A Lady of His Own

CHAPTER 16

BY MORNING THE NEWS OF MARY MAGGS’S MURDER HAD spread throughout the county. Gimby had been known to few; his murder had attracted little notice. Mary was another matter. The searchers had taken the ill tidings home with them; from there the news had spread far and wide.

The Wallingham Hall household was, if not precisely in mourning, then somber and subdued. After breakfasting on tea and toast, Penny went to speak with and comfort Figgs. Together they planned the household chores, keeping all to a minimum, doing only what was needed to keep the house running. Penny decreed that the meals should be simple for the next several days.

“Aye, well,” Figgs said on a sigh. “Mrs. Slattery at the Abbey sent two game pies and a lemon curd pudding this morning. She said as she suspected I had an extra mouth about, and as it was rightly one that was hers to fill, she hoped I’d accept the help.” Figgs sniffed. “Nice of her, I thought.”

“Indeed.” Aware there were proprieties to be observed between households that were every bit as rigid as within the ton itself, Penny could only applaud Mrs. Slattery’s tact.

Leaving Figgs, she returned to the front hall just as Lord Culver arrived. Charles had left her bed early; he’d ridden out to look around the site where they’d found Mary’s body, deliberately leaving Nicholas to deal with Culver. Charles was doing all he could to force the consequences of his silence on Nicholas, without compunction using any lever that came to hand to pressure Nicholas into telling him what he knew, or at least enough to capture the murderer.

Nicholas had been expecting Culver; he came out of the library to greet him. She went forward as they shook hands, but merely exchanged greetings with Lord Culver, who murmured, “Distressing business, my dear.” She glided on into the drawing room. Being reclusive, Lord Culver was very definitely one of the “old school”; discussing anything so horrendous as murder within a lady’s hearing would render him acutely uncomfortable.

Besides, she, too, was determined to convince Nicholas to confide his secrets; he could deal with Culver alone.

From just inside the drawing room, she listened to him doing so. When the pair walked away down the hall, she turned and followed; it wouldn’t matter if they saw her, just as long as she remained apart from their discussion. Hanging back in the shadows of the kitchen courtyard, she watched as they entered the cool store. Their voices echoed in the stone building; Culver asked the expected questions, and Nicholas answered.

Last night, Nicholas had looked stunned-horrified and unable to take in a second murder. This morning, when she’d met him briefly over the breakfast table, he’d looked ghastly-appalled, deeply disturbed, yet oddly resolute. It was almost as if the increasing pressure, instead of making him break, was increasing his resistance.

Even though she thought him culpable for trafficking in secrets, and grossly misguided in not confessing now Charles was so blatantly there, camped on his doorstep, she was nevertheless starting to view Nicholas with a certain grudging respect. Even more telling, so was Charles.

Nicholas and Culver came out of the cool store; Nicholas closed the door and faced his lordship.

“A dreadful business.” Culver looked shaken. He was a slight man no taller than Penny, and lived for his books. “Not the sort of thing that generally happens hereabouts.”

The sound of a familiar footstep had Penny glancing to the right; Charles strode up from the stables. He saw her, nodded, but went directly to Culver.

Both Culver and Nicholas looked relieved. Culver asked, and Charles confirmed that he believed Mary’s murder was connected to Gimby’s, although he omitted to say why. However, as such, it fell within his brief to investigate. Culver declared that that being the case, he would merely record the murder and await further direction from Charles.

The formalities concluded, Charles and Culver shook hands. Nicholas offered to walk Culver to the stables. The three men parted; watching, she saw Charles wait…as if it were an afterthought, he commented to Culver, “I bumped into a young relative of yours-Fothergill.”

“Oh?” Culver halted, nodded. “Indeed, a connection of my late wife’s. Visited with us as a child and was taken with the area-interested in birds, it seems. He’s a likable enough chap, easy to have about-well, he’s not in much, really, so there’s no fuss in having him. I daresay he was out looking at pigeons through those spyglasses of his.”

“Indeed.”

Culver and Nicholas headed on to the stables. Charles watched them go, then turned and joined her.

“At least that’s Fothergill vouched for.” He waved her into the house. “If he’s connected to Culver, that makes it unlikely he’s here for any nefarious purpose. An amazing coincidence to have a relative one had visited as a child living in precisely the district in which one wished to commit murder.”

“Still”-she glanced at him as they walked down the corridor-“I would have thought you’d ask if he was at Culver House on the night before last.”

