“Forgive me, but I was told you are … dead.”
Yancey put a hand over her heart. “My goodness, the way you say dead gives me the shivers. But here I am, very obviously alive. Of course, Sam told me this morning that you and my dear mother-in-law had arrived with the news of my unfortunate demise. I find myself most distressed.”
Roderick’s bold eyes narrowed even as he affected concern and executed a bow. “I apologize if my obviously erroneous news of your demise caused you any distress.”
Yancey returned his comment in kind. “And I apologize to you, sir, if my being alive has caused you any distress.”
She surprised him with that. His hawk’s gaze met and held Yancey’s. She refused to blink first and distracted her mind by detailing the man’s features. Most notably, his eyes weren’t gray like Sam’s. They were blue. A very hard, chipped-flint blue. But they went well with his mouth, which had a cruel set to it.
“Far from distressed,” he said a little too late, a little too insincerely. “In fact, I am truly delighted to find my cousin’s wife so obviously alive and well.”
Yancey allowed herself a smile. “Such a sweet man you are, Your Grace.”
“Please. Under the circumstances, you and I being family, even if only through marriage, please do me the honor of calling me Roderick.”
“Why, I’d be delighted. But you must call me Sarah, in return.”
“Then … Sarah, it is.”
“Oh, forgive me my lack of manners, Your—I mean Roderick,” Yancey fussed, playing the distracted hostess. She indicated an intimate arrangement of chairs that fronted the cold fireplace. “Would you like to be seated? I can ring for tea”—wouldn’t they be surprised in the kitchen? Yancey suffered a second’s fear: what had Sam told the servants? But wait, they already believed her to be the duchess; they’d cooperate without question, wouldn’t they?—“or we can step outside to enjoy this lovely day.”
“What’s your pleasure … Sarah? I defer to you. This is, after all, your home.” His voice was tight, as if it had cost him dearly to spit the words out and admit her ownership. Yancey found that interesting.
“Why don’t we sit in here?” She indicated the chairs, received his nod of acceptance, and preceded him over to them. Eschewing the settee, not wanting to give the man a chance to sit so close to her, Yancey sat in one of the chairs and arranged her skirt about her, much as if she took callers every day in this room.
For his part, the Duke of Glenmore chose the settee, sitting and crossing his legs much as if he owned the place. Yancey eyed him, wondering at the vehemence behind his earlier comment about Stonebridge being her home now. She would have to ask Sam some questions. Such as, did Roderick’s land share a boundary with Sam’s? Was he looking to expand his holdings? How big was his property? Was it profitable? Did this man have the money to support his duchy? Much of the peerage didn’t nowadays and sought rich American wives who were hungry for titles—
“It’s a pity that we couldn’t have met you before now, Sarah. Yet I find you a lovely creature, and don’t blame Sam at all for keeping you to himself in America all these years.”
Though he pretended not to, Yancey reasoned, Roderick had to know—through Sam’s mother’s many visits to her sister, this man’s mother—of Sam’s alleged estrangement from his wife. What a snake. She smiled. “You’re too kind, Roderick.”
“I’ve often been told that is a fault of mine.”
“No doubt.” Yancey remembered to smile, to appear attentive to her guest, even though she would have given her right arm to be able to tie him to the danged furniture and hold a gun to his head until he told the truth, the villain. “Although I must say I’m glad I’m here now. Otherwise, these reports of my death might persist.” She leaned over, toward the hateful man. “I find myself wondering who would tell you such an awful lie, Roderick. And why they would.”
She waited politely, pointedly, for her guest to reply. But inside, she was fretting. Where the hell is Sam? He needs to hear all this. If he doesn’t hurry up and get back here, there’s going to be another death later on. And it will be his.
Roderick’s answering smile Yancey judged to be very much like that, no doubt, offered by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. “Well, this is most awkward, my dear, sweet cousin.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Yancey agreed conversationally, clasping her hands together in her lap. She paused for a count of three, then added, “And your source for that most distressing news you brought with you … Roderick?”
