Gavin considered stepping in to protect his brother from the lady’s shriveling tongue, but Michael scarcely needed protection. He crossed his arms in a stance similar to Gavin’s own and said without inflection, “The duke has investigators searching for the relatives of Colonel Whitnell and is even now verifying that Lady Blanche’s mother and Colonel Whitnell’s wife are sisters. Obviously, the various branches of your respective families are not very close.”
Lady Blanche responded with a sigh, “They did not even speak. Neville’s family stayed in London and disapproved of everything my father did, probably with some cause. Neville never had reason to know anything of my mother. The fact that she was a Reynolds was scarcely a family secret. She came from a respectable family. He just never put two and two together before. Why does he do so now?”
“Blanche!” Dillian exclaimed with irritation. “You have no reason to tell him any of this.”
Gavin watched with amazement as the fragile lady turned her chin up in defiance at her older cousin’s admonishments.
“He is trying to help, Dillian. We cannot do it all on our own. If I choose to trust him, it is my decision.”
Apparently so astounded she couldn’t reply, Dillian actually held her tongue. Gavin gave both women credit for good sense. He couldn’t remember ever giving a woman other than his cousins credit for sense of any kind. Perhaps the English were a different breed, after all.
“Thank you, my lady,” Michael answered, throwing Gavin a quick look. When he received no support from that quarter, he continued, “Rumors of treason are currently circulating London connected with the name of Whitnell. If the relationship between the colonel and Lady Blanche’s father is a close one, then the tar can spread. We wouldn’t wish that to happen, would we?”
Gavin watched with more than a little amazement and delight as the termagant on the bed erupted into a towering inferno of rage.
“That’s not true!” The blanket went flying as she leapt to her feet. “My father died for his country! He damned well lived for his country! He would never do such an obscene thing. They lie! Tell me who says such tales, and I’ll....”
Since the lady seemed prepared to beat the information out of Michael, who offered no defense, Gavin thought it prudent to intrude. Stepping forward, he grabbed Miss Whitnell by the waist and hauled her against him.
Gavin knew his mistake at once. An armful of warm squirming female flesh nearly drove him to the brink right here in front of all and sundry.
Rather than drop her as he ought, he jerked her up against his chest until her squirming suddenly halted. Perhaps the heat burning through him singed her sufficiently to recognize her danger. When he looked down, he met her eyes staring upward. He didn’t see fear in them, but in the darkness, he didn’t try reading what he saw there. He lowered her to the floor now that she had quieted.
“Attacking your defender is not very sensible, my dear Miss Whitnell,” he murmured in a tone that surprised even him. He could feel the others staring, but the fact that Dillian didn’t back away held his interest more.
“I will not have my father maligned,” she replied in a voice that strove for dignity but was not quiet steady.
“And so we will not. We merely seek the truth. Rumors do not circulate without reason. What would someone gain from maligning your father’s name?”
She backed off, steering a wide path around Michael to sit on the edge of the bed. “My father made enemies as freely as he made friends. He had a rather forceful nature.”
Which he evidently passed on to his daughter, Gavin added to himself. His silence forced her to continue. Michael and Lady Blanche left the conversation to them.
She clasped her arms around her as if to keep from shivering. “I can’t think of anything anyone would gain other than venting their anger. And what is the point of that now that he’s dead? And what does any of this have to do with Blanche?”
Michael finally spoke. “Perhaps it has nothing to do with Lady Blanche. Perhaps it has to do with you.”
The room fell silent. The lady rose from her corner chair to sit beside her cousin, hugging her awkwardly. Dillian didn’t seem to want the comfort but sat still for it. Gavin noticed she turned her gaze to him instead of Michael. He didn’t want her turning to him. He didn’t want any part of this. He retreated into the darkest corner beside the door and let Michael handle it.
“They burned Blanche’s home to get at me?” Dillian finally asked, not hiding the incredulity in her voice.
Blanche entered the argument. “That doesn’t make sense. Everyone there knew Dillian as Miss Reynolds, a distant relation of my mother’s. They had no reason to associate her with Colonel Whitnell.”
“It didn’t take me two minutes to figure out the relationship,” Michael answered dryly. “Someone desperate enough to burn down a house full of people is quite capable of seeing through such a thin disguise. Why is it you felt compelled to hide the connection?”
Gavin noted with interest the way the two women looked at each other first before sending some silent communication that nominated Dillian as the one to reply.
“For several reasons, none of which have anything to do with this. As we said before, Neville’s father disapproved of everything Blanche’s father did. My father’s friendship was undoubtedly one of them. My father had a certain . .. notoriety. He came of good but not wealthy family. The hussars are a rather expensive regiment. His manner of supporting himself came into question upon occasion, but as far as I am aware, he never did anything dishonest.”
Gavin wanted to know how her father managed to support a wife and daughter, but Michael intruded first.
“He gambled,” he said flatly.
Dillian nodded and said defensively, “Everyone does.”
“Could he have left creditors of which you’re unaware?” Gavin surprised himself by asking that. He knew too well about creditors.
