A Delicate Deception

by Cat Sebastian

  “And it would seem a very competent one,” Sydney added.

  “Certainly an experienced one,” Georgiana said. “From when I was sixteen, until last year when Amelia carried me away.” She smiled fondly at Amelia.

  Sydney added that to the paltry store of actual facts he had collected about Amelia Allenby: she was the illegitimate daughter of a marquess and a woman with social aspirations, she seemed to support herself by writing, she had left London under a cloud, she tried to be a good friend. It seemed grossly unfair that he only got to know her after things were impossible between them. He knew he only had himself to blame for that.

  “The duke is on the terrace,” Sydney said. “Or, it’s more or less a terrace, minus a few flagstones.” He had cleared most of the rubble away with his own hands so Lex could safely walk outside.

  “Excellent,” Georgiana said brightly. She strode off ahead, leaving Sydney alone with Amelia.

  Sydney couldn’t have said whether he tilted his arm to Amelia, or whether she reached for him, or whether they moved at the same time, their bodies remembering a friendship that their minds had discarded. But either way, Amelia’s hand rested lightly on his forearm as they continued to walk.

  They reached the back of the house, where there had once been a maze or labyrinth. It was all overgrown and riddled with weeds, and would likely need to be torn out. Only after wondering whether the gardener Lex had hired could manage the task on his own, or whether he would need to hire helpers, did Sydney realize he was starting to envision a future at Pelham Hall. He immediately pushed the thought aside.

  “If you look,” he said, gesturing around the corner of a dilapidated trellis, “you can see where your friend and the duke are on the terrace. You had mentioned once that you wished to explore the ruins here. If you still wish to do so, I can assure you that they’re all very safe, as far as ruins go. Leontine has clambered across the lot of them,” he said dryly. “Otherwise, you’re free to treat the gardens or the house as your own. I know it’s not your ordinary time for a walk, but I thought that would be more agreeable for you than sitting.”

  They had reoriented themselves so instead of standing side by side, they faced one another. He was suddenly very conscious of how close they stood, and how her hand still rested on his forearm. Her skirts touched his trousers and he could feel the heat from her hand on his arm. He tried very hard not to think of the last time they had been this close, the last time he had felt the warmth of her body and the heat of the sun. But the harder he tried, the more insistently his mind provided flashes of memory: her parted lips, her roving hands, the sounds she made. He ought to leave her to her walk; that was the only answer. Surely one of them ought to step away.

  Neither of them were stepping away.

  Before he could quite work out how to extricate himself—or, more pressingly, why he wasn’t extricating himself—the blasted dog flopped onto the ground between them.

  “What on earth,” Amelia asked.

  He sighed. “That’s Francine. All she does is find new and ingenious places to lounge. Devil take you, dog. Beg your pardon, Amelia. She ought to be with Leontine but she seems not to understand the first thing about responsibility. Be off with you, you shiftless reprobate.”

  They stood perfectly still, utterly silent, as if they were both uncomfortably conscious of the fact that he had in that moment spoken to her as if she were his friend, as if she were the same person who had walked with him, the same person who had kissed him and touched him and laughed with him. They stared at one another, eyes wide.

  Amelia cleared her throat and looked away. “I believe she’s snoring,” she said in some amazement. “She spent yesterday evening asleep in my lap. Imagine being able to sleep so easily.”

  “That’s all she does. It’s her one talent. She finds the least likely spot in the room and lapses into unconsciousness. I’ve almost tripped over the beast a dozen times now. I’d like to know how you trained Nan to attack interlopers, because I’ve had no luck at all.”

  Amelia pulled her skirt aside and regarded the dog, who was in fact asleep on her boots. They were a perfectly ordinary pair of boots, the same ones she wore when rambling through the hills. And above them her calves were covered in a perfectly ordinary pair of white stockings. He could only see about an inch of stocking, but he remembered how they had felt under his fingertips as he slid his hand up her leg. After everything they had done together, surely he should not be completely incapacitated by an inch of stocking. He dragged his gaze up to her face, and saw she was regarding him curiously.

