One Night of Scandal (15 page)

Richard groaned. ‘But it is barely October! Are we to see cartloads of luggage arriving by the week?’

‘I imagine so,’ Justin said.

Richard groaned again. ‘Whatever has prompted her to come to Midwinter? I thought she detested the place as a little provincial backwater.’

‘She heard that Cory Newlyn had found himself a bride here,’ Justin said with an expressive lift of the brows, ‘so now she thinks to find one for each of us.’

Richard shot him a look and pushed open the door of the study. ‘You had better be careful then, Justin.’

Justin closed the door behind them and threw himself down in one of the
fauteuils
.

‘Not me, old fellow!’ he said. ‘Thought you might appreciate the help, though. You seem to be making a bit of a ham fist of it yourself. How is the divine Mrs Stratton, by the way?’

‘Divine,’ Richard said, trying and failing to repress a smile. ‘I was with her just now.’

Justin laughed. ‘And you are totally
épris
again?’

‘Not again,’ Richard corrected. ‘I never stopped.’

Justin grinned unsympathetically. ‘How very frustrating for you.’ He gave his brother a sly look. ‘So Mrs Stratton is still the epitome of virtue?’

‘Mind your own damned business,’ Richard said. He was astonished how protective he felt towards Deborah.

Justin’s grin deepened. ‘It must be serious if you are refusing to talk about it.’ He flicked the three-day-old copy of the
Suffolk Chronicle
that was resting on the table. ‘Plus you are reading the local papers,’ he observed. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me you have taken up tea drinking.’

‘Splendid idea,’ Richard said, reaching for the bell. ‘You’ll take some?’

Justin looked scandalised. ‘No, thank you. What happened to my fine French brandy? Have you drunk it all?’

Richard nodded towards the decanter. ‘Help yourself.’ He put a hand in his jacket pocket. ‘Take a look at this, Justin.’

He tossed the sheet of code down on the table between them. Justin glanced at it casually, looked again and drew his breath in with a soundless whistle. He looked at Richard, his dark eyes alight.

‘At last! Where did you find it?’

Richard laughed. ‘In Mrs Stratton’s copy of the seventeenth-century poets.’

Justin frowned, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. ‘Explain,’ he said economically.

Half an hour and two glasses of brandy later, they had talked the matter through.

‘So the spy is using a pictorial code,’ Justin said thoughtfully, ‘where the symbols represent groups of words rather than letters, you think?’

Richard nodded. ‘I think it would be good to ask Cory to take a look at this. He has done a lot of work with Thomas Young on hieroglyphs. He may have some useful ideas about breaking pictorial codes.’

Justin nodded. ‘We should send it directly.’ He swung the brandy glass gently between his fingers. ‘As for the members of Lady Sally’s reading group…I cannot believe it, but we are no further forward in finding the spy.’

‘No, but our field of suspects has narrowed,’ Richard said.

‘Only if one discounts Mrs Stratton.’ Justin hesitated, then took a deep breath. ‘She could be playing you for a fool, Richard. You are scarcely impartial in this.’

There was a moment of tension and then the lines of Richard’s body relaxed. ‘She could. But she is not.’

Justin did not say anything; he merely looked a question.

After a moment Richard said slowly, ‘Mrs Stratton is transparent as water, Justin. She finds it impossible to dissemble. She would have to be a damnably good actress to carry this deception through. I am certain that neither Mrs Stratton nor Lady Marney is the one we seek.’

Justin nodded slowly. ‘Miss Lang?’

‘The least likely option of the three remaining. I cannot believe she has the coolness or the intellect to carry it off.’

‘So it is Lady Sally Saltire or Lady Benedict.’ Justin looked thoughtful. ‘What do we do?’

‘Watch them.’

Justin gave him a crooked grin. ‘I infer that you have been watching Mrs Stratton a little too much, Richard?’

‘A great deal too much.’ Richard laughed. ‘So I leave Lady Sally and Lady Benedict to you.’

Justin sighed heavily. ‘Leaving you free to pursue your interest in Mrs Stratton, I suppose.’

‘Precisely.’

