***
“Trenton!”
Emily wasn’t so grown-up she couldn’t squeal like a child at the sight of her oldest brother. “And Dare!” She grabbed them each with an arm, forcing a three-way hug that had both brothers smiling sheepishly. “Oh, I wish Leah were here, but she’s glued to Nicholas’s side when he isn’t flitting about the Home Counties. I haven’t seen Wilton Acres in so long, but the place looks beautiful, doesn’t it, Lady Warne?”
Lady Warne looked as if her last squeal of delight had occurred in the previous century. “A hot bath and some victuals would look lovelier still.”
“Your rooms are ready.” Trent eased away from Emily, which left Dare’s arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Supper will be a cold meal on the terrace, so we can hold it until you ladies are settled in.”
“I have so much to tell you both,” Emily said, whisking off her bonnet. “Trusty sends his love to Skunk and Arthur, though I think he’s grown bored with life in a city mews.” She chattered on as Trent led the way to the family wing and deposited the ladies in connecting guest rooms.
Trent paused in Emily’s doorway, while Lady Warne disappeared with a pair of maids to start unpacking the several trunks brought down with the coach. “You got my letter?”
Emily’s demeanor sobered. “I did. You shall be perfectly odious to me when Papa’s about, or the servants, and I’m to carry on like a brat and make Papa think my Season is in jeopardy.”
“It isn’t.”
“I don’t particularly care.” Emily ran her hand over the quilted coverlet on the bed, a pattern of interlocking circles with two doves embroidered in the middle.
“You don’t care?” Trent crossed the room and drew her down to sit beside him on the bed. “What kind of talk is this?”
He’d read her bedtime stories a lifetime ago, because somebody should, and Leah had needed the occasional break.
“If you want the truth, this is tired talk,” Emily said, leaning into him. “I haven’t wanted to say anything to Lady Warne, because she enjoys having me for a pet, but this visiting all over creation, and living out of trunks, and constantly being fitted for clothes, and trying to keep straight everybody’s name… I hate it.”
Whatever else was true, these were not schoolgirl sentiments. “Hate is a strong word.”
“Lady Warne’s idea of how to go on is useless,” Emily said, her pretty features solemn. “I do not care who sleeps with whom at which house party, or which lady is doctoring her tea or abusing her laudanum. I don’t care which gentleman prefers young men, or what gouty old earl just bought his mistress a ruby necklace.”
This was—had been—Trent’s baby sister. While he was proud of Emily’s common sense, Trent felt a pang of loss for the little girl who worried about nothing more than keeping her pinafore clean.
“You have been getting an education.”
“Lady Warne wants me forewarned. I’m not to be a lamb to slaughter next year, but an informed purchaser of the wares on the market.”
“That sounds cold.” Though he could hear Lady Warne using exactly those terms.
Emily pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “It is cold. I feel old.”
“If you’re old, what does that make me?” Trent tucked an arm around her, thinking such slight shoulders shouldn’t have to bear the weight of the world. “Would you rather wait a year before you make your bow?”
“And do what?” Emily straightened on a dramatic sigh. “More house parties? More spotty boys with straying hands and slobbery kisses? No, thank you. I’d rather find a decent man, get the whole business behind me, and be about starting a family.”
“Don’t settle for decent, Em. You want more than decent. You want fireworks over the royal barge, a hundred-piece orchestra, white doves, galloping horses, pounding hearts.” You want what I have with Ellie. What he’d had with her and backed away from.
“I do?”
“You deserve them.” Trent kissed her temple. “We all do.”
“You didn’t have that.”
Even from her schoolroom, Emily had grasped the truth of her brother’s marriage.
“I haven’t had it yet, or not in a wife, but that’s no reason for you to be so jaded when you haven’t even danced your first waltz.”
Emily grinned, looking once again like a very young lady. “I have so waltzed. Lady Warne hired me a silly French dancing master, and he made it a game.”
“As far as Wilton is concerned, your dancing is atrocious, your French worse, you can’t stay on a horse to save yourself, and you’ve no conversation.”
