A Marquess, a Miss and a Mystery

by Annie Burrows

  ‘Whereas she will actually be in London testifying.’

  ‘Yes, but I shouldn’t think it will take long. Most of what she says is only corroborating what we already knew. Or guessed. And then...’

  ‘I think I know the very place where she might go,’ said the Duke, ‘to recover from all aspects of her ordeal. I have it on good authority,’ he said, turning to Lady Elizabeth, ‘that Leipzig is a most salubrious spot. Not only will she be removed from all the gossiping tongues, but I hear that one can live very economically there.’

  ‘Leipzig,’ cried Lady Elizabeth. ‘You are really sending us to Leipzig?’

  The Duke nodded.

  ‘Then, since Mama cannot show her face in society again, and we will all be poor as church mice, there will be nothing to stop me marrying Mr Brown!’

  He nodded again. ‘I always did think you should marry nobody but him.’

  ‘And you have made it possible,’ she said, beaming at him. ‘I take back every ungenerous thing I ever said about you.’

  ‘And,’ said the Duke, turning back to Nick as though Lady Elizabeth’s faint praise was making him uncomfortable, ‘how do you propose we explain Dr Cochrane’s journey to London?’

  ‘Surely you cannot continue to employ a man who is a danger to females. I dare say you know of some asylum where he may be confined?’

  ‘I can soon find one,’ said Perceval.

  ‘And you,’ said the Duke softly. ‘You will, of course, marry Miss Carmichael.’

  What?

  ‘Naturally,’ said Nick stiffly.

  ‘No,’ said Horatia. ‘There is no of course about it. You know now that Nick was only pretending an interest in me so we could work together to find Herbert’s killer. That it was just a ruse.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Duke. ‘But a lot of people will talk about...the way you two have been behaving. Culminating in this...’

  ‘Let them talk,’ she said. ‘I don’t go about in society, so I shan’t hear it.’

  ‘You will, in effect, go into seclusion and allow my brother to face public censure alone?’ He looked at her as though he was extremely disappointed in her.

  But Nick remained silent.

  ‘You could always come to Leipzig with us,’ said Lady Elizabeth, causing her mother to throw up her hands in horror. ‘It was just an idea,’ said Lady Elizabeth, backing down at once.

  ‘If you truly don’t wish to marry my brother,’ said the Duke, ignoring Lady Elizabeth’s suggestion, ‘then, of course, we will come up with some other way to bring you through this without any stain attaching to your character.’

  Not want to marry Nick? Oh, it would be the best thing that could possibly happen to her, if he truly wanted it. But he didn’t. He was just dealing with her in the way he was dealing with all the other loose ends. And she had no intention of being tidied away, then spending the rest of her life shrouded in a falsehood.

  ‘And what if,’ said Nick, ‘somebody—’ he glanced up at Lady Tewkesbury ‘—should spread the tale of how I held you in my arms and you put up no protest.’

  ‘Why, obviously it is because I am too weak from loss of blood, and too shocked by the whole experience, to properly know what I am doing,’ she said waspishly.

  ‘I see,’ he said and shifted away from her, then stood up, walked over to the window and began examining the shattered pane.

  It felt very cold and lonely once he was no longer holding her in his strong embrace. But she was going to have to get used to the feeling. Of being cold and lonely, that was. Because he wasn’t going to beg her to marry him, was he? Because he didn’t truly wish to be married. To anyone. He’d just gone along with the Duke’s suggestion, as a way of tidying up the whole affair in such a way that gossip would quickly die down.

  Suddenly, she felt very ill again.

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked Miss Underwood, who was, she discovered, holding her hand, ‘I could go back to my own room now? I need, I need...’ Her lower lip began to tremble. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to burst into tears, was she?

  She was. And nothing, not even the way Miss Underwood put both arms round her and started making shushing noises, was able to make her stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She was an idiot. A prize idiot. She could have been looking forward to her own wedding, instead of lying here, all woozy from whatever it was that Mrs Manderville had given her to drink, wishing she’d agreed to marry Nick when she had the chance, even if it would mean betrayals and humiliation and heartbreak for the rest of her life. Wouldn’t it have been better than sinking into a sort of grey sludge of a life, with Aunt Matilda in that gloomy little house? At least if she was fighting with Nick she’d feel alive.

  But it wouldn’t have been fair on him. He’d only gone along with what the Duke said out of some sort of notion of tying up loose ends, or protecting her reputation, or possibly even cementing the fragile bond she could see beginning to form between him and his half-brother, or some warped sense of duty, or...

  Oh, who knew what had motivated him to agree to the Duke’s absurd plan? And she’d never know. Because she wasn’t likely to see him again. He’d be too busy now, escorting Dr Cochrane to London and the men who wanted to question him. And probably making sure Lady Tewkesbury didn’t get away without making a full confession, either. That was his duty. His real duty.

  And no doubt he’d make it sound as if his sudden absence right before the wedding was in keeping with his long-standing enmity for his half-brother. People would say he couldn’t stomach attending the ceremony. Or that he was allergic to weddings altogether.