“I would have if I could place any reliance on Culver’s word. Fothergill might have been sitting in an armchair within three yards of Culver all night, but I wouldn’t trust Culver’s word for it. Once absorbed in his books, a cannonade outside his windows would probably pass unnoticed.”

She grimaced; he was right.

Norris came to meet them. “Shall I serve luncheon, my lady?”

“As soon as Lord Arbry returns from the stables. Lord Charles and I will wait in the parlor.”

“Indeed, my lady.”

Nicholas joined them in the dining parlor as they took their seats. He went to the head of the table, his face even more graven with care than before.

She glanced at Charles, but he gave no sign. Norris and the footman brought in the cold collation she’d ordered; Charles fixed his attention on the cold meats, cheese, and fruit, and spared Nicholas not a glance.

However, when Mrs. Slattery’s lemon curd pudding appeared and Charles consumed half of it, Penny wasn’t sure he even noticed. He might not be looking at Nicholas, but she was quite sure he was thinking about Nicholas. And about the murderer.

It was Nicholas who broke first.

“Why did you ask about Fothergill?”

Charles glanced up the table, past her, meeting Nicholas’s eyes. He paused for one instant, then said, “Because it seems likely the murderer is one of our five visitors, and at present, all of them are in the running.”

Calmly peeling an apple with a paring knife, he recounted for Nicholas without concealment or evasion not just their hypotheses about the murderer, but all they’d learned from London thus far about the five men in question.

She watched Nicholas. Saw again his puzzlement that Charles should be so forthcoming, sensed beneath it a growing confusion; that, she hoped, would be to the good.

Charles held nothing back. Returning from where he’d found Mary’s body mangled like a rag doll’s and discarded with less care, he’d decided to pull out all stops to convince Nicholas to tell him what he needed to know.

Gimby’s death had been serious enough; Mary’s murder increased the stakes. The game would escalate; he knew it would.

They were running out of time, and the murderer was moving closer. If dropping his guard with Nicholas was what it took to learn what he needed to capture the murderer and bring him to justice, so be it.

His duty was one thing, his allegiance to justice another, yet at the back of his mind he was very aware of an even more pressing, more fundamental need. He had to keep Penny safe. He was grimly aware that that compulsion no longer sprang from a simple, uncomplicated wish to protect her purely for her own sake. Protecting her was now vital to him; she was the foundation of his future-the one thing he couldn’t lose.

So he broke with the tenets of a lifetime and told Nicholas all.

He eventually fell silent. Glancing at Nicholas, he saw him frowning at his plate, clearly deeply troubled.

Beside him, Penny reached across and lifted a slice from the apple he was quartering. He followed the fruit to her mouth. The crunch as she bit into the apple’s crisp flesh seemed to break some spell.

“Lady Carmody’s afternoon tea,” she said. She looked up the table at Nicholas. “It’s this afternoon-we should attend.”

Nicholas blanched. “Oh, surely not. No one will expect-”

“On the contrary,” Penny calmly stated, “everyone will expect us to be there, not least to tell everyone what’s going on. Rumors will be rife, and some will be quite extraordinary, so the truth needs to be told. Aside from all else, our five visitors should be there. In this district, in this season, there’s not so many entertainments that one can pick and choose. And with the news of Mary’s murder widely circulating, avoiding the only gathering in the area would be far more a cause for comment than attending it would.”

Nicholas stared at her; he really did look ill. After a moment, he said, “Perhaps if you and Lostwithiel go…”

It was a question, indeed, a plea, the closest Nicholas had yet come to it. She didn’t respond, wondered.

“No.” Charles spoke quietly but decisively from beside her. His gaze was fixed on Nicholas. “Just think. Mary Maggs was a maid in your household. She went to meet a man she didn’t name but described as handsome and ‘not in the usual way.’ Then she’s found strangled. If you avoid a gathering like Lady Carmody’s, no matter what we say or do, some degree of suspicion is guaranteed to fix on you.”

Nicholas’s pallor was once again faintly green. “That’s…”

“Human nature.” Charles regarded him, not without sympathy. “I take it you haven’t spent much of your life in the country.”

“No.” Nicholas frowned. “I went from Oxford to London-I’ve lived there ever since.”

“Where’s your father’s seat?”

“Berkshire. But he’s been in residence for years-there’s rarely any need for me to be there…”

Watching the expressions flit across Nicholas’s face, Charles wondered what the last-was it regret?-meant. There was clearly some sensitivity between Nicholas and his father-something to do with their treason, perhaps.

