A Bride by Moonlight (26 page)

It was a grave misjudgment. The maid popped back up, backhanding the fellow with his own chamber pot, fracturing his nose.

Mrs. Jansen could barely contain a smile over dinner upon hearing of this contretemps, and the following morning, to no one’s surprise, Underwood pronounced Walton fully recovered—save for his nose, which was accounted likely never to be straight again.

Gwyneth laughed out loud at the news. “One can only hope,” she crowed, “that a lumpy black-and-yellow nose will not put Mrs. Boothe off
too
badly.”

And so, with the house slowly returning to normal and the fear subsiding, Napier tried to force his attention back to the one thing that, from the very first, had sat uneasily with him—the business of Lord Hepplewood’s death, and by extension his uncle’s—for if he did not dwell on that, he knew he’d find himself contemplating something a good deal more troubling.

But Hepplewood’s fate could no longer distract him from the temptation that was Lisette Colburne.

Napier felt restless and bewitched, caught in the throws of a nameless longing that felt by turns like both agony and temptation. Temptation when Lisette caught his gaze over the dining table, something enigmatic simmering in her green-blue gaze, and agony—well, the agony came at night, particularly when he counted off the steps that separated their bedchambers. Which totaled precisely twenty-three.

With both footmen returned to service, dinner on Monday evening resumed its usual form with all the formality of a great English house, and more courses than Napier cared to count—or eat. One chair, however, sat empty, for Mrs. Jansen claimed another headache and did not come down and soon Diana, too, left the table early to entertain Beatrice in her stead.

By the time coffee was finished in the drawing room, Duncaster had fallen asleep, slumped in a chair with his fingers laced over his waistcoat, and Gwyneth and Lord Hepplewood were squabbling over a hand of piquet, the former having declared
carte blanche.

“I know perfectly well,” said Hepplewood, his words a little slurred, “that you’ve a knave hidden behind that eight of hearts.”

“Tony, how utterly vile!” Gwyneth retorted. “No, I won’t show them again. Do you imagine me an idiot?”

“You’re a cheat, Gwen,” her cousin retorted. “You do it all the time.”

“All the time?” Gwyneth had turned beet red. “Really, Tony? That’s your excuse? I did it once. When I was
twelve
. And you’ve already got a sheet in the wind. Perhaps you might put down that glass of sherry, and simply play your hand?”

“And perhaps you might put down that overbearing attitude?” Hepplewood suggested, tossing his cards onto the table. “Or just go back upstairs. Doubtless Mrs. Jansen can be persuaded to give you a game you like better.”

Lady Hepplewood snatched up her ebony stick. “The two of you,” she said coldly, “are to set an example for the lower orders, not act like them.”

“Mamma, I—”

“Spare me your excuses,” Lady Hepplewood snapped, planting the stick firmly on the carpet. “If you wish to display vulgarity, Tony, kindly go down to the village tav—”

Duncaster punctuated this discussion with a loud
snk-snk-snoork!
then let his chin fall back into the folds of his cravat.

Napier jerked from his chair and proposed a walk in the gardens, looking rather pointedly at Lisette. “Perhaps,” he added, “we might go so far as the lake? The moon is nearly full.”

The plan, however, backfired. Her posture still rigid, Gwyneth rose and, with a flick of her wrist, sent her cards skimming across the table into Hepplewood’s lap. “A capital notion,” she said. “I, for one, find this house oppressive.”

“I should adore a walk.” Lisette picked up her cashmere shawl that lay across the arm of her chair. “It looks to be a cloudless night.”

Hepplewood might have been in his cups, but not so impaired he couldn’t grasp he was about to be abandoned to the tender mercies of his mother. “Love to go,” he declared, coming a little unsteadily to his feet. “Unless the betrothed wish a moment alone?”

“Oh, no, we should love company,” said Lisette so brightly Napier could have strangled her.

And yet she was doing, Napier suspected, precisely what he’d been doing for several days now. Evading. Avoiding. Pretending. And trying, perhaps, to convince herself that they had not crossed all boundaries. That he had not taken from her something that was not his by rights.

And that she had not willingly given it.

Yes, perhaps Lisette was suffering regret. But he would never know, he realized, if he did not speak to her of it; might never understand what was truly in her heart if he could not bear to ask.

