“Do you really think men are irrational, Cleopatra?”
“I do. Most men are merely little boys in big bodies, prone to foolish games, overindulgence, and occasional cruelties toward friends and strangers alike.”
“Little boys . . .” Diantha drew in a long breath. “Do you recall the wedding of Lady Katherine and Lord Blackwood at Savege Park?”
Emily turned her emerald eyes from the painting. “Yes.” She had a way of looking at a person like she was thinking hard, always a small crease between her brows above the brim of her gold spectacles.
“The night of the wedding my stepsister held a ball. I wasn’t yet sixteen, but I dressed in my prettiest gown and went to the party. It was splendid, the music and ladies and gentleman all from town dancing so beautifully. No one took notice of me, of course, and eventually I went out onto the terrace.”
“I wish I had joined you. I don’t care for dancing, but Kitty is a particular friend, so I must have danced that night.”
“That night I wanted to dance more than I wanted to breathe.”
“Intriguing.”
Diantha smiled slightly. “The terrace was empty, so I danced by myself. Then a group of young men came outside and saw me. I’d known most of them for years—they were all local boys—so I asked if any of them would like to dance. I knew a lady mustn’t do such a forward thing, but I was so filled up with the music and thrill of the wedding day I didn’t care about the . . . rules.”
“Did any of them oblige you?”
“They said they would never wish to dance with me, even if there weren’t other girls around for miles. They said I looked like a sheep all white and spotty and round, and they made rude gestures. I shouldn’t have minded it, really.” Except that shortly before her mother left home, she’d called her round as a sheep. “But I cried, right there as they were laughing at me.”
“They were disgusting. I am astonished they were guests in Lady Savege’s home.”
Diantha shrugged. “They were normally all right. But that night they were quite drunk.”
“Miss Lucas, a man whose tongue goes astray when he is drunk is not a worthy man when he is sober. But it is true, strong spirits make idiots and cads of men.”
“All men?”
Lady Emily lifted her slender brows. “Know you an exception?”
“That night, when those boys said those horrible things . . .” Diantha twisted her fingers in the string of her reticule. “Mr. Yale rescued me. You are acquainted with him, I think.”
“Somewhat.”
“He was drunk that night too. But he helped me.” From the shadow of a tree beside the terrace where she hadn’t known he stood, he’d heard it all and come forward. “He told them to go away, and they did. Then he behaved with great gentlemanliness toward me.” He asked her to dance and became, irrevocably, her hero.
Lady Emily seemed to consider. “Perhaps a man must be cruel in his heart to be cruel when he has been drinking spirits.”
“Have you seen him?” She shouldn’t care. With Tracy’s pronouncement it didn’t matter anyway. But fear had begun to niggle at her, the specter of Mr. Eads never far from her thoughts. “Lately, that is. Here in town?”
“No. Have you?”
“I saw him several weeks ago. He assisted me with some trouble I was having. I had lost my maid on the road, and he helped me. He saw to the hiring of a traveling companion for me and escorted me to”—a magical place where she wished she were still, despite all—“my family.”
Lady Emily turned her attention to the painting. “I haven’t the least doubt of it, Miss Lucas. You see, several years ago he assisted me in a difficult situation as well. I was having trouble convincing my parents that I did not wish to marry where they chose. Mr. Yale pretended to court me so that the direction of their hopes would shift away from the other gentleman.”
“He
did
? And did you— Did you . . . ?”
“Did I what?”
Diantha could not ask what she wished. Emily was a noblewoman, four years her senior, and a bluestocking, after all. There was no telling if she still retained her virtue. Diantha certainly hadn’t been able to spend a handful of days with him without eagerly abandoning hers.
“What I mean to say is,” she managed, “you must have been pleased with the courtship—pretended or not—of such a gentleman.”
Emily’s emerald eyes took on a studying look. “My parents ceased insisting I marry their crony.”
“But didn’t they then want you to marry Mr. Yale?”
“Yes. But he charmed them so thoroughly they barely blamed him when his suit came to naught.”
