Chapter 7

Ryland lurched as the door he’d been about to knock on disappeared only to be replaced with Miranda’s determined face. His fist, already in motion, connected with her nose.

“Oh!” Her gasp corresponded with his surprised outcry.

“My lady!” Thank God he hadn’t called out her name. No doubt he had years of covert experience to thank for that.

Miranda collapsed backward on the floor, both hands flying up to cover her nose. Her eyes were shut tightly against the pain that was sure to be shooting through her face.

He winced as he crouched down next to her.

“Are you all right?” That sounded appropriately desperate. Griffith was not going to take kindly to the news that Ryland had knocked his sister to the ground. If he had been a real valet, he would be very afraid of dismissal at that moment.

She pulled her hands away from her face and frowned. “I’m bleeding.”

Her voice was flat, probably still stunned. Ryland would be willing to bet the girl had never been struck in her life. There probably hadn’t even been a switch in the nursery growing up.

He peeked at her hands to see a few small spots of familiar bright red. He had not hit her as hard as he feared then, for blood was not streaming from her pretty nose. Ryland shook his head. The last thing he needed to focus on was how pretty Miranda’s nose was, even with a few spots of almost dried blood around the edges.

She held her hands up for him to get a closer look. “I’m bleeding!” she said again, with considerably more feeling.

“Well, not much, truth be told. I’ve seen considerably worse.”

That was probably not the best thing to say.

She glared at him. A tense few moments passed where Ryland had nothing to do but stare into narrowed green eyes. He could think of far worse ways to spend his time, but her eyes belonged in the same category as her nose: currently off-limits. Once this mission was over, he could consider spending a great deal of time focusing on her features, but right now it was a bad idea.

He fully expected a thrashing, emotional setdown. All evidence he’d seen thus far indicated she was a boiling pot of high emotion, cleverly concealed behind a shield of ladylike behavior.

“I suppose I should put something on it. Trent always puts meat on his nose when he gets busted up.” A delicate shudder passed through her frame before she continued her monologue.

Her practicality nearly knocked him off his feet.

“This is going to be revolting. I like my meat thoroughly cooked and covered in sauce. That is an entirely English sentiment, I know, but I have never been anywhere else, so I cannot really bring myself to care.”

Did she even remember he was in the room? He never knew a well-bred lady who talked to herself. It was rather endearing. “The cold is said to help, my lady.”

She jerked her face back toward his, blushing. So she had forgotten he was in the room. A rather humbling thought, that.

One hand whisked through the air, as if pushing the awkwardness aside so she could focus on what was important. “Would you see that this letter gets sent? You can direct it however you did the one last week.”

Years of keeping emotions from his face made it easy to hide his pleasure at the idea that she’d answered his letter so quickly. Confusion soon followed, however. Her hands were empty. Nothing was on the floor around her. Unless she was sitting on it, he didn’t have a clue where the letter she was talking about was. “What letter, my lady?”

Miranda frowned at her empty hands, then looked around much as he had just done. She gestured toward her writing desk across the room. A white rectangle rested halfway between him and the chair. He raised a brow at the haphazard pile of remaining correspondence littering the floor but chose not to say anything.

“Over there. Addressed to the Duke of Marshington.”

As he bent to retrieve the letter, he heard her groping her way to the bed. Was she dizzy? She apparently needed the assistance of the sturdy furniture to stand. He respectfully gave her a few moments.

While he waited he took in the rest of the writing desk. A small corner of blue paper peeked out from underneath a slim volume of poetry. He battled back a grin. Had she written two letters in response to his single line?

A soft, feminine groan had him jerking back around to face her. Miranda stood, one hand on the bedpost, one pressed to her forehead.

“I barely tapped you,” he grumbled under his breath. He’d lost more blood shaving himself in a hurry without a mirror, so it must be the emotional trauma causing her to weave her way across the floor. He’d seen enough injuries to know that even mild ones could knock a person senseless.

“What was that?” she mumbled.

“I was merely wondering if I might be of assistance, my lady.” Ryland threw the letter onto the desk and crossed the room to steady her. A soft scent he couldn’t quite place tickled his nose. It wasn’t floral in nature, but it suited her well.

“Just help me get downstairs.”

He held her arm while she took a few slow, shaky steps on her own. At the rate she was moving, it would be time for dinner before she made it anywhere.

“If I may, my lady.” Ryland scooped her up in his arms, appreciating the feel of her clasping his shoulders in surprise and, perhaps, a bit of fear. She probably had not been carried since she was a little girl.

“Put me down!” she hissed.