But it was not so much her feelings for him that he questioned; he did not overly flatter himself in that regard. Instead he found himself increasingly desperate to know
her
. Her nature. Her character.

At first glance, it had been so easy for him to assume Elizabeth Colburne was ice-hearted— even a little unstable. Or a murderer. Yet with each passing day, it grew harder to appraise her at a distance—not even when she kept such a distance between them. He simply desired her, and feared he was fast falling in love with her. And more disconcertingly, what he might learn beyond that simple fact was rapidly ceasing to matter.

No, at this point, it was more a matter of simply figuring out how deeply he was in—then living with himself ever after.

Blithely unaware of his unsettled emotions, the three of them followed Napier out by the back terrace and through the gardens. It was just as well. He had more chance of resolving the deaths at Burlingame than the one left hanging over him in Greenwich—which wasn’t saying much.

He walked on, scarcely absorbing the moonlit beauty of the gardens. On the outs with Gwyneth, Hepplewood soon hitched his arm through Lisette’s and began to regale her with hilarious escapades from his boyhood summers spent gallivanting about the estate.

Left to walk in near silence with his cousin, Napier offered her his arm. Gwyneth Tarleton had a businesslike stride to match his own, and soon they were some distance ahead.

Beyond the shadows of the house, a stillness reigned over the gardens, settling around them like cotton wool to muffle the world beyond. The only sounds were the melancholy hoot of an owl in the wood beyond the lake and an occasional trill of laughter behind them. Napier drew the cool, clean air deep into his lungs and realized that though he might miss the bustle of London, a life of peace and quiet had much to recommend it.

Soon they turned from the formal gardens onto the long, yew-lined path that led down to the lake. Behind them, Hepplewood had begun to flirt with Lisette.

Gwyneth cast a dark look over her shoulder. “You mustn’t mind Tony,” she muttered. “He’s harmless, I assure you.”

“Oh, I don’t mind him in the least,” said Napier honestly.

“Well, most men do,” said Gwyneth. “Shockingly good-looking, the devil. But all charm and no gravitas. An intelligent woman would never fall for it.”

“No,” said Napier dryly, “but many a stupid one likely has.”

Gwyneth laughed, but when he said no more, she spoke again. “You’re very quiet tonight, cousin.”

“Am I?” he said. “You’d better rattle on about something, then. I’m an inadequate conversationalist at best.”

“Oh, I’ve no talent for social banter,” said Gwyneth, “according to Aunt Hepplewood. So, deficient as we are, how shall we begin? Here, I’ll attempt it. Burlingame’s gardens are beautiful at night, don’t you think? I love how the moon reflects on the water.”

“Everything about Burlingame is beautiful,” Napier quietly acknowledged. “Breathtakingly so. One cannot begin to comprehend it in one visit, or even two.”

Gwyneth seemed daunted by this open admiration and lapsed into silence again.

Napier cleared his throat a little gruffly. “Miss Tarleton,” he said, “I hope you understand I mean you no—”

“Gwyneth,” she said hastily. “You really must call me Gwyneth now. And you are Nicholas Royden, after your father, are you not? I can call you Royden, if you’d like, rather than Saint-Bryce.”

“I wish you would,” he said.

“Royden was our great-great-grandmother’s surname,” Gwyneth continued in a conversational tone. “And by tradition, someone in the family always bears it in her honor.”

“Then it seems odd that I, of all people, should have it.”

Gwyneth shrugged. “Your father was Nicholas Royden Tarleton before he changed the surname,” she said. “I daresay he simply wished to name his son after himself. As to Grandmamma Royden, it was her massive dowry that made Burlingame the grand house it is today, and built the folly tower. That’s what it is properly called—the Royden Tower—but I daresay you knew that?”

“Actually,” he admitted, “I did not.”

And for an instant, Napier felt an almost childish stab of resentment that she should have the privilege of knowing such family intimacies when he knew almost nothing at all. But that had been his father’s choice, not Gwyneth’s. And when had he begun to have a sense of longing about this place?

“The tower,” he said evenly, “must be a hundred feet tall.”

“Well, not quite,” she replied. “It’s said Grandmamma Royden built it so that she could gaze upon her father’s house in Berkshire when homesick.” Gwyneth smiled up at him in the gloom. “Until she married in, Burlingame was just a ramshackle little manor.”

