Not to mention the conspiracy, but she chose not to name her prime concern. She still didn’t know if these two were members, or even controlled it, and she wouldn’t say anything until they did. If required, she’d swear loyalty before she left, because she was no fool. If the choice was breaking her word or dying, then the first choice had her vote. Though an oath obtained through duress wasn’t an oath at all.
Elizabeth turned to face Joshua, who had sat next to her on the wide sofa. “Why did you not tell her?”
“What point would there be, since we’d only have to repeat it all now? I wanted you here, my dearest. I needed her to see.”
“Oh, I saw,” Delphi snapped. “You made sure of that.”
Joshua, who had only just recovered his natural complexion, blushed again. Good Lord, the man could blush at the very mention of kissing.
“We are letting you into our secret,” Elizabeth said. “We are in love.”
Delphi blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “What do you know of love?” How could she sit there, the woman who had tried to thwart her sisters and herself of the men they loved, and say that? “You have never treated marriage as anything but a way to maintain your position in society.”
To her shock, Elizabeth blushed, the delicate color flowing up from her neck. She lowered her gaze. “I confess it. However, by the time I met you, the damage was done. I had met Joshua, fallen in love with him, and lost him. And if I could not have it, why should anyone else?”
Delphi did not at all see. “Explain it all.”
And why did they need to tell her?
Unfortunately, the maid chose that moment to knock and enter, bearing the inevitable tea tray. Delphi was not tempted. At Elizabeth’s graceful gesture, and “We will serve ourselves”, in Italian naturally, the woman put the tray down on a side table and left.
Nobody took any notice of the tea tray.
“I fell in love with Joshua in my first season,” Elizabeth said quietly. “But his station was not good enough for my parents. He had little money or position other than the allowance granted him as heir presumptive to the Beauchamp duchy, and my parents said I could do better. Heir presumptive was not good enough. They wanted an heir apparent for me. Even a prince, they said. I believed them, and I sent him away.” She swallowed. “It was the most idiotic thing I ever did. Later, I learned that they had given him the wherewithal to leave the country.”
“A blessing and a curse,” Joshua said. “I would have continued with my courtship, but they wanted the way clear. I was so hurt by what Elizabeth told me that I left the country and made my own way in the world. I have a place here, a way of life I enjoy. Exile forced me to think for myself, to work for what I wanted instead of relying on someone else for it. I own the shop in the piazza, and many more like it. I deal in antiquities, and the not so antique. I make a handsome profit. I chose not to live on my expectations of inheriting the dukedom. And I will never inherit it now.”
He laid his hand on Elizabeth’s when she gave a sound of distress. “It matters not,” he told her gently. Delphi hazarded a guess that “it” was the baby nestling in her womb. The one that would oust him from the title, if it was a boy.
“Go on,” she said.
Elizabeth carried on. “I was barely seventeen.”
Too young to fall in love, or so her parents would think.
“I decided to wait until I came of age, then I would join Joshua. But they forbade the union, told me I must not think of him any longer. And when I discovered he’d left the country, I despaired.” She swallowed. “After a few more seasons, when my parents refused every suitor for my hand, they finally realized I would not become a princess, as they had wanted. They introduced me to the oldest son of the Earl of Carbrooke. Not a duke, but wealthy and respected. I liked him well enough, and my mother told me he would be easily handled. So I accepted his offer.” She shrugged. “What did it matter, when the love of my life had gone? By then, I knew. I wanted Joshua as much as ever.”
Watching her, Delphi wondered if she would have done the same. Would she have accepted someone else instead of Adam? Joshua, perhaps? Because before Elizabeth arrived in Rome, he was definitely showing interest. More than that. Yes, she concluded. She might well have done that. She liked Joshua, and with Adam lost to her, why not?
But would she have taken out her spite on someone else?
No, she would not have done that.
She turned to Joshua. “Why did you come to me that day when Adam struck you down?”
More blushing, but at least Joshua answered her.
