by Mia Marlowe
“The lady herself hasn’t offended someone?”
“No. She’s possessed of strong opinions, but only in private,” Rhys said. “Until we wed, she was something of a wallflower.”
“So what do you propose to do?” his father asked.
“Sir, I’m compelled to ask for your help. I propose to move her into Warrington House until such time as I can set up my own household and staff it with people who will help me protect her.”
“And you think you’re a good enough judge of character that you can hire fellows off the street to guard your wife from an assassin?”
“No, I wouldn’t trust strangers,” Rhys said. “I’ll seek out members of my old regiment, the fighting men who served under me in France.”
“The few who survived your command, you mean.”
Yes, how good of you to remind me, you crusty old bastard. “They are few, but they’re trustworthy and they’ll be glad for the work.”
His father leaned back in his chair and looked down his long nose. “And you think these men would take orders from you again?”
“They, of all people, know the truth of what happened at Maubeuge. They won’t blink twice at my orders.” After the battle, he’d made the rounds at hospital to find members of his command. To a man, the survivors thanked him.
All but Lieutenant Duffy.
“What did happen at Maubeuge?” the marquis asked.
Finally.
His father wouldn’t let him tell his side of the story when he was first sent home. The rumors, the whiff of scandal, were heinous enough that the marquis was obliged to act decisively.
“A field surgeon must sometimes hack off a limb to save the man,” his father had said in this very room three years ago before he banished Rhys from his sight. “A family too must sometimes set aside one of its members for the good of the whole.”
And just like that, Rhys was an outcast. Without recourse. Without being given a chance to explain.
His father was giving it to him now.
“The tale of Maubeuge doesn’t make for pretty hearing,” Rhys said. “Someone gave us faulty intelligence that led my regiment into a French trap.”
In halting sentences, he recounted the days of forced march leading up to the illfated engagement. At one point, his father rose and poured a jigger of whisky for each of them, waving a thin hand for Rhys to continue as they drank.
The British cavalry was lured into committing their forces, thinking surprise was on their side. The intelligence dispatches Rhys and his friends Colton and Sharp had received made no mention of the much larger French force hidden in the surrounding forest and behind the hills.
Rhys told his father the particulars, answering the marquis’s questions without flinching.
But Rhys didn’t confide the way the faces of the dying had risen in his mind to taunt him over the last three years—those who deserved death and, worse, those who didn’t. He didn’t share the blaze of light that would sometimes descend on his vision, the phantom screams of the wounded, or the way the ground sometimes seemed to shake under the memory of two hundred hooves pounding in unison.
The myriad details that used to torment him no longer dragged him back to that killing field. He hadn’t been tortured by a full-blown episode when the world spun backward to Maubeuge since he met Olivia.
He didn’t know why she grounded him in the present, but he thanked God it was so.
“I don’t suppose you have copies of those fraudulent dispatches or any way to definitively clear your name?” his father asked.
“No,” Rhys admitted. Since the Duke of Clarence withdrew his suit before Rhys succeeded in publicly ruining Olivia, he didn’t think Mr. Alcock would deliver on his part of their failed bargain. “You have only my word for what happened.”
“Perhaps,” the marquis said slowly, “that’s good enough.”
Rhys sucked in his breath. With those few words, he was pardoned. He was suddenly restored and reconciled to his family.
And it didn’t mean as much as he’d thought it would.
Olivia was his family now, but he’d certainly accept help from his old one to keep her safe.
“Thank you, sir. Once I have a guard set up for Olivia, I’ll devote myself to uncovering the person behind these thorns and deal with him.”
“Or her,” the marquis said thoughtfully. “After all, poison is a woman’s weapon.”
“I hadn’t considered that before. You’re right.” Rhys would have to revisit the guest list of the Symon’s house party with particular emphasis on Baroness Ramstead, Lady Harrington, and Amanda Pinkerton. He mentally added another female name to the roster—Olivia’s maid, Babette.
