Indiscreet

by Candace Camp

  She grabbed his hands and turned them palm up. “Look. And what about your speech? Who else among them talks like you?”

  “I’m not a fool, Camilla. I wear gloves, and I change my manner of speaking. I copy Jem. You know I can take on the accent. You’ve heard me. I wear clothes I borrow from Jem. They don’t know me.”

  She gave him a long look. “There are other things you can’t disguise. Your build, for instance. I’m sure that you and Jem are together always. Everyone knows that the two of you have been friends all your lives. Maybe you wear Jem’s shirts, but he’s far too short for you to wear his trousers. You think any of them have trousers of that cut and material? There must be one or two of them who are sharp enough to put two and two together, no matter what you’ve done to hide it.”

  Anthony looked a little nonplussed, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that. You might be right. But they’re all loyal to us. They would never turn me in.”

  “Hopefully not. But it’s not a good situation.”

  He sighed. “Yes, I know. And you’re right. I will give it up. I promise.” He looked a little wistful. “But it was jolly good fun, Milla.”

  “I am sure it was.” She smiled at him. “I will talk to Grandpapa and try to convince him that you need to spend some time away.”

  “Maybe a trip to London!” Anthony’s eyes sparkled at the idea. “That would be smashing!”

  “Yes, it would.”

  Anthony hesitated, suddenly serious again. “And you won’t tell Lassiter, will you?”

  “No.” Camilla was aware of a curious longing to unburden herself to Benedict. However, if there was a chance that Anthony was right and her “husband” was an excise man, then he was the last person she could tell about Anthony’s escapade. “You are right. We shall have to be very, very careful to keep it a secret.”

  “Keep what a secret?” asked a masculine voice from the doorway.

  Camilla gasped and whirled around. There in the doorway stood Benedict, looking at them questioningly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CAMILLA STARED AT Benedict. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

  “What?” she asked, stalling for time as her mind raced furiously.

  “What is it you have to keep secret?”

  “Oh, that.” Camilla gave a little chuckle. “Nothing, really, just a…something that Anthony doesn’t want Aunt Lydia to hear about. He’s, ah, wanting to purchase a horse.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Anthony jumped in. “Mama worries—you know how mothers are. She’s afraid that the horse is too wild.” He added in a realistically sulky voice, “She treats me like a baby.”

  “Now, Anthony, dear, she is just concerned about you. You are her only child, after all.”

  “I wish I were not,” he retorted in a heartfelt voice.

  Benedict glanced from one of them to the other. Camilla wondered if he believed them. She had been so rattled at seeing him there that she had reacted badly, she knew. But at least Anthony had been convincing; she hoped that would be enough to make Benedict believe the story. If only she knew how much of their conversation he had heard! If he truly was an excise officer, as Anthony surmised, it would be disastrous for him to have heard the whole, or even a good part, of what they had said.

  “I am surprised to see you here,” Camilla said brightly. “I thought you were staying behind to talk to Cousin Harold.” Had he merely said that in order to skulk along behind them and spy on them? She was feeling more and more distrustful of him.

  “Yes. We talked. But it’s time for luncheon, and I decided to come tell you. You see, ah, the vicar and Mr. Thorne were discussing poetry.”

  Camilla giggled at the pained expression on Benedict’s face. “I understand.”

  “I should think so!” Anthony overlooked his distrust of Benedict in an upsurge of fellow feeling. “That chap Thorne is a dead bore.”

  “I can’t think why Aunt Lydia invited him down here.”

  “She didn’t. Mama may be flighty, but she’s not a sapskull. She said the fellow just showed up on her doorstep when she was leaving and insisted on escorting her to Chevington Park. He has been hanging around her for months now, professing his undying love and all that sort of tripe.” Anthony grimaced. “He told her that he could not allow her to travel all this way without anyone to protect her. As if Batters, who’s driven her everywhere for over fifteen years, and George weren’t enough protection. Not to mention her maid and the driver of the second coach with her luggage. She tried to talk him out of it, but he kept jawing, so finally she agreed. Once they got here, she couldn’t very well not invite him to stay for a visit. It wouldn’t have been polite. How was she to know the leech would live here a month?”

  “A month! He’s been here that long?” Camilla asked, astonished.

  “Yes. Mama tried to hint to him that he needn’t remain any longer, but he just said that he could not leave her to face this ‘family tragedy’ all alone.”

  “It’s a wonder you haven’t kicked him out.”

  “I would have.” Anthony looked grim. “But Mama is too softhearted. She thinks he must be short of funds, that he wanted to escort her because he was fleeing his creditors. So she’s reluctant to toss him out. She says she has been in the same position sometimes when her allowance ran out. I don’t know. Maybe she is hoping he will drive Aunt Beryl away. If he could, even I would be in favor of his staying.”

  “Have your cousin and his friend been here all that time, too?” Benedict asked. “It seems an awfully full house.”

