“I tripped. The ruins are not safe.”
“And yet you persist in visiting them,” Endymion gentled his tone. He raised his hand toward her shoulder, bared by her gown. No. Too much temptation. He rested his palm on the back of her chair instead.
“When we were children, I might have said the same of you,” she shot back.
“No one ever tried to push me from the battlements.”
“I daresay, Her Grace may have considered it,” Voil offered.
“More than once,” she muttered. Rhiannon reached up to twist her hair. Impossible, as it had all been upswept, curled, and pinned into a ruthless work of art. Her hand slid down her neck. Her fingers caught her intricate jet necklace and toyed with the filigree gold. Of all the things to remember. She was nervous, afraid even, and it made it difficult for Endymion to breathe.
A primitive, soul-deep need rushed at him, a high tide of misty certainty. The where or the why escaped him. It simply…was. He wanted to keep her safe. Not because she was his wife, his responsibility, or even his duchess. The sight of her intending to twist her hair set up an ache in his chest. Keeping her safe made that aching need go away. It always had. If she was safe, she was happy. If Rhiannon was happy… She wasn’t. Not now. Not since he’d arrived. He’d made her happy before, that much he remembered. He had, long ago.
“Are you listening at all, Pendeen?” Voil asked.
“Have you said anything of importance?” Endymion inquired. A surge of irritation and surprise drew him back to the present. Attention to even the most boring of conversations had ever been his grandfather’s credo. One never knew when something useful might make its way into the bog of meaningless drivel that was polite conversation. As much as he wanted to learn everything about the woman Rhiannon had become, at this moment, he needed to discover what, if anything, she suspected about these accidents.
Voil threw up his hands. “I despair of you, Pendeen. I truly do. Her Grace assures me she knows the ruins too well to have ever been in danger. She merely lost her footing.”
Endymion glanced down at her from his seat on the arm of her chair. She sat ramrod straight, her hands folded gracefully in her lap. The picture of a demure English lady. He suppressed the urge to snort. She met his gaze with one of her own—one that said “Go to hell” in English and Cornish, no less.
“Her Grace is correct concerning her knowledge of the ruins,” Endymion said. “She has played among them since she was a child. Which begs the question, armed with such knowledge, what might cause her to slip and fall from a window in which she has sat and played princess thousands of times?”
His composed duchess used both hands to try and shove Endymion off the chair. He refused to budge, even when the heat of her touch against his hip and thigh set up a slow burn in danger of traveling to far more interested parts of his body.
“You played princess? How delightful,” Voil said with a flash of his most charming smile. “No doubt, Pendeen here was one of many knights who rode to rescue you.”
“Stubble it, Dymi,” she ordered when Endymion opened his mouth to reply.
“Wait.” Voil held up his hand imperiously. “You fell from a window? How did you fall from a window? Were you injured? When did this happen? Good Lord, Pendeen, why is it you insist upon keeping the pertinent details to yourself?”
“Finally caught up, have you? It is difficult to impart any details when one is forced to wedge them into the whirling dervish that is your discourse, Voil. And I only learned the details myself a few days ago.”
“From my traitorous, garrulous footman,” Rhiannon snapped as she exploded from her chair and paced across the room to the French windows that opened onto a balcony overlooking the back terrace. She spun to face them, arms crossed in such a fashion as to lift her breasts even higher in the damned dress. “Did you come all the way from London to put my servants through an inquisition, Your Grace?”
Endymion stood and took a step toward her. “If you mean, did I ask the footman who insisted upon accompanying you to the ruins and was swift enough and strong enough to catch you before you landed on the cobblestones of the old courtyard about your slip from the window, no, I did not question Tall William. He volunteered the information.”
“I don’t believe you,” she replied.
She did. He heard it in her voice.
“Why would he tell you about something so trivial? Something that happened months ago?”
“Perhaps he understands that, as Duke of Pendeen, I am charged with the safety of everyone on this estate, especially the safety of my duchess.”
