The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (30 page)

“Isabella, Lord Easterbrook and I had a row last night, but it was not about
that.”

“My mother says that if there is a row,
that
is the way to end it.”

“This is not so simple.”

“I see. Of course. Forgive me.” Isabella brushed on,
but Leona heard her muttering the same words in Chinese again.
Europeans are a stupid people.

It did not take long to prepare for departure. A few servants came to say good-bye to Isabella. The house steward performed his duties. Easterbrook was nowhere to be seen.

Leona pictured him sleeping in that big bed. Per haps he was awake and meditating. Quite likely he was relieved to be done with her. After a life of isolation, it would be unnatural to spend so long in another person's company.

She gazed at the big house while the carriage began its journey. The windows on the third level drew her eyes. An odd sensation entered her. She felt his presence up there, watching her leave.

Ridiculous, of course. His chambers faced the garden, not the front of the house. He was the one with special perceptions, not she. Her subdued mood merely played tricks on her this morning, while she yearned for some sign that she had not completely lost him.

She settled back into her seat. Beside her Isabella was lifting a valise.

“Is that a gift from the housekeeper?” Leona asked.

“I do not know. It was in the carriage when we entered, on the floor here. Do you think it is a gift? Or perhaps there are gifts inside?”

Isabella unfastened the valise, opened it, and peered in. She made a face, shut it, and set it down. “No gifts. It was left here by accident. It contains someone's old, dirty book.”

They rode a few hundred yards before Isabella's
words poked through Leona's melancholy. She eyed the valise, then bent over and lifted it onto her lap.

She opened it. The smell of leather wafted over her. She looked inside and saw her father's notebook.

The coach rolled away, disappearing into the last of the morning's mist. Christian watched until there was nothing more to see.

Down below he saw a groom bringing around his horse. His orders had called for his own mount as well as the coach. He would return to London too, only not with Leona.

He had no desire to share the carriage with her while she read that notebook. After last night, she would not entertain any explanations from him regarding what it revealed about his father. That notebook would convince her for certain that he had gone to Macao bent on betrayal to protect the name of Easterbrook.

She was smart enough to comprehend the rest of its revelations, too. The reasons for her danger would be clearer. He did not think that would stop her, though. She had to see it through. Just as well, most likely. The danger would not end if she gave up and went home now anyway. Someone had concluded that she knew too much. Now that she had the notebook, she did.

He walked back to his chambers. It was his imagination, surely, that her scent still lingered here. He opened the windows so the breeze would make quick work of his inclination toward nostalgia.

The gardeners were busy once more, clipping and pruning and mounding soil. There were households
where the lord and lady knew every servant's name, but that had not been the style in the manors of Easterbrook. He had as little congress with servants as possible.

You touch the world even if you do not want it to touch you.
She had a knack for holding up those mirrors, it seemed.

A low cough broke into the silence. He turned to see the house steward near the door.

“Did the letter to Mr. Miller go with them, Thurston?”

“I handed it to one of the footmen myself, sir.”

The letter had ordered Miller to quadruple the guard at Leona's house. She might think Tong Wei was all she required, but Christian wanted more protection of her than one man if she left the sanctuary of Aylesbury Abbey. She would have to suffer the intrusion whether she agreed to it or not, until he returned to London himself, found the men who threatened her, and ended this once and for all.

“I came to say that your horse is ready, my lord.”

Christian looked down at the garden where he and Leona had spent many pleasant hours. His gaze swept the bedchamber.

“Tell the grooms that I have changed my mind.”

Thurston bowed and began backing out of the room.

“Wait. I will ride after all. I will not be leaving for a few days, however. Send word to the land steward that I will meet him at the footbridge over the stream at ten o'clock. And send up that fellow who has been serving me.”

Thurston bowed, and backed off a bit more.

“His name, Thurston. What is it?”

“Who, my lord?”

“That young man serving me.”

“That would be Jeremiah. He is a sober and ded icated young man. I have the highest expectations for him.”

Christian went to the dressing room, content that he had set his course for the next few days. He would have to remember to ask Thurston for the land steward's name too.

Perhaps one afternoon he would ride over to Watlington and visit the Bradwells.

He imagined Mrs. Bradwell's reaction when she found him at her door. He would send an invitation for them to dine with him instead, so they could avoid him if they chose.

The plans lightened his mood, but he knew it was a feint. Activity would be nothing more than a distraction from the utter certainty that he had lost the joy of the last week.

Still, he would remain at Aylesbury for a while. He would bask in the warm spring that Leona had created here, before returning to the empty winter of his London chambers.

Leona heard the singing chatter outside her chamber door. Isabella and Tong Wei conversed in Chinese. She did not understand more than a few words, but she knew that they talked about her.

She did not care about that, or about anything else. She only wanted to sleep.

Except she never did. Not completely. Hours would pass while her mind hovered on the edge of consciousness. Memories would agitate her, then fly away.
Specu lations streamed in undercurrents beneath her deadened spirit.

On the few occasions that she fully woke, the most sickening sorrow shredded her composure. Her heart could not accommodate how very wrong it had been about Christian.

Wrong because it wanted to be wrong. Wrong because it was still a girl's heart, childish and dreamy. She had badly wanted to believe that a young, handsome, mysterious man just happened to show up in Macao, at her father's house, by a caprice of fate.

