A Marquess, A Miss And A Mystery

‘No? You have not come to inform me that I have insulted your poor deluded little bride? Even though, not two minutes after she reported our conversation to you, you come over here when hitherto you have exchanged barely two words with me.’

Horatia got the peculiar sensation that she’d just become invisible. For all the notice either brother was taking of her, she might as well be.

‘I wonder you accepted my invitation to my wedding at all, if that is your belief,’ growled the Duke.

‘Perhaps it will give me more pleasure to be a thorn in your side in person, than to merely express my dislike of you and all you stand for by staying away,’ replied Lord Devizes.

Oh, Lord. Was there anything more uncomfortable than being caught in the middle of what she knew to be a long-standing family feud?

‘I suppose that now you are going to accuse me of, what, upsetting Miss Carmichael? Or attempting to compromise her over the teacups?’

The Duke’s eyes turned to chips of black ice. ‘You had better not attempt anything of the sort,’ he said, evidently taking Lord Devizes’s throwaway remark as some sort of threat.

‘It would be useless to explain, I suppose,’ said Lord Devizes, his own eyes gone as cold as his brother’s, ‘that I was a very close friend of Miss Carmichael’s brother. That I was offering my condolences. And that if it appeared as though I had upset her, it was hardly surprising, his demise being so recent, and the manner of his departure from this life so particularly unpleasant.’

The Duke, who looked as though he’d been robbed of the pleasure of taking his younger brother by the neck and heaving him through a window, muttered his own condolences, before nodding his head and walking away.

‘I suppose that will grant us another minute or so,’ said Horatia, watching the Duke retreat to his fiancée’s side. ‘Even if it was a pack of lies.’

‘It was no such thing.’

‘Oh, please,’ she snorted. Which she knew was a very unattractive habit of hers when talking to men and no doubt contributed to their universal failure to offer for her hand in marriage, but which she simply could not stop. ‘We both know why you have come here. And it has nothing to do with annoying your brother. I apologise for underestimating you.’

‘Apology accepted,’ he said with a smooth smile.

‘Then you are on the trail of Herbert’s killer? I wasn’t sure Herbert had managed to pass on that last note I deciphered for him. I had thought that was why they killed him, to stop you getting it, but since you are here...’

‘That’s enough,’ he said firmly. ‘Good God, woman, have you no sense? You don’t blurt out words like...in public, when anyone can hear.’

‘No, no of course not, I’m sorry, I just...’ She swallowed. ‘And you are right. One of the people in this very room could be...’ She glanced round her nervously. Nobody was standing close enough to overhear their conversation, she was fairly sure. And Lord Devizes had angled his body so that nobody could see all that much of her at all, so they couldn’t even guess what she might be saying. Though it had been careless of her to blurt out what she knew. Particularly after vowing she was going to be more cautious. ‘I know I am not much good at this side of things.’ She was never at ease in groups of people. She was no good at hiding what she felt, or keeping her opinions to herself. Which made her rather unpopular. ‘I just got a bit...that is, I’d thought I was going to have to do it alone. But now, knowing that you are secretly on the trail, that you have even followed them here, just as I have...oh, you have no idea how glad I am.’ She was no longer alone. She could trust Lord Devizes, just as Herbert had done.

Before she could think better of it, she reached out and clasped his hand. Squeezed it and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you. And if there is anything I can do to help you in your search...’

He withdrew his hand abruptly. ‘There is not. You are not cut out for this kind of work. I concede that you may have played a part in Herbert’s success with...that is, that you were more aware of things than he led me to believe, but he would want you to stay out of it.’

‘No, he wouldn’t!’ He’d brought the ciphers to her in the first place because he’d known how much she would enjoy unravelling them. At doing work that not even most men could take on.

But Lord Devizes had turned on his heel and was striding away.

As though the matter was closed.

Chapter Five (#u14f5cf59-8150-5d25-b52d-73449fe2a343)

Nick walked across the room as though he had some destination in mind, though in truth his mind was reeling too much for him to pay attention to such mundane matters as where he was going, or who he’d just smiled at as he’d brushed past them.

Because her claim of being his codebreaker rang with so much truth it was like a peal of bells. Hadn’t he always marvelled at Herbert’s ability to stay up all night drinking, then roll up with a deciphered message the very next day? There had been no denying Herbert’s charm, or his ability to cosy up to some low-life and ferret out his deepest secrets. But he’d wondered, more than once, if his friend might be using someone else to do the hard graft behind the scenes.

Someone like a sister who was so awkward in social gatherings that she’d rather sit at home poring over tables of ciphers. And who doted on her brother so much that she gladly let him take all the credit.

He’d wandered over to the buffet table. Deciding he might as well make it look as if he’d gone there on purpose, he picked up a fresh wine glass and held it out for the footman to fill. His hand, he noted with consternation, was trembling slightly.

He took a deep draught of the fortifying drink and then strolled to the nearest mirror, as though to examine his reflection. He looked calm, thank goodness. Slightly amused, if anything. Which was a relief. He did not want anyone to know that, after his encounter with Herbert’s sister, his heart was pounding with excitement, his mind racing with possibilities. Because this revelation that his codebreaker, his Portunus, still lived, changed everything. If she really was what she claimed, then he wasn’t finished after all.

‘I’m not surprised you need a stiff drink after that little scene,’ came a bitter voice from just below the level of his left shoulder. The fact that his sister, Lady Twickenham as she now was, had managed to approach him without him noticing warned him that he needed to pull himself together. So what if little Miss Carmichael was his Portunus, had been acting as his codebreaker and opener of the doors to all the secrets England’s enemies were trying to pass on to the French? He wasn’t going to be able to carry on his work if he could allow himself to become this inattentive to all that was going on around him in a room.