“Too pompous by half,” Voil—When did he get up?—muttered as he strolled past him, headed to the sideboard, empty glass in hand.
“You are charged. You are charged? Of all the arrogant, pompous— At what point, Your Grace, were you charged with the affairs of this estate?” Rhiannon stormed back to him, which, at least, removed her arms from beneath her bosom. “At what point in the last seventeen years have you bestirred yourself from London to even acknowledge the existence of Cornwall, let alone this estate?” Her face flushed, her eyes shone with righteous fury, and her hands fisted the glistening fabric of her skirts.
“Told you,” Voil whispered as he ambled back from the sideboard and crossed in front of Endymion to hand Rhiannon a glass of brandy. The interfering rogue offered her his arm and escorted her back to her chair before the fire.
“It matters little how I acquired the information, madam. Suffice it to say, now I know, I intend to find out who is responsible and turn them over to the magistrate.”
Voil stood behind the duchess’s chair, a hand over his eyes, shaking his head.
“You are the magistrate, you daft…” Rhiannon caught the corner of her bottom lip in her teeth. His lady wife wanted to continue. Badly. She always chewed her lip when she had more to say.
Stubble it, you great daft looby. I am as intelligent as any man, Endymion de Waryn.
God help him, that is what he feared the most. She was far too clever. How had he forgotten it for even a moment? Each time his memory let slip another thing about her, about his life in this place, it startled and confused him. It lashed at his control, his one shield. His strength. He inhaled deeply. And looked away from Voil, who appeared to be having a seizure.
“Even better, Your Grace,” Endymion started. “As magistrate, I can—”
“Was Pendeen the only knight who rode to your rescue, Your Grace?” Voil suddenly asked. He came around her chair and sat on the arm of it as Endymion had done.
“Was he…” She tilted her head to gaze at Endymion. A smile she borrowed from the girl she’d been slipped onto her lips. “No, he was not.”
“I suspected as much. Surely, every lad in the county flocked to your tower window,” Voil teased. He gave Endymion a pointed look. Unfortunately, Endymion had not the slightest inkling what the marquess intended to convey.
“Not so many as that, Lord Voil,” Rhiannon assured him. “But there were a few.”
“Aha! And who were these brave souls who dared to trespass on Pendeen’s domain?”
Rhiannon swallowed. Endymion fixed his gaze on her delicate throat and then up to her chin, her mouth, her dainty nose. His eyes met hers. Dizziness, the sort one sank into when falling from a great height, blurred her face, but her eyes held him. Still he fell. Brick by brick, the wall he’d built against Cornwall crumbled beneath his feet. He was not this man. He was not.
“My brothers. We all played together as children. The ruins were our particular domain. We spent hours there, didn’t we…Rhee?” He marveled at the steady tone of his voice. His face felt the same as ever it did. Composed. Dignified. Staid. With no indication of the numbness suffusing his limbs.
Rhiannon turned her attention to her brandy. She sipped it and studied the low flames in the hearth.
“Brothers?” Voil’s bafflement was palpable. “You don’t have brothers.”
“No, I do not. Not anymore,
” his hoarse tone could not be helped. His throat had elected to close.
“What were their names?” Voil asked, his expression stricken.
Endymion raised his hand to rest it on the cool marble of the mantel. He’d heard the question. He knew the answer. And he knew if he opened his mouth to speak, not a word would escape.
“Hector and Achilles,” Rhiannon said softly. “His Grace’s father was a scholar of all things Greek.”
Endymion steeled himself, drew the cloak of the Duke of Pendeen’s consequence and reputation around him. He needed to move on, forward, anywhere save here. “As they cannot, you and I will have to serve as Her Grace’s champions, Voil, if you are up to the task.”
“I do not need even one champion, let alone two, Your Grace,” Rhiannon assured him. “What I need is to be allowed to manage the estate without interference.”
“As may be, but tomorrow you will accompany me on a picnic and a tour about the estate. Whilst Voil looks into the accident at the mines. You will not return to the pits.”
