How the Scoundrel Seduces (6 page)

“Excellent point,” Tristan snapped. “You wouldn’t want any scandal tainting your husband’s reputation.” Because of course she would marry someone rich and important and appropriate to be consort to the prospective Countess of Olivier. Someone just like Father.

Though she stiffened, she conceded the point with a nod. “I wouldn’t want him to be affected by any of it—scandal, or the loss of the title for our children, or the loss of my wealth. It wouldn’t be fair to spring that on a man after he’d married me with certain expectations.”

That certainly put him in his place. He grudgingly admitted that no man deserved to be taken by surprise in his choice of wife.

She went on. “And I’d still have the problem of my cousin’s inheriting a property he couldn’t handle. I can’t risk that, even if it means marrying a stranger.”

“But you prefer
not
to marry a stranger, I take it,” Dom said. “You hope that your aunt
is
lying about the Gypsy woman, so you can marry whom you please.”

She smiled at him. “Absolutely. And even if she’s telling the truth, but you and your fellow investigators learn that this Gypsy woman and her husband have taken my secret to their graves, I’m still safe. Because if our servants had known of it, they certainly would have revealed it by now. Aunt Flo only told me under duress.” Her expression turned haunted. “Either way, I have to be sure, don’t you see?”

Dom steepled his fingers. “I suppose the matter is even more urgent now that your cousin is coming to London.”

The grateful smile she bestowed on him scraped Tristan’s nerves. “You understand me perfectly. In a few days, Mr. Keane will be here, and I must know how to proceed. I’d hoped for more time to prepare, but we only learned of his impending visit a month ago. Then I had to convince Papa to bring us here well in advance of it, so I could find a way to consult with you and your men. It wasn’t a matter I dared broach in a letter.”

“Certainly not.” Dom tapped his fingers on his desk. “Let me make sure I understand you correctly—you wish to hire us to find out if your mother really bore a child on that voyage from America. If we learn that she didn’t, you want us to hunt down the Gypsy woman
who actually bore you. And possibly her husband as well.”

“You’ve summed it up brilliantly,” she said.

Perfectly
.
Brilliantly
. His brother got the gushing compliments, while she raked Tristan over the coals. He wasn’t used to that, even from her sort.

Women like her did sometimes turn up their noses at him on the few occasions when he frequented “good society.” But when no one of their class was around, they were perfectly eager to smile and bat their eyelashes. Many a married lady of rank had tried to seduce him, and even the unmarried ones flirted with him, practicing for their more serious pursuit of lords.

But, ever conscious of their reputations, they only showed their true colors privately, in the dark. Give him an honest actress or opera dancer in his bed any day over some bored baroness. They knew what they wanted, and they went after it with gusto. They didn’t hide their desires behind hypocrisy.

Lady Zoe knows what she wants and is going after it. She just doesn’t want
you.
And she’s being perfectly honest about it.

True. Damn her. It shouldn’t annoy him that she was apparently the one female immune to his flirtations. But it did.

“Have you any information that will help us with the search?” Tristan demanded. “Do you even know what ship your parents traveled on?”

Drawing a sheet of paper from her reticule, she placed it on the desk. “I wrote down everything about my birth
that I could glean from talking to servants, tenants, and villagers over the past few months. I had to be careful, though. I dared not risk rousing suspicions in anyone.”

“That must have been difficult,” Tristan quipped. “Clearly subtlety isn’t your strong suit.”

To his surprise, a rueful smile crossed her lips. “It certainly isn’t. Still, I did my best because I also couldn’t take the chance of my questions getting back to Papa. He tends to be overprotective.”

“Which makes sense, when you consider that you’re his only heir.” Dom picked up the paper to look it over.

“True,” she murmured. “Not to mention that he keeps forgetting he’s no longer in the army.”

“The army?” Tristan echoed, taken aback.

Dom glanced up from the sheet of paper. “Don’t you remember hearing about the Keanes of Winborough? The estate is near the town of Highthorpe, only a couple of hours away from home.”

Home. Tristan hadn’t thought of Rathmoor Park as home in a very long time. It reminded him too powerfully of what he’d lost. “Might as well have been a couple of
days
away if her family wasn’t keen on racing.”

“Good point. Father’s friends did tend to be exclusively from that set. In any case, Lady Zoe’s father was Major Keane before his elder brother died, leaving him to inherit the title.”

“And Mama and Aunt Flo were the daughters of a colonel,” the young woman put in. “Father runs our family the way he used to run his regiment. Or so I would guess, since I wasn’t even born then.”

A certain vulnerability flashed over her face, and Tristan realized how young she must be. Based on what she’d said about her coming-out and her mother’s death, she couldn’t be more than twenty-one, barely into her majority.

The thought of a woman that age facing a fight for what was rightfully hers unsettled him. It reminded him of how easily he and Lisette had been deprived of their own inheritance. Dom, too, because of the vagaries of English law. In France, Dom would have inherited a portion no matter what George did to prevent it.

Still,
Lady
Zoe had a father who cared about her and meant to give her a tidy inheritance, regardless of whom she married. It was why she felt free to act recklessly. Unlike Tristan, she’d never had to risk paying for her reckless behavior with her life.

“Unfortunately,” she went on, “when Papa is being the Major, he saddles me with one of our fiercer servants as a gaoler, who dogs my every step. I could never have come here today if Papa had realized what I’ve been up to.”

Instead, she’d coerced her pup of a footman into doing her bidding. No wonder her father felt compelled to give her “fiercer” servants as gaolers.

Dom held up her paper. “I see no information here about the Gypsy woman. Can you tell us anything else about that?”

“I do have a name for her,” she said with a sideways glance at Tristan. “She called herself Drina. Apparently she didn’t mention a surname.”

