Lucas grimaced. ‘And Lady Marney has a widowed sister, if my memory serves me correctly.’
Justin shot him a look. ‘She does. Mrs Deborah Stratton. She was married to a soldier who died in action. That alone should give her no love for the French.’
Richard was smiling reminiscently. ‘I have met Mrs Stratton before. She certainly has the capability and the intellect to organise an enterprise like this.’
‘If you know her already,’ Lucas suggested, ‘why do you not renew the acquaintance?’
Richard laughed. ‘Because she will not give me the time of day, dear brother. We fell out—rather badly—when I asked her to be my mistress last year.’
Cory smothered a laugh. ‘Turned you down, Richard?’
Richard toyed with his brandy glass. ‘I made the mistake of not preparing my ground properly,’ he said. ‘I made some rash assumptions about her virtue—’ He broke off and looked around at the circle of cynically smiling faces. ‘Damned if I know why I’m explaining myself to all of you!’ he said. ‘A poor sort of help you can give anyway. Justin cannot douse an old flame, Cory is suffering from unrequited love and you, Lucas—I swear you do not have a heart to lose!’
‘Thank you for that masterly summary of our romantic entanglements,’ Justin said smoothly. ‘Returning to the matter before us, do you wish to try your hand at seducing Mrs Stratton again?’
Cory did not miss the odd look in his friend’s eyes as Richard answered his brother. ‘No, I do not want to try to seduce Mrs Stratton again. But…I would not mind pursuing the acquaintance if I can persuade her to be civil to me.’
‘Another mark up to unrequited love,’ Lucas murmured irrepressibly.
‘Thank you,’ Justin said, his lips twitching. ‘Now, I need one of you to devote yourself to Miss Lang, the vicar’s daughter. Reverend Lang is an interesting case. He is a disappointed man, turned sour waiting for a preferment that never came. His allegiance may have turned sour as well, and may have infected his daughter.’
Cory nodded. He could see the logic in that. Disaffected clergymen could be the very devil to deal with.
‘Is that all?’ Lucas enquired.
‘Not quite.’ Justin pointed to the village of Midwinter Bere. ‘There is also Lily, Lady Benedict. Her husband is a housebound invalid and she seems devoted to his interests.’
There was a pause. ‘These ladies are all members of Lady Sally Saltire’s reading group,’ Cory said slowly.
‘Reading group?’ Richard Kestrel looked interested. ‘Tell us more.’
Cory shrugged. ‘I do not know much more to tell other than that they meet every week at Saltires.’
Justin and Lucas exchanged glances. ‘What a marvellous way that would be to pass on information if one were so inclined,’ Justin Kestrel said feelingly. ‘This reading group—does it have any other members?’
‘Only Miss Odell,’ Cory said. ‘I doubt that she could be involved, though. The Odells are but lately come to Midwinter.’
‘It’s not impossible, though,’ Richard pointed out. ‘Where was Miss Odell recently, Cory? Was it not London?’
Cory scowled. He knew where this was going. Richard was about as subtle as a runaway carthorse. ‘I believe it was,’ he said coldly.
‘And she has travelled a great deal—’
‘Not in Dorset,’ Cory said, between shut teeth. He felt a rush of fury. It was absolutely ridiculous to imagine that Rachel could be a French spy. He did not dispute that she was intelligent and resourceful enough to do it, but to imagine that she was a traitor was absurd.
‘I am merely suggesting that she should not be left out of the investigation,’ Richard murmured. ‘We must be sure—’
‘Richard,’ Cory said warningly, ‘if you are thinking to get up a flirtation with Miss Odell on the strength of this, then I suggest that you think again!’
Richard raised both hands in a pacifying gesture. ‘Wouldn’t dare, old chap. You’d probably call me out. Besides, you are the one who knows Miss Odell the best. Perhaps you should take the matter on.’
Cory grimaced. ‘My feelings notwithstanding, Miss Odell and I are like brother and sister. If I start making up to her after all these years she will think me run quite mad.’ He sighed. ‘There is no need. I give you my word that Rachel is no more a French spy than I am.’
