Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) Page 7

  If Thorington hadn’t inadvertently brought Rafe to exactly the place where Rafe needed to be, Rafe would have left weeks ago.

  He reached over and tipped whisky into Thorington’s glass. “If you don’t want to play cards, care to finally tell me what we’re doing here?”

  Thorington picked up his whisky and tossed it back in one go. “No.”

  Rafe refilled his glass. “And now?”

  “Leave it, Rafe. I already told you we shall have a family meeting in the morning — isn’t that soon enough?”

  Rafe shrugged. “Depends on what foolish errand you’ve embarked upon.”

  Rafe had already guessed the foolish errand. At least, he hoped he’d guessed. Otherwise, he’d wasted three weeks in Devonshire looking for Octavia Briarley, in addition to the four he’d lost in London after she had disappeared.

  Thorington had peremptorily told his siblings that they were going to Devonshire for the summer instead of their usual trip to the family’s country seat. Rafe should have stayed in London. He had work to do there, even in the slow days of August when most people were out of town.

  But Devonshire was where Maidenstone Abbey was. Maidenstone Abbey was where the Briarley house party would be held, which would determine which lady would inherit. Surely Octavia would turn up there.

  She had to turn up there. It was the only chance he had to find her.

  She’d gone completely to ground after Somerville had turned her out. Rafe had called on her house two days after seeing her at Somerville House, as agreed, and found men removing the rented furnishings. No one had been able to provide a forwarding address. She hadn’t left cards with any of her acquaintances telling them that she was leaving town. Somerville’s staff was tight-lipped. Octavia had, in effect, completely disappeared.

  He was more annoyed about this than he should have been. He told himself that it was because she was surely angry at Somerville — he could pry all the man’s secrets out of her if he found her in the right mood.

  But it was more than that. After their conversation, he’d thought of her more than he should have. More than he usually allowed himself to think of anyone involved in one of his missions. She was supposed to be a potential source of information, and nothing more than that.

  That didn’t explain why he was quite so disappointed when she had disappeared from London.

  “My foolish errand won’t seem so foolish in the morning,” Thorington said, bringing Rafe back to the matter at hand. “Anthony won’t like it, but he’ll adjust.”

  Rafe knew Thorington was baiting him. And anyway, Rafe had already guessed that Thorington intended to make Anthony marry one of the Briarley heiresses. It was the best chance Anthony, as a third son with no inheritance, would have at getting an estate of his own.

  Thorington was right, at least about the first part. Anthony most certainly wouldn’t like it. Rafe would have encouraged Thorington to pursue the subject with more diplomacy, if Thorington had asked for his advice.

  But Thorington never asked for advice.

  Rafe yawned. “Fascinating, I’m sure. I think it’s past time you were in bed.”

  “The sun has only just set.”

  “Country hours and all that,” Rafe said. “If you won’t take me into your confidence, I shall send you to bed without supper.”

  They’d had dinner hours earlier, and there was no need for supper. The innkeeper had gone to great lengths to feed them well during their stay. As he should have — Thorington had rented the entire inn for three weeks, and the innkeeper was happy to cater to their every whim. The public room will still available to the villagers, but business had returned to its usual levels after the first week, when the locals no longer came in to gawk at the duke and his family. At the moment, there were a few groups of men and women laughing and drinking around them, but for the most part, the village was quiet.

  Too quiet. He’d tried, over the past three weeks, to glean any gossip he could. None of them would say anything, even when he bought ale for the entire room. And even though he saw disapproval in most eyes when he mentioned Octavia’s name, he also saw loyalty. He’d bought information in some of the most close-lipped villages on the Peninsula. But these villagers would die before they said anything disparaging about a Briarley.

  Thorington didn’t know anything about this, of course. He was too deep into his own plotting to notice that Rafe also had a scheme — which was exactly how Rafe wanted it. He had enough problems without Thorington mucking up his plans.

  So he was relieved when Thorington drained the rest of his whisky and stood up. “I will see you in the morning, then.”

  Rafe watched him go. Thorington would check on their siblings before bed. Anthony, Serena, and Portia were upstairs in a room they’d taken as a sitting room, no doubt arguing with each other while playing cards. Thorington didn’t like for their sisters to join them in the public room downstairs, so he kept them penned up — waiting, as Rafe did, for answers.

  There was going to be trouble there someday. Thorington meant well, but he’d become rigid in the last decade. Rafe supposed a dukedom, with all the power and all the responsibility, did that to someone. Thorington still unbent around Rafe sometimes, but he rarely treated the younger set as anything more than children.

  But that wasn’t Rafe’s problem at the moment. As soon as Thorington disappeared up the stairs, he signaled the innkeeper.

  Mr. Barker hurried over, greeting Rafe with just the right mix of obsequious bonhomie. “Another whisky, my lord? Something to eat?”

  “No. Any word about Octavia Briarley? Is she in residence at the abbey?”

  The innkeeper’s good humor faded. “Not that I know of, my lord.”

  Rafe slid a shilling across the table. “Have you asked?”

