The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter FIFTEEN


The next morning, at an unfashionably early hour, Nick asked one of the footmen where to find his study. He had arranged to meet Ellie, Marcus, and Ellie’s maid in hopes that they might solve the issue of the highwayman discreetly and with minimal bloodshed. Not that he wanted to see Ellie in such circumstances — not after the pleasure, and confusion, of the previous night. But when Nick found his study, he wished he hadn’t.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered as he came to a sudden stop in the center of the doorway. Studies were supposed to be male preserves, all dark wood and handsomely-bound leather books. This was…this was…

“Do you like it?” Ellie said as she came up the hall behind him. “I redecorated last year.”

“It’s…”

There were no words.

She slipped past where he stood rooted to the floor and claimed the seat behind the desk. Then she gasped, hugely and artificially, with a hand pressed to her heart as though she were an untrained Covent Garden actress. “Oh my, this is your desk now, isn’t it, Lord Folkestone? How tactless of me.”

But she didn’t stand to give way. And he didn’t want her to. The study was an affront to everything masculine — but she was somehow even more beautiful when her blue eyes were lit up with smug satisfaction. And they were certainly lit up now, as he reacted to what she had done to the room. Even her own salon, the one where he had proposed their unholy bargain on his first night in the house, was more masculine than this. His father had told him that the study, at least when it had belonged to Nick’s paternal grandfather, had held hunting trophies, ancient furnishings, and comfortable leather chairs for reading.

There were no comfortable chairs now — just a few tufted hassocks in varying shades of lavender. He walked into the room, pretending it wasn’t utterly ridiculous. The walls were hung with a soft pink damask. The desk was white and gold, with curved legs better suited to a French boudoir than an English gentleman’s retreat. The only welcome sight was the whisky decanter on one shelf — even Ellie’s hatred of him wouldn’t make her banish spirits from the room.

“I will say, Lady Folkestone, your color choices surprise me. I believe I prefer the palette you used in your painting of Circe — even with the chains.”

He couldn’t tell if she blushed or if the pinkness of the room had blinded him. Either way, she smiled. “I hope you’re always so approving of my artistic efforts.”

It was only when her eyes flickered toward the fireplace that he took a closer look at the painting above the mantel. It was the first canvas she’d ever painted of him, if he was not mistaken — and he had always hoped that the silly, besotted look on his face was due to her previous inexperience with human models, not because he actually looked at her like that.

But the painting was different than he remembered. Before, he’d held a book, half-falling from his hand in a negligible pose. Now, the hand still stretched down — to pet a poodle with a giant pink bow that perfectly matched the wall hangings.

“A poodle?” he choked out

“Shall I ring for tea?” she asked, ignoring him. “Lucia should be down momentarily. I can only assume your brother will do your bidding as he always does.”

“I detest poodles.”

She stood and tugged the frilly lavender cord that served as a bellpull. “Again, an artist’s license. If you had given word that you were coming home, I would have replaced it. Perhaps I could have you pat Marcus’s head instead? Or does he work for gold, not affection?”

Marcus strode into the study in time to hear her words. “Ellie, I am truly sorry,” he said, with the resigned voice of a man who knew his apology would go unheard.

She waved a hand. “It was my fault for forgetting you were a Claiborne. I should have expected you to bring me to grief.”

Nick watched her sit again. She was prickly this morning, with all her armor in place. In this mood, with those blue eyes sparking instead of softening, he could almost believe that the previous night had been another one of his dreams.

But this wasn’t the woman he dreamed of. A footman arrived and she sent him for tea, then turned her daggered gaze back on Nick and Marcus. “If you don’t mind, let us postpone any more words until my poor maid arrives. I am sure she is just as eager to know why she was forced to kill a man as I am.”

“And as I am,” Marcus said, shooting a dark look at Nick. “Mrs. Grafton should never have been in such danger.”

“Should I have been?” Ellie asked.

Marcus colored slightly. “Of course not. But Mrs. Grafton deserves better.”

Nick sighed. Ellie looked like she wanted to draw blood, but he needed his brother and his — whatever Ellie was to him — to stay away from each other’s throats. “Let us take Ellie’s suggestion,” he interjected. “The explanation should wait until we are all assembled.”

