“I am puzzled as to why the Crown hasn’t found her,” Stephen said. “Every village has a militia, every turnpike a platoon of tollkeepers. A handbill posted in the commons of the coaching inns, a reward, a few dedicated runners…For as long as she’s been in hiding, for as close as she is to London, somebody should have picked up her trail. The English delight in hanging traitors, no matter their rank or gender.”
Stephen was being cautious, raking gently while he plucked Duncan’s last nerve. “You will please not remind Matilda of that last fact.” Though Stephen’s observation was also bothersome: a lone young woman at large with plans in her keeping that could cause international embarrassment, put troops at risk, alter the course of history…
Why no hue and cry? Why no newspaper articles or broadsheets? Why no sketches of Matilda littering every drovers’ inn in the realm?
Duncan made another pass at the hedge, pruning a few inches at a time when he wanted to hack the plants down to the roots.
“I am puzzled by other aspects of her situation,” he said. “Parker was a deadly dull suitor with a predictable and uninspired rotation of gestures that passed for his version of courting. He’s a military man accustomed to strict schedules and protocols. Why did he arrive more than thirty minutes early to that one appointment with Matilda?”
“Because he was in love with her?” Stephen suggested. “I nearly am.”
I am, most assuredly. “When the condition troubles you in earnest, you will please keep the affliction to yourself, for the sake of your own pride and my dignity.”
The rake slipped and Stephen nearly went down. Duncan ignored the stumble as he’d ignored a thousand others.
“I’m in love with her mind,” Stephen said. “This is a novel brand of infatuation for me. I rather like it. One can be besotted and enjoy spectacular chess without risking having his brains blown out. What else bothers you about her situation?”
Duncan found a rhythm, swinging the blade with enough momentum that the scythe did the work with the least effort from him.
“Matilda said her father always had too many servants. Where were those servants when she tolerated Parker’s company on Tuesday evenings?” Duncan asked.
“Matilda and Parker were a courting couple. I’m told leaving the parties alone for short periods is part of the process. Why plant hedges if they require pruning year after year?”
The pile of trimmings was growing and would make a nice bonfire some evening.
“For privacy’s sake,” Duncan said.
“The entire garden is visible from the upper floors.”
“For damned beauty’s sake. Why did Matilda have to light the candles in the family parlor when a regular caller was expected? Lighting candles is the duty of a servant, and according to Matilda, her father’s house is awash in domestics. Leaving a widow and her suitor some privacy is one thing, avoiding regular tasks is another.”
Stephen paused in his raking. “I can’t see what lazy footmen have to do with treason.”
“Nor can I, but establishing a pattern means examining all the anomalous facts.” Duncan took a particularly vigorous swing at the hedge, sending twigs flying.
“We should be having this discussion with Matilda,” Stephen said. “She has facts in her possession she doesn’t know she has. I wish Quinn and Jane were here.”
Duncan wiped his brow with his sleeve. “I do as well, which is unsettling. One hates to impose, but in this case, the family duke has some valuable perspective to add. Quinn can think like a criminal, while I think like a philosopher.”
Stephen hobbled back to his bench using the rake as his cane. “The family duchess will have something to say. Women notice things.”
And Stephen noticed women, which was normal at his age. “Matilda suspects Parker courted her so he’d have access to the Wakefield premises.”
“Parker was spying on the spy?” Stephen sat on the bench to wrestle out of his coat, something he would not have managed while standing and trying to balance using the rake.
“Parker is a war hero. For him, it wouldn’t be spying. It would be…”—Duncan’s next swing took off a good foot of hedge—“patriotic duty.”
“He does his duty by lying to an innocent woman. Not my kind of hero.”
That rankled as well. If catching Wakefield at his espionage was the objective, why not follow Wakefield? Why not infiltrate his army of servants? Why not take Matilda aside and explain to her the situation her father had placed her in?
Too many questions, not enough answers.
“Who is Colonel Lord Atticus Parker?” Duncan asked, starting on the next section of hedge. “What do we know about him and his people? Does he have ties to the Continent? Where did he meet Matilda and who introduced them?”
