Mistress of Sins (Dredthorne Hall #3) - Hazel Hunter Page 0,60

they have achieved some small victory over us. We will arrange to have the merchant, Guillame Girard, die in a tragic carriage accident while traveling in Provence. Ruban will go to the gallows, and her family persuaded to talk, unless they wish to suffer the same. I expect they will hang rather than cooperate.”

It took William a moment for him to gather enough breath to speak. “What am I to do, then?”

“Why, you will now retire from our service, William, and return to the life you should have had these seven years—with our gratitude, sir.” The spymaster touched his shoulder. “I suggest you take some time for yourself. The transition will be made easier that way. Perhaps a long holiday in the country will help.”

Could it be this simple? “Sir, what am I permitted to tell my family?”

“You may tell everything to those you trust to keep it to themselves. Your mother, certainly. No harm can come from it now.” The older man grinned. “After all, the Raven is dead. Long live Baron Greystone.”

The ancient butler who opened the door to the London house looked down his nose at Greystone. Since he was a head shorter, that required a remarkable arrangement of his neck and head. But John Morris had a lifetime of service to the Gerards, as well as the baron’s chilly example, which had helped perfect his disdainful posturing.

“Her ladyship is not receiving,” the old man told him in a tight, disapproving tone. He didn’t have to add ‘you, ever’ to the end of that statement.

“Get out of my way, Morris, or I will move you.” Greystone looked down at the cane the butler had butted against his belly. He felt a flicker of admiration for the old man, who he could probably snap in half. “Permit me inside, and it will be the last time I darken these premises. I swear it.”

Morris’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t move out of the way.

“I have spent seven years dealing with the mess my father made of my life.” He was coming perilously close to shouting, but he didn’t care. “I was never allowed to tell my mother a word about it. Father forbid that, and he never told her. Today I have been released from my duties to the crown, and from my promises to him. By God, she will know the truth now, if I must stand out in the street and shout it at her window.”

“It is all right, Morris,” a tired voice said from the hall behind him.

As soon as the butler lowered his cane and stepped inside Greystone crossed the threshold, and saw his mother standing outside her morning room. She wore lavender for half-mourning, her gown a simple but elegant style. Although her shoulders had grown slightly stooped, and her hair had gone completely silver, she had changed little over the last year. Yet in her eyes was the same melancholy he had seen at his father’s funeral.

Suddenly Greystone didn’t know what he would say to her. “Thank you for seeing me, my lady.”

“Morris, please advise the Cook that we will want coffee, not tea.” The baroness retreated into her morning room.

Much of the interior of his parents’ home had changed since his last visit; he could see his mother had softened the starkness his father had preferred with pleasant colors and more comfortable furnishings. In the morning room she had a large standing embroidery hoop by her chair, on which she had stitched a panel with flowers and birds. He admired her handiwork for a moment before he went to sit down across from her.

He waited until a maid brought the ordered coffee and left before he said, “You told me to remember my choice. I wish you to know that I never made that choice. Father took that from me.”

His mother poured a cup for him and added cream but no sugar, just as he had always preferred it. “You blame my husband for your behavior, then. How commonplace of you. I suppose I am to blame as well for your heartlessness.”

“You are not, my lady,” Morris said from the doorway. The old man regarded Greystone. “Do not do this thing, sir. If you tell her, it will crush her.”

“What are you talking about?” Lady Greystone looked astonished. “Morris?”

Before he had become the baroness’s butler, Greystone recalled, Morris had been his father’s valet.

“Do you have any notion of what it has done to me?” he asked the old man, who hung his