“One can scarcely fathom it,” he murmured as laughter punctuated the air somewhere behind them.

Gwyneth ignored the sound. “Well, old history little matters in these modern times, however families might cling to it,” she said with an ease he would not have credited. “Besides, I have heard that round Scotland Yard, they rarely call you either Napier or Royden.”

He chuckled. “No, oftentimes not.”

“Is it true, then?” said his cousin, her face breaking into a smile in the moonlight. “Do they really call you Roughshod Roy?”

“Yes, and honestly earned,” Lisette called after them. “I expect it comes from his . . . well, let us politely call it his lack of diplomacy.”

“A failing I shall strive mightily to overcome, my dear,” he returned over his shoulder.

“Yes, well, I shan’t hold my breath,” said Lisette before returning to her chatter with Tony.

“In all seriousness, Gwyneth,” said Napier, returning to his earlier point, “Burlingame is magnificent, but I am ill suited to lead it. I marvel I should even be meant to do so. I should rather ten times over that my uncle Harold—your father—had lived to take it on, as he was brought up to do. I hope you can believe me.”

She turned to look at him as she walked, but they were in deep shadow now and he could only sense the faint smile on her face. “It is all rather ironic, is it not?” she said.

“What?”

“No one had more to gain by my father’s death than you,” said Gwyneth. “And yet you seem the only one concerned about it.”

“I hope that is not the case.”

She shrugged. “Oh, Bea is utterly crushed and Grandpapa is badly cast down, but I suppose he simply accepts that we can none of us bring Papa back, however much we might wish to. But you . . . well, you are prodding a little, are you not?”

“And when you say
prodding
,” Napier murmured, “what, precisely, do you suggest?”

“Oh, come now,” said Gwyneth in a knowing undertone. “Do you think I cannot see what you’re doing? Talking to Grandpapa and Dr. Underwood and even Beatrice. And Miss Colburne’s subtle questions, however delicately placed, scarcely deceive me. Now she might—
might
—be merely curious, as females often are. But you have been here three times now asking questions about Hepplewood. And now Papa, too.”

“I trust I’ve not troubled anyone too greatly,” said Napier, realizing Gwyneth was far more perceptive than he’d given her credit for.

“Oh, only Aunt Hepplewood.” Gwyneth gave a sharp laugh. “It is a good thing you brought Miss Colburne along, else you’d have suffered the constant onslaught Papa did. Indeed, I’m not sure Aunt has entirely given up her schemes.”

Napier did not pretend to misunderstand. “You are speaking of Miss Jeffers’s future, I collect,” he said. “But I am quite sure she can do better than me.”

“And I am quite sure,” said Gwyneth, “that she hopes so.”

Napier was unsure who the
she
in that comment was meant to be. Miss Jeffers? Lady Hepplewood?

“Might I ask a little about you, Gwyneth?” he said smoothly. “What are your hopes? Your dreams? Aunt Hepplewood tells me you don’t mean to marry.”

“I’m thirty years old,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “Does it look like I mean to marry?”

“Well, I merely meant—”

“You meant, I daresay, that you’ll want rid of me, too, as soon as Grandfather’s in the grave,” she said through nearly clenched teeth. “Indeed, to a man, there can be nothing so burdensome as an unwed female relation left hanging off the family tree, cluttering up his house.”

“Gwyneth,” he said gently, “I suggested nothing of the sort. And if the world were fair—”

“But it is not fair, is it?” she interposed. “If it were, women would be allowed to inherit. And Burlingame would be
mine
. Not yours.”

Napier drew back an inch. But Gwyneth had spoken with less bitterness than frustration. Perhaps he was not the only one to feel slighted by fate.

“You are quite right,” he admitted. “It is not fair. Can it be altered? I think it cannot. The laws of entail are entrenched.”

“Deeply entrenched,” she agreed, her ire receding. “And no, I don’t want a husband. I just want what I’ve always wanted, and the one thing Papa would never—”

Her words fell away, and despite the shadows, he could see the chagrin sketch over her face. They had reached the planked pier that led from the glorious green lawn out into the lake, ending at a nearly water-bound structure that was more a gazebo than a boathouse. The water gently undulated all around it, throwing up the moonlight like slivers of glass.

Lisette and her new admirer had fallen a few yards behind. Napier paused at the end of the pier, hoping Gwyneth would continue speaking.