Jilting the Duke (13 page)

She was surprised and intrigued that he would let go of his authority in his own garden. At her villa in Italy, though the shape of the garden was to her taste, it had not been her design. Tom and Ian had collaborated on the design, placing the beds and creating the effect. Sophia's part had been to make the design come alive each year. Even in the London house, she hadn't begun from nothing, but worked within the constraints already present.

Here, however, in this overgrown mess, she could make something beautiful—something of her own creation.

“Well, then, you see how those trees there and the hedge have grown together . . .” As she spoke, Sophia grew more animated and assured, and soon, without thinking, she had curved her body conspiratorially into his.

Despite himself, Aidan found it fascinating to hear Sophia assess his garden. He had thought Tom had been the botanist, and Sophia his assistant. But he quickly realized that Tom had been the scholar and Sophia his muse. She was the artist, thinking about color and shape, texture and time. Planning not only what plants would look well and bloom together, she also considered thoughtfully the succession of colors across the seasons. When he watched her sketch the bare outlines of his garden, noting the placement of the trees and shrubs, he saw a new garden emerge in the swift movements of her pencil.

He asked questions, encouraging her to explain her recommendations. As she spoke, he saw glimpses of his old Sophia. The one whose mind he thought had matched his. The thoughtful passion he had seen in their youth was tempered into a different key, one muted, but more richly inflected. He realized that in other circumstances, he would have been pleased to call this woman friend.

But he wasn't ready yet to give up his revenge, and after that, there would be no space left for friendship. Strangely, the thought did not give him the same satisfaction as it had even a week ago.

Chapter Fifteen

Aidan returned home to find Harrison Walgrave lounging in the study, a glass of Aidan's finest claret in his hand, reading the
London Times
.

Walgrave lowered the shipping news. “Ah, Forster, you've returned. I hear you've become guardian to Wilmot's heir?”

“I have.” Aidan examined Walgrave carefully. They'd been comrades during the war, but Walgrave was the man least likely to cool his heels waiting for an old friend, not even with a fine claret and a newspaper to keep him company. “What of it?”

Walgrave elided Aidan's question. “You've been spending time with her ladyship?”

“With the boy, mostly. I'm taking him to the country, and I wanted to know him a bit better before we leave.” Aidan omitted that he'd spent the afternoon in Sophia's company and that he'd decided Sophia would be joining them at his estate.

Walgrave folded the paper and leaned forward. “How well do you know her?”

“Who's asking? You or the Home Office?” Aidan chose not to sit. If this was to be an interrogation, he had no wish to make it appear otherwise.

“It depends on your answers,” Walgrave countered.

“I was with Wilmot when they met.”

“And . . . ?”

“Tom inherited an estate near her uncle's. From Harrow, we knew Malcolm Hucknall and some of her Elliot cousins, so we rusticated at Tom's estate holidays and summers.” Aidan leaned against the side of the desk. “My father bought me a commission. Wilmot proposed after I left. Until last week, I had had no communication with Wilmot or her ladyship in a decade.”

“Tell me about her.” Walgrave watched Aidan intently.

Aidan knew this was a test of his objectivity. Walgrave would compare Aidan's answers—and level of detail—against what he already knew from other sources.

“Then or now?”

“Then and now.”

Aidan offered the information as if it were a field report. “Her parents died years before we met. Her uncle had educated her without regard to her sex according to her parents' wishes, but neither her brother nor her uncle's second wife approved. At some point she was distressed that her governess had left unexpectedly. As I remember, the governess was her only friend. After that, she had a great deal of freedom, with her cousins acting as rather poor chaperones.”

“Most of that we already knew. What else can you tell us?”

“Sophia was witty, good-natured, and mischievous.”

Walgrave raised an eyebrow at the use of Sophia's first name. “What about now?”

“Lady Wilmot appears much changed from her girlhood. Her solicitor describes her as a statue. Her sister-in-law says she is exhausted by grief.”

“What do you think?”

Walgrave wanted Aidan to identify with Sophia, to anticipate her perceptions, inclinations, and her dispositions. But Aidan had no desire to predict the turn of her mind. “I haven't formed an opinion.”

“What about their years in Italy?”

“I know almost nothing. Wilmot always wanted to take the Grand Tour. I suppose living abroad was his way of doing it, even with a wife in tow. In Wilmot's defense, he chose Naples. After Marengo, Naples was never central to any conflicts, and by the time the Wilmots reached Italy, Bonaparte was already in Russia. It was a fairly safe choice.”

Walgrave listened, looking at the liquid he twirled in his glass. Stopping, he looked directly into Aidan's eyes. “Could she be a spy?”

“For us or for someone else?”

“Either.”

If Aidan wanted a public revenge, this was his opportunity. A single word to Walgrave. But with the Home Office involved, the stakes were too high. Sophia's life and Ian's future. No, unless Aidan had proof, irrefutable proof, he wouldn't sacrifice Ian.