“Elizabeth told me to,” he said. “She knew I liked you, and suggested it as a way out. With both of us married to other people, we might find a way of living with our tragedy.”
Or cuckolding two people, not one.
“So you agreed to be betrothed to the Carbrooke heir,” Delphi prompted. “And when he died, you stuck yourself to my brother, Gerald.”
Elizabeth looked away. Delphi said nothing. Why should she make this part of the story easy for her? She hadn’t done that for them. “I will not speak of it, if you please.”
Oh, it did not please. “You didn’t help us, Elizabeth. You did your best to have us cast out as parvenus. You spread gossip, made us very unhappy for a time.”
Elizabeth swallowed, studying her hands. Delphi remained silent. “I did,” she said when it became obvious nobody else would speak. “By then, I was being castigated as an old maid, and people were making jokes about me, as the discarded betrothed. Did you see The Discarded Bride that year?”
Delphi shook her head. She knew the piece, an opera that left spaces so the performers could insert current scandals. She disliked hearing the braying laughter aimed at the characters who were thinly disguised caricatures and, truthfully, she was afraid to hear her name there.
“I featured strongly last year. Someone warned me, but I went anyway.”
“Was it Blackridge who warned you?” Dorcas’ husband and Elizabeth had been close friends as children.
Elizabeth nodded. “I should have listened to him.” She swallowed and went on, more hastily, as if to get past that part. “So I accepted Beauchamp. I couldn’t bear it any longer. And he was kind, agreed to my terms and gave me his own.”
“Which were?”
A fine tremor shivered through her body. Joshua linked his fingers with hers. “I fulfilled them. That is all you need to know.” After a pause, she said, “My husband wanted to take me to Europe, to introduce me to the courts. I was pleased. We went to Paris first, and Versailles. I had not realized that Beauchamp had sent for Joshua until I saw him.” She paused, worried her bottom lip with sharp teeth. “He wanted to inform his heir that he would not remain so for long.” Another swallow. “Joshua and I are still in love, but I did not realize it until that meeting at Versailles.”
“We never fell out of love,” Joshua affirmed. “It’s been there all along.” They exchanged a searing look that said more than words ever could. “I spent two weeks in Versailles,” Joshua said softly, “but we agreed that we could not continue as we were. I came back to Rome.”
“I couldn’t bear it,” Elizabeth said, tears in her voice. “I asked Beauchamp to bring me to Rome, which he did in the spring. I am in love with Joshua. I always have been.”
Someone had to state the obvious, and they weren’t about to do it. “Why did you agree to marry Joshua’s older brother?” Half-brother, actually, but that couldn’t have mattered less.
Elizabeth’s pale eyes sheened over with unshed tears. “He asked.”
“And he was the last available duke in London,” Delphi couldn’t help adding.
For a second, the old Lady Elizabeth Askew returned. She shot a stare full of ice at Delphi. “Not at all,” she said. “But he is old, and desperate for an heir. You had power over him. You could give him that heir.” And she was doing so.
Elizabeth lowered her head. Then she nodded, infinitesimally. “
As you say. I cannot deny it. If I could not have my heart’s desire, then I would have something else.”
At least she was honest.
And Joshua hadn’t been celibate, Delphi thought, recalling the unfortunate Mariella Passero.
The world stopped.
Passero. Italian for sparrow. Oh, God. The code, the note. The sparrow has the answer. Those papers scattered around her body. Was one the list they were searching for?
The quiet of the day erupted in the thunder of galloping hooves and the rolling of carriage wheels on gravel. Delphi’s heart leaped at the sound. Getting to her feet, she rushed to the window overlooking the front of the house and stared out.
She laughed in sheer delight. “It’s my husband,” she said. She couldn’t see him yet, but she knew. “He’s come to take me home.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Few people would have recognized the fashionable, clever Duke of Kilsyth in the warrior who burst into the drawing room of the villa.
Adam held a sword before him, a pistol in his other hand. The hard expression in his ice blue eyes held none of his usual amused cynicism. Cold anger flowed from him in waves.