  “Too full,” Anthony agreed darkly. “Those two have been here even longer than Mr. Thorne, though, thank God, neither one is as big a gudgeon as he is. Cousin Bertram’s not too bad. At least he’s not prosy like Cousin Harold and Aunt Beryl. But that other one, Oglesby—he’s a strange one.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  Anthony, who was not one to analyze his thoughts, wrinkled his brow. “I’m not sure. There’s just something odd about him. Besides his clothes, I mean. I can’t stomach pink waistcoats on a man, can you? Cousin Kitty and Cousin Amanda, of course, think he’s the handsomest thing ever, and the two of them have been flirting like mad with him.” A small grin flitted across his face. “’Course, he merely looks bored by them, so he can’t be entirely lacking in good sense.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it’s merely that he’s quiet. I rarely hear him say anything. But, somehow, I don’t know, he seems…out of place.”

  “Out of place?” It was Camilla who asked him the question this time, her curiosity aroused by Anthony’s answer.

  “I can’t explain it, Milla. Spend a little time around him, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Benedict said nothing more, deciding that he had asked as many questions as he could without arousing Anthony’s or Camilla’s suspicions. He still wondered what the two of them had been talking about when he opened the door. Camilla’s explanation had been feeble, he thought, and there had been that flash of panic in her eyes when she turned around and saw him standing there. She had specifically said that they must keep something a secret from him, and she had obviously been fearful that he had overheard what they were discussing. He wished that he had opened the door a few moments earlier.

  He found it difficult to believe that either Camilla or Anthony was the person he was seeking. Anthony, after all, would become an Earl upon his grandfather’s death. Perhaps a hotheaded, adventure-seeking young man might be foolish enough to risk all that for the excitement of smuggling, but his very youth argued against his being the mastermind of the destruction of Gideon. As for Camilla, however odd her actions might be, she was a lady. Moreover, she had only just arrived in Chevington Park after several months away. Their mystery, whatever it was, was probably rather innocuous—some family secret, or the location
of something valuable that they did not want known by an outsider. Still, Benedict would have felt better if he had known what it was.

  There was no use pressing the point, however. He had to pretend that he believed them. “Well, I imagine that luncheon is ready now. Shall we go down, my dear?” He offered Camilla his arm.

  “Thank you. Coming, Anthony?”

  Anthony scowled. “With Thorne and Cousin Harold and all of them there? I think not. Mrs. Blakely will send one of the footmen up with my food.”

  With those words, he left them, heading for the back stairs leading up to the nursery. Benedict watched him go, saying casually, “Your cousin doesn’t have a room on this floor?”

  It was odd for a family member—the future Earl, no less—not to be staying on the same floor with all the others, where the pleasantest rooms were.

  “No. He sleeps in his old room upstairs.” Camilla took his arm, and they started strolling toward the stairs.

  “You mean, in the nursery?”

  That fact struck him as even odder. What eighteen-year-old boy would want to stay in the rooms labeled for children?

  “Yes. It’s easier, he says. He and his tutor can use the schoolroom for his studies, and he likes his old bedroom. Personally, I think it’s just because it’s easier to avoid all the adults that way. There is no one else up there, so he can do as he pleases.”

  Benedict suspected that Camilla had hit the nail on the head with her supposition. The lure of being left to his own devices would appeal to any adolescent male; it would be heaven-sent for one bent on mischief. He wondered what sort of view the third-floor nursery windows would have. He thought that it might be an excellent place from which to look for signals indicating that there was a ship to be unloaded that night.

  “Perhaps I ought to visit with Anthony a bit,” he suggested casually. “Get to know him a little better. It might allay his fears about me. Perhaps we could go out riding.”

  Camilla glanced at him, surprised. “Why, that’s very thoughtful. It would be nice if you could reassure him that you are not going to ‘take advantage’ of me. He feels that because he’s a sort of brother to me, he should protect me.”

  “Someone should,” Benedict agreed.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He looked down into her flashing eyes. The words had slipped out without his thinking. Obviously they had aroused her ire. “Well, it’s true. If you were mine, I wouldn’t allow you to be running about on the heath alone at night.”

  “It is a good thing that I am not ‘yours,’ then, isn’t it? That attitude is precisely why I decided never to marry. As if a woman could be your possession, a slave to do your bidding, with no will or mind of her own.”

  A faint smile curved his lips. “I think that is something no one will ever accuse you of. However, that was not precisely what I meant. I meant ‘mine’ as in related to me, dependent on me. I know that the last thing one can expect from a woman is loyalty or obedience.”

  “Two very different things, sir,” Camilla pointed out tartly. “Obedience is what one expects from a child or a servant. Loyalty is what is freely given by a thinking, autonomous adult.”

  “Well, neither of them is a virtue I have found in women.”

  “Then you have made a poor choice in the company you keep.”

  “Obviously,” he agreed grimly.

  “That is the problem with most men—they choose a woman because she is beautiful to look at, rather than for the qualities that count, such as her intelligence or loyalty or courage.”

  He thought of Annabeth’s pale beauty, and the venal heart it had hidden so well. But he could not resist challenging Camilla. “I would have thought loveliness one of the primary qualities one would seek in a wife.”

  “There. You see?” Camilla came to a stop, putting her hands on her hips in exasperation. “That is just like a man. Will a pretty face provide you witty conversation at the dinner table or a thoughtful discourse beside the fire? Of course not. Does it make a sour disposition easy to bear or a dull mind less boring?”