Voil dropped his head and groaned.
Rhiannon. Rhiannon rose slowly. She patted Voil on the shoulder. She offered Endymion her half-drunk glass of brandy. Which, for some unfathomable reason, he took. Her expression was one of terrifying serenity.
“Lord Voil, you may do as you please tomorrow. As shall I. And you, Your Grace, may take your orders and your picnic and go to the devil.” She quit the room in a swish of bronze silk. A log shifted in the fireplace. The ormolu clock ticked into the quiet.
Endymion downed the glass of brandy. It helped to reassemble the bits and pieces of his reserve she’d torn away in the last hour. Though the shredded remains of that much-vaunted reserve now fitted him ill and would perhaps never fit him again.
“Voil, I don’t care what—”
“Stubble it, Pendeen.” Voil stood and began to pace the thick wine and gold Aubusson carpet of the drawing room. “You are not allowed to speak. Probably not ever again.”
“I beg your pardon. What the devil are you on about?” Endymion collapsed into the chair his wife had so hastily vacated.
“You. First, you acquire two brothers of which I’ve heard not a word in sixteen years. Then you order your duchess to attend a picnic.”
“You said—”
“I said to invite her to show you the estate and to join you for a romantic picnic by the lake. Apparently, I should have provided you with a better definition of romance. It doesn’t include ordering your wife about like a new recruit in the King’s Navy.”
“She’s in danger, dammit. Someone is trying to murder her.” He refused to explain to Voil the familiarity of the fear this threat evoked in him. It was visceral, made all the more so because he’d felt it before. At least, he thought he had.
“Who would want to murder your wife, Pendeen? We’ve been here over a week and it appears to me your people love her. Who would wish her harm?”
It came to Endymion in a rush of noise—horses, gunfire, men’s shouts, and the cries of two young boys.
“The same people who murdered my brothers.”
Chapter Eight
“The same people who murdered my brothers.”
She had not intended to eavesdrop. Her intention was to make a dramatic exit and leave Endymion to stew in his arrogance. The extent of his meddling where he had no business had her ready to march him to the River Tamar at gunpoint. He’d corrupted her servants and made plans for her day with not even a pretense of consulting her.
And then he’d spoken of his brothers. His uncle had taken every opportunity to inform her His Lordship, and later His Grace, had few, if any, memories of his life before London. The fever Endymion had suffered for months after he left Cornwall had supposedly burned away his memories. Lord Richard had warned her never to speak of the past as it tended to upset the poor boy. Useless advice when she had not set eyes on her husband these seventeen years.
“Are you waiting for the door to open itself?” Bea asked.
Rhiannon started. Somehow, she’d traversed the corridors and stairs and now stood before the doors to the duchess’s chambers. She tossed Bea a speaking look and marched through the duchess’s sitting room into her bedchamber.
“The same people who murdered my brothers.”
“He remembers Hector and Achilles, Bea,” Rhiannon announced as the maid set about getting her out of the silk gown. “He remembers…what happened to them.”
In the midst of unlacing the back of the gown, Bea’s hands froze. “He…remembers?”
Rhiannon went over the conversation in the drawing room carefully in her mind. Endymion did all in his power to display no emotion, even when he spoke of the loss of his brothers. A strange thing she’d never considered. All people, even the strongest of men, showed their true feelings in little things, and these things often remained the same from childhood.
“His uncle told him they were murdered.”
“Despicable man,” Bea muttered as she resumed helping Rhiannon to undress. “There is something about Lord Richard I cannot like. I never have.”
“There is a great deal about him I do not like, but now is not the time to confess those sentiments at large.” She slipped out of the gown and handed it to Bea, who hurried into the dressing room to hang it up, to be inspected for stains in the morning. By the time Bea returned to the bedchamber, Rhiannon had rid herself of her stays, petticoat, and chemise and donned her sensible thick cotton nightgown.
Bea retrieved the flannel robe from the bed and handed it to Rhiannon, who promptly put it on and tied the belt in a loose bow.
