Page 68

Joshua’s brows drew together.

“You just said that the captain was—”

Frederick slapped him on the back. “My wedding present.”

“What?” Joshua shouted it.

“You’re as stubborn as our father, and every bit as wedded to black-and-white morality over the nuanced grays of real life. You needed to be shocked into sensibility.”

Joshua shook his head. “You lied to me? The captain is innocent?”

“I think so,” Frederick said unrepentantly. “I didn’t have had the time to politely shake you out of your fixed belief that your honor is more important than your wife.”

Joshua let the words sink in. “Thank you.”

“Livie will come to you unmarred by this charge of treason, as long as we can convince Cassio to confess. Somehow I feel certain that we can—or rather, that you can.”

“Did Oates-Plagitt tell you that I asked him to find Cassio?”

“Only after I asked the same thing,” Frederick said. “He’s waiting for us, just having let me know that he has rooted out Cassio’s abode with the help of our boot-boy, who is apparently a gifted spy. Perhaps you should take the lad off with you to war. And perhaps you should bring your sword.”

“You should have told me immediately!” Joshua caught up his coat from a chair and pulled it on. “Are we anticipating violence?”

“Hopefully not, but its blade does look as if it has whipped off many a head. Perchance Cassio will recognize he’s a character in Othello and disembowel himself. Though, again, I think it was Othello who took his own life, not Cassio.”

Joshua ignored his brother’s foolishness, walking to the corner of the room to pick up the sword he hadn’t touched since being wounded. Its hilt had a lion’s head appended to the body of a serpent; the blade itself was Spanish, with a slight curve. It settled into his palm with the comforting ease of familiarity.

He buckled on the scabbard, his sword’s reassuring weight settling on his right hip.

“Off with his head!” Frederick cried, with all the blithe cheer of a man who has never walked onto a battlefield.

Joshua nodded.

If this Cassio had committed treason, he deserved to lose his head.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

RANK TREASON: IN NOVELS OR REAL LIFE?

Livie collected herself enough to offer a polite greeting to the two elderly yeomen guarding the Tower, but it was left to Lord Devin to announce they meant to pay another visit to Captain Sir Tyron.

A light rain hung in the air, misting Livie’s face as they walked through the courtyard toward Beaumont Tower. She readjusted her bonnet to make certain that no rain touched her hair; that morning her maid had ironed her curls and then scraped them back from her forehead in a sleek line with no fashionable ringlets to be seen.

She was wearing an elegant yet somber gray carriage dress. Her fichu was snowy white and so modest that it brushed her chin. Hopefully, her appearance wouldn’t affront her father’s sensibilities.

She couldn’t help thinking that the captain would be furious on hearing her news. Rereading his letters had revealed a fact she had overlooked: he considered Cassio the son he wished he had.

He would be devastated by the man’s treachery.

He might not believe it, even given the evidence tucked in her reticule.

“If Mr. Cassio is in the chamber, I shall expel him before you enter,” Lord Devin told her as they approached Beaumont Tower.

Following his lordship up the stairs, Livie couldn’t catch her breath. The dripping stone walls seemed closer to her shoulders than they had been on her first visit, the miasma of sewage and mildew even more stifling.

“Is Mr. Cassio in attendance?” Lord Devin asked the guard outside her father’s cell.

“No, my lord,” the man answered, unbarring the door.