“Oh. They blamed you.”
She smiled, but her gaze still seemed to consider Diantha carefully. Her hair sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the window. Lady Emily was wealthy, but she was not a sophisticate like her friend Kitty, nor a beauty. She nearly always had a book in hand, and even now carried a catalogue of the gallery exhibit. And Diantha had never heard her gossip, except now.
“Did he—” she ventured. “That is, I expect that he admired you greatly.”
“He was remarkably kind to me. But no, I do not believe he admired me in the manner you suggest. I think he felt responsible for me, although I never understood why, which of course brings us full circle to my original comment concerning the irrationality of the male sex.” She opened the catalogue. “Now, Miss Lucas, I have exhausted my patience for speaking about men today. I hope you won’t mind if we turn our conversation to a more edifying topic.”
Diantha knew already that she had been a responsibility to him. But here was proof.
He rescued girls
. As he had tried to tell her, it was simply what he did.
W
yn went to Yarmouth, traveling north and east as swiftly as the filly could bear. It was madness; he was remarkably unwell. Molly Cerwydn’s medicines continued to relieve some of his illness, but without the remedy of Diantha’s body there was only craving again. If Duncan Eads appeared on the road, he was done for.
But Duncan would not appear, he knew. For all Diantha’s talk of the Highlander’s honor, if Duncan truly wanted him he would have taken advantage of his weakness at the abbey. Men of action did not wait upon the convenience of girls.
He rode until he reached the coast and the castle sitting upon its cliff high above the ocean, all sandstone and turrets and imposing medieval majesty. The porter swiftly ushered him into the central courtyard and bid him to His Grace’s withdrawing room to wait.
Wyn declined, handed over the filly into the groom’s hands, and without looking back rode from the place and put miles between him and the duke before nightfall. He could not fulfill his promise to a living woman if he held to his promise to the girl he had killed. Regret for his misdeed must finally be put aside. With her determination and compassion, Diantha had shown him this. She had turned his life upside down. But now that he was not to be hanged for killing royalty, he would do what he could with that life, beginning with his estate. The abbey was a lucrative property. It had only been his guilt that prevented him from living on its income. It deserved his attention, and he must prepare it for a new mistress.
During his absence Mrs. Polley had gone to the village and harangued the locals into thorough mutual dislike. But the meals she cooked compensated for alienating the people he’d known since childhood, and she managed the returning household staff with grumbling efficiency.
“I am grateful you remained, Mrs. Polley.”
“A grand gentleman shouldn’t be in the kitchen, now, sir.”
“You did not think I was so grand a fortnight ago.”
She scowled and waved him out of her realm. As he was packing his bag for the journey to London, two letters arrived.
Dear Mr. Yale,
I received your letter and read it with great interest, alongside the two other similar offers for my stepdaughter’s hand put before me in the past sennight. Unfortunately I can promise you nothing. Thrice before I attempted to engineer my daughters’ marital prospects, without the smallest degree of success; each of the three are now wed to men I did not choose. Fortunately I like these husbands well enough, and so will leave it to Diantha to determine her future marital bliss. In the end the Female Will shall always prevail anyway.
I wish you the best of luck. Do be aware that her brother, Sir Tracy Lucas, is her legal guardian and must be applied to for approval rather than I.
Sincerely &c.
Charles Carlyle, Baron
London
The other letter, penned on unadorned stationery, came from the unlikeliest of quarters: Lady Emily Vale. Within minutes Wyn saddled Galahad and set off on the road to London.
“A
h. Beauty and wit in one small chamber. It’s good to be back in London.”
Standing before a filing cabinet, Lady Constance Read whirled about, her vibrant blue eyes wide.
“Wyn! You have returned.” She thrust out her hand and he bowed over it. Her smile that turned intelligent men to blithering idiots glowed.
“If I had known you would be the first lady I saw when I returned to town, I would have returned quicker.” He’d been disappointed in the first call he paid. At Savege’s house the butler informed him that Diantha was expected to be out for some hours yet. So he had come here to the Secret Office to find what he could.
