Chapter 14
“You wish to go where?” Devil stared at Alys incredulously across the desk in his study as she stood opposite.
“Newcomb Manor,” she repeated, confirming he had heard her correctly the first time.
Devil had been going through the estate accounts when Alys knocked briefly on the door before quietly entering the room.
He had bathed and dressed after Alys left his bedchamber earlier, but when he knocked on the adjoining door with the intention of continuing their conversation, he found the room was empty of both Alys and her maid. According to his butler, Alys and the maid had gone out for a walk.
The relief Devil had briefly felt at having Alys come to him rather than his having to seek her out very quickly dissipated in the face of her request to take one of his carriages and travel to Newcomb Manor.
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
She met his gaze unwaveringly. “I wish to visit my brother.”
“Why?”
“Really, Sebastian, I believed you capable of more interesting conversation than this!”
He refused to be drawn in by her derision. “The word ‘why’ covers all that I wish to know on any subject.”
She sighed her impatience. “Teddy and I did not part on good terms.”
Devil gave a snort. That was an understatement. As to Alys admitting she believed her brother engineered his own shooting… “And you now wish to try to heal that breach?” He eyed her skeptically.
“Yes.”
He gave a wry laugh. “You are a terrible liar.”
Alys did not appreciate being laughed at. “I will have you know my years as a spy for Napoleon have made me an expert liar.”
Sebastian stood up, his size instantly dwarfing the room. “Do not joke about such things.”
“Why not?” she challenged. “You insinuated yourself into my home under false pretenses, proceeded to seduce me, as good as forced me into marrying you, and now you have accused me of being a spy against my own country.”
“You forgot to add I have kept you a prisoner in my bed these past five nights, doing unspeakable things to your body,” he drawled.
“Do not dare to laugh at me, you—you bastard!” It was the worst word she could think of to call him. Having remained calm, and having been determined to do so, she now found all her previous anger coming to the fore. It would serve him right if she were to make a fist and punch him—
“Are you leaving me?”
“I— What?” Alys stared at Sebastian blankly.
“I am asking if this trip into Worcestershire is merely an excuse to put an end to our marriage,” he bit out tautly.
“I— You— I had not thought that far ahead.” End her marriage? Leave Sebastian for good? Merely thinking of it made her stomach turn and her chest tighten.
“You have merely taken it into your head that visiting your brother, only five days after escaping both him and Newcomb Manor, is a good idea?” Sebastian scorned.
“Yes.”
“I do not believe you.”
“After the insult you have paid me this morning, I do not care whether or not your believe me.”
“I was set a task—”
“And you carried it out with no thought as to how I might feel about being falsely accused of treason.”
“That is not true.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Then it would seem there is nothing more to be said on the subject.” He appeared every inch the Marquis of Deveril as he looked down the long length of his nose at her. “My answer is no.”
“No?”
He nodded. “No, you may not use one of the carriages to travel to Worcestershire.”
It had not occurred to Alys that Sebastian might refuse her request. Now what did she do? Meg’s arrival, the information her maid had carried with her, the gentleman waiting for her at the village inn, all necessitated Alys speak to her brother urgently. But it was too far for her to travel by horseback to Newcomb Manor. Something Sebastian knew only too well.
Her chin rose. “I asked you only as a courtesy. I am mistress here, and as such, it is my right to use any of the carriages whenever I wish. I wish to use one now so that I might call on my brother.”
“I will give my permission if I am allowed to accompany you.”
“Absolutely not.”
Devil studied Alys closely, noting the pallor of her cheeks and the dark blue of her eyes. Usually signs she was either upset or angry. Or both. “What did your maid tell you that you now need to see your brother so urgently?” he prompted shrewdly.
“Meg— My maid relayed only village gossip.”
“Which is?”
Alys glared at him. “Really, Sebastian, I am sure you have no interest in the baker’s wife giving birth to twins. Or that Mr. Soames’s hens have stopped laying in the hot weather. Or that the governess to the Squire’s children was caught stealing a necklace. Or—”
“Such a lot to happen in a small village in such a short time,” Devil drawled. “How much of that was true?” he demanded harshly.
“Village life is far more hustle and bustle than people realize—”
“Alys!”
She gave a pained frown. “It is all true. It is only— It did not all happen in the last five days,” she admitted.
“More lies.”
“I do not think I like your tone of voice.”
Devil stepped closer and was relieved when she did not step back. Nevertheless, the intimacy of their lovemaking this morning was noticeably absent from this conversation and their behavior toward each other. “And I do not like being lied to. I was a major in the army, Alys, and I assure you soldiers are the experts at prevarication. Consequently, I know when someone is lying or avoiding telling me the whole truth.”