He didn’t understand why Ellie had insisted on her maid’s presence. It was nearly as unusual as Marcus’s concern for the woman. But then, Lucia had shot a man, and it was likely Nick’s fault she had been forced to do it.

The silence turned uncomfortable immediately. Ellie folded her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead. Marcus leaned against the mantel, not looking at anyone, and wound his watch with the slow, methodical grace of an assassin awaiting an opportunity. Nick eyed the whisky decanter. But even in that room, with two people who might wish him just as dead as his unknown enemy did, Nick still thought it was too early for a drink.

And so he was relieved when Lucia and the tea cart arrived at the same time. “I am sorry for keeping you waiting, my lady,” Lucia said. “I had to finish the task you gave me.”

She didn’t apologize to the men — didn’t even acknowledge them as she walked directly to Ellie and handed her two sheets of paper. Ellie nodded as she took the papers. “Of course, Mrs. Grafton. You haven’t inconvenienced us at all. Please, do be seated.”

Nick’s eyebrows rose. Lucia was graceful, direct, and perfectly serene — more gentlewoman than servant, and nothing like what he had expected. She had been calm the previous day, in the few minutes he had seen her before Marcus had taken her away, but he had assumed that was due to the shock she’d had. She should have been more affected, like any raw recruit who had killed in battle for the first time. But she was still calm — and when she met his eyes, the direct look in hers said she would welcome the opportunity to take a shot at him as well.

Make that three people in the study who wanted him dead.

As soon as the footman had left, Marcus clicked his watch shut. “You’ve evaded us long enough, Nick. What the devil are you mixed up in?”

“I’m not evading. We couldn’t discuss this last night, not if we didn’t want everyone in the house to know.”

“Shouldn’t they know?” Ellie asked, setting aside the papers Lucia had given her. “I know you said you have a plan, but I don’t want my guests to be harmed.”

“You are welcome to ask them to leave, if you are so eager to be alone with me.”

They hadn’t acknowledged the previous night at all. But if Ellie had enjoyed it — and he knew she had — she was currently more likely to stab him than seduce him. Her eyes narrowed as she said, “We shall address our agreement momentarily. But let us start with why a highwayman wanted to kill you.”

“If I knew why, I wouldn’t be here,” Nick said. He walked over to Lucia and took the cup of tea she had poured for him, then leaned against the wall opposite from where Marcus stood by the fire. “Your guess as to motive is as good as mine.”

Ellie looked at Marcus, who didn’t meet her gaze — he was too busy staring at Lucia. Ellie turned back to Nick. “Between us, we could likely guess a dozen reasons. Where shall we begin?”

“Villains always come to bad ends,” Lucia said, rising and taking Ellie’s cup to her. “If his lordship is no longer in a position to harm you, does the ‘how’ of it matter, my lady?”

“It does if their ends might harm the rest of us,” Ellie mused. She didn’t seem concerned that Lucia saw Nick as the villain in this story — in fact, if Nick hadn’t heard a different note in Ellie’s voice the previous night, he might suspect she agreed with her maid.

He cleared his throat. “Let me share the details. Then you may decide whether I am the villain.”

He started with the three attempts on his life in Madras. The warehouse fire that would have trapped him in his office had he not left half an hour earlier than he always did. The shot during a hunt that had grazed his shoulder — any closer and he might have lost the limb, if not his life, to infection. And the assailant who had come after him with a knife in a Madras bazaar. Trower had stopped that attempt, after tailing Nick without asking permission to guard him.

“Did none of them say who they represented?” Marcus asked.

“There were no witnesses to the warehouse fire or the shot. I didn’t look hard, though. I was still half sure they were accidents. As for the knife-wielder, Trower killed him before he could talk. He appeared to be a Maratha mercenary, though. He would have worked for anyone who paid enough.”

“And those were the only events? Over how much time?” Ellie asked.

She was pale, but her tone was purely business. “Three events over a fortnight,” Nick answered. “Trower and I took the next ship out of Madras a week after the would-be stabbing. Trower didn’t let me out of his sight that whole time, and he hired a dozen men to guard us.”