He tucked away the notion for later examination. “Regardless, you do need to attend Lady Carmody’s event.” He glanced at Penny. “But there’s no reason we can’t all go together.”

She nodded. Beneath the table, she touched his thigh. “Indeed not. Granville’s pair needs exercising-you can drive me in the curricle, and Nicholas can ride one of the hacks.”

So they went to Lady Carmody’s tea party, and if it was every bit as bad as Nicholas had feared, at least he survived.

“Indeed,” Penny murmured, her gaze fixed on Nicholas as he satisfied Mrs. Cranfield’s and Imogen’s appalled curiosity, “he seems to be one of those people who appear to have no backbone, until one leans on him.”

Charles looked down at her. “A shrewd and insightful observation-with which, incidentally, I agree-but unfortunately that very quality is the one most holding us back. Or rather, holding him back from telling us what he knows.”

“Mmm.” They were standing sipping tea at one side of Lady Carmody’s sunken garden. The pool in the center formed a focus for the gathering, the high hedges surrounding the garden providing useful shade. They’d been required to tell their tale numerous times, but then Charles had insisted they needed their tea and moved them out of the ruck; no one had yet had the nerve to follow.

Penny set her cup on her saucer. “The more I see of Nicholas, the more difficulty I have in casting him as a villain of any sort. I know you agree that he’s not the murderer.” She glanced up and met Charles’s eyes, darkest sapphire blue in the sunlight. “But can you truly see him as a traitor, someone who knowingly passed military secrets to the French?”

He held her gaze for a moment, then looked at Nicholas. “Sometimes, people get caught up in affairs without realizing, not until it’s too late. I’ve been wondering if perhaps Nicholas, unaware of the illicit trade his father and yours had undertaken, blithely followed his sire into the Foreign Office, then found himself expected to, as it were, continue the family business.”

She followed his gaze to Nicholas. “That would explain why he won’t speak.”

Charles nodded. “He knows we have no real evidence, yet it’s not just him and his career, but his father’s reputation and the rest of the family’s at stake. As you pointed out, this matter’s a blot that once known would stain all the family, including innocents like Elaine and her girls.”

After a moment, he added, “I can understand why he’s holding against us, but understanding doesn’t make it any easier to break him.”

Indeed, understanding made it that much harder, because they both had a great deal of sympathy for Nicholas’s stand.

As Penny had predicted, all five of their “suspects” were present, all, when discussing the tragedy, had evinced the right degree of revulsion, made the right comments, the expected expostulations.

“Not one,” Charles commented acerbically, “put a foot wrong.”

But only one of them would have been tested, and whoever he was, he was a professional; that Charles already knew and thoroughly appreciated.

He and Penny moved through the crowd, chatting here, exchanging news of their families there. He kept a surreptitious watch on Nicholas, but although Nicholas watched the five “visitors,” he made no move to engage any of them. Even more telling, he didn’t favor one over the other in his observations. Or his peregrinations; he passed each of the five with a nod, a look, and smoothly moved on.

Given he was now convinced he had Nicholas’s measure, that last puzzled Charles. Did Nicholas truly have no idea which of the five was the most likely? If so…

“Damn!”

Startled, Penny glanced up at him. Mercifully, there were no matrons within hearing range. He tightened his hold on her elbow. “You’re feeling faint.”

“I am?”

“You are-we need an excuse to leave now. With Nicholas.”

She didn’t argue, but obligingly wilted against him. He took her weight, solicitously guided her to where Lady Carmody sat. They made their excuses; while her ladyship fussed, Charles collected Nicholas with a look.

He came, puzzled, then concerned when he heard of Penny’s indisposition. He readily agreed they should leave at once; of course he would accompany them.

Lady Carmody was gracious, understanding, and content enough that they’d appeared and thus ensured her tea party was a huge success. She patted Penny’s hand. “Quite understandable, my dear. You are looking rather wan.”

Mrs. Cranfield tut-tutted. “You need a good night’s rest, my dear. Make sure you get it, and leave the worrying to others.”

Lady Trescowthick looked uncertain, but kissed Penny’s cheek and glanced at Charles. “Do take care, dear.”

They made their exit as fast as they dared. Penny held to her pose of an incipient faint until they’d turned out of the drive and were heading along the lane, out of sight.

She exhaled and straightened. Looking at Charles, she noted the rather grim set of his lips. “Why did we have to leave?”

“I’ll tell you when we get back to Wallingham.”

She would have argued and insisted he tell her now, but his tone reminded her there was another with them-Nicholas, to wit. Folding her hands in her lap, she composed herself in patience, and waited.

