“You deserve a good night’s rest after such a conscientious job of hostessing,” the marquess said, putting an arm around her shoulders.
Not to mention all the other tumult she has faced, David thought. Suddenly, he realized that if Phoebe retired, he might be able to question Leah more closely than the marchioness would allow.
“Why don’t you go upstairs now?” he suggested. “I’ll be happy to entertain Miss Cantrell.”
She smiled at him. “Somehow, I thought I might count on you. But before I go upstairs, I need to ask you something. I saw Ben draw you aside before he left. I know I ought not intrude on a personal confidence, but I have an inkling your discussion had to do with Bonaparte. I should like to know if I am correct.”
His jaw went slack for an instant before he recalled himself. “Why, of course not, Phoebe. You will drive yourself mad with all these unwarranted fears.”
“You never were a good liar, David. If we are in danger, I have a right to know.” She placed a hand on her protruding belly. “I have an unborn child to protect. I have a large estate to help defend. Now what did Ben tell you? I don’t care whether the information is classified or not.”
Solebury turned his wife toward him, wrapping both arms around her. “Now, now, love, all this anxiety cannot do the baby any good. Please try to calm yourself . . . for your sake and the child’s.”
The appeal to maternal instinct proved an effective approach. Phoebe leaned into his body, closing her eyes and breathing slowly.
“If you’ll pardon my interrupting, my lady,” Leah said, her tone gentle, “I, personally, have total confidence Napoleon will never invade England. After being defeated once, only think what a hard time he must be having getting soldiers together. Ships will probably be even harder to come by. He’ll never regain enough power to launch an attack by sea.”
David stared at her. She sounded more like a military strategist than a civilian woman. Unfortunately, Harlowe’s spy theory looked that much more creditable.
“You have a good deal of sense, Miss Cantrell.” Phoebe opened her eyes and stood straighter, still encircled by her husband’s arms. She looked to David. “I am sorry for asking you to betray Ben’s confidence. With this baby coming, I fear I am rather more emotional than usual.”
“I am the one who should apologize.” He felt terrible for heightening her fears with his plain attempt at lying. “I can tell you this much, Phoebe. Part of what Ben told me was that he knew no reason to expect an invasion on Kent. In that, I am speaking the truth.”
Her eyes searched his, then she nodded. “I know you are.”
Solebury bent and kissed the top of her head. “Will you be all right now, love?”
“Quite. But I must confess I’m growing eager for my confinement. No doubt I shall feel more myself again once the baby has come.”
“No doubt,” he said. “Now, why don’t we both retire? You have had a very long day.”
“I shall, but you must feel free to stay up, Harold. You and David will enjoy Miss Cantrell’s company.”
David saw yet a better chance to quiz Leah. “Actually, I had thought to ask Miss Cantrell to join me for a walk in the gardens. A lovely spring evening should not be wasted indoors.”
Leah shot him a surprised look.
Phoebe shook her head. “David, Miss Cantrell won’t want to walk out alone at night with a man she scarcely knows.” She turned to Leah. “Of course, if you are inclined to walk, my dear, I can assure you my stepson is a perfect gentleman--in that respect, anyway. But your reluctance is entirely understandable. Admirably prudent, in fact.”
Leah glanced from the marchioness to David and back again. “No, I trust David--in that respect.” She smiled. “And the fresh air will do me good. I’ll go.”
“You’re not tired?” Phoebe asked. “Between your accident and my laudanum, you have suffered quite a trial.”
“On the contrary, I’m wide awake. I slept so late today that the last thing I want to do is close my eyes again. A brisk walk may be just what I need to use up some of this energy.”
“Very well, then.” She looked to Solebury. “Will you join them, love, or do you have something else to occupy you?”
“I have the estate accounts to review, but I shan’t be long. Once David has brought Miss Cantrell safely back to the house, I shall retire, too.”
