The Countess Confessions (24 page)

•   •   •

Iris had to give the devil his due. Winthrop excelled at his job, and a good part of his work included throwing people off his master’s trail. Iris knew efficiency when she saw it. How often had she covered for her mistress’s mistakes? Who in this self-serving world appreciated a servant who risked all and received precious little in return?

Winthrop had only to drop a few words here and there to a gossip-prone guest or servant, stir up an ash or two of trouble as it were, and the rest took care of itself.

By early evening the story circulating around the castle was that a poacher had been shooting at hares when the viscount’s boat had sailed past the pavilion. The elderly fellow had never meant to injure anyone, neither today nor on the morning of the hunting party. He had been living like a hermit in the ruins of the pavilion for three years, by his own estimation. He’d surrendered his gun in exchange for a fishing pole without complaint.

The gamekeeper was still deciding whether to press charges or to chase the vagrant off into the woods, where he would become the responsibility of another parish. The whole incident had so upset Mr. Batleigh that he’d taken leave of the party.

This enormous fib generated several political debates at the dinner table. What right did a vagrant have to possess a gun and live off the viscount’s hunting preserve? Did the aristocracy not have an obligation to the poor?

Was the poacher a malignant person or one incapable of caring for himself? Surely because a man could not afford a meal did not give him the right to threaten others. Arguments smoldered in the air and erupted over a person who did not exist. Some of the guests split into two self-righteous camps, each to the other refusing compromise. By the end of the first course Winthrop confided to Iris that this time he might have gone too far.

But Iris did not agree and told him as much as they passed in the hall to the kitchen. “Well done, Winthrop,” she said.

And to her utter delight, he removed his spectacles, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her without once looking around for witnesses to this deed.

A
fter a leisurely breakfast the following day, the guests returned to their rooms to change their clothing for an al fresco luncheon on the lawn. Damien insisted that Emily looked fine as she was; he was certainly not going to bother changing to impress a group of people he was unlikely to meet again. Still, he agreed to indulge Emily, and waited at the bottom of the stairs for her to enact a ritual that he told her in no uncertain terms was unnecessary. But he supposed he had a little time on his hands now. His job was almost done.

As she hurried up the stairs, her skirt in hand, she was overtaken by a housemaid so engrossed in running an errand that she bumped Emily into the railing. “Sorry, my lady,” she said without a glance in Emily’s direction.

Emily was about to gently reprimand the maid when a familiar face at the top of the stairs drew her attention.

“Oh!” she said warmly to Iris. “What perfect timing,” she whispered as the maid scurried away. “Will you arrange my hair for the luncheon?”

Iris appeared to be in anything but an accommodating mood. She glared at the careless housemaid, who had disappeared into another guest’s room without knocking. “Did you see that? Did you see the sly look on her face? Did she not give you a sense of something evil?”

Emily frowned. “Was that the maid you were talking about last night?”

“The one and only. Something’s not right about her. I told you, didn’t I? I told Winthrop. But does anyone ever listen?”

“I think I might have seen her before,” Emily said, resting against the staircase railing. “Her voice sounded familiar. Still, for the life of me I can’t remember where I would have met her.”

She stared over the balustrade at Damien, who took only one look at her face before he realized that something was wrong. “In the last room to the left,” she said as he ran up the stairs toward her. “It’s the housemaid that has behaved suspiciously.”

He turned into the hall, Emily and Iris trailing at his heels. “The housemaid?” he asked. “What housemaid?”

“The one Iris distrusts.”

Damien pivoted. “Am I chasing her down for any particular reason?”

“There’s something off about her,” Iris stated. “She’s always listening when I talk to Winthrop.”

Damien shrugged. “Winthrop never mentioned her.”

“I have an odd feeling about her, too,” Emily said.

“I have odd feelings about people all the time,” Damien admitted. “But it usually takes more than a feeling for me to chase them into an unknown person’s room. What exactly do you expect to say to her?”

“Ask her what she is doing upstairs when she has been assigned to the yellow-drawing room on the first floor,” Iris said. And at Damien’s perplexed look she added, “What if she is part of the conspiracy? Wouldn’t a female assassin be the last person you would suspect as a conspirator?”

Damien looked pointedly at his wife. “As a married man I have made it a rule to never underestimate a member of the opposite sex.”

Emily smiled at him.

“However,” he continued, “this sounds like a situation that should best be left to the butler.”

“He’s taking Winthrop’s side,” Iris said to Emily.

Emily stared down the hall, shaking her head. “It can’t be. I have seen her before, Damien. And I remember where. She was working at the Sign of the Raven when we stayed there only days ago. Can it be coincidence that she is here?”

He muttered an unintelligible curse. “There’s only one way to find out.”

•   •   •

As he entered the room, the housemaid swung around from the bed, took one look at Damien, then launched into a tearful confession.

