Clarissa caught her breath. “Mrs. Whiting died last autumn.” Her gaze flew to Edwin. “That’s why Count Durand called me a whore tonight. It wasn’t to goad you. It was because he knows everything, has always known everything. And he probably blames me for his cousin’s death.”
“That damned arse,” Edwin growled. “If he’d had the tale from Whiting’s ailing mother, she would never have admitted that his precious cousin was a rapist. There’s no telling how she would have cast the tale in her final hours. Or if she might have demanded that he seek justice for the family.”
“Wait a minute,” Warren asked Clarissa, “Durand called you a whore? I will beat him within an inch of his life!”
“No need,” Clarissa said dryly. “Your fool of a friend there challenged him to a duel for it.”
Warren blinked. “Damn.” He stared at Edwin. “Are you mad?”
“You were just talking about beating him yourself,” Edwin shot back. “I’m defending my wife’s honor!”
“Yes, but a duel . . .” Warren said. “You don’t even believe in duels.”
Edwin crossed his arms over his chest. “A man can alter his opinions.”
“And a man can be stubborn to a fault,” Clarissa replied.
“Nothing has changed,” Edwin told her.
“Everything has changed! Since this isn’t about Durand’s wild obsession with me, he’s not going to stop until he gets what he wants—the information about where to find my brother.”
“And possibly,” Warren put in, “the chance to humiliate Clarissa by telling the world what happened.”
“He could have done that long ago if that’s what he intended,” Edwin pointed out.
“Yes, but then he would have lost his chance to find Niall,” Warren said. “He wants them both—her ruined and Niall charged with murder.”
“And if he’s anything like Whiting,” Clarissa said, “he will break every rule—even cheat at a duel—to get rid of his opposition, who happens to be you. And he’ll get away with it because of his position! Then who will keep him from dragging your family through the mud? If he reveals your father’s activities—”
“What activities?” Warren asked.
“All the more reason to kill him,” Edwin said coldly, feeling beleaguered on all fronts. “Then he can’t hurt anyone.”
“Only if you win!” she cried.
When Edwin bristled at that, Warren said hastily, “Even if you don’t, there would be repercussions, old boy. You can’t kill a highly placed French diplomat, even in a duel over your wife’s honor, without comment. You ought to go to his superiors.”
“What superiors?” Edwin spat. “He is the most senior member at the French embassy right now! And there’s no time to go through channels.”
“Unless you refuse to fight him,” Clarissa said stoutly. “You’ve bluffed him before and it worked. Just do it again. Tell him to go to the devil.”
“And what happens to you when he has me dragged before the courts on trumped-up charges of treason?” Edwin countered.
“Hold on, now,” Warren said, “what’s all this about treason?”
Clarissa ignored him. “You could consult with your friends at the club, talk to Warren’s friends, gather some help and advice before you go waltzing off to die! But you simply won’t.”
“Because I refuse to embroil a bunch of friends and strangers in my private affairs. And certainly not in the private affairs of my wife!”
“Do not claim you’re doing this for me, Edwin Blakeborough! I’ve argued myself hoarse begging you not to fight Count Durand, and you’ve ignored me. You’re doing this for yourself. For your sense of justice and right, for your belief that a man should risk his own life to protect the reputation of a woman.”
“Yes! He should!”
“Even if she doesn’t want him to?” She planted her hands on her hips. “I’ve already lost my brother to exile because he was protecting my reputation. I don’t want to lose you because of it, too. I would rather spend the rest of my life dealing with scandal than watch the man I love die trying to protect me, simply because he doesn’t want ‘a bunch of friends and strangers’ to know his ‘private affairs’!”
The man I love.
The words stunned him. She loved him? Truly?
As if she didn’t even realize what she’d said, she added, “So I’m washing my hands of this whole thing.” She tipped up her chin at Warren. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into him. I give up.”
Then she stormed from the room.
Edwin could only stand there staring after her. The word love rang in his ears, shocking him with its power to beguile. If she loved him . . .
“All right,” Warren broke into his thoughts. “Now that she’s gone, you’d best tell me what the hell is going on. Why would you be accused of treason? What activity of your father’s is Durand threatening to reveal? And how in God’s name did you end up married to my cousin in only a few short weeks?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Then you’d better talk fast.” He examined his watch. “Because unless we think of something, you’ll be fighting a duel in four hours. And I’m not acting as your second for it unless I know what I’m getting into.”
Edwin gritted his teeth. “Fine. And in case you’re wondering, I never told you the spying and treason part because I didn’t know about it myself until two weeks ago.”
“Spying? God, this gets worse by the moment.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
Then he began to relate a highly truncated version of what had happened since Warren’s departure. To Warren’s credit, he didn’t pepper Edwin with inconsequential questions. He just listened.
He did look rather speculative when Edwin got to the part about proposing marriage to Clarissa, but wisely didn’t say anything.
When Edwin was finished, Warren headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Edwin asked.
“You are in over your head, my friend. And no matter what you say, you need help. So we’re going to talk to Fulkham and see what he can do.”
