“But I have Leach’s marker.” Without a thought, he gathered the cards and put them in his pocket. “It’s a start.”
“Aren’t you assuming a bit much?”
George closed his fingers about the coin purses. “What’s that?”
“That he’s good for it.”
POCKETS jingling, George strode across the lawn, his gaze fixed on the groups of young ladies dotted about the grass. Some of them had set up easels to capture in watercolor the neat ranks of flowers bordering the walkway. Others scribbled on sheaves of paper while their friends exchanged gossip behind their hands. Pastel-colored titmice twittering away, the entire lot of them.
Worse, neither of his sisters was anywhere in sight.
“There you are.” Mama’s fingers clutched George’s wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. “You can’t spend the entire week hiding. I won’t have it.”
“Have you seen Henrietta? I require a word with her.” And more than a word. Revelstoke’s parting shot at the inn made George question whether Leach had told him the truth about not losing intentionally. If he indebted himself to Henrietta on purpose to lure her into a trap …
Mama’s grip tightened on his sleeve. “Henrietta is occupied at the moment, and you aren’t to disturb her.”
The insistence in Mama’s tone drew his gaze from the flocks. “Occupied how?”
“I’d never have believed it after all this time. She’s attracted a suitor, and she doesn’t seem set on turning him away.” Mama lowered her voice to a whisper, as if speaking the truth might frighten off said suitor.
Damn, he might have known. “That’s why I wish to speak to her. I don’t believe the gentleman in question is quite appropriate—”
“Nonsense! Next year, she’ll be six and twenty. Between her age and her past, I was beginning to think we’d never marry her off. Best to get the job done before she puts any more notions in Catherine’s head. And as for you—”
Her grip changed, putting a decided pressure on his wrist. She practically frog-marched him toward a group of giggling young girls. If they weren’t in company, she’d doubtless lead him by the ear like a recalcitrant schoolboy.
One girl stood slightly apart from the others, her hands folded in a perfect display of a demure miss, while another girl made sweeping stabs at a sheaf of sketch paper with a stick of charcoal. Their friends jabbered encouragement. The lot of them looked like they still belonged in the schoolroom. And his mother thought one of them would be a suitable match?
“Mama, really,” he muttered.
“I am determined,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, giving his wrist a none-too-subtle jerk. If she had him by the ear, she’d have twisted it. “Ah, here we are. Miss Abercrombie, I don’t believe you’ve met my son. George, this is Miss Theodosia Abercrombie.”
Theodosia. Good Lord. George felt a stab of pity for the chit, being saddled with such an ungainly name.
Miss Abercrombie looked away from her work and smiled for a fleeting moment before narrowing her eyes into a penetrating glare. The others fell silent while her gaze sketched his face from brows to cheeks to chin. Interesting subject, that gaze said.
“A pleasure, I’m sure,” she murmured before ducking behind her sheaf of paper once more.
George bowed to the sheaf. “Likewise. Now, if you’ll—”
But Mama cut him off. “Who are your friends?”
Clearly the artist did not intend to let herself be disturbed in the midst of such creative energy, for the furrow between her dark brows deepened, and she went on swiping at the page.
Another girl stepped forward and dropped a curtsey. “I believe we were introduced at the Pendleton ball last Season?” Yes, Miss Prudence Wentworth of the unfortunate nose. “You’ve just met my cousin.” She nodded to the artist before rattling off a few more names. “And this is Miss Emily Marshall.”
George stiffened.
Mama dropped his arm. “Gracious. Would you be connected to the Earl of Redditch?”
“He is my uncle.” The girl’s tone was frosty, as if Mama were a servant. Hardly surprising coming from a family whose head thought nothing of ruining a man.
George studied the girl, while his mind whirled with possibilities. She stood, pale, blond, white-skinned, and white-gowned—she might as well be a ghost for all she was nearly translucent in her whiteness. Even her eyes were such a light shade of gray they faded into the blandness of the whole. Little to recommend in the realm of beauty, unless one fancied an untouched canvas.
