The three were fast friends by the time Ian reached his rousing conclusion, which reflected none too happily on his own part in the affair.
~ ~ ~
“What manner of chaos has erupted here?”
Luc stood in the middle of King Street, staring at the ale barrels scattered around a now-empty farm wagon. Under Connor’s expert eye they had followed the trail of fresh prints into the center of King’s Lynn.
Connor looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard any number of wild tales, everything from talk of a French invasion to an assassin attempting to kill the Prince Regent. Damned if I can make heads or tails of it, Luc. The only consistent thread seems to be the slip of a country girl who stood in the street with a pistol in her hand and foiled the attack.”
At those words Luc felt a queer sinking sensation in his chest.
A slip of a country girl with a pistol in her hand? Luc knew only one female to whom those words could apply. But surely it couldn’t be. He would find her admiring shop windows down the street, or taking tea beside the elegant Guildhall.
Certainly not foiling an assassin’s bullet.
At least Luc hoped so.
~ ~ ~
Something was bothering Bram.
In fact, it had been bothering him all afternoon. It had to do with the man beside him, broad shouldered and strong handed, with eyes of coolest gray. Frowning, Bram darted another searching glance at India’s brother.
The tall, sleepy-eyed soldier, however, was a man who missed very little. “You look troubled, Brandon. Have I done something to give you a disgust of me already?”
“Not a bit of it. It’s just — well, you’ve the look of someone I know. Or at least I think you have. But I can’t for the life of me say who it is.”
Ian Delamere shrugged his broad shoulders. “It seems that I have that sort of face. It happened often in Spain. It can be a deucedly unpleasant experience.”
“Oh, Ian,” India cried, “never tell me you were mistaken for a horse thief or a traitor!”
For a moment there was a hardness in her brother’s eyes, but it disappeared so fast that Bram thought he might have imagined it.
Except for the tension in the man’s hands at his reins.
“No, not a horse thief, India. Acquit me of that, if you please. And do stop being so troublesome. There is nothing a fellow hates more than an inquisitive female, I assure you.”
“Oh, you’ve wounded me mortally!” India’s hands clutched dramatically at her chest, even as her shining eyes showed that she was in no way wounded. “A hit, a palpable hit. I daresay I shall languish in a swoon and never recover.”
Her brother looked across at her, tenderness in his eyes. “Harridan.”
“Scoundrel,” his sister answered promptly.
Riding between them, Bram hid a smile, wondering about this most unusual family that he’d crossed paths with.
~ ~ ~
Silver opened her eyes and made a slight, tentative movement. She was heartened to discover that the pounding in her head had abated. Now there was only a faint ache at her temples. As she struggled to sit up, the duchess moved to help her.
“Feeling more the thing, are you, my dear? In good time, too, for Swallow Hill is just over the hill.”
“You are very kind, Your Grace. We are complete strangers, after all. I cannot think this proper somehow.”
“Poppycock,” the duchess snapped. “I haven’t had so much fun in months, not since the day I…” Her eyes took on a speculative gleam. “But that’s a story for another day. Now come and look. You can see the top of the house from here.”
Pulling back the curtain at the window, Silver looked out onto a shining emerald valley crisscrossed by darker lines of oaks and hedgerows.
Then her breath caught.
Swallow Hill was not a house one would soon forget — or perhaps ever forget. It rose from the green curve of the hillside, a tangle of turrets and wildly twisting chimneys worked in warm pink granite. Large oriel windows dominated the south face and a topiary garden marched along the west. There was nothing regular about the house, no symmetry or order in its clustered wings.
And yet in its very vitality there was a matchless beauty to the house, the clear expression of a vigorous family who had flourished here for generations.
“Well, what do you think? Not to the current Palladian taste. Perhaps you’ll find it ugly.”
“Ugly?” Silver said breathlessly. “Why, I think it the most beautiful house I have ever seen.”
