“For this,” he said. “For all of it.”
She found herself unable to answer.
A discreet knock at the door rescued her. The housekeeper, efficient as always, peeked in. “Your Grace. Dinner will be ready within the hour. Cook requests your approval for the sauce.”
Nancy rose, brushing crumbs from her skirt. “Of course. I’ll be right down.”
Oscar said, “Mrs. Tullock, I shall be dining in the main hall this evening.”
She blinked, startled. “Very good, Your Grace.”
He looked at Nancy, holding her gaze in a way that made her pulse leap. “The Duchess shall be joining me, of course.”
Nancy felt the color rise in her face. “Of course.”
Oscar nodded, then added, “We have matters to discuss.”
Nancy swallowed, not trusting herself to speak, the warmth of the room wrapping around her like a secret.
CHAPTER 16
“How did you know the twins’ mother before all of this?”
The question landed with an odd delicacy, suspended above the roast and the hissing candle as if Oscar had taken pains to set it there just so. Nancy regarded her knife, which was doing an admirable job of rendering the cutlet into insignificance.
“I suspected you would ask eventually,” she replied, not quite looking at him. “Though I half hoped you’d develop the knack for mind reading and spare us the conversation.”
“I do not claim any expertise in mind reading,” Oscar said. “Only in facts.” He sipped his wine, face carefully impassive. “I have seen the way Clara and Henry look at you. It is not the affection of strangers. Nor does it strike me as the regard for a distant cousin. I would like to know more about your relationship with them.”
“Must I?” Nancy picked at her bread, watching the crumbs collect in the gutter of the plate. She was stalling, and he knew it.
“You must,” Oscar said, with the smallest smile. “Otherwise, I will assume you are a spy.”
That broke the ice. “A spy? For whom?”
“Your mother. The House of Neads. The Peerage. I am flexible,” Oscar replied, gesturing vaguely. “But the truth would be preferable.”
Nancy glanced up. His gaze was direct but not challenging. She forced her shoulders back, straightened in the chair, and faced him properly. “Very well. The truth, then. Teresa was a maid in our house.”
Oscar’s brow shot up, but he said nothing.
“She was not an ordinary servant, though.” Nancy found her voice, a little shaky at first. “Teresa was brilliant. Not just clever, but… luminous. She had opinions about everything, often stronger than my own. When I was fourteen and she nineteen, we got into a quarrel about Aristotle’s ethics. I lost, which I have never forgiven her for.”
Oscar’s lips twitched. “You admit defeat?”
“I admit nothing,” Nancy said, but her smile was genuine. “But from that day, she became my closest friend. We did everythingtogether. I taught her Latin and French. She taught me how to sneak tarts from the kitchen without getting caught. She covered for me when I broke a window with a cricket bat, and I—” She stopped, catching herself before she could say too much.
Oscar leaned forward. “You?”
“I covered for her, too. Often. Especially when she began receiving secret correspondence from your brother.”
Oscar’s smile was gone. He was very still, a chess piece that had not yet decided whether to move or topple.
“Peter wrote to her?”
“Oh, constantly. Sometimes two letters a day. Most of them smuggled through the post at risk of getting us all sacked.” Nancy found herself almost laughing at the memory. “There were so many codes and misdirections you’d have thought we were plotting a coup d’état. Teresa would read his letters in the linen closet, and she would tell me—sometimes—what he said. Sometimes not.” Nancy folded her napkin into a narrow ribbon. “When they began meeting in secret, she enlisted me as lookout.”
Oscar blinked. “You were their accomplice.”