“My lady.” Ryland knew his tone was belittling, but he couldn’t help it. When he opened his mouth, it sounded as if he were talking to a child. “This is the fastest way to convey you to your desired location.”

“Put me in the family parlor, then. You can fetch Sally and have her bring the meat up to me.” Another shudder racked her body.

Ryland was much more aware of it this time, since she was in his arms. He began to sweat.

“Of course, my lady.”

After gently depositing her on the sofa in the family’s private parlor, Ryland bowed himself out the door. He sent a footman to find Sally before returning to Miranda’s room to retrieve the letter.

Feeling a little guilty about throwing her morning into chaos, he gathered up the dropped letters beside the desk. He traced a finger over the vine running through the carpet’s pattern. It was vaguely reminiscent of a splendid carpet in his own home in London. At least, the carpet had been in the library the last time he had been home. It was possible his money-hungry cousin had sold it, but he doubted it. He paid his steward and estate manager obscene amounts of money to keep his greedy relatives in check.

He placed the stack of letters on the desk, then picked up the white letter she’d asked him to mail. The corner of blue peeking out from under the book of poetry caught his eye once more. With a grin, he pulled it out and looked over both letters. She thought to give the Duke of Marshington a brush-off, did she? The formal tone of her intended letter didn’t suit his purposes at all.

The blue paper found its way into his pocket and the white one replaced it under the slim book. This was sure to muddle Miranda’s mind a bit, but the slight knock to the head would have her wondering if she were remembering things clearly.

He was halfway back to the door when it occurred to him that he was in Miranda’s room.

Alone.

He’d felt no discomfort going through Georgina’s things and only a bit uncomfortable searching Griffith’s room, but the idea of invading Miranda’s private chambers felt wrong. Wrong enough that he almost continued walking from the room. It wouldn’t be the first time an agent’s personal feelings had gotten in the way of his job—which was why Ryland jerked open her closet door and searched every pocket, bag, and hemline.

His search wasn’t as thorough as it might have been but it was enough to satisfy his professional guilt. Dropping to his knees he did a quick look under the bed, surprised to find a large, shallow trunk.

All of the luggage trunks were kept in another area of the house. Why was this one here?

It was incredibly heavy as he pulled it out. And it was locked.

Heart pounding, Ryland grabbed a couple of hair pins from the dressing table and went to work on the lock. The last thing he expected when he popped the lid was paper.

Letters to be precise. Hundreds of them. All addressed to the Duke of Marshington.

As much as he wanted to, he didn’t read them. What he was doing with the recently written letters was bad enough. He didn’t need to compound the problem.

There was one bit of curiosity he had to satisfy though. Digging in the back of the trunk he found the oldest letters, written on plain white paper. He flipped one open to look at the date.

1800. The woman had been writing to him for twelve years.

How was he ever going to live up to the ideal man she’d created in her mind?

Miranda waited until the last possible moment to go down for dinner. She successfully avoided meeting with Griffith and Georgina in the drawing room beforehand, but there was no way to avoid the actual meal unless she begged off as ill, which would create a host of other problems.

Georgina’s nose wrinkled as Miranda took her seat. Miranda feared it wasn’t a reaction to the unpleasant aroma wafting up from the onion soup. She’d avoided looking in a mirror, not wanting to know if her encounter had left a mark.

“What happened to you?”

Miranda sighed. Her sister’s question brought Griffith’s scrutiny. “What did happen to you? There’s a bruise across the bridge of your nose.”

She couldn’t tell him his new valet had done it. He’d probably drag Mr. Herbert back from retirement. “A bit of a clumsy moment is all. I didn’t even bump it that hard. It must have hit exactly right.”

Georgina snickered into her serviette as Griffith’s eyes narrowed. “What hit you exactly right?”

He sounded calm, but he looked suspicious. She’d never been very good at telling lies.

“The, um . . .” She spied a painting on the wall across the room. A woman reclined on a chaise with a book in her hand. “Book!”

His eyebrows shot up. Georgina’s snickers turned into a laughing cough.

“A book?” he asked.

“Yes!” Miranda shifted in her seat, feeling confident in her inspired story. “I was reading in bed and I fell asleep and the book fell right onto my nose.”

Griffith ate some soup. “What book was it?”

He wanted to know what book it was? Miranda shoved a spoonful of soup into her mouth, wishing it were something that required a large amount of chewing. A bite of soup only delayed the conversation for a moment. “It was . . .” Another frantic visual search of the room brought nothing to mind. “Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Yes.”

