As they all rose and lamented Vee’s uncanny talent for gambling and fleecing them for every coin no matter what the card game, Diana took her time leaving the table while Giles insisted all the other ladies leave before he did. Within seconds he had returned, patting down his coat as if he had left something behind and closed the door.
“I had a couple of visitors this morning.” Straightaway he began to pace, raking an agitated hand through his dark hair ashis cheerful, flippant, festive mask dissolved. “Gervais and his son.”
“Your uncle Gervais? The kidnapper?”
“The very one and guess what? He knows. He has a letter that proves my mother wasn’t the duchess, and he intends to use it to claim the dukedom and everything that goes with it.”
“What did the letter say?”
He stopped pacing only long enough to shrug. “Who knows? I didn’t see it.”
“Who is it from?”
“I don’t know that, either. All I do know is that I am convinced they don’t know who or where my mother is.” He told her everything about his morning. What was said, how it was said, how it was left. All the while his boots ate up the floor like a man possessed, his expression so devastated it broke her heart. Once his tale was told he finally stopped and his whole body slumped in defeat.
“I just wanted more time. Was that too much to ask? I assumed if I fixed things at Harpenden, then I could hand it over and wish my successor well, safe in the knowledge that I had seen everyone right first, but now…” He huffed and sagged against the wall. “Now I am more frightened for the estate and its tenants than I ever was when the duke was at the helm. Gervais will run it into the ground. Rinse it for all it is worth. Dalton called him malevolent, and he is right. The badness shimmered off him, Diana. It was so tangible a presence it felt solid. Even his own son is terrified of him.”
“Then we need to stop him.”
“Dalton said that, too. Said I owed it to my people to protectthem from that lying lobcock.” He shook his head. Laughed without humor. “How pathetic is my situation that I have resorted to taking Dalton’s advice all of a sudden?”
She smiled a little, too, as her hand brushed his arm in sympathy. “What’s a lobcock?”
“Despite my scandalous, illegitimate, un-aristocratic roots, I am still too much of a gentleman to tell you.” Bleak despondency replaced the familiar but brief mischief in his eyes. “What am I going to do?”
“We beat Gervais to your mother.”
“We?” He closed his eyes for a moment as if she had said something profound. “And how dowefind her? I’ve searched everything both in Shropshire and at the duke’s house here, and I cannot find a thing.”
“That’s because you do not know what you are looking for.”
“And I suppose you do?”
“Not yet, but I will—I promise.” Her mind was whirring now. “I’ll need to start my search in your father’s things before I rattle all the Sinclair skeletons. But there is every chance you might not like what I find, Giles.” Such an investigation was too close to home for her not to be nervous of the outcome. “I feel I need to prepare you for that. When you kick hornets, some sting.”
“I am doomed already, Diana, and I would much rather a friend rattled the truth from those damn bones than a foe.”
If she could rescue him she would. Right now if she were able—but thanks to Christmas, she couldn’t. At least not without arousing suspicion. “Tomorrow? First thing? I could meet you in the duke’s house in Grosvenor Square.”
“Thank you.” He reached for her hand. It was a friendly gesture.Yet seemed so much more because neither of them severed the potent contact and just stared.
“Didn’t I tell you they were having another moment?” At the sound of Olivia’s voice they jumped apart to find both the older woman and Vee grinning at them from the doorway.
“I dropped my favorite stickpin and Diana found it.” Giles tried to brazen it out, but her guilty blush gave them away. “I couldn’t see it for looking. Perhaps I need spectacles like you, Vee? Do you think they would suit me?” He wafted a hand in the air near his face. “I suspect they would give me an air of gravitas that will make all the ladies swoon even more than they do now.”
“What do you think, Diana?” With a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth expression, Olivia deftly turned the tables. “Would you swoon more over Giles in spectacles, or would they make no difference?”
“It would make no difference to me either way, as neither would induce me to swoon over him.”
“Then perhaps a kiss would.” Her wily blue eyes were triumphant as they glanced up at another looming ball of mistletoe hanging above their heads. “It’s dreadful bad luck not to kiss under the mistletoe—unless you have already… in which case you can ignore it.”
The gauntlet was down, because they both knew she was caught between the devil and the deep-blue sea, as either answer would result in a day full of ribbing. Trapped, she picked the lesser of two evils and pulled a face as she nudged Giles and pointed to her cheek. “Get it over with or we’ll be hounded all day with this nonsense.”
“Be still my beating heart.” He rolled his eyes at Olivia andher sister. “What hot-blooded male could refuse such an enthusiastic invitation?” He turned to her, the usual mischief suddenly dancing in his dark eyes. “But Giles Sinclair never shrinks away from a challenge. Prepare to swoon, Diana.” Before she could argue, he tugged her into his arms, dipped her backward, and kissed her like he meant it.
Chapter Nineteen
She arrived at the duke’s silent house the next morning with Dalton, cloaked and smuggled through the servants’ entrance for propriety’s sake. Giles had never been more relieved to see anyone in his life.