The duchess’s eyes twinkled. She sat back, clutching her silver cane between her fragile fingers. “You’ve a quick wit about you. I’ll say that for you.”
“But it’s true. The house is not at all orderly. The windows are of different sizes and the wings lack symmetry. But somehow it all works. One doesn’t notice the differences because of the overwhelming power of the place.”
The duchess nodded, looking out at the lush green hills and the magnificent stone house set within them. “Very well said, Miss St. Clair. You’ve an understanding that goes much beyond your age, I think.” Her eyes seemed to glitter with moisture as she patted Silver’s hand. Then she straightened her shoulders. “The first thing we’ll do is pack you off to rest. After that I must have that old quack, Sir Reginald, look in upon you.”
“Oh, no.” Silver shook her head. “I wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Nonsense, girl. Unless I’m badly mistaken, you’ve a wound at your side along with that blow to your head. Maybe you’ll tell me about it and maybe you won’t, but one thing I do know: You aren’t fit to be racing around the countryside. Not anywhere. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. So if it’s family you’re worried about, I shall be delighted to send a footman with a message to put them at their ease. When you’re feeling more the thing, you can write a note yourself.”
Silver studied the duchess’s face with a mix of irritation and warmth. “You really are the most abominably managing woman, Your Grace.”
“So I have been told,” the duchess said happily, in no way offended. “It is rather a principle with me, you understand.”
Silver shook her head, laughing softly as the carriage came to a creaking halt before the mellow walls of Swallow Hill.
~ ~ ~
The duchess led the way to a magnificent yellow sitting room whose floor-to-ceiling French doors opened to green lawns. After Silver was comfortable, the imperious old woman excused herself. As soon as she had gone, Silver sat up and brushed away the cover the duchess had left around her. “Bram, where is the notebook?”
The boy smiled and patted his pocket.
“What about the things that were in that man’s greatcoat? I can’t find my cloak!”
“All safe, Syl, don’t worry. I took them out while everyone was busy helping you inside. It was a rolled-up document of some sort, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. There are only rows of numbers without any sort of pattern.”
Silver frowned. “Numbers? That’s all?”
“Afraid so. But maybe—”
At that moment the door opened; India and Ian peered in. Bram shot Silver a warning glance.
“Are we disturbing you?” India asked.
“ — not a bit.”
“ — of course we are.”
Silver and Ian spoke at the same moment. Then all four broke into laughter.
“We thought we’d check on you while Grandmama went to rouse the servants. We weren’t expected for another two days, you understand, and they will have been taking a much-needed rest. I’m afraid she can be the most veritable dragon when the spirit takes her. But then,” India added, “I expect you have already noticed that.”
“On the contrary. I think your grandmother is extremely generous.”
“So you’re a diplomat too.” Ian nodded approvingly. “We could have used you over in Spain. Wellington had no patience for such things and was constantly sending our allies stomping off in a fury.”
“You were fighting
in the Peninsula?” Silver found she couldn’t take her eyes from Ian’s face. There was something about him — something nearly familiar, though she could not say what.
Ian nodded. “For two years.”
“I hope you were not wounded.”
“Nothing significant.”
“Don’t mind Ian,” India said confidingly. “He never reveals anything of any significance. I’m afraid all that spying has gone to his head.”
Ian smiled and the hardness about his eyes disappeared. But Silver was certain she hadn’t imagined it and could only wonder what had left him with bitter memories.
A minute later the door opened and the duchess ushered in a butler carrying a silver tray.
“This table will be fine, Jeffers.” The duchess indicated a beautiful rosewood Chippendale table at Silver’s feet. Soon they were seated around India, who was dispensing cups of a fine, small-leaved amber souchong and Cook’s special buttery-soft walnut cake. Bram was on his third wedge when he looked up to find India and Ian smiling at him.
His cheeks flamed. He dropped his last piece as if burned.