Her mind ranged back over their departure; thinking of Lady Trescowthick’s puzzled look, she couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” Charles asked.

She glanced at him, but he was looking at his horses. She looked ahead. “I was just wondering when it will occur to them that I’ve never fainted in my life.”

Charles heard the amusement in her voice and bit his tongue. Hard. No need to point out that while those three ladies, who had known them both since birth, might indeed note the oddity of her faint, instead of supposing the faint a sham, they might come up with quite a different reason to account for it.

A reason that, already or at some point in the not overly distant future, might indeed be real. Would be real.

Would she feel faint? Penny? Would she enjoy carrying his children?

He hadn’t even asked her to marry him yet. He told himself he was foolish to imagine he knew any woman’s mind, let alone hers, well enough to predict her answer, yet after last night he felt unreasonably confident. And ridiculously buoyed by the mere thought of her carrying his child.

Almost distracted enough to forget the revelation he’d had in Lady Carmody’s sunken garden. But not quite.

He pulled up in the stable yard, gave the reins to a groom, and handed Penny down. They waited for Nicholas to join them, then walked together to the house.

“That wasn’t as bad as I’d feared,” Nicholas said. “At least their curiosity wasn’t morbid-more that they simply wanted to know, to be reassured they had the facts correct and weren’t falling prey to mere rumor.”

“Indeed.” Penny glanced at Charles as they entered the house. “Now-why did we have to leave just then?”

He met her gaze, then looked at Nicholas. “Could we have a word with you in the library?”

Nicholas blinked. “Yes, of course.”

He led the way. She followed with Charles, wondering; once she’d focused on him, she’d realized he was tense. Annoyed, but not at her.

What had Nicholas done?

Nicholas led them into the library. Charles stood back and let her precede him, then followed and closed the door. Nicholas had gone to the large desk; he sat in the chair behind it.

Charles steered her to one of the chairs before the fireplace. “Sit down,” he murmured.

She did.

He didn’t. He paced to the hearth, turned, and looked at Nicholas.

Nicholas looked back at him, his diplomat’s mask very much in place. The conviction Nicholas had done something she hadn’t noticed grew.

When the silence had stretched as far as it could, Charles said, his tone hard and harsh, “Just tell me this. You aren’t, by any chance, setting yourself up as a target here, are you?”

Nicholas’s expression didn’t change, but his pallor was so pronounced that the slight flush that rose to mantle his cheekbones might as well have been red flags. “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”

Charles looked at him, then shook his head. “I hope you lie better when negotiating trade treaties.”

Stung, Nicholas replied, “When negotiating trade treaties I deal with diplomats.”

“Indeed, but I’m not a diplomat, and it’s me you have to deal with here.”

Nicholas sighed and closed his eyes. “What I do is none of your concern.”

“If what you do has any connection whatever to the murderer of Gimby Smollet and Mary Maggs, it’s very much my concern.”

“I have no more notion than you which of those five is the murderer, or even if it is one of those five.”

The words were weary, but definite.

Penny broke in, “Just what did he do?”

Charles glanced at her, exasperation in his eyes. “He waltzed back and forth before their noses as if daring the murderer to come after him.”

Penny looked at Nicholas. “That wasn’t wise.”

“None of this was ever wise,” Nicholas returned.

She and Charles both picked up the allusion to something beyond the immediate subject.

“I know the caliber of this man,” Charles said. “Believe me, you don’t want to tangle with him.”

“No, you’re quite right. I don’t.” Nicholas drew in a breath. Opening his eyes, he looked at Charles. “But I don’t know who he is, and I can’t tell you anything. I’m glad enough that you’re here-at least that means Penny’s safe. But…there’s nothing more you-or I-can do.”

Charles’s eyes, fixed on Nicholas’s face, narrowed. “You mean,” he said, in his silkily dangerous voice, “that we’ll just have to wait for him to show his hand.”

Nicholas inclined his head.

She waited to see which way Charles would go, whether he would push, or…

Eventually, he nodded. “Very well, we’ll play the next scene by your script.” He caught Nicholas’s gaze. “But I’ll find out the truth in the end.”

For a long moment, Nicholas held his gaze, then quietly replied, “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

An uneasy truce prevailed for the rest of the day. Charles was concerned, and on more than one front. He left her with Nicholas in the drawing room and spoke with Norris. Nicholas smiled faintly when Charles returned, but said nothing.

