She supposed there was no harm in delaying her return home for a few minutes, and she did want to confirm her suspicions about the coded message, so she accepted his offer.
• • •
UNMINDFUL OF HIS OWN APPEARANCE, ASHTON DASHED to his room on the upper floor to retrieve the note he’d secreted away. He removed a box from the back of the armoire and found the note stuffed within. If Edwina was right and the hand was decidedly feminine, what would that mean in terms of the contents? He imagined secrets could be conveyed by a woman as well as a man, but he had to admit the possibility surprised him. He pulled a cane from a floor vase by the door, then returned downstairs grateful for the addition of the wooden support. Just as he worked his way down the passageway between the library and the parlor, Constance slipped behind him.
“Ashton. Where have you been?” She ran her fingers across the back of his shirt. “I’ll need you to escort me to the Merton’s recital this evening. The girl has no musical ability, but Mrs. Merton has influence. I want you to—” He turned to face her. “Dear heavens, look at you! What happened?”
“I daresay you haven’t seen your son, as he looks similar. Matthew decided to take a dip in a fast-moving stream. I had to fish him out.”
“You allowed my son in a treacherous stream! He could have drowned! He could have died! Died!” She bristled with anger. “Can’t you even manage to keep a small child out of danger? I swear your father is right. Your talents excel at drinking and whoring and little else.”
He was about to tell Constance to go to the devil, but Edwina, eyes flashing, burst from the parlor. “How dare you accuse Ashton! It was an accident that the boy fell into the water, but due to Ashton’s heroic efforts, we were able to pull him back to land and safety. You should be thanking him. He saved your son’s life!”
“Ashton? You call him Ashton now?” Constance raked her gaze over Edwina’s soiled clothes before turning back to him. “Is this your latest? This little bicycle-riding hoyden? I’ve heard about her immodest antics from reliable sources. I thought you had higher standards.”
“You will not insult Miss Hargrove.” Anger slapped Ashton in the gut. “She was instrumental in the rescue of Matthew. She deserves your respect.” He should have left it at that, but the fact that Constance would attack undeserving Edwina stuck in his craw. His eyes narrowed. “Can’t you leave anything fresh and good untouched by your venom? You should be thanking, not insulting her.”
Constance laughed, a caustic sound. Why hadn’t he noticed that years ago? “Thank her for setting her sights on Casanova?” She focused on Edwina. “I know he’s charming, but he’s not the marrying kind. I assure you many have set their cap for him but failed to gain his pledge. Even those with better fashion sense and more money at their disposal.” She attempted a weak smile. “I suggest you find some safe young man of values and settle down before you’ve completely passed your prime.”
“Is that what you did, Constance?” Ashton sneered. “Settled with some safe young man, as it appears to me you prefer the rich old ones.” He turned his back on her and led Edwina by the elbow toward the parlor.
“No one can criticize me for seeking to better my circumstances,” Constance called after them.
Ashton didn’t reply, but his body tensed as if anticipating an ambush. While he hadn’t particularly enjoyed traveling on the road with his father’s carters and freight vans, he had enjoyed the reprieve from living in this powder keg of a household. He should count his blessings that he’d learned of Constance’s perfidious nature before asking her to be his wife. That hadn’t saved him from sharing a household with her. If not for Matthew, he’d pack his things in a rucksack and find other accommodations, but someone needed to be here to protect the boy.
Edwina’s face had paled. “I wasn’t trying to bind you with wedlock. I never considered—”
“Put her words out of your mind. I’ve learned that she flatters those that she believes have something to offer her, and lambasts those that don’t.”
Color returned to her face. “As long as you understand . . .”
“Hush now,” he said, stepping closer. “While Constance hasn’t the wherewithal to know when to thank someone, allow me. Thank you for your help with Matthew in the park and thank you for your defense of my actions.” A smile found a way to his lips. He ran his fingers down the side of her face, slipping a stray tendril behind her ear. Trust and admiration shone in her eyes. Lord, she made him feel ten feet tall and as whole and substantial as any man. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced of late. “I can’t say that I recall anyone defending me on the basis of my heroic attributes.” Her returning smile warmed him more than the sun had on their travel home. “It’s a pleasant surprise.”
A blush fanned across her cheeks in a most enticing fashion. Many women only flushed like that when in the throes of sexual pleasure. But Edwina pinked for far more mundane incidents. Would that particular color stain her neck and breasts as he brought her to the pinnacle of pleasure? Would her eyes still shine with generous admiration or glaze over in self-fulfillment? His cock stiffened at his wayward thoughts, but he didn’t care if she recognized the effect she had on him. Some women would find it a compliment. Some women would—
“The note?” she asked, pulling him from his thoughts. He took one glance at those wide, blue, innocent eyes and quickly stepped behind a nearby table before the evidence of his attraction scared her away.
Shame that he didn’t notice that the table supported an eighteenth-century Japanese incense burner in the shape of a rooster. A golden rooster at that. In retrospect, he thought a chair might have been a better choice.
