Linnet had grinned. “In that respect, at least, I’ll fit in.”
By the time the three of them went downstairs to join the men for dinner, Linnet was, to her very real surprise, relaxed, at ease, and indeed, in that moment at least, enjoying herself.
Not that she didn’t have a bone or two to pick with Logan, but that would have to wait until later.
Over dinner, the others were eager to hear about Logan’s mission thus far, from its beginning in India to when he and Linnet had arrived at the Seafarer’s Arms.
Reassured that all was well with Linnet—very aware that it was at his insistence that she’d been forced into a world she wasn’t accustomed to, and that any consequent unhappiness would lie at his door, and thus relieved and cravenly grateful to Penny and Phoebe for smoothing her way—Logan set himself to succinctly but comprehensively satisfy their curiosity.
Linnet listened, too, no doubt adding flesh to the bare bones he’d previously revealed to her, but she left all questions to the others. Charles and Deverell were experienced interrogators; they knew what to ask to clarify his story.
When it came to Linnet’s part in it, he didn’t hold back. She blushed at his compliments, his very real praise, tried to deflect attention by claiming it was no more than anyone else would have done—which argument none of the others accepted.
Penny waved Linnet’s words aside. “There’s no help for it—you’re heroine material. No point trying to clamber off the pedestal. You’ll just have to get used to the height.”
Which shut Linnet up. Logan thought she was dumfounded, which in his admittedly short experience was a first.
He took pity on her and quickly summed up their time in Plymouth, which brought them to the present and Paignton Hall.
They paused to allow the empty dessert dishes to be cleared.
When the footmen had withdrawn, Deverell asked, “So your mission’s a decoy run?”
When Logan nodded, Charles said, “From the way Royce is managing the four individual threads of this action, I suspect Delborough’s most likely a decoy, too. Hamilton I’m not sure about.”
Logan thought of his comrades, of Gareth, and especially Rafe, about whom he’d yet to hear definite information. He stirred, looked down the table at Deverell, then across it at Charles. “So what now? Where to from here?”
Deverell raised his brows at Phoebe, at the other end of the table. “Shall we repair to the drawing room to make our plans?”
Phoebe nodded decisively. “Yes, let’s. Aside from all else, we ladies aren’t about to leave you gentlemen to swap secrets over the port. If you want any spirits, bring the decanters with you.”
Deverell checked with Charles and Logan, but as none of them felt the need for any further bolstering, they left the decanters on the sideboard and fell in on the ladies’ heels as they led the way to the drawing room.
A minor distraction occurred when the respective nannies ushered in the Deverell and St. Austell children to say their goodnights. Logan watched as Linnet smiled and shook hands with Charles’s two little boys, and Deverell’s eldest daughter and his son, admitting that yes, she really was a ship’s captain, that yes, her ship was a big one with lots of sails, an oceangoing vessel, not a sailboat, but that as yet she hadn’t ordered anyone to walk the plank.
Satisfied, the children smiled huge smiles, bobbed bows and curtsies, and chorused their goodnights.
Penny and Phoebe handed their youngest children—Penny’s daughter, Phoebe’s second girl—to their husbands to jiggle, kiss, then return to the nannies’ waiting arms.
When the door finally shut behind the small cavalcade, Penny fixed her eyes on her husband’s face. “Right. Now cut line, and tell us what your orders are.”
Charles arched a brow at Deverell.
Subsiding beside his wife on one chaise, Deverell said, “I’ve already sent a messenger to Royce to report that Logan’s reached us hale and whole, and with his scroll-holder still in his possession. However, Logan was late in to Plymouth, so Royce has already sent us our orders for the next leg. We’re instructed to reach Oxford by the evening of the nineteenth, traveling via Bath, where we’re to stay at The York House. Further orders will await us at the University Arms in Oxford. Our ultimate goal is Royce’s house, Elveden Grange, just short of Thetford in Suffolk, but he’ll want us coming in on a specific route, on a particular day. Presumably we’ll learn which route and what day once we reach Oxford.”
