Beyond A Wicked Kiss (10 page)

"There are always students who can ill afford to pay the tuition."

"These are students with little in the way of consequence and with few prospects of acquiring any. Why educate them at all? What can be the sense of it, especially as they are females?"

It was an argument Ria had heard before. Usually it frustrated her. Now, coming from this man, it merely disappointed. "That is one view," she said in carefully neutral accents. "Mine is considerably—" She stopped because she was finally able to comprehend the perfect blandness of his expression and know he was putting significant effort into affecting such a countenance. "You do not believe that at all, do you?"

West smiled a little then. "No, I do not." He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs comfortably. His hands were folded loosely on the edge of the table. He tapped the balls of his thumbs together. "But I do not think I am such a reformer as you. Indeed, I am not a reformer at all. It's a messy business, better left to politicians, who like to wallow in it, or women, who cannot help but take a broom to it."

"I think you are a cynic, Your Grace."

"And I make no apology for it." He regarded her thoughtfully. "There is much more here I want to know, Miss Ashby, but mayhap you should tell me about your missing girl."

"Her name is Jane Petty, and she is but fifteen years old."

"Then she is no child."

"No, but—"

"Have you considered there is a young man? Perhaps she has fashioned an attachment to one of the local fellows and gone to Gretna."

"I don't think so," Ria said, shaking her head. "I could find no evidence to support it."

"Then you did admit the possibility."

"Let us say I did not want to overlook it. Jane is rather more trusting than is strictly good for her, so I could envision that such a thing had come to pass. Yet she is not a restful girl, and one has to consider that maintaining secrecy around an elopement is wholly out of character."

"You are perhaps understating it when you describe her as
not restful? "

With an almost imperceptible nod of her head, Ria conceded the point. "Jane is a chatterbox," she said, her tone giving clear proof of her fondness for the girl, "and her movement is not confined to the workings of her jaw. She is rarely still. She chafes at inactivity and suffers the strictures of the classroom because she must. Outside of it she flits about like a hummingbird, pausing here and there, but never settling for more than a few moments. She fairly thrums with energy, and she cannot do a thing quietly. Something is invariably overturned or at least set askew. One always knows when Jane has been about." The recollection raised a faint smile that quickly disappeared as Ria continued. "But it is not only her physical path that is marked by disarray. Jane manages to do the very same thing with the girls. She cannot seem to help herself. There is always some drama in her wake."

"Then she is not well liked."

"No, that is not it at all. She is popular with the others—it is just that it requires so much effort to accommodate her presence."

"I had forgotten how appreciative females are of high drama. They will make a great many allowances for it."

Now it was Ria who lifted an eyebrow. "Surely neither the appreciation nor the allowances are exclusive to females."

West thought of his friends and the intrigues they reveled in at Hambrick Hall. "I stand corrected," he said. He caught himself in time to keep from saying that it was all part and parcel of one's youth. How, then, could he reconcile that statement with the fact that he and his friends still regularly engaged in intrigues? It would not stand up to much scrutiny, and West wisely kept his silence. "How long has Miss Jane Petty been missing?"

"Sixteen days."

West was careful not to let his dismay show. He had hoped to hear it was much, much less. "There has been no word at all? No hint?"

"Nothing. It is yet another reason I have dismissed the idea that she eloped. I believe she would have written by now. She was not a thoughtless child."

"Pray, temper this tendency you have to name her a child. It is not helpful. You cannot yet acquit her of responsibility for her own disappearance."

"I can," Ria said softly. "You do not know her as I do. I will not believe she is gone of her own accord."

West chose not to argue the point. She was right—he did not know Jane—but he was also right, characterizing Jane as a child was not helpful. "What is it you would have me do, Miss Ashby? Have we finally arrived at the reason you set yourself in my path yesterday? You might have ridden to town with Tenley and his brood if you had only meant to attend the service and inform me of my responsibilities to you as guardian. It seems you should set the matter before me in very plain language."

"I want you to help me find her."

It was
almost
what he had expected she would say. "Help you?" he asked. "Do you mean that you would assist me in determining Miss Petty's whereabouts?"

"No," she said firmly. "I mean that you should assist me."

He did not like the sound of that at all. It was with some effort that he voiced no objections. He decided they could wait, as he was not yet prepared to give her an answer. "I am finding it hard to imagine that had the duke's health not been a concern, you still would have applied to him with the same request." When her eyes slid away from his and she remained silent, West knew he was right. "I would hear it from you."

"I would not have gone to him," she said at last. "It is not that your father would have been unsympathetic, only that he would have seized the opportunity to lecture me about the school. He would have had me abandon my duties."

It was considerably difficult for West to believe the duke would have had even a
soupcon
of sympathy, but he let this pass. It was borne home to him again that Ria's experience with his sire was vastly different from his own. "Miss Petty disappeared more than a fortnight ago. That was before any of us knew what revelations the duke was preparing to make. You might have gone to Tenley with your concerns. At that time you could have properly expected that he would be your guardian."

"Your brother would not be inclined to help me." She hastily added, "There is no animosity between us. It is just that Tenley is not often inclined to extend himself."

West chuckled and watched as Ria's fair complexion colored. "That is a damning defense you offer. I hope you will never make a similar effort on my behalf."

"I only meant—" She stopped before she made it worse. He knew perfectly well what she'd meant; his view of Tenley could scarcely have been more complimentary.