“Did anything happen aboard your ship, my lord?” Lucia asked. “Or were you guarded there as well?”

“No suspicious events at sea, nor during the week we spent taking on supplies at St. Helena. We had no additional guards, but I own the ship. The captain was most diligent about keeping me alive.”

“As he should be,” Marcus said. “Your connections in India have captured more of the private trade in that country than we had any right to expect a decade ago. If he lost you, his career would be finished. Do you trust the other men in our employ there?”

Nick had considered every single man in the India operation on the long voyage back to England. He nodded once. “There were always a handful whom I had to let go for one reason or another. But the ones currently there — for the most part, I trust them. And I can’t see what any of them would stand to gain by murdering me.”

Ellie pulled out a fresh sheet of paper from the desk, as well as a pen and ink. “Should we discuss who stands to gain something?” she suggested. “Or is that a delicate subject, when those who would gain the most are in the room with you?”

Nick waved an expansive hand. “Please, start. I’m curious to hear who you think my enemies are.”

He watched her write her own name at the top of the sheet in graceful, looping cursive. He laughed. “Is that a confession?”

“Of course not. This is a list of people who might want you dead — not a list of people who likely ordered it.” Then she smiled. “But to save myself forty thousand pounds and the irritation of your return, murder does look cheap.”

“True. But it’s not you. Who is the next suspect?”

She pointed her pen at Marcus, who nearly choked on his tea.

“You cannot seriously think I want to kill Nick,” Marcus spluttered, once he had recovered from his coughing fit.

She wrote his name on the list. “Again, not likely. But you stand the most to gain — the Folkestone title, for one, not to mention whatever share of Corwyn, Claiborne and Sons is left to you in Nick’s will. Nick’s return changes everything for you, does it not?”

He didn’t look at her. He looked at Lucia instead. “Perhaps it does. But I would rather have more time, not more responsibility. Nick is welcome to take over his estate any day he pleases.”

Nick believed him. Perhaps he shouldn’t. Ellie was correct, after all. Marcus would gain more than anyone if Nick died without another heir. But even as a youth, Marcus hadn’t cared for power. Stuck in the middle between Nick and Rupert, he had played the peacemaker rather than the rabble-rouser.

That brought another thought uncomfortably close to the surface. He hesitated, and Ellie sensed it. “Who would you add?” she asked.

He kept his eyes on Marcus. “I have another brother who would stand to gain.”

“Rupert?” Marcus asked, turning toward him. “That is even more unreasonable than suspecting me. Next I suppose you’ll accuse the Prince Regent?”

“Of course not. But Rupert always wanted to build something of his own. And I don’t think we see eye to eye on our business dealings, although sending a letter from India to the Caribbean and back takes so long that I hear from him far less than I do from you. Perhaps he was tired of trying to change my mind about business issues.”

“I assure you that Rupert is not a murderer,” Marcus said. “I’ve seen him several times in the last decade — whatever his sins, fratricide is not among them.”

Ellie intervened. “We are merely listing suspects, not sending anyone to the gallows. And I agree with Nick — Rupert has a hot head, and a motive. He stays on the list, even if he’s not likely.”

Lucia coughed delicately. “Is there anyone else, my lady? Or do all his lordship’s enemies share his last name?”

Nick felt a stab of remorse at that. He didn’t think any of the three were likely to kill him, but he should be bothered by the fact that they topped the list. “We’ve listed all the Claibornes — let us move on to more likely candidates.”

Ellie frowned at that. “We did miss a Claiborne, actually. The dowager marchioness still lives on the estate, although we are no longer on speaking terms. But it drove her absolutely mad that a man with your background inherited her precious son’s title. Perhaps she hired someone?”

“That seems unlikely,” Marcus scoffed. “Even if her anger hasn’t subsided, how would she arrange it? She never leaves Surrey, as best as I can tell.”

Nick agreed. “There are more likely options, and they are all related to my business interests. The East India Company tops the list.”

“Shall I write ‘the Company’?” Ellie asked sarcastically. “Or do you have names?”

“Marcus knows the directors better than I do. They are all based in London.”

