by Karen Ranney
“I have tended to see you as an irritant,” he said curtly. “But I have never thought of you as idiotic. Until now.”
“How dare—”
“Not now, Mother,” he said sharply. “I do not want to hear any more of your diatribes.
“Smytheton,” he said, addressing the ever-present butler without removing his gaze from his mother. “Open the door. My mother and my sisters are leaving.
“Perhaps if you retreat to Setton,” he said curtly, “you might be able to survive the horror of my marriage.” His hands rested on his hips; his fingers drummed an impatient tattoo.
“But it’s the middle of the season!” Charlotte burst out.
He glanced over at his sister. “You should have thought of that before you were tempted to be intrusive. Or rude,” he said, turning to his mother. “Don’t come again, Mother, until you’re specifically invited.”
She stared at him, taken aback by his order. An altogether welcome relief to have her reduced to silence. She turned and descended the stairs, pinning him with her gaze the whole time. At the doorway she turned. “You are acting decidedly unlike yourself, Michael. Has she bewitched you as well?”
She proceeded through the door, waving her arm as she did. “Come, girls.” Ada and Charlotte followed her without a backward glance. Elizabeth darted to him, stood on tiptoe, and placed a kiss on his cheek.
“Now I know you love her,” she whispered, smiling. Before he could respond she had disappeared through the doorway. Smytheton bowed, left the foyer.
“I used to think that nobles were insufferable,”
Margaret said. He looked up to discover her standing at the landing.
“You’re supposed to be napping,” he said.
“But then,” she said, ignoring his comment, “I met you. You aren’t like most earls are you?”
“While my mother remains the quintessential example of all that is to be avoided. Didactic, haughty, arrogant,” he said ruefully.
“Was your father the same? Or was he a charming rogue?” She halted a few steps above him.
He gripped the banister, and pulled himself up, brushing a light kiss to her lovely mouth.
“The memories of my father,” he admitted, “are mainly those of his shouting at my mother and her responding in kind.”
He chuckled at her look of surprise. “My mother is not, for all that she would like to appear so, an example of propriety and rectitude. She has only become this way following my father’s death. Prior to that, her lapses of decorum were legendary.”
“Are you certain we’re talking of the same woman?”
He nodded. “She took a riding crop to my father once. He retaliated by shooting out one of the stained glass windows in the chapel.” His grin widened at the look of stunned surprise on her face. “My father’s explanation for the act was that he was mad at God for creating woman in the first place, and my mother specifically. My childhood was not uneventful,” he admitted.
She tilted her head and studied him. “Is that why you claim to be so restrained?”
“Claim?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
He reached for her, clasped her hand, and walked her down the rest of the stairs. He stood at the base and wound his arms around her waist. “I confess that my mother might be correct in this instance,” he said. “Perhaps you have bewitched me.”
He almost always wanted his hands on her. The curve of her back was beautiful, so fragile and feminine that he wanted to put his lips there right at this particular moment. In the center of it, and lower, where it curved to her buttocks. He felt himself swelling even now at the thought.
Like an impatient and unwise suitor, he walked Margaret gently back against the wall.
Her smile seemed tipped with merriment. A thoroughly enchanting look. He adored everything about her. Her laughing face, those fascinating eyes, that beautiful mouth.
“Raise your head,” he said. “I want to kiss you.”
Her eyes sparkled with amusement.
He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. A teasing touch. Too soon transformed into something else. Whenever he kissed her he seemed to lose part of himself. As if he were falling down into a darkly hued cavern where thought was superfluous. Only physical sensation remained intact. The passage of time had not altered the sensation. If anything, it had heightened it.
The desire was there. God knows the need was.
Both his hands slapped against the wall on either side of her. His erection, eternally tumescent and almost boyishly eager, strained against his trousers.
His next kiss was openly carnal. Into it he infused all the instant hunger he always felt, and all the enduring fascination. But most of all, their kiss was filled with love, the power of which still awed him.
His hips arched forward involuntarily. Restraint managed by only a thread of thought.
“Excuse me, my lord.” Smytheton’s voice as he passed through the foyer. There was a distinct note of amusement in the majordomo’s voice.
Michael jerked back from Margaret and stared straight ahead at the wall. A feeling unlike any he’d ever known slid through him.
He leaned his head against his arm, felt the burning sting of embarrassment. “Dear God, I’ve been a rutting bull in front of my butler.”
Michael opened his eyes to find Margaret suffused with merriment. Every time she started to speak, another choking laugh emerged instead. He closed his eyes again.
“Have pity on my consequence,” he muttered against her ear.
“We really should move,” she teased. “He might come back again and it will only be worse.”
He retreated with his wife to their chamber, the sound of her laughter echoing through the pantheon.
The Duke of Tarrant was watching his foals. Not an unknown pastime for him. They ran for their freedom the way all young things do, with a gusty expectation of long life and a rosy future.
Pity that it did not often come to pass.
