“What if she stole those plans, Carlu? What if she was searching for them for her own purposes when Parker came upon her? Then my daughter might well be a traitor to the Crown, and any attempt on my part to rescue her only implicates me in her crime.”
Another theory was bound to be popular with the military: Those plans implicated Matilda in Wakefield’s crime. That notion had substantial factual support, viewed from a certain inconvenient perspective.
Eyes colder than a Moscow winter wind glared at Wakefield. “She is your daughter. If she’s a sneak-thief traitor, she learned from your example or the example of others with whom you consorted. She has no other family, and yet you hesitate.”
Condemnation dripped from every word, but then, Carlu was a man far from home, with a difficult past. He did not hold opinions, he championed eternal verities.
“She should have come to me, Carlu. Why didn’t she come to me when she first found the plans?”
“Because you did not warn her of your little games; because you, like most Englishmen, lack a proper respect for the resourcefulness of women. Because the colonel could have had her taken up for questioning before you came down for breakfast. Warrants, writs, and summonses can be issued at all hours for a marquess’s son turned loyal soldier, and Parker knows exactly how to obtain them. She can’t come to you now because the damned colonel has been guarding your front door when you’re not busy stuffing him with tea and biscuits in the family parlor.”
All true. “Parker is no longer guarding my door, and Matilda is still in hiding.”
“She’s in hiding, if she’s alive.” Carlu stalked off.
Wakefield kicked the nearest pile of snow, sending slush flying up to strike him in his own face.
* * *
Duncan was not about to make love with his intended for the first time amid dusty old treatises, frigid air pouring off the window, no place to properly adore the lady except one lumpy sofa.
“Come with you?” Matilda frowned the same way she’d frowned when Duncan had begun distracting her on the chessboard with his prancing bishops.
He stuffed his shirttails back into his waistband and did up the buttons of his falls. “The occasion wants comfort and privacy. Also warmth. I know where we can have all three.” And each other.
She nodded, the barest gesture of assent, but Duncan rejoiced in the trust it signified. He led Matilda down the corridor and around one turn, then bowed her through a carved door.
“This is your sitting room,” she said. “Your personal sitting room.”
“Through there is my personal bedroom, where a blazing fire is kept burning, despite my orders to conserve fuel throughout the house.”
She went to the mantel, upon which Duncan had displayed a collection of Stephen’s sketches. “This is you, and that must be the duke. The resemblance is marked.”
To behold her among his personal effects was a pleasure. What awaited them in the next room went beyond mere pleasure, and yet, Duncan let her explore. Every man had certain physical attributes that were mostly the same—a pair of hands, a nose, limbs, eyes, a mouth. What he chose to keep about him in his private quarters was unique to him.
“The duke is both taller and more muscular than I,” Duncan said, “and he prefers numbers to letters. I would call him an altogether more robust specimen. The ladies call him gorgeous.”
Matilda considered the drawing, her expression bringing to mind the early moves of her chess game.
“The duke is less refined than you are,” she said. “More of a broadsword while you’re a rapier. The look in your eyes is the same, though—assured enough to intimidate any who behold you. You have the same nose. His mouth is grim while yours is serious. I doubt he plays chess, but then, the ladies drawn to his appearance probably aren’t interested in chess.”
I am in love. I am in love with a woman who sees me as an improvement over my dear, wealthy, titled, handsome, younger cousin, with a woman who thrives on the intellectual exercise of a chess game.
“Who is this?” She ran a finger around the wooden frame of the only sketch Duncan had done himself.
“That is Jane with her oldest, Elizabeth, whom we call Bitty. The child is, in a manner of speaking, what brought Jane and Quinn together.” Courting Matilda meant treating her as a member of the family. Quinn and Jane’s unusual past was not a secret, but neither was it generally known.
“They anticipated their vows?” Matilda set the drawing back among the collection on the mantel and began re-arranging their order.