Drina was actually a popular Romany name. Perhaps her aunt’s tale wasn’t entirely spurious. Still, it wasn’t much to go on. It would require several forays into the different Gypsy camps, and there were quite a number.

As it finally dawned on him what this could mean for
him,
his blood raced. Lady Zoe wanted someone to talk to the Romany; he wanted to find Milosh. He might actually get paid for doing what he’d been itching to do for months.

“Did your parents know where Drina’s people had camped?” Dom asked.

She furrowed her brow. “Mama told Aunt Flo that Drina was headed west for York when they encountered her. Perhaps she was going to join her family.”

This was getting better and better. With both Winborough and Rathmoor Park near the road to York, Tristan could easily investigate them both.

But he was getting ahead of himself. “What time of year was this?”

“January. Mama and Papa disembarked the ship in Liverpool, then traveled by coach to York. They were headed home to Highthorpe when they met up with Drina. That’s all I know.”

Tristan glanced at Dom. “Many of the Romany winter in major cities like York or Edinburgh or London. Some even take houses for those months.”

Lady Zoe began to tremble so violently that she had to sit down again. “My aunt’s tale might be true, then.” Her gaze, oddly unfocused, met Tristan’s. “I might indeed be a Gypsy by birth.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, inexplicably alarmed by her distress. “There are things about the tale that don’t make sense. Why would this Drina have been on the road in January? The Gypsies who used to camp on my father’s land left for town in early November, not two or three months later, when there was more likelihood of snow.”

She swallowed hard. “Still, you must admit that I
look
like a Gypsy, with my coloring and my hair—”

“Nonsense,” he said.

Granted, she looked unusual, rather like a Russian princess he’d once met. But not so unusual as to provoke suspicion about her heritage. Her skin was the creamy hue of marzipan, and her hair wasn’t dark enough. Though she did have a Gypsy’s high cheekbones, her eyes were pure English—green as the wolds of York in summer.

“You look half-Gypsy at most.” As something occurred to him, Tristan searched her features again. “Perhaps the Gypsy story is only partly true. Perhaps you really aren’t your mother’s child. But you could still be your father’s.”

Her eyes got huge in her face. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing,” Dom put in with a look of caution.

Tristan ignored him. “Perhaps Drina was your father’s mistress.”

3

F
OR HALF A
second, all Zoe could do was gape at the wretch. Then she leapt from her chair. “That’s impossible. Papa would never have shamed Mama so. They were in love!”

Mr. Bonnaud cocked his head. “So were Dom’s parents, yet his father—
our
father—took my mother as a mistress fairly early in their marriage. He claimed to love her as well. That sort of thing happens in England more than you think.”

“Don’t drag our family into this, Tristan,” Mr. Manton warned.

Paying him no mind, the dratted devil began to pace before her. “It would explain all the inconsistencies—why a Romany woman was alone on the road to York without her people. Why your father took you in so readily, even though your mother could still have borne him children. Drina might have been waiting for him when your family arrived at Winborough. Perhaps he
was just hiding the truth from your mother when he said that he’d bought you.”

Zoe glowered at him. “And the fact that Drina was beaten, what of that? I suppose you’re going to blame my father for that, too.”

“Certainly not,” he said.

Her pulse steadied a little.

“But Gypsies have a stricter morality than Englishmen realize. All rumors about them to the contrary, they don’t allow adultery or fornication. If Drina had shared a bed with your father, then her husband—or her own father—might have beaten her for it.”

“You claimed that Gypsies don’t abuse their women,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “They don’t generally, but it’s hard to know what a husband might do when faced with his wife’s adultery.” He paused in his pacing to shoot her a meaningful glance. “Or what an English husband might do to cover up his own.”

Heat rose in her cheeks. She’d had quite enough of this. “You are a vile,
vile
man. To cast aspersions on my family with nothing more than a few facts—”

“I’m merely trying to get at the truth.” His eyes glittered at her. “That
is
what you want, isn’t it?”

“Not from you.” Turning on her heel, she approached the desk. “Mr. Manton, I want you to promise that your brother won’t be involved in this investigation. He’s clearly biased against my family, for no reason that I can see, and I don’t want his bias to affect his judgment.”

Mr. Manton glanced from her to Mr. Bonnaud, then sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t promise you that, Lady Zoe.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Bonnaud was the one to answer, in his typically self-satisfied manner. “Because I know more about the Romany people than Dom and Victor put together. I speak their language, I’m familiar with their customs, and I’ll have no trouble learning the whereabouts of all the major Gypsy families.”

Botheration.

“He’s right,” Mr. Manton added. “Tristan spent far more time with them than I did. I was either at school or going about in society with our father. And Victor has had no dealings with them at all.”

The words had scarcely left Mr. Manton’s lips when a knocking sounded from downstairs.

He rose. “That’s probably the records I’ve been waiting for. So if you’ll excuse me . . .”

Surely he wasn’t going to rush out of here and leave this matter unresolved! “But . . . but I don’t want Mr. Bonnaud to be part of this!” she cried as Mr. Manton headed for the door.

Mr. Bonnaud gave a harsh laugh. “I think my brother has made it clear that you don’t have a choice.” When she whirled on him, he added with a smirk, “Not if you want Drina found. Assuming that she even exists.”

Heaven save her, this was not to be borne! “I could always tell the world that you’re a thief,” she hissed, unable to govern her temper any longer. “
You
were the one
seen running from Kinlaw Castle that day. And I’m the one who can testify to that.”

That didn’t seem to faze him one jot. “Go ahead, my lady, tell the world.” Mr. Bonnaud marched up to lower his voice to a threatening rasp. “Then
I’ll
tell the world that you might not really be heir to the Earl of Olivier.”