Sin and Sensibility (34 page)

Zachary looked as though he had more to say, but after a moment he only gestured her to proceed. Chatty as her brother usually was, she immediately began to wonder whether something was amiss. Obviously, though, her senses had been somewhat askew over the past few days.

Or perhaps it was merely that Valentine was here already, though it would be frightfully early for him. A thrill of goose bumps ran down her arms. If he appeared this early, it would mean something.

Sin and Sensibility / 297

The sitting room door stood open, and with a questioning glance at the nearby Stanton, she slipped inside.

“Good morning, gentle—”

The room was empty. Surprised, Eleanor turned around and nearly bumped into Zachary as he pressed in behind her. He didn’t look at all surprised, and when he closed the door and seated himself close by it, she knew for certain that something was afoot.

“What’s going on?” she asked, abruptly worried.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you won’t say?”

“I don’t know, and I wouldn’t say if I did. Just have a seat and drink your tea.”

So whatever it was, she was supposed to stay out of it.

How typical. And how very counter to their agreement—though Zachary wasn’t the one with whom she would need to take that up. “Might we at least move to the morning room?” she asked, trying to pretend she wasn’t that interested in whatever was going on. “The chairs are so much more comfortable in there.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, come now, Zachary. Did Melbourne say you had to keep an eye on me, or did he say I was to stay right here in this room?”

“No one said anything.” He shifted, frowning at the stiff-backed chair. “But you’re correct about the furniture.

All right, we can move to the morning room.”

“Thank you.”

She would have led the way, but he actually took her hand to wrap around his arm. Eleanor suppressed a shudder. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good. Had someone seen her kissing Valentine? Or worse? Eleanor 298 / Suzanne Enoch

blanched, her imagination diving through logic and straight on to panic. Everything would be finished.
She
would be finished.

“Stop it,” she muttered, shaking herself.

“Beg pardon?”

“Nothing.” All she needed to do was fight her way back to logic. No one would have kept news of their tryst secret for this long and then tell. The gossip would have been too hard to resist.

As they crossed the hall, though, the front door opened, and logic leaped out the window again. Charlemagne entered, followed closely by Valentine himself. Neither man looked particularly happy, and Eleanor’s already thundering heart skipped another beat. Valentine glanced at her, his expression unreadable, before he turned his attention back to Shay.

“You’re beginning to perturb me,” he said, shrugging out of his greatcoat and tossing it at Stanton. “What the devil is so pressing that you had drag me out of my own bloody house before I’ve had breakfast?”

“In the office,” was all Shay said.

“Come on,” Zachary told Eleanor, tugging her down the hallway.

She dug in her heels, pulling free of her brother’s grip.

“If this has something to do with me, I demand that you tell me what’s going on, Zachary. I am not a child. And this subterfuge is ridic—”

Sebastian stepped out of his office. The dark, furious expression on his face stopped her cold. “Get into the morning room and stay there until I summon you,” he growled. “This is not a game any longer.”

Valentine watched the color leave Eleanor’s face. Her wide gray eyes spoke her worst fear so clearly that he was Sin and Sensibility / 299

surprised her brothers didn’t drag him out and hang him from the front portico. He wanted to tell her to be calm, not to worry, that he had every intention of claiming responsibility for whatever it was the Griffin men were frothing about. And considering how uncharacteristic of him that sentiment was, he was almost as amused as he was annoyed when he followed Melbourne into his austere office.

“You’re beginning to bear a frightening resemblance to the Spanish Inquisitors,” he commented, noting that neither of the other brothers had been allowed into the room.

The duke moved with a measured stride to his desk. “I had a visitor this morning,” he said, his voice the deceptively cool one that Valentine had heard on only a rare handful of occasions.

The hairs on the back of his neck pricked. “I assume you’re going to tell me who came calling.”

“Stephen Cobb-Harding.”

It took everything Valentine had not to lurch to his feet.

Melbourne was watching him, however, so he only crossed his ankles. “How exciting for you. I wish you’d waited until a decent hour to share the news with me.”

“You’re blackmailing him.”