“Jane was a widow in an interesting condition. Quinn had means and no patience for sentimental courtship rituals.” While Duncan—for the first time in his life—wanted to escort a particular woman onto the ducal dance floor and waltz holding her in a scandalously daring embrace. At the conclusion of the set, he’d bow extravagantly over her gloved hand and gaze adoringly into her eyes, while Stephen, Quinn, and the rest of polite society goggled in awed silence.
Or laughed uproariously. Duncan didn’t particularly care what they thought of him or his intended, and his indifference was not his usual studied detachment. They were family, of course their regard mattered.
Matilda mattered more.
So this was love. This daft, fierce, exaltation of emotions and sensations. “Will you come to bed with me, Matilda?”
She’d set the sketch of Jane and Bitty in the middle of the collection, an improvement over the previous arrangement.
“That’s the best one of the lot. The others are competent, some of them interesting. They lack courage. The one of you and the duke, for example. See how unoriginal the composition is. Two men, side by side, looking directly at the artist. The background lacks a single symbol or contradiction, unless roman columns and latticed windows qualify. If not for your particular features, the sketch would have no texture, no topography.”
More than her specific observations, the assurance with which Matilda spoke struck Duncan. She was confident of her artistic opinions and backed them up with technical assessments. Something less substantial than memory teased at the edge of Duncan’s mind, an association, a snippet of text. He couldn’t concentrate enough to bring the recollection into focus.
“And the sketch of Jane and Bitty?”
“The best art isn’t perfect, and its imperfections are part of why it fascinates. The artist—I doubt it’s the same hand as drew the others—took risks with the composition. The mother and child are not sitting idly in the middle of the page, but, rather, in motion and enthralled with one another.”
Bitty was in Jane’s lap, reaching up to encircle her mother’s neck in a hug. Jane was bending toward the child, intent on arranging a blanket around Bitty’s shoulders.
“We see barely a profile of the mother’s expression,” Matilda went on “and less than three-quarters of the child’s, but the resemblance is caught in the features, and in the joy the mother and daughter take in one another’s affection. They love each other, and the artist loved them, and had the bravery to put his tender regard on the page. This is art, and this is love. The artist’s message could not be more boldly conveyed. These other pictures are so much sketching.”
Stephen would wince to hear that opinion of his artistic efforts. Duncan nearly crowed.
He stood halfway across the room from Matilda and flailed about looking for words. Thank you. Of course I love them. I’m not an artist. I’m not brave. I haven’t been brave for years.
He covered the distance and wrapped his arms around Matilda. “You see too much.”
She tucked in close, quieting a panic inside Duncan. “I have seen too much. You drew that picture.”
He would never, ever stop loving her. “I have others, from my travels. Stephen claims they have a unique charm. When Stephen is attempting to be kind, one worries.”
“I want to see them, Duncan. I want to see every single one, and Stephen is jealous. He can make mechanical drawings and accurate elevations, but art has been denied h
im. That is a sore affliction in anybody’s life.”
Duncan considered the idea that he might be an artist rather than a teacher, or possibly both. He couldn’t hold the thought because Matilda was in his arms.
“I’ll show you every sketch I’ve ever done, but right now, I’d like to show you my bedroom.”
Matilda sighed, a happy sound accompanied by the fragrance of roses and the sensation of her relaxing in his embrace. Truly relaxing, giving him her weight, her trust, her everything. He knew, then, who and what he was: He was the man born to love and cherish Matilda Wakefield, for however long she allowed him those privileges.
* * *
“One must allow that the hostelry qualifies as lowly,” John Coachman said.
“Humble,” Parker replied, peering into the teapot. “Clean and respectable, but humble. Affordable to a woman with limited means, unremarkable to somebody trying to remain hidden.”
No matter how long he let the leaves steep, the tea would never be strong—if it was even tea. At such an establishment, all manner of hedge sweepings ended up in the teapot, with nary a leaf of the real article to be found. John Coachman had ordered ale, though that option presented even more potential hazards.