Rhys mistrusted all things French on principle, and the fact that this particular French woman had been associated with the suspected spy, La Belle Perdu, only added to his misgivings. Still, he hadn’t seriously considered female involvement in the attempts on Olivia’s life until now.
“Do you and your wife intend to be…fashionable?” His father’s tone suggested keeping up with the bon ton was tantamount to considering becoming infected with the French pox.
“No, sir.” How could his father imagine that Rhys would be squiring Olivia to balls and the theatre when someone was trying to kill her? “The fewer people who know our whereabouts, the better.”
“A wise decision.” Lord Warrington stood. “I have sources of information not readily available to most. I’ll make a few discreet inquiries and do what I can to determine who’s behind these attempts on your wife’s life. Do not consider establishing your own home at present. Warrington House is at your disposal for as long as you need it.”
Rhys rose as well.
Then his father extended a tremoring hand. Rhys took it and gave it a shake.
“Welcome home, son.”
Chapter 31
Olivia and Rhys settled into life at Warrington House with a minimum of disruption to the staff or Rhys’s family. His mother was overjoyed to see him and welcomed Olivia with open arms. The marquis was coldly quiet, but even though he was less demonstrative, Olivia caught him looking at Rhys across the dinner table with a satisfied glint in his eyes.
All in all, it was an agreeable arrangement until she and Rhys could set up their own household. Life fell into a comfortable rhythm. If not for the threat of the thorns and the way Rhys almost smothered her with protection, Olivia would have been perfectly content.
“My sister Calliope has finally gotten her way and escaped the nursery,” she remarked to Babette, as the maid cinched her stays tight one morning.
Olivia had received word that her parents had moved their household to London and taken up residence in their Mayfair townhouse. Beatrice Symon was up to her elbows in plans for fifteen-year-old Calliope’s “come out” once the Season started. The ton might try to bar the door against the Symon family on account of its lack of title and, what was possibly worse in the eyes of the mighty, its association with trade. But no one could keep such a well-dowered young lady as Calliope Symon on the sidelines of the Marriage Mart for long.
Besides, Olivia now sported a “lady” before her name. While the Symon link with the House of Warrington didn’t carry as much weight as a match with the Duke of Clarence would have, Olivia’s mother was reportedly milking her oldest daughter’s aristocratic connections for all they were worth.
“Will you be calling on your family soon?” Babette asked.
“No,” Olivia said as she lifted her arms so her maid could slip the muslin day dress over her head. The column of fabric draped to the floor in graceful folds. She might as well double as a Grecian statue. She certainly didn’t have any more freedom of movement than one. “Rhys has made me a veritable prisoner here at Warrington House.”
He meant extremely well, and she understood why he’d given orders for her not to leave the premises. He’d enlisted the help of the Warrington staff, and Tweadle especially trailed her like a bloodhound whenever she wandered t
oo close to the front door. As long as she was under the marquis’s roof, she was untouchable. Whoever sent those thorns must be pulling out their hair in frustration.
The only trouble was, Olivia was near to yanking out her own locks as well.
“Lord Rhys, he did not mean to cut you off from your family, bien sur,” Babette said as she smoothed the counterpane on Olivia and Rhys’s bed. He wouldn’t hear of separate bedrooms, even though it fairly scandalized the help at Warrington House for them to share a bed.
Olivia was glad for it. Her days were filled with tedium while Rhys was out and about, tracking down information he hoped would lead to Mr. Weinschmidt’s killer. She’d begged to come with him, but he was so certain the only way to keep her safe was to keep her at Warrington House, she’d finally relented.
“If anything happened to you, I couldn’t bear it,” he’d said, his voice catching. “I’d be…homeless.”
So she stopped wheedling him about it, but she wouldn’t budge when he tried to make her dismiss Babette as well. Warrington House was opulently comfortable and there were plenty of servants to be had, but Babette was her one link to her past life. She counted on Babette’s gossip with the Symon servants for news of her family. She couldn’t lose everything, even to keep herself safe.
“I could take a message to your parents, asking them to call on you here for tea,” Babette suggested. Even Beatrice Symon didn’t have the gall to knock on the door of a marquis’s home without an invitation. “Do you wish it?”