But if he could break through the layer of ice that surrounded her, he might gain enough acceptance to permit him to call on her in Town. All he needed was an entrée. It would take all the charm he possessed to melt her. He held Miss Marshall’s gaze and thought of the sweet taste of victory when he paid off Summersby’s debts and exposed Redditch for the man he was.
There. That ought to make for a convincing smile. Successful, too, if the chorus of sighs from the surrounding young ladies was any indication.
“Finished!” Miss Abercrombie announced. The other girls flocked to admire her handiwork, but George stayed where he was. He’d seen enough young ladies’ efforts at art, and in this case, he was far more interested in the subject.
Thus, he was barely prepared when Miss Abercrombie declared, “Mr. Upperton shall stand for my next portrait.”
He held up his hands. “Ladies, I really don’t think—”
“Oh please,” they pleaded as one. Even Miss Marshall seemed to animate herself long enough to add her voice to the chorus.
“Well, if you insist. As long as you don’t require me to stand like some statue, that is. The exercise will be far more enjoyable if I’m allowed conversation.”
Miss Abercrombie jerked her head in assent. Thank God. If he had to stand there and think about how assessing her gaze was, he might well go mad. He took up his position where she indicated and tried to put her unnerving eyes out of his mind.
“Marshall, Marshall.” He tapped his chin. “I seem to recall someone by that name a form or two below me at Eton. You wouldn’t happen to have an older brother, by any chance?”
Miss Marshall peered at him frostily. “I regret that I do not.”
He had to strain his ears to catch her murmured reply. “Pity that. A cousin, then?”
“No, sir.” As she muttered the words, a trace of something—her eyes were too nondescript to call it a spark—passed through her glance. A flutter of a shadow. So the chit had something to hide, did she?
So did many members of the ton, but her family in particular was adept at hiding their foibles. Perhaps that’s why she worked so hard at blending into the scenery. Under his scrutiny, she seemed to whither.
“Marshall, yes. It’s coming back to me now. Henry, his name was. Always in some scrape or another. Almost as often as I was.” He paused for the series of giggles that erupted from his audience. “Come to think of it, he favored you. Or you favor him.”
She angled her head to one side, as if she was trying to make heads or tails of him. “I cannot possibly.”
“Of course you do.” Of course she didn’t because Henry Marshall, her purported cousin, did not exist. “I see it now. His nose tilted the same as yours, and he was fair. With a bit ruddier complexion.”
Her shoulders rose as she drew in a breath. Ghostly pale brows lowered. Two pinkish spots stained her cheeks—doubtless this was as ruddy as she ever got. Inside, she must be seething. “I’m afraid you are mistaken. I know of no Henry Marshall, not even among my acquaintances, much less any family connections.”
The more she spoke, the more he became certain he’d hit close to some mark. She was hiding something. Or perhaps not her, but a larger scandal within the family. But what? George sifted through his memory, but he’d never been one to attend to gossip, at least as long as he couldn’t hear anything to his advantage. If the ton was abuzz over some lord losing big at the gaming table, he might lend an ear. If a man had earned a
reputation for ruining young misses, he might pay enough attention to know who to warn away from his sisters.
But he’d never paid the Earl of Redditch the slightest heed before becoming aware of Summersby’s difficulties. Well, here was his chance. He only needed to convince her to meet him under more favorable circumstances to see if he could draw her out.
That would require meeting with her. Alone.
PETER Weston would be all right, surely. Isabelle told herself as much as she left the vicarage. His mother was too indulgent. An overabundance of sweets would give any boy a bellyache.
A salt-laden breeze kicked up swirls of dust along the road through the village. She clapped a hand to her head to secure her bonnet as she made her way home. Coins jingled in her pocket, the very sound of security, or at least a full stomach tonight.
Two matrons, shopping baskets swinging from their elbows, emerged from the butcher shop. For form’s sake, Isabelle nodded to them. They returned her acknowledgment with barely perceptible inclinations of their heads, as close to a cut as they could go without committing themselves to blatant rudeness.