By early evening, the entire household was as weary and wan as she’d earlier pretended to be; by unspoken consent, they retired early.

She and Charles found pleasure and, even more, comfort in each other’s arms. The revelation of the previous night-that moment in which it had been shatteringly obvious that what lay between them was definitely not purely physical-was still there, waiting to be acknowledged, examined, and dealt with. She couldn’t deal with it now, not with so much other tension surrounding them. Although the connection remained, a deep and very real link between them, Charles didn’t allude to it, and for that she was grateful. Sated, as much at peace as they could be, they fell asleep.

About them, the old house settled, and slept, too.

Penny woke, and felt the mattress shift. Instantly alert, she lifted her head and saw Charles padding around the bed. He stopped by her dressing stool, picked up his breeches, and proceeded to climb into them.

“Where are you going?”

He glanced at her. “I woke up, and thought I may as well check the doors and windows downstairs.”

She listened, but could hear nothing. He wasn’t hurrying as he pulled on his boots.

“Stay there.” He headed for the door, glanced back. “I’m going to lock the door-I won’t be long.”

She sat up as he opened the door, started to whisper, “Be careful.”

Crash!

Downstairs, glass shattered, wood splintered.

Charles swore and shot out of the door. Penny bounced from the bed, grabbed up her robe, struggling into it as she raced after him. The ruckus continued. Reaching the stairs, she saw Charles ahead of her, leaping down. She reached the landing as he gained the hall and swung around, heading for the library.

She followed as fast as she could.

Charles slowed as he neared the open library doors. Thuds and grunts came from within. Noiselessly, he glided into the doorway.

Poised to react, every nerve tensed, he swiftly scanned the shadowy room. The curtains had been left open, but there was little illumination from outside; it took an instant to separate the destruction on the floor from the figures wrestling amid the wreckage most of the way down the long room.

Then one man gained the ascendancy, reared above the other, raised his arm, and struck down. Immediately, he raised his arm again-faint light glinted along a blade.

“Hold!” Charles shouted, muscles tensing to race in.

The man looked up, and changed his hold on the knife.

Penny moved behind Charles, peering past his shoulder.

Charles swore, and flung himself back.

The man threw the knife.

Pushing Penny out of the double doorway, Charles flattened her against the hall wall beside the door. Her “Ooof!” coincided with the thud of the knife as it hit the paneling on the opposite side of the hall, then clattered to the tiles.

He was back through the doorway as the tinkling died.

The room was a mass of shadows. He searched, then saw the man frantically climbing through the long window at the end of the room. His face was black-a scarf or mask; a hat was pulled low over his forehead.

The knife from Charles’s boot was in his hand before he’d even thought. It was a long throw; he took an instant to gauge it, then sent the knife streaking down the room.

It thudded into the window frame where the man had been standing a bare second before, pinning his coat. Charles raced forward. He heard a curse, then material ripped and the man, already outside, was gone.

Glass crunched beneath Charles’s boots; he called back, “There’s broken glass-be careful!” He hurdled the slumped figure and finally reached the window; wrenching aside the billowing curtains, he looked out.

The man was briefly visible, a denser shadow pelting toward the dark mass of the shrubbery. Charles watched, itching to pursue but restrained by experience. The man would reach the shrubbery long before he could catch him; once amid the high hedges, the man could wait for him to venture in, then slip past him and return to the house to finish what he’d started.

Swallowing an oath, Charles turned and headed back to where Penny had picked her way to the slumped form and was now crouched by its side.

She glanced up as he neared. “Nicholas.”

No surprise there.

“He’s been stabbed, I think twice.”

A curse slipped out. “The idiot!” Scuffing away the broken glass from around Penny, Charles hunkered down. “Light the lamp on the desk.”

Penny rose and went to do as he’d asked. Nicholas was unconscious; grasping his shoulders, Charles rolled him fully onto his back. As the wick flared, then steadied, he saw two wounds, one in each shoulder.

The pattern spoke volumes. The next strike would have gone just above the heart, fully incapacitating, potentially fatal. The last strike would have been a quick jab between the ribs, directly into the heart. Always fatal.

If they’d been a few seconds slower, Nicholas would have died.

Both shoulder wounds were bleeding, but not as much as the next wound would have. Loosening, then dragging free Nicholas’s cravat, Charles ripped the muslin in two, folded each piece, and firmly pressed one to each wound.

He looked up at Penny. She was as white as a sheet, but a long way from fainting. “He’s not going to die.” Her gaze lifted from Nicholas’s deathly pale face to his. He nodded to the bellpull. “Wake the household. We’ll need help with him, and we need to set a guard.”