“Forgive me, Sarah,” Roderick began, appearing puzzled, “but I wonder why Sam didn’t tell me straightaway early this morning that you lived. His dear mother was so distressed—and still is, I remain certain—to learn that Sam’s wife was, uh, no longer with us.”
So … no sources revealed. Roderick was proving to be quite the slippery little eel. Yancey adopted an expression of sweet innocence and tried again. “Sam’s poor, poor mother. I myself am very distressed that someone—and you must tell me who—is spreading these tales that are upsetting everyone.”
If he wasn’t going to answer her questions, she wasn’t about to answer his. And so she waited. Roderick said nothing, only tilted his head this way and that as he considered her, much as he would a ripe fruit ready for the plucking. Yancey’s smile stayed in place as if she’d plastered it there. “Yes?” she asked, encouraging him. “Who did you say wrote to … Mother Rosamond”—dear God, she hoped that was a correct form of address for Sam’s mother—“and upset her so? What a villain this person is, I must say.”
Roderick’s tight smile only tipped up the corners of his thin slash of a mouth. “Very much the villain, I assure you, dear lady. One can only hope he will be dealt with accordingly for having passed along such incorrect information.”
Yancey did not doubt in the least that whoever the bumbling informant was, he would be dealt with severely—as soon as Roderick got away from here.
Just then he became the very picture of cousinly solicitousness and charm, leaning forward in a show of attentiveness. “And now, my dear, you must tell me how it was that you and Sam met.”
Yancey’s smile fled from her face. She had no idea how Sam had met Sarah. None. She recovered quickly, becoming the trilling, cheerful hostess. “Oh my, that’s a story for Sam to tell you.” Through gritted teeth, she added, “If only he were here, that dear, dear man.” She eyed the closed doors of the suddenly suffocating drawing room. “I wonder what can be keeping that husband of mine. He should really, really be here.”
As if in response to her inquiry—or prayer—the doors to the drawing room opened. Yancey had to grip her chair’s arms to keep from jumping up and shouting hallelujah.
Chapter Sixteen
But it wasn’t Yancey’s “husband” who rattled in behind the tea service. No, it was Scotty. Yancey wanted to die. Where the living hell was Sam? How many horses did he have, and were they all ailing?
As the Duke of Glenmore had jumped up—out of guilt? Wariness? A need to watch his back because he was up to no good?—and now faced the doors, Yancey fanned her face with her hands and exhaled hard enough to puff her cheeks out. This grateful feeling she had for Scotty right now had to be how settlers felt when, surrounded by marauding Indians, they saw the cavalry coming on the run. Of course, in Scotty’s case, there was no running.
“Why, Scotty,” she chirped, knowing full well she hadn’t rung for refreshments, “how nice of you to bring tea.”
“I brought the tea,” Scotty repeated, continuing his rattling way across the room, and not sparing the furniture’s legs—or the villainous duke’s. Had the man not sidled out of the lumbering giant’s way at the last moment, he would have been run over. Scotty waited until he had settled the silver service at Yancey’s side, next to her chair, between her and Roderick, to offer more conversation. “The horse is sick,” Scotty told her. “The duke is delayed.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Yancey said pleasantly, ev
ery facial muscle involved in smiling now sore and tired. She did wonder, though, exactly how long Scotty had known this tidbit of information. Hours, it had to be. Veritable hours. Yancey patted at her hair and sent Scotty a sidelong glance. “Did the duke happen to say, Scotty, exactly how long he would be delayed?”
“No.” He pointed a sausage-like finger at the steaming pot of tea. “Pour this,” he said, “in here.” He now, of course, pointed to a fine bone china teacup in its equally delicate saucer.
Dismayed, Yancey forced a chuckle and felt her face heat up. “Thank you. I know how to serve tea, Scotty. You may go now.”
But he didn’t. He just stood there … between her and the Duke of Glenmore. Scotty’s dull gaze seemed somehow to skewer the man in place.
Yancey glanced the way of the now reseated duke and saw him dividing his suspicious attention between her and her monster-sized butler. “No doubt,” Yancey said, directing her “fair warning” comment to Sam’s cousin, “you have a long acquaintance with Scotty and know how … protective he can be of those he serves.”
“Yes,” the duke said smoothly. “A most singular creature.”