“An excellent idea. Though between fittings with Jean-Pierre and putting Calliope through her paces, I doubt my mother could find the time unless I told her the marchioness would be pouring out.”
But her father might come. It was worth a try. She was so hungry to see anyone outside of the staff and residents of Warrington House, she wasn’t too proud to beg her father to visit.
“I’ll just nip down to the library and write a note. Then you can deliver it this morning,” she said, leading the way out of the room she shared with her husband. Perhaps Papa would come this afternoon.
Mr. Tweadle met her on the first floor landing.
“A gentleman is here to see Lord Rhys, but his lordship is not at home. The caller claims to have something for your husband and will not entrust it to me. He will, however, give it to you. I wonder if you’d care to receive him?”
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Fortescue Alcock, Esquire,” Mr. Tweadle read from the man’s calling card. He added a sniff of disdain. “A Member of Parliament.”
“I wonder that he didn’t ask to see Lord Warrington then.”
“The House of Lords has little truck with the House of Commons,” Tweadle said crustily. “My lady may certainly send word that she is ‘not at home’ to Mr. Alcock, and I’ll send the gentleman on his way.”
“No, that’s not necessary, Mr. Tweadle. If Mr. Alcock has something for my husband, I’ll certainly meet with him,” she said. Company of any kind was a welcome diversion from her days of isolation. “Please fetch some tea and bring it to the parlor, Babette.”
Olivia had never been a social being. She hadn’t ever felt alone while pottering about with her orchids or riding her mare, Molly, over the Barrowdell hills. There was a time when she would have reveled in the solitude she now enjoyed, but there was a difference between choosing her own company and being forced into it. Surely Rhys wouldn’t begrudge her a chance to play hostess in his absence just this once.
She followed Mr. Tweadle to the parlor where he announced her to the tall, gaunt man who bent over her offered hand with correct deference.
“Lady Olivia,” he said. “May I offer my felicitations on your recent marriage?”
“Thank you, sir. Please make yourself comfortable.” Olivia claimed the central section of the settee and waved a hand toward one of the wing chairs opposite her. Mr. Tweadle hovered near the doorway, clearly intent on remaining unless she sent him away.
Babette appeared at the doorway, having set a speed record for assembling a tea tray. She bobbed a curtsey and then arranged the tray on the low table before Olivia. “Shall I pour out, my lady?”
Before she could respond, Mr. Alcock said, “I rather think you’ll prefer to hear what I have to say alone.”
Babette flashed a warning glance at her and waited.
“I trust my maid’s discretion implicitly,” Olivia said. Besides, she knew Rhys wouldn’t want her alone with a strange man, even if he was an MP. “Whatever message you have for me to deliver to my husband will be safe in her hearing. Mr. Tweadle, you may go.”
The butler pressed his lips in a tight line but did as she bade him. Mr. Alcock glared at Babette from under his wiry brows. Olivia was determined not to let him bully her into sending away Babette as well.
“As you wish,” Mr. Alcock finally said. “Time is of the essence or I would have waited for Lord Rhys.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a fat parcel. “Enclosed, he will find copies of original dispatches that should have gone to him prior to the battle at Maubeuge. There is also a sworn statement from a Sergeant Leatherby that the dispatches were switched at the last checkpoint prior to being delivered to Lord Rhys.”
Olivia’s chest constricted. Mr. Alcock was offering proof of Rhys’s innocence in that horrible debacle. “Did this Sergeant Leatherby reveal who switched the orders?”
“He wasn’t willing to do so until he gets to open court, but I fear that day may never come. You see, I have it on good authority that the sergeant is at this moment preparing to take ship for Portsmouth at Wapping Dock. If your husband wishes to compel his testimony, I advise him to head for the docks before the next tide.”
Mr. Alcock stood. “I regret I must decline this lovely tea, but business requires me to be elsewhere.”
Olivia stood as well, clutching the packet of documents to her chest. “Thank you for this, sir. My husband and I are in your debt.”
