“No,” Duncan said, nuzzling the baby’s head before passing the infant to Jane, “but you will have to choose your bed, re-organize the toys, and decide where to stable your dragon.”
“Come along, Mama. George is a very particular dragon. He must have the best cave in the house and the best storybooks to read.”
Peace settled over the room when Jane and the children departed.
“So where is Matilda?” Stephen asked, his mouth full of tea cake.
“She should be joining us shortly.” Duncan hadn’t thought to look for her in the nursery. Perhaps she’d crossed paths with little Hester and her nurse, and been charmed into joining them abovestairs.
“His Grumpy Grace scared her away,” Stephen said, gesturing at Quinn with his teacup. “She heard the dread Duke of Walden had come to call with his Vandal horde. She’ll hide in a closet until you’re gone.”
“Don’t joke about a missing child,” Quinn said. “Bitty would still be locked in that cupboard unless we’d kept searching for her.”
Stephen and Quinn bickered when other brothers merely shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“Duncan kept searching for her,” Stephen said, hobbling to the sofa. “You were still muttering about ‘the child must learn’ and ‘she can’t be frightening her mother like this.’”
Bitty had gone missing one fine morning last spring, and her parents had decided she was making a bid for attention in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. Duncan had not agreed with that hypothesis, and he’d begun a systematic search of the ducal residence. His diligence had been rewarded an hour later when a tearful Bitty had been found in a cupboard in the linen closet, where the housekeeper had inadvertently locked her.
His search had not been the result of a logical conclusion, but rather, of a nagging question: What if Quinn and Jane were wrong about their own daughter?
“So tell me about the woman who has moved Stephen to raptures,” Quinn said, taking the reading chair near the sofa. “And don’t pretty it up. Jane is certain you have trouble afoot here at Brightwell.”
Stephen had doubtless dropped epistolary hints for Their Graces’ delectation. Duncan decided to start with facts.
“Matilda is the daughter of a well-to-do art dealer named Thomas Wakefield. He might well be a traitor to the Crown, and Matilda has been inadvertently caught up in his schemes.”
Quinn turned on Duncan an expression the duke usually reserved for his younger brother. “When you set out to create a muddle, you create a spectacular muddle.”
“I’ve also proposed to the woman,” Duncan said, “or asked leave to pay her my addresses.”
“Beyond spectacular,” Quinn said, sounding impressed. “For the first time, I must admonish Stephen not to follow your example. What do you need from me? Shall I play the duke, threaten a few Cabinet ministers, have a word with King George?”
“All in a day’s duking,” Stephen said. “Duncan will doubtless consult Matilda before he gives you your marching orders. Matters have progressed to a serious state.”
Quinn yanked off one boot, then the other. “Treason is always serious.”
“I meant matters of the heart. Tell him the whole of it, Duncan.”
Duncan did not tell Quinn the whole of it—a couple was entitled to some privacy—but he sketched in the major points: a message possibly in code, invasion of France, a suitor who was probably himself scheming to thwart Wakefield’s espionage, question upon question, and the likelihood of leaving Britain in the near future.
“I don’t like that part,” Quinn said. “Jane will never stand for it.”
“I am not courting Jane,” Duncan said, though the idea of fleeing, while logical and necessary, also brought with it significant heartache. All Matilda wanted was a place to call home, a patch of ground on which to live out her days. All Duncan wanted, much to his own surprise, was to give that to her.
“Matilda promised me that you and Jane would be taken into our confidence before we made any final decisions.”
“Where is Matilda?” Stephen asked again. “I’ve left her a good half dozen tea cakes, but they’ll grow stale before she deigns to join us.”
Duncan for once could not muster any interest in the sweets. “Perhaps Jane has waylaid her.”
“Jane will soon be napping,” Quinn said, propping his feet on a hassock, “if she knows what’s good for her.”
“I don’t know where Matilda might be, but I’ll ask Mrs. Newbury—”
The door swung open to reveal Manners in the company of a red-cheeked, winded Jinks.