Aidan held Walgrave's gaze as he answered. “As a girl, her education made her thoughtful, but not radical. She was as suspicious of Bonaparte as any of us. As for her present opinions, I haven't had occasion to observe. What exactly do you want to know?”

Walgrave set the paper to the side and leaned forward.

“The Home Office would like you to spend more time with her. Some information important to our interests has made its way into England from Italy, carried, we believe, by one of the realm's peers or his family in the last year. Only three families have returned from Italy in that time. The other two have been thoroughly investigated, but your lady has proved difficult. She has kept the strictest mourning, her only visitors family. She rarely goes out, but when she does, she visits a bookseller or a print shop where she could pass information easily. Her staff is surprisingly small, so we haven't been able to place a servant in her household.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You have the official story.” Walgrave poured himself another glass of claret.

“What's the unofficial one?”

“I did tell them you would ask. But I won't tell you if you are simply going to stand there glowering at me.” Walgrave gestured at a chair, and Aidan sat. “In Italy Lady Wilmot hosted a salon, making the Wilmot household a gathering place for members of the Bourbon government in Naples
and
for Carbonari revolutionaries. Wilmot collected information for us from both. To protect the information—and obscure his part in collecting it—he would encode it, then send duplicate copies. One by our courier, if we could get one to him, and another by whatever means he thought might be successful. Over the years, he used the mails, other travelers returning home, the embassy packet. The key to the code he never sent the same way twice. Once he wrote a letter to the editor of the
Gentleman's Magazine
praising a rather obscure passage in Horace and commenting on a specific word in a specific translation. That word was the code key. His last communication indicated he was sending us a list of names. We believe it includes English peers who sold information to our enemies during the wars. But we have not heard from our courier since before Wilmot's death. Even if we had received one of Wilmot's copies, we wouldn't be able to decode his message without the code key.”

“So, one dead—and one missing . . . presumed dead?”

Walgrave nodded.

Perhaps this was the information Aidan had waited for. “If you suspect Lady Wilmot might be a traitor, do you also suspect her in her husband's death?”

Walgrave looked thoughtful. “Wilmot was dying. No one gave him more than another year, so if Lady Wilmot wanted her husband dead, all she had to do was wait. As for the list itself, we don't know if it didn't arrive because it no longer exists, because she doesn't know what she has, because her own name is on that list, or because she's conspiring with those whose names are.”

“Blackmail?”

Walgrave shrugged, pouring the last bit of claret into his glass. “I can say this, Forster. If your
Sophia
has the list or the code key, and she doesn't know what she has, she could be in grave danger.”

* * *

Walgrave reentered the private suite at the Home Office where the more clandestine projects were planned.

Behind the desk sat Walgrave's commander, his body broken in the wars, a long disfiguring scar down the middle of his face. His eyelid on one side was puckered badly, and his lips, where the sword had sliced through the corner of his mouth, didn't meet properly. When the commander stood, he could walk only with the aid of a cane, his leg having been crushed under a horse's terror. He'd lost everything in the wars, even his name.

Joseph Pasten, his adjutant from the wars, sat reading reports at a table nearby. It was said that Joe had saved his commander, carrying his body to safety, hiding him, and nursing him back to health until he could be left alone long enough for Joe to find help. It was also said that no doctor would have attempted where Joe had succeeded.

“Have you chosen a new name yet, sir?” Walgrave posed the question as he did each day. “When we received the news that you were both our new head and officially dead, the men began steeling themselves never to use your old name, sir, but as time goes on, it's making conversations a bit difficult.”

“Whatever my name will be, it won't be ‘sir.'”

Walgrave chose his favorite chair and pulled it next to where Joe was working. “Have you convinced him to choose something?”

Joe shook his head. “He can be quite stubborn. He has no wish to return to his old life, but he's unwilling to let it go entirely.”

“There is nothing wrong with my hearing, gentlemen. To the point, Walgrave, did Forster agree?”

“Yes, but I had to tell him a bit more than we hoped.”

“Well, that's not unexpected. Has he realized that Edmund is watching Sophia for us?”

“Edmund doesn't think so. In fact, Edmund managed it so that Forster asked
him
for help.”

“Good. Then let's see how this plays out.”

Chapter Sixteen

Aidan had bought the Exmoor pony for the look of sheer joy on Ian's face, but it was proving valuable for getting Sophia and Ian out of the house. This morning Sophia and Ian were riding in Hyde Park . . . and Aidan was searching the volumes in the bookcases behind her desk.

He opened each of the printed books, thumbed through the pages, read the marginalia, and examined their bindings and the pastedown pages on the inside of each board. He found nothing.