• • •
EDWINA WAITED WHILE ASHTON FUMBLED TO REMOVE folded papers from his pocket. “I brought the paper used to wrap the parcel as well,” he said.
She held the letter to her nose and sniffed. She shook her head. “If it had been perfumed, it’s long since faded.”
“Perfumed?” His brows raised in surprise. “Why would a letter of state secrets be perfumed?”
“It could be a letter from a lover,” she replied. “I see coded messages between lovers all the time in the Mayfair Messenger.”
“This isn’t the Messenger,” he insisted. “And the letter was in a book addressed to my father.” He grimaced, placing his hand on the head of the golden fowl.
“You’d prefer to accuse your father of treason than of having a lover?” She tilted her head in consideration. “That makes little sense to me.”
“I don’t wish to accuse my father of treason.” His face twisted. “The implications would prove disastrous.”
“To Constance?” she asked, feeling a tug of jealousy. The woman had humiliated Ashton in front of a stranger, and yet he still showed concern for her.
“Yes, Constance, but more importantly to Matthew.” He shook his head. “The boy doesn’t deserve that burden.”
“And yourself? Your reputation would be affected as well,” Edwina said, noticing for the first time that he stood by a fowl synonymous with his past exploits.
He barked a laugh, stepping away from the table as if he could read her thoughts. “My reputation has already been tossed to the wolves.” He paced in the confined room. “As much as I would wish this note was a harmless exchange between a man and his lover, I can’t ignore that it could conceivably be something else entirely. The book came from Calcutta. That’s a substantial distance for a romantic relationship.” He shook his head. “No. It must be a letter concerning government secrets. Why else would it be in code?”
Edwina kept her skepticism to herself. Tomorrow she’d speak to Sarah about researching past newspapers for clues as to the senior Trewelyn’s past. “Have there been other notes?” she asked. “Multiple communications might assist my translation.”
“This is the first one I’ve found
.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t others,” she said. “Others that you weren’t here to intercept.” He was clearly not accepting the possibility that the notes were of a nonthreatening nature. She decided to take a different tack. “Assuming there are others, do you suppose your father would keep them in his study, or would he have left them in the gallery?”
“I would assume the study, but we should investigate both,” Ashton replied. “Just to be certain we find them all.”
“We?” Surely this was one task Ashton could handle alone.
“There are too many books and too many places to hide a packet of letters for one person to do a thorough search.” His lips tilted in that rakish smile that went right to her heart. “You’re the only one I trust to help me locate them.”
“I think that’s impossible,” she protested.
“That I trust you?” His eyebrows raised in a pleading sort of way.
“No,” she said, but then regretted the implication. “Of course, you can trust me, but I can’t help you search. Not here. Even your stepmother takes exception to my being here. To say nothing of the nature of the chamber.” An unanticipated shiver titillated the tips of her breasts.
“You know the gallery is private.” His voice dropped to a low tone that managed to make her rib cage vibrate in a most pleasant way. Did all men have that ability, or just this man? She suspected the latter. “You’ve been there before. The contents can no longer shock you, not anymore.”
The truth was the contents of that gallery were shocking at best and the images had stayed with her for days. She wouldn’t mind exploring further, but only if she were alone. It would be just too difficult to return to the gallery knowing Ashton would be watching her reaction. “I was lucky to come here and leave without being discovered the last time. I don’t think we should tempt fate again.”
She handed the original coded note back to Ashton. “I suppose a woman can trade secrets just as a man, but I do think this was written in a woman’s hand. Perhaps when you return it to your father, you’ll be able to determine where he keeps the other communications, if there are others to keep.”
She unfolded the brown wrapping paper while Ashton secured the note in his pocket. Immediately, she noted the Raja mon. “I don’t recognize any code markings, but it would be best if we could compare this to the markings of other parcels that have passed through Calcutta.” She looked up. “When will you return the coded message to your father?”
“This evening if possible. I’ve noted that ever since I’ve returned home, my father spends more and more of his evenings as well as his days at his office on the docks. Assuming he spends this evening at home, I’ll talk to him then.”
Now that she had witnessed Constance from a different perspective, she recognized Ashton’s position in the household. “He expects you to entertain his wife.”
Ashton nodded. “As Constance inferred, he believes it to be one of my more useful abilities.” His hand tapped his injured thigh.
“Then he doesn’t know you very well, does he?” she snapped. Ashton regarded her with a sort of gratitude in his eyes.
“No,” he said. “No, he doesn’t. At least, not as well as you.” He maneuvered past roosters, chairs, and a settee to stand before her. He lifted her fingers. “I wonder, Edwina, if I might write you while I’m traveling on my father’s behalf.” While his voice remained noncommittal, his eyes pleaded with her. She felt her heart soften. “You value your brothers’ letters so greatly, I hope you might consider—”
“Yes,” she said quickly, then tempered her wide smile so as not to appear overeager. “I’d enjoy hearing of your thoughts.”
What a shame Ashton’s father didn’t recognize all the fine traits that his son embodied. There was so much more to him than implied in that silly Casanova name. In fact, if his father knew his son better, he might even recognize him as an equal. Which inspired a thought. She stepped back so she could focus her thoughts. She glanced at him askance. “You know, Ashton, if you truly believe this note is one of espionage and the Guardians are part of it, there is really only one way to discover the truth.”
