How to Woo a Reluctant Lady (29 page)

When he got an odd look of alarm on his face, she felt a twinge of guilt, then squelched it. If he refused to tell her anything about his life, then perhaps he deserved to worry about what she might put in her books.

“But you’re not planning to put the theft—”

“No, Giles,” she said. “I told you before—I don’t want to see my husband arrested for stealing. I’m no fool.”

She left the bed. They were married, for goodness sake. Did he really think she would risk his career?

Honestly, he was taking this far too seriously. No one had noticed that the character was him. She doubted anyone ever would.

Oliver recognized the masquerade party. And he could one day realize that Rockton isn’t him at all, but Giles.

She shook off that concern. That seemed extremely unlikely.

“Are we going to eat anything?” she asked. “I swear, I’m famished.”

“I’ll call for a servant,” he said, leaving the bed. “What do you want?”

After that, they were a bit less awkward together, but only a bit. Even as they ate breakfast and went out to tour Calais, she sensed that something was still wrong between them. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but Giles seemed preoccupied, worried even.

What could he be worried about here, on their wedding trip? She couldn’t think of anything. Yet as they strolled the
ramparts with its pretty gardens and walked to the end of the pier to watch the swimmers, he seemed to take little pleasure in their ramblings.

“Are you all right?” she finally asked after they’d climbed to the top of the Tour de Guet and were looking across the Channel at the cliffs of Dover.

He stiffened. “I’m fine. Why?”

“You’re the one who wanted to come to Calais, but you don’t seem to be enjoying it.”

He forced a smile. “I’m just tired. A certain someone woke me early to have her wicked way with me.”

“Early!” She laughed. “You have no idea what early is, sir. Just be glad I didn’t get up in the middle of the night and light a candle so I could jot down notes for a book.”

“Do you do that?”

“Sometimes.” She stared pensively across the Channel. “I really ought to be making more notes if I’m going to use this trip as part of Rockton’s spying adventures.”

Giles groaned. “I still don’t see why you had to make him a spy for the French.”

“He’s a villain. He couldn’t be a spy for the English.”

“But why a spy? Bad enough you made him a reckless gambler and a seducer of women.”

“That description fits half the men in the ton, including my brothers and you. Rockton had to be something more . . . fearsome.”

He got very quiet. “I
am
a patriot, you know.”

“Of course you are.” She squeezed his arm. “Do try to remember that Rockton is fictional. He may have started out as you, but he became something else once he came to life on the page. He’s a figment of my imagination more than anything.”

“So you say,” he grumbled.

“Look, if his very existence annoys you, I shall just kill him off.”

She expected the same protest he’d made on their wedding day, so she was surprised when he said, “Perhaps that would be best.” Then he cast her an uncertain smile. “Don’t mind me. I’m just out of sorts. Do what you think best with the character.”

He changed the subject, but she couldn’t get his reaction out of her mind. He really had taken it to heart how she’d portrayed him. She ought to feel guilty for that, but she couldn’t. He would never have come back into her life if she hadn’t created Rockton.

They spent the next hour visiting the Notre Dame church, a pretty building. It was very Catholic, with a plethora of candles and an impressive altar of Italian marble bedecked by eighteen statues. There were little silver charms stuck to the statues, representing eyes, ears, hands, and the like. When they asked about it, they were told that the charms were offerings to whatever saint was believed to have cured the body part.

She raised an eyebrow at that, but wrote it in her notebook. And they both admired the painting over the altar, which was purportedly a Van Dyck.

By the time they returned to the hotel, Giles seemed more himself. Until he discovered there was a message waiting for him. When he didn’t explain what it was for, just shoved the paper in his pocket, she asked about it. His comment that it was a note from the packet captain reminding them of the departure time for the next morning didn’t ring true. Why would the captain go to such trouble?

Then again, whom else could Giles possibly receive a message from in Calais? He knew no one here, and no one in
England had known they were going to be here.

Really, she was seeing problems where there were none. Perhaps the packet captain had worried about them because they were newly wedded. That was probably all it was.