Emily rose. “All of that was true last spring. I’ve Lady Warne to thank for bringing me along.”
“And your own hard work.” Trent rose as well. “You’re sure you can manage this charade, Em?”
“Of course.” She turned abruptly adult eyes on him. “If I’ve learned nothing else in the past months, Amherst, it’s to dissemble on command.”
“I believe you.” Her intentionally brittle tone and the cool smile she served up with his title took him aback. “Unpack, and be warned, Wilton will likely join us for dinner.”
“I shall be insufferable,” Emily assured him. “But tell me, is that Mr. Benton joining us as well?”
“He typically does. Wilton won’t address him at table, because he’s only the nephew of a viscount.”
Emily’s mask slipped enough to reveal sadness at that observation. “Papa is a fool if he can’t tell Mr. Benton is a gentleman and an asset to Wilton Acres.”
“We can agree on that much.” Trent took his leave, closing her door quietly behind him.
He headed for his own rooms, thinking only to garner some solitude before the performance that would be dinner. He dreaded dealing with his father, much less putting on a charade intended to throw the older man off his arrogant stride. When Trent arrived to his rooms, he didn’t reach for a drink, though. He reached for his pen and paper.
He wouldn’t send this letter. He’d use it as an exercise, to gather his thoughts, and calm himself before the dinner gong sounded. He began by explaining to Ellie what his situation with Emily entailed and why he was stooping to such a farce. He went on to say that impersonating his father even temporarily made him deeply uncomfortable—being judgmental, snappish, arrogant, and mean-spirited tore at his soul.
He told her he missed her with a physical ache in his chest, missed the feel of her body against his, missed the little flutters and shifts of the child growing safely inside her.
Were he to send the letter, he’d never have included such nonsense. Because he would not send it, Trent told Ellie how worried he was for his brother and sister, that protecting his siblings was so ingrained in him, he wasn’t sure he could stand to walk Emily down the aisle at St. George’s next spring, not even to marry the most worthy man in the realm.
His worst fear wasn’t that he’d lose his life, but that he’d lose his ability to protect those he loved from Wilton and his infernal machinations.
The dinner bell interrupted his reflections, signaling thirty minutes until the meal was served. Trent sanded the pages he’d filled with sentimental tripe, though they’d likely end up in the fire. While the ink dried, he changed for dinner, not into formal attire—they were all but picnicking—but into a clean shirt, and waistcoat, a fresh cravat, and matching pin and cuff-links.
Darius sauntered in after a perfunctory knock. “You ready to let the play begin?”
“Hardly.” Trent dragged a brush through his hair. “Who cuts your hair?”
“I do, which saves on coin. Nick trimmed it up for me. Val Windham did a time or two. I can do you up, if you like.”
“Ellie likes it long.”
“Ellie, whom you will never see again. That Ellie?” Dare lounged in the chair behind the escritoire, looking elegant, careless, and bent on tormenting his only brother.
“The very one. We haven’t time to cut it today, but soon.”
“Right.” Dar
e fiddled with the penknife. “Soon. You aren’t going down to dinner without a jacket, are you?”
“Of course not.” Trent kept talking as he went into his dressing room. “Though I feel like I ought to wear a hair shirt. I dread having to speak sharply to Emily.”
“Hmm?” Dare glanced up as Trent emerged carrying two different coats. “I’ll draw your fire, don’t worry. Wear the green. It goes with your eyes.”
“But I’ve used a silver cravat pin.”
“So switch it to gold.” Cautiously, as if trying not to get sand on his cuffs, Darius moved the finished letter off to the side while Trent changed the silver pin securing his cravat for gold.
“Get this for me, will you?” Trent stuck out his wrist, and Darius obligingly changed silver cuff-links for gold.
“You’ll do,” Darius pronounced. “I’d best change out of my boots if we’re putting on our country manners.”
“Wilton will comment on our shabby attire, no matter what we wear.” Trent took a final look at himself in the mirror. “I’ll see you on the back terrace.”
“Let the play begin,” Darius said, saluting smartly.
