A Good Rake is Hard to Find (28 page)

Hmm. It was a puzzle. Because Leonora wasn't entirely sure that Lord Darleigh was innocent in the matter. A man would do a great deal to protect his own life and that of his wife. A great deal that he might otherwise find unconscionable.

Aloud, however she reassured Lady Darleigh. “I wish you wouldn't trouble yourself so,” she said. “Your husband is safe and that's all there is to it. I know my brother would say as much.”

“But that's just it,” Lady Darleigh said in an undertone. “My husband examined his own carriage later that day before we drove back to London, and he found something that made him think that perhaps despite your brother taking his place, he was still someone's target.”

“What do you mean?”

“My husband's groom found that one of his traces had been cut,” Lady Darleigh said in little more than a whisper. “They discovered it before we departed for London, thank goodness, else we'd have risked our own necks. But he did wonder if it had been done as some sort of payback. For trading places with Jonathan.”

Leonora was quiet. What a tangled mess this affair was.

“Robert never goes anywhere without examining every bit of his leather and checking the vehicle for soundness, as well,” Lady Darleigh said in a low voice. “And I rather think he blames Lord Payne for what happened. He believes Lord Payne thinks him a coward for agreeing to switch with your brother in the first place.”

Since Lord Payne's whereabouts during the race had been, like Darleigh's, unknown, it was not impossible that the two men had been together.

Working on behalf of Sir Gerard? There was no way of knowing without speaking to the men herself.

By this time they'd caught up with the others, who were nearing the crest of the hill where a pretty Grecian folly had been built by South Haven's previous owners. The fa
ç
ade looked to be stone, but upon closer inspection, it was revealed to be painted wood. The floor of the enclosure proved to be real marble, however, and as she climbed the steps and walked between the Doric columns, Leonora felt as if she were walking into an adult version of a children's playhouse.

“You looked to be deep in conversation with Lady Darleigh,” Frederick said as he stepped up beside her, taking her arm in his.

“Later,” she said in a low voice as they ventured into the small edifice and then out the other side into the pretty garden that lay between the folly and the wood. “I wonder that your cousin has kept this place up. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing a sportsman would find interesting.”

“I suspect,” Freddy said with a wry smile, “my cousin feels that a gentleman of property is required to have a folly on his estate. He once said as much when we were boys, playing in the folly at my father's country estate. Gerard has some very stringent ideas of what it takes to be a gentleman, and most of them have little to do with conduct and everything to do with possessions.”

“Like the shelves of books in his library that remain uncut and never read,” Leonora said with a moue of distaste. “It goes against my own code to let books go untouched. Especially when they were obviously chosen for the color of binding rather than the content within them.”

“Exactly,” Freddy said, taking her elbow as she took a seat on a stone bench. “It is about appearances. And perhaps on some level proving a point to those he sees as looking down on him.”

“He's certainly not destitute,” Leonora said. “He is the nephew of a duke and appears to have as much money as he could wish—no matter how he might have acquired it.”

“It might interest you to know that this folly looks a great deal like the one at Lisle House.” Freddy dropped down beside her, picking up a blade of grass and splitting it in two.

But Leonora was not distracted by the grass.

“How is it possible that his folly is so like your father's?” she demanded.

“An unusual coincidence?” He shrugged. “I was rather less polite when I saw it from the road yesterday.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked, remembering he'd seemed fine when they arrived at South Haven's entrance.

“I didn't really want to talk about it,” he said. “Gerard has been jealous of my father from the time he and his mother first came to live in Lisle House. I think he was bitter because my father was a duke, but his father wasn't.”

Leonora's eyes widened. It hadn't occurred to her that Sir Gerard and Lady Melisande were trying to compete with anyone in particular. “Just like this one?” she asked, looking back at the folly.

“This is perhaps grander,” he said ruefully. “My grandfather built the one at Lisle House. My father has always hated it, though as children we had great fun there. I suppose Gerard recalls only that the Duke of Lisle possessed a folly so he decided that he should have one, too.”

“Curious,” she said, rising to look closer at a statue of a stone cherub. “His mother is your father's sister, then?”

Freddy nodded. “I suppose he's felt the sting of being a mere baronet when he himself is the grandson of a duke. It's not something I've ever refined upon. I certainly don't envy my eldest brother his position as the heir. I'd find my life constricted in any number of ways that I don't now need to worry about.”

“Like being forced to marry a wealthy titled lady?” she asked, suddenly realizing that if he were the eldest he'd never have given her a second glance. Or if he had, they'd be discussing an arrangement far less respectable than the one they had.

“Like that,” he said, kissing her head. “But mostly being at the beck and call of any number of poor relations or petitioners who see you as the means to an end. My father has spent most of his adult life responding to various queries from aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, tenants, villagers, and the like. I'm a selfish fellow. I like being able to come and go as I please, without having to see to the needs of a dozen other people before my own.”

His meaning was clear.

He didn't wish to be tied down.

She almost laughed it was so ludicrous. Had she really been protecting
him
from a childless marriage? From the way he spoke now, he disliked the idea of anyone under his protection.

She might have been relieved at his obvious reluctance for children, if only she didn't desperately want them. Yesterday when things had been going so well between them, she'd even allowed herself to imagine that they could find some poor child without parents to adopt as their own.

But clearly that was just a fantasy.

She disentangled herself from him suddenly and walked briskly toward the little pond at the center of the folly's garden. Busying herself with removing a tangle of vines from the plaque there, she heard him approach without turning to greet him.

“I didn't mean you, Leonora,” he said quietly from behind her. “I was talking about the myriad of people who place demands on the ducal estate. I would rather not feel that kind of responsibility. That's all I meant.”

But Leonora wasn't listening.

She'd managed to remove most of the vines from the plaque.