Richard went over to the desk, drew the inkpot towards him and started to pen a quick note to Cory Newlyn. Justin got up and sauntered over to the door. ‘Mama always hoped that Papa’s example of faithlessness would lead her sons in the opposite direction and breed uxorious men,’ he said. ‘She will be glad that one of us at least will not disappoint.’

Richard laughed. ‘Fate has a manner of thwarting our plans, Justin,’ he said. ‘Unless I can find a way to convince Mrs Stratton of my good intentions, she will never trust me enough to marry me. As for you and Lucas…’ He shook his head. ‘Parson’s mousetrap will catch you in the end.’

Justin took a guinea from his pocket and tossed it idly in his hand. ‘Care to wager on that, Richard?’

‘No,’ Richard said, bending his head over the letter once again. ‘I never wager on a certainty.’

Chapter Nine

O
livia Marney was lying in her bed, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. The design of her bedroom had been a particular triumph for Olivia, who had taken the floral theme she loved so much and transformed her house into an extension of her garden. The domed starfish ceiling was patterned with trelliswork in delicate green and floral sprays of pale rose, and there were flower stands and brackets attached to the wall, from which cascaded a riot of ivies and miniature, scented limes. There were mirrors inset in the walls and the morning light was soft and ethereal. It was by that pale light that Olivia had noticed the finest of cracks in the bedroom ceiling, cracks which probably no one else would ever see but which quite spoiled her enjoyment of her pastoral surroundings. She would have to do something about the plaster. Perhaps it was the exceptionally dry summer that had made it fracture into a spider’s web of fine lines. She would need to send to London for a plasterer of sufficient skill to make the repairs. The last time she had tried to use a local craftsman, the fool had completely filled in an alcove that she had intended for a cinerary urn…

She became aware somewhat belatedly that something had changed. It took her several seconds to work out what
had happened and then she realised that Ross was not moving any longer. In fact, he was propped on one elbow above her, his cynical blue gaze scanning her face.

‘Would you care for me to hand you a magazine?’ he said. ‘That might help you to pass the time.’

He did not wait for any reply, but swung himself off the bed and reached for his dressing-robe. Olivia averted her gaze from his hard, well-muscled body. She could not remember a time when she had permitted herself to look openly on Ross’s nakedness.

‘Naked men look
so
untidy,’ she remembered her mother, Lady Walton, saying to her on her wedding night. ‘It is best to lie back, close one’s eyes and think about something pleasant. The menus for the week, perhaps, or what one might wear for church on Sunday. You will find that your husband will soon finish and you will have the added benefit of having planned the food for an entire seven days.’

Olivia had often reflected that Lady Walton’s words had been all too true. With Ross, the moment had passed all too quickly. They had been virtual strangers when they had married, in a match that was a long-standing arrangement between their two families. Olivia had wanted to please her parents and had not objected to Ross as a husband. He seemed kind enough and she knew, in the instinctive way that one did, that he admired her. She was pretty and obedient; she thought that she should have been the ideal wife. It therefore caused her great pain when she realised that Ross found her lacking in some way. He almost seemed bored with her. And she, in turn, could not reach him. There was a part of him that had been locked away since she had first known him; the part that had gone to sea at fifteen and had seen naval action around the world, had fought and suffered and inflicted suffering on others. Ross never spoke
of his experiences of war. It was other people who told her that he had been a hero.

They had fashioned a compromise in their marriage over the past six years, but occasionally that compromise was upset, as it had been when Ross had overheard her speaking to Deborah the previous week. She had known then that he would come to her and make love to her, almost as though he had something still to prove. Almost as though he still cared. And now he
had
come to her and she had been thinking about decorating the ceiling…If only she could be more like Deb—more open, more spontaneous, more capable of saying how she felt…

Olivia swallowed a sharp lump in her throat. Ross had his back to her as he tied the sash of his robe, but she could see his reflection in one of the inset mirrors. He was tanned from all the time that he spent outdoors, and his thick black hair tumbled across his forehead. There was a heavy frown on his brow. He looked up abruptly and his narrowed blue eyes met Olivia’s in the mirror. She hastily covered herself with the tumbled bedclothes and saw a parody of a smile touch Ross’s firm mouth.