“You will whack down this whole garden and be no closer to those answers. Why don’t I have any bloody wind, Duncan? I work with weights, I make myself walk, I avoid the near occasions of gluttony and inebriation—mostly—and still, I have no stamina.”
This lament was unprecedented in more than ten years of keeping close company with Stephen. He rarely acknowledged his limitations, unless it was to make a jest of them.
“The problem is your balance,” Duncan said, starting on the next hedge. “You must limit all of your activities to avoid falling. If you could put yourself in a situation where falling was not possible, then you could build up to steady exertion.”
Stephen pushed to his feet, coatless, the rake in his hand. “You mean like rowing? I can’t fall if I’m sitting in a punt.”
“Rowing, swimming, riding…you can build up your wind as long as you’re not on your feet while you do it.”
I will miss you. The thought came between one swing and the next, a bittersweet pang of sentiment that was also the lot of every teacher. Students moved on to greater challenges, to life and adulthood. Matilda would understand why having a single pupil for the past ten years had been enough for Duncan, why Stephen’s courage and tenacity meant so much to him.
“I have ever admired your ingenuity,” Duncan said, wielding his scythe. “You never give up, you never give in to despair. Your resilience is boundless, your imagination nimble. You will find a means of increasing your stamina, just as I will find a way to put Matilda’s situation to rights.”
The rake scraped quietly against the snow-crusted ground. “The only witness to her alleged treason is this Parker person. Eliminate him and you eliminate the problem.”
That solution had occurred to Duncan before he’d risen from his bed and kissed a sleeping Matilda’s shoulder. “Logical, but lamentably illegal. Parker has superiors, people counting on him to deal with Wakefield once for all.”
“Then eliminate Wakefield.”
“Another logical suggestion and delightfully simple, though Matilda’s whole aim has been to prevent her father’s downfall. By protecting him, she has created problems of her own.” This hedge was older than the last and more thickly overgrown. Duncan swung hard.
“Then eliminate Matilda Wakefield,” Stephen said. “Turn her into Mary Ellen Wentworth, and take up residence in Vienna or Georgia.”
“Run, you mean.” If the problem was that Matilda was wanted for high crimes, then leaving Britain was a possible solution. Duncan wasn’t convinced Matilda’s supposed guilt was the fundamental issue, however. More was afoot than a spy’s version of chess gone wrong.
Stephen, who would never run again, leaned on his rake. “She gained possession of treasonous correspondence. She did not report that to anybody in authority. She absconded with the evidence, she is apparently the daughter of a known spy and the widow of some wealthy German. I’d run like hell, though of course that will make her look even more guilty than she already does, and put your neck in a noose as well.”
“I’ve told her I’m willing to take that risk, but first I owe Quinn and Jane an explanation.” And then—possibly within the week—Duncan could quit England’s shores for all time. Why, when he
professed to enjoy travel above all things, did that prospect now hold no appeal whatsoever?
* * *
Matilda had awakened alone, and for the first time in ages, she’d been content to drowse beneath the covers. Duncan’s warmth and scent lingered with her, as did an odd sense of well-being. She’d made a choice—she’d chosen him—and the rest of the game would sort itself out for better or for worse.
Duncan had left a tea tray by the hearth, so Matilda was thus wrapped in his robe, enjoying a hot cup of gunpowder and a buttered currant bun when Danvers came in carrying a bucket of coal.
“Gracious me, I do beg your pardon, Miss Matilda.” Danvers set the bucket down. “Might as well build up the fire whilst I’m here, unless you’d rather I didn’t.” Danvers wasn’t blushing. The maid was, in fact, smiling.
So was Matilda. “Please do build up the fire. Would you happen to know where Mr. Wentworth is?”
Danvers set aside the hearth screen. “In the garden, along with Lord Stephen. They’re battling the hedges, which is thankless work for a gardener. Less to do in the spring if they tend to it now, I suppose. We’re all a-twitter to soon be entertaining the duke and duchess here at Brightwell. Cook is poring over her recipes, and Mrs. Newbury and Mr. Manners have us cleaning up a storm.”