“How did the plan to dazzle them into complacency fair?” Bea asked.
“You were correct about the gown. It worked quite well. Everything did until His Grace revealed someone in this household has been carrying tales, and then he insisted on using the tales to order me about like a servant.”
“Carrying tales about?” Bea had an annoying habit of asking questions to which she already knew the answers.
Rhiannon rolled her eyes and sat before her vanity so Bea might help her take down her hair. “The accidents. The duke immediately came to the conclusion they are not accidents, at all. He believes them to be nefarious attempts on my life…by the same people who murdered his brothers.”
“I see.”
Not Bea’s most helpful response.
Rhiannon looked over her shoulder to study the friend who had become her maid for reasons only Beatrice truly knew. She was born a lady, unlike Rhiannon, yet she unpinned and brushed out Rhiannon’s hair with the intent efficiency of the most well-trained lady’s maid. The most well-trained lady’s maid with an entire regiment of secrets.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing I care to discuss, Your Grace. Save, I believe His Grace makes a great deal of sense.”
“There is always a first time, I suppose.”
“So, you agree? These accidents are not accidents at all?” Bea finished braiding Rhiannon’s hair into one long braid and secured it with a bright red ribbon.
“Apparently, what I think is no longer important. Josiah Thomas and Tall William have seen fit to put the matter into His Grace’s hands, as if I have not managed every situation to occur at Pendeen since my father died.” Perhaps she should be grateful for Dymi’s interest and assistance. Somewhere inside, she might well be. Overriding all of that was the galling fact his arrival had, in little over a week, usurped her role and made her feel…less. Like the girl who woke up the morning after her wedding to find herself abandoned, unnecessary. Nothing.
“Perhaps they are merely enlisting his help to keep you safe,” Bea suggested.
“I have survived the last seventeen years without his assistance, no matter what the men in my service have decided.” Rhiannon settled into her favorite chair before the fire and picked up the novel she’d left on the tapestry-worked footstool.
“I fear they have decided His Grace intends to stay. Until he has what he ca
me for, at least,” Bea said, eyebrows raised in knowing amusement.
“He is doomed to disappointment,” Rhiannon declared and opened her book. “And now he will use his theory about these accidents as an excuse to take control of the estate and control of me.”
“Control of you?” Bea snorted. “Poor man has no idea.”
Rhiannon laughed. “No, he does not.”
“If you have all you need, I’ll bid you a good night, Your Grace,” Bea said and turned to leave.
“Bea?” Through their entire conversation, Rhiannon had pondered her next request. A dangerous request, but one she dared not put off any longer. She only hoped… It did not matter what she hoped.
Beatrice stopped, hesitated, and then turned around. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Find a way to send your friend a message. Tell him…tell him everything I have told you. About His Grace’s suspicions, what he intends to do, and what he remembers. I would say tell him about what happened at the mines today, but I suspect he already knows.”
“Are you certain?”
“No, but I want your friend to have this information. He will decide whether it makes any difference to his course or not.”
“Yes, he will.” Bea took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I will see to it.”
“Thank you, Bea.”
“I hope you know what you are doing, Your Grace.” Beatrice hurried from the room.
Rhiannon tucked her feet beneath her and dropped her book back onto the stool. “I hope so, too,” she murmured.
***
Was it the chill or the distinctly uncomfortable position of her head that awakened her? Rhiannon unfolded from the chair one limb at a time. A quick check of the mahogany bracket clock on the mantel revealed she’d dozed off hours ago. One minute she’d been staring into the flames of a warm fire in the hearth. The next, it was nearly three in the morning and the fire was mere embers.
She rubbed her hands together against the cold and shoveled several scoops of coal from the coal shuttle onto the glowing ashes. A few stirs of the poker and the fire burned high enough for her to warm her stiff arms and legs. If she were a better liar, she would tell herself she’d foregone her bed to read or simply to contemplate what she had to do tomorrow.
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