for I am not leaving.”
“Tell her that she is insolent.”
“I’m still not leaving.”
With a sharp gasp, the countess struggled up on one elbow. Fully dressed and bound like a sausage, it was no wonder she thought she was dying. Michael’s mother, with her classical facial structure, high cheekbones, and wide mouth, still held a hint of her past beauty, even as she glared at Brianna. “The lodge is mine,” she said flatly.
“His Grace agreed to handle the problem,” Chamberlain hastened to say. “Clearly, he chose not to do so. She paints at the lodge in the summer months.” His voice lowered. “The place is her refuge, your Grace.”
“Do not whisper around me, Chamberlain, as if I require a hearing tube. It is not a refuge. I only go there to escape here so I can paint in peace.”
Unfortunately, Brianna understood. The lodge’s very popularity through the Aldbury generations was evidenced by toys and other artifacts she found there. “Then you’re the artist?” Brianna had admired the woman’s talent so much that she’d hired the carpenter to frame the pieces she’d found. “There is a whole trunk of wonderful work in the cellar—”
“You did not find my work in a trunk.”
Brianna looked around the room and saw similar drawings hanging in frames on her wall. “The work belongs to his grace,” Chamberlain said. “From when he was younger.”
“James was forever doodling.” His mother lay back on the bed. “Drawing Spanish galleons and pirates. Such a fanciful boy. Gentle. His father disliked that immensely.”
Fanciful? Gentle? That the man known in Egypt as El Tazor had ever picked up a paintbrush shocked her. “What happened to him?” She straightened her shoulders. “I mean…you must have been very proud of his talent.”
A visible inhalation from the countess preceded a sigh. “If there is anything to be proud of, it is that he has survived his life this long.”
Brianna looked at the miniature galleon on the wall. “Why didn’t he join the Royal Navy?” She couldn’t help asking.
“Because his father expected him to join the navy.” The countess removed the rag from her eyes. “Why did you say you are here?”
“What about you? What did you want him to do?”
“I was only his mother. One does not tell James to do anything.” She glared at Chamberlain. “One does not tell him that a bride would be chosen for him upon his return to England.”
Brianna found it unfortunate that the countess had lost the ability to laugh or smile—like everyone in this house—for otherwise she might have found humor in her own thoughts. As for Michael’s reason for marrying her in the first place, Brianna had already suspected the worst, and found it a moot fact.
After a moment she decided that what she had learned here today far outweighed her current work at the lodge. She would let that rest for now. “My maid is very good with herbs and can help you with your headaches.” Brianna didn’t know if the countess had heard the quiet words. “I’ll send her in here.”
Nodding to Chamberlain, Brianna turned to leave.
“You’ll be disappointed here,” the countess said, stopping Brianna at the door. “It takes more than a new wardrobe and etiquette lessons to make a duchess. Isn’t that what you told me, Lord Chamberlain?”
Brianna met the man’s gaze, and he suddenly became engrossed by some defect on his sleeve. As for the countess, she wasn’t going to get off the maternal hook so easily. Brianna knew that if she possessed one talent in life, it was that she could scale walls. At least if they weren’t too high. “Then perhaps it is time that you and I begin enjoying afternoon tea together,” she graciously offered. “And you can help me learn.”
Later, Brianna found herself in Michael’s room, her mood greatly dissipated and fragile as she stood over his bed. One would have expected a former artist to exist in ordered chaos. Unlike her room, cluttered with every monument and testament to her life from photographs to lacy doilies that had once belonged to her grandmother, nothing of himself lined the walls or shelves—no piece of furniture had been moved. Her arms wrapped against her torso.
The curtains were open to the stars, and it seemed to Brianna as she leaned a shoulder against the window that she should not be missing Michael, or feeling remotely sympathetic about his upbringing or sorry for his mother, for it seemed that the countess could have displayed more backbone in defense of her son. But the past few months had taken its toll on her body and made her weak—so she did miss him.
Staring at the moon, she only remembered feeling this trampled once—when she’d fallen off the roof with her friend Rachel. But it was impossible to tell which made her feel worse.
Missing Michael. His family. Or two broken ribs.
“There’s someone here to see you, your Grace.”
Brandy in hand, Michael turned from his place at the window before he realized that he was not the one being addressed. Bedford’s butler had stepped into the smoky parlor and pulled Lord Bedford from a game of whist. With typical British impassivity, Michael returned his attention to the window. His reflection stared back at him like a shadow on ice, his shirt white beneath his waistcoat and jacket, pulling color from the glass. He could see over his shoulder as Lord Ware entered the room where a dozen of Bedford’s associates waited for him that evening.
Michael found the moon had again captured his gaze for no apparent reason, as it seemed wont to hide behind the clouds. He’d been in London over two weeks.