“Duchesses are people, Danvers, the same as anybody else. Give the woman clean sheets and hot tea, she’ll probably be easy enough to get along with.” In Matilda’s experience, even princesses and queens valued those amenities.
“Yesterday we scrubbed the whole nursery. We haven’t had children on the premises since the old duke entertained, years ago. Had house parties, shooting parties, card parties…Brightwell were grand once.” She swatted a rag along the mantel, then ran her cloth around the base of the brass candlesticks.
“Will you decorate for Yuletide?”
Danvers paused in her dusting. “We haven’t, not usually, but with company coming, we really ought to. I’ll say something to Mrs. Newbury. She might be waiting for Mr. Wentworth to give his permission. Enjoy your tea, Miss Matilda.” Danvers hurried out, leaving the bucket behind.
Matilda considered calling the maid back and warning her to keep Mr. Wentworth’s private business to herself, but the admonition would be pointless. Servants had few enough joys in life, and gossiping about their employers figured near the top of the list.
They would gossip among themselves, but apparently not with others outside the household.
Matilda dressed, some of her pleasure in the day ebbing. By Christmas, she and Duncan might be on a ship for America, where the Crown had no authority. Perhaps they’d establish a home in Stockholm, though pitch-dark winters and relentless summer daylight did not appeal to her.
Very likely, they’d move frequently, uproot their children and any servants, and change their names from location to location.
While Papa lived out his dotage in Mayfair, surrounded by servants and beautiful art. That thought should please Matilda. Instead, it struck her as grossly unfair.
Unjust, even. She made her way to the study, intent on immersing herself in Duncan’s beautiful prose. He did not deserve a life of obscurity in foreign climes, but then, neither did Matilda. She’d made an error in judgment, fled when she should have remained near enough to consider the chessboard at greater length.
“Water over the dam,” she muttered, taking up her edited version of the essay on Prague.
Sometime later—she lost track of the hours when she read Duncan’s travelogues—Jinks interrupted with fresh oil for the lamps. He had to stand on a chair to trim the wicks of the candles on the mantel, though he was a nimble little fellow.
“Will you get outside to enjoy the sunshine?” Matilda asked.
“’Deed I will, Miss Matilda. I fetch the post, you see. I take Mr. Wentworth’s letters to the inn, and I bring back any mail for Brightwell. I mustn’t drop anything in the snow, and I mustn’t tarry at the inn to gossip. Mr. Wentworth says fetching the post is a very important job. Sometimes, we get letters from our duke—Birdsong Lane, Mayfair, London—and those are franked because he’s a nob.”
The day was as pretty as a winter day could be. Brilliantly sunny, no wind, the sky as bright blue as Duncan Wentworth’s eyes.
I am hopelessly in love. “I have a packet to mail myself, Jinks. Can you wait a bit for me to join you?”
Jinks clambered off his chair. “You want to go into the village with me?”
Matilda could not entrust this correspondence to anyone else. “We’ll go straight to the posting inn and come straight back. I’ve been sitting long enough.”
The boy wrinkled his nose. “Should we tell Mr. Wentworth that you’re leaving the property?”
Matilda had left her father’s household on the spur of the moment, though even hindsight supported that decision. She could not afford to be reckless merely because the day was sunny and her heart was lighter.
“I’ll wait for you on the path in the woods and you can take my package into the inn with the other letters. I won’t leave Brightwell, but I’ll keep you company on the way to the inn.”
Still, his gaze was dubious. “You aren’t bringing a satchel or bundle with you? Mr. Wentworth won’t like it if you run off.”
What staunch loyalty for such a small boy. “I will bring nothing except my letter. If I wanted to run off, would I take you with me as far as the village, then leave you to tattle on me? Would I leave from the woods, where my footprints in the snow would reveal exactly which direction I fled?”