Creature? Not man? Instantly angry, all Yancey could think about was Sam’s telling her earlier how Roderick used to torment Scotty when he’d been a helpless boy. Well, the duke certainly didn’t seem inclined to do so now. No doubt, Scotty’s size had something to do with that. But size or no, should anyone of any rank think to torment anyone under her charge, Yancey silently fumed, they’d have to go through her first.
Tipping her face up to the butler, trying to convey that she was fine here alone with the duke, though she felt anything but fine, Yancey smiled and said, emphatically this time, “Thank you, Scotty. You’ve been most kind, but you really may go now.”
The hugely intimidating man, who was proudly wearing his new suit of clothes, complete with his new hat—a strange twist for indoors—straightened up to his considerable awe-inspiring size. Cutting his clear-colored gaze from her to Roderick and back to her, he said, “I cleaned your gun. It’s back under your pillow.”
No doubt, he thought himself the soul of subtlety. But Yancey nearly shrieked. She certainly had Roderick’s undivided attention now. Surely, he was wondering why the lady of the house felt compelled to sleep with a gun under her pillow. “Oh my. Uh, thank you, Scotty.” Yancey looked up at the butler, pleading with her eyes for him to leave.
“Her Grace Nana filched a crumpet off the tray.”
He wasn’t going to leave. Defeated, Yancey could only stare up at the man. They were speaking two different languages, she and Scotty. She cleared her throat. “Really? Why didn’t she simply join us if she’s up and about?” Yancey was actually beginning to feel sorry for the Duke of Glenmore. They must all appear insane to him.
“She’s hiding.”
Genuine distress seized Yancey and had her turning to the duke. “Excuse me a moment, Roderick. Please forgive this bit of domestic drama.” The man nodded, looking as if a cannon had gone off right next to his head. Yancey turned in her chair to better see the butler. “Where, Scotty? Where is Nana hiding? Tell me.”
“Under her bed. She’s eating the crumpet.”
“And you’re supposed to be looking for her, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Then I expect you to do so. Scotty, she is approaching three hundred years old, if she’s a day. So if you’re going to engage her in a game of hide-and-seek, there will be none of this allowing her to hide and your not looking for her. Now, what do you have to say to that?”
Scotty lowered his impressive brow stubbornly and poked his thick bottom lip out. “Mr. Marples made potty in the dining room.”
Yancey stared at the big, big man. “Dear God.” She then squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. In that pose, she told her guest, “You’ll be glad to know, Roderick, that Mr. Marples is a very bad little dog.”
When she opened her eyes, Scotty was lumbering off in his hulking way and Roderick the villainous duke was staring at her as if she’d just shed a skin. “You really are Sarah Margaret, aren’t you? You are the American duchess.”
Yancey cocked her head at a questioning angle. “Why, yes I am. But what an odd thing for you to say. I told you straightaway who I was. Did you doubt me?”
“No,” he said, tugging thoughtfully at his clean-shaven chin, his eyes narrowed in consideration of her. “No, I didn’t.”
Yancey watched him, knowing that as of this moment, with the Duke of Glenmore now convinced of her identity, her life was in danger. She would have to be very careful from now on. After all, her suspicion was that he’d killed, or had caused to be killed, one Duchess of Somerset, for whatever reason, and so he wouldn’t hesitate to kill another one. The most dangerous creature on earth, she knew, was a man who had already killed once. Maybe twice. She thought of Sam’s brother, Geoffrey.
Still playing hostess, though, and still smiling, she poured Sam’s cousin a cup of tea and offered him a biscuit. As he made his selection, she looked up and happened to catch Scotty’s eye. Behind the Duke of Glenmore, out of the man’s sight, but directly in Yancey’s line of vision, the butler stood at the open doors, facing her, and was making ready to close them as he exited.
He’d obviously been waiting for her to notice him. Yancey glanced her guest’s way and saw he was occupied with staring longingly, perhaps possessively, out the open French doors off to his right. With him thus occupied, she set down the plate of biscuits and met Scotty’s waiting gaze, her eyebrows arched in question.
