When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,76

trust.

Did he still have it?

Yes, and he always would. “I have committed treason—I’m nearly certain of that—and I have been terribly, unforgivably stupid. My father’s life hangs in the balance, and I have no good options.”

Duncan went into the bedroom and came back with a quilt. He draped that around Matilda’s shoulders and resumed his seat.

“Tell me what happened and leave nothing out. Do not flatter anybody, do not protect anybody, most especially, do not protect me. The truth and the truth alone will serve, or you will depart from my household and never return.”

* * *

Duncan abetted a traitor, and by demanding the whole story from Matilda, he became an accessory to her crime after the fact—unless he turned her over to the authorities.

That was the sensible choice, and Duncan had learned to his sorrow the price of ignoring common sense. Apparently, the lesson needed some review, because for no inducement, not even to preserve his life, would he betray Matilda’s trust.

“Papa is an art dealer,” Matilda said, gathering the quilt close. “A gentleman art dealer. He’s also a sometime spy, from what I can gather. When I traveled with him, that possibility was only a passing notion, but part of the reason I married was to make certain that my path and Papa’s diverged, lest he be caught in the pay of the wrong party.”

“Your father was a free lance,” Duncan said, as the fire crackled softly and the winter wind soughed beyond the window. “A mercenary.”

“I don’t know what he was. On the Continent, the line between diplomacy, trade, and espionage blurs. Those who dabble in statecraft like it that way, while I could not abide the court intrigues and the conversations that abruptly changed topic when I joined them. Papa was always going out late at night or whispering with the servants in the pantries. I ignored the lot of it.”

This recitation apparently annoyed Matilda, which was fortunate, for it made Duncan furious. “You were part of his camouflage, to use the French word. His deception. He did trade in art, he was a doting papa showing his daughter the Continental sights. He also traded in secrets.”

She held her hands out toward the fire. “I came to that conclusion only recently. I missed the evidence: Papa never worried about money. He never mentioned needing to save for his old age, never talked about setting aside a sum for my settlements. I’m well fixed, as it happens, though I can’t touch my widow’s portion at present.”

“Your father had no financial worries, but he’d sold his soul.” Duncan had met such men, some of them wearing a priest’s collar, and he could not respect them.

“If Papa sold his soul, I know not to whom. We always had more servants than any two people required, and they were a canny and polyglot collection. Many of them came with us to London, even though Papa is done with his travels.”

Matilda shifted, so she sat in profile, expression pensive. She was pretty—many women were—but what distracted Duncan was the marvel of her mind. She was laying out a story for him with the precision of a chess match recited from memory. She had studied this board, at length, and she had avoided putting her father in check.

Barely.

“We moved every few months,” she said, “and we never stayed in the same lodgings twice. Now I know that fugitives take that precaution. Papa held dinner parties with people I could never recall meeting, and many of his art clients were amazingly uninformed regarding the pieces he had sold them. My late husband noticed that, and he was a man much preoccupied with his mechanical inventions. In hindsight, I was blind.”

As Duncan had been blind when he’d taken his curate’s post. “You were kept in the dark. Hindsight was doubtless the second-to-last imp to escape from Pandora’s box. It yet flies about the world, creating all manner of havoc.”

Matilda sent him a fleeting smile, Mona Lisa–sweet, a little wry. “I love you. I wish I didn’t. I wish you’d chased me from your home wood on the end of a pitchfork. But you didn’t.”

Duncan wanted to leap from the chair and bellow her admission to the rafters—Matilda loved him—instead, he twitched the quilt up around her shoulders. Those three words were a parting gift, unless he could convince her to stay and fight for their future.

“Thank you for that declaration,” he said. “The sentiment is entirely reciprocated, but at present, I’m attempting to focus