The next hour went in organized chaos. Already on edge, every member of the staff turned out in response to the jangling bell. Explanations had to be given; reassurances made. Maids had to be calmed, then some were sent to boil water while Figgs ordered the younger ones back to bed.

Figgs herself took charge of Nicholas. Working with Charles, she packed the wounds, then organized two footmen to carry Nicholas upstairs, back to his bed.

“Not even slept in!” Bustling ahead of the laboring footmen, Figgs hurried to turn down the covers. “Lay him there, gently now.”

Charles sank into the armchair by the bed. Penny sat on its arm and leaned against his shoulder. Together, they watched as Figgs sent maids for water, clean linen for bandages, and ointment from the stillroom. While they scurried to obey, with brisk efficiency Figgs stripped Nicholas’s ruined coat and shirt away. Once they’d delivered all she’d requested, Figgs shooed the maids off to bed; carrying the bowl to the bedside, she carefully lifted their improvised bandages and washed away the blood.

Patting the wounds dry, Figgs glanced at Charles. “Can’t say I’ve much experience of stab wounds, but these don’t look all that bad.”

“They’re not.” Charles leaned forward and looked more closely. “At least they’re clean-one benefit of being attacked by a professional.” The last comment was uttered sotto voce, for Penny’s ears alone as he sat back again.

She leaned more firmly against his shoulder. “Has he lost a lot of blood?”

“Not that much-his faint is most likely due to shock.”

“Aye.” Figgs looked decidedly grim.

“My lord?”

Charles looked up to see Norris in the doorway. He was carrying a lit candelabra; he glanced at the figure on the bed, then looked at Charles. “A guard, do you think, my lord?”

“Indeed.” Charles rose, lightly squeezed Penny’s shoulder. “Wait here-I’ll be back. I need to speak to him when he comes around.”

Penny nodded. She’d belted her robe tightly about her and was glad of its warmth, especially now Charles had moved away. She’d stopped by her room and put on her slippers, but even warm toes didn’t alleviate her chill.

When Figgs started to smear on the ointment and lay gauze over the raw wounds, she shook herself, rose, and went to help. Working together, they secured bandages around Nicholas. Figgs had used warm water to wash away the blood, but Nicholas’s skin felt icy.

Figgs noticed her concern. “It’s the shock, like Lord Charles said. There.” Pulling up the covers, she patted them down around Nicholas. “He’s as comfortable as can be.”

Piling her cloths in the basin, she hefted it. She glanced again at Nicholas. “I’ll send up a footman with some hot bricks. That’ll warm up the bed and bring him to himself.”

“Thank you, Figgs.” Penny sank into the armchair, her gaze fixed on Nicholas’s effigy-like face.

Figgs humphed. “Em brews a tisane as calms the nerves something wonderful. I’ll have some sent up for you all. After all this fuss, you’ll be needing it, no doubt.”

Penny smiled. “Thank you.”

Figgs bobbed and left.

Charles walked back in as Figgs neared the door. He held it, then closed it behind her and crossed the room to Penny.

She raised her brows at him.

“Shutting the door after the horse has bolted, but…” With a light shrug, he sat on the arm of the chair. “If it was me, I’d come straight back in. Better safe than sorry.”

“What have you organized?”

He told her of the orders he’d given, two men in each patrol, with two patrols circling the corridors, passing in sequence from one wing to the next. “One man alone, this villain will kill him, but he won’t use a pistol-too much noise-and unless he’s a wizard, he won’t try to take on two men at once.”

Penny nodded. Everything seemed so unreal. This was her home, yet patrols of footmen were now required to keep a murderous intruder at bay.

“I’d send you to bed, only I’d rather you remained in the same room as me.”

She blinked, looked up at Charles. “I’ve no intention of returning to my bed. I want to be here when Nicholas awakes-I want to hear what he says.”

He smiled, wry, resigned, and said no more.

Em’s tisane arrived, and they each drank a cup; a pot under a knitted warmer sat waiting for Nicholas. Footmen came with the bricks wrapped in felt; Charles oversaw their disposition. Another footman stoked the fire into a roaring blaze. Penny thanked him and dismissed him. Then she and Charles settled to wait.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on.

Another hour passed before Nicholas stirred.

“You’re in your own bed,” Charles said. “He’s gone.”

Nicholas frowned. It took effort to open his eyes; he blinked at them, went to move, and winced. His eyes widened. “He stabbed me.”

