A Marquess, A Miss And A Mystery

Chapter Four

Since Horatia and Lady Elizabeth had not taken the direct route back to the house from the chapel, practically everyone who’d attended morning prayers had already reached the yellow salon before them.

Horatia followed in Lady Elizabeth’s wake to the tea table, which was manned by a brace of the Duke’s liveried footmen. Having procured drinks, they then proceeded to another great long refectory-style table, which was piled with all manner of the kinds of things she would have taken on a picnic. There were huge hams, chicken legs, slices of bread, whole boiled eggs and fruit that was so artfully arranged on a sort of pedestal that it would have felt as if she was desecrating it if she dared remove so much as a single grape.

She picked up a plate and handed it over to one of the footmen, pointing out what she wanted rather than helping herself to any of the tempting delicacies on show. Once it was filled, but not piled high, Horatia looked about for somewhere to sit and eat it. Lady Elizabeth had already dutifully gone to sit beside her mother. But there was no way Horatia was going to try to squeeze on to the sofa beside them. The vinegary expression on Lady Tewkesbury’s face was enough to give her indigestion. And there were loads of other chairs dotted about, in little clusters, and sofas set at angles so that the occupants could chat.

Though Horatia had the horrid feeling that what they were chatting about was her. Several times she caught a sly look, or somebody nudging someone else to make them aware she was about to walk by. And, of course, there was Lord Devizes himself, surrounded by a gaggle of giggling females, his eyes following her progress, his mouth slightly tilted in that mocking smile he very rarely went without.

His flirts must all be wondering how she could possibly show her face in public after the scene she’d made in the chapel earlier. If only she had the courage to take her plate and cup up to her own sitting room where she could avoid the stares. Or if only there was a bank of potted plants behind which she could hide.

But there wasn’t. For all his vaunted wealth, the Duke had not a single plant, in a pot, anywhere in this room, never mind a whole bank of them. The best she could do would be to find a corner and hope that once she’d sat down in it, and applied herself to her nuncheon, certain people would find something else to laugh at. She couldn’t help darting the Duke a rather resentful glance before beginning her search. He was standing with a group of men by one of the fireplaces, the over-mantel of which they were using as a shelf for their drinks while they tucked into their food. Which did nothing to improve her mood. It was all very well for men. They could eat standing up and put mantel shelves into use as tables, and all anyone would say was that they were making themselves at home. If she were to do the same...

She resumed her search of the room for a secluded corner and after only a few moments finally spotted a straight-backed chair standing against the wall by a window. It had the advantage of being partially shielded by a heavy velvet curtain. With a sigh of relief, Horatia made straight for it. It was only once she’d sat down that she realised that it was going to be virtually impossible to eat anything while she had her teacup in one hand and her plate in the other. The windowsill was too narrow to be anywhere near as useful as a mantelpiece, as well as being a bit awkward to reach being swathed by such a bulky curtain. Why, oh, why did people not provide their guests with handy little tables? And not just the gregarious ones, who sat upon the sofas in the middle of the room. They were all amply catered for. They had tables to the front of them, tables at their elbows, even tables directly behind the sofa back should they take it into their heads to reach for their teacups over their shoulders.

She was just wondering which of the groups of people who were in possession of tables she could go and join, when the Duke’s intended came bustling over, a little white dog bounding along at her skirts.

‘Miss Carmichael,’ said the dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned slip of a girl that nobody could believe the Duke would prefer over elegant blonde beauties such as Lady Elizabeth. ‘I am so sorry that I have not had a chance to speak with you before now. I am...’ She hesitated, a tide of pink rushing up her cheeks. And then she took a deep breath as though deciding she might as well say whatever it was she’d thought twice about. ‘As you can probably tell, I am not used to entertaining on such a vast scale. Well, any scale at all, to be honest. But, oh, dear me...’ She waved to a footman stationed at the door. ‘Peter, can you go and fetch a little table for Miss Carmichael? I am so sorry,’ she said the moment he’d strolled away. ‘I should have thought to have a table placed here.’