  “She’s exactly the color of the dirt,” she said, evidently striving for a normal tone. “What a cunning disguise. Well, I suppose I’m here for the duration. That’s the law. The custom of my people, rather. If an animal sleeps on you, you can’t move.”

  With a pang, he realized she was making a joke, the sort of idle silliness he had once found so baffling but endearing. Vows of chastity, and now dog laws. She was peering carefully at his face, as if waiting for his verdict on her jest. So he tried to smile, to show her that he liked it, but what he achieved must have been more of a baring of teeth, because she nearly flinched. Damn it. He was bollixing this up. There was only one thing to do.

  He dropped to his knees, shoved her skirt to the side, and lifted the dog off her boots. “Never say I won’t rescue a fair maiden,” he said, his voice perilously low. “That, Amelia Allenby, is the custom of my people.” There. He had shown her that he was still capable of entering into her silliness, and also, judging by the direction of her gaze, that he had arm muscles she found attractive. He felt absurdly satisfied by the dazed intensity with which she regarded him.

  Hefting the dog under one arm, he made a gesture as if to tip his hat, had he been wearing one, and left her in the middle of the garden.

  Amelia almost wanted to call him back, ask him to join her on her explorations, ask him if they could put bygones behind them and go back to when they had made easy conversation. They had been friends, at least, and that had to count for something. A braver woman might have called him back, but Amelia didn’t have any reserves of courage left. Instead she watched him go, his shirt straining across his broad shoulders.

  Both last night and today he had tried to make her comfortable. Today he had gracefully found an excuse for her to be alone and had not even tried to burden her with his company. He had even pointed out that Georgiana would be in her sight at all times. That had been kind. The fact that Sydney did not think she was difficult or eccentric was not, she knew, a feather in his cap. It only meant he had achieved a minimum level of humanity. And yet, when so many people failed to do so, she could not help but feel grateful that he had casually observed her limitations and done his best to accommodate them.

  She walked the circumference of the knot garden, wondering how long it had been since anyone had trimmed the hedges. She climbed up onto the remnants of a bird bath and tried to see what was at the center. Usually there was a statue or a fountain. But the greenery was too overgrown for her to see anything, so she left it behind and headed towards the ruined wing of the house. There were still blackened timbers visible among the rubble.

  The child had referred to the duke as her uncle. The duke’s sister had owned Pelham Hall, Sydney’s brother had died, and now Sydney owned the house. Amelia didn’t have a copy of Debrett’s but she suspected that if she did, she would find that the Duke of Hereford’s sister had married Sydney’s brother. If the house hadn’t been properly settled on Hereford’s sister, then upon her marriage it would have passed on to her husband. Sydney, then, might have inherited the house after his brother’s death.

  He had said that he didn’t care for the manner in which he had come into possession of the house, and now she could see why: he was saddled with a half-destroyed home that held nothing but guilt and bad memories.

  There were details she couldn’t quite figure out. Why, after leaving the house empty and deteriorating for two y
ears, had Sydney chosen to come to Pelham Hall with his brother-in-law and begin restoring the place? And why had he brought the child? There were other oddities, too. Most of the servants had been hired locally. According to Janet, the duke had arrived with a valet and a groom. In Amelia’s experience, rich men traveled with a small army of retainers. And Janet had also mentioned that the servants and laborers were hired and the furnishings were purchased after the duke arrived, rather than earlier, so as to make the house ready for his stay. That was very odd indeed.

  As she let her path take her closer to the terrace, she could hear the duke laughing at something Georgiana had said.

  “I tell you,” Georgiana said in tones of high delight. “She carried a vial of cyanide—”

  “They didn’t even have cyanide in England in 1480—” the duke interrupted. Amelia nearly opened her mouth to protest that they certainly did, but Georgiana got there first.

  “She had it anyway. Vats of the stuff. And she went about putting it in everybody’s tea—”

  “They didn’t have tea either,” the duke said.