Thank God Melbourne had gone to him for information first. Confronting Eleanor with whatever accusations Cobb-Harding might have leveled would have been both unfair and unnecessarily cruel. He shrugged. “It’s been a bit dull this Season. I had to do something for excitement.”

The duke pounded his fist on the desk. “Dammit, Valentine! Do you know what he told me? How he offered to preserve my family’s—my sister’s—reputation through an offer of marriage?”

“Melbourne, you—”

300 / Suzanne Enoch

“And I had to sit here and listen to it, because no one bloody told me about any of it! I recruited you to keep Eleanor out of trouble, not to let her do as she pleased and then conceal if from me!”

Valentine sat and listened to the duke rant. Since Melbourne didn’t seem to expect an answer or even a response at the moment, it gave him time to think.

He could lie about it, of course, tell Sebastian that he had no idea what Cobb-Harding was talking about. That would suffice if he were the only party involved, but Eleanor complicated the issue immensely. In the first place she probably wouldn’t sit for a lie, and in the second place she would consider the fabrication an injustice. This had been about her right to some freedom, and pretending now that she’d been sitting demurely on her hands that night at Vauxhall would counter everything her rebellion had been about.

“Deverill,” Melbourne bellowed, jolting him out of his thoughts, “you owed me a simple favor. I hardly consider this appropriate repayment. Explain yourself.”

For a fleeting moment he wondered how Melbourne would react to the information that the evening at the Belmont soiree was the very least of what Eleanor had done, and how integral his own participation had been.

“I don’t carry tales,” he said shortly. “And keep your damned voice down. They could hear you in Paris.”

Melbourne leaned over the desk, jamming his fists into the hard surface. “Don’t change the subject. And this tale, you
will
carry.”

“Sebastian, it’s complicated. And it’s not what you think.”
It was worse, actually
.

“Then enlighten me, damn it all. I am out of patience.”

Sin and Sensibility / 301

“Cobb-Harding tricked her into attending the Belmont party. It was a masked gathering, so no one saw her face.”

The duke made a strangling sound. “He offered to describe certain…aspects of Nell’s anatomy to me.”

Cobb-Harding was a dead man
. “He drugged her.

Laudanum. And then he dragged her into a room and attacked her. I arrived in time to prevent the worst of it.

It wasn’t her fault, Seb.”

For a moment Melbourne remained where he was. Finally he sank back into his chair. “And why didn’t you inform me about this? It would have ended Nell’s little rebellion weeks ago.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you.” That, and the fact that she’d begged him not to say anything. “It was her first attempt at freedom. She bungled it. I thought she deserved another chance.”

“
You
thought. That’s hardly your place, Deverill. You are not part of this family. Your involvement was to settle a debt of honor.”

“There’s a reason you recruited me to be her nanny, as I recall. None of you could manage it. I could. You said no scandal, and there hasn’t been one. Even Cobb-Harding only came to you. No one else knows anything.”

“True. All I have is that little scab lingering about and trying to worm money or power or influence out of me, now.”

“Not even that. According to our…agreement, he has to leave England in the next fortnight.”

“How fortunate for him. This is finished. As you said, she bungled it. Now it’s my turn. She needs to be married and have a family and responsibility. I daresay she wouldn’t feel the need to seek out scandal, then.”

302 / Suzanne Enoch

Valentine laughed. He didn’t feel particularly amused, but he couldn’t help it. “Yes. A married woman is immune to temptation and scandal. For God’s sake, Sebastian, what do you think I do with my nights?”

The duke looked at him. “I am not going to overlook this. Someone will find out, and someone will talk. The gossip is too good to let pass by. If she’s married, she’ll be protected from the worst of the insinuations of her being some sort of lightskirt.”

“She’s not—” He drew a breath. “She’ll resent you for the rest of her life if you take this away from her now.

Don’t do it.”

“I thought you’d be relieved. You didn’t want anything to do with this in the first place.”

God, he hadn’t, had he? “It’s been more…interesting than I expected.”

“I see. So what else has she done that you haven’t bothered to tell me?”

Standing, Valentine walked to the window and back.