“And what makes you think he won’t just leap on the chance to make an example out of a traitor like my father?”
Warren stared hard at him. “I’m the one who convinced him to join St. George’s. That means I vouch for his character. Do you question my judgment?”
Edwin gritted his teeth. “No.”
“Good.” Warren strode up to him. “Because if you did, I would have to remind you of the many ways I’ve championed you through the years. Of the times I helped you get Yvette and Clarissa out of youthful scrapes.”
That brought Edwin up short. “And . . . I appreciate that.”
“Do you? You’re behaving like an ungrateful bastard at the moment. You have friends, Edwin, whether you accept it or not. There’s me, there’s Keane, there’s the men at the club.”
When Edwin just stared at him, Warren added, “They look up to you because they think you’re sensible and rational. They know you’ll always be in their corner. Can’t you have the same faith in them? Accept that perhaps they will stand behind you because they’re your friends?”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand that you have always operated as if you alone are responsible for your life, your fate. That you have no one to turn to. Well, that’s not true. Your father may have pretty well abandoned you, but your family will not. Your friends will not. Your wife clearly will not.”
“Leave my wife out of it,” Edwin growled.
“Why? You said you were doing this for her. But she’s right: You’re not doing this for her. You’re doing this to prove that you’re a better man than your father. That you can take care of your family. You’re doing this in an attempt to protect Clarissa and Yvette, which is a noble idea on the face of it.”
Warren leaned in. “But at the heart of it is pride. You don’t want to ask for help. You don’t trust anyone to give you h
elp. You would rather risk your future with a woman who loves you than rely on the aid of your friends.”
Glancing away, Edwin swallowed past the thickness in his throat. What if Warren was right? That he didn’t trust anyone? That he would give up a future with Clarissa rather than take a chance on his friends and family?
The possibility made his stomach roil. Until now, he’d let his anger at Durand propel him forward. But Clarissa didn’t want the risk he was ready to embrace. She didn’t want a life without him.
The truth of that sang through his heart like a nightingale’s trill.
She loved him.
And surely that was worth taking a chance on the men who believed in him.
“All right. Let’s go find Fulkham. And I pray to God he has some idea for routing Durand. Because if he doesn’t, you, my friend, will be going with me to fight that blasted Frenchman at dawn.”
It took Edwin and Warren some time to rouse Fulkham’s servants, and even more time to persuade them that he should be disturbed in the wee hours of the morning. They only relented when Edwin told them that there would be dire consequences if they turned away a marquess and an earl who were there on a matter of great import to the English people.
After being ushered into his lordship’s study, they were forced to wait while Fulkham was rousted from his bed. Unsurprisingly, when he entered in his dressing gown, he was none too happy.
“What in God’s name is this about?” he asked as he crossed the room. “Couldn’t it wait until morning?”
“Blakeborough here might be dead by morning,” Warren said. “I’m hoping you can prevent that from happening.”
Fulkham frowned. “You’ve caught my attention, that’s for damned sure.” He sat down behind his desk. “Why would Blakeborough be dead?”
“Because Count Durand challenged me to a duel at dawn, and I’ve accepted,” Edwin said matter-of-factly.
“A duel?” Fulkham looked from Edwin to Warren. “Is this a joke?”
“Afraid not,” Warren said. “The count is apparently trying to hunt down my cousin, the Earl of Margrave. In the process, he’s been threatening the life and reputation of Blakeborough and Margrave’s sister. Who just happens to be Blakeborough’s new wife.”
“Ah,” Fulkham said, glancing at Edwin. “This has to do with that conversation we had a few weeks ago at the club. The one you claimed was about some other member.”
Edwin nodded. “Forgive me for the subterfuge, but my fiancée was involved, and I didn’t want that information to be bandied about.”
“Then can I assume this concerns the duel between Whiting and Margrave?”
Edwin and Warren exchanged surprised glances.
“You don’t think I knew about Durand’s connection to Whiting?” Fulkham fixed Edwin with a hard stare. “If you’d told me at the time that your concern over the charge d’affaires’ activities was related to Lady Clarissa’s family, I would have mentioned that Whiting and Durand were cousins. But you didn’t offer that information.”
“Offering information isn’t my friend’s strong suit, I’m afraid,” Warren said dryly.
“Do you know what the duel was about?” Edwin asked.
“No. Do you?”
Edwin let out a breath. “Yes. Unfortunately, I can’t say. But it doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that Durand wants revenge on my brother-in-law for killing his cousin, so he’s been trying to find Niall by cozying up to my wife. When she and I put an end to that with our betrothal, Durand threatened to reveal secrets about my father if I didn’t break it off.”
That arrested Fulkham’s attention. “What sort of secrets?”
Edwin swallowed. Now came the difficult part. “That apparently Father was a spy for the French.”
A cold anger suffused Fulkham’s features with color. “That damned bastard.”
“My father?” Edwin snapped.
The baron started. “No, no, not him. Durand. He’s mucking about in matters he should leave alone. I’ll have to speak to his superiors and put an end to this before he creates more trouble. Relations between England and France are rocky enough as it is right now.”
