Page 63 of The Duke’s Suspicion

When Tristan bent to lift his sister in his arms, he fixed Erica with feverish eyes, long past fatigue. “Don’t forget the note, love,” he said, his voice low, more seductive than a whisper.

Suddenly Erica was alone again in the library, its book-covered walls illuminated by the flickering light of Remington’s abandoned lantern. A moment before, she had been considering whether it would be altogether too indecorous to curl up on the sofa and sleep right there. Now, however…

She pulled the folded paper from her bodice and sat with it on her palm for a long while. Apprehension swept through her, and excitement, and— Flooded with all the possible things the note might contain, both good and bad, her mind bounded from one idea to the next and her pulse began to flutter to keep up with its frantic pace.

“Oh, just read it.” Her voice, loud in the quiet room and slightly breathless, cut through the clutter of her thoughts.

Rising, she approached the desk, unfolded the note, and laid it flat in the lantern’s light. The decisive strokes of Tristan’s pen leaped to life and danced across the page. Why, it wasn’t written in English! What on earth…?

Then she remembered he’d described it as a coded message. And she recognized the code. Her code. How quickly he’d mastered it. In the upper right-hand corner of the little square of paper, he’d drawn a circle and filled in half of it. A half-completed task. And beneath that, he had written a line that might have appeared on a certain list in her journal…if she’d dared.

For defiance, an hour in the conservatory with Dk of R—

A tremor of excitement passed through her. Surely, though, after all that had happened, he didn’t mean tonight?

But she’d seen his burning eyes, knew that strange energy when a discovery drove sleep away. And when she recollected the circumstances under which the note had been given, those moments in the darkness, the touch of his hand and his whisper against her lips…

She folded the note again and, as Mr. Remington had done, opened the lantern to expose the flame and set the paper alight. When that single, scandalous line was reduced to ash on the hearth, she picked up the lantern and made her way to the conservatory.

Chapter 19

When Tristan looked through the small window in the door of the conservatory and saw Erica, calm eased into his veins, the first calm he had experienced in hours. She’d come. She’d stayed.

She was striding between the rows of tables and talking animatedly as she did so. Occasionally, she would pause, gesticulate with her hands, then shake her head. Quickly, he scanned the room for the person to whom she spoke. Mr. Sturgess, perhaps, though the hour was late. But he saw no one else. As he watched for a moment longer, he could draw no other conclusion than that she was talking to the plants.

At the sound of the door opening, she stopped and looked up at him. He gave her a wry smile. “Do they make any answer?”

For a moment, she looked bewildered at his question. Her lips formed the word who? before lapsing into an echoing smile of chagrin as she glanced about her. “None that I have been able to make out.”

He took a step closer. “That’s probably for the best.”

She made no move to close the remaining gap between them, and he did not press her. “I was debating with myself whether I ought to return to my chamber,” she said quietly. “Whether you would come.”

“I said I would.”

“But you didn’t say when. I’ve been telling myself it was only my foolish hope that you meant tonight…” She trailed her fingertips through a mound of glossy green leaves and set them trembling. “You must be exhausted.”

“Yes.”

“Furious.”

He considered for a moment, wary as always about admitting that heated emotion. “Frustrated, I should call it. I blame myself for not assessing the situation more carefully. But when I think about what Pilkington did, what he might have done…” He nodded. “Yes. Furious.”

At last she ventured closer, though still separated from him by the breadth of one plant-covered table. “I can wait. This”—she flicked one wrist, gesturing from herself to him, unwilling to assign a label to whatever stood between them—“can wait.”

“I cannot.”

Something flared in her eyes—surprise? excitement? trepidation? What an astonishing variety of emotions he had seen written there this past week, both light and dark.

Surrounded by greenery, her coppery curls springing free in the warm, damp air, she was like a wild thing in her element…and yet, not. For when all was said and done, the conservatory was only a simulacrum of nature. He remembered once, when he was a very small boy, a bird had found its way inside that pristine garden and then been unable to find its way out, trapped by glass walls that offered only the illusion of freedom.

“Will you sit?” he asked, tipping his chin in the direction of the orange trees. A genuine question. He knew she too was tired, yet she radiated that peculiar energy that had driven her through the storm the afternoon they’d met. The last thing he wanted to do was try to contain it. Try to contain her. But he was dangerously close to vaulting across the table, gathering her into his arms, and spouting poetry—flower poetry, if that was what it took to win her.

With a nod, she turned and made her way toward the iron benches. He followed and seated himself beside her, determined to keep a proper distance between them.

To his surprise, however, her hand crossed that divide and reached for his. Her fingers were cold despite the warmth of the room.

“You forgot frightened,” he said after a moment. “In your list of the things I have been feeling tonight. I have never been so frightened in all my life.”