Edith Layton (8 page)

“Investigations of a private and delicate nature, I’ll have you know,” the other man said prissily, then grinned. “Aye, he’s a knowing one. So, when I found
out I was bubbled, I reckoned I might as well take a room at the White Hart. Anyway, my widow was tempting, and you know I’m no good with temptation.”

“You’re good enough if you have to be. But, ‘Anthony’ now, is it?” Christian mused.

“
Captain
Anthony Briggs, if you please, sir. Good, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Christian said. “The truth is it feels good just knowing you’re near. But we can’t stand here much longer. As it is, I’ll tell Murchison you and I spoke, because for all I know he’s watching us right now. I’ll tell him you came too close, and I lured you in and confronted you.”

Anthony ducked, and came up with his fists in classic boxer’s stance. “Want to pot me one, to show you meant business?”

Christian put up his own fists, then straightened, and smiled. “God, it’s good to see you! Stay safe, and watch yourself. But let me know if you find out anything. I’d like to have this settled in a matter of weeks, and I begin to think I can.”

Anthony straightened and gazed at him seriously. “And this Hammond cove? He seems right enough. But you want me to pursue that line of inquiry too?”

“No,” Christian said. “I think he’s what he appears to be—or at least, as much as I ever let myself believe anyone is. He came here thinking he’d get Egremont, but I don’t think he’d ever make a move to be sure of it. Though, God knows, he’s got enough good reason. Now he’s got nothing but a fiancée who could spit tacks because he may be cut out of the succession, and prospective in-laws who are looking at him twice
because he doesn’t look so fine without that title and estate. Anyhow, he appears to be lumbered with honor. Go now. Stay at hand. The game is sure to change soon, and I feel better for knowing you’re nearby.”

The tall man nodded. “As for me, I don’t sleep unless I know where you’re sleeping, and who’s nearby.” He hesitated. “You sent letters today. Did you get any or hear anything?”

Christian shook his head, momentarily looking troubled. “Nothing. So we still have time. I hope to have it all done before anyone hears a word. Then it will be too late.” He swung up on his horse. “Mount up and go first. I’ll wait at a distance and watch from afar.”

“And who will watch you?”

Christian threw back his head and laughed with genuine humor. “Why, everyone, old son. I thought you knew that. Everyone.”

Christian waited until the tall rider left the lane and watched him ride off into the distance. Only then did he steer his mount back to the highway, and when he reached it, he rode slowly, lost in thought.

It was all going according to plan, as he’d said. But he hadn’t told Anthony all.

Such schemes always invited the unexpected, he supposed. That didn’t mean he had to like it. He hadn’t expected Julianne Lowell. The problem was that he already liked her too much, and that complicated things. Women always did. In this case it wasn’t just her looks. He was used to pretty women because
women liked him. That had been one consolation in his life, child and man. Women civilized a man, his father had always said, and he’d found it true. Even the uncivilized ones did that. There was something about a feminine influence, however malign, that made a man feel more complete. His smile was crooked as he realized he’d known more malign females than good ones, but had cause to appreciate them even so.

On balance, he’d been lucky, he supposed. He’d lost his mother early on and had always longed for a female influence in his life, and had always gotten what he’d longed for, even in the most unlikely places and circumstances. Other men thought it was because of his looks or wiles. But he thought it was because women could tell when you really enjoyed their company. He did. A man could lie about almost anything and be believed if he was skillful enough, but never about how he felt about women. That was something that was part of a man, it showed no matter how he concealed his thoughts. He ought to know, he was very good at concealing his own, sometimes, even from himself. But not today. Because the thought of Julianne Lowell troubled him.

She fascinated him. With all the women he’d known, he hadn’t known many like her. Sophie was pretty and feminine, but manners and station aside, he could understand her because he’d met so many like her. Julianne was different. She acted like a lady, yet spoke to a man as directly as another man, which he could never forget she was not. It was a beguiling combination. The only women he’d known to act that
way had been those who had absolutely no interest in sex with men, either because of their advanced age or unusual personal preferences. But though she was straightforward as a man, Julianne obviously fancied men, and himself, in particular.

It showed in small ways. She couldn’t keep from glancing at him under her eyelashes. She ducked her head and fluttered her eyes to avoid looking directly into his when he looked back at her. It wasn’t flirtation. He knew what that was. This was more exciting because she couldn’t seem to help it.

Lord, he’d like to make love to her. He could have her, he thought, if he tried. He doubted she knew it. He had, from the moment they’d met. The thought kept nibbling at him. He thought her face was lovely, with those brown-gold eyes and that adorable mouth. He absolutely loved the look of her body; she really did have exceptionally fine breasts. He didn’t think she knew it either, and while that made his conscience twinge, it did even more to his physical parts. Though it was true he didn’t have much experience with respectable women, females were females, after all. He doubted he’d have much trouble bedding her. That wasn’t arrogance. It was simply his experience.

