When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,43

guest had admired the painting, Matilda had sent her Papa such a look of admonition he’d known that to sell that landscape would have been a betrayal in her eyes.

“Sir, I hesitate to be indelicate,” Carlu said, stamping his feet, “or to suggest that all possibilities have not come under your most excellent consideration, but even an intrepid colonel, if traveling an imprudent distance from his equipage in this devil-begotten English weather, might suffer an accident.”

Carlu’s dark eyes held such hope, such a plea for the reasonable course. He was Corsican, after all, and reasonable to his very toes.

“What if Matilda loves him?” Wakefield asked. “The bloody bore managed to turn her head. Why else would she have agreed to marry a man who will drag her all over creation, though he can’t play more than middling chess?” Matilda longed for a permanent home, the one simple comfort Wakefield hadn’t been able to provide her until eighteen months ago.

She was a woman who could move easily in the best society of any European court, and yet, she was a stranger to her homeland.

“If she loves that arrogant excuse for a clodpole in scarlet,” Carlu said, “then she will grieve for him, but what manner of lady in love leaves her fiancé’s side without a word and stays away from him for months?”

A damned clever one. “No accidents, Carlu. I need the colonel to remain in obnoxious good health for the nonce.” Wakefield needed as well to find Matilda before the clodpole—the colonel—did, and Brightwell was one place Wakefield had not thought to look.

“For the nonce,” Carlu said. “That is English for until you come to your senses, perhaps? Or until the eternal suffering referred to as the English winter can arrange another fate for his colonelship?”

“Get into the house and tell Ambrose you’re in need of a toddy. You’ve had Parker followed?”

A dark-eyed gaze worthy of a Renaissance angel turned upward to sullen clouds. “What have I done, what have I ever, ever done to merit such a lack of faith from one whom I esteem so greatly? Tell me, for I will not sleep, I will not eat, I will not partake of Ambrose’s most excellent toddy, until I have learned of my transgression and set all to rights with my treasured employer. The wound in my heart that your doubt has riven exceeds the bitterness of Lucifer when cast from the glories—”

Wakefield pointed to the house. “My apologies for even hinting that I doubted your competence or your loyalty, but I am a father sorely worried for my daughter, as she is doubtless worried for me. Enjoy your toddy.”

Carlu bowed, his expression fierce. “We’ll find her before the colonel does, sir. Depend upon it.”

A lazy flake of snow drifted down and landed on the rough wool of Carlu’s scarf.

“From your lips to God’s ears.” Though the timing would be delicate, and if Wakefield bungled, he and Matilda could both end up dead or worse.

Carlu strode into the house, leaving Wakefield alone in the frigid garden. He was watched by loyal eyes at almost all times, as Matilda had been, and yet, she’d slipped away. The why of her departure was still unclear, though every explanation Wakefield came up with was bad for both him and his daughter.

The challenge was to fashion a solution that boded even worse for Colonel Parker.

* * *

Secrets were like elaborate millinery. They weighed more the longer they were borne about. Matilda’s secrets were piling up like snow on a frozen lane. She knew not only the Brightwell property, but this very chess set. Her recollection of the house had been vague—children were not allowed to roam grand premises at will—but she would never forget the pieces on the board. She’d learned the game sitting across from the old duke, whose patience had been matched only by his appreciation for strategy.

Mr. Wentworth had given her the choice of color, as a polite host would, and Matilda chose white simply to start the game as quickly as possible.

Please let his chess be interesting.

Her prayer stemmed from two sources: First, she had a passionate longing for a good game. She was as starved for the complexities of the chessboard as she’d been for shelter, sustenance, and human kindness.

Second, she wanted a stretch of time to sit in the same room with Duncan Wentworth, in intimate congress of any variety. Intimate congress with his mind would do splendidly, for a well-played chess match stripped away all fig