  People would say...

  People.

  She hated people!

  She rolled on to her side and reached for a fresh handkerchief. She didn’t know what had come over her. She’d never been much of a one for tears. Not even after Herbert had died. Back then, she’d just been fired up with a furious determination to avenge him. Well, she’d done that now. Perhaps that was why she could finally cry. Why she was doing so much of it.

  Or perhaps it was the medicine that Mrs Manderville had given her to try to calm her down and deal with the throbbing pain in her hand. Perhaps that was what was making her feel as though her limbs were made of lead and her future look so depressing. Why she was wishing she’d never come to Theakstone Court.

  No, no, she mustn’t wish she hadn’t come. She’d discovered the ringleader of the people responsible for Herbert’s death. And now they’d pay. Dr Cochrane would pay.

  But Herbert was still dead. And her life could never go back to the way it had been, with him bringing her all those coded messages to decipher. Though it wouldn’t be just the work she’d miss. She’d miss him. Herbert. Without him in her life, she’d have nothing to look forward to.

  And without Nick, she’d dwindle into an old maid, because she wouldn’t dream of marrying anyone else. Not that anyone else would ever ask her. She was doomed to become an irritable old maid, who would take out her frustrations on the servants and any hapless relatives who had the misfortune to darken her doorstep. She’d end up as bad as Aunt Matilda. Probably worse, because at least Aunt Matilda had a coterie of friends. Friends who’d invited her to go to Bath with them while Horatia was at this wedding. And the only person who could tolerate Horatia was Elizabeth. Who was going to swan off to Leipzig to marry her impecunious scientist.

  Yes, she was going to dwindle into a lonely old age and die unmourned. And then...

  A furtive sound from the other side of her room had her turning her head in alarm. Miss Underwood had said nobody would disturb her. That they were going to let her sleep it off. So who was...?

  ‘Nick!’ She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breast as she saw him sidle into the room through one of those doors that led into the servants’ corridor. ‘What are you doing?’

  * * *
r />   She looked a mess.

  She looked adorable.

  But what made his heart lurch was the fact that she was neither shrieking in alarm, as if she suspected him of having evil intentions, nor giving him come-hither looks. She knew that if he had come in here, in a stealthy manner, then it was because he had something both important and confidential to tell her. Because, in short, she trusted him.

  And as to her question, what he was doing, well, it was something he’d never done before. Because nothing had mattered to him as much. So naturally, instead of saying so, he turned and shut the door behind him with a decisive snap, before he could dart out through it and run.

  He turned to face her, his heart pounding. Wondering where to start.

  She was looking at him with her head cocked to one side, waiting to hear him out. Still not shrieking or casting out lures. Just waiting for him to explain himself.

  ‘This is something I’ve never done in my life before,’ he said.

  Immediately she pursed her lips in a cynical way.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean creeping into a lady’s bedchamber by a back door,’ he said, interpreting that pout as easily as he could read just about every expression that flitted across her face. ‘Yes, I have done that plenty of times. But what I have never done is stand up and fight for what I truly want.’

  Now she simply looked puzzled. Lord, but she really couldn’t see how much he wanted her! Encouraged to think he might have cause to win through, he took a couple of steps away from the door, clasped his hands behind his back and squared his shoulders.

  She ran her eyes greedily over his frame. And then sighed, as though with regret. Yes, he knew he looked good, adopting this particular pose. It was why he’d adopted it. He wasn’t above using every weapon available in his arsenal, not if it meant conquering her.

  Although, he hoped that his most potent weapon would be the truth.

  ‘Look, I cannot blame you for not wanting to marry me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Her eyes flew wide. So she hadn’t been expecting him to renew his proposal. Was that a good thing, or not?

  Giving a mental shrug, he kept on going with the speech he’d prepared while he’d been pacing the floor of his room, after he’d had that horrible vision of what life would be like without her at his side. How he’d go back to the aimless frittering away of his days. Without even Herbert, or the work they’d begun to do, to give him some sense of...well, that he wasn’t totally worthless.

  Which brought him neatly to his first point.

  ‘To start with, I thought you were right to turn me down...’

  ‘Turn you down?’ All traces of confusion vanished. She looked downright cross. ‘That statement,’ she said in her most nannyish tone, ‘implies that you made me an offer. And you didn’t. The Duke said that you ought to marry me and you just went along with the suggestion. With obvious reluctance.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you would be much better off without me. I thought so from the start. I didn’t want to let you into my world, a world of spies and violence and lies. Because I don’t want to see you hurt. Not on my account. And, God, Horatia, when he fired that pistol and I heard you scream...’

  ‘I did not scream,’ she said indignantly. ‘I may,’ she conceded, ‘have shouted in surprise...’

  ‘When you shouted in surprise,’ he said, since this wasn’t the time to start arguing about things that really didn’t matter. Besides which, she looked so adorable, with her hair all over the place like that, scolding him as though he was a naughty schoolboy. ‘Well,’ he forced himself to continue, rather than pointing out that her nightgown was slipping off one shoulder. Revealing a delicately rounded shoulder...