Trent left for the library, there to fortify himself with a drink, while Darius remained by the escritoire, looking handsome, dear, and ready for mischief.
***
“This is terrible.” Ellie folded Trenton’s letter and stared unseeing at the rain pattering down outside the parlor window.
“What is?” Minty worked on a gown for the baby, again embroidering daisies along the hem.
“I’m almost certain Amherst understood he wasn’t to be writing.”
“You were peevish when he didn’t write. Now you’re peevish when he does. That child is making you fretful.”
“This child is making me fat.”
“You’re six months along. You aren’t fat. In fact, your face looks thinner to me, as do your hands.”
“My ankles don’t,” Ellie muttered. “What’s this?” She peered at the back of the letter where a sentence had been added in a less elegant hand. She mumbled the words aloud as she read. “Lady R: Found this epistle on my brother’s desk, but I doubt he intended you to see it. Hon. D.L.”
“Who is Hon. D.L.?”
“Darius, his lordship’s brother. Darius must have gone behind Trent’s back to send this.”
“Typical brother.” Minty bit off a thread. “Is it drivel?”
Trenton Lindsey wouldn’t be capable of drivel if he lived to be ninety. “It’s comfy, in parts.” In other parts, the letter was from a man whose heart was breaking in three directions at once.
“Not that comfy business again. I have it on the best authority Amherst is a frivolous earl-in-waiting, one who merely dallies with every widow who waddles along.”
“I’m not waddling. Yet.”
“Pardon my oversight.”
“Minty, he’s having to act toward his sister as if he’s his rotten father, and it’s tearing him up.”
Minty grimaced, pausing in her sewing. “What else does he say?”
“He says that to carry off his charade with Emily, he and she must both act as if each resents the other for merely drawing breath. All he has to do is recall his list of nevers and modify them slightly to suit the situation.”
“What is his list of nevers?”
“Never insult your child before company,” Ellie said. “Never ridicule your child for the entertainment of others. Never joke about putting your child at risk of serious bodily harm. That sort of thing. Things no decent person should ever—”
“What?”
The child moved, not a kick, but a shift, as if settling in. “Oh… Minty…”
“Ellie? Are you well?”
“I know, Minty.” Ellie rose, and all the peppermint tea in the world could not have soothed the upset inside her. “I know who it is.”
“What do you know? And sit down.” Minty led her to a chair. “Make sense, Elegy, and make it now.”
“Trenton’s list of nevers. He broke bones trying to please his father, suffered beatings, contracted lung fever that took weeks to recover from. I know where all this vile, nasty, deadly mischief is coming from.” Ellie’s hand curved into a fist. “God in heaven, Wilton isn’t merely old-fashioned or hard-hearted. He’s evil.”
“Sit down, Ellie, and explain yourself?”
“Wilton is the one,” Ellie said, half to herself. “He wants his own son dead. He resents Trent for drawing breath and has since Trent was born. He’s put him on dangerous mounts, left him in the cold until lung fever was inevitable, beaten him within an inch of his life, subjected him to trials and torments, tried to turn his own brother against him.”
The litany was enough to make Ellie positively ill.
“Ellie? What are you going on about?” For once, Minty didn’t sound calm, competent, and in charge.
“The attempts on Trent’s life! His father is behind them, I’m sure of it. We need to go to Hampshire, Minty. Right now.”
“We aren’t going anywhere in this downpour, my girl,” Minty said sternly. “Think of the baby.”
Ellie shot out of her chair. “I will not sit here stitching receiving blankets while Trent falls neatly into any trap Wilton sets for him.”
“You can’t be sure of any of this. The weather is beastly foul and getting colder by the hour.”
“That wouldn’t matter to Trent if I were in danger,” Ellie bellowed back. “Send a groom for Mr. Spencer.”
“This will be considered a wild start from a breeding, grieving woman.”
“Heathgate won’t take it as such,” Ellie retorted. “Or he’d better not.”
Within an hour, Mr. Spencer had brought the magistrate, as well as Benjamin Hazlit, who’d put off his return to Town until the next morning in deference to the state of the roads.