The evidence it had been otherwise was there from the start. More had been added since she saw him again in London. He had quizzed her on her purpose here that first day. He had kept an eye on her, and distracted her, and seduced her away from learning the truth.

Her heart had mourned while she read that notebook. For her father, whose personality came through in every jotting that mapped his increasing fear and unshaken resolve. For her innocence and her foolish love, when she saw the lines where he linked Easterbrook to the entire matter.

Easterbrook had been the only lord he believed with certainty was among the owners of the secret company that smuggled opium. He had not described why he settled on that one. He had, however, made notations that indicated not only opium was involved.

Instead he described a plot, a long and old one, of smuggling tea and luxuries into England, and its colonies too. If he was right, not only the Chinese emperor's laws had been broken, but also those of England.

Why had Christian put the notebook in the coach
when it linked his father to such crimes? Perhaps he felt obligated, after she had reminded him of his offer to give her anything.

Most likely it had simply been the parting gift that he decided she deserved.

She tried not to picture him. She fought to forget that argument the last night. For all the revelations, her stupid heart still burned when she thought about him. She had nothing to be sorry for, and she hated how the pain would not go away. He had accused her of treating their affair as something base, but he had only pursued her from the very start for the most callous reasons.

A hand touched her shoulder, interrupting her mental raving. She opened her eyes to see Isabella beside her bed. Tong Wei looked down at her too. He held a bowl.

Isabella moved a chair to her bedside, then left. Tong Wei sat. “You will eat now.”

“I am not hungry.”

“You will eat.”

He lifted a spoon to her mouth. She sipped a spicy broth. Her English hired cook had not made this.

She held him off and sat herself up. She took the bowl in her hands. “You should not be serving me like that. I will do it.”

He watched her. Whenever she paused, he began to reach for the bowl again. She kept sipping so he would not demean himself on her behalf.

“You have not asked about the brother of Lady Lynsworth,” he said. “You sent me away from my duty here, you gave me a task that left you unprotected to the
worst danger, but you have not asked if the young man will survive.”

She sipped more broth. Some rice lay saturated at the bottom of the bowl. “Will he?”

“No.”

“She thinks that he will.”

“He is free now. She again sees the brother she knew. However, he is weak. I do not think he wants the freedom as much as she thinks he does. Someday he will succumb again.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“You knew how it would probably be.”

“You have been wrong before.” She prayed for Lady Lynsworth's sake that Tong Wei was wrong again.

He sat placidly while she ate the rice. He took the bowl and set it aside. “Are you pining?”

“Pining? Goodness, where did you learn that word, Tong Wei?”

“It is in the book I am reading. I also saw it in a poem. English people seem to pine away. I do not know what it means, but I thought perhaps you are doing it.”

“I am not the sort of woman to pine away.”

“You are not the sort of woman to take to your bed if you are not sick either, but here you are.”

Yes, here she was. “I have made a muddle of things, Tong Wei.”

“Isabella says that you have fallen out of favor with the marquess.”

“He has also fallen out of favor with me. Completely. The worst part is that I do not think Easterbrook will help me now.” It was not really the worst part, her heart
whispered. Refusing to acknowledge the other pain would not make it go away.

“He still does help, even if we do not want it. There are his men here all the time. Too many. They carry pistols in plain view. I tell them to go away, but they do not.”

“Even if his people stay here to protect me, I do not think I will see him again. There were introductions to important traders to be made that I have now lost.”

Tong Wei's expression remained bland, but she knew his mind considered the problem. While he did so, Isabella reentered the chamber and opened the drapes.

“If the marquess will not do this, then you must do it yourself,” Tong Wei said. “If you know the names of these men, you must go and speak for your brother.”

She knew their names. She had broached the subject one night in Aylesbury, briefly, and Christian had told her.

“They may not receive me.”

“You can, perhaps, say that the marquess recommended you to them, can you not? It is not a lie.”

It was not a lie, but it was an “almost lie.” Tong Wei was correct. She needed to do what she could. She had to try at least. They could not sail home until she did.

“I have cause to think one of them knew my father. I will try him first.” She had only recently realized this old connection existed. This shipper's name had also appeared in her father's notebook.

“I will make a bath,” Isabella said. “You will dress. Tomorrow you will feel yourself and know what to do.”

Tong Wei left. Isabella threw back the bedclothes. Leona forced herself to her feet. Pining could wait. She had the rest of her life for that, after all.

D
aniel St. John did not make regular use of the private offices he kept in London. Leona learned that when her first visit resulted in no response to her rap on the door.

She returned each of the next three days. Finally on the last one she met with success. A clerk opened the office to her, Tong Wei, and three of Easterbrook's footmen. He took her card away.

She rehearsed her “almost lie” while she waited. She hoped that Mr. St. John would not examine it too critically.

Tong Wei took a position near a window, looking out much as he had that day in the drawing room. He was always on alert now, despite the guards who crowded the house and garden.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“He still follows,” he said. “The rider on the brown horse. He does not even try to hide his presence now.”

She peered over his shoulder. Down below in the street the rider in question, hat brim low over his eyes,
boldly sat near the crossroad forty yards behind her carriage.

“He wants me to see him. He wants me to be afraid. That is all this is.”