Marcus handed his cup back to Lucia to be filled again. As she poured, he pushed his hand through his hair. “I find it unlikely that the Company is behind this, Nick. True, you are driving our business in India — but if you died there and I pulled us out of the India trade as a result, they would face a dire shortage of ships. You know they can’t haul all their goods on their own. With the discussions in Parliament about their monopoly, they can ill afford a loss in profits.”

Marcus had told Nick all about the debates in the carriage the day before. The East India Company already wasn’t quite a monopoly; private traders accounted for almost ten percent of the goods imported to Britain from India. The Claibornes had made a tidy profit off even that sliver of trade, not counting the contracts they had to transport Company goods on their ships. But if the Company lost their monopoly entirely…

“Perhaps another trader, then?” Nick asked. “With me gone from India, other ventures are better suited to take advantage of whatever happens to the Company’s share of the India trade.”

Ellie tapped her nose with her pen. “But that doesn’t explain how someone knew to find you here, or why they still wish to harm you in England. If it were purely a matter of driving you away from the subcontinent, they wouldn’t need to send a highwayman after you here. As much as it displeases me to say it, we could likely narrow our search by looking at my houseguests.”

Lucia frowned. “The man I shot wasn’t one of your guests or servants — I didn’t recognize him at all. And I am nearly certain the same can be said for the other highwayman.”

“I didn’t recognize them either,” Ellie said. “But that doesn’t mean they weren’t hired by someone we know.”

“Then tell me, Ellie — among your guests, who is a likely culprit?” Nick asked.

“Beyond the people in this room?” she responded. She turned to Marcus. “They are my friends — I may not be able to stay unbiased. What is your assessment?”

“So you want my opinion now?” he asked.

She scowled. “Only if it helps find who wants to kill Nick. Once that is settled, I can get on with murdering him myself.”

Marcus and Nick both laughed, but Marcus sobered first. “I don’t see any of them as likely. As best as I know, none of them are involved in the East India Company. Perhaps among your servants…but even they are rather too artistic to be bloodthirsty.”

“Even the most artistic people can be bloodthirsty when provoked, Mr. Claiborne,” Lucia said.

He nearly stammered as he apologized. “Forgive me, Mrs. Grafton. I did not mean to remind you of yesterday.”

She looked just as startled as he sounded. “That wasn’t what I meant at all. Just that artists shouldn’t be overlooked.”

Nick couldn’t agree more. Ellie had the soul of an artist — but she had the brain of a general, and the steely look in her eyes was more suited to a war room than a studio. She cut off Lucia and Marcus without a moment of hesitation. “Enough. None of my servants, as far as I know, have ever gone to sea. I doubt that they’d even know how to arrange the murder of someone half a world away. We can still consider them, but I don’t see the use of it.” She turned back to Nick. “Is there really no one else?”

Nick paused, then shook his head. “Just the occasional junior secretary or hanger-on who was unhappy to be sent packing back to England. But would any of them try to murder me on two continents?”

“Nick is correct,” Marcus said. “In all the time I’ve been in London, only one man came in to complain that Nick had sent him back to England. He wasn’t pleased when I refused to help him find another job. But he was too pleasant about it to be a murderer.”

“Was it Edgewood?” Nick asked. “He was always pleasant, even when he was embezzling everything in sight.”

Marcus shrugged. “I believe so, although I could be mistaken. He didn’t make a scene, and I never saw him again. Seems unlikely he would want to kill you when there’s nothing to gain out of it.”

Nick considered their other options. “Perhaps none of the guests are directly tied to the Company. But what of their investments?”

Ellie’s hand hovered over the paper. “I know Norbury is heavily invested in the Company.”

Marcus’s nose wrinkled. “His estate is leveraged — he would be made uncomfortable if the Company’s fortunes change.”

“Still, I don’t see him as a murderer,” Ellie said, with a note of finality in her voice. She didn’t add him to the list.

Nick didn’t push it. “So our only official suspects are Ellie, Marcus, Rupert, the dowager marchioness, and the East India Company. If one of you would confess, it would make this all much easier.”

“It will have to be Marcus,” Ellie said. “I’ve no intention of confessing my sins.”