“No, it is I who would not be in his. A man must pay his debts of honor,” Mr. Alcock said. “Even though your husband fulfilled his part of the bargain in a wholly unexpected way, I am still duty-bound to deliver on my pledge.”
“His part of the bargain? What do you mean?” That smacked of a wager, and though her bets with Rhys had resulted in unexpected happiness, she was still suspicious of the practice.
“He didn’t tell you? Hmph. I suppose I ought not either then. Ignorance is bliss, you know.”
“Sir, I find ignorance an intolerable state. To what do you refer?”
“Very well, since you insist.” His oily smile made her realize he intended to tell her all along. He merely wanted her to beg. “I know you think Lord Rhys was sent to Barrowdell ostensibly as the Duke of Clarence’s factor. His true commission, which I orchestrated, was to upset the match between you and the royal and keep it from coming to pass. Now, you mustn’t take it personally. My reasons were purely political and had nothing to do with you.”
Nothing to do with her? The man had just admitted to interfering with a possible marriage. Could it be more personal? Surely Rhys wouldn’t have been a party to such skullduggery.
But now that she thought about it, Rhys hadn’t been terribly complimentary to the duke. “And how did you expect him to stop the match with Clarence?”
“By doing what he does best, of course.” Mr. Alcock popped his hat on his head. “Lord Rhys was supposed to seduce and ruin you, which I rather guess he did since your father forced him to marry you. Rather hard luck on him to be leg-shackled for life in exchange for information that could clear his name. Still, he could have done ever so much worse. You might have been a wart-ridden heiress with the squints.”
Olivia’s stomach cramped as if someone had punched her in the gut.
“I can see I’ve given you plenty to consider, Lady Olivia. I’ll see myself out. Good day.” Mr. Alcock strode out but stopped at the arched doorway and turned back to her. His practiced smile, the one Olivia suspected he used to disarm
political opponents he intended to destroy, didn’t reach his eyes. “You see, my lady, ignorance really is bliss.”
***
“Think, man.” Rhys smacked his fist down on Horatio Symon’s desk with a resounding thud. If Olivia had known he was paying her father a visit today, she’d have pitched a fit to come along. But since he was feeling rather less cordial toward his father-in-law than she’d have appreciated, Rhys was grateful he’d been able to put her off again. “Which of your wife’s houseguests has reason to wish you ill?”
“A successful man of business makes enemies without even trying. Surely you can appreciate that.” Horatio strolled over to his bookshelf, pulled out a thick volume, and took a flask of green liquid from between the worn covers. “Care for a drink, son?”
“No. May lightning strike me dead if ever I touch your vile brew again.” Rhys sank into a chair and rubbed his temples. “You’re not taking this threat to Olivia seriously.”
“Of course I am.” Horatio poured a jigger of the liquor for himself and knocked it back in one gulp. “I made sure she married you, didn’t I?”
“If the threat isn’t because of your business dealings, then the attack is personal. Why not target you directly?” Rhys wondered aloud.
“I expect the point is to cause me pain,” Horatio said. “The dead feel none.”
“If the aim of the assassin is to cause you pain, why not target Mrs. Symon then?”
Horatio cocked a brow at him. “You’ve met Mrs. Symon, I collect. Don’t misunderstand. I love the woman, but she can be a bit much. Most people would think they were doing me a favor by ridding me of her. Olivia, on the other hand…” He slumped into his chair again. “She’s my own heart and I haven’t been very circumspect about showing it. Everyone knows she’s my favorite.”
“So whoever is behind this knows that. Now, I ask again, which of your guests at Barrowdell has reason to cause you pain?”
“None of them. I was careful to help each of them during the time we all passed together in India. A stock tip here. A word of an impending unrest there. A man needs his friends all the more when he is far from Home, and he does well to keep them informed when something touches them.” A shadow passed behind Horatio’s eyes and he covered his mouth with his hand for a moment. Then he lowered it slowly. “I only exchanged harsh words with one of them and then only once.”