Lucas and Richard exchanged a look of covert amusement that Cory fortunately missed. ‘No exceptions,’ Richard pointed out blandly.
Cory gave an irritable sigh and held on to his temper—just.
‘If anyone is to flirt with Miss Odell then it should be me,’ Lucas said, blander still. ‘I’m not as dangerous as Richard and it will be my pleasure.’
Cory clenched his fists and slowly released them. He had never previously had any urge to inflict an injury on Lucas Kestrel, who was one of his best friends. There was always a first time, however. He took a deep breath and looked into the other man’s amused hazel eyes as he tried to clamp down on his fury.
‘I try to think of Miss Odell as a little sister, Lucas,’ he said heavily, ‘so I am hardly likely to encourage one of the greatest rakes in the whole country to flirt with her.’ He looked at his friends. Justin was watching him quizzically, there was a laugh lurking in Richard’s eyes and Lucas was grinning openly. Cory let his breath out in a long sigh. He was unhappily aware that his feelings for Rachel were as transparent as glass. He raised a warning hand.
‘Not another word…’
Justin shook his head. ‘We were not going to say anything at all, Cory,’ he said innocently. ‘Other than good luck, of course!’
Cory sighed. ‘I am happy to keep a watching brief at Midwinter Royal House,’ he said. ‘If I might change the subject slightly, I have already observed that there are some odd things going on there.’
To his relief, his friends took the hint.
‘Such as?’ Lucas asked.
‘Smugglers have been using the burial mounds to store their booty, for one thing,’ Cory said. ‘There is a lot of disturbance at the eastern end of one of the fields. It made a good hiding place, especially with the legends warning people to keep away from the treasure. I imagine they were not best pleased to hear we were to excavate there.’
‘Smugglers,’ Richard said thoughtfully. ‘A good line of communication with the enemy.’
‘Maybe.’ Cory grimaced. It seemed that they were positively surrounded by treachery. So much for Rachel’s view that the Midwinter villages were a haven of peace.
‘Well, whatever you do, please do not interfere with my brandy supply,’ Justin said with feeling. He topped up his glass. ‘Would anyone care for more?’
The glasses were refilled.
‘I suppose,’ Lucas said, ‘that we should be particularly careful in our dealings with the ladies. I cannot speak for the rest of you, of course, but I do not think we would wish our flirtation to be misconstrued as having a serious purpose. None of us wants to end up in parson’s mousetrap.’
There was heartfelt agreement to this. ‘How damnably ironic would that be?’ Justin said, and they all laughed to think of it.
It was two nights later when Cory Newlyn made an unheralded visit to Midwinter Royal House and slipped through the gate into the stable yard. There was a half-moon, small, silver and bright, above the line of the stable roof. It was a perfect night for a spot of illicit activity, be that smuggling, piracy, spying, or perhaps a little tomb robbing, all of which Cory was certain might occur in the Midwinter villages at any time. The wind had dropped during the evening and barely a whisper stirred the tops of the tall pines down in the burial field. Cory prepared for his own covert activity.
He leaned back against the wall of the stables and waited silently to see if anyone else was moving in the quiet night. It was about two o’clock. Cory had spent a pleasant enough evening at a dinner at Midwinter Marney Hall. His head should have been full of plans for the night, but instead he had found his thoughts had been full of Rachel
Odell. To his own disgust he could feel himself becoming as lovesick as a youth in his salad days.
Rachel had looked utterly charming in her pale pink evening gown. With her chestnut hair and brown eyes she had the rich colouring to carry off a shade that looked so insipid on many of the blonde débutantes. The dress was demure and high-necked, but Cory could not help but admire the way that the material draped so gently over Rachel’s curves, concealing but outlining her full breasts and the generous curve of her hips. He suspected that Rachel’s dressmaker had cheated her. Without a doubt Rachel had told the woman to make her a gown of irreproachable modesty, but the modiste, with an eye to her professional pride, had created an outfit most flattering to Rachel’s figure. Cory smiled to think of that figure now.