The girl was so uncomfortable, so clearly out of her depth, that even though Horatia had just been mentally berating her for not thinking of providing a table, she started to feel some sympathy for her. Even though that smacked of disloyalty to Lady Elizabeth.

‘I don’t suppose you expected any of your guests to wish to sit behind a curtain,’ she said by way of a compromise.

‘Oh. But I should have known, since the first time I set foot in this room I only lasted five minutes before... I mean, well, that is, how are you finding things at Theakstone Court?’ Miss Underwood spoke in such a flustered manner that Horatia would have assumed, if she didn’t know better, that the girl was even more unused to polite company than she was. ‘It must be so awkward for you, being here at such a difficult time,’ she then continued. ‘Were you very close to your brother? Oh.’ She coloured up again. ‘That is not the kind of question I should have asked, is it? Oh, where is Peter with that table?’ She looked around with an air of desperation.

And Horatia didn’t have the heart to maintain any sort of hostility at all any longer. After all, Lady Elizabeth herself didn’t seem to begrudge Miss Underwood the Duke. ‘I was very, very close to my brother,’ she said, in an attempt to lay to rest one of her hostess’s concerns. ‘And, yes, I do feel a bit awkward here, but then, to be frank, I was not that much less awkward before. In society, that is. In fact, I rarely went about much, even though I live in London.’

Now it was her cheeks that heated. But at least Miss Underwood looked less uncomfortable.

‘Then it was very brave of you to attend.’

‘Loyal, I should have said,’ drawled Lord Devizes, who had somehow managed to make his way across the room without either of the ladies noticing. Both she and Miss Underwood jumped, though she was the only one to spill tea down the front of her gown. Fortunately, since it was black, the stain would hardly show. Which was yet another advantage of not having to wear the fashionably pale colours Aunt Matilda had insisted she wore in the past.

‘You came, primarily,’ Lord Devizes was continuing, ‘to provide support for your disappointed friend, Lady Elizabeth Grey, did you not? Against the woman who stole her intended from beneath her nose.’ He turned to give Miss Underwood a smile that was just about the most disdainful expression she’d ever seen on anyone’s face.

Which made her want to leap to the girl’s defence. ‘It was as much to my advantage as Lady Elizabeth’s. That is,’ she said, belatedly realising that she’d been on the verge of giving too much away, ‘she thought that getting me out of Town might help to, um, lift my spirits.’

‘I can see that she is doing her utmost,’ he said, indicating the sofa on which Lady Elizabeth was sitting with her mother, at the far end of the room, ‘to do so.’

Sarcastic beast.

‘Well, it must be very difficult,’ put in Miss Underwood, ‘to know what to do for Miss Carmichael. I mean, what with her being in mourning, it isn’t as if she can join in all that much with any of the activities we have planned for the entertainment of our guests this week.’

No, but then she hadn’t wanted to do any joining in. She’d wanted to contact Lord Devizes and let him know what she knew, so that he could bring Herbert’s killers to justice. Once she’d shared all the information she had, she’d planned to stay in her room as much as she could, out of the way of all the festivities, and hand the work over to him.

What a fool she was. She should never have assumed that a man, any man, even a man like Lord Devizes would have been better at tackling the active work. When had any man been any better than her at anything?

Except dressing well and being charming, that was, at which both Lord Devizes and Herbert excelled. Which wasn’t surprising, the amount of time they spent gazing at themselves in mirrors. Why, Lord Devizes was doing so now. Though he was standing close enough to hold a conversation with her, he’d also chosen a spot which gave him a clear view to the mirror which hung between her window and the next one along. And was openly checking out the set of his neckcloth.

‘You were involved in the planning of the entertainment, were you?’ Lord Devizes raised one of his eyebrows in mock surprise at Miss Underwood.

‘I... Well, no, it was more my aunt, as I expect you know, but...’

‘Well, I certainly knew that it could not have been His Grace,’ he said, apparently satisfied with his appearance and turning to direct a sardonic smile in Miss Underwood’s direction. ‘Since he cares nothing for anybody’s pleasure but his own.’