A sweep of the docks had begun three days ago near the point where Finley discovered the two dead men. The bodies had been exhumed from a pauper’s grave at Potter’s Field and reexamined after a scarab tattoo was located on the wrist of one.
“A spot of congratulations to you, your Grace.” Lord Ware’s undersecretary stood eagerly beside him, smelling overwhelmingly of ale and not the least bit disinclined to complain that he’d lost a fortune to Bedford in whist.
The man’s eagerness faded when Michael turned. “In what way?”
“Your name was mentioned prominently at Lord Ware’s office today. It seems you have provided the first break in a case that has kept the government of two countries at heel for two years.”
Without reply, Michael drank from the brandy snifter. He’d done little but follow up on Finley’s information, a source that he owed to his wife. The real break in the case had come from the most unlikely of sources.
“Mr. Cross is here, your Grace.” The undersecretary stood aside, and Michael’s eyes locked on Cross standing beside Ware, handing his coat over to the butler.
Michael set down his brandy with the same aversion he’d felt when he discovered Cross in London. Not only did the man work for the Foreign Ministry; he was the chief adviser in Egyptian antiquities. He’d taken charge of the amulet Michael had given h
im.
“My source is meeting me tomorrow morning,” Cross told the gathering crowd of men, his light brown eyes nearly gold behind his thick spectacles. “He knows the exact location of the warehouse we’re looking for. He wants his money tonight.”
Cross went on about the arrangements, briefing those gathered in the plan for tomorrow.
After a while Michael removed himself from the group to retrieve his coat and hat. “You’re not satisfied with the arrangement?” Lord Ware approached him. A big man with graying hair and muttonchop whiskers, he was Lady Alexandra’s father and a rumored thorn in the side of the entire Donally clan. Michael felt almost disloyal admiring the man. But then, his wife was no longer a Donally.
She belonged to him.
“Has anyone checked the validity of Cross’s source?” Michael asked, shrugging into his coat. “Brought him in for questioning? For the kind of money this government is paying—”
“Mr. Cross believes the man will flee if he gets wind of a double cross,” Ware said. “The informant does have what looks to be a scarab tattoo on his forearm. Cross feels he is legitimate and will take us to the others. Perhaps letting one go is the price we pay to get the rest.”
“Even if that one may be the leader? Or the bloody bastard who shot me?”
“Some of the items the informant brought in belonged to Captain Pritchards’s outfit. Evidence enough to link the smuggling to the caravan attacks. London was the receiving end for what went out of Egypt. With Sheikh Omar dead, I also believe the Cairo connection is severed.”
“It’s obvious we’re close enough to the heart of them,” Cross said, his words sounding loud as silence filtered down the ranks of the room. “Someone has clearly decided to exchange the end of a rope for his life.”
Michael’s gaze settled on Cross. His burnished hair was nearly blond in the lamplight. The man didn’t appear as bookish in these surroundings as he had in Cairo. Nor timid. “You’re a very good actor, Cross,” Michael said quietly, knowing damn well he would offend most of the men in the room, who fancied Cross a hero. “I wouldn’t have recognized you from the man I saw at the Bulaq Museum in Cairo.”
“It was a job,” Cross said. “One that I obviously performed well.”
One that Michael felt he sure as hell should have been informed about.
“Or maybe your pique springs from injured pride,” Cross said. “You failed to find these thugs. I have not.”
Sliding on his gloves, Michael transferred his gaze to Ware, then Bedford. “I’ll be taking my leave.”
“Major Fallon,” Cross said. “Would you give your wife my regards? Your marriage was sudden even by polite standards. I didn’t have a chance to see her before she left Cairo. Perhaps I can call on her.”
If Cross wanted to live a long and healthy life, he would stay far away from Aldbury. “If you will all excuse me,” he said to Ware.
Bedford caught him as the butler was handing him his hat and cane at the front door. “I’ve been curious about something ever since I read about your discharge from the army,” he said, amused. “The British consul in Cairo was ready to sacrifice you to appease the khedive’s loyalists over Sheikh Omar’s murder. What happened?”
“I had a credible alibi,” Michael responded laconically, aware that he had crossed a line with his mood and would not pretend otherwise.
“A firebrand with blue eyes, no doubt. Maybe the injured pride belongs to Cross. By the looks of it, you took something that he wanted. Will you be at the docks tomorrow?”
Michael’s gaze lingered on Cross, who had turned away to receive a drink from a footman. “Who is watching him?”
Bedford observed the subject of Michael’s query. “That would be my men.”
“I’ll be there.”
Michael left the house. The night was wet and he pulled up his collar as he approached his carriage. Streetlights blurred in the thickening mist. “Your Grace?” The driver leaped off his perch to reach the door before Michael. “You’ve company,” he whispered to Michael’s arched query. “I thought—seein’ as how there’s folks about—you’d be wantin’ to know.”