Two men stood behind him, at the doorway to the room. They were also armed. “Let her go,” Adam said in a voice of steel.
“I’m not holding her,” Joshua answered. He was on his feet, too, standing in front of Elizabeth in a protective move that said so much more than words. And he wasn’t afraid who saw them. His stance told everyone he was finished with subterfuge. He glanced over his shoulder. “Elizabeth?”
They couldn’t see her clearly but her long-suffering sigh echoed off the walls. “So dramatic!” she murmured. She stepped out, but kept a step behind Joshua. “We’re not holding your wife, Kilsyth. She is free to leave whenever she wishes.”
Adam lowered the blade, but kept his hand firmly on the pistol. “Why abduct her?”
Delphi took a slow step, then another, to stand by her husband’s side, but not obstructing his aim or his reach. “Indeed, Adam, he’s speaking the truth.”
Adam’s hard gaze softened infinitesimally when he looked at her. “You are well? He did not hurt you?”
“Only my dignity. And you know that I don’t have much of that.”
“Do I?” His voice softened, too. “I came here to bring you home. Frederick is back with us, out of his entanglement. He’s downstairs, with Signor Raffetti, ensuring the guards won’t interrupt us. Which reminds me.” He flicked his attention back to Joshua. His voice hardened. “I want to talk to you about your mistress, Mariella Passero.”
Deep color tinged Joshua’s cheeks. He tilted his chin in a gesture of defiance. “Yes. What of her? I had quite given her up.”
Adam growled. “You know she’s dead.”
A beat passed. Joshua’s eyes widened. “Yes. The news was all around Rome yesterday. Together with news of your marriage.”
“She was found dead shortly after you were seen waiting for her.”
Joshua flushed, but answered immediately. “Yes. But I did not kill her. I arranged to meet her the night before her death, but only to dismiss her. When I left her, she was alive.”
Adam’s mouth tightened. “We only have your word for that. You could have met her at the column and killed her then.”
“I know. Why do you think I didn’t say anything? Someone wanted you to think that. She might have told someone else she was meeting me.”
“She arranged to meet the Duke of Trensom at the same place, but to give him information,” Adam said shortly. “By the time he arrived, she was dead.”
Adam turned his attention to Elizabeth. “Why did Lord Joshua bring my wife here?”
He lowered his sword, resting the tip on the carpet.
“He didn’t.” Elizabeth swirled around her lover, taking her seat and arranging her skirts into a romantic flow of fabric before he could prevent her. Delphi was forced to admire her style, although she didn’t want to. “This is the villa my husband hired. I brought him.”
“And he brought you,” Adam said to Delphi.
Delphi tried to make sense of these new developments, forcing her mind into logical thought. “In the most foolish way. I still don’t understand why.”
“We haven’t told you everything,” Elizabeth said. “There’s much more. We need the help of someone powerful, and you and Trensom seemed the best we could think of. But I did not ask Joshua to abduct you.”
Joshua shrugged. “After my altercation with his grace the other day, that was the only way you would listen to us.”
As she drew everyone’s attention, the sound of rumbling wheels came from outside, approaching the house. Delphi looked at her husband for explanation.
“It’s Beauchamp,” he said. “He wants to be here to bring his wife to account and take her home.”
“I won’t go,” Elizabeth declared, a mulish set to her mouth.
Adam crossed to the window. “You must, Duchess. I’m afraid the man you say you have fallen in love with is a traitor to the Crown. He will be taken back to London to face trial.”
Delphi caught her breath. “I had just reached a similar conclusion.”
She saw the bigger picture. Joshua had been in Rome for some time. Plenty of time to concoct a plot, or take part in one, to seek revenge against the person he hated the most; his brother. For Beauchamp was a loyalist to the House of Hanover. Despite his family name, he’d gladly sworn an oath to King George, served in his government, become an important person in the court of St. James. And made his fortune.
While his wastrel brother had dealt in fake statues in Rome, consorted with heretics and apostates, and perhaps changed his loyalties.