The pond was dedicated to the memory of a child, whose birth and death dates were only fifty or so years in the past. And possessed of a depressingly small number of years between them.

The child had died long ago, but all Leonora could see was her own babe. Fully formed and so achingly sweet. A little girl, who'd not even lived long enough to draw her first breath.

Her eyes stung from the effort of holding back tears.

When she didn't answer him, Freddy stepped up beside her so that he could read the little memorial. “Just a wee one,” he said softly, placing his hand over hers where it rested on the death date. “Darling, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I really was speaking of all those other people.”

But she was beyond that now. It seemed that every time she began to visualize a way out of her prison of loneliness, some reminder that she was not quite worthy appeared.

Whether it was Freddy's dislike of managing a ducal household or the memorial to a child who'd died before Leonora was even born, the message was the same.

No family for you.

“I'm not angry,” she said, regaining her composure. “I was simply bothered by this small child's memorial. Such a short life he had. It is sad. That's all.”

He made a noise that sounded skeptical, but to her relief, he didn't press her. “I imagine my cousin didn't even know this plaque was here,” he said, helping her remove the rest of the vines from the stone. “It is rather like Gerard to buy something then not pay the least bit of attention to it. It's the owning he likes, not the caring for.”

“He's not unlike most men in that,” she said wryly. She stood and brushed her hands off on her skirts, and heard Lady Melisande calling her guests to where the army of footmen and maids who'd followed discreetly behind them as they trekked to the folly had set up a table laden with a feast far too sumptuous to be called a picnic.

“Shall we?” Frederick asked, his expression seeming to ask more than that.

Her heart constricting in her chest, Leonora put her hand in his and allowed him to lead her to the table.

 

Twenty-one

After the picnic lunch, which Freddy had found a trifle extravagant even for his cousin, the partygoers trekked back to the manor house. Leonora, whom he admitted with a touch of masculine pride hadn't gotten a great deal of sleep the night before, retired for an afternoon nap, while Freddy wandered down to the library in search of one of his cousin's uncut three-volume novels.

When he stepped into the room, however, he found that Gerard was there, albeit not immersed in a book. He was in a discussion with Lord Payne, which stopped abruptly as soon as Freddy opened the door.

“Don't mind me,” he said, beginning to back out again.

But his cousin held up a hand. “One moment, Lord Frederick, if you please. I was just about to go in search of you, so this visit is fortuitous.”

Curious despite himself, Freddy stepped in and shut the door behind him, sensing that whatever it was that Gerard wished to discuss was not something that should be open to public scrutiny.

“How can I be of help?” he asked, taking the seat beside Lord Payne, who had stretched out his trunklike legs before him. “I must warn you that I cannot let you drive my team as promised because my leader strained a fetlock on the journey here.”

Gerard, who'd been watching him with what Freddy could only describe as a speculative expression, touched his forefingers together. “I do not wish to drive, cousin,” he said. “Besides I'm the leader of the foremost driving club in England, I've no doubt driven better horseflesh.”

Freddy decided it wasn't the best time to inform his cousin that he himself didn't have a spare carriage and he considered himself to be a fine specimen. But then he wasn't the leader of the Lords of Anarchy. He supposed that sort of responsibility would weigh upon one.

“Then you must tell me,” he said with a shrug. “I'll be happy to oblige if I am able.”

And if it's legal.

“You have no notion of how happy that makes me,” Gerard said with a chuckle that sounded just the slightest bit sinister. Or perhaps that was just Freddy embellishing for his own amusement. His mind did that sometimes.

“We need you to do something as a club member,” Lord Payne said with a grin that revealed he'd partaken of the spinach pie that had been served at lunch. Rather than inform the other man, Freddy let it pass, considering that he still bore the bruises from their last encounter. “Something that you will perhaps find unpleasant.”

Since Freddy had found very little about being a member of the Lords of Anarchy to be anything remotely resembling pleasant, he was not surprised to hear it. “I will simply have to hear what it is and then make my decision.”

Gerard laughed again, this time harder. “Frederick, I vow, I find your conversation to be most amusing. Indeed, I don't remember you being such a pleasant companion when we were lads.”

Perhaps that was because Gerard had spent much of their boyhood running after Freddy and his brothers, begging them to let him play with them, he thought ruefully. He wondered idly if their treatment of him as a boy had had some impact on the man he'd become. Then again, it was impossible to know that sort of thing. After all, he'd spent a fair enough time begging his brothers to let him in on their games and he'd turned out all right.

“I beg you will tell me what it is you ask,” he said, tiring of the suspense. “I am not a great fan of secrets, I must tell you.”

“Very well,” Lord Payne said, showing that bit of spinach again. “We have a task that must be done. And since you are the newest member of the club, it falls to you.”

“Ah.” Freddy sighed. So it was to be some unpleasant chore. Perhaps riding back to town to ask some unsuspecting fellow to pay his dues. Though come to think of it there had been no mention of dues. “Well, I feel sure it will be something I can do. Though I must warn you that I will not leave Miss Craven here alone. I take that part of my duties to her quite seriously and I would not like leaving her here in a house where she is unfamiliar with most of the other guests.”

“Your concern does you credit, cousin,” Sir Gerard said, doing that thing with his fingers again. “But I assure you that this task is one that will take but an afternoon. And you can do it here at South Haven.”

“Excellent,” Freddy said, relaxing a bit. He hadn't liked the idea of telling Leonora that they would have to leave before solving the mystery of her brother's death. “So, what is it, then?”

“You proved yourself to be quite accomplished when it comes to bare-knuckle fisticuffs,” Lord Payne said, grinning. Really, Freddy was going to have to tell the man about the spinach or it would turn everyone's stomach. “We would like you to use those skills on Lord Darleigh.”