She was far too accustomed to their reaction to let it bother her. When she first arrived here, heavy with child, she’d been appalled and hurt. Now she merely smiled a bit more broadly and suppressed a giggle when the two increased their pace. Heaven forbid she take their acknowledgment as an excuse to speak to them. How dare she possess the gall to comment on the weather?
She strode toward her cottage, suspecting without looking that the pair had their heads together. The whitewashed walls of her dwelling rose in a neat frame about the oaken front door. Not much, but she retained enough pride from her former life to keep the place as tidy as possible. A tangle of flowers trailed along either side of the path beneath the shuttered windows, their vivid colors bright in the sunshine.
As she came in the door, Biggles held out a folded square of paper. “I think this must be yers.”
Isabelle blinked. “What’s this?” A stupid question. Biggles could barely read.
“A note, it looks like. I found it there on the floor jus’ waiting when I came in.” She pointed to a space just over the threshold.
Isabelle lowered her brows. The only person she could think of with the audacity to slip notes under her door had no business doing so. As if her set-down earlier hadn’t been enough. “We’ll see about that.”
She snatched the paper from Biggles and unfolded it.
Meet me in the garden at Shoreford House. Midnight. Come alone. I know something important about your son.
Isabelle scanned the elaborate scrawl twice in utter disbelief, but the words read just as terse and ominous the second time. She closed her fist about the note to stop her hand from shaking. Could Mr. Upperton have sent her the message? But that made no sense. Before yesterday, Mr. Upperton had known nothing of Jack’s existence. What important information could he possibly possess?
Nor could it be anyone from the village. None of her neighbors would resort to cryptic notes. But that only left someone from her past. How could anyone have found her after all these years? And what could they know?
“What is it, dear?” Biggles laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Ye’ve gone all pasty.”
“It’s nothing. Just some foolishness.”
Somehow she managed to hold her voice steady. She strode to the hearth and tossed the note into the flames, watching the paper twist and blacken to ash. She’d just told Biggles half a lie—because anything to do with Jack might be at once nothing and everything.
CHAPTER SIX
GEORGE PULLED in a final drag on the cheroot and tossed the stub into the hedge. The chit wasn’t coming. Naturally she wasn’t, and why should he expect her just because he slipped her a note? Far too much of a risk for the upright Miss Marshall to meet a rake in the gardens without a chaperone. At any rate, he’d do better worming gossip out of one of the older ladies. One way or another, he’d charm the truth out of someone. Then, when he had the blunt to pay off Summersby’s markers, he’d come armed—in more than one fashion.
He stomped toward the nearest French casement. It creaked as he pulled it open, the sound echoing through the empty ballroom. Of course. Deprived of the usual evening entertainments involving high stakes, the other guests had long sought their beds. The opportunity to invest his earlier winnings in a few more hands of vingt-et-un might be lost, but he could take advantage of the empty house in other ways.
To his left, the pianoforte loomed, a dark hulk of shadow in the night. That damned instrument that his sisters had turned into a torture device beckoned to him. Right. No one about this late. No one to mock him for undertaking such an unmanly activity as music. No one to laugh at him if he struck a false note—as surely he would. If he wanted this preoccupation to pass undetected, he couldn’t practice daily as he ought.
He seated himself on the bench and the ivory keys stretched before him, a row of jagged teeth with spaces at regular intervals. He set his forefinger on middle C, drew in a breath and pressed. The note rang clearly through the darkness.
He positioned his left hand, and a tingle passed through him, half anticipation, half dread. Before his brain had a chance to engage, his fingers moved, rippling over the keys without direction. They knew what his conscious mind did not, but his ear told him every note was true.
Naught but a scale, simple enough, but the moment he closed his eyes, the music took over. His fingers found the path until a melody surrounded him, each note pure, each one correct, each one forbidden.