  He cleared his throat. ‘It felt as if the world had gone dark. Completely dark. If he had killed you, it would have... I would have felt as if...’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘The thing is, Horatia, I realised then, in that moment, that if I never saw you again, never held you, never kissed you, I would have lost something infinitely valuable.’

  ‘But you just shrugged and walked away when the Duke said he’d think of some other way of explaining my involvement.’

  ‘Yes. But then, surely you know me well enough to understand that it’s what I always do? Pretend I don’t care when people hurt me. So that was what I did.’

  ‘Yes, that is what you do,’ she mused. And settled back into the pillows. The pose was so inviting, that if it wasn’t so important to convince her to accept his proposal, he’d have been at the edge of her bed and going into his tried-and-tested seduction routine. He did take a step nearer the bed. But only so that he could grab hold of one of the bedposts, hoping that if he hung on to that, it would help him resist the urge to reach out and take her into his arms before they’d got everything properly settled.

  ‘It was only later,’ he explained, ‘when I considered just how very much I want to marry you, that I realised that for once in my life I needed to...to bare my soul to another person. And fight for what I want, rather than pretending I don’t care. So, then, Horatia,’ he said, gripping on to the bedpost for all he was worth, ‘would you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?’

  There was a long pause. She looked him up and down. Put her thumb to her mouth and started chewing on the nail.

  And then, with an expression of utter bewilderment, simply said, ‘Why?’

  He hadn’t known he’d been holding his breath until it all went rushing from his lungs.

  It wasn’t a refusal, at least. She just needed convincing.

  He pushed aside the temptation to kiss her into surrender. Because in years to come, she might say he’d taken advantage of her at a weak moment. Besides, it wasn’t her body he wanted to conquer...although, yes, of course he did want that. But more importantly, he needed to convince her mind that he was in earnest. And know he’d won her heart.

  So what could he offer her? He scrabbled for an answer. ‘If you are asking what I have to offer, I must admit most people would say not very much. I am not considered a prize catch—’ He broke off as she shook her head, with a touch of impatience.

  ‘No, no, no! The question is, why on earth do you claim to want to marry me? I mean, apart from anything else,’ she protested, applying her handkerchief to her nose, which was clearly still running after what looked, from the redness of her eyes, like a hearty bout of weeping, ‘we’ve only known each other a matter of days.’

  Well that was an objection he could easily dismiss. ‘Yes, but during these days, we have spent as much time with one another as many couples do during an entire Season. And what is more, since most of it has been unchaperoned, we have been more open and honest with each other than is the norm. Besides which, we did know each other, through Herbert, for many years.’

  ‘You are splitting hairs.’

  ‘Possibly. But only consider the easy intimacy into which we fell from the moment we agreed to work together. As though we’d been a team for a considerable time.’

  She snorted. In a most unladylike fashion.

  ‘What does that snort denote? You surely cannot deny that we worked well together.’

  ‘Once I’d forced you to abandon your prejudice against working with a female.’

  ‘There was no prejudice of that nature. I told you, I didn’t want you getting dragged down into the murky business of lying and spying on people. Nor expose you to the very people who killed your brother. It was only when I saw that if I didn’t help you you’d go after them alone that I decided I would be better keeping an eye on you and making sure you came to no harm.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she cried, jabbing a finger at him. ‘You didn’t trust me!’

  ‘Whereas you trusted me from the start. Even now, though I startled you by coming in here, I did not alarm you. You believe in my integrity in a way that nobody else ever has.’

 
‘Well, of course I do. You would not have bothered sneaking in here without a jolly good reason.’

  ‘You see? You make me feel...as though I could be worthy of...’ He gave a half-shrug. ‘You know, I fell into the work with Herbert by accident and let him believe we were carrying on with it for a lark. But it wasn’t just that. For the first time in my life, there were people, besides my hen-witted mother, who believed I had value. And when you told me how solving ciphers made you feel, well, it was like finding...’

  ‘A soul mate?’

  Was that a wistful note in her voice? Lord, he hoped so.

  At any rate, she hadn’t yet told him that she had no intention of marrying him. The objections she was raising were all about superficial things.

  ‘I would prefer to say that it felt as if we...recognised each other,’ he told her, since that was more how it had felt to him. And he’d promised always to tell her the truth. ‘It was also the total loyalty you displayed, time and time again. The way you defended me, instead of letting me take the blame...’

  ‘Well, it was my fault you got into any of the situations we found ourselves in, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t kept on pestering you until you grew sick of me, you would not have been searching for Herbert’s killer among the Duke’s wedding guests, would you?’

  ‘I could never grow sick of you,’ he said, unfurling his grip from the bedpost, and leaning against it instead. ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, a smile touching his lips as he folded his arms across his chest, ‘how unique you are?’

  ‘I am nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘But you are. I have never once heard a woman shoulder the blame for a catastrophe, if there was a man standing by...but never mind other women. You are the one I want to marry. And if you don’t I am going to die a lonely, bitter old bachelor.’