She was also smart, which he appreciated. And lonely, which drew him. And she trusted him, without knowing if she should. There was the problem.

He did possess a sense of honor. Much of it learned in dark places at great cost, yet nevertheless, a kind of honor. He knew it was wrong to corrupt the pure, not because the Bible said it, but because innocence of
mind or body was such a rare and fragile thing in his world.

Nor had women been included in his plans. But then she’d come on the scene. He hadn’t been able to ignore her since.

The horse slowed to a walk, and he didn’t notice.

Finally, Christian blinked and looked around. Had he lost his mind? He’d been riding without looking or thinking of where he was. What folly! Hadn’t he learned that if a man relied only on his five senses, he’d be butcher’s meat by evening? Yet that was just what he’d been doing.

He was worried about Julianne Lowell? How could he be sure she could even be trusted? She’d been sent to spy on him, she’d even admitted it. How much of what he saw of her was real, and how much was what she wanted him to see? Was he even certain
she
was who she claimed to be? He couldn’t trust anyone here. How could he have forgotten that? Madness.

But a fellow could certainly have a woman without giving her his trust. Whatever his own preferences, most men he knew did just that. He could find pleasure so long as he remembered to keep his head and watch his back. That was his first priority. He must never forget that, or his mission, or his present danger, ever again.

Christian spurred his horse to a gallop to clear his head and get back to the White Hart faster. The future would come, and if he could have Julianne Lowell as it approached, that would be fine. If not? He
wouldn’t worry about that. It was enough that he looked forward to seeing her tomorrow. He’d see what happened after that. He was tired of looking back. It was time to move on.

“I
’m not sure I approve this,” Hammond said, eyeing Julianne’s pretty gown and the prettier blush on her cheeks as she tied her bonnet strings.

“I appreciate your concern, Hammond. But there’s nothing to disapprove of.” Julianne closed her lips before she could add, “and it’s none of your business.”

“Nothing to disapprove of?” Hammond asked. “There’s a great deal, I think. You’re doing something that’s not done: going off by yourself with a strange man. A man, moreoever, who claims to be someone we can’t prove he is. And you say it’s nothing?”

And it’s your fiancée who’d kill me if I didn’t go, Julianne thought, not to mention the fact that I’d want to kill anyone who made me stay home now, after I’ve nerved myself up to go all night.

“He’s hardly likely to do anything disrespectful if he’s eager to prove he is who he claims to be,” she said. “And how can I find out anything if I can’t talk with him?” She hoped she didn’t ruin this perfectly reasonable statement with a giggle. But giggles kept bubbling up in her throat, and it was all she could do
to hold them in. She actually felt she was filling with fizzy air. It was ridiculous, and lovely, and a joy to feel this way after all her sorrows. Whatever else the advent of Christian Sauvage meant, she hadn’t felt this vividly alive for years.

Christian was taking her to see Egremont again today, and he promised he’d have a hamper of food for lunch. The sun was shining, and they’d picnic at Egremont, he said. She hadn’t done anything like it since she and Jon had been children. The prospect made her feel like a child again. The idea of being alone with Christian made her feel her own age—and excited to her eyebrows.

But Hammond was scowling as if he could see all the secret thoughts and longings she had tied up in today’s excursion, including the ones she hadn’t even admitted to herself yet.

“I know you must meet with him,” he said. “And I don’t think he’ll attack you. But I do think he knows how to charm and manipulate, and I don’t think you’re safe against that.” His honest face looked deeply troubled. “I argued against your going today, Julianne. I only ask you to remember, that as
I
am the one most directly involved in this, I don’t want you to sacrifice your comfort or safety in the push to discover the truth. We have other means of doing that, so you don’t have to go with him, and certainly not alone.”

“But everyone felt he’d be less guarded without a maidservant hanging on his every word,” she said. “Servants do listen, you know. They can hardly help it. I know the upper classes think they’re furniture,
but they’re not, and that’s not how I was brought up to think either. I wouldn’t feel comfortable making some poor girl sit there and pretend she was a tree while I talked and joked with someone. So this way he’ll feel freer, and who knows what will be said?” Or done? she thought on a spike of excitement that made her blush even more rosily.

Hammond noticed, or at least, he frowned again. “Well, if anything happens to upset you,” he said, “I want you to promise me you’ll come back at once. You may not have a maidservant with you, but I’m sending a groom, and he’ll be within calling distance at all times.
That
, I insisted on,” he added with emphasis.

Her spirits fizzled, just a little, but she silently conceded he was right. It was one thing to be daring, another to be foolish.