He did the most remarkable thing, something she would never have believed if she weren’t seeing it herself. His face split apart … into a grin. Then he winked, which made Yancey blink with surprise. Why in the world had he done that? But almost immediately, she knew. The butler’s performance had been just that. A performance to show Roderick that Yancey knew the ins and outs of the household. A performance to convince a skeptical and dangerous man that she was who she said she was. Scotty was her co-conspirator.
A sense of wonder filled Yancey as the butler pulled the doors closed and left her alone with Roderick. At least now she had the serving of the tea to occupy her hands and the fussing with the dishes to supply her with reasons for pauses to gather her thoughts. Maybe Sam had told Scotty, on his way out to the horse barn, to come to the aid of the duchess because she was new here. That could be, but she had no idea what to think about that gun business. How did Scotty know where she kept her gun? Sam’s doing, again? Possibly. She would have to ask him. And, for the tenth time, where was he—off inspecting the queen’s stables in London?
Just then, the closed double doors to the room opened again. So quick was this on the heels of Scotty’s departure that Yancey thought it must be the giant again. With her guest, the villainous duke, she turned expectantly, waiting to see who would join them now. Yancey’s silent prayer, of course, was that it would be Sam. But no. To her horror, in swept an elegantly dressed, silver-haired middle-aged woman who could only be the dowager Duchess of Somerset, Sam’s mother and the writer of the desperate letters to her daughter-in-law in America.
Unescorted—meaning, again, Sam wasn’t with her—she stopped suddenly, stared wide-eyed at Yancey, who’d slowly risen to her feet, along with Roderick, and said, “Who are you?”
All but frozen inside, and refusing to look Roderick’s way, Yancey replied smoothly, “I’m Sarah, your daughter-in-law. You wrote to me in Chicago, and here I am.”
The attractive woman with the sweet face took a moment to absorb that. Then her expression softened, became wondering. “Then … you’re not dead? You’re Sarah?” Her face lit up. “It is you? You’re really Sarah? And you’re really here?”
Yancey credited the woman’s inane questions to her shock. “Yes, it is I. And yes, obviously, here I am. And I am very much alive.”
The dowager shook her head, still not believing. “I don’t understand. Roderick told me—And then Sam s
aid you had—Oh, dear.” She put the back of her hand to her forehead as if feeling for fever. “Forgive me, I fear I’m going to…”
And then she did. She fainted dead away.
* * *
Sweaty, frustrated, and smelling of the horse barn, but with events there satisfactorily resolved—a stubborn stone had been removed from a prize mare’s hoof and then, free of pain, she had finally accepted her hungry foal to nurse—Sam now carried his jacket tossed over a shoulder. Grim of expression, he rolled his sleeves down. With the afternoon sun beating down on his head, and his mounting worries beating down on his mood, he trudged up the steep hill that led from the meadow up to the formal garden and then to the manor house.
He couldn’t really say that he was anxious to go back inside. Not while he and Yancey were at odds. And not with Roderick here. And especially not with his own mother in residence. He loved her deeply, heart and soul, and she was a good woman. But she could ask more unanswerable questions than Roderick could because she had more of a right to do so.
Sam still debated with himself whether or not he should tell his mother the truth about Yancey. For one thing—
“Sam! Oh, thank God, here you are!”
Sam jerked his head up and saw Yancey standing atop the hill he was just starting up. She was waving and urging him to come to her. Obviously, something had happened. A jet of fear weakened Sam’s limbs, but then galvanized him into action. His mind suffered from dire images of what could have transpired in his absence. Gunplay? A life-and-death struggle? A stabbing, a poisoning, a choking? His mind spared him nothing. He knew he’d never forgive himself for not being there.
Swinging his coat off his shoulder and tossing it to the ground, he charged headlong up the hill to meet Yancey, who was stumbling down to meet him. They met halfway up, and she fell into Sam’s arms, putting them in grave danger of nearly crashing and rolling back down to the meadow in a twist of arms and legs. But Sam held fast, digging his heels into the earth as, his muscles tensed, his heart pounding, he pushed Yancey’s hair out of her face. “Yancey, what is it? What’s happened?”
The Marriage Masquerade Page 24
