The Lady’s Secret (14 page)

“What is to be done? What is to be done?” Miss Hodge fluttered. Nathan suppressed his irritation. No other gentleman stepped in to save him, so he offered himself up gallantly.

“I will carry Miss Lucinda back to the house, if you would be so good as to chaperone, Miss Hodge?”

Miss Hodge’s saintly expression faltered. “Oh, but…the walk…” She turned her head to look at Dunsmore. “My lord?”

But Dunsmore wasn’t going to let an avenue of escape like that be closed off.

“I think Lord Harland has the right of it, Miss Hodge. I shall miss your company, but I cannot abandon my other guests. I know you are too good a sister to do otherwise than accompany Miss Lucinda in her hour of need.”

And that was that.

Nathan hoisted the none-too-light Miss Lucinda up into his arms and began the half-mile trudge back to the house, consoling himself with the thought of returning to his bedchamber—and Georgy.

Georgy waited fifteen minutes after the ladies and gentlemen set off on their walk before she did anything. She removed her shoes and tucked the hairpin she’d found in her inside pocket. She checked that she had her lucky coin in her pocket, then off she went.

She stood for a few minutes in the doorway, listening. She could hear the sounds of doors opening and closing upstairs, a few clatters as the maids tackled the guest bedchambers on the floor above. She knew they’d already finished with this floor; she’d seen them gathering up their supplies to move upstairs half an hour ago. Around her, there was no sound at all. At last, heart pounding, hands shaking, she set off down the corridor in her stocking feet.

In truth, she expected to find the study door locked and to fumble uselessly with the hairpin for several hair-raising minutes before returning to Nathan’s bedchamber unsuccessful. She had not expected to turn the door knob and have it simply swing open. But it did.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, heart galloping, breath short.

The room was panelled in walnut, with bottle green drapes obscuring much of the window. One wall was lined with books, two full shelves taken up with large leather-bound ledgers. The desk, which dominated the room, also had several ledger books on it, one lying open.

Georgy sidled behind the desk and stepped back to study the drawers. There were three on each side and she tried them one by one. Every one of them was locked. She extracted the hairpin from her waistcoat and inserted it in the first keyhole with shaking fingers. For long minutes she fiddled at the lock, trying to gauge the shape and movement of the mechanism with the thin wire. Nothing. She could detect nothing of it at all. Her pin scraped around uselessly as sweat gathered under her neckcloth. It felt nothing like the lock-picks she’d finally begun to master. At last, defeated, she took the pin out and stuck it back in her pocket.

The cabinet, then.

After her failure with the drawers, she had no confidence left. She would try to open the cabinet doors and fail again. Eventually she would have to leave, weak with fear, angry at her lack of success.

Or perhaps not.

A small key protruded from the keyhole of the topmost section of the cabinet, a drop-down leaf. Georgy stared at it for a moment, astonished. It was meant to be, she thought. Then she stepped forward and opened it.

As the wooden leaf swung down to a horizontal level, two supporting wooden struts emerged from below. The leaf resting on the struts formed a desktop, the surface of which was inlaid with red leather. Inside the deep desk well were packets and packets of what looked like correspondence. Each packet was tied up with ribbon or string, some bearing an explanatory bit of script on the exterior face, some not.

Georgy began to sort through the packets. She tried to keep them in order, but it was difficult and she was taut with nerves, her fingers fumbling. If the exterior labels were to be believed—
Correspondence from Mr. Wickham re land at Halton Farm 1807; Correspondence from Mrs. Kelvin re Society of Impoverished Gentlewomen
—many of the packets were plainly irrelevant. Conscious of the time, Georgy took these packets at face value, concentrating her efforts on the others, which she began to open up with shaking hands, her unusually clumsy fingers struggling with the tight knots. She perused these quickly, then re-folded them and tied the packets up again when she discovered they were of no interest.

The clock of the mantelpiece gave out a loud tick-tock that tormented her, making her perpetually aware of the passing minutes. It rang the quarter-hour twice during her vigil. As she got to the last few packets, she began to feel desperate. There was nothing here. All this risk, and for nothing. At some point the walkers—Dunsmore and Harland among them—would return.

And then she opened the third-to-last packet. It bore the legend
From P. 1801-1803
. A number of letters tumbled onto the desk when she undid the knot, perhaps six or seven. Each one, she realised, was addressed to Lady Elizabeth Dunsmore, in the same small, precise hand. She scanned the first—it was from “Peter.” She realised this was the present Lady Dunsmore’s husband, her own uncle.

That first letter was exceedingly dull. So was the second.

The third was not.

The first thing she noticed was the date—the fourteenth of September, 1802. It was the day her own mother had died, stabbed by a cutpurse in broad daylight, not five minutes’ walk from the Camelot. He’d taken a few coins and small strand of pearls, ripping them from her mother’s throat as she lay dying.

Years later, when Max had told them about their parents’ marriage, Harry had become suspicious. It was too convenient, he had pointed out, their mother attacked in the street only days after the death of their cousin Benjamin, when it turned out Harry himself should have inherited.

Georgy hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now she dropped her eyes from that burning date to the short note set out below it.

She read it three times, dry-eyed and disbelieving at first, and then with rising horror and a growing lump in her throat. At length she folded the letter up again and gathered it up with the others, tying them together with the black cotton ribbon again and tucking them into her inside pocket.

She checked the last couple of packets—irrelevant again—and then began to try to put everything back the way it had been. But somehow the arrangement didn’t look the same as before.

Would anyone notice? She moved the packets around a little, trying to re-create the higgledy-piggledy appearance they had when she’d found them. But the more she fiddled, the more out of sorts it all seemed. When the clock rang the quarter hour for the third time, she eventually stopped and shut the cabinet up again. She had already been here too long.