Jinks’s brow furrowed. “You’d pike off after dark, nobody the wiser. That’s what Manners says. Danvers says won’t nobody be piking anywhere, and Mrs. Newbury says idle talk never beat a carpet.”
“Give me ten minutes.” Matilda rummaged in the desk drawer for clean paper on which to jot a note.
Jinks pelted out the door, then banged it closed behind him. The entire house was livelier this morning in anticipation of the ducal visit, though Matilda wasn’t looking forward to meeting Duncan’s cousins.
She finished her note and sealed it, then met Jinks in the scullery, where he slung an oilskin pouch over his shoulder.
“In case I slip in the mud. Anybody can slip. Lord Stephen said so.”
“We’ll be careful.” Matilda pulled her hood up around her face. “There and back before anybody knows we’re gone.”
Chapter Fifteen
The gardens looked less unkempt, and a great pile of brush and bracken had accumulated in the lowest parterre. Duncan’s back ached, his arms burned, and his thighs were in a righteous fury, but the work was satisfying.
“Are we about damned done for the day?” Stephen settled on the edge of a large urn sporting the snow-encrusted remains of a dead chrysanthemum.
“Done for the morning. I will pay for this exertion, though I did not want Jane making one of her infernal housekeeping lists. Overgrown gardens are fine in fairy tales. In real life, they are evidence of sloth and eccentricity.”
Stephen’s cheeks bore a slight flush, and he, too, had shed his coat. “You’ve been at Brightwell a few weeks, and you’re already an expert on country life. Such a quick study. Perhaps an overgrown garden is evidence of ambitions beyond one’s abilities. A fellow plants a hedge, thinking to provide shade for a few rabbits, some geometry for his parterres. The English climate comes along and turns one hedge into an annual Herculean labor.”
Duncan set down the scythe in a dry fountain. “Plans go awry. True enough.” He fished a whetstone from the pocket of the coat he’d draped over the bench.
“Shame to have to leave all this,” Stephen said. “Brightwell has possibilities.”
“You are leaving us?”
“I’ll wander on, or I’ll look after the place for you if you like. You and Matilda will have to travel soon. Winter makes a journey harder, which is good when your pursuers don’t know where to find you, but bad when you’re trying not to be found.”
Duncan drew the blade
along the stone. “I ask myself: Why should Matilda spend the rest of her life in hiding when her great sin was that she simply came upon an upsetting situation and did not want to have to explain it to the authorities? Wakefield created this mess, perhaps he can resolve it.”
“And what of the fiancé? Matilda is convinced he’s onto Wakefield’s game, and Parker is military. His interest in a career spy is unlikely to be casual.”
Duncan flipped the scythe, applying the second side of the blade to the stone. “The military hero stands to burnish his halo, however quietly. If he captures a spy, verifies the fate of stolen plans, and exposes a treasonous plot, his promotion to general officer is likely assured.”
Stephen pushed away from the urn and retrieved his coat from the shoulders of a statue of the Venus de’ Medici.
“I hadn’t considered that Parker would be tracking Matilda down for his own glory. Not a very suitor-ly thing to do.”
“You have bracken in your hair.”
“So do you.”
A moment of swatting at hair ensued. Between one brush of his fingers through his locks and the next, Duncan’s mind seized on a thought.
“If Matilda marries Parker, he cannot testify against her.”
Stephen finished dusting twigs from his hair and gave Venus’s breast a pat. “What are you going on about now?”
“Spousal privilege. Just as a priest cannot be compelled to give testimony regarding what he’s heard in the confessional, spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other.” This legal detail was profoundly unsettling, also a well-established aspect of English law.
“Matilda wasn’t Parker’s wife when she stole the plans,” Stephen said. “Does that matter?”
“If she’s his wife when she’s put on trial, no.” Was the war hero clever and selfless enough to offer Matilda this protection? “And she didn’t steal anything. Her father was in possession of those plans, and he hasn’t accused her of theft.”
“Cases such as these require brandy,” Stephen said. “And victuals. I’m starving.”
When a Duchess Says I Do Page 22
