When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,79
a foreigner commit treason?”
That earned him one instant’s knitted brow. “Perhaps not, but she can be arrested for conspiring against the Crown, and Papa is still a British subject.”
“With whom did you conspire when you bolted from Town, alone, in the middle of the night? With whom did you conspire when you cut off all contact with your father?”
The puzzle called to Duncan, the odd details and ragged edges of Matilda’s story. Why had the great war hero not married previously? Where was Matilda’s father now, and who was watching him? Why would such dangerous and incriminating information have been left in the keeping of an art dealer?
Though Duncan knew why. Wakefield was a seasoned spy, a reliable courier, bought and paid for. He shipped all manner of goods to and from the Continent, and could easily hide documents among his paintings, manuscripts, musical instruments, and fancy porcelain.
Entrusting documents to him was akin to hiding them in plain sight, a generally sound strategy.
“You are tired,” Duncan said. “I apologize for questioning you at such an hour, but thank you for confiding in me.”
He ought not to thank her. By sharing this tale with him, she’d all but announced an intention to flee Brightwell rather than implicate him in her difficulties. That strategy—bolting into the night—had kept her father alive and at liberty so far.
Matilda rose, the quilt wrapped about her like one of her shawls. “I’d like to share your bed tonight. To sleep with you, if that’s not asking too much. I will understand if you’d rather not have a traitor—”
Duncan lifted her into his arms, quilt and all. “You are always welcome in my bed, and I do not see that you have committed treason. I see that your own father has embroiled you in schemes not of your making, and a man purporting to be a suitor has courted your affections under false pretenses.”
He carried her into the bedroom and set her on the bed.
“Your perspective has a certain appeal,” Matilda said, scooting back onto the mattress, “but I doubt the authorities will agree. I purloined evidence of possible treason, shielded my father from the truth, and avoided being questioned by those who could get to the bottom of the situation.”
Duncan knelt to remove her house slippers. “You destroyed all of the evidence?” Smart woman.
“I burned those papers within a day of leaving Papa’s house. That feels good.”
He was shaping her feet against his palms, learning the contours of her arches, and losing all interest in talk of treason and schemes.
“If you join me in this bed, Matilda, I cannot promise that sleeping is all we’ll do.” Her garters had been tied in simple bows, which Duncan released without raising her skirts. He rested his forehead against her knee, trying to collect his wits, to check the headlong rise of desire.
Desire—the third-to-last imp to leave Pandora’s box?
Matilda brushed her hand over his hair. “I can assure you, Duncan Wentworth, we will share more than slumber tonight, but first you have to help me out of this dress.”
* * *
The roads in rural Berkshire were a horror worthy of Dante’s purgatory, though Parker had no choice but to put up with them. The coach had broken a wheel in a frozen rut, and now—a few scant miles from his quarry—Parker was in a bitterly cold saddle, John Coachman riding beside him. A quarter moon on the snow made traveling on to the nearest inn possible, which was fortunate for Parker’s frozen backside.
The grooms, wheelers, and coach had been left in the last village, which, God be praised, boasted a wheelwright among its denizens. No lodging was to be had, though, and Parker wasn’t about to go into enemy territory after dark without a subordinate.
“I should send word to his lordship of our mishap,” John Coachman said, his breath clouding in the night air. “The marquess likes to know his vehicles are well maintained.”
Oh, right. Tattle to his lordship over a minor mishap. “What is your name?” Parker asked.
“Angus Nairn, sir.”
The name had been given after a slight hesitation. Coachmen were proud of their office, second coachmen doubtless prouder still.
“You’re a Scot? You don’t have an accent.”
“The burr was beaten out of me. I’m a coachman, and I wear his lordship’s livery. That’s all anybody need know of me.”
A fine answer that subtly emphasized Parker’s lack of authority. The marquess held Nairn’s loyalty, and not simply because he provided Nairn’s livelihood. In the military, Parker had enviable rank, but