He turned towards her and his gaze swept comprehensively over her as she huddled beneath the coverlet.

‘Do not worry, my dear,’ he said. ‘There is no enjoyment to be had from making love to a piece of statuary. I shall never trouble you again.’

He went through the painted door into his dressing room and closed it with studied quiet. Olivia’s bedroom resumed its bucolic peace. For a long moment she stared at her reflection in the mirror—the tumbled fair hair about her shoulders, the thin pale face that looked so bereft, the slender body that
should
still be desirable to her husband. She felt dreadfully lonely.

Rolling over, she rang the bell beside the bed to summon
her maid. Her mind seemed strangely blank, but she was aware that if she did not get up and do something, she would probably cry. So she would go out. She would go out and see Deborah and her sister’s irrepressible spirits would cheer her. It was no great matter if she was not on intimate terms with her husband. Most people rubbed along together tolerably well without being madly in love. A sob caught in her throat and she gulped, taking a deep breath as the maid came in, and turning a smiling face in her direction.

‘Jenny, is it not a beautiful day? I shall go out to see my sister at Mallow. She is in need of some advice on her garden. I fear it is in a sad state of decay, but then Deb only ever wanted those plants that would flower immediately…’

And chattering inconsequentially, she made her toilette and shut out the knowledge in the maid’s eyes that said that she and the entire household knew that Lord and Lady Marney were estranged and that Lord Marney would shortly be seeking consolation elsewhere.

Deb was trying to write a letter that morning. It was a strange business, but she had found that since she had spent more time in Lord Richard Kestrel’s company, she seemed to have even less inclination to hire herself a temporary fiancé. It was odd, and she could see no direct connection between the two facts, but it was undeniable. To become betrothed, no matter how briefly, no matter how practically, seemed some sort of betrayal of her feelings. She was out of all patience with herself.

She sighed and re-read the missive.

Dear Lord Scandal, I need to be certain that you are a man of honour before I agree to a meeting. Though I have adopted so strange a mode of proceeding, I mean to be cautious in my choice. I confess that I am undecided. I shall write again to you shortly, and if you are still interested in rendering me assistance, perhaps we may meet…

Deb sighed and crumpled up the paper, throwing it inaccurately in the direction of the fire grate. It was her fifth attempt and it still was not quite right. The first had been too coy, the second too vague, the third too bold. She had had no idea that this business of advertising for a fiancé would be quite so difficult, nor that she would be so short of choice. She had visited the Bell and Steelyard Inn again the previous day and there were still no more replies to her advertisement. It seemed inexplicable.

Deb paused at the sound of a step in the corridor outside, for she had not told Mrs Aintree that she was pressing ahead with her plan. She felt a little ashamed of this, but she had lain awake for a long time into the night whilst she puzzled the whole matter out. She could find a fiancé or she could confess all to her father and accept his reproaches as her due. If it would end there, then perhaps she might have taken it on the chin. But it did not. Lord Walton was of choleric disposition and Deb knew that once he was aware that she had no matrimonial plans, he would compel her to return to live in Bath. If she refused, he would cut off her allowance. There would be no discussion.

Deb rested the quill pen on the inkpot and pushed the paper away from her. After three years away it would be impossible to go back and to live at her parental home. It had been bad enough before she had run away with Neil. The atmosphere there had been stifling. Her father had ruled with a rod of iron and her mother had practically pushed her into the lap of any eligible man who passed by. So, before her parents tried to marry her off again, she had to find her own fiancé.

Dear Lord Scandal, you simply must help me. I have told my father that I am engaged to be married, but unfortunately this is not the case. I do not have a betrothed and most earnestly seek a gentleman who can fulfil the duties of a fiancé during the period of my brother’s wedding. This is crucial to me if I am to avoid the ignominy of being dragged home to live with my parents again…

Deb ran a hand through her disordered honey-coloured curls. She could not help but wonder what Lord Richard Kestrel would make of her attempts to hire herself a fiancé. Although it was the merest business arrangement, she felt the same wave of disloyalty sweep over her again. She groaned. This was ridiculous since she owed Lord Richard no loyalty at all. For all her affinity with him, she did not know whether he was trifling with her or not, although her blood burned to believe him faithful.