“Wonderful.” She turned back to the others. “If you need anything when you return, the servants will accommodate you. And, Miss Cantrell, dear, if you should ever want me--for any reason at all--don’t hesitate to have Molly summon me. Goodnight to both of you.”
She kissed Solebury on the cheek and began a slow ascent of the stairs. David watched her progress with a tug of compassion. At this late stage of her pregnancy, she could ill afford a mysterious houseguest and a head full of worries about war. If he could do anything at all to help, he would be happy to stay at the gate house.
He turned to Leah and offered her his elbow. She smiled and curled her hand around his arm. The pressure of her fingers through his shirt set his skin to tingling. Foolishness. He reminded himself this walk had nothing to do with pleasure.
“Don’t be long,” Solebury said, his eyes narrowing as he scanned David’s face. “Remember that Miss Cantrell is recovering from a difficult experience.”
He met his father’s gaze squarely. “You have no need to worry, my lord.”
The marquess nodded. “Enjoy the evening then.”
Leah thanked him, and they stepped outside into a mild night. Solebury waited until they had descended from the portico before he closed the door, shutting out the light from the hall chandelier. Without speaking, they started up the moonlit drive, attended by a chorus of crickets and countless twinkling stars.
After a long moment, David heard a soft sigh from her.
“This is beautiful,” she said, “like being in a fairy tale.”
He could not think how to respond, incapable of disagreeing and unwilling to concur. The splendid evening made an unfit backdrop for an interrogation. How on earth should he begin?
She adjusted her grasp on his arm, nestling a little closer in the process. Her body felt warm and snug against his side, and the scent of rosewater grazed his nostrils.
“When you suggested walking,” she said, “I didn’t realize you’d had a stroke of genius.”
He had thought so, but now his intellect failed him entirely. No sensible comment would come to him.
She giggled. “Maybe some magical sprite whisked the idea into your head. I never used to believe in magic . . .”
Her voice trailed off with her last words, as though she had drifted into thought. He looked at her and saw that she stared at the sky, her expression now sober.
“Do you believe in magic now?” he asked, immediately deploring the pointless inquiry. He had so many important questions, yet he would waste his time with nonsense.
“Yes.” She pulled her gaze down from the heavens and gave him a soft smile, the sort of smile that had kept men speculating about the Mona Lisa for centuries. “And, for the moment, I’m not even afraid of it. The magic I feel right now is too beautiful to fear.”
Too beautiful to fear. He stared into her starlit eyes and felt the weight of those words, even as he chided himself for melodrama. He had to begin his questioning, before this encounter took on all the aspect of a romantic tryst rather than an investigation. But where should he start?
A light breeze blew, wafting the scent of tulips over from Lady Solebury’s private garden. Leah closed her eyes, breathing in the fragrance with a smile.
He squelched the urge to lean over and kiss her, forcing himself to think of French espionage. She could be a French spy. He had to ask her . . . ask her something!
“Parlez vous francais?” The words emerged without forethought, but at least he had posed a question.
She laughed, a light chuckle that echoed quietly in the trees. “I have to wonder why you’re speaking French
, David, but maybe a night like this calls for a romance language. Let’s see. Give me a minute to remember what little I know.”
While he stared at her, she looked up at the sky, then back into his eyes. “Okay, to answer your question: En peu, monsieur. Wait, more is coming to me. Je m’apelle Leah. Je suis americaine. Comment allez vous?”
She had the worst accent imaginable, pronouncing her French words even more flatly than her English. Of course, he had proved nothing in this exercise. She could be feigning her ineptitude. Or she might even communicate to the French in her own peculiarly bland English.
“You haven’t answered my question, monsieur,” she said, grinning at him. “Comment allez vous?”
He gazed down into her face. In the moonlight, her skin looked just like cream, spilling down her lovely cheekbones, over her slim neck and into the expanse of her bosom.
