A Lady of His Own

“Start at the beginning-why do you think Granville was a traitor?”

Between bites of toast and jam, and sips of tea, she told him. Filchett didn’t return with the coffeepot, probably just as well.

The frown remained in Charles’s eyes. “So you never had a chance to tax Granville with this?”

“I had taxed him over what he was doing with the smuggling gangs-I’d known of his association with them for years, at least since he was fifteen. But of course I never got any answer other than that he was just larking about.” She paused, then added, “I never suspected there might be more to it until last November.”

“Tell me again-your housekeeper knew of this priest hole?”

“Yes. I gather Figgs has always known it was there, but that Papa and later Granville had insisted it be left alone, that they kept important things in there they didn’t want the maids disturbing. So Figgs never told the maids, but when it came time to prepare the master bedchamber for Amberly’s first visit-he came in early December-Figgs thought it must be time to clean and dust in there, so she asked me if she should.”

“When you went to check, did anyone go with you?”

“No. Figgs told me how to open it-it’s easy enough if you know what to twist.”

“And you found a large number of pillboxes.”

She sighed. “ ‘A large number’ doesn’t adequately describe it, Charles. Trust me-Papa was a collector, but I never knew he had boxes like these. They’re…wonderful. Gorgeous. Some jewel-encrusted, others with beautiful miniatures, grisailles, and more. And I’ve never seen any of them before-not the ones on the shelves in the priest hole.”

Setting down her teacup, she looked at him. “So where did he get them?”

“Through the trade, collecting. Simply buying.”

“I kept the estate accounts for all the years Granville was earl, and I checked the ledgers for the years before that. Yes, Papa did occasionally buy pillboxes, but those purchases were relatively few and far between, and, tellingly, those are the boxes in the library display cases. The boxes he bought, he kept openly. Why did he hide these others-so much more beautiful-so completely away? I didn’t know of them, and I’d swear no one else in the household other than Granville has seen them.”

“A clandestine pillbox collection.”

“Yes!” She narrowed her eyes at him. “There’s no viable conclusion other than that those hidden pillboxes were payment for something. And it’s something Granville knew about. But initially I couldn’t think of anything either Papa or Granville might have to ‘sell,’ as it were.”

“Indeed. Neither Granville nor your father ever had access to sensitive information, the sort the French would pay for. So it can’t-”

“Wait!” She held up a hand. “I said initially-there’s more. After finding the boxes, I shut up the priest hole and put Figgs off. Amberly and Nicholas arrived; the visit went smoothly. Then, on the last day they were there, I heard from the grooms that Nicholas had been asking after Granville’s friends, those he spent time with in the neighborhood, where he went in the evenings when on his own, what taverns he frequented.”

“Maybe Nicholas wanted to find a place to drink?”

“Are you playing devil’s advocate, or are you just being difficult?”

He smiled. “The former, so go on.”

She cast him a repressive glance, then reassembled her train of thought. “When they left, I checked the priest hole. Someone had been examining the boxes. Many were out of line, turned around, that sort of thing.” She sighed. “I went down to dinner, trying to puzzle it out. Elaine was telling the girls how distinguished Amberly and his branch of the family were. She mentioned that Nicholas was following in his father’s footsteps-at the Foreign Office.”

“Ah.” Charles sat up, all expression leaching from his face.

“Indeed.” Feeling vindicated, she nodded. “So now you see why I started to seriously worry. And the further I looked, things only got blacker.”

“What did you find?”

“Not so much found as recalled. Papa and Amberly grew up together-they shared a schoolroom, went up to Oxford together, did the Grand Tour together. They were only distantly related, but very close friends, and the connection continued all their lives. Papa started collecting pillboxes when he was staying in Paris with Amberly, who at that time had a minor role in our embassy there.”

Charles said nothing; his eyes locked on her face, he nodded for her to continue.

“The other pertinent facts are that Amberly was Granville’s godfather, and his guardian after Papa died. And Nicholas and Granville knew each other, how well I don’t know, but Granville often visited Amberly’s house, so presumably Nicholas and Granville were frequently in each other’s company.

“And as I told you earlier, when Nicholas arrived unheralded in February, the week after Elaine and the girls had left for town, he spent five days contacting all the local smuggling gangs. According to Mother Gibbs, he was putting it about that in the matter of Granville’s activities with them, he was Granville’s replacement. Anything to do with Granville, they should see him-send word via the grooms at Wallingham Hall, and he’d come down and speak with them.”

“What did the local lads think of that? Were there any takers?”

“No.” She hid a ghost of a smile. “They see Nicholas as an outsider, almost a foreigner, but more than that, I don’t think they actually understand what fish he’s trawling for.”

“Very likely.”

Charles heard his voice, deep, resonant, cut across her lighter tones. She shouldn’t be involved in any of this, but she was. Leaning back in his chair, he caught her eye. “So you believe that Granville, possibly with your father’s connivance, was running secrets to the French via the smuggling gangs. He got said secrets from either Amberly or Nicholas, but regardless, Nicholas at least is involved.”

She nodded. “Yes. And-”

“You don’t think Granville enlisting to fight the French at Waterloo argues against his involvement? Or that perhaps he wasn’t aware of the nature of what he was doing?”

She met his gaze. “No. Granville…he was ten when you left to join the Guards. You didn’t really know him. He was a reckless, feckless boy, and he never grew up. Yes, he was spoiled, indulged in every degree, but as he didn’t possess a malicious bone in his body, everyone simply smiled, shook their heads, and let him be.

“Ferrying information to the French? He’d have considered that a great lark-the thrill, the danger, would have seduced him. He wouldn’t have really thought about what he was ferrying, that wouldn’t have been important. Pursuing excitement and thrills-that was Granville’s sole purpose in life. That was why he joined the army for Waterloo. Any contradiction honestly wouldn’t have occurred to him.”

He studied her eyes and thought she was wrong, but she’d pushed herself to accept what was for her a hugely painful interpretation. No hypothetical argument was likely to sway her.

And what she thought-the question of whether Granville and, the point she was trying to think of even less, her father before him had been knowingly involved in treason-was not of immediate importance. Not with her “cousin” Nicholas about, ferreting around, stirring up things even more effectively than he himself was.

She was watching him measuringly, lips and jaw set. Before he could speak, she did.

“If Granville is labeled a traitor, even posthumously, Elaine will be ostracized, to a lesser extent Constance- she’s now Lady Witherling-will be, too, and neither Emma nor Holly could hope to make a decent match. No gentleman of the ton will want to marry a traitor’s sister.”

She paused, then added, her gaze steady on his, “I would prefer not to be known as a traitor’s half sister, either, but at twenty-nine with my fortune my own, at least my future doesn’t rest so completely on society’s opinion.”

He waited, but she didn’t ask for any promises or assurances that he would keep her family safe, that he would find some way to protect them from the consequences should the truth prove as dire as she thought.

All of which made him even more determined to do so.

She’d trusted him with all she knew; he was tempted to ask what in their conversation last night had tipped the scales, but he wasn’t sure he truly wanted to know. She saw through him, to the real him, more easily than anyone save only his too-perceptive mother.

“I should mention that my commander, Dalziel, has investigated thoroughly but could find no evidence of any sensitive information from the Foreign Office actually reaching the French.” He grimaced. “Indeed, until I realized