one before now. I will find out and take care of it tomorrow.”
“There are going to be fireworks,” she said. She smiled fleetingly. “Here at Vauxhall, I mean.”
“We will go back to the box,” he told her. “It would be a pity to miss them.”
“Gabriel,” she said before they moved, “let us not say anything to anyone. I would like my mother to be the first to know, and then Anna and Avery.”
He rather suspected her relatives back at the box would take one look at her and find themselves making a very shrewd guess.
“My lips are sealed,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He set an arm about her waist again and drew her against his side as they made their way back along the path to the main avenue.
Fourteen
Jessica had been quite correct. Gabriel applied for permission to call the following morning—or for an audience, as she had put it last night—and the Duke of Netherby had returned a prompt, affirmative reply.
Being ushered into the ducal study a few hours later was an intimidating experience. Netherby, as he rose from the chair behind a large oak desk, was neither particularly tall nor broad. He was dressed with an elegance that bordered upon, but somehow did not cross the line into, dandyism. He wore several rings upon the well-manicured fingers of the hand he extended to shake Gabriel’s. Yet somehow he exuded power and the unspoken warning that one might be very sorry indeed if one attempted any sort of impertinence. Gabriel, who was adept at summing up men upon very little acquaintance, was at a loss with the duke.
“Thank you for granting me some of your time,” Gabriel said, clasping his hand and shaking it firmly.
“Not at all,” the duke murmured, indicating a chair for his guest before resuming his seat behind the desk.
A man’s time was precious. It ought not to be wasted upon small talk except on social occasions. This was not one.
“I have asked Lady Jessica Archer to marry me,” Gabriel began, though he was still not sure he had asked. “She said yes. We plan to marry by special license within the week. She does not wish for a large ton wedding. Neither do I.”
If Netherby was shocked, or even surprised, he certainly gave no indication. “Congratulations are in order, then,” he said. “You may have a fight on your hands with her mother over the nature of the wedding. But that is no concern of mine. Was there anything else you wished to discuss with me?”
He was a cool customer, Gabriel thought, especially in light of what Norton had had to say in the report that had arrived from Brierley this morning.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Is your secretary at work this morning?”
The ducal eyebrows rose, and for a moment Gabriel could see a faint resemblance between him and his half sister. Or perhaps it was just that they had both perfected that haughtiness of manner that froze pretension.
“Edwin Goddard?” the duke said. “I pay him to work during the mornings. I trust he is at it now and not playing truant.”
“Here at Archer House?” Gabriel asked.
A very brief smile curved the duke’s lips for a moment. “It is doubtful,” he said, “unless he can ride like the wind, which is extremely unlikely. He is a commendably efficient secretary, but in some instances he might be fondly described as plodding. He is not blending unnoticed into his surroundings, I take it?”
“Not as well as my man does,” Gabriel told him. “Norton is a gardener at the house by day and a frequenter of the local tavern by night.”
“Ah,” His Grace said. “For all his many talents, one cannot imagine Edwin wielding a scythe. Or, for that matter, blending. When I next see him, he will give me a pained look and not quite inform me that he told me so. He did tell me so. How was a stranger going to park himself for a week or more at a godforsaken inn in a godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere, he told me—actually he did not say it aloud, though his manner implied it—and discover a sudden and insatiable curiosity about its inhabitants without arousing suspicion from all and sundry, even the village idiot, if there is such a person? I advised him when I saw that look on his face to do his best. For once in his illustrious career it would seem that his best was not good enough. As a matter of purely personal interest,