Lounging beside Penny on the opposite chaise, Charles said, “Given the enemy knows you’re in England, and will almost certainly trace us to Totnes, I suggest we remain here in safety before doing a dash in the minimum number of days required to reach Oxford on the nineteenth.”
Deverell nodded, his gaze going to Logan. “We’re safe here—it’s close to impossible to successfully attack this house.”
Logan inclined his head. “So what’s the minimum number of days on the road to get from here to Oxford?”
“Two,” Deverell replied. “With the days so short—and we certainly won’t want to be traveling through the night, inviting attack—then it’ll take us one long day to reach Bath, and then a shorter day’s journey to Oxford.”
“That should allow us some flexibility as to which roads to take,” Charles said, “although I assume we’ll stick mostly to the main highways.”
Deverell leaned back. “Unless we have reason to do otherwise, that would be my plan.”
“All right,” Phoebe said. “It’s the sixteenth today, so that leaves you tomorrow to make preparations and get everything arranged, then the day after tomorrow, you leave for Bath.”
Everyone nodded. Charles looked at Phoebe, then Penny beside him. “I still can’t believe Minerva invited you and the children—and the other wives with theirs, too—to join us at Elveden.”
“Minerva,” Penny stated, adding for Logan’s and Linnet’s benefit, “she’s Royce’s duchess, is an eminently wise and sensible lady. And she’s now one of the grandest of the
grandes dames
, so of course we can’t possibly decline the invitation.”
“Especially not when that invitation so perfectly aligns with your own wishes,” Deverell rather acerbically remarked.
Phoebe struggled to keep her lips straight as she patted her husband’s hand. “Indeed. Especially not then.” She looked at Penny. “If they’re leaving the day after tomorrow”—she glanced at Deverell—“and I expect you’ll be away at dawn?”
Resigned, he nodded. “We should leave at first light, if not just before—if there’s any surprise to be had, we want it on our side.”
“Well, then”—Phoebe looked at Penny—“I can’t see any reason why we couldn’t set off within an hour or so.”
Logan shifted, frowning as he imagined it. “If you can, it would be wiser to wait a few hours at least.” He met Deverell’s, then Charles’s, eyes. “We have to work on the assumption that the cult will locate us here, that they might be watching. If we leave, they’ll follow us, but it would be preferable that they get no hint that anyone else might be leaving shortly after.”
“In case they think to take hostages?” Charles asked.
“No point taking chances.” Logan looked at Phoebe. “Don’t start making preparations—any that might be seen from outside the Hall—until we’ve been gone for at least two hours. If there’s others waiting for us further up the road, those watching might mill about for a while when we leave, but if there’s nothing happening here, they won’t stay—they’ll fall in on our tail.”
Charles and Deverell both nodded emphatically.
“That’s what you’ll need to do.” Charles looked at his wife. “Where had you planned to stay on the road?”
Penny exchanged a look with Phoebe. “We’d planned to make Andover on the first night, which we still should be able to do.” When Phoebe nodded, Penny went on. “There’s a very large hotel there—what with our guards around us as well, we’ll be perfectly safe. On the second day, we’ll travel through London to Woodford.”
“Another very large hotel, again with lots of other people around,” Phoebe put in. “Which means we’ll reach Elveden easily on the third day. We’ll be there to welcome you when you get there.”
Charles glanced at Deverell, grimaced. “I suppose, as neither of you will consent not to go, then the best we can do is surround you with guards.”
Penny smiled resignedly. “We’ll take however many you want to send, but if I might point out, we’re already resembling a royal procession.”
Charles grunted.
Linnet asked a question about Elveden Grange, and the talk veered into less fraught waters.
L
eaving the three men reminiscing about the war and their respective parts in it, Linnet climbed the stairs with Phoebe and Penny, very ready to rest. The day had been beyond eventful; quite aside from recouping physically, she had a great deal to review and digest. Parting from the other two at the head of the stairs, she found her way to her comfortable chamber and what promised to be a very comfortable bed.