Miss Underwood gasped. ‘That is not true. He is a truly generous host—’

‘I shall have to take your word for it, having never been in receipt of his hospitality.’

‘What?’ Miss Underwood looked completely taken aback. ‘Has he never...? I mean, I know that there is some bad feeling on your side, but...’

Lord Devizes managed to let Miss Underwood know that she’d seriously offended him by letting his smile slip just the tiniest bit and doing something with his eyes that made them look positively freezing. ‘Bad feeling?’ The tone of his voice matched the iciness of his eyes.

‘Oh, um, I see Peter coming over with the table,’ said Miss Underwood, wrenching her gaze away from Lord Devizes and turning to the footman as though he was her saviour. After flapping about for a minute or so placing it in a position that meant Horatia had both cup and plate comfortably to hand, Miss Underwood scurried off with her footman at her side.

Leaving Horatia alone with Lord Devizes.

‘That was a bit unnecessary,’ she said.

‘Possibly,’ he conceded. ‘But I gathered, from your little demonstration in the chapel earlier, that you were desperate to have private speech with me.’

‘Well, yes, I am, but...’

‘Then why waste the few moments we have in questioning my methods? We probably have two minutes, at most, before somebody comes to break up our tête-à-tête. Here,’ he said, holding out the Bible she’d been worrying about. ‘My pretext for approaching you.’

Gone was his fatuous smile and the lazy droop to his eyes. Even his voice had changed. Now she could see the man her brother had worked with. The man whom very few people ever saw when they were in the presence of Lord Devizes.

‘What is so important that you needed to accost me in that fashion?’ he said, in a tone of voice that finally persuaded her that he could really have run the kind of organisation Herbert swore they’d been involved in. ‘Money, is it? I know Herbert supported you.’

‘He did not!’ She was fortunate enough to have a small competence of her own. Along with Aunt Matilda’s jointure, the two ladies managed to rub along in their little house very comfortably, in a financial sense, at least. ‘And if I was in that sort of difficulty, do you really suppose I would apply to you for help?’

‘Then the sketch you tucked in the pages of your Bible really was a message. Herbert must have been speaking out of turn,’ he said, half to himself. ‘What more,’ he said, applying himself directly to her again, ‘do you know about the business beside my code name?’

‘Probably a sight more than you do, since I was the one who unravelled all the ciphers you gave him.’

‘You?’ He looked at her as though he’d never really seen her before, in a searching, piercing way that made her want to wriggle in her seat.

‘Yes, me,’ she said, feeling her cheeks flush. Though why they should do so she could not think.

Or perhaps she could. This was the first time he’d really turned his full attention on her. And it was having a most remarkable effect. She could now see why he was so attractive to so many women, even though she’d never cared for his wispy fair looks before. He had a great deal of...presence, that was what it was. She could not call it charm, since he couldn’t be less charming, insinuating she couldn’t have possibly done so much of Herbert’s paperwork for him. Well, whatever it was about him, it was a bit galling to discover that she was not immune to it.

‘Surely,’ she pointed out, reminding herself that she was a rational, intelligent creature who was in the middle of a very important conversation, and, therefore, had no business melting into the chair, let alone noticing that his eyes were blue, not grey as she’d previously thought, ‘you cannot really think he had the time to work out some of the earlier ciphers he brought to me with all the carousing he did with you? Or the brains, come to that. You knew him at Oxford, didn’t you?’

‘Herbert was clever...’

‘In some ways, yes. But he didn’t have the patience to sit down and work through the thousands of possible permutations each cipher could represent. Don’t you have any idea how many hours such work takes?’

‘I truly sympathise,’ he said in his more typical lazy drawl, his expression suddenly assuming that mask of fatuous insincerity that he’d briefly dropped. And then turned to face the Duke, who was, Horatia saw, approaching them with a look of dark intent on his face. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t my exalted half-brother, His Grace the Duke himself. Deigning to grace us with his presence.’

The Duke came to a halt. His brows lowered still further. ‘I have not come to quarrel with you.’

‘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

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.