Page 39 of The Duke’s Suspicion

The Duke of Raynham was a thief.

Rational thought urged her to speak to him in a low voice, prompt him to drop the book and leave.

Pure instinct ripped a scream of betrayal from her lungs.

She freed herself from the tangle of bed linen and leaped to her feet, racing toward the door. Tristan, frozen in surprise, did not protest when she ripped the journal from his hands and flung it back toward the bed. “How dare you?” she demanded.

“Miss Burke, I—”

His explanation, his excuse—whatever it might have been—died on his lips. Up and down the corridor, beds creaked, footsteps pounded, doors rattled. Up and down the corridor, voices rang.

“What was that?”

“Who—?”

“Is someone hurt?”

“I think it came from Miss Burke’s room…”

In another moment, the corridor was filled with people and candlelight. Mrs. Newsome, who had been bustling toward the disturbance, skidded to a stop and stared in horror, scarlet from the ruffled edge of her nightcap to the high collar of her flannel dressing gown. Lady Easton Pilkington, by contrast, was deathly pale. Lord Beresford and Lady Lydgate, suspiciously late to the party, whispered to one another behind her raised hand. Captain Whitby alone did not press forward, but clung to the shadows beyond the nearest sconce, his expression unreadable, his arms folded across his chest. Self-consciously, Erica imitated the pose and recollected belatedly the diaphanous quality of her borrowed sleepwear. Cool night air penetrated the thin fabric and swept along her flushed skin.

From the chamber across the way, Caroline emerged last of all, her eyes awash with something that looked suspiciously like amusement. But it could not be, could it? For there they stood, the center of a circle of otherwise disapproving, disbelieving stares, Erica in a rumpled nightdress and Tristan in his shirtsleeves and stockings, bright spots of color high on his chiseled cheekbones. They would hardly have been worse off to have been caught in flagrante delicto.

Caroline’s lips pursed, and again Erica had the distinct impression she was fighting back a laugh. “Oh,” she said when she had mastered whatever impulse had distorted her lovely mouth.

Tristan, too, was battling some emotion, but it was assuredly not laughter. A muscle ticked along his jaw and his eyes flashed, putting Erica in mind of the way lightning pierced storm clouds, momentarily shifting the sky from black to deepest blue and back to black again. He glanced first at Caroline, then turned toward Erica—no easy task, as his spine appeared to have been replaced with an iron rod, his posture so rigid that even his complete uniform, were he still wearing it, would have been unequal to it.

“Miss Burke,” he began, and this time, nothing and no one interrupted him, although Erica felt certain the words he spoke now were not at all the words he had intended to speak two minutes past. “It seems I have the honor of asking you to be my wife.”

She understood, suddenly, Miss Pilkington’s impulse to giggle. Or perhaps that alarming bubbling sensation in her middle presaged something a bit more dire. Either way, she clamped her jaw tight against it. No, no, no. Nothing made any sense. She was the one who spoke wildly, whose thoughts moved with the jerky leaps and wobbly steps of a spring lamb. Tristan was all cool logic and order. So why was he spouting nonsense now? Why wasn’t he explaining to all these people, herself included, the reason he had come to her chamber in the middle of the night? He certainly hadn’t compromised her. At least, not in the traditional sense, though when she thought of her journal in his hands she felt undeniably violated. And earlier in the evening there’d been the kiss…well, kisses…but surely even a high stickler like Mrs. Newsome wouldn’t require such a dire punishment for mere kisses. And punishment it would be. Of the worst sort. For both of them. Imagine…her, a duchess?

And he was imagining it too. Of that, she had no doubt. While she stood there, not speaking, some of the cold fury in his aspect leached away, to be replaced by something very like panic. Probably he was forcing himself to contemplate the years ahead, saddled forever with an unsuitable woman, when he might have had Caroline instead.

A noise grated in Erica’s throat then, too rough and too loud to be a laugh. Frankly grateful that only sound and nothing more humiliating had burst forth, she notched her chin a bit higher. Oh, what would her sister say when she heard what had happened? Even though nothing had happened, really…

Except that for some inexplicable reason he had tried steal her journal.

“Miss Burke?” he prompted, for all the world as if he had asked a serious question requiring a considered answer.

“A Thiarna Dia,” she muttered.

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you, ma’am.” Not even a glimmer of humor. His voice slid along her spine like icy raindrops.

“I most certainly will not marry you,” she said, crisply enunciating each word so that everyone within earshot could hear. And before he or any of the assembled company could recover from the shock of either their discovery or her refusal, she stepped backward into her chamber and slammed the door between them.

Chapter 13

Erica awoke to a tap on her door, surprised to discover she had slept at all. The morning light had a distinctly grayish cast, as if the sky had not yet made up its mind whether the day was to dawn wet or dry. Something firm and sharp-cornered was pressing into her ribs, and when another soft knock came, she raised herself from the bed enough to discover she had collapsed atop her journal.

She rolled onto her back, brushing tangled hair away from her face and rubbing her knuckles into the thin, salty crust of dried tears at the corners of her eyes. Probably some servant, ordered to retrieve the finery that had been loaned to her and then send her on her way in her mud-stained pelisse. Perhaps if she simply ignored the knocking, she’d be left alone, walled into the chamber and never spoken of again. Perhaps that was how one actually died of embarrassment.

“Go away,” she muttered, not quite loudly enough to be heard in the corridor.

“Miss Burke?”

The duchess’ voice, so unexpected, brought her to her feet. After fumbling to free herself from the bed linens, Erica closed her fingertips around the cool, heavy silk of the dressing gown and drew it about her as she stumbled toward the door. When she reached it, the Duchess of Raynham was lifting her hand to knock again. The Laurenses, even by marriage, were a persistent lot.

Erica made herself open the door wide and invited the duchess into the room with a sweep of one arm. No sense in staging another scene in the corridor for all to hear. And why else would the woman have come but to rail at Erica for having schemed to trap her stepson?