They all lapsed into silence as the soup was removed and the next course placed on the table. Miranda felt ill simply looking at it. She’d never view meat the same way again.

Georgina grinned. “I’ve always loved his work. Which one were you reading?”

There should be a law against bratty younger sisters. Georgina couldn’t name three Shakespeare plays if her life depended on it. “Twelfth Night.”

Where had that come from? Oh yes, that was what Marlow had been reading in the library the other night. Fitting choice, then.

Griffith stared at her. “Twelfth Night?”

“Er, yes. But I’m not very far into it, so I can’t make much discussion about it.”

Miranda began to worry about her older brother. He looked deep in thought, as if he were trying to remember something that was just out of his mental reach.

With a shake of his head he gave her a tight smile. “We should talk about something else, then.”

Miranda stuffed a bite of meat into her mouth. This was going to be a very long dinner.

Griffith’s bed was exceptionally comfortable. Ryland was going to have to look into getting himself a mattress like this one when he got home. Of course, it could have been the years of sleeping in hovels and low-class rooms that made the high-quality mattress seem that much more comfortable.

The large four-poster walnut bed, however, he could do without. It had been in the family for generations, and Griffith frequently described it as horribly ugly, but the last six dukes had slept in it, and he was a sucker for a sentimental tradition.

Ryland shrugged and settled farther back into the pillows. What was he going to do with Miranda’s letter? He had to answer it, of course. It was only a matter of time before she realized the wrong one was still on her writing table, and no one would receive a letter such as the one in his hand and not respond somehow—it was simply too absurd! He’d established a week-long response time, so he had a few days to figure it out.

He glanced at the clock. Probably an hour before Griffith required anything of him.

What a ridiculous assignment. His friendship with Griffith made maintaining his disguise extremely difficult. He’d always been able to immerse himself in the role before, forgetting his true past for long stretches of time. That was an impossibility on this assignment. Sometimes it felt as if he and Griffith were back at Eton, before the world took them in such different directions.

It also didn’t help that the mission wasn’t going very smoothly. He’d searched every room of the house, and his suspect list was considerably narrowed. Within a week the Office should be able to send him anything they knew about the people on his list. There was something bothering him, though. Something missing, but he didn’t know what it was.

He didn’t like not knowing.

He had determined that at least one upper servant was involved. Someone had thrown a letter into the fire in the drawing room the upper servants shared. One corner hadn’t burned. And while Ryland wanted to know what the rest of the letter had said, there was enough there to know someone had been receiving instructions that weren’t friendly to the Crown.

Finding that letter had taken more diligence than he would have thought. The scullery maid came through twice a day to sweep out the burnt ashes. Who knew what other clues he’d missed because of her dedication?

Besides the house servants, he had several grounds workers he wanted to look into more. Everyone in the stable was suspect. What better place for moving messages than one with ready access to some of the best horses in the country? He’d seen how often they took the horses out to exercise them. It would be a simple matter to rendezvous with another spy.

The stable staff’s quarters were more difficult to gain access to, their proximity to the stable meaning constant activity in and around the rooms. Like it or not, he was going to have to get Griffith involved, have him do something that required all the grooms to leave the stable at the same time.

Until then there was little to do but keep an eye out for more mistakes and wait for the Office’s report on whether or not any of the people on his list were more than they seemed.

Patience, the quality most needed in work like this, was running thin for him. He didn’t want to wait for opportune moments or for his culprit to make a mistake.

He reached into his pocket to look at the singed scrap of condemning instructions, but his fingers wrapped around the neatly folded square instead. Pulling out the blue paper, he smiled.

Focusing any thought on his friend’s younger sister was ill-advised, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. The idea that she would choose him as the target of her journal amused him to no end. What had Griffith put in those letters home from Eton? Somehow he doubted they had detailed Ryland’s many scrapes and run-ins with the school authorities.

Set to become two of the most powerful personages in the land, the two of them had tested everything to see how far their titles could get them. Nothing horrendous, of course. Ryland could thank Griffith’s faith and steady influence for that one.

The door opened and Ryland jerked to his feet. His eyes flew to the clock. Was dinner completed already?

Griffith stopped a few steps into the room, eyeing the mussed covers. “You’re in my bed,” he muttered.

“It’s more comfortable than mine,” Ryland returned.

“I would imagine so, since I am the duke and you are the servant in our little play.”

Ryland shrugged. He refolded Miranda’s letter and slid it into his pocket.

Griffith’s gaze concentrated on Ryland’s pocket. “Didn’t I see you reading Twelfth Night earlier this week?”