‘Yes,’ he drawled, turning from the mirror to give his sister back the kind of sarcastic smile she’d expect. ‘It did all rather escalate.’ Had escalated beyond anything a feather-brained creature like she could imagine. Jane’s life revolved around fashion and status and gossip. And she assumed he was as shallow as she.

He’d taken pains to make sure of it. Although recently, he’d been starting to feel the muscles in his face creating smiles that held far more disdain than amusement. And when he checked those smiles in a mirror, more often than not he appeared cynical. Jaded. The way Jane looked all the time.

‘I only wonder,’ she said, ‘that you took notice of such a dowdy in the first place.’

‘It had the effect of annoying His Grace,’ he pointed out, as though that had been his sole intent on approaching his friend’s sister. And Jane, being the kind of person she was, assumed that was what he’d meant.

‘You are a wretch,’ she said with a maliciously approving smile, rapping him lightly on the wrist for good measure. ‘I had wondered why you came, knowing how you must feel about the Cuckoo.’ She darted a look of loathing in the direction of their half-brother.

He followed the direction of her gaze. Their half-brother was looking straight back at them, his beetling brows drawn down into a scowl with which Nick was all too familiar. A scowl which sent his mind flying right back to the first time they’d encountered each other, as boys. In their father’s study, here at Theakstone Court. And the shock he’d experienced upon hearing that the surly, swarthy oaf who’d looked, dressed, and smelled like a farm labourer was going to inherit the house and the title that Nick had been encouraged to believe was his by right. And what was more, that Nick was no longer even going to live here, but in a smaller, distant estate that he’d never even heard of before.

Nick turned his head away, set his glass down on the mantelpiece and raised both his hands to his cravat. Demonstrating, should anyone else be taking note, that he cared more for his own appearance than he did for his half-brother’s opinion. It was an attitude he’d adopted very early on, in order to conceal his devastating pain at being cast off like an old shoe. Oliver might be the first born and the rightful heir, and nowadays also one of the wealthiest men in England, but Nick was never going to let him forget that, once, Nick had seen him standing hat in hand, shuffling his feet in their scuffed boots.

After adjusting the set of his already perfectly arranged neckcloth, Nick returned his gaze to the scowling Duke, raising his quizzing glass as he ran a disparaging eye over the bulky frame in its sombre clothing, before allowing his lips to twist in just the hint of a disdainful grimace, before switching his attention back to his sister.

Who’d so bitterly referred to the Duke as a cuckoo.

But then that was how it had seemed, to start with. As though the moment he’d come to Theakstone Court, Nick and his sisters, along with their mother, had been tossed out of their cosy nest.

The truth was, however, that even though they’d all resented the boy whose appearance had made their father look at them all differently, the analogy fell down under scrutiny. Because no matter where Oliver Norrington had spent the first eleven years of his life, there was no disputing the fact that he was the legitimate first born. And that Nick would remain second best for ever. No matter what he did.

‘Should I,’ said Nick, quirking an eyebrow at his sister’s reflection, ‘ask why you are here, then?’

She gave a little shrug. ‘Anyone who is anyone has been invited. It is the event of the Season. Even the Wortley-Fortescues are posting back from Paris to attend.’

Yes, so they were. He turned to his sister slowly, giving his mind the leisure to ponder that fact before having to come up with the kind of spiteful witticism she would expect.

The Duke had put it about that he had invited so many of the great and good of the land to Theakstone Court because he wanted to introduce his bride to society from his own home, rather than pitching her into the hothouse that was London. Yet, what better excuse could there be for getting all the members of a network together? They could exchange the latest information they’d gathered over a hand of whist, or while out riding in the park, to whoever intended to take it to their paymasters in France. That must have been what Miss Carmichael had meant by her comment about him having the same reason for coming here as she did. She clearly thought he’d come to Theakstone Court on the trail of those responsible for her brother’s death.

And he’d said nothing to disabuse her of that opinion. Because he wanted her to think he was at least as clever as she. Yet only now did he regard the way the room was already thronging with all the noblest and most influential members of society left in England with suspicion. For many of them, as his sister had just pointed out, had already taken advantage of Bonaparte’s defeat and crossed the Channel to see Paris. Or Brussels. Or any other of the cities that had been impossible to visit while Europe had been at war. And once the celebrations for the Duke’s nuptials were done, many more of them would take to ships and flock to the Continent. And only a very few people, who knew that information was being passed to the French, would think anything other than that the fashionable were determined to keep up with the latest trend.

‘I cannot deny that it has also given me a great deal of pleasure to install my own children in the nursery where we all used to play,’ his sister added, with a flash of malice. The sister who’d correctly deduced why he was here.

Because she knew him. She knew that he could, and frequently did, act from petty motives. Over the years, he’d gone from doing his utmost to prove to his father that he was the better son, to creating the biggest scandals he could simply to get the old devil to notice he still existed.

‘Mary did the same. We thought we should make a point, you know.’

‘And what point would that be,’ he said, ‘precisely?’ That they were still pouting over the fact that their father had been unjust and unkind? ‘She was only a babe when we left. She can surely recall nothing of this house, or what it was like to live here.’ He’d only been approaching his sixth birthday himself. Though some things were impossible to forget. Like this room. He let his eyes wander over the nymphs frolicking about the frieze below the elaborate plaster adorning the ceiling. All that yellow. Like sunshine, Mother had always said, although today it put him in mind of lemons and the bitter taste they left in the mouth.

‘We still have more right to be here than...than anyone else.’ She shot a look of sheer loathing at Miss Underwood, who was hanging on to the Duke’s arm and gazing up at him with a worshipful expression. He couldn’t quite believe that any woman could look at any man with quite so much open adoration, let alone a man like the Duke.

‘Especially that by-blow of his.’