Ducal Encounters 03 - Portrait of a Duke (27 page)

Sean gave her a look that told her he didn’t believe a word of it. “Yes, I expected that’s all it is,” he said, touching her shoulder.

“Go to Winchester Park.” Nia bit her lip to stop herself from crying. “But go through Compton first. They might have taken it upon themselves to have another confrontation with the local boys.”

Sean’s smile did not reach his eyes. “This time I will definitely make good on my numerous threats and thrash my sons for their disobedience.”

Nia managed a brief smile. “Of course you will.”

She waved Sean away, took a moment to compose herself, and then slipped up the stairs to check on her grandfather.

“Grandpapa, I am so sorry to have left you alone,” Nia said brightly as she entered his studio. “Is there anything you…oh my goodness!”

He was in his chair looking disorientated, blinking vacantly, and a bruise was forming on the side of his head.

“What happened, Grandpapa?” She crouched beside him and took his hand. “Did you have a fall?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. A movement in the periphery of her vision caused Nia to glance up. She had not realised someone else was in his studio, adjacent to his sitting room. Annie stared at Nia through widened eyes as she stood over Grandpapa’s portrait of the duke with a dagger raised above her shoulder, on the point of plunging it into the canvas.

***

It was not difficult for the forger to enter Stoneleigh Manor’s grounds. He approached them from the edge of the woodland that skirted the Winchester Road and made his way through a track in the woods. Annie’s directions had been spot on in that respect. Hiding the curricle in which he planned to make his getaway was more difficult. He eventually found a place on the other side of the track that did not form a part of the Manor’s grounds. It was further away than he would have liked, but that couldn’t be helped. The important factor was that although the area where he planned to take the boys would be searched eventually, no one would think to do so until he was long gone.

Annie had assured him the boys would make their way to the pond the moment they were released from their lessons, and that is where the forger concealed himself. He was infuriated when he heard voices coming from the terrace and realised one of them belonged to Lord Vincent. What business did he have here? He crept closer, concealed himself behind a stout tree, and watched, cursing the interfering cove for taking such an avid interest in Miss Trafford’s affairs.

The boys were jumping all over him, begging to be allowed to visit the stud at Winchester Park. The forger seethed. If that request was granted then the forger’s plans would have to be put back a day. With every day that passed, Trafford made progress on the duke’s portrait, making its destruction that much harder to orchestrate. Even so, he had no option other than to wait and hope. Passivity did not sit well with the forger—he was a man of action—but he owed his success to patience every bit as much as he did to his own astuteness. In the end that trait was rewarded when Sheridan took his leave and the boys dragged themselves into the house with obvious reluctance, presumably for their lessons.

An hour later they came bounding down the path towards the pond, nets and jars in their hands—the tools of tadpoling. That damned dog of theirs was dancing around their feet, barking with excitement. The forger had forgotten about the beast, but would not permit it to interfere with his plans. He pulled his hat low and a muffler high enough to cover his nose and mouth, so that only his eyes were visible. The boys knew him but would not be able to recognise him, even if they did manage to get a look at him before he incapacitated them. He waited until both boys were leaning over the pond, flat on their bellies, bickering about the best way to catch tadpoles.

“You get the net ready, Art. I’ve got the jar.”

“No, I’ll do the net. I’m better at it.”

“All right then, but hurry. You’re frightening them.”

“You can’t frighten tadpoles…”

No, the forger thought, smirking, but small boys were altogether a different matter.

He would never get a better opportunity: the boys were totally focused on the tadpoles and the dog had disappeared into the trees. He crept forward and pounced, placing a hand on the back of each of their necks and holding their heads beneath the water before they could react to his presence. This was the delicate part. He didn’t wish to kill them; merely to render them unconscious so he could gag and blindfold them and get them away from Stoneleigh Manor.

The ultimate diversion.