“The boy is demanding to speak with you, sir,” Manners began. “Told him it weren’t his place, but he’s powerful agitated, and—”
“Miss Matilda left,” Jinks cried. “She said she wouldn’t, and then she did, and them two rotters I seen at the inn afore are swilling gin like their nag just won the Derby. She said she wouldn’t leave us, said she wouldn’t leave Brightwell, but she was in that coach, and now she’s gone.”
Chapter Sixteen
“This is the marquess’s own team,” the coachman said. “He values his horseflesh, and it is not worth my job to drive one of them from merely off to seriously lame. I doubt his lordship would lend you a conveyance again if he learned I’d abused his cattle at your direction, sir.”
Angus Nairn was that plague of senior officers the world over, the conscientious subordinate. Not loyal to his master, but loyal to duty, inasmuch as duty involved thwarting the ambitions of his betters by citing rules, conventions, and other excuses.
In the military, such punctilious fellows seldom rose above a lieutenancy.
Matilda remained on the forward-facing seat beside Parker and said nothing. Gone was the gracious, worldly, bluestocking Parker had met at a Paris soiree. Parker’s intended had grown skinny and silent, spending most of the past hour staring out the window and ignoring him.
Time to get some answers from the lady. “We will stop for a change of horses and for sustenance,” Parker said. “Go easy on the team until we reach a decent inn.”
Though the blighted man had been going easy on the team, which dithering he claimed was necessitated by the muddy roads.
“Right, sir. The Speckled Hen isn’t but three miles farther on. We should be there in less than an hour.”
Because the road in winter was banked with snow, and traffic heading west was busy, Parker’s coach was frequently forced to pull off to wait for vehicles passing in the opposite direction. Matilda seemed indifferent to the delays, to the chill in the coach, to everything. Military wives were supposed to be uncomplaining, but the best of them were cheerfully uncomplaining.
“I will need a moment’s privacy,” Matilda said, when at last the coach swayed into the Speckled Hen’s innyard.
“I’ll get you a room where you may refresh yourself while the food is being prepared.” And he’d commandeer the private dining room if he had to declare martial law to do it.
Matilda nodded, as if she were too busy watching a drama visible only to her to bother replying. Perhaps her recent experiences had set off a touch of melancholia or hysteria. Women were delicate, and fleeing in the middle of the night to wander the countryside alone was not the behavior of a lady in possession of all of her wits.
The inn, fortunately, boasted only an old couple in the common. The place was clean, cozy, and worthy of a titled family’s custom. Parker ordered a meal for two in the private dining room.
A maid bustled in, setting down plates laden with beefsteak and mashed potatoes, boiled turnips, and bread. A gentleman’s pint and lady’s pint came next, though Parker waved the lady’s pint away and ordered a tea tray instead.
Matilda was to be the wife of a colonel—a general if all went well—in His Majesty’s armed forces. She was owed hot tea and the inn’s good china, as was Parker. When she joined him at the table, the remote quality that had enveloped her in the coach remained, though she took the chair he held for her.
“We have p
rivacy, my dear,” Parker said. “You will answer a few questions while we eat.”
Matilda bowed her head, her hands folded in her lap. She moved her lips silently, clearly offering a grace for the meal.
Fair enough. She’d likely not had regular sustenance, and gratitude was fitting in her circumstances.
“I will tell you whatever you wish to know,” she said, spreading the table napkin on her lap, “but there isn’t much to tell. Might I have the butter?”
Parker passed the butter. “Why did you run?”
She dipped her knife into the butter and put a generous portion on her bread. “Papa is in grave danger, Atticus. I have thought and thought about a document I came upon in his satchel, and I am convinced that somebody on his staff is guilty of serious wrongdoing. Have you ever noticed his servants?”
This was interesting. “One generally doesn’t, if the staff is well trained.”