The theory was there. It had merit, it sounded all too true. And yet, knowing the two men, she would have reversed the situation. Beauchamp calculated, did nothing not to his benefit.
But traitors were not all unpleasant, and loyalists were not all noble and good.
“It adds up.” Adam sheathed his sword with a swish of steel and walked to where Delphi stood, cupping her elbow. His touch made her shudder in delight. She hadn’t felt it, even through fabric, for so long, it seemed to her. “The death of the woman who might know too much, the visits to the antiquities shop in the Piazza Navona, the accounts of your appearances at the Palazzo del Re…”
Joshua broke in. “Everybody goes there. And yes, Mariella was my mistress, but once I saw Elizabeth again, I knew I didn’t want any other woman.”
“You can’t have her,” Adam said bluntly. “She’s married to your brother. Do you have no shame, man?”
His words still echoed around the room as the Duke of Beauchamp entered. He, too, had brought some sturdy men with him. He scanned the occupants of the room, and turned.
“Stay here.” He closed the doors on the men. “Duchess—over here.” He didn’t mean Delphi.
Elizabeth stayed were she was.
Beauchamp sent her a glare that should have made her burst into flame. “You heard me.”
Elizabeth swallowed, but did not move.
Did he speak to her like this all the time? Husband or no, Delphi would never have stood for the way Beauchamp was speaking to his wife. As if she were a scullery maid or a laborer in the fields. As if she were nothing.
“I have no interest in your marital business, your grace,” Adam said. “I have come here to arrest a conspirator, and I am the only person in the room with the authority to do so. I’ve been commissioned by His Majesty and his government to put an end to the conspiracy to commit the ultimate treason, and take the offender back to London. We will take him with us and leave you and your wife to sort out your own affairs.”
Delphi frowned. This was wrong. Nothing worked in this scenario. Oh, the clues were there, the seeming evidence, but she couldn’t believe it. Her instincts told her that everything about this accusation was a lie. She had to voice her concerns. “I don’t think Lord Joshua is a traitor.”
Beauchamp’s lip
curled into a sneer. “Very well. But this man will tell you all manner of untruths. He was like that as a boy, always making things up. Jealousy started him on his path.”
“What do I have to be jealous of?” Joshua demanded. He jerked his chin. “This? The empty estates at home? Do you think I missed the blank spaces on the walls where the Leonardos and Titians once hung, that I didn’t see the winnowing of the staff and the lack of creature comforts everywhere but your chambers? That was why no woman would have you, isn’t it? You’ve wasted all your money, dissipated it. You barely managed our sisters’ dowries. Of course, your own miserable nature didn’t help. I left all that behind me when I came here.”
Beauchamp was not as rich as the average duke? What had caused this deprivation?
That certainly changed his motivations. He was a proud man, not to say pompous. He would not see his consequence go into decline.
“I know how that feels,” Adam admitted, “but there are ways of building up a fortune if only one wastrel came before you.”
“You call your father a wastrel?” Beauchamp demanded. “I assure you, sir, he was nothing of the sort. He believed in the cause so strongly that he gave up his life for it.” He gave a short gasp. “For the wrong cause, that is,” he added hastily.
He must have picked up the way Delphi’s hand clenched into a fist, half-hidden by the folds in her gown, or the way Adam’s jaw tightened.
“Come here, Madam,” Beauchamp repeated to his wife. “Go outside and get into the carriage.”
Then the most unusual thing happened. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I have finished with you. I will go with Joshua, wherever he takes me.”
Shock struck Delphi silent for the space of a few seconds. Then she found her voice. “That is not like you, Elizabeth. Your husband is unlikely to offer you any comforts.”
“What about your child? A boy will inherit the dukedom.”
“I care not. I’m past caring. The baby isn’t Beauchamp’s. It’s Joshua’s, conceived in Paris. A child made of love.”
Delphi gaped and heard her husband’s sharp intake of breath. Had she just heard those words correctly?
A Whisper of Treason Page 26