He was obliged to let them up sooner than he had planned when something sharp sent a shooting pain through his backside. Damnation, the blasted dog had returned and bitten his buttock! The boys spluttered as their heads broke the surface of the rank water, weed and pond debris adhering to their hair and clothing. Before they could recover or catch a glimpse of him, the forger knocked their heads together with enough force to render them insensible. Then, kicking at the dog until he connected with its ribs and made it yelp, forcing it to crawl away from him, he blindfolded and gagged the twins.

Then he threw one boy over each shoulder and traipsed back to his hiding place.

Vince resisted the urge to call at Stoneleigh Manor again. He had no legitimate reason to do so, other than an overwhelming desire to see Nia. But, by failing to receive him in person the previous day, she had made it perfectly clear that her feelings did not mirror his own. He had stretched out his visit to the point of rudeness, hoping she would appear. He tried not to react each time he heard a light tread on the boarded floor immediately outside the drawing room door where he was received by Sophia Ash. Surely she would come eventually.

But Nia did not appear. Sophia implied she could not be spared from her grandfather’s studio, but Vince suspected that was untrue.

Facts needed to be faced. Nia was deliberately avoiding him.

Unused to being shunned by members of either sex, Vince struggled to understand why she felt the need to distance herself from him. Surely she understood his only desire was to be of service to her? Well, that was not precisely true. From Vince’s perspective, Nia Trafford’s name and ‘desire’ were words better not used in the same sentence. His behaviour had probably been inappropriate and he had frightened her off.

No
probably
about it, he decided, grimacing. Whenever they were together, her strong sense of duty warred with unconventional appetites she had been unaware she possessed—until Vince entered her life and brought them enthusiastically to life. Beneath his tutelage, she was allowing instinct to overcome her strong sense of duty: a situation which would not sit well with her because she was so determined to put her grandfather’s interests ahead of her own. When he was not there to distract her and she was at leisure to examine her behaviour she had undoubtedly come to that conclusion for herself.

Was it her own reactions she mistrusted if she found herself alone with him again, or did she imagine he could not be relied upon to behave himself? She had good reason to think that way, Vince conceded, but Nia was entirely to blame for his misconduct. He seemed to forget the rules whenever he was in her company and was overtaken by a capricious need to explore her sensuality. That her mere presence could make him lose sight of the gentlemanly instincts that came as naturally to him as breathing was as troubling as it was inexplicable.

But matters got worse. When he was not in Nia’s company he spent an increasing amount of time thinking about her, desperate to help her family out of a situation that was fraught with more dangers than they could possibly conjecture. The forger would not be easily deterred. He had found a lucrative means to line his own pockets and nothing, no one, would stand in the way of his ambitions. How he could be so sure, Vince could not have said. All he did know was that Nia and her family were in a vulnerable position—a position that was already being assaulted from two sides simultaneously if the forger and the theft of the sketches were not connected, which he thought they most likely were not. Vince fully intended to protect the Traffords, regardless of the fact that they had not asked him to do so.

All in all, Vince’s conduct with Nia was a source of acute discomfort to him. He had crossed the invisible line that he and all his brothers had been at pains to remain securely behind, and he had done so because the attraction he felt towards Nia transcended all common sense. But she did not know that.

Was it any wonder that she sought to avoid him?

He saddled Forrester himself and set off from the Park at a brisk canter with no particular destination in mind. He simply needed to clear his head and somehow rationalise his behaviour. After a flat out gallop across the common, he slowed Forrester as he got closer to home again, wondering how the devil he was supposed to put right his friendship with Nia when she was purposely avoiding him. Deciding whether he actually wanted to right it was another matter entirely. He had not anticipated such a difficulty ever arising, thinking himself immune to every feminine wile, every attempt to lure him into…into what precisely? Society ladies had a duty to make good marriages. Vince and his brothers knew it and were in a constant state of awareness lest they got caught off guard by a pretty face. But Nia had not tried to lure him into anything at all. She hadn’t even flirted with him.

Vince shook his head as realisation dawned. He wanted Nia because she didn’t appear to have any particular interest in him—except when he was kissing her, that is—and kissing her was the one thing he absolutely should not make a habit of. Nia’s apparent disinterest was as refreshing as it was challenging. That’s what all this was, Vince decided. A delightful challenge coupled with an overwhelming urge to be of service to a lady in distress.

