Her mother smacked her hands with a folded fan. “In mixed company? You’ll do no such thing!”
How could it be worse to prove that she was wearing two garters than to let Sir Vernon believe she was wearing only one?
Once again, she tried to calmly state the truth. “Lord Granville and I were merely talking.”
“Talking?” Mama fanned herself with vigor. “Talking about what, I should like to know.”
“Murder!” Edmund shouted. He made the word a chant, stomping his feet in time. “Mur-der, mur-der, mur-der.”
“Not murder!” Charlotte cried. “Nor any other untoward activity. We were speaking of . . . of . . .”
“Of what?” Sir Vernon demanded.
Lord Granville intervened. He silenced Charlotte with a touch to her arm. Then he cleared his throat and gave the completely truthful—and utterly devastating—reply.
“We were speaking of marriage.”
Chapter Two
The next morning, Piers sat at the table in his suite, nursing a cup of coffee and massaging his temples. His head was pounding.
“How exactly did this happen?” In the corner of the room, Ridley brushed down Piers’s blue topcoat. “Explain it to me again.”
“I’m not certain I can explain it. And you really don’t need to do that, you know.”
Ridley shrugged and continued brushing the coat. “I don’t mind. It soothes me.”
“As you like, then.”
To the rest of the household, Ridley was his valet. To Piers, he was a colleague in service of the Crown. A trusted partner and professional peer. As usual, Ridley’s purpose at Parkhurst Manor was to listen below-stairs while Piers moved among the elite. Piers didn’t like asking a fellow agent to perform menial chores.
“When the quadrille began, I went to the library,” he said, trying to retrace his steps from the previous night and make some sense of them. “I was planning to start on the investigation.”
The investigation. The true reason for this country holiday. Sir Vernon Parkhurst didn’t yet know it, but he was under consideration for an important appointment. The Crown needed a dependable envoy to sort out the tangled, corrupt state of affairs in Australia. The vetting had been a simple enough process . . . with one snag.
Over the past few months, the man had been bleeding money. Moderate sums, at irregular intervals. A hundred pounds here, two hundred there. He’d been disappearing from Town for a few days at a time, as well. Nothing too serious, but the pattern pointed to trouble. A gaming habit or a mistress, most likely. Blackmail couldn’t be ruled out.
If Sir Vernon had any secrets he’d pay to keep, it was Piers’s task to discover them.
“I meant to make a quick search of his desk for any ledgers or correspondence. She interrupted me. Without an introduction, without even knocking first. I found her . . . provoking.”
“And pretty.”
“I suppose.” There was no point in denying it. Ridley wasn’t blind. Miss Highwood was quite pretty, in fact—with lively eyes and a wide, unabashed smile. A tempting figure, as well.
“Charming, too, I’ll warrant.”
“Maybe.”
“And she was a breath of fresh air,” Ridley went on, rhapsodizing with a flourish of his hand. “A beam of innocence and sunlight to warm the cold, black heart of a jaded spy.”
Piers made a dismissive noise, then sipped his coffee to end the conversation.
The hell of it was, Ridley knew him too well—and he was, to a degree, correct.
Piers had spent too much time moving through palaces and parliaments as though they were scenes in an endless play. Everyone he encountered, from kings to courtesans, was playing a role. Parkhurst Manor was just another scene—and a boring one, at that.
Suddenly, in burst this woman—a pretty young thing in a pink gown—who was the worst actress he’d ever seen. She bumbled her lines, knocked over the scenery. No matter how she tried, Charlotte Highwood was unable to be anyone other than herself.
That quality was rare and refreshing, and Piers felt like a damn cliché for being charmed, but he’d learned to enjoy a fleeting pleasure where he found it.
He would pay for that lapse in concentration.
So would she.
“I let her dally too long,” he said. “We were discovered. Explanations were impossible to offer without inviting more questions.”
Questions such as the reason he’d been in Sir Vernon’s private library at all. Better to let his host believe he’d sought a quiet place for seduction than to admit the truth.
“Mistakes aren’t like you, my lord,” Ridley said.
No, they weren’t.
Piers rubbed his face with both hands. No use dwelling on it now. The only thing to be done was move forward. Face up to his errors and correct them, if possible. Minimize the damage, if not.
At some point during last night’s debacle, his alternatives had become plain. He could disclaim involvement and flee the “murder” scene, abandoning his assignment and throwing an innocent young woman to the dragons.
Or he could do his duty, in more ways than one.
“Naturally, you’ll do the honorable thing,” Ridley said. “You always do.”
Piers gave him an ironic look. They both knew honor was elusive in this line of work. Oh, they chased after that shiny feeling of patriotic heroism—it was the reason they’d taken the job, after all. But they never seemed to quite grasp it. Meanwhile, shame and guilt nipped at their heels.
The best course, he’d learned, was not to examine it too closely. These days, he avoided looking inside himself at all. What little honor remained to him was muddled with deception and darkness.
This matter with Miss Highwood would be no different, and more was the pity for her sake. She deserved better than what he meant to do today.
He tapped the folder on the table. It contained information on every resident, guest, and servant in Parkhurst Manor—including Charlotte Highwood. “You’ve read this. Sum it up for me.”
Ridley shrugged. “Could be worse. She comes from gentry. Several generations of country squires, an estate with modest but steady income. Her father died having sired three daughters but no sons. His estate passed to a cousin, and the ladies were left with middling dowries. Charlotte is the youngest. The eldest, Diana, suffered asthma in her youth, so the family moved to the seaside for her health. Here’s where it gets interesting.”