“I admit everything. I am as guilty as the person who paid me. I knew what I was doing was wrong when I offered my services. My dad knows I became involved in their arrangement. He wanted me to do it.”

Damien rubbed his face. How had this girl deceived Winthrop? She was a woeful amateur, and her voice made his head split.

“Iris,” he said, “stand outside in case Mrs. Gladwick returns before we are finished.” He turned back to the housemaid. “How did you become involved in the conspiracy?”

The girl gave him a blank look. “What conspiracy? Oh, you mean the ‘arrangement’?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I mean the conspiracy against the Crown.”

“In this castle?” she asked, her shock palpable. “Don’t tell me I’ve been taking tips from traitors this whole time. I’ll give back every tuppence that I’ve saved for Sunday night gambling.”

“Who hired you?” Damien demanded, wondering which of the conspirators had been impressed by this feather-brained female.

“The castle steward,” she said. “I worked the harvest feast in the Christmas ball last year. I made enough to buy me mum the green cloak she’d been wanting. But she won’t be happy if she finds out about this.”

“Nor will the castle steward.”

“Mr. James? Oh, he wouldn’t mind. It only bothers him when a cuckolded husband finds out and insists on defending his honor with a duel. You should know what I’m talking about.”

Damien glanced at Emily, who half covered her face with her hand. “Why do I have the sense that she and I aren’t talking about the same thing?”

“I am employed at the Raven,” the girl said with a nervous giggle. “My father said that hard work would pay off in the end, but I don’t see that it’s made a difference. The rich still treat servants like filth.”

Emily lowered her hand. “You were the maid who approached me with the tarot card outside my husband’s carriage. You do admit that, too?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” the girl asked in confusion. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

“Then why didn’t you acknowledge me a few minutes ago when we passed on the stairs?”

“I didn’t want to get you into trouble with his lordship. I knew he was watching, and you told me that your husband would be upset if he thought you had consulted the gypsies about your love affair.”

“I said nothing of a love affair,” Emily said indignantly.

“Not in so many words,” the girl replied. “But the card you dropped said ‘passion.’ For all I knew you had another lover or had bought a spell to make your husband love you forever. Desperate women often resort to magic to hold a man’s heart.”

Damien walked to the door, shaking his head, and motioned for Emily and the maid to take their leave. Once the maid slipped into the hall, she wasted no time disappearing down the stairs.

“Well,” Iris said, her hands on her hips. “Was I right or wrong?”

Damien glanced around the room. “You were right to alert me, Iris,” he said guardedly.

“She’s a little liar,” Iris said, her face reddening.

“Yes. She is. Why don’t you go with Emily while I think this over?”

He walked from the room in silence, watching Emily and Iris disappear into his chamber. Footsteps on the staircase diverted his attention. He turned to see Winthrop below him, his face dark with concern.

“What is it?” Damien demanded.

“It’s Batleigh, my lord. I don’t know how it happened, but apparently he tried to escape, and one of the viscount’s guards shot him to death on the way to gaol. We’ll never know now if he was working alone.”

“How convenient,” Damien said.

“I thought the same thing myself,” Winthrop said. “He was never questioned or allowed a defense.”

“He almost killed me,” Damien said.

“Yes,” Winthrop said, clearly shaken. “And I suppose you think it was an accident?”

Damien arched his brow. “Don’t you?”

“No, my lord,” Winthrop said. “I do not.”

•   •   •

Damien was in a fretful mood while he and Emily dressed for the operetta that would be held in the great hall. He slouched against the door, his gloves in hand, his long black coat slung over his arm. Emily had come to the conclusion that this was how her husband dealt with a crisis: withdrawing into himself. She, on the other hand, could not stop chattering when she was upset.

Conversation, even one-sided, seemed preferable to his frequent bouts of silence in which, for all she knew, he was wondering whether another assassin would strike tonight and how he would thwart him if he did. She didn’t know how much longer she could live like this, pretending to be a bride who had no worries in the world, except that someone had tried to kill her husband today. What difference did it make if Damien had not been the intended target?

“Are you worried that there will be another assault tonight?” she finally asked him.

“How do you think it would happen?” he asked, looking her up and down.

“He could be stabbed while the audience is engrossed with the action on stage. He could conceivably be shot during the aria, if the perpetrator enters and escapes through one of the screen doors.”

“There are four guards disguised as footmen in the castle.”

Emily turned to him, no longer able to hide her distress. “Counting Winthrop and Hamm?”

He nodded. “We are still all at some risk. Winthrop will have his eye on Iris the entire night, as I will on you.”

“You cannot keep watch over me and the viscount at the same time. At least not properly. Your commitment is to him.”

He placed his arm around her waist and drew her to him. Her violet satin skirt rustled in the momentary silence. “With apologies to the Crown, my wife comes before all else.”

“Damien, you don’t mean that, and I would not expect you to put me first.”