Returning to the Park after an exhilarating ride, Vince handed Forrester over to a groom and wandered towards the stud. One subject he was absolutely clear upon: he did not want Nia to go off and live in Ireland. The thought of not seeing her again caused him acute physical pain, but was he prepared to compound his bad behaviour by putting his own interests ahead of hers? Besides, under what possible circumstances could he ask her not to go?

There was one obvious answer to that question: an answer he was not yet ready to consider. Or was he? One of the most decisive people he knew, for once Vince did not know his own mind. Nia Trafford had a lot to answer for.

“Are you lost?”

Vince looked up at the sound of Amos’s voice, and grinned sheepishly. He had been wandering about with no clear sense of purpose, giving Amos good reason to sound amused.

“Just taking the air.”

“Which is why you and Forrester came thundering in here like you were being chased by the hounds from hell.”

Amos probably sensed Vince’s discontent and was inviting his confidence. Vince wasn’t ready to share his muddled thoughts: he would not know where to begin.

“How are the youngsters coming along?” he asked instead, referring to the yearlings Amos had started lunging, with the help of the Trafford boys.

Amos clapped Vince’s shoulder. “Come and see for yourself.”

The brothers spent a pleasant half-hour looking at the yearlings and discussing their progress. They were interrupted by the sound of hooves pounding up the gravel driveway.

“Hello,” Amos said, looking up. “Someone is in an even greater hurry than you were.”

Vince scowled, an unsettling premonition gripping him when the horseman got closer and proved to be Nia’s brother. “What the devil?” he muttered.

Trafford jumped from his horse’s back before he had even brought it to a halt. “Lord Vincent, Lord Amos, are my sons here?” he asked breathlessly.

Vince and Amos shared a bewildered glance.

“No,” Vince said, anxiety taking a tighter grip. “I assume they have gone missing again, or you would not be asking the question.” Trafford nodded. “Have you checked Compton?”

“I rode through the village before coming here. No one has seen them.”

“What happened?” Vince asked.

“We did an hour’s lessons this morning, then they went off tadpoling. When they didn’t appear for luncheon, we instigated a search.” Trafford shook his head. “When I left Stoneleigh Manor they had not been found, although people are still scouring the grounds and that situation might have changed.” He swallowed several times. “I found their tadpoling equipment abandoned beside the pond, but no sign of them.”

“And you hoped they might be here,” Amos suggested.

“I heard them begging to come back to the stud with you when you called before, Lord Vincent. Nia and I thought they might have found a way to sneak through the trees.”

“There is a track that leads through the woods to this estate,” Vince said pensively. “But I doubt whether the boys know if its existence.”

“We made use of it as boys ourselves when we wanted to leave the place undetected,” Amos added. “It is a shortcut into Compton. But I doubt anyone has set foot on it for years now. It’s probably totally overgrown, but I will get someone to check anyway.”

“If it is there,” Trafford replied. “I would not put it past my boys to have found it. They excel at mischief.”

“I will come back with you and help you to search,” Vince said without hesitation.

“I’ll arrange for that track to be looked at and then tell Zach what has happened,” Amos added, striding towards the house. “I’ll get him to arrange for a party of his men to help scour the woods.”

“Thank you,” Trafford said tersely. “I am very much obliged to you.”

Vince ran to reclaim Forrester, his mind occupied with just how distraught Nia would be. The thought of her being overset was totally unacceptable, and Vince vowed to find the boys no matter what it took.

***

“Annie, what the devil do you think you are doing?”

Annie had clearly not heard Nia enter her grandfather’s sitting room. She started violently at the sound of her voice and the dagger fell from her hand, clattering harmlessly onto the wooden boards of the studio floor. Her eyes were round with a combination of vindictiveness and fear. Nia realised at that moment that she had never entirely trusted Annie—according to Hannah she was slow and lazy when it came to the execution of her duties—but she had never once doubted her loyalty.