Pushing back his chair, West came to his feet. He felt her anxious eyes marking his progress to the fireplace where he poked at the logs while he considered what he might say to her. He glanced out the window to the garden. It had started to rain again, this time with a gusting wind accompanying it so there were diagonal etchings on each pane of glass. Occasionally splinters of ice fell among the raindrops, a clear sign that the weather was turning colder. These ice needles hit the window at a different pitch than the rain and dissolved slowly, sometimes collecting visibly on the sill before they melted.

He replaced the poker and turned back to Ria. He ran a hand absently through his copper hair. "I am not certain what you think I can do for you."

"I have said as much, haven't I? You can help me find Jane."

"In what way?" he asked. "Is it money you require? Assistance hiring someone to do the investigation? Perhaps you mean that I should interview candidates for the position and weed out the fellows that are likely to take advantage of your naivete."

"I could hire anyone," she said. "I want you." She watched both of his eyebrows lift in response to her directness. "I can say it no more plainly than that."

"No, that was perfectly frank. You seem to have gotten the hang of it."

Ria refused to be turned from her purpose by his light mockery. "I can offer you compensation, though you will understand that it means I will only be returning my allowance. If you want more than what you give me, then you shall have to give me more."

West wished he had not stood up because it was just that sort of logic that set him reeling. She looked as if she meant to explain herself, and he held up a hand palm out, to forestall her. "It will be a kindness if you do not repeat yourself. It is my experience that this rarely results in clarification, yet one tends to speak more loudly the second time."

Ria felt a tendril of hair flutter against her cheek. The distraction as his eyes fell on it was not welcome. She tucked it behind her ear quickly. "What is your answer to my proposal?"

"Forgive my obtuseness, Miss Ashby, but I am no more clear as to why you think I
can
help."

"Your Grace is being disingenuous or modest or both."

"I don't know what you mean."

She could not very well call him a liar, though it was a temptation. "You have a position in the foreign office."

"Yes. That's true enough."

"Then you have connections."

"I suppose that is also true, though how they can be of use in finding Miss Petty remains a mystery."

"Have you learned nothing at all?"

West rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "I know something about drawing up legal documents. That is how I spend my time, after all, reviewing and revising documents that pass from one person to another person to yet another person. Dull stuff, but I do it in the service of my country."

"I don't believe you," she said. "About the documents, I mean."

"I'm a clerk, Miss Ashby, though I suppose the Westphal inheritance will put a period to that. Perhaps they will allow me to pen the documents myself in the future. I imagine there is a Westphal seal. I may be able to use it when I put my signature to paper." West saw the line of Ria's slender shoulders droop. Her blue-gray eyes were no longer suspicious, but resigned. "What, precisely, is it that you imagined I did at the foreign office?"

She shrugged. "I'd heard things."

"Do not make me strain to hear you."

"I'd heard things," she said more audibly this time.

"What sort of things? Not that rubbish about smuggling French brandy, I hope."

So it wasn't true that he had been a smuggler. Ria allowed that she was disappointed to hear it. The tales of debauchery on the Continent were probably false as well, though she had never set much store by them. "I'd heard that you were instrumental in providing intelligence concerning Napoleon's movements during the war."

West replaced the poker and regarded Ria with ill-disguised amusement. "My dear Miss Ashby, never say you have conceived the notion that I was a spy. Oh, but I can see that you did. You are perfectly crestfallen to have it denied and no doubt even more worried about Miss Petty. It is true that I was attached to Wellington's camp, but such intelligence as was gathered was done so by others and merely passed on by me. If I called myself a courier it would still be puffing the thing up. To say that I was instrumental means only that I was a cog in the wheel, as clerks often are. Had I performed my duties with less diligence, perhaps there would have been a company without proper rations, but I doubt the outcome at Waterloo hinged on whether there was enough salted beef in the camp."

"You tallied foodstuffs?" she asked her eyes widening a shade.

"I tallied most everything that an army requires to move and fight and move again. Mathematics, after all, is what kept me prisoner at Cambridge for more years than I care to remember."

"That was mathematics," she said. "You are speaking now of... of
adding."

"Yes, well, one does what one is asked to do. If you are Wellington, you want to know you can rely on the accuracy of the count. Rifles. Cannons. Pistols. Men. Uniforms. Wagons. Boots. Horses. Saddles. Bayonets."

"Salted beef," Ria said. "Yes, I understand the importance of it, I just thought you did something..." Her voice trailed off.

"Something more?" he asked. "I think you have conceived some romantic notions about what is required to win the day. I do not blame you. No one who is not on the field can know what hard, bloody work it all is."

"I didn't mean to disparage your contribution," Ria said hastily. Embarrassed by her insensitivity, she was contrite. "It is only that..." She had no words again.

West returned to the table and his chair. "You are burdened by your worry for Miss Petty, and I have done nothing to relieve you of it."

Ria managed a faint smile as indication that she was resigned to the weight of it now.

"Tell me," he said in a tone of only mild interest. "This thing you heard about me being instrumental in the effort, how did it come to your attention?"

She could tell him honestly, for this was information she had never set out to learn. Indeed, he would have been a very poor spy if it was common knowledge that was his business. "I was staying with the duke in London," she said. "It would have been five or six years ago, around the time Wellington entered Madrid."

"Six years, then," West said.

Ria thought about that. "Yes, I do believe you're right. It was just before I accepted the position at the school. As I was saying, I was in London at the duke's residence and he had a visitor. I was not introduced, as I was not seen on the stairs, but I could see that Westphal was glad of his visit and offered him refreshment in his study. That struck me as peculiar because your father rarely entertained and seemed to suffer those occasions rather than enjoy them. This was decidedly different."