He remembered how he’d promised to learn her sins in the carriage the day before — but this wasn’t the time or the place, even if their agreement was now in full force. Instead, he gave her a loaded glance. “Someday you will, my dear.”

She leaned back in her chair, but her eyes didn’t give an inch. “Unlikely. But if this is the best we can do for a list, so be it. Do you have a plan for it?”

“Trower is working to identify the dead highwayman. Perhaps that will give us a clue. Beyond that, I plan to talk to your houseguests. If one of them is behind this, I will ferret it out.”

Ellie nodded. “I shall see what I can learn from our guests as well. Lucia knows how to pry information from visiting ladies’ maids and valets. If any visitor has a secret, we stand a good chance of learning it.”

Marcus drained his second cup of tea. “I can talk to the tenants and see if anyone has noticed a stranger in the area.”

“I will come with you, if you want to leave now,” Nick said. It was too early to talk to most of the guests, but country farmers kept different hours. “Not a word of this to anyone, though. Our only advantage lies in keeping everyone here, and making the killer nervous about why we haven’t reported the highwayman. If the party disperses, we’ll be no closer to finding an answer.”

Ellie stood up, leaning over the desk to hand Nick one of the pieces of paper Lucia had brought her. “Before you go off looking for danger, sign this. If you demand that the party stay intact, we need some rules for our…other agreement.”

He took the sheet. It was their agreement — brief, direct, and in writing. It stated that if Ellie did as Nick wished until the thirteenth of June, her debt would be forgiven. But Ellie had added an addendum: no one could find out about their arrangement. If gossip started to spread, he would let her go immediately.

He looked up and met her eyes. “This is not what we agreed to.”

“No, but if you don’t agree to this, I vow I will murder you myself.”

She wasn’t teasing him. “Why is the gossip so important to you? From what I’ve heard, gossip has never bothered you.”

“Gossip has never bothered me because I was always able to control what they said. But I cannot control you, can I?”

Nick snorted. “I’m sure you’ll try. You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“It would be obvious, if you knew anything of the ton.”

That was a statement that should have insulted him, but he considered it a clue, not a barb. Realization dawned fast. “Your sisters.”

“My friends as well. And my servants, if you want all of it. They are so discreet because they know I can procure jobs for them anywhere they like — but if my reputation goes, so go those opportunities, and so goes their loyalty. I could risk any scandal I wanted at nineteen…”

“…Except for eloping with a merchant’s son,” Nick interjected.

She ignored him. “But I have other responsibilities now. I’ll give you what you think I owe you — as I said, perhaps atonement will help me. But if you are seeking to humiliate me in public, and ruin other lives along with mine, you’re not the man I once loved.”

The man she once loved. She said it so matter-of-factly — both the love and the dead, past-tense nature of it. He didn’t want her love to be dead. He didn’t want everything between them to be the past.

But she was right about one thing. If he ruined her in public, it would ruin his honor along with it. And as much as he had dreamed of her groveling at his feet in the middle of Almack’s, a public revenge wasn’t worth the cost.

He stole the pen from her hand and signed both sheets with a bold, scrawling stroke — feeling almost like Faustus making a deal with the devil, but he was in too deep to stop himself. Public revenge was off the table — but private revenge, and all the ways he’d imagined taking her, were still open to him.

He handed her the pen. “Sign, my love.”

Her fingers brushed his. There was no hesitation, no fear, no regret in her touch. Her eyes were stark again, but if she saw visions of hell, they didn’t stop her from signing her name.

It was done. He ignored Marcus and Lucia, who both coughed at the same time, and went around the desk to kiss Ellie on the top of the head. “Tonight,” he murmured into her hair. “I will send you instructions later.”

She didn’t betray any curiosity. “Just don’t interfere with dinner.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. There’s no need to add your chef to the list of suspects.”

Ellie grinned at that, just barely. Her amusement should have piqued him. He should have been annoyed that she was spiking his guns with her acceptance of his revenge — she almost seemed to want it, in a way that he had never predicted when he had imagined it before.

But he found he didn’t mind. Now that he knew she wanted him on some level, even if she denied it, he couldn’t imagine having her any other way.

Just as he couldn’t imagine how he was going to leave her at the end of it.