The Missing Heir

Tension drained from Adam’s shoulders. He stood and smiled. “Yes, sir. I still have some business here. Lord Craddock said he would have me reinstated and secure my back pay. I’ll need it to repair and stock my cottage and lands in Devon. Since I was reported dead, I imagine the stock was sold off, but I pray the cottage is still in the family.”

“Family,” Barrington repeated. He looked thoughtful.

“Well, only Uncle Basil and I remain, unless that young wife of his has given him heirs.”

“You’ve not gone there?”

Adam recalled the expansive home on Bloomsbury Square and smiled. “I wanted my business finished so that I could relax and enjoy the reunion. I’ve never met my new aunt, you know. Uncle Basil said he met her while selling a parcel of land to her brother. She was in the country when I was last in London on my way to Ghent, but I saw the portrait of her in Uncle Basil’s study.”

And what a portrait it had been! It had kept his blood humming for weeks afterward, and many long winter nights since. Dark, sultry eyes gazed out of a face of sheer perfection. Her expression had been self-possessed and confident, and Adam found himself envious of his aging uncle for the first time. He’d suspected the wife was a fortune hunter, since a woman like that could have married someone considerably higher in station. And considerably younger. He wondered if there’d still be fire in those dark eyes.

Barrington heaved a deep sigh and wouldn’t meet Adam’s gaze. “Damn it all, Hawthorne. Craddock should have told you. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. Your uncle expired immediately after we’d had word of your death. Everyone said it was the grief, but it went beyond that.”

Adam sat again, trying to comprehend this last in a chain of bitter disappointments. “How….”

“He hadn’t been well. He did his best to hide it from you on your last visit. Didn’t want to worry you, he said. When we got the news of your death, the spirit went out of him. I helped his widow make the final arrangements and put his business in order. The last thing he did was change his will to leave everything to her.”

Adam nodded, registering the logic in that. He had already discovered through his earlier visit to his bank that his uncle had closed his bank accounts and taken his assets, but he had been confident they would be returned to him. Ah, but now everything was in the possession of his widow, and it was anyone’s guess what she would do. “Well, there appears to be some matters we will have to sort out. Did she and my uncle have heirs?”

“No,” Barrington admitted.

“Has she remarried?”

“She seems quite content to be a widow.”

A niggling suspicion grew from his hunch that she’d been a fortune hunter. Had she sped her husband’s demise once the competition for his money was gone? No. Barrington just said his uncle had been ill even before his last visit.

“She lives quietly,” Barrington continued. “Her reputation is of the highest order. Not a breath of scandal.”

“Discreet, then,” he concluded.

“There is nothing to be discreet about. She’s blameless.”

Adam glanced up at Lord Barrington. His reaction to the implied criticism was telling. All the signs were there. Damned if Barrington wasn’t in love with his widowed aunt! He cleared his throat and stood. “Good to know,” he said, heading for the door. “You’ll let me know when you find the name of the military advisor at Fort Garry?”

“Where shall I send word?”

He smiled, an idea taking root. There was only one way to get to the bottom of his uncle’s death. “I’ll let you know when I’m settled, sir.”

The sound of a bell downstairs announced a visitor. A quick glance at the little enameled clock on her bedside table urged Grace to haste. Ronald Barrington must have come early. He was not supposed to pick her up for another hour. Mrs. Dewberry, her housekeeper, would put him in the library with a glass of port, but she did not like to leave him alone so long. He had a propensity to snoop through her private correspondence.

Glaring in her mirror, she fussed with a few stubborn strands of hair. She always wore the dark mass smoothed back and contained in a tidy chignon due to its unruly tendencies and she never felt completely groomed until it was perfect.

“Really, Aunt Grace, I think you should snip half of it off and leave the rest in curls.” Dianthe shook her own blond ringlets and laughed. “I’ve never seen hair so long you could sit on before. And I think you’d look younger with it down.”

Yes, that was half the problem. Grace did not want to look younger. Though less than ten years older than Dianthe, she had learned to act twenty years her senior. She smiled. “If I cut it, I’ll never gain control of it again.”