A miracle that his muscles retained the memory, the ability to execute the intricacies of an arpeggio. His fingers ought to trip clumsily over the keys like a toddler first learning to run. He practiced so seldom, they ought to have lost their stretch, yet he easily spanned over an octave. They recalled the necessity of lightness on the high notes to make them tinkle like silver bells. They remembered the emphasis in the lower register to accentuate the beat.
He didn’t need to think this. He only needed to feel, to fill himself up with the music until the George Upperton that society knew—the rake, the gambler, the wit—ceased to exist. That man was a shell, a container, a bushel to hide this essential core of himself that not even his closest friends were ever allowed to observe, that even he denied.
At last, his fingers drummed out the coda, and the final notes drifted off into the darkened room. No sound broke the silence now, except for his own ragged breathing, as if he’d just run a mile. A drop of sweat trickled along his cheek and hit the ivory with a plop.
He inhaled, seeking to calm his racing pulse, and that was when he heard it—the steady rush of another person’s breath, out of sync with the rise and fall of his chest. He looked back toward the casement. Open, but had he left it ajar? He no longer remembered.
Could Miss Marshall have decided to defy propriety and meet him?
“Who’s there?” His question echoed, low and rough through the stillness.
“Pardon me. I …”
He raised his head toward the whisper, the voice somehow familiar to his ear when it shouldn’t be. Isabelle stood in the far corner, her moon-kissed white-blond hair a mere glimmer in the deeper shadows. From across the room, he sensed her tension, her uncertainty. He remained on the bench, the massive bulk of the piano a shield between them. But whom was it protecting? Him as much as her, for he’d never intended to reveal so much of himself—not to her, not to anyone.
“What are you doing here?” He kept his question deliberately casual. No need to appear upset, even if she might as well have walked in on him naked. Any other woman, and he would have preferred things that way. Far more fun to be had. Far more pleasure. Much better than enduring the scrutiny of her silence.
“I …”
An assignation, but not with him. What else could it be? The thought struck him like a punch to the gut.
“Has Jack fallen ill?” There. He’d thrown her a line, an excuse, something she could
grasp. And bolt.
“No, he’s long in bed. I left him with Biggles.”
“Biggles?”
“I share her house. He’s safe enough.”
He studied her face for a sign. In the low light, she appeared otherworldly, like a fairy, with her wisps of silvery curls backlit by moon glow. What he could see of her expression was guarded, as if she was afraid to admit the reason for her presence.
He rubbed his palms against his thighs, the fine wool of his trousers hot to his skin, and waited. Waited for her to declare herself. She couldn’t stand forever on the threshold of her world and his.
She moved, a tentative step, presaged by the flutter of her gown. Her hand stretched out and lit upon the polished wood of the pianoforte. “I had no idea you played.”
“I don’t.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. “Of course you do. I’ve never heard such … such virtuosity.”
“I don’t play,” he insisted, the words harsh, hard. Why was he doing this? Why distance her only because she’d chanced on a side of him he revealed to no one?
“No, you’re right. ‘Play’ is too frivolous a term for what I just heard. That was not playing.”
“It certainly wasn’t work,” he snapped. He shifted his weight, suddenly aware of the wood beneath his seat. Hard, unforgiving, unyielding. How much could she see of him in this low light? Too much. And she didn’t need her eyes, not when she’d just experienced—
“Beauty, that’s what it was. Ideal beauty.”
He released his breath in a loud splutter, the sound just as discordant as any note his sisters produced. “Indeed. How manly of me to produce such heights of aesthetics. Why have you come here?”
She withdrew her hand. “I heard you playing, and I couldn’t help myself.”
“You heard me from your house in the village?”
“No.” The whispered admission barely grazed his ear. “The garden.”
“Did someone ask you to meet him?” He pushed himself to his feet. Despite the low light, he picked up on the rigidity of her shoulders. “What did you imagine would occur out there? Come,” he added when she didn’t reply. “You’ve brought a child into the world. You cannot pretend ignorance of what passes between men and women.”
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