by Colleen Ladd
Portia very nearly said something about Courtland, but he did not pause long enough for her to speak. It was just as well, perhaps. Roger was beyond anyone’s grasp now, but Courtland could still be hurt by an incautious word. She regretted blurting out her realization as she had. It was no wonder he’d been frantic.
“I couldn’t see the justice in returning to take everything away from him.” Ashburne tipped his head back against the chair, his eyes focused somewhere over her head, cataloging cobwebs and moth-eaten drapes. A muscle in his jaw stood out in high relief. “I had no idea how badly under the hatches he was, nor what wanton destruction he would wreck upon the Hall. Had I known, I would not have stayed away.”
“What led you to return, my lord?” Portia asked softly, certain if she spoke more loudly she’d bring him back from wherever he was, and he would never answer.
His eyes drifted down to her, but his focus had not yet returned from foreign climes. “A fellow I did business with thought I’d be interested in the news from England. He dropped me the scandal sheets every time one came his way. In one of them, I read of Roger’s death. And in that moment....” His voice trailed off, and picked up again, almost too soft to hear. “I was overcome with heartsickness. It seemed an easier thing to risk my life in returning home than to stay away all my days.”
And so the threadbare hope became strong enough to hang a life on. Desperation, Portia reflected, could make any man wager all for a poor shot at success. “Well,” she said, and saw him blink at her vigorous tone, “I would be happy to help you look through these books, my lord.” With his shoulder, it would take him a great deal longer than it had already if she didn’t lend a hand. “But I think you’d have better luck with the people who were there. Someone must know something.”
“What do you suggest I do? Ask up and down the high street?”
“No, but I could.”
“Absolutely not. You’ve put me in enough jeopardy already. Not to mention the danger you’ve brought upon yourself.” Ashburne got up and took a stack of books from her, including one she hadn’t looked at yet.
She snatched it back and watched him shove the books on the shelf without regard to their proper places. “Someone other than you saw Lady Amelia go out. Someone saw whoever went out after her, or knows who was not in the house during the time she must have been killed.”
“She might have been killed any time up to the moment I found her. Or after, if you believe the case against me,” Ashburne said brutally. “We were all of us out of the house looking for her.”
“Then someone saw them together, she and this lover of hers. You don’t have to have the note to confront him. You may be able to trick a confession out of him by merely intimating that you’ve seen the note.”
“And I may not.”
“Someone knows who her lover was,” Portia urged. No longer for her own sake, or even for his, but for the sake of Lady Amelia who, whatever her faults, had lain too long in her grave while her murderer walked free. “Perhaps even Ransley.”
“No.” Ashburne turned on her, a book tumbling to the floor, and took her wrists in a bruising grip. “You will not speak to Ransley again, do you understand me, madam?”
“I don’t mean that he knows he knows her killer’s name, just that—”
Ashburne gave her a shake. Her fingers were going numb. “I said leave him out of this. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.” He was getting wise to her. Though his grip gentled, he did not release her wrists.
“You will remain inside the Hall. You will not go out. You will help me search the library, and you will do nothing else. Are we agreed, my lady?”
Portia glared at him, but he did not soften one bit, and finally she said, “Yes. I’ll help you look for the note.”
He released her. “Good.”
She rubbed her wrists, the mark of his fingers red on her pale skin. “And if we don’t find it?”
Ashburne glared.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There were pressed flowers and squashed bugs, dust and spiderwebs and the occasional spider, not all of which were dead. And then there were the little “gifts” from the mice, which had tried out their teeth on more books than Portia could bear to contemplate.
And there were notes. Scraps of accounts, betting chits, letters long and short. Market lists, passages copied into schoolboy copperplate, rude drawings. Love notes. Notes tender, notes marital, notes of bitter disappointment and dawning glory. Notes that Portia blushed to read (and then read again, if Ashburne was not watching).