  “Well, it would make it more pleasant to look at your companion through life.”

  “Ha!” Camilla’s voice dripped scorn. “If all she is is pleasant to look at, within a few months you won’t even be there to see her. You will have been driven mad by boredom and will spend all your hours at your club.”

  Benedict could not help but chuckle, thinking of one of his friends, to whom this exact fate had befallen. Enamored of a fragile blond-and-white beauty, he had married her, only to find once they were alone together, without chaperones, friends and family, that the poor girl had no conversation and little wit. She had the same dimpling smile and sweet expression that had bewitched him, but when they talked, there was nothing to say. He had, indeed, taken to spending most of his time with his friends at the club.

  “There, you see? You’ve seen such marriages, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have,” he admitted.

  “Then admit that what I am saying is right. If a man chose a wife for her mind or her conversation, he would be much more likely to be happy.”

  “Passion plays no part?”

  Camilla looked at him, feeling suddenly as if she had stepped onto treacherous ground. Her usual answer in the past would have been a contemptuous dismissal of such a base appetite as passion as reason for marriage. However, remembering how she had felt this morning, when Benedict kissed her, she could not be so scornful.

  Her eyes went involuntarily to his lips, and he gave her such a knowing smile that Camilla longed to hit him.

  “I think it a flimsy foundation,” she told him primly, “for a lifetime of devotion.”

  “Flimsy?” Something flickered in the dark depths of Benedict’s eyes as he reached up and twined one of the wispy curls that framed Camilla’s face around his finger. “I would have said that it is a very strong thing, passion.”

  Camilla could think of no answer. Indeed, she could scarcely breathe.

  “It hit me like a fist this morning,” he went on in a soft, conversational tone.

  Camilla drew a shaky breath. He was going to kiss her again, she thought, and she realized with astonishment how much she wanted him to. The thought seemed to break her trance, and she pulled back abruptly.

  “We’d best go, or we shall be late.” She whirled and started quickly toward the stairs again.

  With a soft, rich chuckle that sent a quiver through her, Benedict matched her pace, saying, “Of course, madam. At your service.”

  * * *

  CAMILLA WAS SURPRISED—AND, she told herself, relieved—that Benedict made no advances toward her over the next couple of days. He did not come up to their room at the time she was undressing and bathing; indeed, he did not come in until after she had finally fallen asleep. Nor did he spend much time with her at any other point. When she inquired where he had been, he responded vaguely.

  But Anthony was quick to give her his opinion. “Snooping! That’s what he’s doing,” he sputtered angrily. “Looking here and there, talking to everyone. I’ve seen him all over the house. Lord, he has probably been exploring the west wing, too. The man is up to no good, I tell you.”

  “Oh, hush. You sound like a suspicious old priss.” However, Camilla had to admit that she was rather curious, too, as to where Benedict had been and what he had been doing.

  “Well, why else would he be talking to all the servants?” Anthony pointed out reasonably. “I went down to the servants’ hall last night to cajole a little snack out of Cook, and I heard one of them say that he was in Purdle’s room, talking to him.”

  “He was talking to Purdle?” Camilla’s eyebrows sailed upward. “But, Anthony, Purdle would never say anything to him. Besides, what does he know?”

  “Nothing to any purpose. But he spies o
n me. Him and Jenkins both,” Anthony said bitterly.

  “Oh, now, Anthony…”

  “They do. For Grandpapa. Oh, they don’t mean any harm, I know that. But sometimes it’s enough to drive me mad. I have to sneak out of the house if I don’t want one of them questioning me.”

  “Even so, Purdle would never reveal family business to a stranger.”

  “Well, they don’t think he’s a stranger, do they? They think he’s your legal husband.”

  “Still, that’s not enough to make Purdle say anything that might harm you.”

  “Oh, you don’t know. They always say it’s for my own good. That they’re worried about me. It’s enough to make a fellow wish he were an orphan.”

  “You don’t mean that. But I understand. I really do. All that ‘taking care’ of one can make one feel smothered.”

  “Exactly. I knew you’d understand.” Anthony smiled at her, but continued to pace agitatedly. “Can’t you do anything about him?”

  “Who? Benedict?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you suggesting? That I get rid of him?”

  “It’s what I’d like to do. But I know there’s no chance of it. Just watch him, keep him on a shorter leash. He’s supposed to be married to you. Can’t you make him do things with you?”

  “All right, all right. I will try.”

  So it was that the next morning Camilla put on her riding habit when she got up and went downstairs in search of Benedict. She found him in the breakfast room with Mr. Oglesby. If he was trying to worm anything out of Mr. Oglesby, Camilla thought with a smile, then he was having rough going. She had tried to talk to the man after dinner the evening before, and he had hardly said a word.

  “Camilla!” Benedict arose with a smile and came over to brush a kiss against her cheek. Camilla was not sure if he was putting on an act for Mr. Oglesby, who had also risen politely at her entrance, though more slowly than Benedict, or if he was genuinely glad to see her.