“To Thistleton,” he answered, then added with a brief glance at Grace, “and new possibilities.”
She blushed, of course, and clinked her glass to theirs with a tremulous smile. “Cheers, gentlemen.”
“Cheers,” they replied.
T
revor was still thinking about Grace when he arrived in London the next morning.
He had stayed for nearly three hours the night before, chatting with the Kenwoods on the terrace. It was midnight when he had finally taken leave, making the drive back to London through the dark. The reverend and his daughter had been alarmed at his undertaking such a “dangerous” journey, but he had assured them he was used to such adventures.
Now that he was back in Town, the clamor, coal dust, and the bustling pace of the city could not have struck a greater contrast from his visit to the countryside. Instead of going home directly, he headed to Mayfair to tell Beauchamp about his purchase.
As he slowed his carriage to a halt before the handsome brick town house that had long been his friend and team leader’s bachelor residence, it still felt strange to him to be welcomed in by Beau’s new wife.
Sebastian Walker, Viscount Beauchamp, and the petite fey redhead, Carissa, had only been married a few months. Thanks to Nick (bastard), Trevor had missed the wedding.
“There you are!” Carissa pulled him fondly by his arm. “Everyone’s been wondering where you were!”
“I thought my days of reporting my whereabouts to the Order were done.”
“Never! Come in. He’s upstairs.”
Trevor followed Lady Beauchamp all the way up to the third floor, where he found his brother warrior in the process of packing his luggage. “Blazes, man, is she already throwing you out?”
Beau glanced over and grinned. “Well, look who it is.”
“Going somewhere?”
“I owe my wife a trip to Paris. We leave in the morning.”
“Oh, I can’t wait!” Carissa flitted over to Beau with childlike excitement. “We’re going to have so much fun! You are the best husband in all the world.”
“Don’t be surprised if I return bankrupt,” Beau drawled. “Shopping, don’t you know.”
“Now, now, you promised me a proper Continental holiday once all this business with the Order was finished,” she chided.
“Yes, I did. And you were actually patient, which was most unprecedented.”
“I beg your pardon!” she retorted, giving him a pinch.
“There, there, I’m only teasing,” he murmured, leaning down to plant a doting kiss on her lips.
Trevor looked away uncomfortably.
Never in all his days could he have imagined that a lothario like Beauchamp would end up an old married man before him.
“So, Trevor, you
are
coming to our bon voyage feast at Max and Daphne’s tonight, yes?” Beau asked him.
He hesitated.
“Of course he’ll come!” Carissa exclaimed. “He’s not going to see us for three months! Besides, Daphne always gives an excellent dinner party. All our set will be there.”
Trevor had a galling vision of five happy couples, each madly in love, sitting around the table—and him.
Considering recent events, it sounded excruciating.
Indeed, he’d rather take supper alone with Nick in his dungeon cell.
“Be there at eight. Formal dress is obviously not required.” Absently counting the linen shirts his valet had packed in his portmanteau, Beau glanced over and noticed Trevor’s taut expression.
A fleeting look of understanding passed across his face, followed by regret. “You know, Jordan’s wife, Mara, has a charming widowed friend named Delilah, whom we could invite on short notice to be your dinner companion—”
He scoffed and turned away while Carissa let out a gasp of sympathy. “Oh, Trevor, I’m so sorry! How thoughtless of us all! And here, you should have been with Laura. Yes, do please let us invite Delilah—she is very beautiful and witty—or even my aunt Josephine. She’s older than you, of course, but not by much. I wager you’d find her most intriguing.”
“See there?” Beau chimed in. “You have your choice of worldly, sophisticated women. So which do you prefer? Or shall we ask them both?”
“Do it, and I’ll kill you,” he replied.
Beau and Carissa glanced at each other in surprise, then both looked uncertainly at him.
Trevor gritted his teeth at their dismay. He knew they were only trying to help.
Still, it wasn’t helping.
“But you must come to our farewell party,” Carissa cajoled him in a soft tone. “What if our ship goes down? What if this is the last time you ever get to see us?”
“Carissa, honestly,” Beau muttered.
“Fine, I’ll come to the dinner to wish you bon voyage, but don’t you dare set me up with some strange woman.”
“Fair enough,” Beau replied in a tone that warned his bride not to argue. “So where the devil have you been, anyway?”