“David, you started this game. Now you have to tell me how you are. And on this gorgeous night, I defy you to answer anything but ‘Tres bien.’ Now, come on.” She tilted her head sideways. “Comment allez vous?”
Her eyes glittered like the stars in the clear sky above. The sweet, lopsided way she smiled at him rendered her silly request irresistible.
“Tres bien, mademoiselle,” he whispered.
“Ah, oui! You are tres bien, David.” She grinned wide, revealing a pearly set of perfectly even teeth. “Tres, tres bien.”
They eyed each other for a long moment, David increasingly aware of the heat of her body against his. Taking a deep breath, he shifted slightly aside. She loosened her grip to allow his movement, letting her fingers slide down his arm. Somehow, they ended in holding hands.
Her fingers felt slender and warm, and he lifted them, his dazed mind focused on kissing her hand, if not her lips. But the sudden sight of her ring halted him. He looked back up into her eyes, unconsciously twisting the gold band around her finger.
She dropped her gaze to their clasped hands, and her smile faded. With a brief glance at his face, she looked away, staring at the path ahead.
The muscles in his midsection tightened. Obviously, the ring had more significance than she had indicated. And why should that surprise him? Had she been candid about anything whatsoever?
“I think maybe we should return to the house,” she said, extracting her fingers from his. She transferred them back up to his upper arm, her touch light and cool. “Lord Solebury will wonder what’s happened to us.”
He acquiesced silently, turning back with her to retrace their steps. With each stride, his chance to interrogate her slipped further away, but only one question loomed is his mind--and the subject had nothing to do with espionage.
“Your friendship ring is from a male friend.” The question, in fact, came out more as a statement.
She hesitated only briefly. “Yes.”
“And you share more than mere friendship with him?”
This time the paused lasted longer. “We did.”
Did. Implying the relationship had ended--but she still wore the ring. Not that any of it mattered! He should have abandoned the subject and moved onto something more important--but at the moment, nothing felt more important. “Did you and he talk of marrying?”
She shrugged and, he noted, failed to meet his gaze. “The topic came up, but we never got near the point of making plans. As I said earlier, he gave me the ring in friendship.”
An odd sort of friendship, he reflected, his guts now sour--he must have eaten too much rich food at the manor. Despite the discomfort in his abdomen, he fancied he could feel the cold metal of her gold band through his sleeve, where her fingers rested. And now more questions--inappropriate questions--erupted from him as of their own will.
“Do you still think of marrying him?”
She shook her head. “He is very far away.”
“And if he were here?”
“Here?” The idea seemed to affect her oddly, as though she had never considered such a prospect. She bit her lip, glanced at him, and faced forward again. “Actually, if he were here now, I don’t believe marrying him would be on my mind at all.”
They had reached the front of the manor, and she let go of his arm, leading the way up the steps.
“Thank you for a lovely walk.” She smiled but not so naturally as she had earlier. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“You will.” He thought of her earlier return to the scene of her accident and added, “Remember, you promised not to go to the spring on your own.”
“I remember.” She held his gaze. “You’re kind to worry about me.”
He stared at her a moment longer, searching his mind one last time for a question pertinent to espionage. Instead, her safety occupied his every thought.
“If you find you want to face the spring again, tell me and I’ll take you there myself. If you feel you must leap into the water, then I shall leap in with you.”
Her eyebrows drew together, and he thought he saw her lip quiver. “You’re . . . brave.”
He snorted. “I’m not likely to fear a few feet of water.”
She looked up the dark drive, toward the woods surrounding the spring. “Are you afraid of the unknown?”
“The unknown? You, for example?”
She gave no answer.
“My greatest fears are based in the evils I know,” he said, hoping to prime her candor with some of his own. “The unknown at least offers the possibility of good, as well as evil.”
She shivered, hugging herself to rub her own arms. “It offers something.”
“Certainly too much to throw away.”
“Yes.” She nodded, finally looking back to his face. “Don’t worry about that. I wouldn’t throw away any of this. Goodnight, David.”