Constance squeezed his hand and laughed. “You are a rogue, but you hide it well behind lovely flattery, as always.” Her gaze flickered up and down him. “You look remarkably good. Where have you been?”
He bowed. “I am honored, madam.”
“And . . . ?” She turned back to the filing cabinet. Daughter of a duke, Constance was received everywhere. She used this popularity in her work for the Falcon Club. “Where . . . ?”
“I went to see a man about a horse. But I suspect you know that already.”
“I am still jealous Colin assigned the task to you. Is Lady Priscilla as beautiful as they say?”
“More so. Our august
secretaire
would have sent you, I suspect, if he thought you enjoyed cards, brandy, and scantily clad working girls.”
“I see. But you retrieved her successfully, it seems, without too much distraction.” She threw him a glance of mild interest.
Wyn wasn’t fooled. Golden-haired, voluptuous, and an heiress, she was any man’s fantasy. But years ago he had learned that Constance Read’s reasons for joining the Falcon Club—and remaining in it after her cousin, Leam, quit—were none he wished to explore.
“Were you that jealous of me, Con?” He wandered to the desk in the modest whitewashed chamber. Sparely furnished, with a single portrait of the old king on the wall and one barred window, the Secret Office looked nothing out of the ordinary. But within filing drawers that lined the walls were stored every letter from every informant in the British Empire that had ever reached London successfully. Most of that correspondence had never been read. “Would you have liked the assignment yourself, or are you busy here with more interesting business?”
“Oh, this is nothing.” She shuffled through the file before her. “It was only that you were absent for so long. It should not have taken you over a month to retrieve a horse and deliver her to the duke.” Her gaze passed over the papers, but unfocused. “Really, Wyn—”
“Dear Constance, why don’t you put that down and ask me what you wish to ask me? Then we might move past it and speak of more pleasant matters.”
She pursed her full lips and peered at him closely. “You did not go directly from the house party to Yarmouth.”
“Do you know, you are especially beautiful when you are piqued. Would that I could pique you more often.”
“How do you imagine I learned of this most unusual detour of yours?”
He sat back against the desk. “I am as ignorant as the next man. Unless, of course, the next man is Colin Gray.” He crossed his arms. “What have you two been up to?”
She met his gaze for a long moment. Then she sat down in the office’s single chair and draped a hand airily over her brow. “I cannot tell you. If I did, then I would have to kill you and that would ruin my gown, bloodstains being what they are.”
He tsked. “It is far too lovely a gown for such abuse, s’truth.”
She dropped her hand, her face now devoid of play. “Wyn, I was concerned about you. I am still concerned. You have been so little in touch with us for too long, even when you are here in town. And even with Leam. Will you remain in London for a time?”
His friends imagined him hell-bent on self-destruction, and perhaps he had been when last he’d seen them. But no longer.
“Colin is about to dismiss me from the club, you know.”
“I don’t think so. When you did not return immediately he would not send anyone to find you. He said you would appear when you wished and that I should trust you. He has great faith in you.”
“He did not send anyone after me because he wishes to discover whether Lady Justice truly knows my identity.”
“You heard about that already?”
“I have been back in town at least three hours, my dear.”
She shrugged. “Believe what you will about Colin’s motives. But I know you will believe that this past fortnight since Leam came to town he has been in a perfect stew. I think it’s about you, but he won’t say.”
“The poet is all dramatic anguish when he wishes to impose his notions of rectitude upon another.”
Her laughter filled the little room with music. Then abruptly her amusement faded.
“Why were you gone so long, Wyn? Is Leam displeased with you for a particular reason?”
“If you wish to know your cousin’s feelings on the matter, I recommend you apply to him, my dear. Now, as much as I am delighted to again be in your company, I have a task to accomplish this afternoon and few hours in which to do so.”
She stood and came to his side, bringing with her the scent of white roses. Her bosom brushed his sleeve. “I am happy to see you,” she said softly.