  Barker looked down at the coin. He picked it up between his thumb and one finger, like it was tainted — but he took it. “My niece is a chambermaid at the abbey, my lord. She said Miss Octavia’s room is empty and that Miss Lucretia hasn’t given orders to prepare it for her.”

  Interesting. He slid another coin across the table. “Does your niece know when Miss Octavia will arrive?”

  He picked up the second coin, quicker this time. “She thinks Miss Octavia won’t stay at the abbey, my lord. Too much bad blood. It’s the way of things with the Briarleys, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Tragic, it is. Those girls used to be thick as thieves, just like their fathers before them. But they….”

  He trailed off abruptly, as though remembering that Rafe was an outsider. But Rafe didn’t need to hear any more. He’d heard enough murmurings to know that Octavia and Lucretia hated each other.

  Still, it was odd — why wouldn’t Octavia go to the party? She was entirely ruined, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t inherit. Maidenstone Abbey was too large a prize to forfeit without a fight. Many men would marry someone far less eligible than Octavia if they stood to gain an estate for their pains. And Octavia wasn’t the type to give up. He would have guessed she would attend the party even if she wasn’t included in the competition, just to rub her presence in the faces of all the aristocrats who had cut her after her ruin.

  He dismissed Barker and swirled the whisky in his glass. He was glad Thorington had gone to bed. It was harder to feign excessive consumption when drinking with only one other person, especially one as concerned with his well-being as Thorington was.

  But he took another sip. This was a conundrum. He’d agreed to come to Salcombe with Thorington because he guessed that Octavia would be there. But the locals wouldn’t say anything about her. From the gossip his London correspondents sent, Octavia’s trail had gone cold. His friends in Bath and Brighton hadn’t seen her, and Rafe could think of nowhere else she might have gone without him hearing of it. She was notorious enough that he would have heard if she’d taken another protector.

  She had to come to Maidenstone eventually. Surely it wasn’t just his own need that made him believe that. But if the in
nkeeper was right, she might not be at the party at all.

  That simply wouldn’t do. Rafe didn’t want to track her across England, especially without any clues. If he found her elsewhere, it would be clear that he had gone out of his way to find her — and that might spook her.

  It would also be clear to Whitehall what he was up to. He was glad that Thorington had managed to secure an invitation to the Maidenstone party — it had given him an excuse to give to his superiors about why he was in Salcombe instead of London. If Rafe were overthrowing a foreign government, they might have applauded him. They wouldn’t feel similarly about him destroying a British citizen’s political career.

  Still, if he went to Maidenstone Abbey when the party started and Octavia wasn’t there, he couldn’t waste any more time. He had to find her. Soon, before she took another protector and recovered from any wounded pride she had over being abandoned by Somerville.

  Rafe didn’t believe in luck. Not anymore, not after Spain. Or, if he believed in luck, he believed in it the way that the wheel of fortune was often depicted in art — if you were on top of the world one moment, the wheel would inevitably turn and crush you under its weight. He’d felt that way in that tavern in Salamanca the previous year, celebrating after breaking part of the French code that would tell Wellington everything about the enemy’s movements — and then, the next day, being captured by the French.

  So even though he wanted to find Octavia — even though she was the key to everything he needed to take down Somerville — he didn’t like, or trust, the suddenness of what happened next.

  A stir near the door drew his attention. A woman walked in, dark hair gleaming in the flickering light of cheap tallow candles. She could make any room look like a palace, and then make herself the queen of it.

  She strode across the room, tipping her head graciously at the locals. They didn’t bow and scrape as they might to another highborn lady. But they didn’t scorn her, either. They were too wary for scorn.

  Rafe’s breath caught in his throat. Octavia Briarley was here, in this room, like luck had delivered her to him.

  Which could only mean this was about to become a disaster.

  She walked straight toward him. He stood, without thinking — he always stood for ladies. And no matter what her reputation was, Octavia was obviously, always, a lady.

  She smiled at him. He saw his doom in her dark eyes, saw it all an instant before she spoke — how victory was suddenly within his grasp, and how the wheel of fortune might turn and destroy him just as he seized it.

  “Lord Rafael,” she said, her drawling voice as out of place in Devonshire as her elegant gown and her elaborately coiffed hair. “I heard I might find you here.”

  Chapter Six

  She knew that he was shocked to see her. But he was too polished to let her see the shock for long. He gave her an easy smile. “Madame Octavia,” he said, bowing. “This is a surprise.”

  It was almost a surprise to her as well. She needed an ally in her quest to destroy Lucy — and Lord Rafael was perfectly suited for that role. But she had debated for days whether to come to him — whether to risk making an alliance with him, when he could be as dangerous to her security as every other man had been. Her heart had risen into her throat as soon as she had seen him across the room. She might have turned around if she had thought he hadn’t seen her yet.

  But she’d had weeks to make her plans. There was no way around the fact that Lord Rafael, as the only guest she could safely approach before the party, was vital to her schemes.

  She dropped into the chair across from him without waiting for his invitation. “No more of a surprise than I had when I heard you and your family were in Salcombe. Why haven’t you called on me?”

  He frowned. “Have you been at the abbey many days already?”

  “No. But I’ve been at my brother’s former hunting lodge for ages. It isn’t so far from Salcombe that you couldn’t find me there.”

