Page 20 of The Duke’s Suspicion

He contented himself with muttering, “Preposterous.”

“She’s done nothing, then, to arouse your suspicions?” Whitby prodded.

Quickly, he shook his head. Too quickly. Despite the dimness, he thought he could see Whitby’s skeptical expression.

His mind seemed determined to shy away from the evidence before him. He forced it to the fore. An apparently chance encounter in the abandoned cottage. A guest caught wandering in a part of the house in which she had no business. Her spectacular departure from dinner, which, if she’d succeeded in getting away alone, would have provided the perfect opportunity for her to explore while every other guest was occupied for hours. And then, of course, there was her journal…

Her journal. Of course. He could almost feel its worn cover in his hand. Why in God’s name hadn’t he looked into it when he had the chance?

A servant’s muted tap at the door interrupted his mental checklist. “Come,” he barked, uncertain when he had got to his feet.

Armitage, the butler, stepped into the room with a tray extended. “A letter for you, Your Grace. From Mr. Davies. He did not wait for a reply.”

Tristan’s fingers closed around the cold, damp rectangle of folded paper. Armitage nodded sharply, tucked the tray beneath his arm, and left. Without waiting to be asked, Whitby rummaged for a spill and set about touching it first to the fire, then to the candles along the mantel and atop the desk. Soon the room blazed with light from which no print, even the most crabbed, could hide.

Still, Tristan held the letter perilously close to a flame, close enough that a little hiss of steam went up from the paper. What did he hope to find within? Some plausible explanation for Miss Burke’s behavior? An excuse to send her away?

My Lord Duke,

With deepest apologies for the delay, I write to tell you that Kevin has returned from what was, in the end, quite a perilous journey. The River Kent has overflowed its banks, sending water along every stream, crevice, and path it can find. The bridge at Kendal is washed away, but the old toll-keeper informed him that not long before its collapse, a crested carriage accompanied by a baggage coach made it to the other side safe and sound. The two conveyances must have belonged to Miss Burke’s family, as they can by no means be found on this side of the river. However, the destruction of the bridge means they will remain quite out of reach for some days and regrettably must continue without knowledge of her safety. As you requested, word was left at Endmoor against their return.

Your obedient servant,

W. Davies

“What news?” Whitby stood too far away—deliberately so, Tristan understood—to glean the letter’s contents.

With a twitch of his fingers, Tristan touched the paper to the flame. Despite the damp, it caught. When smoke began to curl into the air, he tossed the letter into the fireplace, where it soon disappeared into ash. “It seems my guests—all of them—must resign themselves to the hospitality of Hawesdale for the foreseeable future.”

However long it took for him to unmask a spy.

Chapter 8

When the thunder began to rumble once more, Tristan rose and walked to the window of his bedchamber, though the sky was still too dark for him to watch yet another storm roll in. No gleam of light caught his eye. All of Hawesdale was asleep—even the villain who meant to expose his secrets, endanger countless British troops, and rip from him the only meaningful work he had ever done.

Once the sky had lightened to an ominous gray—he could not bring himself to call it dawn—he rang for hot water and thumbed through his clothes, rejecting three coats before selecting one of such dark blue it might have been black. The perfect accompaniment both to the weather and his mood.

As he ascended the stairs to breakfast with his sister, he ticked off each guest, once more weighing his suspicions. Almost to the schoolroom door, he came to the final set of facts Whitby had laid before him, and the most damning: Erica had close ties to known traitors with French allies, and her excuse for wandering in the vicinity of Hawesdale could be neither proved nor disproved while the rain continued.

Unless her journal held a clue…

“Thank you, Miss Chatham. I’m most obliged.”

The last voice he had expected to hear this morning was Miss Burke’s. He knew, of course, how much could be gleaned from an overheard conversation. But it would mean behaving like a spy in his own home, and he had always made it a point never to think of himself as a spy.

Silently, he rocked back onto his heels, out of the swath of light from the partly opened door, into the shadowy corridor.

“For such a small service, gratitude is hardly necessary.” He had imagined the governess to be a young woman, but the voice belonged to someone well beyond the middle years of life.

A moment’s quiet. For whatever reason, Miss Burke did not seem eager to leave the schoolroom. “I hope you find yourself fortunate in your pupil, Miss Chatham. Lady Viviane seems a clever girl.”

“Too clever, sometimes, for her own good.”

The governess’ reply drove all thought of catching an informant from his mind. Miss Chatham’s words were creased with the sort of prim disapproval that would crush Vivi’s spirit. Tristan drew a deep, quiet breath.

Miss Burke laughed. The sound was strange, however. Sharp. Almost humorless. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I was sometimes such a pupil myself, Miss Chatham. Why, on occasion, I surely spent more time concocting schemes to avoid a lesson than I would have spent completing it.”

Miss Chatham found nothing amusing in the younger woman’s response. “You defied your governess?”