When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,92
will doubtless consult Matilda before he gives you your marching orders. Matters have progressed to a serious state.”
Quinn yanked off one boot, then the other. “Treason is always serious.”
“I meant matters of the heart. Tell him the whole of it, Duncan.”
Duncan did not tell Quinn the whole of it—a couple was entitled to some privacy—but he sketched in the major points: a message possibly in code, invasion of France, a suitor who was probably himself scheming to thwart Wakefield’s espionage, question upon question, and the likelihood of leaving Britain in the near future.
“I don’t like that part,” Quinn said. “Jane will never stand for it.”
“I am not courting Jane,” Duncan said, though the idea of fleeing, while logical and necessary, also brought with it significant heartache. All Matilda wanted was a place to call home, a patch of ground on which to live out her days. All Duncan wanted, much to his own surprise, was to give that to her.
“Matilda promised me that you and Jane would be taken into our confidence before we made any final decisions.”
“Where is Matilda?” Stephen asked again. “I’ve left her a good half dozen tea cakes, but they’ll grow stale before she deigns to join us.”
Duncan for once could not muster any interest in the sweets. “Perhaps Jane has waylaid her.”
“Jane will soon be napping,” Quinn said, propping his feet on a hassock, “if she knows what’s good for her.”
“I don’t know where Matilda might be, but I’ll ask Mrs. Newbury—”
The door swung open to reveal Manners in the company of a red-cheeked, winded Jinks.
“The boy is demanding to speak with you, sir,” Manners began. “Told him it weren’t his place, but he’s powerful agitated, and—”
“Miss Matilda left,” Jinks cried. “She said she wouldn’t, and then she did, and them two rotters I seen at the inn afore are swilling gin like their nag just won the Derby. She said she wouldn’t leave us, said she wouldn’t leave Brightwell, but she was in that coach, and now she’s gone.”
Chapter Sixteen
“This is the marquess’s own team,” the coachman said. “He values his horseflesh, and it is not worth my job to drive one of them from merely off to seriously lame. I doubt his lordship would lend you a conveyance again if he learned I’d abused his cattle at your direction, sir.”
Angus Nairn was that plague of senior officers the world over, the conscientious subordinate. Not loyal to his master, but loyal to duty, inasmuch as duty involved thwarting the ambitions of his betters by citing rules, conventions, and other excuses.
In the military, such punctilious fellows seldom rose above a lieutenancy.
Matilda remained on the forward-facing seat beside Parker and said nothing. Gone was the gracious, worldly, bluestocking Parker had met at a Paris soiree. Parker’s intended had grown skinny and silent, spending most of the past hour staring out the window and ignoring him.
Time to get some answers from the lady. “We will stop for a change of horses and for sustenance,” Parker said. “Go easy on the team until we reach a decent inn.”
Though the blighted man had been going easy on the team, which dithering he claimed was necessitated by the muddy roads.
“Right, sir. The Speckled Hen isn’t but three miles farther on. We should be there in less than an hour.”
Because the road in winter was banked with snow, and traffic heading west was busy, Parker’s coach was frequently forced to pull off to wait for vehicles passing in the opposite direction. Matilda seemed indifferent to the delays, to the chill in the coach, to everything. Military wives were supposed to be uncomplaining, but the best of them were cheerfully uncomplaining.
“I will need a moment’s privacy,” Matilda said, when at last the coach swayed into the Speckled Hen’s innyard.
“I’ll get you a room where you may refresh yourself while the food is being prepared.” And he’d commandeer the private dining room if he had to declare martial law to do it.
Matilda nodded, as if she were too busy watching a drama visible only to her to bother replying. Perhaps her recent experiences had set off a touch of melancholia or hysteria. Women were delicate, and fleeing in the middle of the night to wander the countryside alone was not the behavior of a lady in possession of all of her wits.
The inn, fortunately, boasted only an old couple in the common. The place was clean, cozy, and worthy of a titled family’s custom. Parker ordered a meal for two in the private