“Twice.” Charles’s tone was caustic. “What possessed you to tackle him alone?”

Nicholas grimaced. “I didn’t think it through-there wasn’t time.”

Charles sighed. “What happened?”

“I was sitting in a chair in the hall, waiting-”

“Why there?” Charles asked, perplexed.

“Because I reasoned he’d go to the library, and I could see the library door from there. I didn’t think he’d come through the window. The first I knew of him was a great crash-he’d smashed one of the display cases.”

“Hmm.” Charles’s eyes narrowed. “What happened next? How much do you recall?”

“I rushed in-he saw me and swore, but I was on him in a flash. We tussled, fell.” Nicholas’s gaze grew distant. “It was so dark. It was more guesswork than science, grappling, rolling-then he flung me back, and stabbed me.” He paused, then continued, “Then he stabbed me again. It felt so cold…” After a moment, Nicholas looked at Charles. “I heard a shout, but it seemed to come from a long way away.”

“That was me-I was in the doorway.”

“I must have fainted. What happened next?”

“He threw the knife at me”-Charles glanced severely at Penny-“at us, instead of plunging it into your heart. Then he fled.”

“He got away?”

“The shrubbery is too damned close to the house-it’s the perfect escape route.” Charles studied Nicholas’s face. “I need you to tell me all you can remember about your attacker.”

Nicholas nodded; gingerly, he eased up in the bed.

Charles rose and went to help him, stacking the pillows behind his back. “You’ve lost a fair amount of blood-you’ll be weak for a day or so, and those wounds will pull like the devil as they heal, but you were lucky-he didn’t have time to be as professionally vicious as he’d have liked.”

Penny rose and poured the tisane; when Nicholas was settled again, she handed him the cup. “It’s Em’s special recipe. It’ll help.”

Nicholas accepted the cup, sipped gratefully. Slipped back into his thoughts.

“So?” Charles prompted, returning to sit on the arm of Penny’s chair.

Nicholas grimaced. “I couldn’t see anything of his face-he had a scarf tied over his nose and mouth. In the dark, I couldn’t get any idea of his eyes, and he wore a hat jammed low-it didn’t come off.”

“Don’t think of features-you wrestled with him. How did he feel to you-old, young, supple, strong?”

Nicholas blinked; his expression grew distant. “Youngish, but not that much younger than I. Quite strong-leanish.”

“How tall?”

Nicholas looked at Charles. “Not as tall as you. More my height, maybe an inch or so taller.” He paused, then asked, “Did you see anything-anything to identify him?”

“Not specifically, but I believe we can cross Yarrow and Swaley off our lists. From what we both observed, Swaley’s too short, and there’s no way a man of Yarrow’s weight could have moved as your attacker did. I agree with your youngish-younger than you or me-and leanish, too, although on that I’m less clear.” Charles leveled his gaze on Nicholas’s face. “Now think back-you said he swore when you entered the library. What did he sound like?”

“He was swearing even before he saw me-he seemed enraged about the pillboxes.”

“Well, then?”

Nicholas’s grimace was self-deprecatory. “It was all in French-fluent, and…well, if you work with people who speak multiple languages, you realize they sound different in one tongue versus another.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how he would sound in English.”

Charles humphed, but nodded. “Carmichael, Fothergill, or Gerond, then.”

“But from what you said before, Fothergill and Carmichael are unlikely.” Nicholas handed his empty cup back to Penny. “And it was very fluent French.”

Charles shook his head. “Don’t build too much on that. I swear in very fluent French, too. As for the rest, ‘unlikely’ isn’t definite. Those three are all still suspects.”

Nicholas fell silent.

Penny studied him, then looked at Charles. He was thinking, furiously, not about what they’d learned, but about how to learn more. He was weighing his options; she knew the look.

After a long moment, he refocused on Nicholas, who met his gaze.

“When are you going to tell me-us-what’s going on?”

When Nicholas’s lips merely tightened, Charles went on, “If I hadn’t decided to come down and check the doors and windows, I would never have been in time to stop his next blow, one that would very likely have ended your life. And no, I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel grateful. I want you to understand how serious this is. This man has killed, not once but twice that we know of, and he will kill again. He has no compunction whatever. Who knows who it might be next time? Figgs, perhaps-she tended your wounds. Or Em, who made the tisane. Or Norris. Or Penny.”

His voice had grown progessively colder. When he said her name, even though she’d guessed it was coming, Penny had to fight to quell a shiver.