He wanted to defend Eleanor, both her actions and the reasons behind them. If he did so, however, Melbourne would see just how involved he had become in this—not just with Eleanor’s project, but with her. “Take a step back and look at this from her viewpoint,” he suggested instead.

“What?
You’re
telling me that a chit has a right to any viewpoint other than what we tell her?”

“She isn’t just a female, the sister of my friend,”

Valentine spat, too angry to ignore the wise part of his brain which was telling him to keep his mouth shut. “She’s a woman with wants and needs, and she will be miserable in any life you choose for her—especially now that she’s experienced some freedom. Let her find her own happiness.”

“What the dev—”

Sin and Sensibility / 303

The door burst open, Eleanor storming into the room with both Zachary and Charlemagne on her heels.

“We tried to stop her,” Zachary said, rubbing a red mark on his cheek where he’d obviously been hit.

“You were talking rather loudly,” Shay added, his own tone tight and angry.

Valentine vaguely heard the duke order everyone out of the room, but he wasn’t paying much attention. Rather, his gaze was on Eleanor as she stalked up to him and stood, hands on her hips, glaring at him. He couldn’t put a word to the expression in her eyes, but it cut deep into his chest.

“You what?” she said tightly.

He frowned. “I don’t—”

“
You were assigned to look after me?
” she continued, a tear running down her cheek. “Melbourne told you to keep me out of trouble, and you agreed to do this?”

Sweet Lucifer
. “Eleanor, I—”

“You were a spy?” She drew a shuddering breath. “I thought we were…I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends. Don’t—”

She slapped him. More than anything else the blow startled him—not that he’d never been slapped before, but that Eleanor had hit him. Reflexively he grabbed her wrist, but she pulled free.

“How dare you,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

“It’s not just him, Nell,” Melbourne put in, his voice surprisingly calm. “I asked him to help.”

“So you did. You couldn’t trust me for one second, could you? Nell couldn’t possibly have been looking for something she felt was important just for herself. She must be trying to make some sort of trouble for the family, so let’s assign her a keeper. That was shameful of you, 304 / Suzanne Enoch

Melbourne.” She glanced at her other brothers, her eyes cold. “And shame on you two for going along with it.”

Before anyone could comment, she whipped back on Valentine again. “And shame on you for agreeing to this farce, and for choosing not to tell me about your little agreement.” Tears choked her, but she took another breath and continued. “I thought I was free, Valentine. But this was all just part of another of my brothers’ plans to control my life. And you were part of it. After everything you said, and your advice…”

He stepped forward, lifting a hand to wipe the tears from her cheek. “Eleanor, give me a chance to exp—”

“Did you hover about me because you truly wanted to help? Did you care for me at all? Or were you merely trying to distract me and control me—to keep me from doing something that might trouble everyone’s busy schedule? And if my brothers trusted you, how could you behave in such an ungentlemanly manner toward me? I trusted you. I confided in you. How could you not tell me that you’d been ‘assigned’ to watch me?”

Valentine wanted to shake her. Before he could conjure a suitable retort, she stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.

He clenched his fists, but stayed unmoving. Perhaps it was just as well that she hadn’t given him the opportunity to explain what he’d been doing. He had no idea how to do so, even to himself.

“And what, pray tell, was that conversation about?”

Melbourne asked in a hard, cold voice.

“She didn’t know you’d recruited me to be her bloody nanny,” Valentine growled, not certain whether he was angrier at the duke for bellowing, or himself for not telling her. Or better yet, at himself for getting involved with this Sin and Sensibility / 305

in the first place. He’d known from the beginning that entangling himself in Griffin business was a mistake.

“I was not referring to her ignorance about your assign-ment. She mentioned some—”

“What sort of ‘ungentlemanly’ behavior did you show Nell?” Charlemagne interrupted, grabbing Valentine’s shoulder. “I warned you about distressing her, damn it all.”

Valentine shrugged free, using all his self-control to keep from punching someone. “You interrupted a nice breakfast,” he grunted, turning for the door. “If you don’t mind, I’ll return to it.”