“Constance, your sweet seduction will not stir me into unwarranted disclosures,” he said without looking at her. “I am better at this game than you.” With all but one dimpled girl. His friends did not recognize him because he had become, in fact, unrecognizable, guided by his mind as always but now no longer ruled by it. And . . . he liked it this way.
“You are heartless.” Constance leaned her cheek upon his shoulder. “I adore you.”
“I am eternally yours.”
“You never were,” she said sweetly. “And now I think you never shall be.”
He swiveled to her. “What precisely am I intended to gather from that?” he drawled while the heart he supposedly lacked beat a quick tempo.
“Only that Colin has a letter for you to read. But I shall leave that to him.” She went to the door. “If you depart from London again without telling me, I vow I will send someone after you. Or perhaps I will simply follow you myself. Colin has confined my work to town, but if you cross me again in this manner I will become a wandering hunter like you, and like my cousin and Jin used to be. I vow it.”
“Your vow is my bond. Now, leave, dearest lady.”
The door clicked shut. He drew the bolt and returned to the file resting atop the drawer. At the top a clerk had scrawled
Davina Lucas Carlyle, Baroness
. He opened the file and read.
“Y
ou made it all up?” Diantha sat behind a potted plant in a corner of an enormous ballroom bursting with guests from its cascading entry stairs to its beveled terrace doors. An orchestra’s bright notes leaped into the air, the murmurs and laughter of conversation mingling with the wafting aromas of perfumes and colognes, champagne and melting beeswax.
Teresa sat beside her on another embroidered gilt chair, her short, flaming curls sparkling with tiny pearls laced into a white net that matched her snowy white gown. She nodded somberly.
Diantha shook her head. “I imagined
some
of it embellishment.” And she had discovered that some of it was enormous understatement. “But . . .
everything
?”
Teresa’s eyes were pretty round lily pads. “Not everything,” she allowed. “Annie told me stories of her amorous escapades with footmen and stable hands.” Her fingers tangled together on her lap. “I merely told those escapades to you as though they had happened to me.”
Diantha felt astoundingly ill. Regret had nothing to do with it. “But why would you do such a thing?”
“Why didn’t you write and tell me where you were?” Teresa retorted. “After Annie returned to Brennon Manor, I suffered an agony of guilt for having assisted you in leaving. I would have sent my brothers searching for you but they went off hunting with Papa. I could not tell Mama, of course. She would have gone into an instant decline. But more importantly, I knew you would never speak to me again if I revealed you. You’d made me promise not to!”
Diantha peered at her friend.
“I would not have easily forgiven you for betraying me, it’s true.” She reached for Teresa’s hand. “I’m sorry I did not write. I was . . . busy.” Busy throwing herself at a man who had lied to her all along, as her mother had for years, and as Teresa had too. But perhaps she was overly primed to see such lies as betrayal.
Teresa’s eyes welled with tears. “I think I may weep with relief. Di, I am so very glad you are well.”
“Dear T, don’t cry here. And forgive me, please,” she whispered, knowing she should be begging forgiveness of another person as well, a man who had worried over her just as Teresa had.
“You are here, safe and sound. You are forgiven.” Teresa’s lips wobbled into a smile. “Now will you tell me of your adventure? You did not go to Calais, I must assume, for your mother is not restored to your family.”
“I did not go to Calais. I went . . . Oh, it’s too long a story to tell now. Let’s save it for later.” Or never. How could she tell Teresa
this
? “Now you must tell me about your time in town so far. Has it been wonderful?”
“All my mother speaks of night and day is finding me a husband as quickly as may be.” Her brow pleated. “But in the three days since she and Aunt Hortensia have been taking me about, I have yet to be introduced to even one gentleman with whom I should be inspired to do the sorts of things Annie does with the blacksmith’s son.”
Diantha’s cheeks warmed. They never had before when Teresa told stories. But now she knew what it was to share that sort of intimacy with a man. Everything had changed.