“Pray God, then, that my loyalty is not put to the test.”

Her emotions blocked the flow of rational thought in her mind. As touched as she was by his courage, she could not contain her concern. If she had ever doubted the dark motives of his enemies, she did not now. She wondered how her husband had ever been able to trust anyone after overcoming evils that she would never understand. And she wondered if it was possible he meant what he had said, that he cared for her and placed her above his profession. She grasped his hand, wishing that she could protect him for once.

D
amien fell asleep within minutes of undressing and sprawling across the bed. He had not relaxed for a minute during the operetta. Now Emily sat beside him, studying his hard features and the sculpted perfection of his shoulders and upper torso. “I love you,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss his cheek before she slid away from him to the floor. She slipped on the nightshirt he rarely wore and carefully drew the coverlet over his intimate parts.

For a moment he stirred and she waited for him to awaken. But he slept on while she surveyed the appalling state of their bedchamber. As quietly as she could, she hung his still-damp clothes on the linen press by the fire. She draped her discarded garments over the dressing screen. She placed his boots by the armoire and retrieved his gloves from under the table; then she spotted his waistcoat, fallen from a chair in the corner. The man truly did need a valet.

She reached down. It was the vest he had worn the night he searched his trunk and removed from it the paper he had not wanted her to see. It was none of her business. For all she knew it contained a cryptic message from the Home Office.

Whatever the mysterious article was, it had mattered enough to Damien that he’d removed it from the trunk. Then again, if this was a missive that contained any Crown secrets, he surely would not be so careless as to leave it where his wife would come across it and be tempted to take a peek at the thing.

Perhaps he was testing her integrity. Perhaps it was a letter from an old lover.

Perhaps Emily would be better off not knowing what his secret was. Except that not knowing would nag at her for ever after, and she might never have this chance again.

He might be furious at her invasion of privacy . . . unless she didn’t tell him, in which case she would be the one hiding a secret, and that might be worse.

She reached inside the pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew from it a slightly wrinkled card that read—

“‘Mariage,’”
he said over her shoulder, his warm body pressed to hers.

She turned, holding the card to her heart, uncertain whether she could trust what she saw in his eyes. “You kept it,” she said in wonder. “I thought it might be a love letter.”

“Oh, it is,” he replied. “The woman who possessed it stole my affection from the moment we met.”

She swallowed.

“She was an impostor,” he said, plucking the card from her hand and dropping it on the table.

“Was she?”

“She had set a lure for another man. Fool that I was, I walked straight into it and took his place.”

“What a shame.”

“It was shock, you see. I thought I was to wed a sultry, raven-haired fortune-teller who would make my life a living hell.”

“And?” she whispered.

He shrugged his bare shoulder. “I ended up marrying an entirely different woman.”

“Is she sultry?”

His mouth curved in a smile. “Like the last burning coal in a tavern fire on a winter’s eve. She draws a man to her warmth.”

“Do you prefer her raven hair to mine?”

He lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall to her breast. “There’s fire in your hair, too. That might mean you are dangerous.”

She placed her hand around his neck and drew his head to hers. “You do know that I have no talent for fortune-telling whatsoever? Will that be a mark against me?”

His eyes kindled. “It might have been a point in your favor if I’d planned to spend the rest of my life at the horse races. As luck would have it, I’m not much of a gambler.”

“But you do take chances with your life.”

He shrugged again. “Until now it’s been mine alone to risk.”

She drew a deep breath, the heat in his eyes stealing through her. “And—”

He waited, bending his head as though every word that she uttered enthralled him. The sensuality on his face made her falter, forget what she had wanted to say. “And what?” he coaxed.

“And you still desired this other woman, despite your certainty that she would make your life a living hell?”

His fingers traced the curve of her cheek, her chin, then stroked lower through the nightshirt with unmerciful skill. “On that account,” he murmured, “I might have been mistaken. We’ll never know, will we?”

His fingers glided over her swollen breasts. Arousal pulsed through her every vein. “Why not?” she asked, her breath constricted in her throat.

“For one thing,” he answered, shifting his weight so that his hard body held her captive against the wall, “the fortune-teller disappeared the night we met, and so what influence she would have had on my life will remain a mystery. “And—”

“But you wonder—”

“For another, she loved another man.”

She shook her head in denial. “That is untrue. The cricket player was an infatuation. There is only one man who could compete with you. He is—” She paused as he lifted the nightshirt to her waist.

“He is?” he prompted, guiding the head of his shaft between her thighs. “Tell me his name, and I will demand satisfaction.”

She smiled, closing her eyes to concentrate on their coupling. Slowly he pressed through her plump folds, giving her only an inch at a time. “Sir Angus Morpeth of Aberdeen,” she whispered. “Sometimes I dream of him.”

“Doing what precisely?”

She moved her hips to allow him deeper penetration. “This.”