LITMIR.BIZ

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town yesterday afternoon, stayed with my friend Brownlow in Berkhamsted overnight. I have a trifle of business with your father before I turn south for Warrenford Park.’

      ‘If the snow holds off, otherwise you will have to stay, which will be delightful,’ Verity said. ‘Oh, I am sorry, I am quite forgetting myself! Nell, this is my godfather, Robert Veryan, Viscount Keddinton. Godpapa, Miss Latham is staying with us.’

      Nell managed a presentable curtsy. ‘Good morning, my lord.’

      ‘Good morning, Miss Latham. You have chosen a cold month for your country stay.’ He smiled, nodded and followed the footman through the hall towards the study.

      ‘What a lovely surprise,’ Verity said. ‘But I don’t expect he will be able to stay long, the roads must be so difficult with all this frost.’ She settled herself by the fire with her embroidery frame and began to sort silks. ‘You do curtsy nicely, Nell. I didn’t think milliners would learn how to do that.’ She went pink, suddenly realising that she had been less than tactful.

      ‘There is no call for it,’ Nell admitted, not wanting her to be embarrassed. ‘But I learned how to curtsy properly when…We were not always very hard up, you see,’ she finished lamely.

      Honoria put down La Belle Assemblée. As usual, she was seeking out the most outrageous styles, guaranteeing another heated confrontation with her mother when they next visited the modiste. ‘We wondered, because of your manners and the way you speak, only Mama said not to ask because it was tactless.’

      ‘So it is,’ Verity said, still pink.

      ‘I grew up in moderate comfort,’ Nell said. ‘But then Mama was ill and then—well, the money ran out, so I had to work for a living.’

      ‘What a pity you don’t have a title,’ Honoria observed, oblivious to Verity’s frowns. ‘Because then you could have opened your own millinery shop. Lots of aristocratic French ladies have; it gives a real cachet.’

      But I do have a title, Nell thought, startling herself. Or I did before they took it away. Lady Helena Wardale. She could not recall it ever being used. That was another person, a long time ago.

      ‘Well, even if I had, I do not have any money,’ she said making her voice bright. ‘It takes quite an investment to set up a business. I would have to rent a shop, buy materials and equipment, hire girls, advertise.’

      ‘I suppose it must be expensive,’ Verity said, threading her needle and beginning to add the leaves to a spray of roses. ‘Oh well, perhaps Marcus will send his new mistress to the shop that you work at and your employer will be so pleased she will increase your wages.’

      Honoria laughed. ‘Really, Verity! I never thought I would hear you talking about such things.’

      ‘He has got a new one, I’m sure,’ her sister retorted. ‘And mistresses are very expensive, aren’t they, Nell?’

      ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Nell said repressively, reducing Verity to bushing silence again. Her own cheeks were burning as she bent over Verity’s work basket and began untangling a skein of pale blue silk. There had been that insane moment when she had been tempted by the thought of becoming Marcus’s mistress, tempted to throw away her principles and her upbringing and risk plunging into the life of the demi-monde. For money. Or had it been for money? Had she been falling in love with him even then and not realized it?

      ‘Damn it!’ Marcus half rose from his chair as his father slammed his fist down on the desk, making the inkwell rock dangerously. ‘Are you saying that Wardale was innocent? That I helped send an innocent man to his death?’

      ‘No, no, my dear Carlow, of course not,’ Veryan soothed. ‘I was just asking if you’d thought of anything else, anything that could explain this persecution. I was simply speculating. You must remember, when I visited you in London you said nothing of this—the rope was a practical joke, Stanegate’s wound the result of an encounter with a footpad, that was all.

      ‘When I got your letter, I have to confess my mind was a total blank, and it isn’t much clearer now. Of course the man was guilty, but just because that’s a fact doesn’t mean someone may believe otherwise. We discussed this before Christmas, you recall, and you did not feel so heated then.’

      ‘Well, it sounds as though you were hoping he was innocent,’ the earl said, subsiding back into his seat. His hands were not quite steady as they gripped the carved arms of the big chair and Marcus got up, splashed brandy into a glass and set it on the desk beside him. ‘Part of me wishes it were so. Will Wardale was my best friend, for God’s sake. But if he was blameless then there’s injustice added to murder and treachery.’

      ‘The roads must be bad,’ Marcus remarked into the silence that greeted that observation. ‘This frost seems to be hardening.’ Veryan cast a sharp glance at him and Marcus tipped his head infinitesimally towards the door.

      ‘Indeed, yes. Well, I had best be on my way.’ One thing, Marcus reflected, Veryan was so damn sharp you never had to give him more than a hint.

      ‘A pity.’ Marcus steered him firmly towards the threshold. ‘It would have been delightful if you could have stayed for luncheon, but Mama will understand.’

      ‘Another time, perhaps.’ Veryan looked back at his old friend. ‘I’ve set Gregson, my confidential secretary, to dig out the old files while I’m away. He’s a bright young man, we’ll see what he can find. Good day, Carlow.’

      The viscount stopped a safe distance from the closed study door. ‘Well, this is doing your father no good at all, is it? A good thing, perhaps, that outburst was not heard by anyone but us or it might have been misconstrued as coming from a guilty conscience.’

      ‘Damn it, Veryan!’

      ‘I said misconstrued,’ the older man said calmly. ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me about it?’

      ‘Possibly.’ Still feeling defensive, Marcus opened the library door and motioned Veryan inside. ‘I had hopes he was finding this more stimulating than upsetting, but the reminder that there might be some doubt about Wardale’s guilt—that hit him hard.’

      ‘So, what else is there?’ Veryan strolled over to the globe and set it spinning, one long finger tracing across the continents like an emperor seeking new lands to conquer. ‘Anything to do with that charming young lady I met in the hall on my arrival by any chance?’

      ‘Miss Latham? She delivered the parcel that set this whole nightmare going.’

      ‘And is she the owner of a pistol, one wonders?’

      ‘Of course not.’ He trusted Veryan, but the identity of whoever had shot him—a capital crime at worst—was not something he intended to reveal to anyone outside the family.

      ‘No. Quite.’ Apparently intent on the borders of Russia, Veryan did not lift his head. ‘A young lady of mystery, then?’

      ‘A milliner, that is genuine enough. She says the man who sent the parcel used her employer to secure its delivery.’

      ‘Possible.’

      ‘But she is hiding something,’ Marcus said, half to himself. ‘I want to believe she is telling me the truth and yet, somehow, I cannot.’

      ‘Then trust your instincts,’ Veryan said, looking up suddenly, his pale eyes intent. ‘With a male suspect there are obvious methods of getting to the truth, regrettably coarse though some of those methods may be. With women, perhaps one needs to be slightly more…subtle.’ His smile did not quite reach his eyes.

      With an unpleasant taste in his mouth, Marcus watched Veryan’s carriage disappear down the drive. Veryan’s veiled suggestion that he seduce the truth out of Nell chimed all too closely with his own desires to be comfortable. It felt as though he had somehow let Nell down by talking about her to the other man and that he had revealed too much of his own thoughts to the experienced spymaster.

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