Annie Burrows - A Marquess, A Miss And A Mystery

‘Surely,’ she pointed out, reminding herself that she was a rational, intelligent creature who was in the middle of a very important conversation, and, therefore, had no business melting into the chair, let alone noticing that his eyes were blue, not grey as she’d previously thought, ‘you cannot really think he had the time to work out some of the earlier ciphers he brought to me with all the carousing he did with you? Or the brains, come to that. You knew him at Oxford, didn’t you?’

‘Herbert was clever...’

‘In some ways, yes. But he didn’t have the patience to sit down and work through the thousands of possible permutations each cipher could represent. Don’t you have any idea how many hours such work takes?’

‘I truly sympathise,’ he said in his more typical lazy drawl, his expression suddenly assuming that mask of fatuous insincerity that he’d briefly dropped. And then turned to face the Duke, who was, Horatia saw, approaching them with a look of dark intent on his face. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t my exalted half-brother, His Grace the Duke himself. Deigning to grace us with his presence.’

The Duke came to a halt. His brows lowered still further. ‘I have not come to quarrel with you.’

‘No? You have not come to inform me that I have insulted your poor deluded little bride? Even though, not two minutes after she reported our conversation to you, you come over here when hitherto you have exchanged barely two words with me.’

Horatia got the peculiar sensation that she’d just become invisible. For all the notice either brother was taking of her, she might as well be.

‘I wonder you accepted my invitation to my wedding at all, if that is your belief,’ growled the Duke.

‘Perhaps it will give me more pleasure to be a thorn in your side in person, than to merely express my dislike of you and all you stand for by staying away,’ replied Lord Devizes.

Oh, Lord. Was there anything more uncomfortable than being caught in the middle of what she knew to be a long-standing family feud?

‘I suppose that now you are going to accuse me of, what, upsetting Miss Carmichael? Or attempting to compromise her over the teacups?’

The Duke’s eyes turned to chips of black ice. ‘You had better not attempt anything of the sort,’ he said, evidently taking Lord Devizes’s throwaway remark as some sort of threat.

‘It would be useless to explain, I suppose,’ said Lord Devizes, his own eyes gone as cold as his brother’s, ‘that I was a very close friend of Miss Carmichael’s brother. That I was offering my condolences. And that if it appeared as though I had upset her, it was hardly surprising, his demise being so recent, and the manner of his departure from this life so particularly unpleasant.’

The Duke, who looked as though he’d been robbed of the pleasure of taking his younger brother by the neck and heaving him through a window, muttered his own condolences, before nodding his head and walking away.

‘I suppose that will grant us another minute or so,’ said Horatia, watching the Duke retreat to his fiancée’s side. ‘Even if it was a pack of lies.’

‘It was no such thing.’

‘Oh, please,’ she snorted. Which she knew was a very unattractive habit of hers when talking to men and no doubt contributed to their universal failure to offer for her hand in marriage, but which she simply could not stop. ‘We both know why you have come here. And it has nothing to do with annoying your brother. I apologise for underestimating you.’

‘Apology accepted,’ he said with a smooth smile.

‘Then you are on the trail of Herbert’s killer? I wasn’t sure Herbert had managed to pass on that last note I deciphered for him. I had thought that was why they killed him, to stop you getting it, but since you are here...’

‘That’s enough,’ he said firmly. ‘Good God, woman, have you no sense? You don’t blurt out words like...in public, when anyone can hear.’

‘No, no of course not, I’m sorry, I just...’ She swallowed. ‘And you are right. One of the people in this very room could be...’ She glanced round her nervously. Nobody was standing close enough to overhear their conversation, she was fairly sure. And Lord Devizes had angled his body so that nobody could see all that much of her at all, so they couldn’t even guess what she might be saying. Though it had been careless of her to blurt out what she knew. Particularly after vowing she was going to be more cautious. ‘I know I am not much good at this side of things.’ She was never at ease in groups of people. She was no good at hiding what she felt, or keeping her opinions to herself. Which made her rather unpopular. ‘I just got a bit...that is, I’d thought I was going to have to do it alone. But now, knowing that you are secretly on the trail, that you have even followed them here, just as I have...oh, you have no idea how glad I am.’ She was no longer alone. She could trust Lord Devizes, just as Herbert had done.

Before she could think better of it, she reached out and clasped his hand. Squeezed it and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you. And if there is anything I can do to help you in your search...’

He withdrew his hand abruptly. ‘There is not. You are not cut out for this kind of work. I concede that you may have played a part in Herbert’s success with...that is, that you were more aware of things than he led me to believe, but he would want you to stay out of it.’

‘No, he wouldn’t!’ He’d brought the ciphers to her in the first place because he’d known how much she would enjoy unravelling them. At doing work that not even most men could take on.

But Lord Devizes had turned on his heel and was striding away.

As though the matter was closed.

Nick walked across the room as though he had some destination in mind, though in truth his mind was reeling too much for him to pay attention to such mundane matters as where he was going, or who he’d just smiled at as he’d brushed past them.

Because her claim of being his codebreaker rang with so much truth it was like a peal of bells. Hadn’t he always marvelled at Herbert’s ability to stay up all night drinking, then roll up with a deciphered message the very next day? There had been no denying Herbert’s charm, or his ability to cosy up to some low-life and ferret out his deepest secrets. But he’d wondered, more than once, if his friend might be using someone else to do the hard graft behind the scenes.

Someone like a sister who was so awkward in social gatherings that she’d rather sit at home poring over tables of ciphers. And who doted on her brother so much that she gladly let him take all the credit.

He’d wandered over to the buffet table. Deciding he might as well make it look as if he’d gone there on purpose, he picked up a fresh wine glass and held it out for the footman to fill. His hand, he noted with consternation, was trembling slightly.

He took a deep draught of the fortifying drink and then strolled to the nearest mirror, as though to examine his reflection. He looked calm, thank goodness. Slightly amused, if anything. Which was a relief. He did not want anyone to know that, after his encounter with Herbert’s sister, his heart was pounding with excitement, his mind racing with possibilities. Because this revelation that his codebreaker, his Portunus, still lived, changed everything. If she really was what she claimed, then he wasn’t finished after all.

‘I’m not surprised you need a stiff drink after that little scene,’ came a bitter voice from just below the level of his left shoulder. The fact that his sister, Lady Twickenham as she now was, had managed to approach him without him noticing warned him that he needed to pull himself together. So what if little Miss Carmichael was his Portunus, had been acting as his codebreaker and opener of the doors to all the secrets England’s enemies were trying to pass on to the French? He wasn’t going to be able to carry on his work if he could allow himself to become this inattentive to all that was going on around him in a room.