His smile vanished. Rachel had not paid him a great deal of attention that evening. During dinner she had been placed next to Caspar Lang and in the impromptu dancing that had followed she had given her hand more than once to Caspar and to various other admirers, including John Norton. It was galling when Cory had warned her away from both Lang and Norton. It was even more annoying that when Cory had approached her for a quadrille, Rachel had apologised and explained that she was spoken for. Lang had been hanging on the back of her rout chair and had smirked in a manner that had made Cory want to strangle him with his own neckcloth. John Norton had also overheard the remark and had laughed as he came to carry Rachel off into the dance. Cory had gone to cool his heels in the card room, but through the open door he could still see Rachel twirling from one end of the set to the other. Under the circumstances, he had swiftly lost the game.
It had been no hardship for Cory to leave Marney Hall early, return to Kestrel Court and prepare to venture out again, less formally dressed and certainly less inclined to draw attention to himself. He needed to sort through Maskelyne’s books that Rachel had consigned to the stables, and he could not do it during the day when everyone was involved in the excavation and would notice his absence. There was only a slim chance that Maskelyne would have left any record of his activities in the house, but it was all they had to go on. Hence his presence in the Midwinter Royal stable yard at a time when Rachel was asleep in the room just above his head…
As if in response to this last thought there was a flicker of light above him and a pool of gold spilled from an upstairs window to mingle with the silver moonlight. Cory pressed back into the darkness. It would be disastrous for anyone to see him now, particularly Rachel, who was quite dauntless enough to come downstairs to see what was going on.
He looked up. The curtain at Rachel’s window twitched. Cory kept absolutely still. He was sure that he had not made enough noise to attract attention, so what had disturbed Rachel sufficiently to wake her in the middle of the night? Had she not yet retired for the night, or could she not sleep after the excitement of the evening?
The curtain moved and he saw her. She was standing in the window, framed by the candlelight. She was peering out into the darkness. Her dark hair was a cloud that framed her face in a way that lent it an ethereal air.
Cory looked at her and discovered that he did not want to look away. The pale candlelight was behind her now and it shone through the insubstantial white nightdress that she was wearing, illuminating in glorious detail a view of Miss Rachel Odell that he had never been vouchsafed before. Cory smothered a grin. He was no gentleman to be standing here and staring, but since the opportunity had presented itself he was not going to turn it away. In the shadowy light he could see all Rachel’s curves, previously only hinted at beneath her neat and tidy exterior. Cory’s smile deepened. Her waist was small and nipped in, and her breasts were luscious. He could see the shadow of the cleft between them and the darker smudge of her nipples against the lawn of the nightdress. And lower, where the outline of her thighs pressed against the thin material, he could see…
Cory realised that he could not actually see anything, since the window sill cut Rachel off neatly at the waist, but his imagination filled in the gaps in intimate detail. His body hardened with desire and at the same time his mind intervened and slammed him up hard against a metaphorical wall. This was Rachel he was lusting after, Rachel whose soft body he wanted to tumble beneath his own, Rachel whom he wanted to kiss senseless and make love to until she cried out with a passion to match his own. Yet only the previous day, when they had talked of love and passion, he had sworn to himself that she could be no more than his honorary little sister. What the hell did he think that he was doing?
Cory pressed the palms of his hands against the rough brick of the stable wall and forced himself to look away. He was sweating with the effort of controlling his body and fighting off the images that plagued his mind. The night air touched his face and turned the sweat cold. He screwed his eyes up in agony.
When he glanced back at the window, the light had gone and the night was dark again. Cory let his breath ease out of him in a long sigh. It had to be a momentary aberration. He would never think about Rachel in that way again. Because if he did, it would turn a lot of his life’s certainties upside down and nothing could be the same again.
Cory deliberately dismissed the episode from his mind and a moment later softly, carefully, edged his way around the side of the stable block. A cool little breeze scattered stray pieces of straw across the cobbles. It masked the lifting of the latch as he opened the stable door and stepped inside.