Edwin eyed him closely. “So you knew about my father’s spying.”
“Of course I knew. He was spying for us.”
“That’s not what Durand says. And he showed me—”
“Reports? Documents your father gave to the French? Damn them; they’d assured him that those records had been destroyed.” As Edwin and Warren continued to gape at him, he sighed. “I need your word as gentlemen that what I’m about to tell you never leaves this room.”
“Of course,” Edwin said, with Warren nodding his assent.
“Because of your father’s ties to France through his grandmother, and because of his occasional visits to that private opium club, the French approached your father in the final years of the war with a request to spy for them. They promised to pay him quite handsomely for such treachery.”
Fulkham settled back in his chair. “As you can imagine, money wasn’t much of an incentive for him, but he did see an opportunity to help England beat the French—so after agreeing to their proposal, he came to us. We engaged him to leak incorrect information about our troops to the French from time to time.”
A wave of relief swamped Edwin, followed swiftly by a wave of shame. He should have realized his father could never commit treason. “How do you know all this? You’re no older than I. You couldn’t possibly have been in the War Office at the time.”
“I wasn’t. But your father continued to go to the opium dens, so when our focus shifted to India, he was able to give us information about that occasionally. I joined the War Office a couple of years before he died. I was the one who took over managing his information.”
Edwin was still reeling. His father had spied for his country all that time. Without a word to his son. “You’re telling me he was not a traitor.”
“Never. He was a hero, as a matter of fact. Of course, he could never speak of his activities, and the French never knew him as anything but a spy for them. But they assured him that his reputation would never be impugned, because the documents connecting him to the activities were burned.”
“Clearly, that was a lie.”
“Yes,” Fulkham said tersely. “Which is another reason to go to Durand’s superiors. I don’t need to reveal that your father helped us—just that Durand is trying to use what he did to blackmail you for his own purposes.”
Warren leaned forward. “Going to his superiors won’t solve the problem that he’s dueling with Edwin in Green Park in a little over an hour.”
Fulkham rose. “Then I’ll have to go there with you, and tell him precisely what sort of trouble he’ll be in if he persists in his madness. We won’t allow an English citizen, no matter what his crime, to be assassinated by a Frenchman, even a diplomat.”
The baron headed for the door to get dressed, then paused. “It’s curious, though. What does Durand think to accomplish with a duel?”
“By eliminating me,” Edwin said, “he thinks to gain control over my wife and force her into telling him where Niall is.”
“Then why hasn’t he done that before? Why not abduct her off the street? Use brute force to convince her to do so?”
“He tried courting her, no doubt so he wouldn’t tip his hand and give her a chance to warn Niall. When she persisted in refusing his advances, he started shadowing her, which is when I stepped in and married her.”
“So she’s been with you since then.”
“At my estate, where it would have been hard for him to roam without comment. We only returned to town last evening for a celebration of our marriage. He tried to get her alone, and I stepped in. That was when he challenged me.”
“Hmm.” Fulkham stared at Edwin. “So where is your wife now?”
The question made him uneasy. “At home asleep, I hope.”
“Or, if she’s anything like my indomitable sister-in-law,
preparing to go to Green Park and plead with you not to fight.”
Edwin’s blood chilled. “Damn it all to hell.” He jumped to his feet. “She would do that, too. She doesn’t know we’re here. And if we don’t return—”
“Go, go,” Fulkham said. “I’ll dress and head to the dueling field, while you two return home. You can probably catch her if you hurry.”
Edwin rushed from the study, with Warren cursing behind him. They leapt into Warren’s carriage, ordering his coachman to drive at top speed to Edwin’s town house.
As the rig pulled away, Warren said, “Perhaps she won’t go. She said she was washing her hands of the whole thing.”
“She also said she loved me.” Edwin’s throat felt raw with fear. “And Clarissa is precisely the sort of woman who gives a man her whole self once she falls in love. She will fight for me with her last breath.”
“The way you’re fighting for her,” Warren remarked. “You swallowed your pride for her, you gave up your plans for a peaceful life for her, and you clearly will do anything for her. I think she’s not the only one in love, old chap.”
As the truth hit him, Edwin sucked in a ragged breath. No, she wasn’t the only one.
All these years, he’d avoided the tumult that love could bring, but it had slipped under his guard while he wasn’t looking. The idea of something happening to her, of living without her, stole the breath from his soul. He couldn’t stand to think of her suffering one second of Durand’s cruelty. What was that but love?
Now that he knew what it felt like to crave her company and her teasing, to seek her touch in the middle of the night when the world seemed darkest, he couldn’t imagine his father feeling any of that and still taking his friend’s side over his wife’s. Mother might have been in love, but Father couldn’t have known the meaning of the word.
“She’ll be all right,” Warren said. “I’m sure she will.”
“If she isn’t, I swear I’ll cut out Durand’s heart and crush it under my heel. I’ll draw and quarter him myself. I’ll—”
“I get the gist,” Warren said grimly. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, my friend. Because I don’t fancy watching you hang for the murder of a worthless arse like Durand.”
The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 Page 27