Most intriguing to him were the manuscript versions of Tom's books, offering a record of Wilmot family life. The manuscript volumes contained the fair copies sent to the printer and the messy early versions, pages with corrections and comments in the hasty hand he knew as Sophia's, responses and additional comments in Tom's. Ian had not exaggerated his parents' cooperation.

Equally clear was Ian's place as a treasured child. The books recorded not just the parents working together, but Ian's developing intellect and ability. In one volume, Aidan found the rude pencilings of an unformed hand. In the next, Ian's name practiced in the unused areas of the pages, and most recently, Ian's answers to questions posed to him in the ample margins reserved for his parents' own commentary. Aidan had never longed for a child, but these evidences of Ian's growing intellect held an unexpected charm. A space on the shelf indicated that one book was missing.

Below the shelves of the bookcase was a locking cabinet, but he found the key quickly in a desk drawer. Inside were the estate and household account books. He pulled them out.

He caught himself automatically reviewing the figures—wages for household and gardening staff, costs of transporting crops to market, improvements to fencing and drainage, repairs to the manor-house roof. Under Sophia's guidance (he knew it wasn't all Seth's capable supervision), her husband's already ample estate had grown more robust. Indeed, the estate was flourishing.

Closing the estate ledgers, Aidan moved to the household accounts. The figures were recorded first in a secretary's neat copperplate hand, then confirmed by Sophia's own scrawled notations in the margins. He wondered who served as her secretary. By now, he thought he'd met all her servants.

The accounts revealed that Tom had established a handsome annuity for Sophia as part of her wedding settlement, and she had just the month prior received her semiannual payment. All her bills had been paid for the quarter; she had set in a store of coal for winter, buying in summer for the advantage of lower prices; and the household staff had already been paid their wages. In each category, she was well within her allotted budget.

Though he learned a great deal about Sophia's household and estate management, Aidan found nothing to answer whether Sophia had the coded documents or the code key. And certainly, if she were engaged in blackmail, she would be unlikely to record the amounts in ledgers available to her secretary and her estate manager.

He worked efficiently. The only books remaining were those nearest Sophia's easel. But those would have to wait. He could hear Ian's voice, chattering happily, as he and his mother entered the garden from the mews.

* * *

By the time Sophia entered the library, Aidan was lounging on the couch, legs stretched out, and a newspaper sufficiently rumpled to suggest a man at his leisure. He watched her as she entered the room, irritated to see her again in black. It was odd: The manuscript books had fascinated him as the easy concourse of two minds. But while they had signaled companionship, they contained no scribbled endearments, no loving asides. The pages only made him more convinced that Sophia had not loved Tom with any degree of passion. Yet Sophia's mourning dress made that greater claim, embodying a devotion he was certain she did not feel and continuing to place the reminder of Tom between them—Tom, who had always been the block to any revenge Aidan might wish to take, and whose child now stood equally in the way.

“When do you intend to set aside your mourning clothes?” he asked off-handedly.

Sophia had made no acknowledgment of seeing him in the library when she entered, and she remained silent as she stood behind her desk, facing the bookcases. She removed her hat and placed it on the low shelf that extended out over the locking cabinets. She turned back to the desk, toward him, then offered a slight shrug.

“This is all I have to wear. We dyed my clothes for mourning, and I haven't ordered new ones yet. I'd thought about bleaching them, but . . .”

“Are you out of funds?”

“No, it's not that. I . . . I just . . . After Tom's death, so much
had
to be done—returning to London, moving everything into a new house, getting Ian settled, all of it. Some things were just too much to face. Now, I have nothing suitable to wear that isn't”—she held out her skirts—“black.”

“We'll have to remedy that for you to enter society again.”

The look she gave suggested both resentment and suspicion.

“For Ian,” he offered.

“Oh, of course,” she relented. “You just sounded like Tom.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before he died, Tom made me promise to ‘regain my place in society.'” She shifted her voice to mock Tom's words. “I'll tell
you
as I told
him
, I never had a place in society to regain. I was a poor relation to country gentry before I married Tom. I'd never even been to London.”

She said it as if Aidan hadn't known her then, as if they hadn't talked for hours about where he would take her on her first trip to London. He remembered their conversations vividly. Clearly she did not. He buried the sudden and unexpected anger.

“
Was
country gentry. Even if you were not
Lady
Wilmot, your son is
my
ward. Society will welcome you to further an association with me.” He looked over her dress more closely, noting each curve and line of her body. “But not in those clothes.” He sat up straight and rose, picking up his hat, but leaving the newspaper as a reminder of his occupation during her absence. “This afternoon. I'll be by at two to escort you to a modiste.”

“What do you know of modi . . . ?”

Aidan turned to her with a stare that stopped the words in her mouth. “Madam, I have clothed many a mistress in your absence, and no one has ever questioned my taste—in clothes or in women. Be ready at two.”

He turned on his heel and was gone.