“Please don’t stop,” India said quickly. “It was terribly rude of us, I know, but it is so wonderful to see a young person with all your energy.”
Bram shoved his glasses uncertainly up on his nose, then helped himself to the last slice.
“I would like you to meet my parents,” India said to Silver, “but I’m afraid they’re on an extended visit to Italy. Father is in his antiquities phase again, you see. No doubt from Venice they will be off to Athens and Cairo. Grandmama, meanwhile, has bravely volunteered to fill the breach and squire me about London until they return. I keep telling her that I’ll never take at the marriage mart and no gentleman will possibly come up to scratch.”
“Not when they find out you can box, shoot and use a foil better than most men,” her brother said helpfully.
The Duchess of Cranford snorted. “I wish you will stop using that horrid cant language, young lady. It is most unbecoming.”
“Is it truly? I expect I’ll have to stop spending so much time around my brothers, in that case.”
An abrupt silence fell over the room. The duchess’s fingers tightened on her cane and Ian’s mouth tensed. India’s face went pale.
Silver felt the tension gripping the three of them and wondered at it. Bram, however, busy with his cake, hadn’t noticed the sudden change. “Brothers?” he said blithely. “Do you have another brother besides Ian?”
India gasped. Her teacup of bone china slid from her fingers and crashed to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
After a moment of frozen embarrassment everyone seemed to move at once. Ian fetched a napkin to clean the tea from his sister’s skirts. The duchess patted India’s hand. Bram bent down, red faced, and began to collect the fallen porcelain fragments.
“Please don’t do that, Brandon.” India frowned at the stiffness in the boy’s shoulders. “It is not at all necessary.” She touched his shoulders gently.
When Bram looked up, he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“I’m most dreadfully sorry if I — I upset you.”
“It is no fault of yours, truly.” India came slowly to her feet. Suddenly she looked very tired. “If you will excuse me, I think I’ll go to my room. I believe the trip was more tiring than I realized.”
With her chin held high India walked from the room. A moment later the duchess went after her.
“I said something, didn’t I?” Bram bit his lip. “And it’s my fault that she left.”
Ian cleared his throat. “Nonsense. It was not your fault. Sit down, won’t you? I think I’d better explain.”
Bram returned to his seat next to Silver. The tall soldier paced about for a moment, his hands clenched behind his back. When he turned, his face was very hard. “You see, we do have another brother. At least we did have one, seven years India’s senior and five years mine. He was … beloved by all who knew him.” Ian’s voice tightened. For a moment it seemed that he could not continue.
“You said he was? Did … something happen to him?” Silver asked softly.
At her question Ian seemed to rouse himself from his bitter memories. “I’m afraid so. He disappeared some years ago. Our parents sent Bow Street runners and a score of investigators the length and breadth of England, even to the Continent, but not a trace was ever found.” He sighed and dropped his hands to the back of an elegant Louis XIV chaise. “We believe he must have been set on by a gang of footpads and—” His eyes turned bleak for a moment. “It’s been hard on all of us, but perhaps worst on India. The two of them were very close, you see. It was almost as if they had some sort of mental bond between them.”
As he spoke Silver felt a tightening in her chest. A faint whine seemed to echo through the room until she found it harder and harder to concentrate on what Ian was saying.
He disappeared some years ago.
Never found … never found…
Over and over the grim words echoed in her head.
“It was unforgivable,” Bram said, looking miserable. “I should never have asked the question in such a ham-handed way.” He shoved his fists in his pocket, very glum. As he did so, he dislodged the notebook that had been lying on the settee next to him.
In a graceful motion Ian bent to retrieve it.
The well-thumbed pages flipped open, revealing Bram’s deft sketches of local flora and fauna, botanical oddities, the growth cycles of various native herbs and an array of lavender species.
And finally a freehand sketch of a man’s face, made several days earlier.
A man with glinting eyes, slashing cheekbones, and a faint scar above his full, sensual lips.