He stood against the fence, watched the mist covering the ground. A summer oddity. As if even nature warned him of the danger that loomed.
Peter came and stood beside him. A master and his servant. Not quite as innocent a portrait as they appeared.
“I have a new plan,” he said. “We can lure both of them to us and obtain the rest of the books.”
Peter glanced at him. “You want me to take his wife.”
“Exactly so,” Tarrant said, turning and smiling. “See that it’s done quickly,” he said. “I want this over.”
Peter nodded.
He donned his trousers, slipped on his dressing gown on, and leaned over the bed.
“You’re leaving me,” she complained sleepily, her eyes still closed.
“Do you mind?”
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes reluctantly. She reached up to grip the lapels of his dressing gown, pulled him down for a kiss, then sighed as he stood again.
“Less than a few weeks wed,” she said, sighing dramatically, “and I’ve already been replaced by work.”
“Never,” he said, kissing her again. “But you should rest regardless.”
“An obvious ploy to placate me,” she said.
“Is it successful?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But I feel remarkably decadent sleeping in the afternoon.”
“The prerogative of a countess,” he teased.
She heard him leave the room and smiled.
Love is learned thing, perhaps. She had learned love at her grandmother’s knee, from Jerome in a friendly, easy marriage. Michael, however, had taught her that love involved all her senses, that she could feel passion as well as delight. More emotions strung together than she had ever felt.
One other element to love that she had never before known. It fed on itself, and grew each day.
Michael was working at his desk when a tap on the door interrupted him. He called out to Smytheton, who entered the room in his us
ual somber way, crossing the carpet soundlessly and bowing unsmilingly in front of him. He picked the message up from the tray, opened it and scanned it quickly. Robert was back in London and inviting him to participate in a night of debauchery.
He penned a reply, inviting his friend to dinner instead, and informing him of his wedding. Margaret’s existence would no doubt come as a shock to the man who believed he was privy to all manner of secrets. Michael smiled in anticipation, and returned the message to Smytheton.
“See that it gets off straight away, will you, Smytheton? I’ve invited Adams to dinner.”
Smytheton only nodded and crept away on silent feet.
When he began solving a code, Michael sketched a grid upon a sheet of paper. As he began to fill in the deciphered letters, the grid helped him identify those missing. If he was fortunate, he could determine early on exactly what kind of code was used, what patterns were missing.
He had already deduced that the cipher in the Journals was a poly alphanumeric cipher. A surprisingly difficult one to solve, often requiring both the recipient and the sender to utilize a word key. It could be a phrase, one word, or a combination of words and numbers. But in the past few days he discovered that he didn’t need the word key after all. His experience in solving the Cyrillic cipher proved invaluable, the two codes were so alike. One of the Journals could easily serve as the other’s word key. All he had to do was compare the extractions.
Four hours later, he speared his hands through his hair and stared at the deciphered code in shock.
The mantel clock chimed softly. A reminder, then, of Robert’s imminent arrival.
He stood and walked to the window, his mind silent, an empty cavern that resounded with only one thought. What he had read was an act that had altered history. One single deed that had changed the world and resulted in the death of thousands.
How was Margaret involved?
The lesson of the Cyrillic cipher was difficult to ignore. A woman’s treachery had ended a man’s career, made him suspect in a country he only wished to serve.
Had he been a fool? So blinded by his love for Margaret that he had not seen the truth before his eyes?
No. He banished that thought quickly. However she was involved, it was innocently, he was certain of that.
How do you know? A last, almost desperate, rational thought. The answer was simple. Because I love her.
He needed to turn the cipher over to Robert. It was imperative that the Foreign Office know what he had discovered. But not yet. Not until he could protect Margaret.
Chapter 33
Anger spoils passion.
The Journals of Augustin X
"Do not tell me that he’s never spoken of his fish?” Robert Adams asked.
Margaret shook her head, carefully moving her fork to the crystal rest as Smytheton replaced her bowl with a plate.
Surreptitiously she traced her fingers over the ornate silvery cutlery, stared down into the reflection of an almost translucent china plate. As a London shopkeeper’s wife, she’d felt prosperous. Yet her utensils had been of commonplace steel, her bowls and cups and plates crafted of creamware.
An enormous gulf to cross from a tradesman’s wife to countess. Margaret wondered if she would ever become used to it.
She was grateful for the dinner she and Michael had shared the night of the theater. His humor had made the experience less daunting. His effortless introduction to all those forks and spoons had made this night a little less difficult to endure. She did, however, watch both men carefully, in case she’d erred in some rudimentary fashion. Twice she had picked up the wrong fork, and she’d not known the purpose of the fingerbowl. But neither man had noticed her errors.
She glanced over at Michael. Robert had done most of the talking tonight. She’d thought, initially, it was because his was a voluble nature. But she suspected, as the evening advanced, that he was simply attempting to fill the void created by Michael’s silence.