Undressing by the light of a small lamp some maid had left burning, Linnet let her mind range over all she’d learned that day—the true danger of Logan’s mission, the reality that she could, and now looked set to, play a part, in her mind as his guardian, his keeper, regardless of what he might think. The abrupt shift in her view of aristocratic ladies, the realization that, at least in terms of Phoebe’s and Penny’s world, she might indeed fit in; they thought like her, had so much in common, shared so many attitudes, and had no more patience with social pretense than she did. She had a shrewd suspicion that, given the circumstances, they could both be as bold and as brazen as she.
She found Charles’s and Deverell’s attitudes to their wives interesting, too. Revealing, intriguing—their marriages were definitely not the norm, or at least not the norm as she had previously understood it.
There was a lot to assimilate, a large number of her views to reassess and rescript in light of what she’d observed. Yet one topic, one piece of news, increasingly filled her mind, increasingly captured her thoughts. Increasingly commanded her entire attention.
Logan was an earl’s son.
What did that mean with respect to her?
In a nightgown Penny had loaned her, wrapped in the counterpane for warmth, she was standing by the window staring out at the restless sea and wrestling with that question when the door opened and Logan came in.
She glanced at him. “I wondered if you’d come. I’ve no idea which room you were given.”
With a quirk of his brows, he sat on the end of the bed and bent to ease off his boots. “I could tell you it was my superior tracking skills that led me to your door, but the truth is my room is two doors further along, and going down to dinner I passed this door and heard your voice.” Setting his boots aside, he looked at her. “Regardless, I would have found you. I wasn’t about to stay away.”
She faced him, but didn’t venture closer. “Wasn’t about to sleep alone?”
Logan studied her face in the lamplight; the set of her features was uninformative, her eyes shadowed. “No.” He had no interest in sleeping alone ever again, not if he could help it. “However, if you’re wondering if that was part of the reason I insisted you came with me, the answer is no—that consideration didn’t occur at the time, and weighed not at all in my decision. Yet now you are here, with me, I can’t imagine not lying with you, sleeping with you in my arms.”
She seemed to hear the truth in his words. Yet still she hesitated, her arms wrapped over the counterpane, her gaze on him.
Then her lips firmed, and her gaze grew sharper. “An earl’s son?”
The question was quiet, yet loaded with intensity. With intent.
Mentally cursing his luck, he baldly stated, “My father was the Earl of Kirkcowan.”
“Was? He’s dead. So who’s the earl now?”
“His eldest son.” Standing, he shrugged off his coat, tossed it on a nearby chair. Started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“From which curt description, I take it you’re estranged?”
He nodded. “I’m . . .”
A bastard.
“The black sheep of the family.” He had to tell her, and surely this was the perfect opening, but he hadn’t yet got all in place. He was too good a commander to charge in when his troops weren’t ready. Jaw tightening, he said, “You don’t need to worry about my . . . elevated connections. In every sense, they’re irrelevant.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.” Laying aside his waistcoat, he turned as she came closer, but she halted more than a yard away, studied his face as, raising his chin, he unknotted, then unwound, his cravat.
From her stance, arms still folded, from her increasingly determined expression, from the frown tangling her brows, she was preparing for battle.
Sure enough . . .
“Originally you swore you’d return to me. Instead, you’ve managed to whisk me away with you.” Her green gaze locked on his eyes. “But you can’t keep me with you. You’ll have to let me go in the end.”
Meeting her challenging gaze with adamantine stubbornness, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I am not going to walk away from you.”
Stubborn witch
. “I won’t be letting you go. Not now, not later. You’d best get used to that.”
The scoffing sound she made stated she was far from that.
“Just how do you see that working?” Temper snapping, Linnet swung out an arm, encompassing the pair of them and the bed. Inside her roiled panicky fear—and the fact she felt it scared her even more. The desperate fight in the narrow yard, the race through the maze with enemies in pursuit, the knowledge that those enemies were still there, lurking beyond the Hall’s thick walls to fall on him again . . . her reaction to that, and to what that reaction meant and might mean, shook her to the core.