“Oh, wait!” Carissa interrupted. “Before I forget, we’re sending a package to Nick before we leave. We have some gifts for him. Maybe you’d like to include a short note?” Well aware that this was a sensitive subject with Trevor, she brushed a lock of auburn hair behind her ear and waited for his answer with a wide-eyed gaze.
He stared icily at the green-eyed viscountess. “What are you giving him gifts for?”
“Er, to make him more comfortable in prison. Won’t you write a line or two?” She offered him an open pad of paper and a pencil from the writing desk nearby. “I know it would mean a lot to him.”
“My dear girl, you
do
recall he shot you?” Trevor reminded her.
“Oh, that was an accident. He was aiming at him,” she said brightly, nodding at her husband. “Besides, it was only a flesh wound.”
Trevor scowled, but to humor her, he took the pad and paper and wrote in large block letters: DEAR NICK, ROT IN HELL, YOU BASTARD. HOPE YOU’RE ENJOYING PRISON. SINCERELY, YOUR HUMAN SHIELD.
He handed it back to her. She read it, tilted her head and gave him a sardonic look, then handed off his message to her husband.
Beau read it and laughed aloud. “Put it in the box,” he told her, nodding.
“I’m not sending this to him! The poor man’s in prison—”
“He’ll love it. Trust me. It’s better than icy silence, anyway.” Beau gave Trevor a knowing glance as he closed his portmanteau. “You know, Trev, it’s not like you to hold a grudge. I thought you already forgave Nick before they took him away.”
“That was before I found out the full extent of how he ruined my life.”
“Ruined your life?” Carissa exclaimed. “Isn’t that rather extreme?”
“He’s still blaming Nick for Laura’s defection,” Beau informed her with a shrewd glance at Trevor.
“Ahh,” Carissa said.
Trevor turned away, unwilling to discuss it, especially not in front of Beau’s little “lady of information.” Whatever he said, she’d likely tell the world. What sort of spy married a Society gossip, anyway?
Carissa always had her opinions, and once more, she chose to share them presently. “You boys need to make up and play nice again if you ask me.”
“I don’t think anyone did, Lady Beauchamp.” He arched a brow and leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
She frowned. “Come, you all have been friends since you all were children. If I can forgive Nick for grazing me in the head with that bullet, surely you can forgive him for using you as a hostage and locking you in that cellar all those months. It’s not as though he did it out of malice. He had no choice! Without you for a bargaining chip, the Order would’ve had their snipers kill him. You didn’t want him to die, did you?”
“Hmm,” said Trevor, then he glanced at Beau. “Do you tell her everything?”
“Oh, come,” she persisted, “you seem to be forgetting that when you were shot, it was Nick who saved your life.”
“And you seem to be ignoring the fact that by disappearing me, Nick cost me my fiancée! Not that it’s any of your business Lady Beauchamp,” Trevor clipped out. “but I had a very nice plan for my life all mapped out—oh, never mind. Why are you standing up for that blackguard, anyway?”
“He charmed her,” Beau explained.
“Figures.”
“Nick’s had a hard time!” Carissa insisted. “He doesn’t have a nice family or a fortune, like you two. He hasn’t been as blessed, you know.”
“Nor as wise,” Beau interjected.
“Nor as honorable,” Trevor agreed.
“Leave the poor fellow alone, Carissa,” Beau ordered softly.
Trevor leaned his head back against the wall, considering her words. “In theory, Lady Beauchamp, I could do as you say, I suppose. Forgive and forget and all that. But I think maybe he couldn’t stand for me to be happy.”
“That’s not it at all,” Beau scoffed.
“Really? Maybe he just didn’t want to be the last one left alone. So he did what he had to do to separate me from the lady I had always intended to marry. What do you say to that?”
“Well, Trev,” Beau drawled, “there’s ‘marry’ and then there’s ‘intended to marry,’ and these are two entirely different things.”
Trevor cast a baleful eye on the pair of Beauchamps ganging up on him. “Do you two want to know my news or not?” he demanded, pointedly changing the subject.
“Of course we do! What is it?” Carissa asked.
“I’m moving,” he announced.
Beau’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t tell me you accepted that position with the Foreign Office?”
“God, no.” He shuddered. “I’m never working for the government again. I bought a house in Leicestershire. Actually, a farm.”