They had a lovely dinner and retired to bed, where Giles made love to her with such care and sweetness that she felt guilty for doubting his truthfulness. She lay in his arms a long while afterward, chiding herself for her suspicious nature.

She was just dropping off to sleep when he murmured, “I’m going downstairs to the common room for a glass of wine.”

Drowsily, she watched as he left the bed. “I thought you were tired.”

He dressed with his back to her. “I’m tired but not sleepy, if that makes any sense. I’m hoping the wine will help.”

Of course it made sense. It happened to her all the time. Still, something in his manner—the way he didn’t look at her, the care he took in dressing—gave her pause.

After he left she tried to go back to sleep, but sleep eluded her. She started imagining all the reasons he might really have for going down to the common room.

After tossing for half an hour, she grew annoyed with herself. She was becoming exactly the kind of shrewish wife she never wanted to be, the kind that a man like Giles would never tolerate. If she stewed in her thoughts any longer, she would have him consorting with whores in her mind, and she would accuse him of all sorts of ridiculous things when he came back upstairs.

Perhaps she should just go downstairs and set her mind to rest. She would tell him she couldn’t sleep without him, and he would be flattered, and it would be fine. Then they’d have a glass of wine together. Why not?

She took her time dressing, hoping he would come back up
before she even left the room. When he didn’t, she tried not to let it bother her. She sauntered very casually down the stairs.

The common room was filled with travelers, mostly men, in various stages of intoxication. When a few eyed her with interest, it occurred to her that perhaps she shouldn’t have come down here so late alone. Especially since she couldn’t find Giles.

That
she hadn’t expected. The worst she’d feared was to find him flirting with some French maid. To find him absent entirely was terribly upsetting.

She sought out the owner, a squat little Frenchman who’d been solicitous of their comfort and who was presently serving wine to a couple of laborers. “Have you seen my husband, sir?” she asked in French.

“
Non, madame.
He eez gone upstairs, eez he not?”

The sudden hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach made her dizzy, but she managed a smile. “He must have gone to take the air,” she said in French.

The innkeeper nodded and returned to pouring wine.

Perhaps Giles really
was
taking the air. That’s what she would do at home if she couldn’t sleep.

But she wasn’t at home, and neither was he. Would he really have left her alone in an inn in a strange country, even to take a walk down the street?

She glanced out the front door, half hoping she would see him doing just that, but all she saw was a pair of drunkards stumbling home. Her heart lurched in her chest as she returned to their room. She was probably making too much of this, seeing shadows where there were none. She ought to go to bed and go to sleep.

But sleep wasn’t a choice until she knew if he was safe. So she hunted up the book she’d brought, climbed back into the bed,
and settled down to wait.

G
ILES SPENT SEVERAL
moments outside the Quilliacq, the French hotel where Newmarsh was staying. Giles had sent a message to the man shortly after their arrival, arranging a meeting and instructing him to send his answer to the British consul, who’d already been made aware that Giles was expecting a message to come for him there. Then the consul had sent the note on to Giles’s hotel.

He hadn’t wanted Newmarsh anywhere near his wife, and he certainly hadn’t wanted him to know where they were staying. No telling what the baron had up his sleeve.

So Giles took his usual precautions for any meeting with a suspicious character. He determined where the two hotel exits were, which apparently led into parallel streets. He paid close attention to the lighting—a few oil lanterns, badly trimmed. Though he didn’t expect an ambush, it never hurt to be prepared.

Then he entered and surveyed the hotel. The downstairs was shaped in a square, with hotel offices all around; sandwiched between two of those was a modest dining room, where he was supposed to meet Newmarsh.

He surveyed the lobby but could see no one about. A glance at his watch told him he was a little early. He and Newmarsh were supposed to meet at eleven
p.m.

So he went into the dining room and did a quick assessment. Other than a sleepy couple in one corner eating a late dinner and the servant who attended them, the place was quiet. This being a family hotel, there was no rabble drinking until all hours. Their conversation would be private, thank God.