“Actually,” Teresa whispered, “I kissed one gentleman.”
“You did? After I left Brennon Manor?”
Teresa nodded. “He came to visit my brothers before they went off hunting and I felt so guilty that I’d lied to you about all that, so I let him kiss me.”
“How did you find it?” Thrilling.
Delicious
.
“Unpleasant.” Teresa’s brow creased beneath her coppery locks. “His mouth was wet and he said I had a very large bosom.”
“You do have a very large bosom.”
“He said he liked that about me the best and that he wanted to touch it.”
“He sounds like a nincompoop.” The sensation of Wyn’s touch was indelibly fixed on Diantha’s skin. She could not forget it, no matter how tangled her feelings about him. “But now you know he is no gentleman and you should not allow him to court you.” She was a thorough hypocrite. But Wyn
was
a gentleman. He was also a man, and he had said he needed her body.
Teresa sighed.
“There now.” Diantha patted her hand. “We will arrange an introduction to the most handsome gentleman here tonight and your bosom will charm him instead.”
Teresa’s sigh became a giggle, which was Diantha’s intent. She glanced beyond thick palm fronds to the ballroom bubbling with elegant ladies and gentlemen. “There must be any number of eligible bachelors here.”
“It is the ball of the season. Aunt Hortensia says that Lady Beaufetheringstone decorated everything with gold to celebrate the new king, and black since we are still mourning the old. But rumor has it that the black swags are not really for the old king but for the travesty of a trial that our new king has imposed upon the queen for infidelity. Of course everybody says Her Majesty is innocent.”
“Oh. Yes.” She hadn’t heard. Or if she had, she hadn’t paid attention. Every day it grew increasingly difficult to attend to gossip. A fortnight had passed and still Wyn did not come to London. Either he had lied to her about intending to marry her, or Mr. Eads had gotten him. Her stomach churned.
“Di, you don’t look well.” Teresa tugged her to her feet. “Let’s find a glass of lemonade for you.” She stepped out from behind the plant and Diantha slammed into her back.
“Oh!” Diantha caught her balance. “I beg your—” She looked over Teresa’s shoulder and her lungs folded up and placed themselves before her windpipe like a door. She choked.
Teresa’s eyes were round. “It is
him
.” This said in a weak tone that suggested awe for a deity.
But the man standing alone by the French windows, gaze fixed on Teresa, was not a deity. He was a bulky Highlander with suspicious blue eyes and a penchant for tossing ladies about when he wished them to do his bidding.
Diantha hadn’t imagined Mr. Eads could clean up so well. His long dark hair was pulled back in a queue, and he wore evening finery atop with a plaid kilt, stockings, and shining shoes below. But he was still very large, he was still an assassin, and . . .
if he was in London, Wyn might be too.
The notion was a combined joy and agony.
“T, come away,” she whispered, but the music drowned her voice and Teresa wasn’t listening. She and Mr. Eads stared at one another as though there were not four hundred other people in the place. But his gaze was not now suspicious. It was as wondering as Teresa’s. Then with the neatest movement, as though he were indeed a gentleman, he bowed. Teresa swayed forward.
Diantha grabbed her arm and propelled her through clusters of guests into the depths of the crowd.
“What on earth do you mean, ‘It is
him
’?” She drew her friend to a halt at the edge of the dance floor.
“What?” Teresa blinked ginger lashes.
“You said, ‘It is
him,
’ Are you acquainted with that man?”
“He bowed to me.” She looked dazed. “He must like my bosom.”
“Don’t be silly. All men like bosoms.”
The sense came back into Teresa’s face. “Now wait just a moment. You said that I would meet a handsome gentleman tonight who admired
my
bosom.” She craned her neck to look back toward the terrace doors. Mr. Eads was still staring at her. She released a little breath of pleasure.
“A
gentleman
.” Not an
assassin
. Diantha twisted her fingers in her skirt. “You see— Oh, good heavens.” Her heart raced. She could not lie again, especially not in these circumstances. Never again. “T, I must warn you—”