Dillian sat still as she contemplated the answer. “It’s possible, I suppose. I didn’t see my father often, and he certainly never discussed his business affairs with me. He’s been dead for some years, however. Why should anyone wait until now to seek revenge?”
“Because they have only now returned to the country. Because they have only now discovered who you are. There could be any number of answers. Who was your father’s man of business? Would he hold any notes without telling you of them?”
“My father handled his own business, not that there was much of it. He spent everything he ever earned. I didn’t see anything that looked like notes in his papers.”
Michael suddenly straightened. “You have his papers? Where?”
Gavin expected the response to be they burned with Blanche’s house. Instead, she shrugged and said, “Probably in London. I didn’t know what to do with them, and I got tired of hauling them about.”
Blanche nodded. “You asked me to put them in the vault, if I remember, but there wasn’t enough room for all those old journals. So we sent some of them over to Mr. Winfrey. We should have asked him to have them evaluated to see if they had any worth, but it didn’t seem important at the time.”
Gavin could just imagine Michael’s eyes rolling skyward. He had the urge to shake both women himself. Military men didn’t collect books and papers and carry them about if they had no value. His fingers fairly itched to rifle through them.
Michael answered with some semblance of control. “We need to see those papers. Did you not look at any of them?”
Blanche threw her cousin a swift look and replied, “Well, they didn’t seem any of my business, and Dillian”—she sent her cousin another look—”Dillian doesn’t have a fondness for paperwork.”
Gavin rather suspected that was the understatement of the year. Dillian might climb the roof of a burning house or play ghost in abandoned dumbwaiters, but she wouldn’t be much inclined to scholarly pursuits. Rather than consider how appealing he found her adventurous nature, he said the first thing that came to mind, and regr
etted it immediately after.
“I think we need to see those papers, or at least assure ourselves that they’re protected.”
He wanted to bite his tongue the minute the words escaped his heedless lips.
“I thoroughly agree, your noble lordship.” Gavin could almost hear the laughter in Michael’s reply. “Shall we hop in the carriage and journey to London?”
Gavin growled a curse, and wondered if he could gnaw his hand off and escape the iron teeth of the snare. Dillian saved him from immediate reply.
“They’re my papers. I’ll fetch them. We have no assurance that’s what the arsonist wanted to destroy. I want Blanche staying here, where it’s safe.”
Blanche kneaded her hands in her lap. “Dillian, that might not be so wise.”
Gavin waited in silence. Michael did the same.
Dillian looked at her cousin. “Why not?”
Blanche looked at her hands. “I put the smaller things in the vault in the London town house.” Everyone waited silently. “I never use that vault. I have to write the numbers down that open it.”
Gavin groaned inwardly, seeing where this led. Dillian still sat there expectantly.
Blanche turned her head to him as if looking for his absolution. Gavin merely waited. She sighed and murmured, “The numbers were written on a piece of paper I carried in my daily journal.”
“Daily journal?” Michael and Dillian echoed each other.
Blanche nodded. “The one that the fire destroyed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Blanche’s declaration fairly well left them at wit’s end. The night grew late. They had all reached the edges of exhaustion, and the general consensus was to sleep on it and work out the problem in the morning.
Only Dillian knew the problem wouldn’t resolve itself in the morning without a push in the right direction. She’d seen the look on the marquess’s face. He would vote to throw them all out of here and let them go to the devil without him.
She couldn’t really blame him. She and Blanche were virtual strangers who had disrupted his reclusive existence. He undoubtedly had better things to do than chase around half of England saving them from unknown and possibly imaginary villains. She’d have reached beyond irritation by now had she stood in his shoes.
For herself, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would just have caught the next mail coach into London, retrieved her father’s papers and journals, burned the lot of them, then dared anyone to come after her.
But whoever or whatever the arsonist was after had endangered Blanche. Dillian considered her own life relatively worthless, but Blanche had the whole world at her fingertips. For the sake of both their mothers, for her own sake, for Blanche, she would see nothing happened to prevent her cousin from taking her rightful place in this world.
And the marquess of Effingham held their future in his hands.
From the shadows of the hall, Dillian watched the marquess stride down the stairs to his lair in that disreputable room he called a study. She’d heard Michael go out the front door earlier. She couldn’t imagine what kind of hold a footman could have over a marquess to allow him as much leeway as he had, but she didn’t think it would last much longer. Unless something drastic happened soon, Effingham would throw them out on their ears in the morning.
Dillian had left Verity looking after Blanche on the excuse that she would go to the room she’d made her own. She would go there, but only to change into something a little more respectable than this thin robe. Then she would confront the marquess.
The thin French dress wasn’t much more concealing than the robe, and Dillian shivered as she let herself down the back stairs a little while later. She pulled her borrowed shawl more tightly around her. She didn’t fear the servants hearing her. She imagined an entire army could hide themselves in this place and the servants wouldn’t hear. No, she feared the beast lurking in the gloom of that study down the hall and how he could affect their lives.
She shouldn’t think of him as a beast. He was a soldier. Upon occasion she had considered her father a beast because of the life he led, but military men were a different breed. She’d learned to deal with her father. She could deal with the marquess.