When Nicholas glanced down at his hands, lying atop the covers, and said nothing, Charles continued in the same, coldly judgmental tone, “You said you’d reasoned he’d make for the library, and that he was swearing over the pillboxes. Am I right in guessing that you believed the pillboxes would be part of his target?” He stopped, waited.

“Yes,” Nicholas eventually said. Closing his eyes, he rested his head back on the piled pillows.

“I assume you thought that because he’d gone after Mary-she was the downstairs tweeny, so she was responsible for dusting in the library.”

Eyes still closed, Nicholas nodded.

Charles studied him, then looked at Penny. Mouthed what he wanted her to say. She nodded and sat forward.

“Nicholas, we know of the pillboxes in the priest hole.”

His eyes jerked open; he stared at her. “You know…?”

He looked at Charles, who nodded.

“Not easy to explain, not at all.”

Nicholas sighed, and dropped his head back once more. He stared at the canopy over the bed.

“The thing I can’t fathom,” Charles went on, “is how the pillboxes fit with our theory of revenge. No one could have known…”

He paused. He’d been speaking his thoughts as they occurred, as he followed the train, yet hearing it aloud…suddenly he saw the light. “Not quite true, of course. The one group who most definitely would have known about the pillboxes is those who handed them over-the French.”

Fixing his gaze on Nicholas, he felt the jigsaw shift, saw the difficult pieces slide smoothly into place. But he was still missing one major piece.

Nicholas had a stubborn look on his face-one Charles actually recognized; it was very like Penny’s intransigent mask.

“Very well.” Settling back, he watched Nicholas. “This is what I know so far. Your father and Penny’s set up some scheme decades ago passing secrets to the French. The French paid in pillboxes. The secrets were delivered mostly verbally to a contact from a French lugger who met one of the Selbornes out in the Channel. The Smollets arranged the meetings using their yacht and the appropriate signal flags, then Penny’s father and later Granville would go out with one of the smuggling gangs, meet the French, effect the transfer, and come away with a pillbox.

“A very neat exchange for everyone concerned, except the soliders who died in the wars.” He was unable to keep the icy contempt from his voice.

Nicholas heard it; he paled, but otherwise didn’t react. He continued to stare at the canopy. But he was listening.

“Now, however,” Charles continued, reining in his feelings, “for some reason we have a French agent sent to recover some or all of the exchanged pillboxes, and”-watching Nicholas’s face he guessed-“to punish the Selbornes, indeed, to kill any of those involved, or even their relatives.”

Nicholas didn’t react. Charles’s blood ran cold as Nicholas’s lack of shock or surprise confirmed he’d guessed right. He glanced at Penny; the stunned look on her face as she stared at Nicholas showed she’d followed the exchange and read it as he had.

Drawing a deep breath, he looked again at Nicholas. “Nicholas, you have to tell me what you know. This man is a killer-he’ll continue until he succeeds in what he’s been sent here to do, or he’s stopped. He can be stopped.”

He paused, then added, “Regardless of the past, the current situation is that you have a French agent about who wants to kill you. That puts you and me on the same side.”

Nicholas’s lips curved fractionally. “An enemy of my enemy must be my friend?”

“War makes strange bedfellows all the time.” Charles waited, then quietly said, “You have to tell me. If you don’t, and he kills again, that death will be on your head.”

His final card, but he suspected, from all he’d seen of Nicholas, perhaps a telling one. He certainly hoped so.

“Nicholas.” Penny leaned forward and laid her hand on Nicholas’s. “Please, tell us what’s going on. I know the family’s reputation weighs with you.” Nicholas lifted his head enough to meet her eyes; she grimaced. “No matter how bad the past has been, the family might not have a future at all if you don’t speak now. You must see that.”

Nicholas held Penny’s gaze.

Charles held his breath.

A long moment passed, then Nicholas sighed and let his head fall back. He stared at the canopy unseeing. “I have to think.”

Charles fought to keep impatience from his voice. “This killer’s on the doorstep. We don’t have much time.”

Nicholas lifted his head and met his gaze squarely. “It’s not my story. I can’t just”-he gestured-“make you free of it. I have to think what I can reveal, should reveal, and what isn’t mine to tell at all.”

“You just have to tell me enough.”

Nicholas searched his eyes. “Twenty-four hours. You can give me until after dinner tomorrow”-he glanced at the clock-“no, that’s now today.” He drew in a shaky breath, and met Charles’s eyes. “Give me until then, and I promise I’ll tell you all I can.”