This inn was quiet as more successful inns were not. Nobody made an entrance here, nobody shouted greetings to a jovial innkeeper or flirted with the pretty maids. The maids were too tired and skinny to be pretty; the innkeeper mumbled and shuffled in response to his wife’s shouted commands.
To think of Matilda in such environs curdled Parker’s belly, but better here than in prison. He had a plan for preventing that—a good plan—but that plan turned on finding Matilda and convincing her of a slight variation on the truth.
A variation she’d be eager to believe.
The inn stank of wet wool and damp leather, with the kitchen adding the aromas of cooked meat and leeks. Half of Wellington’s campaign across Spain into France had borne these scents, and Parker would ever associate them with suffering and death.
He poured himself a cup from the teapot. The liquid was hot, and sugar and milk were on hand to disguise its true nature.
“Do we keep pushing westward?” the coachman asked. “The grooms expect to remove with the marquess to the ancestral seat at Yuletide. Most of them hail from Sussex and have family there.”
The need to explore increasingly unprepossessing inns meant Parker had meandered for days in the wilds of Berkshire. To request more than a few weeks’ leave for hunting would attract the notice of Parker’s fellow officers, and that he was not permitted to do.
“We’ll turn north soon,” Parker said. “Matilda likes art and architecture. Oxford would appeal to her.” As would the concentration of strutting lordlings who fancied a game of chess between their wenching and wagering. Matilda wouldn’t play in public, of course, but she was incapable of walking past a game in progress, and the coffeehouses and taverns in Oxford had chess tables.
The idea comforted him—it was a good idea—and it annoyed: Why hadn’t he thought of Matilda’s little hobby sooner?
The door opened and two men entered, stomping snow from their boots and letting in a bitter draft.
The innkeeper’s wife rose from her desk. “G’day, gents. Are you here for a meal?”
“A meal, your best spirits, and a room with a roaring fire,” the smaller man said. He was slender, and his clothing had once been fine, probably several owners ago. His companion was taller and stockier, his fleshy jowls turned ruddy by the cold.
“We don’t light the fires in the guest rooms until after supper,” the woman replied. “And you have your choice of gin, whiskey, or brandy, all of it legal. Where you coming from?”
The brandy would be smuggled, watered down, and expensive, in other words. John Coachman took another sip of his ale, and Parker was abruptly glad to have a companion at his table. The two new arrivals were ruffians, probably members of the poaching gangs that plagued the English countryside in bold numbers.
The tea was every bit as bad as anticipated. Parker added a lump of crumbling sugar, a desperate measure indeed.
“Let a man know that he needn’t do an honest day’s work,” Parker muttered, “and you’ve ruined his character for life.” Parker’s father, the late marquess, had offered that same sentiment, usually from the padded comfort of his elegant town coach.
“They work,” the coachman replied. “They likely work very hard and have little to show for it, and they look as if they could use a friendly drink.”
The notion was distasteful, also shrewd. Parker raised his hand. “Join us, gentlemen. The weather has stopped our westward progress and boredom threatens.”
The two men exchanged a glance, smiled at each other and then at Parker.
“Don’t mind if we do,” the smaller fellow said. “Herman, pay the lady. You meet all the nicest people in the commons of our fine English inns.”
“It’s your turn to pay, Jeffy,” the bigger man said. “I paid last time.”
“For friendly company over a tankard of ale,” Parker said, “I’m happy to pay, particularly if you fellows are familiar with the estates in these surrounds. We’re looking for a ducal property that changed hands sometime in the past few years. Four stories, red brick, circular drive, set against a mature woods. The place might need some attention. It’s a minor holding, and you know how the nobs can be about spending money that doesn’t directly benefit them.”
The travelers exchanged the barest whisper of a glance. They knew. They knew the exact property Parker had been searching for. They knew, and they would tell him everything he wanted to know if he and John Coachman had to drink them under the table to get the information from them.
