“So you see, Vee, you were quite mistaken that Giles and I were headed north for a tryst and you really are reading far too much in that silly mistletoe kiss to think we harbor feelings toward each other. As if I would swoon over anyone…” He winced at the hollow tinkle of her laughter. “And especially Giles. Anyone with eyes could see…” The toe of his boot pressed down on hers hard, but she had started, and seeing as Vee’s eyes had now narrowed toslits, it seemed prudent to finish. She could still fix this. She had to. “Well, to be frank, anyone with eyes can see there is no more a frisson between me and him than there is…” As she floundered for a metaphor, Giles slapped his palm to his forehead.
“For the love of God stop, woman, before you dig us both into a bigger hole!” He sighed and turned to Vee. “The truth is I am in huge trouble, Miss Vee.Hugetrouble. And because I need all the help I can get, I shall throw myself at your mercy and pray that you take pity on me.”
Then, while her baby sister gaped in shock, he confessed everything from start to finish. The only thing he omitted from the sordid tale was Diana’s role as the Sentinel. A noble omission she was determined to thank him for if she ever managed to snatch a moment with him again. Her romantic sister might have forgiven an attempted tryst and hidden it from the others to encourage a proper, chaperoned courtship, but she would bellow foul from the rooftops if she knew how dangerous her job at the newspaper really was.
“So, in short, I am not really the legal duke, and while I now know that my wise old solicitor thinks it unlikely I risk criminal charges for what was ultimately my father’s crime”—he glanced back at Diana, allowing her to see his relief that her sound advice was accurate—“he also confirmed that if Gervais can find proof of my illegitimacy that corroborates whatever is written in that letter, then I will be stripped of both my title and my lands. Worse, if he is correct, and no witnesses survive who can make valid testimony about his abduction of Lady Caroline Derbyshire, then the warrant against him will also be dismissed and there will be no legal impediments impinging on his custodianship of Harpenden. He shall be free to do with it as he sees fit.”
“Free to destroy it, you mean, with his reckless spending and hedonism!” Vee’s outrage was now all loyalty to their friend rather than the shocking, panicked lies Diana had vomited to protect him. “Diana and Dalton are right. We must do everything in our power to stop him. We need to find all the evidence of your illegitimacy and we must destroy it. It’s the only way to stop Gervais and protect the tenants on your estate.” For all her youthful naïveté, the youngest Merriwell was probably the smartest of them all.
The “we” had touched him, Diana could see, and his voice was choked when he took her sister’s hand.
“Ifwedo that, then we will be breaking the law, Vee. We would be perverting the course of justice by trying to find a way to suppress evidence to perpetrate a fraud—and for that we could all go to jail. Even if Diana wasn’t headstrong and stubborn”—his eyes flicked to hers briefly but shimmered with an emotion so intense, it made her breath hitch—“she is a grown woman, long past the age of majority, and she offered her help in full possession of all the facts. Insisted, in fact.” He smiled at Vee. “You, on the other hand, did not and you are still underage and legally the ward of Minerva and Hugh. You are here solely to protect your sister, and while that intention is admirable, you have also unwittingly put yourself in grave danger. If I give you my word not to lay a finger on her—ever—will you allow me to send you back home with Dalton so I am reassured you are well out of harm’s way? All I would ask is that you hold your tongue about where we are until somebody directly asks about it.”
Vee digested this for a moment before her blue eyes hardened behind her spectacles. “You expect me to cower in silence then feed you to the wolves the moment they bay at my door?”
“To save yourself from being tainted bymyscandal, yes, I do.”
“Then you are an idiot, Giles Sinclair, because that is not how families work.” Vee leaned across the benches to poke his shoulder with an outraged finger. “When I adopted you as my brother alongside Hugh, I did so on the full understanding that it came with certain caveats. One of those irrevocable caveats is that the Merriwell siblings always stand together against the world, no matter what.”
“Then I am afraid I am going to have to put my foot down, Vee, and insist that you go home.” Giles hammered on the roof and shouted to Dalton and the driver above to pull over, and determined dark eyes locked with two magnified steely blue ones. Both parties folded their arms. “I will not take you to Shropshire and that is that.”