“Would you stop plaguing her?” Sophie asked as she came into the hall.

“I’m merely ensuring her safety,” Hammond said stiffly.

“No, you were trying to change her mind. I thought we were done with that.”

“
We
were done with it,” he said pointedly. “But
I
had never discussed it with
her
.”

Julianne frowned. They sounded like a much-married couple now, not like engaged lovers. When she’d come here Sophie and Hammond had been constantly smiling on each other. Now they were glaring and had obviously been squabbling. Julianne wondered how much of this particular quarrel had to do with her fate, and how much the growing possibility that Hammond might lose Egremont. If he did, he
might lose Sophie, too. Julianne didn’t know if Hammond thought, as she herself began to suspect, that Sophie’s love for him was dependent on his future fortunes.

As if to illustrate that, Sophie leapt to battle. “Oh, and so I suppose you’re willing to give up Egremont and the title if it will spare my cousin some discomfort? Lud, Ham, I didn’t think you such a fool.”

Julianne gasped.

Hammond’s face froze, and his ears turned brick red.

Sophie realized she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Ham,” she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. This whole thing has turned me topsy-turvy. Just the other week we were picking out new silks for the wall of the grand salon at Egremont, and now we don’t know if we’ll have to live”—her voice broke—“in rented rooms, instead!”

“I’m not as fabulously wealthy as the earl of Egremont,” Hammond said with awful dignity, “but I’d hardly ask you to live in rented rooms, Sophie. I think, though, that it would be best if we talked about that future now. If you’ll excuse us, Julianne?”

“I was just leaving,” Julianne said, and fairly flew out the door. It wasn’t the thing to wait for a gentleman caller on the doorstep, but she’d rather wait in boiling rain than stay inside a minute longer.

She was standing lost in thought, wondering if she’d witnessed her cousin’s engagement breaking up, as Christian’s sporty curricle came rattling over the pebbles in the drive.

He stopped the curricle and looked down, his head
to one side. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “You’re still coming today, aren’t you?”

“Oh. Yes,” she said, startled, glad she’d had something to occupy her mind, because he looked so fine she thought she might have been overwhelmed if she’d been watching for him. He wore a high beaver hat and a many-caped greatcoat. He wore it open to show his dark brown jacket and mustard waistcoat. She could hardly help noticing his tightly fitted buff breeches and high, shining, brown boots. He looked dashing, fashionable, unapproachable, and utterly desirable.

“But there’s a problem?” he asked, looking at her intently.

“Family business,” she said on a weak laugh. “You know the sort of thing.”

“I can guess,” he said grimly. “They’ve ordered you to find me out by sunset, or you’re out on your ear?”

“Lord, no!” She reluctantly smiled. “Shall I, do you think? I mean, find you out?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, matching her smile. “I hope so.”

She gave him a tremulous smile because she couldn’t manage a more confident one, picked up her head, and the hem of her skirt, and accepted his hand as she put a foot on the wheel and stepped up to the high driver’s seat where he sat.

It was a soft day, and if the sun wasn’t brilliant, it was at least out, which was rare for an April day in England. The pinks and yellows of blooms from the towering shrubs that lined the drive to Egremont
looked like those in a pastel painting. As they approached, the manor seemed suddenly to appear from out of the mists.

“It’s magnificent.” Julianne sighed, taking a deep breath of the flower-scented air. “But that’s such a cliché, isn’t it?”

“Because it’s only true,” he said. He slowed the horses to a stand so they could look at the mansion on the hill. “God! I mean, Gad! Pardon me, I’m still trying to remember how to speak to a lady. But I can’t get used to the fact that this place will be mine. Just look at it! I never knew it existed, except in a distant sense, the way you know about an old relative you never expect to meet again. It was never part of our plans, certainly not when we lived here, of course not when we were thrown out of England. Not even when we won free. When I think of how many people had to die to make it mine, I’m boggled. The coincidences are as staggering as the place is overwhelming. But I’ll take it, and gladly. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” she said, and dared a look at him. She’d been gazing at the scenery all the way here, but now felt comfortable enough to look at him while they spoke. When she’d first tried, she’d felt her stomach grow hollow, and she got dizzy. She still felt that when she looked at him, but now she rather liked the experience. She liked it so much she had to remind herself that she had work to do. “Does it bother you that so many of your relatives perished so…precipitously?”

He laughed, and shook the reins to get his team moving again. “You mean do I think there’s a curse
on the place? No, and damned…deviled if it would matter to me if there was. There were curses and spells on every inch of the land I’ve come from—or so the natives say. They said the whole place was sacred, wrapped up in a story in the dreams of their god. Sometimes I believed it. And I lived with enough ghosts at Newgate…”

He frowned. “No, I’ll take Egremont, curses and all. The only thing that bothers me is that my relatives don’t believe in curses. They think my father and I had something to do with the vanishing earls, though damn…deviled if I know how they think we could have done it in chains, from halfway round the world.”