She padded back to the door and put her ear to the wood. After a minute, she inched the door open and poked her head out. The corridor was empty. She could feel relief descending upon her—a heady, almost ecstatic feeling.

She eased the door closed behind her and stole swiftly down the corridor, turning the corner just as Harland reached the top of the stairs, a dark-haired woman in his arms.

Nathan froze. So did Georgy. The picture she presented said it all—her shocked expression, her shoeless feet. She was obviously returning to his chamber from a part of the house she had no business being in. Her gaze flicked to Miss Lucinda—who was, by some miracle, speaking to her older sister and Lady Dunsmore over his right shoulder—and then she darted away again, back round the corner from whence she’d emerged.

“I am wretched that this should have happened to you, my dear,” Lady Dunsmore was saying behind him. “Do you have some sewing with you, or a book to read while you rest? I could fetch you a book from my own chamber if you wish. I have several novels you may enjoy.”

Damn. He had to stop Lady Dunsmore from going to her chamber.

“Perhaps, ma’am,” he interrupted loudly, “we could take Miss Lucinda to her room first? My arms are becoming rather tired.”

Miss Lucinda turned her head to glance at him reproachfully. It
was
a most ungentlemanly thing to say, even though it was quite true—he had been carrying her for over twenty minutes after all. But it had the desired effect. Lady Dunsmore murmured her agreement and brushed past him, leading the way up to the floor above.

Nathan followed Lady Dunsmore’s silk-covered rump up another twenty steps and along to the west end of the corridor where Miss Lucinda slept. He hoped to God that Georgy would have the wits to get herself back to his bedchamber without delay.

Christ, what was he thinking? He should be hauling her in front of Dunsmore, not protecting her!

Lady Dunsmore opened the door and stepped inside. Miss Hodge followed. Nathan entered last and laid Miss Lucinda gently down on the bed.

“Thank you, Lord Harland. You have been most kind,” Miss Lucinda said, straightening her long skirts demurely.

Nathan suppressed the urge to shake the stiffness out of his arms as he retreated.

“Not at all. I was pleased to be of assistance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies.” He had his back to the door, his hand curving round the handle impatiently. He executed a bow as he turned it. Miss Lucinda smiled and Lady Dunsmore nodded brusquely. Miss Hodge looked longingly in his direction, but couldn’t very well suggest that he accompany her back on the walk without seeming uncaring of her sister’s wellbeing.

With a final bow, Nathan opened the door and made his escape. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he darted back downstairs, shaking his aching arms. He went straight to his bedchamber, throwing the door open, half expecting to find the room empty. But she was there and she turned quickly to face him. He slammed the door behind him and stepped forward, a simmering anger bubbling up to replace the awful fear that had bloomed in his chest when he’d seen her standing there, vulnerable to discovery.

He compressed his lips, trying to lock the anger away, and breathed through his nose. Georgy watched him, eyes wary.

“You were trying to get into the study again,” he said.

“Yes,” she admitted, her voice small.

“Did you get in this time?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Did you take anything?”

She shook her head but he didn’t know whether to believe her. God, how could he have been so stupid as to imagine she wouldn’t try this again?

“You promised you wouldn’t go in there again.”

“No I didn’t. You told me not to but I promised nothing.”

He exhaled angrily. “I made it entirely clear you were not to do so!
Why
were you in there? What were you looking for?”

His voice rose and she flinched at each question, staring at him miserably.

“So help me, Georgy—” He broke off, forcing himself to calm down. He did not want his raised voice attracting attention. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t take you to Dunsmore right now. For all I know, you’ve stolen from him, taken something valuable. What if someone else is blamed? A servant, perhaps, someone who could lose their position over this.”

“That won’t happen,” she said, taking a step towards him, her expression fervent. “I admit I was looking for something. A document—something that doesn’t belong to Lord Dunsmore—but I didn’t find what I was looking for. I swear on my life, I did
not
find it!”

He met and held her earnest gaze, saying nothing. Her eyes were that cool, watery green. Transparent. It was difficult to believe they hid anything.

“Please,” she added, pressing her hands together in a beseeching gesture. “I will leave this house at this moment if you wish. There is no need to—” She broke off in the face of his continued silence and exclaimed, “You
promised
you would not hand me over!”

Nathan laughed, an abrupt gust of disbelief. “You dare to hold me to my foolishly given promise, when you have defied my express command?” He shook his head, his hands clenched in tight fists at his sides.

“I did not promise not to go in there.”

He gave a harsh laugh and she flushed scarlet.

He stared at her for long moments, torn as to what to do. He was blisteringly angry that she had disobeyed him. But in truth he balked at the prospect of hauling her up before Dunsmore. Dunsmore would call the magistrate. She would be charged—probably with attempted burglary, a serious crime. She would be tried. He would have to give evidence against her—he was the only witness, after all. She had given him no reason to believe she was anything other than untrustworthy, but for some reason he believed her. Her protestations of innocence held the ring, not only of truth, but of outrage. There was a defiant, angry glint in her eye now, a faint belligerence firming her jaw. His gut told him she was no criminal. But there were secrets here, ones she was not prepared to divulge.

“Will you tell me what you were looking for?” he asked.

“I cannot,” she said with apparent regret, anxious eyes fixed on him.

He made an inarticulate noise of mingled frustration and admiration. Her hand in this game was as poor as it could be and yet she looked him in the eye and called his bluff? Did she realise the strength of the card she played? His desire to find her out and persuade her to yield her secrets to him was irresistible.

“I daren’t leave you to your own devices in this house,” he said, turning from her to cross the room and ring for a maid. “I will plead a megrim and ask for a supper tray. You will tend me, as befits my devoted valet. We will leave for Camberley tomorrow morning, as early as can be managed.”