He took a seat in the corner, keeping his back to the wall and his hand on his pistol. He’d had a little difficulty slipping his
pistol into his coat pocket while Minerva had been watching, but her sleepiness had worked to his benefit. With any luck, she would sleep until his return.

And if she didn’t?

He gritted his teeth. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Bad enough that he’d lied to her twice today already, but if she were to suspect that he’d left the hotel . . .

An image of her in bed assailed him. In her nightdress, she’d look sweet and fetching . . . and trusting. He didn’t like abusing that trust. But he couldn’t let her know secrets that might ruin him if she said something heedless.

Or if she wrote about them in a book.
I just thought that the entire incident made a good story. And what writer can resist using such fodder?
She would certainly find
this
worthy of putting in a book.

A motion in the doorway arrested him, and he turned to see a man making his slow way across the room. Newmarsh? Surely not. Newmarsh wasn’t even fifty. How could this gray-haired, thin, and stooped creature possibly be the hearty lord Giles had once known as a casual acquaintance?

But when Giles saw the man’s face, he dragged in a breath. It
was
Newmarsh, for God’s sake! What on earth had happened to him?

Giles rose to pull out a chair for the fellow, too flabbergasted to do anything else. At least he needn’t worry about Newmarsh trying to murder him.

The baron settled into the chair with ill grace. “You think I’m decrepit now, I suppose.”

“Certainly not,” Giles lied blandly as he took his seat.

Newmarsh summoned the servant and ordered a bottle of wine. “The doctors say I have a cancer in my liver. They do not expect me to live out the year.”

The news shocked Giles. There’d been no word in Newmarsh’s letter of being ill.

“Of course, who can believe these French doctors, eh?” Newmarsh settled back against his chair to cast Giles a long, piercing glance. “That’s why I had Ravenswood send you here. I want to return to England to consult with doctors there. And I want to see my mother—she’s too old to make the journey to France. I need you to convince Ravenswood and his superiors to allow me to go home.”

That
Giles hadn’t expected. “Why me?”

Newmarsh eyed him askance. “Let’s not dance around the truth, shall we? We both know that you’re the one who stole those financial documents from my desk and brought them to the government. You’re the ‘concerned citizen’ who turned them over, and you alone are responsible for my present state of exile.”

Giles fought to keep his features unreadable. “What makes you think that?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” At Giles’s scowl, he said, “I’ve known it was you for a long time, Masters. I daresay you lifted those documents during that ill-conceived masquerade party I held.”

Giles tensed. “I was out of town for that.”

“Were you?” The servant brought the wine and poured two glasses. After he left, Newmarsh took a sip, then said, “That’s not what your brother told me.”

A chill swept down Giles’s spine. “My brother.”

“Didn’t he mention running into me in Paris eight years ago, while on his honeymoon?”

“No,” Giles said, his mind reeling.

“He was here with his first wife. Sarah, right?” At Giles’s wooden nod, he said, “I always suspected that the documents were stolen by someone Sully had bilked, or one of their
relations, but that encompassed a large number of suspects. Still, your father’s suicide made you two the most likely candidates. Except that you were both supposedly in Berkshire at the time.”

Giles remained silent, astonished that the baron knew so much, and by such a strange means, too.

“When I ran into Kirkwood in Paris, I decided to see what I could learn. Within moments I realized he hadn’t engineered my ruin. He seemed surprised to hear that I was living out my days in France. Then I asked about you. I told him that the last time I’d seen you was at my masquerade party, the one he’d missed.”

With a curse, Giles downed some of his wine.

Newmarsh settled back with a cold smile. “He said, ‘Aha, so
that’s
where he ran off to.’ It seems you’d left Berkshire early, telling your mother you had to return to town for a trial. Kirkwood had always assumed you’d gone back to town early to cavort with the demi-reps.”

A churning began in Giles’s stomach that even the wine wouldn’t quell.

“I daresay I could find out for certain if you were there,” Newmarsh went on. “Someone is bound to have seen you in town or at the party. Not that it would matter. The minute I mention that papers were stolen from my study that implicated me in a crime, everyone will be eager to figure out who did it. Someone is sure to know something.”