Page 55 of The Duke’s Suspicion

Tristan turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the man over his shoulder. “You have experience in such matters, do you, Mr. Remington?”

“Oh, things have come up. Now and again.”

“He’s very trustworthy,” Erica interjected. “And clever. Why, this past spring, he helped Lord Ashborough—”

“Whisht, Miss Erica. His Grace won’t care about that.”

Tristan had heard countless men praised for their honesty and bravery. Remington’s laconic reply told him more of what he needed to know. Too few, in his experience, knew when to keep their mouths shut. “Perhaps,” he said, turning his back on the rugged, sun-kissed landscape, “the rumors are only that: rumors. Perhaps there never was a spy.”

“You don’t believe that.”

The confidence with which Erica contradicted him ought not to come as a surprise. And as she had a habit of speaking hastily, he also knew he ought to exercise caution in drawing conclusions from what she said. Still, he could not help but wonder whether he was slipping, losing the essential ability to mask his thoughts. Or whether, as he feared, the mask was still firmly in place, but she now possessed the ability to see through it.

“Whether I do or not, Miss Burke, it does not change my decision. I cannot allow Mr. Remington to run such a risk on my behalf.”

Her eyes blazed like cut topaz. “Then I’ll do it.”

“Miss Erica—”

“No.” He spoke more softly than Remington, but he had no fear of making himself heard.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because I—” He snapped off the first words that rose to his tongue, startled:

Because I love you.

He tested the idea like a man drawing his thumb across a blade to test its sharpness, knowing one careless slip would leave him with a wound. But even the possibility of pain—and it was real, for he doubted she would be eager to hear him make such a declaration—did not diminish the fierce truth of those three words.

“If I may, Your Grace.” Remington’s voice jerked him back into the moment. How long had he been standing there with his mouth agape, while they waited for him to finish his sentence? “You do not strike me as a hasty man. But another day or two of deliberation, and it will be too late. Now is the time to act, before the weather makes it possible for your guests to scatter. If the truth is uncovered, Miss Erica can be cleared of any wrongdoing before the gossip spreads beyond the walls of this house.”

Exasperation puffed from Erica’s lips. “I don’t care about—”

“I do,” Tristan said flatly. Despite all appearances to the contrary. With a wave of his hand, he invited both of them to sit before sinking with surprising weariness into a chair. What a hash he’d made of things. “Continue, Mr. Remington.”

“Miss Erica mentioned a Captain Whitby.” The man still sat with the straight-backed posture of a soldier that clearly conveyed he’d rather be doing than sitting. “I wonder if you are certain he’s not the culprit.”

“If he’s the real spy,” Erica interjected, astonished by the notion but obviously willing to consider it, “he had some nerve cornering me in the conservatory to accuse me of the crime.”

Though her words contained no details of the encounter, Tristan could easily picture it. A screen of leaves and branches for cover. A few well-chosen innuendos. A threat. As if it were a thing disconnected from him, he watched his hand curl around the arm of the chair. A loyal betrayal. The most perverse sort of contradiction he could imagine. Persuaded of Erica’s guilt, had Whitby imagined himself acting to protect his oldest friend? If so, he’d failed, for by frightening the woman Tristan loved, Whitby had earned his disgust and distrust instead.

That did not, of course, make him the culprit they were seeking.

Nor did it make him innocent.

“I believe it would be best if we proceeded without alerting Captain Whitby to our scheme,” Tristan said quietly. “Whatever it may be.”

Remington nodded once. “Understood.”

Silence reigned for some time as he considered how best to proceed. Every plan that presented itself, he dismissed as relying too heavily on evidence acquired from Whitby, the veracity of which he had neither the means nor the time to prove. Remington might be some help below stairs, but he was one man. A stranger. And Erica…

“Tell them all that Whitby was right about me,” she blurted out.

Of course she had been using those quiet moments to form her own absurd plan. “The hope, my dear,” he said, “is to reduce the speculation surrounding you, not increase it.”

At the wry edge to his voice—or perhaps the endearment—her eyes narrowed. “The hope is to catch a spy whose very existence is a threat to your work, and by extension a threat to us all. Is it not?”

To his right, Remington discreetly turned a snicker into a cough.