Alys studied Sebastian’s face for several long seconds, noting the coldness in those dark eyes, the grim set to his mouth, and knew he was not to be gainsaid on this subject. He would not allow her to travel without him.
Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Meg has not been visiting with relatives in Newcomb, but traveled to London on my behalf. While there, she talked to the other servants at Newcomb House and visited with my father’s lawyer for the purpose of giving him a letter from me.”
“Your father’s lawyer, not your brother’s?”
She nodded. “Teddy dismissed him shortly after Papa died.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flared. “What was in the letter?”
Alys closed her eyes briefly. “I requested a copy of my father’s will.”
“Did this gentleman supply you with one?”
“He did better than that,” she acknowledged. “Mr. Wilcox accompanied Meg to Herefordshire and is currently eating his lunch at the village inn. I visited him there with Meg a short time ago,” she added uncomfortably.
Sebastian’s brows rose. “It appears, without my knowledge, you have been exceedingly busy.”
“I—” She broke off abruptly as Sebastian raised a silencing hand.
He strode across the room to stand in front of the window, hands tightly gripped together behind his back. “I kept information from you because I did not want it to be true. I married you knowing you might be a spy for Napoleon.”
Once Alys’s anger had lessened earlier, she had realized that was exactly what Sebastian had done. But she had no idea why he might have done so when it would involve him in her scandal if it should transpire she was, after all, guilty of treason.
“But this”—Sebastian turned back to face her, his eyes colder still, his jaw tight—“the information you have kept from me, what you intended doing with that information without so much as telling me of your reason for traveling to Worcestershire, speaks volumes for the future of our marriage.”
Alys again felt that plummeting of her stomach and that tightening in her chest. “I—”
“We will speak no more of it,” he bit out harshly. “If you will permit me a few minutes so that Riley might pack me a bag, I will accompany you and Mr. Wilcox into Worcestershire. The two of you may inform me on the way as to the reason for our journey.”
The haughty disdain in Sebastian’s expression cautioned Alys against protesting further. Against saying anything further, in fact.
It was a warning she heeded.
Devil stared unseeingly out the window of his carriage as it rolled purposefully along the road leading to Newcomb Manor
The presence of two other people in the carriage—the lawyer, Mr. Wilcox, and Alys’s maid—prevented the two of them from having any private conversation.
For which Devil felt only gratitude.
He was so angry with Alys right now, he would only have said things to her which could never be unsaid. Not that it mattered when the outcome of today seemed certain. If all went as it should, Alys would be the mistress of Newcomb Manor by the end of the day and Teddy Newcomb would be safely locked in a prison cell, awaiting his trial.
Having now heard all the facts, Devil had no doubt as to the outcome of that trial. Newcomb would hang. After all the misery the younger man had caused, Devil intended to make sure of it.
In the meantime, the estrangement between himself and Alys only deepened with each mile traveled. A distance Devil had no idea how to even begin to breach. They had both lied, each to the other, if only by omission. Only one thing could breach such a chasm of distrust between them.
Love.
They had desire, and despite everything, Devil also believed they had respect for each other. But love? Alys might have thought she loved him three years ago, but she had made no mention of the emotion since, not even during their most passionate moments together.
“How much longer shall we be, Seb—Deveril?” Alys corrected, aware of the others in the carriage with them.
The only reason the explanation to Sebastian had not proved more devastating than it had was because Mr. Wilcox and Meg were already privy to that information.
Alys now believed Teddy was a murderer as well as a thief.
“Half an hour or so,” he answered dismissively, hardly sparing her a glance as he continued to look out the carriage window, his expression remote.
How Sebastian must now regret marrying into a family such as hers. A brother-in-law who was a murderer and a thief. A wife who might or might not have behaved treasonably toward the English Crown.
The latter still smarted, Alys admitted, but it was nevertheless true that Sebastian had married her still suspecting that.
Why had he?
He could merely be protecting her, of course, out of the friendship and affection he had felt for her dead father.
Or could he have acted out of love for her?
Alys studied him unobserved, as she had done many times these past five days and nights of being his wife. Sebastian was all she could ever have wished for in a husband: handsome, kind, a pleasure to be with, generous to a fault, and man who could be relied upon.
He had suspected her of treason!
Yes, he had, and he still had no proof she was not guilty. Nor had she actually denied that guilt; they had been interrupted before she had a chance to do so. And yet here he was, in the carriage with her as she traveled to Newcomb Manor to confront her brother with the truth.
Once this situation with Teddy was settled, the two of them would need to talk to each other. To decide whether or not their marriage really had come to an end.
She had loved Sebastian three years ago, and she loved him still. She was in love with him. No one, and nothing that had happened since, had ever changed that.
Alys had every intention of fighting for her husband and her marriage.
As soon as matters were settled with Teddy.