“Well,” Robert said, leaning toward her, “he always wanted a dog. But his mother would not have one in the house. So he decided that if he was to have a pet at all, it would be a fish. He and the gardener made a net and caught several fish in the river near Setton, bringing them home in a bucket.
“He named each one of those ugly carp after kings of England. His mother was furious with him. The carp ate everything in the pond and grew to be huge.” He glanced over at Michael. “You swore that they knew you and could do tricks.”
“I was six at the time and allowed to be somewhat silly,” Michael said, smiling slightly.
“His mother relented finally, and let him have a puppy,” Robert said.
“It chased my sister’s cats as I recall,” Michael contributed, before lapsing back into silence.
“I think Smytheton has improved as a cook,” Robert said. “Don’t you agree, Michael?”
He didn’t answer. Only after the second repetition of the question did Michael nod absently.
She turned and looked at him. He appeared preoccupied, stroking the stem of his wine glass with two fingers as if it held more interest than their conversation.
“Michael?” He looked up at the sound of her voice. He must have realized he was being inattentive, because for the next several minutes he attempted to concentrate on their conversation.
“Did you tell her about your first pony, Michael?”
“I doubt that Margaret truly wishes to be informed of every event in my childhood, Robert,” he said.
Margaret glanced over at Michael, then at their guest. “On the contrary,” she said softly, “I would be very interested to hear.” What sort of little boy had he been? Brave and daring? Or shy?
Robert smiled at her across the table. He was an exceedingly charming man. His brown hair was the exact shade of his eyes. The expression in them had been kind from the moment he and she had been introduced.
He was untitled and not unaware of the state of poverty, she suspected. The fact that he was Michael’s friend was not a surprise. For an earl, Michael seemed to have a surprisingly egalitarian outlook on life. Especially valuable, since he had just married a poor widow.
But his sidelong glances were making her uncomfortable. He had remained in his library the entire afternoon. The only time he had left the room was a few minutes before his friend had arrived. Little time to spare for dressing or conversation. She wondered, now, if the delay had been calculated.
“He spent most of his childhood trying to escape his sisters,” Robert said.
Michael only smiled, but didn’t speak.
She studied her blackened roast beef. She didn’t think she could eat one more mouthful. Nor had Michael touched much of his dinner, even though he had consumed an inordinate amount of wine this evening. Another change. She had thought him temperate in his habits.
“Where do you hail from, Margaret?” Robert asked. “There’s the flavor of London in your speech, but then I hear certain words that have a touch of Wiltshire about them.”
“She has lived for the past two years in a place called Silbury Village, Robert,” Michael said. He held up his wine glass. Smytheton instantly refilled it, but his face was a mask of stiff disapproval. “One could almost believe that there were fairies in the land, for the charm of the place.”
His voice was mocking, and the precise, deliberate nature of his speech led Margaret to wonder if he was becoming affected by the wine. She felt a flush of embarrassment for him.
“I was born in London,” she said quietly to Robert.
“Margaret’s childhood is an infinitely more interesting topic of conversation than my own,” Michael said, and took another sip of his wine.
Robert looked as if he wished to say something, but before he could comment, Michael suddenly stood. He threw his napkin down on his chair and stepped away from the table. At the doorway, he stopped, his back to the room.
“Unfortunately, I am not very good company this evening. Please, continue with your meal an
d your tales.” With that he disappeared.
As the moments passed, it was all too evident that he was not going to return.
“Shall I regale you with tales of Michael as a boy?” Robert asked, without seeming to notice Michael’s absence. “Or shall we be quit of him as a topic of conversation altogether?”
“What was he like as a little boy?” she asked. Robert smiled at her as if he knew what the effort had cost her.
“Not appreciably different,” Robert said, settling back in his chair. “A smaller version of the Michael we know. Just as autocratic. I remember when Elizabeth was about to be born. He came to my home, disgusted. The process was taking entirely too long, he said. I think he believed that God was taunting him with the hope of a brother.”
“What did he say when he discovered that he had another sister?” She propped her hand on her chin, imagining Michael as a child.
Robert laughed, the sound of it echoing through the room. “He refused to talk to his mother for weeks. When he did, he demanded to know where he took this new sister to exchange her for a worthwhile boy.” He smiled, evidently recalling that moment. “As it is, Elizabeth is his favorite sister. I have always found that a bit of irony.”
She looked down at her place setting. Smytheton bent low on her left side. “Would you like me to remove your plate, my lady?” His tone was, for Smytheton, almost friendly. She glanced up at him, surprised, only to be greeted with a slight smile. She nodded, bemused, and he did so, retreating into the kitchen.
She tiptoed around the subject, hoping that Robert would understand the question she dared not asked. “The Countess is a formidable woman,” she said.
“You realize, of course, that you outrank her now. She is no longer the Countess of Montraine. You are.
She has been relegated to being Dowager.”
She looked at him, horrified. It was something she had never considered.
“If you do not mind me saying so, Margaret, you have the most fascinating look on your face at the moment. As if I have said something altogether horrible.”