  She was baiting him, testing to see how he might respond. She thought he might have looked chagrined, but it must have been a trick of the light as he took his seat across from her. When he looked up again, his smile was smooth.

  And his grey eyes were far too amused.

  “The innkeeper wouldn’t say a word of your whereabouts — only that you weren’t in your room at the abbey.”

  Octavia already knew that Lord Rafael hadn’t learned her location, but she didn’t want him to know that she had spied on him. The innkeeper had told her that Lord Rafael was asking about her. She could have talked to him weeks before this night.

  But she had waited until tonight — partially to make sure she knew what she needed from him, and partially because she suspected it would be a very, very dangerous idea to spend too much time with him before the party began. She couldn’t wait any longer, though. The party would start in the morning. And from what she’d learned during her attempts to infiltrate the house and the staff, she would lose access to Lord Rafael as soon as he crossed Maidenstone’s threshold.

  The servants didn’t wish her harm. But they were also firm in following Lucy’s orders and keeping her out. Too many of the servants’ ancestors had learned, through bitter experience, not to double cross the Briarleys until it was clear that a new family member would be taking over the estate.

  As long as Lucy was in charge, the servants wouldn’t let Octavia into the house. Octavia had tried sneaking in once, but Claxton had found her and escorted her out. She couldn’t buy their loyalty, either. Even Agnes, who was friendly with most of the staff, was barred from entering. Agnes had spent more time at the pub than she normally would have, gathering whatever information she could find, but the servants who visited the village on their half-days knew better than to tell Agnes any secrets or give her any help.

  That meant Octavia needed to make an alliance with a guest. She needed someone inside Maidenstone who could let her through locked doors and pass rumors on to her.

  Someone like Lord Rafael. But the way he looked at her, like she was a chicken who had unwittingly walked up to a fox, made her nervous.

  She couldn’t give in to doubt now. “I suppose it’s true that I’m not at the abbey. But you know how it is in the country. The tenants and villagers are suspicious of outsiders.”

  That, and she had ordered the innkeeper not to tell Lord Rafael or anyone else that she was in the neighborhood until she was ready to reveal her location. But they would have protected her even without that order, as long as helping her didn’t go against Lucy’s orders.

  “So it seems that I never would have found you,” he said. “But the opera season is over anyway, and there are no entertainments in Salcombe that would tempt you to join me.”

  The reference to what they might have done in London if she had stayed there — and if she hadn’t been so stupidly loyal to Somerville — made her a little wistful. “I hope there shall be more operas in the future. But I didn’t come to speak of that. I came to make you an offer.”

  “I do not know whether to thank my fate or run from it.”

  He drawled the words, but there was something in his tone that said he wasn’t making a jest. For a single moment, he looked at her as though she were a firing squad and he was a condemned man considering his last words.

  But the moment passed, so quickly that she would forget about it until days later…forget the warning she should have seen, in favor of the story she wanted to believe.

  “You should thank your fate, Lord Rafael,” she said. “If you’re here, it can only be because you or your brothers hope to win Maidenstone. And I can help you, if you agree to help me.”

  Lord Rafael shrugged. He looked elegant, effortlessly so, even in a small inn far from the centers of power. “I can’t say why my family is here, Madame Octavia.”

  “Keeping secrets?” She laughed. The flirtation began to come easier to her. She noticed the way his eyes shifted, momentarily, to her mouth. “You don’t have to pull the wool over m
e. There can be no other reason why you and your family would reside in Devonshire so long unless you intended to be made eligible for marriage licenses in the parish.”

  Three weeks of residence in the locale for both the bride and groom was all that was necessary to get a marriage license from the local diocese without the delay of reading banns. It took a small fee, of course, but was far cheaper than a special license — and far easier to get quickly, since the local diocese in Exeter could be reached in a day and the special license could only come from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was the only reason why someone like Thorington would choose to reside somewhere like Salcombe for so long.

  “I’m not keeping secrets,” Lord Rafael said. “It could very well be that Thorington intends to marry one of you, but he hasn’t told me his plans. I’m merely here to drink his whisky. If we adjourn to Maidenstone Abbey and I can drink from your grandfather’s wine cellar instead, all the better.”

  He sipped his whisky as though to emphasize his point. Then he frowned. “Where have my manners gone? Would you care for a drink, Madame Octavia?”

  A drink would only delay the inevitable. But the temporary courage it would give her might help. And she had been alone for weeks — an additional five minutes in Lord Rafael’s company was worth the delay. “I’ll happily take your drink, Lord Rafael.”

  He signaled Barker. “A glass of sherry,” he said when the innkeeper reached them. “Unless the lady prefers champagne.”

  The lady did prefer champagne, but Barker didn’t sell enough of it to keep the best stuff on hand. “Whisky,” she said smoothly. “And a cup of tea.”

  “Two cups of tea,” Lord Rafael said. “And bring her a glass. She can drink as much of my bottle of whisky as she can hold.”

  Barker followed this exchange with equal parts confusion and curiosity. “Yes, my lord. Do you still take milk, Miss Briarley? Or one of the wife’s biscuits?”