  “In their chocolate, then,” she said blithely. The duke cackled. Amelia smiled broadly. Georgiana knew enough about history—she had been a governess for ten years, for heaven’s sake—to know the Plantagenets hadn’t been drinking chocolate either. “Here, have this. I took the stem out,” Georgiana said, handing the duke a strawberry.

  “It’s probably poisoned.”

  “You say the nicest things.”

  Amelia climbed up the steps to the terrace, making her footsteps loud enough that the duke would hear.

  “There you are, Amelia,” Georgiana said. “Tell His Grace about your murder queens. He’s very much enjoying your book.”

  “The Wolf and the Huntress,” the duke said. “I’m about halfway through. I didn’t know I even liked Isabella of France.”

  “Wait,” she said, remembering that the duke could not see. “Who is reading it aloud to you, Your Grace?”

  A smile spread across the duke’s face. “Sydney, and I fully intend to make him stay up tonight until we finish it.”

  “I’m becoming quite the expert in arcane murder rituals,” Sydney said, coming up behind the duke.

  Amelia let herself smile, a polite, discreet curve of her lips. “And are you enjoying it?”

  “I am.” His voice was low. Intimate. Just for Amelia. “Especially when I can hear the author’s voice in my own head.”

  Amelia tried her best to keep her guarded smile from spreading into something real and broad and dangerous, but in the end she decided not to bother.

  When they arrived at Pelham Hall the next day, a mist had settled over the valley. It muffled the sound of the horses’ feet and carriage wheels crunching over the newly graveled drive and gave the house the appearance of having been cut off from the outside world. Inside the hall, a fire had been lit.

  “Damn those hedgehogs, my leg hurts enough without daring the universe to give me rheumatism,” the duke said from where he sat on the sofa, “so I intend to spend the afternoon indoors getting lied to about the Plantagenets. Miss Allenby, if you prefer to take your chances in the garden and risk being rained upon, we’ll have tea waiting for you by the terrace.”

  Amelia supposed this meant that either Sydney or Georgiana had explained her predicament to the duke, and she did not know whether to be grateful or annoyed. She couldn’t even imagine what words they might have used to describe her requirements, because she could hardly do so herself. “That’s very kind,” she said.

  “Nothing of the sort,” he said, scowling. “Be off with you, so I can corrupt Miss Russell in peace.” Amelia glanced at Georgiana, who made a shooing motion with her hand. “If you see Goddard, let him know that he too can feel free to get rained upon. The brat has a cold, so he’s reading to her. A tract against popery or the moral righteousness of sad-looking coats, no doubt.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Amelia asked.

  “Mother Goddard’s Moral Tales for Young People,” the duke said. “His mother wrote it. As it seems to be the only book to have survived the fire, Leontine has the entire thing by heart.”

  Amelia supposed that if Sydney had been raised by the sort of woman who wrote improving tales for children, that might explain why he was so rigid and unsmiling, why it took so much work to coax a laugh out of him. Most children weren’t so fortunate as to be raised by a parent as pragmatic as Amelia’s mother, and she felt vaguely resentful of this Mother Goddard. Amelia had read her share of stories that were meant to instill virtues in recalcitrant children, and they all seemed to work on the principle that a child who was deeply ashamed of herself would behave better—and better usually meant in a manner more convenient to adults. It might very well be a sound idea: Amelia had been both ashamed and extremely well-behaved. But she also had lost years of her life to that shame.

  She had been about to take the duke up on his offer to explore the gardens, but now she found that she wanted to take the book and throw it out the window before it could rob Leontine of her happiness.

  “If I wanted to hear these improving tales, where would I find Mr. Goddard and Leontine?” she asked.

  “Take my advice and don’t let curiosity get the better of you,” the duke advised.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s being a giant baby because he doesn’t like having to listen to stories about girls getting their monthlies,” Georgiana said. “We all know that’s why you’re cross, so save it, Your Grace. Now, let’s discuss murder and treachery.”

  Before Amelia could ask what on earth Georgiana was talking about, the duke spoke. “Top of the stairs, second door on your left,” he said, then turned his attention back to Georgiana.