“Lady Rammel.” Heathgate bowed, looking not the least put out to have been summoned from his cozy house into the damp, chilly night. “Mr. Spencer said it was urgent.”
“I know who’s trying to kill Lord Amherst,” Ellie said, not waiting even for the tea to be served. “His own father.”
Heathgate glanced at Mr. Hazlit, who’d come calling with the marquess nearly a month past. That Heathgate didn’t tut-tut and there-there suggested the marquess’s reputation for shrewdness was well earned.
“Plausible,” Hazlit pronounced. “On what do you base this theory?”
“Wilton has been trying to kill Lord Amherst since he was a boy,” Ellie said. “When it was time to teach Trenton to ride, Wilton put him on a wild pony, took away his stirrups, then sat back until Trent had broken both his collar-bone and his wrist and Lady Wilton got wind of it. Trent had a severe bout of lung fever when he was five as a result of his father refusing him entry into the house until he could skate across a frozen pond without falling.”
She had to pause for breath and waved away Heathgate’s handkerchief. Over the door, Mr. Spencer was looking damp and concerned.
“Wilton taught Trenton to fence without tipping the foils—when Trenton was barely eleven. Trenton has scars.” Her hand waved up and down her right side, and then her voice faded, as she swallowed back a shiver.
“When he reached his majority,” Ellie went on, “Darius was likely watching out for him, but when Trenton married and had his own household, Wilton could start up again. Trenton’s coach was tampered with twice, his meals poisoned, and you know about the laudanum in his drinks, the shooting. Cigars were left burning…”
“I believe you.” Heathgate’s voice was all the more arresting for its quiet.
“I wouldn’t go to the magistrate with it,” Hazlit said slowly, “but intuitively, the facts hang together. The length of the campaign, the cleverness of it, the patience, they all point to a sick mind with a sick motive.”
“Amherst is Wilton’s replacement,” Ellie said. “Trenton has already taken over the finances of the earldom, and he’s making Wilton repay what he stole from the trusts for
Darius and Leah. With Trent gone, Wilton can petition for guardianship of Ford and Michael and have his earldom back on a platter, as well as control of the funds Trenton has set aside for the children.”
“It makes sense,” Hazlit said. “Twisted sense, but sense.”
“Then we’re off to Hampshire.” Heathgate said. “Mr. Spencer, does Crossbridge have pigeons to fly from here to Wilton Acres?”
“Lord Amherst took a few of ours to Wilton, but we have none of Wilton’s to fly the other direction,” Mr. Spencer said. “For what it’s worth, I think Lady Rammel’s theory is sound, but somebody had better stay here to look after Amherst’s children.”
“He’s right,” Hazlit said. “At least one attempt was made on Amherst’s life here in Surrey. If that was Wilton’s doing, then his factor is still at large, and with Amherst absent, those children are vulnerable.”
Heathgate picked up the receiving blanket Ellie had been stitching and fingered the incomplete border of daisies.
“Spencer, tell the children they’re going on an adventure and will be spending some time at my house. James and Pen have lately been socializing with Grey’s two boys, who are already acquainted with Amherst’s offspring. We shall have an assembly of pirates in my nursery.”
“When can we leave,” Ellie asked, though thank goodness the marquess had a plan for keeping the children safe.
“My traveling coach has ample lanterns, and the rain, while steady, isn’t particularly hard,” Heathgate replied. “Or would you prefer to ride, Benjamin?”
“We’re off to Hampshire?” Hazlit sounded resigned.
“Not without me.” Ellie advanced on Heathgate. “I should have seen this earlier. You can’t expect me to sit here on my backside and wait for you fellows to drag Trenton home to me, assuming you reach him before Wilton can put a period to his existence, much less that of his brother, who has walked into this trap with him, both of them completely unsuspecting because you men… Oh, please, you have to let me come… You just…please.”
Heathgate wrapped his arms around her and drew her against his solid frame.
Ellie accepted the embrace gratefully. He wasn’t the right man, but he was a good man, and he could get her safely to Trenton’s side.
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 30