* * *
Duncan’s bedchamber was exactly what Matilda had expected—tidy, pleasant, uncluttered—and also a revelation. The art Duncan kept near him was personal and very fine: the duchess and her daughter seated at the piano, an oil of a flower girl with her wares. The colors were exquisite, the composition beguilingly simple. Papa would not rest until he’d discovered the painter’s name.
Which Matilda could never tell him, of course.
On the windowsill sat a blue-and-white porcelain vase so delicate it seemed to hold the sunshine in addition to three purple chrysanthemum blooms. Saint-Cloud work, based on the creamy undertone of the white, or possibly—the finish wanted examination with a quizzing glass—Mennecy.
A patchwork quilt in purple, green, and cream squares was folded along the back of the sofa, the colors echoing in a floral rug and in the emerald bed hangings. The room smelled of beeswax and lemon spiced with lavender, and everything, from the oak parquet floor, to the wardrobe, to the desk by the window, glowed with evidence of good care.
“This was the old duke’s room,” Duncan said. “The connecting door in the dressing closet opens onto the duchess’s dressing closet. Both spaces are paneled in cedar, which inclines one to linger over a choice between four white shirts.”
And, someday, Duncan hoped Matilda would be at his side, guiding that choice. He didn’t have to say that. Matilda could feel the hope filling the room even as she pretended to study a sketch.
“This must be Lord Stephen’s brother. How old was he in this drawing?” Duncan’s talent was evident in the realism of the portrait.
“Seventeen. Quinn sat for me dressed in his livery, but refused to let me draw him wearing it. Once upon a time, the current duke of Walden was a footman.”
“That is doubtless a family secret.” The footman version of the duke was an exquisitely masculine subject and subtly unhappy. Anxiety clouded his eyes, as did a pugnacity at odds with his long lashes and the slightly unkempt dark hair fringing his brow.
Duncan had perfectly caught the last rays of boyhood’s sunset and the dawning power of the grown man.
“His Grace’s past is not bruited about,” Duncan said, shrugging out of his coat. “In two generations, his origins will be something Wentworths boast of. Shall
I loosen your stays?”
“I wear jumps,” Matilda said. “I grew accustomed to them in France, and with front lacing, one needn’t trouble a maid for assistance.”
Duncan positioned himself between Matilda and the window. “Shall I loosen your jumps?”
The sketches in the other room had derailed Matilda’s desire, distracting her with a less fraught passion than what Duncan offered. Papa had claimed that Matilda’s mother had a much better eye for art than he would ever have, and that he’d learned much from Mama.
Standing before Duncan, on the brink of making love in a proper bed with a proper man for the first time in ages, Matilda acknowledged an exhaustion that had little to do with food or sleep. She was tired of being self-sufficient, tired of being alone.
Would this interlude with Duncan sustain her when she was forced back into unrelenting self-reliance, or weaken her? She was too soul-weary to care.
“If you would please unlace me,” Matilda said, “I will oblige you with reciprocal courtesies.”
He drew open the bow holding her bodice closed, then stepped near. “This is the last time I will ask you: Are you sure, Matilda? If we grant each other this intimacy, we can never un-grant it. I become yours in a way I have never belonged to anybody.”
She kissed him to stop his words. Of course she wanted to claim him, to claim his body, his ferociously imposing mind, and his equally impressive decency, but she lacked the freedom to surrender herself in the same measure, and, thus, what he offered was impossible.
Frustration—physical and emotional—turned her kiss desperate. She lashed her arms around his neck and willed away all thoughts of treason and tomorrows.
“You should lock the door,” she muttered, fingers going to the buttons of his falls. “We can’t have a maid or footman stopping by to build up the fire if we’re—” He was in her hands again, as magnificently aroused as he’d been in the study.
“We will have fire enough and privacy enough. The staff knows to knock, and they know I occasionally tell them to go away. Hold still, please.”
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