“One generally does, if the staff is underfoot at all hours of the day and night, traveling with one everywhere. I didn’t see the difference until I went to live with my husband. At the castle, the servants were nearly invisible. In Papa’s house, they hover. I suspect Papa is all but a prisoner, and he hasn’t dared speak up about his circumstances because he’s been desperate to keep me safe.”
What flight was this? Parker cut into his steak—slightly overdone, not tragically so—and prepared to patiently attend to a lot of nonsense. Thomas Wakefield was not held hostage by his servants, though, upon reflection, they were a motley bunch.
“Please do elaborate, my dear. Your father has ever struck me as a man competent to look after his own self-interest, but women notice things men overlook. I am eager to hear any and all theories you care to put forth.”
While you avoid explaining to me why you ran from our engagement.
Matilda set down her fork and knife and chewed her meat slowly. Playing chess with her was exactly like this. Bloody slow and without visible evidence of a strategy. When she decided to focus on the game, her sheer unpredictability could result in victory. In the usual course, she moved pieces at random, experimenting her way to defeat nearly as often as she stumbled to victory.
She leaned closer. “Did you know that Papa’s porter is a Corsican? I cannot credit that Carlu would involve himself in dangerous schemes when he has honorable work and a good roof over his head, but Atticus, I saw information I should never have seen. The handwriting was Carlu’s—he uses a distinctive script—and the only possible explanation is that Papa has become the unwitting victim of desperate villains. He is in very great danger, and I still don’t know what to do.”
She cut off another bite of meat, but put her fork and knife down without tasting the food. “I am afraid, Atticus. I am afraid that if you are not very careful, much harm will result to people I care about dearly. You must tread cautiously or that harm could befall you too.”
How very intriguing. Parker had not known the dark-eyed fellow minding Wakefield’s door was a Corsican. An accomplice, doubtless, a fellow sneak thief of state secrets and private scandals.
“What of the rest of the staff?” Parker asked. “Have you suspicions regarding them?”
She stared at her plate, and he had the odd thought that she was trying not to cry. Matilda wasn’t the crying type, thank heavens, but at the sight of her, pale, gaunt, struggling so to find words…Parker’s gentlemanly upbringing did not allow him to ignore her upset.
“Take your time,” he said. “Unburden yourself of all your fears and nightmares, and I will see that everything is resolved as quietly as possible.”
“I can make you a list of his staff,” she said. “Papa’s servants are notably un-British. Papa would never betray his king and country, but even a well-meaning man can be taken advantage of by ruthless schemers.”
True enough, alas.
She sketched a portrait with possibilities. Parker poured her a cup of tea and set the cup and saucer by her plate.
“We will make a list and consider the evidence,” he said. “Strategy is a skill every senior officer commands in quantity. Trust me, my dear, and all will come right. Tell me exactly what sent you alone into the night.”
Parker had hit upon the notion of exposing a single spy out of expedience. Career advancement in peacetime was difficult, and then the opportunity to ensnare Wakefield had fallen into his lap. A comment overheard here, a quiet suggestion there, a pointed remark from a grumbling general, and he’d been given the means to use Wakefield to his own advantage.
But if instead Parker uncovered a whole nest of spies, quietly, and on terms that would reflect well upon his superior officers? Even the marquess would have to applaud such an accomplishment. A baronetcy wasn’t out of the question.
“You promise you won’t laugh?” Matilda asked, cradling her teacup in her hands. “I need you to take my situation seriously, Atticus. I did not leave my home on a whim.”
“You fled because you were afraid.”
“And shocked, also horrified. I don’t know what exactly I found—my foreign languages have grown rusty with disuse—but what I was able to deduce frightened me.”
She had been pathetically relieved to see him, embracing him right in the innyard and before the servants.
“What did you find?” And where was that evidence now? Parker had made a copy, but she’d said the original was in the servant’s—the Corsican’s—handwriting. That development was just too lovely to ignore.