“Then I will find my own way there and you shall have to forcibly evict me from your estate. And”—her sister’s chin lifted in defiance as she prodded Giles again—“I shall summon Minerva before I risk the footpads and dangers of the long road to Shropshire all alone, and then you shall have all three of us to contend with!”
“That is blackmail!” Giles glared at Diana, expecting her support. Vee did, too. She knew both of them too well to expect either to back down, so as the carriage slowed, Diana made a decision that she hoped she wouldn’t live to regret.
“If the worst happens, we shall tell the authorities that Vee knew nothing and was merely present as a chaperone—but frankly, Giles, as you said yourself, you do need all the help you can get.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
They made it to Shropshire close to midnight after three days of punishing travel where they stopped only to either change the horses or collapse at an inn for the night. Despite being in on the secret, Vee was still determined to be their chaperone, so Giles hadn’t had a moment alone with Diana since he left her in Hugh’s garden. Even tonight, with them all wilting from the exhaustion of thirteen full hours on the road, Vee had stood guard while the servants organized their rooms in case he got ideas. An irony that was not lost on him, because he had no shortage of ideas where the vexing second Merriwell was concerned. The ideas came thick and fast and with little encouragement. But he did not need a chaperone to stop him acting on them when the hopeless truth was incentive enough.
After complaining that he had arrived unannounced and with guests, Mrs. Townsend insisted on accompanying him to his bedchamber. “We had a bit of an incident, Your Grace.”
“If it is anything to do with another falling-out between you and Dalton, I do not want to know.”
“I wouldn’t trouble you with something so trivial, Your Grace. We had an intruder in the small hours of last night.”
“In the house?” Giles’s heart sank. He had expected Gervais would inevitably turn up here like a bad, prying penny, but it unsettled him to know that he had beaten him here.
“Thankfully just the grounds, but they attempted to get inside the house. Smashed a windowpane in the estate office.” Which meant that Gervais wanted to search the household accounts for the answers, too. “Fortunately, my room sits above it and I am a light sleeper. I raised the hue and cry and they fled but I have ensured someone is on watch ever since in case they return.”
An eventuality Giles did not doubt for a moment.
“Then let us hope that is that, Mrs. Townsend, and we have seen the last of them.” A forlorn hope Giles did not believe for one second now that Gervais was close, but he would spare her from the burden of the truth for now. The fewer people he embroiled in theDirty Secretuntil it became common knowledge, the better.
The housekeeper left him in his bedchamber with a roaring fire, a steaming washbowl, freshly turned-down sheets, and a plate of shortbread once the rest of the household retired for the second time. He ignored all to pace, and when he could stand pacing no longer he decided to check the security of the estate office, as he wouldn’t put it past his uncle to try again tonight.
As he approached the steward’s office, he heard the movement first before he saw a flash of light beneath the door as if someone had just lit a lamp, so he crept the last few yards to listen at the wood. There was a shuffle of feet. The sound of something being moved, so before he thought better of it, Giles burst in like a bull charging a gate. Hoping the element of surprise might be all that was needed to send his tenacious intruder packing again. Except it wasn’t Gervais he scared witless with his entrance, it was Diana,and she reacted by throwing the account book she was clutching at his head.
He ducked a split second before the weighty leather tome hit the doorframe and they both slumped in relief. Hers was short-lived.
“Idiot! You frightened the life out of me!”
In case she threw another book at him, Giles raised both palms in surrender. “I thought I was being burgled.” He pointed to the nailed wooden panel boarding the window. “Gervais tried to get in last night.”
“He’s here?”
“Who else would try to break into this office? There is nothing of any value here—apart from information. But it is interesting that it was this office he wanted to get into.” He gestured to the neat walls of ledgers and files of paperwork on the shelves surrounding them. Ledgers and paperwork that he had meticulously gone through, cleaned up, and organized since her last visit to this office two months ago. He picked up the book at his feet and scanned the date, then smiled when he saw it was the one for the year of his birth. “I take it you couldn’t sleep, either?”