Most Portia returned to the pages where she found them, feeling obscurely that they deserved to rest where they had for decades, if not centuries. Some had no salutation or closing, no names to identify them, and those she gave to Ashburne. After reading them, he stuck them between the pages of whatever book he had open, something in the writing or the content assuring him they did not suit. Others slowly collected in a pile on the table by his elbow, more out of a fear of somehow going astray, she thought, than any real belief they might be what he sought.
Afternoon passed into evening without any effect on the library with its drawn drapes and flickering candles. Mrs. McFerran brought in tea, kept Ellie away when she returned from her free day, though Portia would not care to guess by what means, and chivvied them into the breakfast room for dinner, the dining room being still too dusty and mouse-ridden for use. Ashburne ate fast, with the manner of a man who did not taste what he put in his mouth. Portia, who had missed her luncheon, dined well also, but with significantly more appreciation. The difference between this meal and the lackluster attempts she’d threatened out of the housekeeper was night and day.
“You have much to answer for,” Portia told Ashburne as they returned to the library. “Turning even the servants against me.” She was thinking of the conversation she’d overheard several days since and assumed to be between the housekeeper and her husband. She owed Mr. McFerran an apology.
He sent her to bed when the candles guttered and she began to nod over the books, unable to remember anymore whether she had Dante or Rabelais in her hands, though she had not yet stopped looking at the frontispieces, for how else was she ever to know the contents of this library. A library that would be hers only so long as Ashburne must hide. She tried not to dwell on the loss she’d feel upon going back to Rosewood’s little book room, if she were so lucky as to manage even that. Yawning, Portia went up to bed, where Ellie scolded her over reading so long and tucked her up like a little girl, nearly asleep before ever her head hit the pillow.
She dreamt that he came in while she slept and watched her by the light of a guttering candle. And that when she opened her eyes and saw him there, he set the candle aside and lowered his body over hers and she wanted him more than she’d ever dreamed of wanting Roger.
*****
And so it went for another day.
Portia managed, somehow, to forget her dream long enough to be civil to Ashburne at breakfast, though she did blush when he asked how she'd slept. The courtesy was clearly an effort for him, though whether because he was out of practice with them (or had never been in practice; he sometimes scowled as if he’d as lief spend the rest of his life skulking about, for ghosts never had to speak to anyone) or because his arm pained him, she could not tell.
When she went to the kitchen to fetch dinner, she found Ellie with Mrs. McFerran in her sitting room, the two of them plying their needles together like old friends. Returning to the library with a tray that held more food than Portia could eat in a week, she wondered if their new accord reflected Mrs. McFerran’s growing acceptance of her mistress, or had more to do with Ellie’s assistance in tending Mr. McFerran. As for Ellie, she had to find company somewhere, and mayhap Mrs. McFerran had been starved for female companionship, little though it had showed.
Mrs. McFerran turned Clary away at the door when she arrived sometime in the afternoon, though Portia only knew of it at dinnertime.
The woman swore she’d said nothing more than that Lady Ashburne was feeling unwell, and Portia had no choice but to believe her. Truthfully, it was as well she’d sent Clary away. The girl would otherwise have come bursting into the library, and the cat would have been among the pigeons for certain.
After that first day, Portia had Ellie lay out one of her old gowns. Her maid grizzled at her unfashionable choice until she realized just how much grime had found its way onto the gown Portia’d been wearing, then grumbled about that while she buttoned Portia into a gray morning dress so faded it was an odd shade of lavender. The frivolous girl who still lived somewhere inside Portia’s breast complained bitterly at attending Ashburne in such a dress, and withered into silence when he seemed to notice nothing more than that she was there. His black coat and trousers were soon so covered in dust they might have been gray. Portia decided they were even and tried to put the matter from her mind.
She could not, try as she might, put him from her mind. However far from her he stood, he seemed to fill up the space around her with his scent of heat and spices. His hands, when they brushed hers, struck sparks, and the slow whisper of his breathing filled her ears, even over the rustle of pages.