“Still,” Julianne persisted, “you must admit it was strange the way so many of the previous earls met accidents. By the way, speaking of which, how long, do you think,” she said carefully, “before the matter of the succession is finally resolved?”

He gave her a sparkling look that made her stomach feel as though she stood on the edge of a steep precipice. “Back to work, eh,” he asked. He laughed at her expression of guilt.

“Tipped your hand, luv,” he explained. “Three’s a number that can’t be denied. ‘By the way.’ ‘Speaking of which,’ and ‘Do you think,’ is two too many. If you put that many qualifiers in front of a question, you’re telling me exactly how nervous asking it makes you. Don’t look ashamed! That’s a good thing. Shows you’re not a practiced sharper. I just came from a place filled with practiced—and convicted—Captain Sharps, so I know.”

He’d grown more careless in his speech, she realized. His accents remained the same, but the longer they were together the more slang and cant he used. She liked it. That showed he was able to be a perfect gentleman as well as a casual friend, the way he’d been when they’d been young…No. He wasn’t that, either.

“Don’t worry,” he said gently, watching her. “You’ll reckon it out sooner than later, trust me. A great many things happened to me, Little Jewel, I’m not the boy I was. But I’m not a bad man, either.”

There was nothing she could say.

They rode down the lane to the lake.

The lake was so perfect in its design that Julianne was sure it was artificial. Artful plantings of trees and shrubs along its banks enhanced it, making it lovely at every angle it could be viewed from.

They drove to a huge building that stood on a grassy slope overlooking the lake. It was a copy of the Parthenon, a round marble rotunda with high white columns, open on all sides. A wide tier of stairs fanned out from its entrance. Christian stopped the phaeton, tied the horses to a plinth so they could crop the grass, took down a hamper, and held out a hand to help Julianne down. She alit and looked around. The building nestled in the embrace of enormous shrubs on three sides, so its primary view was its own shimmering reflection in the lake.

It was quiet except for birdsong and the sound of the slow hoofbeats of the groom who had followed them. As they watched, the groom tethered his horse in a copse of trees a few hundred feet away, within
earshot, if not easy reach. He ambled over to a tree and sat on the ground beneath it, very ostensibly looking toward the lake and not at the couple who were walking up to the Parthenon.

Christian hoisted the picnic basket. “I appreciate your cousins’ trust in me.”

“It’s only that they didn’t want to send me alone,” she said, embarrassed because they hadn’t trusted him, as well as because she knew they shouldn’t have sent her if they didn’t, and she oughtn’t to have come knowing that.

“I know,” he said. “It wasn’t irony. I appreciate the fact that they trusted me enough not to send a maidservant to hover over us.”

She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not. That was one problem with this man, she could never tell if he was serious or teasing. That was one of the things that made her begin to believe he was Christian. It would be the sort of joke he and Jon always played on words, and people.

“I could have had a footman along to lug this,” he went on, raising the hamper, “and to wait on us. But I didn’t want to make it a formal luncheon. No, the truth is that I did. I wanted to entertain you at Egremont in high style. They won’t let me. Only the staff lives there now, and they’re the only ones who can dine there, too. Isn’t that absurd? The servants live like earls, and the earl dines out of doors. I’ve eaten in worse places, but I apologize to you.” He waved off her assurances that she didn’t mind. “We’ll make do in the summerhouse, if you don’t mind, as the butler suggested. Summerhouse?” he murmured, looking at
the false Parthenon. “It looks big enough to house three families.”

They took the shallow stairs and entered the rotunda. Christian stopped in the chill shade of the place and looked around the bare stone building. “Brrr,” he said. “Looks more like it’s meant to house three dead families. The thing feels like a mausoleum.”

She giggled. “It looks like one, too.”

“This is no place to have luncheon,” he said with a frown. “Maybe in the summer, when it’s so hot the lake starts boiling, but not now.”

She looked at him curiously. “It never gets that hot here.”

“Ah, caught out the imposter, have you?” he said with a wry grin. “Afraid not. It’s just that I forgot. It’s hard to remember I’m no longer in a land where you either bake off your ears in summer or freeze off your…extremities in winter. Funny, how you cling to memories of little things, like happy moments and favorite dogs, but forget the main events.” He frowned. “We can’t stay here, it’s bloo…blasted chilly. Are you game to have luncheon in the sunshine, on the grass? There’s a blanket in the curricle, we can dine overlooking the lake.”

“I’d like that,” she agreed.