Page 58 of The Duke’s Suspicion

By God, it was as if someone had handed her a script. Tristan managed to nod.

“And have you got what you wanted from the girl now?” the other lady demanded.

He set his teeth into the soft flesh of his inner cheek to fight down the grin that seemed determined to rise to his lips. “Not quite. It is my hope—” He pretended to break off, as if he feared he’d said too much.

True to form, Lady Lydgate was ready to coax the details from him. “Have you some plan to catch her?”

It was his turn to send a surreptitious glance around the room and lower his voice. “I’ve been expecting an important packet from my colonel, and I have hopes that with this change in the weather, it will be delivered today. Rather tempting bait to leave lying around tonight in…say, the library, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Official military correspondence?” Caroline’s eyes were wide with surprise, her lips creased with disapproval. “I should think you would not wish to risk—”

He heaved a reluctant sigh. “I know what you are about to say, Miss Pilkington. But I cannot expect to catch someone as clever as Miss Burke—oh, she is clever, have no doubt about that—with anything less valuable. Now,” he added, looking from one to the other with his sternest expression, “I must ask you not to say one word more of this.” Such a request would ensure that Lady Lydgate, at least, would retail the rumor far and wide. When his gaze fell on that woman, however, he found that she had anticipated him. She squeaked. “Ma’am? You have not already…?” He raked his eyes over her face, studying for signs of guilt.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she insisted. “Although…it’s just possible Sir Thomas might have overheard what Higgs said to me while she was dressing my hair. And, well…I did mention it to the earl when we passed in the corridor just now… And come to think of it, Mrs. Newsome was leaving her chamber as Lord Beresford and I were speaking, and she does seem to take a rather untoward interest in our conversations, so I suppose she could have overheard…”

Excellent. That was very nearly every guest accounted for, except Caroline’s parents. Unfortunately, he did not take her for a gossip.

“Well,” he said, unbending slightly toward Lady Lydgate, though not so much that she would doubt his sincerity, “I suppose it won’t do any harm, so long as that’s as far as the story goes.”

“The essential matter, I gather,” Caroline put in, looking thoughtful, “is that Miss Burke hears of the delivery of the letter without learning what you suspect.”

“Precisely. And that should be an easy matter to convey. Over dinner, perhaps.” A step in the corridor drew his notice before he could say more. He looked up to discover Whitby entering the breakfast room with Tristan’s stepmother on his arm.

David’s handsome face, carved in a deep smile as he laughed down at some amusing remark Guin had made, froze. Gradually, it melted into wariness as he watched Tristan, apparently expecting a confrontation. But over what? Whitby’s treatment of Erica? His proposal to the woman Tristan was supposed to marry? Or the possibility that he was in fact the spy?

Tristan nodded coolly and tried not to think about how many plots the two of them had hatched together, or what Whitby might say when Lady Lydgate spilled the “secret,” as she undoubtedly would. Nodding to them both, he said, “I wish you good morning. Regrettably, I cannot stay.” A flicker of concern crossed Guin’s face, but he pretended not to notice.

In the corridor, he paused only long enough to hear Lady Lydgate say to Caroline in a carrying voice, “I for one suspected something from the first. Don’t you, of all people, recall her behavior that first evening?” Caroline made some inaudible response, to which Lady Lydgate replied, “Pishposh, my dear girl. You heard what he said. It’s hardly spreading gossip. Why, I daresay the tale might even serve to amuse your poor sick mother.”

And Caroline, who must at that moment be desperate for something to divert either or both of her parents’ attention, said with a bit more firmness, “Perhaps you’re right.”

He pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and flicked the catch with his thumb. Half past ten. By the dinner hour, every person under Hawesdale’s roof would surely know of the expected packet and the plan to use it to catch a spy. He snapped the watch shut again and set off to send Mr. Davies a note.

He was not quite to the study when he saw Armitage bearing down on him from the opposite direction, accompanied by the man himself.

“We’ll met again, Mr. Davies,” Tristan said as Armitage bowed and excused himself, his mission accomplished. “I was just on the point of sending you a message—”

“To enquire about the state of the farms?” Davies finished for him as Tristan showed him into the study. “Dreadful, Your Grace. Dreadful. ’Tis glad I am that you’re here now.” The strength of his Scottish burr grew with his agitation. “’Twill make it easier to learn your wishes about repairs and the like, and quicker to get the work done.”

Earlier, as he’d stood looking out the sitting room window, Tristan had imagined the devastation that must lie just beyond his view. Now, he thought of how blithely he’d once dismissed the importance of his role as duke in making things right again. He nodded, half expecting his man of business to berate him soundly for his ignorance, his arrogance. Whatever happened tonight, he understood at last how much he was needed here too. He had a decision to make—a decision that had once seemed simple, but which grew more difficult with every passing hour.

Thankfully, Davies was not the sort of man prone to waste time in recriminations. “But I’m forgetting what brought me,” he said as he reached into his coat and withdrew a stack of folded parchment. “No word yet on Lady Ashborough’s return. But the mail coach came through Endmoor late last night. I wanted to get these to you as soon as possible, in case there might be important business in’t.” He held out the handful of letters.

Tristan took them without any particular interest in their contents. Until he saw a familiar hand on the outer sheet of the one uppermost. He blinked to clear his vision and looked again to be sure.

The letter had been sent by Colonel Zebediah Scott.

Chapter 18

Having been left alone by Remington as he went about his gossip-mongering, Erica had spent the rest of the morning in a dream-addled sleep that did little to make up for the night before or to prepare for the night ahead. Again and again, she saw Whitby’s leering face accuse her; now, however, he was joined by the whole leering company, pointing and laughing and saying they had always suspected the worst, while Tristan stood to the side, arms crossed over his chest, and declared in her defense that such a shatterbrained creature could never be a spy.

In the afternoon, she made up her mind to visit the conservatory. Why should she squander an opportunity to study and sketch, merely because of what else had transpired beneath its glass roof, the competing memories of Whitby’s words and Tristan’s kisses? Clutching her journal and a freshly sharpened pencil, she pushed herself across the threshold. It was just a room.

Under the sun’s brilliant rays, the glasshouse fairly steamed. Absent the clatter of rain, she would have been willing to swear she could hear the sounds of growing and blooming and ripening, an erotic symphony that filled her ears and her mind with the groaning, aching pleasures of the night before. Groping in the pocket of her sturdy work apron, she found the cotton wool, stuffed it in her ears, and worked until the pages of her journal were limp.

At last, when the sun was low on the horizon and the trickle of sweat down her spine had left her chilled, Remington came into the room, bearing a folded, unsealed note.

Swiping the back of one dirty hand over her damp forehead, she reached with the other to take it from him. The trap is set. When you come to dinner, it read in a bold, dark hand—Tristan’s hand, behave as if nothing has changed.