“Atticus, I am not certain, but I have reason to believe that Spain is planning to invade England. The defeat of the Armada was Spain’s greatest humiliation, Papa always said, and England’s resources are spread thin now. We are vulnerable to attack, and Spain has never forgotten the drubbing they were given. The French are happy to aid in England’s downfall, and I might have seen evidence of French collusion with Spain.”
Good heavens, she’d garbled everything. “Why not bring this evidence to me straightaway, Matilda?”
“I am not clever like you, Atticus. I must think and consider everything before I come to a decision. I was shocked, upset, bewildered, and thought only to remove the evidence from Papa’s household. Without the document that I found, nobody could move that dastardly plot forward, could they?”
An old saying popped into Parker’s head: Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
“You set out alone, with little coin, and nowhere to go, because you were trying to save England?”
“Of course. Why else would I abscond with the villain’s plans? Why else would I travel in secret at great risk to myself? For all England’s enemies knew, I did give those plans to you, because we most assuredly have not been invaded, have we?”
The logic, or lack thereof, was stunning. Parker nearly burst out laughing. “We have not been invaded, but Matilda, while I applaud your patriotism, I must inform you that another perspective might pertain to the facts.”
“You think Papa is a traitor? When that satchel was carried by Carlu more often than anybody else?”
“Your father has much to answer for, which we can discuss at greater length at another time. I am more concerned, madam, that you will be accused of treason, which is a serious crime indeed.”
Matilda stared at him, her expression blank, then filling with ire. “I risked my life for months, I thwarted King George’s foes, I solved a very delicate problem without involving anybody else, and I’m to be tried for treason? If that’s how you foresee this situation unraveling, then I’ll thank you to set me down at the next crossroads. You offered me safety, Atticus, not the threat of a noose. You’re a war hero and you have strategy coming out your fingertips. You will set the generals and ministers straight, or there will be no wedding.”
There had to be a wedding. Had to be, for the sake of all Parker held dear. Then too, Matilda had been well dowered before her short-lived marriage to the German. She had a widow’s portion now, as well as most of the original settlement funds under her control.
 
; “Calm yourself, Matilda. I said I’d resolve the situation, and I will.”
“For months, I’ve hidden myself away, expecting Carlu or one of his cohorts to leap out of the bushes and cut my throat. Now I find my heroism will be rewarded with mutton-headed histrionics on the part of the very people whose realm I’ve saved. Why is there no word to describe a woman’s brave deeds? Heroinic? There should be such a word. Pass the salt.”
Parker passed the salt and let her grumble, while he marveled that Matilda had an imagination after all. The quiet, pretty lady who’d always kept to the harmless side of art world gossip and never worn too many jewels was, in fact, fanciful in her way.
Parker told himself this was a good quality. He began to consider the possibilities her fairy-tale version of events offered for a war hero who’d uncovered a nest of spies and rescued a valiant subject of the Crown from possible assassination at the hands of traitors.
That version of the facts could work. It could work very nicely, indeed.
* * *
“Jinks says Matilda never attempted a struggle.” Quinn offered that observation casually, though Duncan longed to reply by knocking the duke from his horse and pounding on His Grace’s handsome face.
“How could she struggle?” Stephen retorted. “She was accompanied on either side by the Treacher brothers, then confronted with Lord Atticus and his liveried minions.”
Jinks had lurked in the inn’s stables, watching the drama unfold, while Duncan had been greeting his family and dreaming impossible dreams. The boy had lingered long enough to ask questions in the manner of nosy children the world over, though one result was that Parker had a good ninety minutes’ head start.
The other result was that Herman and Jeffrey were enjoying the hospitality of Squire Peabody’s saddle room, awaiting the magistrate’s next parlor session. On Monday both brothers would be bound over for trespassing, poaching in a forest, and assault with a weapon.
To bring them to justice had been profoundly satisfying, though Duncan had asked for a sentence of transportation rather than the most severe penalty.
When a Duchess Says I Do Page 24