He stopped just inside the door and edged it closed, but left it unlatched. The thin sliver of moonlight cut out, and he was standing in the darkness, the tickly smell of hay in his nostrils and the dusty shadows pressing close. He did not move for at least a minute. Cory had been in some dangerous and unusual situations in his life and the one thing that he had learned from them all was never to make hasty decisions and always to be on his guard. His instinct was telling him now that something was amiss. Someone had been there before him.
He struck a light and looked about him in the flare of the flame. The stable was empty of everything but a mound of old hay, for the Odells did not keep a carriage. Cory trod softly across the cobbled floor and looked into the end stall. When he had collected Castor earlier in the day he had taken the opportunity to locate the pile of false books that Rachel had thrown out of the library. They were stacked neatly away in the corner of the final stall.
Or, at least, they had been. Now they were scattered across the cobbles, the covers ripped off, the wooden blocks splintered. Cory bent down slowly and picked one of them up. As Rachel had said, they were beautifully made. Each block of wood was cut to exactly the same size and each had an elegant printed leather cover stuck to the front. When they had been displayed on the library shelves it would have been impossible to tell from a distance that they were not real books. Now they were fit for nothing but the fire.
Cory gave a heavy sigh and straightened up. Evidently someone other than himself had heard about Jeffrey Maskelyne’s collection of false books. Knowing Rachel, it was entirely possible that she had shared the information with Lady Sally’s reading group, deploring the philistinism of a man who had to fill his bookshelves with fakes…
He felt a cool draught on his skin and a sudden shiver down his neck as all the hairs stood on end. He had not heard the stable door open, but now he realised that he had made a potentially fatal mistake. For one split second he had forgotten to be careful.
And in that second the blade of a dagger touched the skin of his throat and lingered there like a caress.
Chapter Seven
Rachel had been unable to sleep. She had tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position in the big four-poster bed. There had been a panel of bright moonlight that had crept through a gap in the curtains and illuminated the mantelpiece and a patch of the floor. It disturbed her. Rachel knew that sooner or later, she would have to get up and close the curtains properly. When she finally gave in and did so, she could not help but glance out of the window. The moon was high and the burial mounds were illuminated in
black and silver, shadows flowing into darker shadows in a way that was as beautiful as it was mysterious. Nothing moved in the landscape, although Rachel could hear the soft rush of the river away to her right, and the breathy call of the tawny owl in the copse. With a sigh, she put out a hand to draw the curtains, pausing as a flicker of movement caught her eye. Someone was creeping around the edge of the stables.
Rachel almost drew the curtains and left them to it, for, in her opinion, anyone who wished to sneak around an Anglo-Saxon burial site in the dark was clearly quite unhinged. Then she thought of all the hard work that her parents had put into the site. They had not found the Midwinter Treasure yet, nor anything of any great value, but they had catalogued and preserved a great many artefacts that would be of interest to the Saxon scholars at the British Museum. It would be a shocking pity if their work should be sabotaged by an intruder.
Rachel was not afraid of confronting prowlers. She had single-handedly taken on an angry mob in Egypt when they had tried to wreck her parents’ excavation and had vanquished a tomb robber in Derbyshire by hitting him over the head with a seventh-century pot. With an angry swish, she pulled the curtain back into place, then went over to her cupboard. She rummaged about inside, emerging with a thick cloak and a pair of stout outdoor boots. The ensemble was rather haphazard and would gain no plaudits from the fashionable, but Rachel did not care. Even though it was summer and had not rained for weeks, she was taking no chances on flimsy footwear. She did not stop to check her reflection in the mirror. Picking up her candle, she opened the bedroom door.
The moonlight spilled over the floor of the landing and lay in threads down the staircase. Rachel tip-toed down the stairs, holding the candle in one hand and the hem of her cloak up in the other. She paused at the bottom, toying with the idea of rousing her father to come and help, but then she dismissed the thought. Sir Arthur Odell would insist on bringing his blunderbuss and making an unconscionable amount of noise. It would be better to check out the situation and return for help if it was required. After all, it might be that she had simply spotted a poacher. Even so, Rachel paused to remove a medieval dagger from the wall. She had borrowed it before and found just the sight of it made most would-be villains think twice. It also made her feel much, much safer.
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