I’d been so hopeful when I’d mounted Scout a few weeks ago, so certain everything would easily go according to my plan. I had been a naïve whelp.
“Mrs. Wickerton,” Brookhouse piped up, beaming at the woman across the table. There was something in the way he raised his voice and the timbre of it that set my instincts on edge. If I’d been riding Scout in the army, my hand would be on my saber. “I’m afraid I’ve been keeping a secret.”
Miss Blackwell, Harriet, Mr. Howard, and Davis glanced up from their plates. We all knew what this was—it was finally time Brookhouse paid the piper. But the grin on his face didn’t look like the kind a man would wear when he was about to do something unpleasant. And with Brookhouse, that didn’t bode well.
Mrs. Wickerton froze mid-chew. Her eyes locked on Brookhouse and stayed there. Then she chewed as quickly as a rabbit and swallowed hard.
“Well.” She gave a little cough into her hand. “Secrets aren’t typically good things, now, are they? They fester.”
Brookhouse nodded as if she said something extremely wise. “That’s exactly what I was thinking, which is why I feel I should tell you mine.”
Mrs. Wickerton leaned forward, her hands busy in her lap, no doubt reaching inside her reticule for the little book she kept there.
Brookhouse smirked directly at me. My hand went to my side, but there was no saber there to steady me. I narrowed my eyes at him, but we were both retired on half-pay. He didn’t actually have to do what I wanted, and the smirk on his face showed me exactly how happy he was about that. “Captain Calder fell ill on his way to this house party and was saved,” he paused for dramatic effect, “by a mysterious woman in white.”
The table went silent and I forced myself not to turn toward Miss Blackwell. I could not look at anyone. My face was certain to betray me. Miss Blackwell had assured me her parents wouldn’t spread the word about that night, nor would they force a marriage because of it.
I thought she’d underestimated the scandal such news would bring, but I also trusted that she knew her parents best and that she could be right.
But that was before Mrs. Wickerton became involved and before I discovered I’d kissed her.
If General Blackwell interrogated me about what happened in that croft, he would see my guilt from a mile away, and Mrs. Wickerton would follow it like a bloodhound with a fresh scent.
A court-martial would be too good a punishment for Brookhouse.
Actually, his was a face I could look at. He wouldn’t see guilt in my eyes and I didn’t care if he saw murder.
He was waiting for my glance with a smirk and a shrug. Trust him to make certain his forfeit wouldn’t actually harm him.
But he didn’t know who he was harming.
“Mysterious?” Mrs. Wickerton sputtered. “Why mysterious?” She glanced first at Brookhouse, and then at me.
“She wasn’t mysterious,” I said gruffly.
“Then who was she?” Mrs. Wickerton asked. “Did she fetch a doctor?”
“They were alone,” Brookhouse said, almost joyously.
“Only by happenstance. She is someone who helped me out of kindness and I would rather not impose on her any further by trying to discover more about her when she asked me not to.”
Mrs. Wickerton’s eyebrows rose and her mouth, which was small to begin with, practically disappeared into her face. “She asked you not to discover her identity?
Blast. That was a mistake. Miss Blackwell was at my side—my eyes wanted to find hers as desperately as a man might crave finding water in the desert. But I held firm to Mrs. Wickerton’s gaze. “Perhaps that was only my assumption.”
“Where and when was this, exactly?” General Blackwell leaned forward to look at me, his deep, gruff voice commanding the air. I clutched my fork so tightly it might snap in half. General Blackwell wasn’t a simpleton. He knew his daughter had spent a night alone during that storm. He’d given her a blasted gun to protect herself. But at least Brookhouse hadn’t mentioned the time or the location.
I was going to pummel Brookhouse for this. The second we left this room, hopefully with Miss Blackwell’s reputation still intact, I was going to pull Brookhouse into a corner and make certain that careless mouth stayed shut. “It was near my estate.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. After all, near was a relative term.
Brookhouse furrowed his eyebrows and opened his mouth as if he were about to contradict me. I kicked Miss Blackwell’s leg softly under the table, hoping she would understand my meaning and kick Brookhouse as hard as she liked.
She must have, for he started, and then wisely kept quiet.
“You are a fine young man, Captain Calder.” Mrs. Wickerton pointed a gnarled finger to her book. “Page eighty-seven,” she reminded me. “If this woman lived near your estate, she would have heard of you. Perhaps the whole situation was a trap—a scheme to ensnare an obviously successful young man.”
I blinked at her assumption that a young woman would be able to control not just the weather, but a bout with the ague. “I’m quite certain that wasn’t the case. In fact, I might have dreamed the entire thing.”
Mrs. Wickerton shook her head. “We cannot assume such a thing, not when your memory of her is so vivid.”