  This was the first time she had ventured beyond the great hall and dining room of Pelham Hall. The rest of the house seemed much of a piece: old woodwork marred by centuries of nicks and dents but brightly polished nonetheless, mullioned windows still darkened by ivy, the lingering smell of sawdust and paint speaking to the recent spate of improvements and repairs. It had to be inescapably drafty in the winter and damp in the spring, and probably ought to be knocked down and replaced with something newer, a red-brick manor with evenly placed windows and a sensible arrangement of corridors and chimneys. But she also guessed that the duke was attached to this place and that he wasn’t going to let it go easily, even if it didn’t belong to him anymore. She wondered what Sydney planned to do about it.

  At the top of the stairs, she heard Sydney’s voice. She would have liked to linger outside the door and listen to what he was reading, but every floorboard in this house seemed to creak, so there was no hope her approach had gone unnoticed. Standing in the open doorway, she raised her hand in an awkward wave.

  Sydney sat in a hard-backed chair beside the bed, a book open in his lap. Upon seeing Amelia, he shut the book and smiled. It was such an unguarded, instinctive reaction that Amelia was momentarily robbed of speech. Despite everything, when he saw her, he smiled.

  “Don’t stop on my account,” she whispered.

  “She’s asleep,” Sydney whispered back. Sure enough, Leontine—her nose red and her bed littered with handkerchiefs—slept, curled on her side. He gestured at the empty chair beside his own. “I don’t want to leave her. I know it’s only a summer cold, but I—”

  “You don’t need to explain.” Amelia remembered her mother sitting up with her during childhood illnesses, and she also remembered the times her mother couldn’t do so because her father required her or because she had an engagement she couldn’t avoid. Amelia sat in the empty chair, and even though it was more than six inches away from Sydney’s, he felt even nearer in the silence of this little room.

  She reached over and took the book off his lap. “‘Moral Tales for Young People,’” she read aloud. That did sound dire. “I had a book very much like this one, in which children who didn’t wash their hands or kiss their mothers met with terrible fates.”

  “We had on
e like that too,” Sydney said, his voice so low it was hardly more than a rumble. “Which is why my mother wrote her own version.”

  She opened the book. The flyleaf looked typical enough—there was a woodcut of a plainly dressed child sitting primly on a bench. The table of contents listed stories with such titles as “Little Susan Eats a Scone” and “Brother William Goes to Market.”

  Amelia drew in her breath. She was glad that she and Sydney were on a decent footing now, that they weren’t enemies, even if they would never return to their previous closeness. And she knew she was going to jeopardize that by what she said, but she had to speak up. “Leontine has been through a lot in the past few months,” she said, thinking of what the child had said to Georgiana outdoors. “Perhaps this isn’t the time to read her stories about how she ought to deport herself.” Amelia thought it was never the right time for that, but she was trying to appeal to Sydney’s sense of decency.

  To her surprise, Sydney smiled again. “This isn’t a book about deportment. It’ll have any child deporting themselves right out of polite society,” he said. “And right into prison, if my mother’s any example.”

  “What?”

  “Go ahead, read it.” When she only blinked at him, he pitched his voice even lower. “Trust me.” Amelia shivered.

  “I’ve never wanted to read a book more,” said Amelia, trying to keep her tone light. “‘Will send you right out of polite society’ ought to be on the cover.” She cleared her throat. “‘Rosie’s New Shoes,’” she began, reading aloud. “‘Once there was a girl of ten years named Rosie. In her pocket she had sixpence which she was meant to use to get her shoes mended, but what she really wanted to do was buy the pretty purple vase she saw in a shop window. Rosie’s mother warned her that she would have no more money until next month, but that if she chose to spend her money on the vase that was her choice.’”

  She looked up, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve read this,” said Amelia. “It’s a terrible story. Rosie buys the vase and when she gets home she discovers it isn’t purple at all but rather filled with dirty water. And her mother won’t give her a bowl to put the dirty water in.”