Beau looked at him in astonishment, but Carissa grinned. “Farmer Montgomery?”
“You bought a farm?” Beau echoed.
“Yes,” he said wryly, lifting his chin. “An old, run-down, ramshackle thing. But it’ll be quite something, one day, by the time I’m through with it.”
“Aha, a new building project,” Beau said, looking pleased for him. “To take your mind off . . . other things, I presume?”
Trevor nodded. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he admitted. “You two will have to come and see it once you’re back from France—though I doubt if I worked round the clock for the whole three months you’re gone, I’ll have put a dent in it. The house is a good three hundred years old. It needs serious repairs.”
“Trevor, this sounds perfect for you,” Beau said. “Whereabouts in Leicestershire?”
“It’s actually near Lord Lievedon’s seat. The village of Thimbleton. Er, Thistleton,” he corrected himself.
Beau stared at him oddly—the piercing assessment of a fellow spy.
“What is it?” Trevor asked, wondering how much his face might have already given away.
“Any particular reason you chose that place?” Beau asked, almost in suspicion.
Trevor shrugged, but of course, all his thoughts were of Grace. “I just liked it. Lots of fertile acreage. Good views.”
“I see.” Beau nodded, and though he seemed to sense there were things Trevor wasn’t telling him, he did not press. “Well, times have certainly changed, haven’t they? I thought Nick’s going to prison was a surprise. But your moving out to the country . . .”
“And here you are, married,” he countered.
“He’s
entirely
married!” Carissa threw her arms around her husband gaily and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“Yes, I see that,” Trevor drawled.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, really,” Beau remarked, at which his lady smacked him.
Beau put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, laughing.
“Keep it up, Beauchamp. See what it gets you,” she warned him in a whisper.
“That sounds distinctly like a challenge,” he replied in a husky murmur.
“On that note, I think I’d better go,” Trevor said dryly. “If you’re going to force me to come to this dinner with all of you sickening newlyweds, I have to stop at home first. See you at the Rotherstones’.”
“Eight o’clock!” Carissa called after him as he turned and headed back out into the hallway to let himself out. “Don’t be late!”
“I’m never late,” he answered. On his way out, he nodded to Beau’s stiff old butler. “Vickers,” he greeted him, then he headed home.
His own bachelor lodgings were discreetly located on the third floor of a neat and unobtrusive brick building in Old Bond Street. The ground level housed a fashionable milliner’s shop, but his four-room apartment on the third floor was spacious and secure, and quite fine enough for any younger son. It was especially suitable for a man who was so frequently abroad. As a spy, he liked the presence of the shop’s customers, too. Their comings and goings helped to mask his own.
When he arrived, Trevor left his carriage in the mews, then walked up the stairs to the door of his rooms. He unlocked it and stepped inside. Closing the door behind him, he looked around, let out a sigh, and tossed his coat onto the nearest chair.
Once he began the work of tallying his belongings, he soon realized there was not as much to do as he had thought. He didn’t own all that much, for starters. His nomadic life as an agent had made him frightfully efficient and ingrained in him the habit of traveling light.
Sauntering through the rooms of his apartment, he calculated what he’d need to transport to the Grange. Not the furniture, obviously, but his clothes, his books, especially his architectural tomes, and certainly, his extensive collection of weapons. If trouble in the form of some half-forgotten enemy from his old life followed him out to the country, he meant to be prepared.
Nevertheless, after a brief assessment of his belongings, he believed he could be ready to pick up and move in less than two hours. Of course, there was the dinner party tonight. He wondered what Grace would have thought of his glamorous friends.
Glancing at the clock, he saw he had some time before he had to be at the Rotherstones’, so he went back out to the mews. He had long held a lease on a tack room in the old carriage house behind his apartment.
There he stored the large array of construction tools and equipment he’d collected during his last building project. He let himself into his storage room and spent some time refamiliarizing himself with every saw, wrench, and hammer like old friends. Just this simple task was entirely soothing to him, as much as his family might think him a quiz for it.
He smiled, though, musing to recall how his scatterbrained sisters had appreciated his innate tinkering skills back in the old days. Even as a boy, he had been able to fix nearly anything, his younger siblings’ broken toys, his mother’s broken jewelry, his father’s hunting musket, a flintlock that had become hopelessly jammed.