She scratched briefly at the study door but didn’t allow Effingham the opportunity of denying her entrance. She walked in before he could answer.
He’d lit the lamp on the desk. She had grown so accustomed to walking about in darkness that the light startled her. The man standing beside the desk startled her even more.
Rakish black curls fell in tangled disarray over the marquess’s brow, accenting deep-set dark eyes. A muscle tightened in his jaw as he saw her standing there, and the thin white scars of his cheek stretched thinner and whiter, curling his lip up in an expression of mockery.
That look alone ought to make her shudder, but Dillian couldn’t resist letting her gaze fall to the open neck of his shirt. More bronzed skin shone in the lamplight. The marquess obviously did not spend all his days hiding in his hermitage.
“You are going somewhere?” he asked with almost a pleasant rumble, eyeing her lacy gown.
That interpretation of her change of garments hadn’t occurred to her. She had only meant to make herself respectable. This meeting hadn’t got off to the best of starts. She clasped her hands in front of her and wondered why she was suddenly nervous. She had faced down Neville often enough, and he was a bloody duke.
She ignored his question and plunged right into the topic at hand. “I’ve come to beg,” she said with as careful a tone as she could muster. She didn’t want to beg, but she would—for Blanche.
Effingham lounged against the desk and crossed his arms. Dillian hated it when he did that. It made him seem enormous and important and intolerably bored with the whole proceeding. She hated it when he didn’t respond but waited for her to continue without giving a clue as to how he felt.
“Blanche is my only living relative,” she continued. “She is young, and the duke’s family is rather overpowering. I’ve protected her these last five years, but I don’t think I can protect her from a murderer. If the villain is actually after me, I must leave her at once. I just can’t leave her unprotected. I thought, if I could go to London and find my father’s journals, I could take them to someone in authority, and they might know what to do with them. Perhaps they could discover who threatens us.”
The flickering light played over the marquess’s scarred cheek. Dillian thought he may have deliberately turned the damaged side of his face to her. She almost felt grateful that he had chosen this side to show her. The other side was too handsome by far, and she didn’t need any added distraction.
“You have a higher opinion of authority than I have,” he replied, his dark eyes shadowed as they watched her.
That wasn’t the reply she wanted. Doggedly, she pushed a little harder. “My father had a great many friends in government. I will find someone to listen. It may take a little while. I’ll have to open that vault somehow, and Blanche’s solicitor isn’t too fond of me, so he’ll likely stall. But I can do it. And once I make someone listen, perhaps I can get them to protect Blanche. It’s just that, until then...” She waited, hoping he would understand and make the offer she wanted. He didn’t.
She finally doffed the demure plea and glared at him. “Damn and blast it, Effingham! Help me out a little. Blanche is no trouble at all. You’ll not even know she’s around. She can pay you well. She has a maid now. What more do you want?”
“Did you by any chance live with your father in a military barracks?” he asked with satirical interest.
Dillian clutched her fingers into fists, closed her eyes, and prayed for strength. If only she were a man, she could just run her fist into him and release some of this frustration. Bloody damn hell, anyway!
Fighting for control, she opened her eyes and glared at him. “My mother died when I was twelve. After that, my father’s idea of companion for me was anyone who owed him a favor. I can ride a horse l
ike a man, shoot like Manton, fence with the best of them, and even know boxing, although it’s relatively useless due to my size. Does that answer your question?”
She thought he smiled. Since this side of his mouth had a permanent upturn, she couldn’t tell for certain. Either way, she wanted to kick him.
“Yes, I believe it does. It answers many questions, not the least of which is why you’re not married by now. You must scare these milksop aristocrats to death.”
Dillian thought she might tear her hair out in rage and frustration. Better yet, she’d like to tear his. “What has that to do with anything? You’re a bloody damn aristocrat, for pity’s sake. Do I scare you?”
He considered that a minute, looking her over thoroughly as he did. Dillian suddenly realized she didn’t shiver from the cold, she shivered from the way he made her feel. No man had ever made her feel like this before.
The masculine interest in his eyes made her recognize herself as a woman. Her breasts suddenly felt immense. They ached. A tingling feeling settled into the place below her belly, and it grew stronger the longer he stared. With shock, she realized what was happening to her.
She stared at him in incredulity. Why, of all men, must it happen with this one? A bloody damn Yank with a soul from hell, and she wanted to know what his arms would feel like around her!
She knew what his arms felt like around her. She wanted to know more.
As if recognizing the sudden flicker of desire in her eyes, the marquess said gruffly, “Come here.”
She blinked. He didn’t move. He didn’t say more. He just waited. Dillian moved one foot forward, then the other, stepping within arm’s reach of him. Perhaps Effingham wasn’t as calm as he pretended. His knuckles appeared white where his hands bit into the upper parts of his arms.
She didn’t jump or even flinch when he finally reached out and tilted her chin upward. Unable to read the opaque depths of his dark eyes, she just held her breath until he lowered his mouth to meet her own.
The Marquess Page 17