“I’m afraid I’ve come to a similar conclusion.” His face appeared older, more solemn than moments before. His eyes reached hers with the sad realization.
“I will have to join the Guardians.”
• Thirteen •
“YOU SAY YOU FOUND THIS WHERE?” HIS FATHER looked at him skeptically.
“In between the secret entrance and the inner door of the gallery,” Ashton replied, working hard to keep his expression blank. “It must have fallen out of the pillow book when I hid it in the gallery the night those vigilantes stormed our doorstep.”
His father’s brows lowered in confusion. “I thought I checked there.”
“It was wedged into a corner,” Ashton said, hoping he sounded convincing. He’d never been the best of liars. He’d found no need for it. But this whole coded message incident was teaching him skills he never knew he had. Now he wished he had crumpled the paper a bit to support his story. “I’m not surprised you missed it. I would have overlooked it myself except you mentioned you were missing some sort of correspondence.”
“Did you read it?” his father’s gruff voice barked.
“It looked like gibberish to me, sir. I couldn’t make any sense of it.” He raised his brows in what he hoped was an innocent expression. “Does it have a purpose?”
His father’s glare was certainly not one of appreciation or gratitude. Any hope that discovering the missing message would somehow gain him a level of respect in his father’s eyes vanished.
“No purpose I’d wish to share.” He opened the center drawer beneath his desk and deposited the paper. Ashton tried to see if this was just one of several such notes in the drawer, but his father’s action was too swift to facilitate such an observation. Once he’d closed the drawer, he hunched over his desk as if to further protect the coded message with his presence. “Constance tells me you’re taking her to some silly recital this evening. I’m not certain how you can stomach that sort of poppycock but—”
“I can’t,” Ashton interrupted.
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t stomach that poppycock. I’ve escorted Constance on these many occasions in deference to you, sir. But I don’t enjoy it and I’m having difficulty continuing to do so.”
His father leaned back in his chair with a faint glimmer of respect in his eye. “Is that so?”
“It is.” Ashton gestured to a chair in front of the desk. His father nodded, and Ashton lowered into it. “You’ve sent me out on the road on the drayage carts to observe the various districts, and quite frankly, I’d prefer to spend the evening discussing where improvements can be made with you, than standing by Constance while she chatters incessantly about some nonsense.”
“Improvements?” His brows lowered. “What sorts of improvements?”
“I’ve noticed some of the equipment needs a good overhaul to operate efficiently. We could use the railroad lines much more effectively, and I’ve heard rumblings about a new internal combustion motorcar coming out of Germany that—”
“A motorcar?” His father laughed. “A rich man’s plaything. Next you’ll be saying we should deliver freight from a hot air balloon.” He reached to a crystal decanter to pour himself a snifter of brandy.
Ashton smiled, refusing to take the bait. “Right now the motorcars may be expensive toys used to carry passengers. But this is only the beginning. Reliable motor wagons will be built in time. The sort of motor wagon that can haul freight, and we should be positioned to take advantage of it.”
“Freight without horses? I’m not sure I want to see that day.”
“Nevertheless, it’s coming whether you’ll be alive to see it or not.” His father scowled at him i
n response. “It’s much like the use of rifles in the military,” Ashton said, warming up to the analogy. “The old muzzle-loaders were deadly, especially against enemies armed with knives and stones. But when the breechloaders came into being, the victors of a skirmish became the ones with the better weapons.” Ashton formed his fingers into the suggestion of a gun. “The ones who could accurately pick off their enemies at a safe distance.”
Ashton watched his father’s reaction, hoping the change in conversation from freight to military would give him some sort of clue as to the secrets hidden behind his father’s eyes. The old man sat for a moment, considering the talk of rifles. “You’re not suggesting I arm my cart drivers, are you?”
Ashton laughed and leisurely picked up the Falcon stamp and slid his finger over the raised edges. “No sir, I am not. I had hoped to prove to you, sir, that I can be of some benefit beyond that of profligate.”
His father grunted.
“In fact”—Ashton modulated his tone to convey the serious nature of his words—“I believe I can be of even greater service.”
Now he got a reaction. His father ran his eyes over him, considering, then reached for his waiting glass of brandy. “What exactly are you proposing?”
“That you introduce me to the Guardians.”
His father nearly choked on his drink. Ashton was about to pound on his back when normal breathing returned. “The Guardians,” he rasped in a tight airy voice. “I thought I told you to forget about them.”
“When I was in Burma, I heard of a group that endeavored to bring items of cultural importance of other countries back to England: statues, pieces of temples, small artifacts, that sort of thing.” He leaned over and poured himself a glass of brandy. “After you mentioned the Guardians, I’ve been thinking how that kind of activity would prove profitable to a man invested in moving freight. Now that I’ve seen the operations of Falcon Freight, I’ve noted that parcels from all over the world pass through your fingers, in a manner of speaking.”
The Casanova Code Page 16