She gave him another small smile and disappeared through the door, leaving him to wonder what on earth their obscure exchange had truly meant.
He sighed and started off for the gate house. So much for his interrogation. Relevant questions would have to wait for another time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Startled awake in a cold sweat, Leah sat up in bed. She could have sworn she’d heard someone scream--or had it been her own mind crying out for help? Now she heard only the sound of birds chirping outside the window. The orange glow of dawn lent a cheerful peachy tint to the yellow wallpaper.
A muffled moan came from somewhere outside the closed door to the hall.
Someone had cried out.
She kicked off the covers and scrambled out of bed. Without a thought for the robe the marchioness had lent her, she dashed out of the room in her nightgown. The sound of someone sniffling traveled up the hallway, and she hurried toward the source, her bare feet padding on the carpet.
When she rounded a turn, she nearly ran into Lady Solebury’s maid. The girl slumped on a sparse wooden chair in the hall, tears streaming down her reddened cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Molly?” Leah stooped down beside her, placing one hand on her arm. “Is there something I can do?”
“Oh, Miss, I wish you might! Alas, my mistress has gone into labor, and the babe is coming too early.” She pulled a big white handkerchief out of her apron pocket and blew her nose, nodding toward a door across the hall. “The midwife is in there now. She wanted me to go downstairs with his lordship and Mr. Traymore, but I reckoned my lady might want me.”
Leah looked at the closed door and, between Molly’s sniffles, heard quiet voices coming from the room. She distinguished two women, speaking in tones that sounded calm.
“Are you sure the marchioness is in labor?” she asked the maid. “Has she cried out in pain?”
“She was crying before the midwife came,” Molly said, “though she’s settled down since. Mayhap Mrs. Carson gave her a potion to soothe her.”
Leah frowned, wondering how a “potion” might affect the unborn child. Given her own recent experience, she hoped the marchioness hadn’t taken laudanum.
The door opened, and a woman who could have been Mrs. San
ta Claus came into the hall. Her pure white hair formed a neat bun, and clusters of crinkles around her eyes showed that she spent a lot of her life smiling.
“I am Harriet Carson,” she said to Leah, while Molly pushed past her to get into the room, “the midwife. Are you a relative of her ladyship?”
“A houseguest. My name is Leah Cantrell.” She bobbed a brief curtsy. “Is the marchioness in labor?”
Mrs. Carson curtsied in return, shaking her snowy head. “False alarm. My lady suffered a few pangs of pain, but they seem to have passed. I reckon she’ll carry full term, providing she keeps to her bed. If you are a friend to her, you’ll see that she stays put.”
“I’ll do anything I can.”
“For the moment, you can go in and sit with her, while I coax that silly maid into fetching the marquess.” She glanced back toward the bed, where Molly kneeled beside Lady Solebury. “If the girl stays here, she’ll only work her ladyship into a state. I’ll have a long talk with her before I leave, but I’m glad the marchioness has a sensible friend like you to counter that fretting maid.”
She walked back into the bedroom, but Leah paused in the doorway, reluctant to intrude.
Propped against a mound of pillows, Lady Solebury murmured a greeting as the midwife returned to her. When she noticed Leah, she stretched her neck to give her a faint smile. “Miss Cantrell, I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep. Do come in for a moment, so I can assure you all is well.”
“You haven’t disturbed me, my lady.” Leah stepped up to the bed, still feeling uncomfortable. “I’m only glad to hear you’re not in danger.”
The marchioness bit her lip. “I daresay I have let my nerves get the best of me. If only I can temper my concerns about the war, I shall be perfectly fine. Mrs. Carson has insisted that I keep to my bed, however.”
“A good idea, my lady.” Leah glanced toward the midwife, who spoke in low tones to the anxious maid while she maneuvered the girl into the hallway. “She seems a very sensible woman.”
As You Wish Page 7