Grace met Dianthe’s gaze in the mirror. She was lying across the bed and resting her chin on the heel of her hand. It was generally acknowledged that Dianthe was one of the reigning beauties of the Season. With her pale blond hair and petite figure, she drew admiring glances wherever she went. What an observant young woman she was! Perhaps that was why she was so adept at maneuvering through complicated courtships and unwanted entanglements—she saw them coming and avoided them, much as Grace had done since Basil’s death.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” she finally admitted.

“Why have you never considered Barrington as a potential husband?”

Should she give her niece the easiest answer, or the truth? Heavens, not the truth! That was too humiliating to admit. “It is not that I think he would be cruel or unkind, but he occasionally smothers me with his condescension and his attempts to mold me into his ideal. And I do not love him the way a wife should love a husband.” There. That much was true.

Dianthe’s china-blue eyes twinkled. “You mean, like my sister loves the McHugh?”

“Yes. Like that,” Grace said. “McHugh’s passions are very close to the surface. One look at him and Afton and there can be no doubt that they are made for each other.”

“That kind of love is very rare.” She sighed and pushed herself into a sitting position. “I am certain I would not be comfortable with something so fierce. Better a man I can manage. And you can manage Lord Barrington quite nicely, Aunt Grace. That should be an advantage.”

Oh, if Dianthe only knew! She fastened a crystal-studded snood over her chignon and stood. She smoothed her gown, a deep burgundy satin that lent her an air of mature elegance—an image she was constantly striving to achieve. If anyone should guess what lay beneath the surface, she would be finished in society.

“Enough about me, Dianthe. Shall we discuss you instead? What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing so interesting as you. Are you certain I cannot come with you and Lord Barrington?”

Grace laughed. “Positive.”

“Hmm. Then I suppose I shall have to go to Hortense and Harriet Thayer’s dinner party with Lady Sarah and her husband. Not nearly as much fun as you will have, I wager.”

“Wager? Very amusing, Dianthe. This is but the first step. I doubt I will do much wagering tonight. I only intend to accustom myself to the atmosphere and the customs—perhaps learn a game or two before I pit myself against Lord Geoffrey so that I will not look like a complete novice.”

“Has dear Ronnie asked you about your sudden interest in gambling?”

“He did indeed. It required a little more persuasion than I had anticipated to elicit his help. I simply told him that I wanted to do something new.”

Dianthe laughed. “I think he consented just to keep you from asking one of your other admirers to escort you. Still, it must have sent him into a tizzy.”

More like a rage!

Grace’s bedroom door flew open and Mrs. Dewberry stood there, looking for all the world as if the sky had fallen.

“Oh, Mrs. Forbush! There’s a man downstairs—a Red Indian! He wants in. I’ve tried to send him away, but he will not go.”

Dianthe stood and glanced toward the corridor, her eyes round with excitement. “A Red Indian? How very intriguing. I wonder what he could want.”

“I cannot imagine.” The last thing Grace wanted to deal with at the moment was a confused foreigner. Well, she’d simply have to give him directions and send him on his way. “Where did you leave him, Mrs. Dewberry?”

“In the library, Mrs. Forbush. Couldn’t very well leave him on the stoop, could I? What if the neighbors saw?”

Grace sighed. She was less concerned about what the neighbors would say than she was with the stranger himself. A Red Indian could be dangerous. What if she could not make him understand her, as Mrs. Dewberry had been unable to do? She composed herself and hurried down the stairs. She wanted to be rid of the man before Lord Barrington arrived.

Dianthe followed close on her heels. “I’ve never seen a Red Indian before,” she whispered. “I wonder if they are as fierce as I’ve heard. Should I fetch a pistol?”

“Of course not,” Grace said, bracing to open the library door. “But if he begins to make trouble, fetch Mr. Dewberry. I believe he is in the coach house.” She lifted her chin and opened the door silently.

A man, tall and lean, stood at the side table with his back to her, holding a brandy bottle and a glass. He was dressed in buckskin leather breeches, a jacket with fringed arms and yoke, and moccasins that extended to his knees and, above that, a long, lethal-looking knife strapped to his right thigh. His hair, long and bound back with a leather thong, was a medium brown with glints of light playing through it from the firelight. The set of his shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly and Grace knew he was aware of her presence.