Ian froze, his eyes locked on the picture. Silver saw a tremor run through him. He looked up slowly, a storm of conflicting emotions on his handsome face. Disbelief, confusion, anger — all were written there as he stared at Bram. “Is it possible that you’ve seen him? Is he still alive?”
The whine in Silver’s head grew deafening. Her throat tightened. She tried to push to her feet, only to find her legs wouldn’t support her. “That man — he is your brother?”
Ian nodded grimly.
“Luc,” she whispered. Wonderingly. Furiously. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ian’s fingers clenched as if he were fighting the miracle of the news he had just been given. “My brother. Lucien Reede Tiberius Fitzgerald Delamere, Marquess of Dunwood and Hartingdale.” He stared at the sketch, his fingers gently tracing the careful features in turn, drinking in the sight of them. “He disappeared on the way to his club. We never saw him again.” Ian’s fingers tightened on the notebook. “Not until now.”
He looked at Bram and Silver. His gray eyes were no longer sleepy but very hard. “And now you will tell me exactly what you two are doing with my brother’s picture in that book.”
Silver heard no more. The room began to spin about her.
Her hands locked at her chest.
Luc, oh, Luc, you fool! How much you gave away for honor. And how very much they all love you.
For it changed everything, of course. The elder son of the Duke of Devonham was entirely above her touch, whether he chose to play at being a highwayman or not. There could be no question about anything between them now.
It was over, all over.
With that harsh knowledge crashing through her mind, Silver swayed. She barely noticed the creamy blossoms on the priceless Persian carpet rushing up to meet her.
~ 34 ~
Her first impression, when clarity returned, was utter pandemonium.
Voices rang out around her, chairs scraped back and forth, and footsteps hammered in the hallway.
Silver pressed her hands against her head, fighting back waves of pain as memory returned. Luc…
Now she knew the rest of his name.
Lucien Delamere.
Marquess of Dunwood and Hartingdale.
Sweet heaven,
he was the heir to the dukedom of Devonham!
She opened her eyes to see Ian’s anxious face floating above her. He patted her hand, smiling ruefully. “I hope you will forgive me, Miss St. Clair. It was a damnable thing for me to say. My only defense is that I couldn’t believe — I couldn’t understand. For five years we’ve searched for some trace of him. And then this…”
He looked out the window. “I think we had all given up except India. And then in an instant, to see his face staring back at me, so plain upon the page like that — well, it gave me a nasty turn.”
Silver swallowed back tears, realizing what had seemed so familiar about him. It was the pride in the high cheekbones, the sensual tilt to his full lower lip. Now that she knew he was Luc’s brother, the resemblance seemed so obvious she wondered how she had missed it before.
“There’s no need to explain,” she said softly. “It must have been a terrible shock to you.”
“That’s no excuse for my appalling rudeness. I hope you and your brother will forgive me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t.” Silver looked up to see the duchess standing behind Ian. Her eyes were glinting with unshed tears. “You’ve the manners of an ape, Ian. Now off with you. Both of you men. I wish to have a few words with Miss St. Clair. Alone.”
Ian did not move, studying Silver’s face and looking deep into her eyes, as if to read things that she could not or would not put in words. After a moment he nodded slightly, then pushed to his feet. “Very well. I expect Master Brandon might like a look at the conservatory.” He smiled conspiratorially at Silver’s brother. “We have rather an impressive orangery here at Swallow Hill. Would you care to have a tour of our steam pipes?”
Bram nodded, torn between ecstasy and a residual pang of embarrassment. “Would I! You’d need a carriage and a team of eight horses to tear me away.”
“Then we’ll be off.” Ian and his grandmother exchanged a short, significant look before Ian steered Bram from the room.
The duchess sat down beside Silver. Her back was very straight, and her hands moved restlessly on her cane, before finally going still. “So you love him, do you?”
Come the Night (The Dangerous Delameres - Book 1) Page 32