She wished she knew whether he was as aware of her.
*****
It was damned difficult to concentrate with Portia in the room.
Much as Giles appreciated her help—his shoulder ached so abominably the first night he’d resorted to laudanum to sleep and woke muzzy headed and irritable—he could hardly see what was in front of him when she sat opposite. She need but shift minutely to break his train of thought.
He fought it by concentrating ever harder on the books. It was here. It must be here somewhere, though with every bookcase finished, his hope faded further.
He was standing on the library stairs to avoid having to lift his left arm to reach the top shelf when the pounding began. Startled, he wavered and Portia, who was waiting below for him to hand down the books, steadied him with a hand on his calf that he could feel long after she removed it.
Someone was hammering at the front door. Someone strong and angry and very determined. Giles descended the library stairs and listened—Portia’s nearness, the delicate scent of her, filling his head—as Mrs. McFerran rushed to the door, her footsteps echoing quickly in the great hall. Her voice came, quick and angry and indistinct though the library door, then a man’s, loud and quite clear.
“Don’t give me that rot. I know she’s here and I’ll thank you to step aside.”
With a cry of “Tony,” Portia dashed out into the hall, the library door not quite closing behind her.
Cursing, Giles tripped a hidden catch and one of the bookcases swung open. He slipped into the secret passage, recent practice allowing him to easily make his way to the kitchen without a candle. Family lore was voluble on the handful of secret rooms and passages in Ashburne Hall, attributing them variously to hiding Catholic priests, smuggling, thievery, or sheer bloody-minded perversity on the part of previous generations. The “priest-hole” in the servants’ quarters where Giles had spent entirely too many of his recent days was devoid of any religious symbol, Catholic or otherwise. For himself, Giles believed that unlawful and unfortunate activities were the long-ago start of the Ashburne fortune and he was now paying the price for his ancestors’ crimes.
He ran lightly up the servants’ stair to duck into a room that fronted the drive. All he could see at first was the man’s mount, a nice bit of horseflesh, sturdy but not fancy. A moment later, the fellow appeared, his dark head bent toward Portia’s. She hung on his arm, her face turned to his, and Giles knew that bright expression. He’d seen it bent on himself, perhaps once, perhaps twice.
He should have sent her to the right-about that first morning. He’d been trying for a fortnight to force her out by means both fair and foul. With someone trying to hurt her and the threat she represented to his safety, he ought to have had no difficulty packing her off, bag and baggage. He had not. He’d been seduced by her flashing eyes and quick smile, her blunt conversation, delicate stature and far from delicate beauty.
He had let himself forget what kind of woman she was, let her adultery, perfidy as great as Amelia’s, fade to the back of his mind while she worked by his side, too grateful for her easy acceptance to let himself remember what he knew her to be. He’d forgotten this Tony, his letters, his cavalier assumption of her love, vows and reputation and Roger be damned. Portia spoke animatedly to her lover, touching his arm, his chest. He laughed with careless affection and swept her into an embrace. Giles’ fingers ached where they gripped the windowsill.
He would not forget again. Portia Ashburne would not spend another peaceful night in his house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“But however did you find me here?” Portia demanded, blinking in the sunshine, painfully bright after the dim library. “And why aren’t you at Oxford?”
“I tracked you down.” Tony took up the reins of the horse he’d rushed her outside to see. “And deuced difficult it was, too. I’m run off my feet, Portia, dashing from one end of England to the other after you.”
“Not quite so far as all that.”
“And this downy fellow’s carried me the whole way, haven’t you boy? Oxford to Rosewood to Ashburne.” He rubbed the horse between his twitching ears and turned a brilliant grin on Portia. “Isn’t he a corker?”
“He’s a lovely horse,” Portia agreed, stroking the soft nose, “but wherever did you get the money for him? I know you haven’t the blunt to—”
“Don’t come over difficult at me, sis! I ain’t in dutch with the duns. I own Lightning fair and square, don’t I boy?”