The curtains in the carriage were drawn shut. Caroline sat inside, her face pale beneath a fur blanket. The back of her hand went across her cheeks, and whatever she’d been thinking when he opened the door went behind the mask of her posture. “I needed to talk,” she said.
Their eyes met in the gilded shade of light cast around her by the lamp. She’d been stunning as a younger woman. She was no less beautiful now. She was also drunk, he realized. He could smell the bourbon.
“You’re impossible to catch alone,” she said. “I’ll be going back to Aldbury probably before you. I’ve been away too long from my daughter.”
A subtle shake of his head told his driver to remain in the drive. He climbed inside. “Do you do this often?” He eased a flagon from her hand. “Wander outside in the dead of night? You’ll have your brother’s servants thinking this house is haunted.”
“I’ve been drunk twice in my life, James Michael Fallon…Aldbury. Both times because of you. You have no right to take that bottle from me.”
Michael held the flagon out of her reach and set it on the floor. “I have every right.”
“I despise domineering men. Hounds and horses—” She leaned against the corner. “Especially horses…and domineering men. You think that you are not like him. But you are.”
Michael adjusted the collar of his coat and sat back, bracing an arm across the seat. “Is that a perceptive remark from one who knows me?”
“I didn’t want you leaving tonight until I could talk to you. Alone.” Her green eyes glittered brightly in the lantern light beside her head. “You’re Edward’s family. My daughters’ guardian…”
“I know all of this, Caro.”
Somewhere outside, a dog barked. “I’ve never been able to tell you that I was sorry,” she said. “I made such a mess of both of our lives. I was young and foolish. And frightened. I should never have allowed you to take all the blame for something that was my fault.”
Although the age difference between them was barely a year, she was suddenly that girl he’d tormented with frogs and spiders. “You don’t deserve all the censure for poor judgment, Caro. Do you honestly think what happened was the worst incident in my life?”
She peered at him in amused horror. “How can you joke about that?”
A grin turned up his lips. “You live a sheltered life, Caro.”
Beneath the blanket, she folded her arms. “Was it hard for you…after you left here?”
“Not as hard as coming back and starting over,” he said.
“I…didn’t know if there would ever be a chance for us….”
“I’m in love with my wife, Caro,” Michael said softly.
She didn’t miss the softening in his expression. “And you will find she is an understanding person…to a point.” He opened the door and stepped out. “I may be used to facing the ignominy of a tattered reputation, but you’re not. Do you want your maid?” He lifted her from the carriage. She wore a gown of soft white silk, ridiculously virginal against her curves. But it wasn’t her body Michael felt beneath his hands or her scent that made his heart beat harder in his chest. He felt sorry that she had lost almost everything.
“I can walk, thank you, your Grace.” She wobbled with dignity.
“That’s good, Caroline. Because if you pass out on the ground, I’ll get you a blanket. I’m not taking you to your room.”
Nodding to his footman to escort her to the door, Michael waited at the carriage to make sure she would make it back to the house. She turned. “I would be lying if I told you that I did not envy her.”
Long after Michael left Bedford’s house, long after he realized that the investigation might finally be over, he sat in his carriage, the lingering cadence of his thoughts lulling him to sleep.
He loved Brianna.
The words he’d spoken struck him—not
so much because of the discordant observation, but because they were true. At least in part.
He was obsessed with her. There could be no other explanation for his need of her, especially after he’d made love to her that night in London and let her climb inside his soul. He wanted her.
Was utterly consumed by it, and could easily trace the beginnings of his ignoble defeat back to the day he’d found her head scarf beyond the watchtower oasis. To the point when he’d seen her for the first time draped in desert moonlight like an apparition out of his deepest erotic fantasy, never mind the gun she’d pointed directly at his heart or that he walked into her snare like some bloody tenderfoot. Or that he’d been making careless blunders with his life ever since.
He lifted his head and saw a distant flash of lightning out the window, as if the storm churning inside him were not enough. For long ago, disabused of wonder, Michael had stopped believing in many things.
Perhaps there was irony that love could find someone like him a willing recipient at all. For indeed it had.
Hell, he could only blame it on the moonlight.
And Brianna’s gentle touch.
The door slammed.
A portent of doom to anyone within listening distance of the lodge.
Amber spun around, surprise and horror momentarily stalling her decision to run as her round gray eyes crashed against Brianna standing with her palm braced on the portal. Her rare show of fury had already left the servants at the house exchanging nervous glances. Yet, as she’d made her way to the lodge today, no one had wondered what force had fallen upon her to put her in her current state.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Brianna warned as the girl darted her gaze to the window in the other room.
Her doll clutched in one hand, Amber’s small chin hiked like a porcelain martyr ready to face down the forces of death. Brianna might have admired her defiance if the precocious brat hadn’t been in need of a thrashing. She could very well have burned down the entire lodge yesterday with her antics in this lab.
Must Have Been The Moonlight Page 31