“I don’t believe it. Stop talking to your horse,” Portia snapped when he persisted in whispering in the animal’s ear, “and have the courtesy to speak to me. How did you come by him?”
Tony sighed. “You’re a perfect Gorgon, you know that? I won him in a card game.”
“Tony—”
“Don’t start. Don’t start, I haven’t gone off the rails, I promise.” He turned a charming smile on her, wrapping his arm about her waist. “It’s not a regular thing with me. I’m not Roger, I promise you that.”
“You had better not be!” Portia slapped his arm. “And don’t try any of your wiles on me, I’m not a schoolroom miss or upstairs maid to be melted by your smile. You still haven’t said why you’re not at university.”
He was suddenly very interested in the fit of his horse’s bridle.
“Tony...” Portia’s throat squeezed shut. “Tony, please tell me you haven’t been sent down.”
“Nothing as bad as all that. Just... Just rusticating for a couple of days.”
“A couple of days.”
“A month.”
“Oh, Tony...”
“Look, you can ring a peal over me later. I’m hot and I’m dusty and my horse needs tending. What’s a fellow got to do around here to get his horse seen to?”
“The stable’s around back, Tony. You’ll have to tend him yourself, I’m afraid.”
“Are you telling me there’s not a soul to look after my horse in all this ruddy great house?”
“Mr. McFerran’s broken his leg and there’s no one else.” She frowned at his expression, which had gotten him his way far too often in the past and looked idiotic on a grown man. “For heaven’s sake, Tony, it’s not the first time you’ve had to shift for yourself. Nor will it be the last, I trow. There’s only the five of us here, and making faces at me isn’t going to do one blessed thing to change that.”
“Five?”
“Mr. and Mrs. McFerran, Ellie, me, and—”
“Me,” Tony supplied when Portia stopped, appalled at her slip. “All right, Portia.” He bent to kiss her cheek and took up the slack in Lightning’s reins. “Come on boy, looks like we’re fending for ourselves.”
As he walked away, the horse nudging his shoulder with its muzzle every couple of steps, Portia trie
d to remember whether she’d seen any oats in the run-down stables. They’d have to get some from the Duck and Drake if there wasn’t. What a good thing she hadn’t spent the money from the silver yet. She hadn’t intended to spend it at all—the last thing she wanted to do was take Ashburne’s money, and she’d only spouted the silver in the first place for the sake of the staff and the house—but it looked now as if she’d have to. Goodness! She’d forgotten all about Ashburne. Portia turned to the house and a movement in one of the upper windows caught her eye. She couldn’t see who was watching, but she could certainly guess. It was only her guilty conscience that made her think he was scowling.
Portia went back inside. Ignoring Mrs. McFerran’s glare, she said, “I take it he’s gone upstairs?”
“Who, my lady?”
Portia sighed. “All right, then. If you should happen to see him, tell him he needn’t worry about Tony—Mr. Durose, that is—he’s perfectly harmless. And I’m sorry, but I’ll be needing the master’s bedchamber, as Mr. Durose will be staying a few days.” That should give him enough warning to remove his shaving things and anything else he oughtn’t leave lying about. Mrs. McFerran glowered, but she didn’t return to the fiction that the bedchamber’s ceiling leaked; at least she wasn’t fooling herself that Portia’s wits had gone completely begging.
“I’m sure I don’t know to whom you refer.”
Portia bit her cheek to keep her temper. “I’m quite certain you do know something about supper. Pray see to it. We will be eating in a quarter hour.”
“Of course, my lady.” Mrs. McFerran stalked back to the kitchen, leaving Portia rubbing her temples, which were beginning to ache. She closed the door to the library, though Ashburne was clearly lurking about upstairs somewhere, and went into the morning room, leaving the door ajar so Tony could find her when he returned.