Sebastian poured. He prepared himself a drink, too, because it was the polite thing to do. He would set it aside untouched later, it was barely nine o’clock.
Leighton finished his glass in one gulp. “If you—if the pieces were returned to me,” he then said, “I shall never mention it again, Your Grace. No offense taken. I can see why a man would be tempted to have them at all costs.”
Sebastian looked him directly in the eye, and as expected, Leighton squirmed a little on the spot.
“Tell me,” Sebastian said as he stared, “am I known for collecting Phoenician marbles?”
Squirm. “Not exactly.”
“Or any marbles.”
“Not to my knowledge,” Leighton admitted, “but, since they disappeared on your train, the conclusion drew itself.”
“My train?” Sebastian said sharply. “The ducal train?”
Leighton narrowed his eyes, clearly surprised by Sebastian’s sudden alertness. “Indeed.”
Sebastian turned the tumbler in his hand. He had not sanctioned the use of his train.
“Start at the beginning, please.”
Leighton’s gaze flickered with uncertainty for the first time. “The pieces were scheduled for transfer from the Ashmolean in Oxford to the British Museum, in September. Curiously, someone issued the marching orders a few days ago, and your train was used for transport, well, until it went astray—”
“Astray—the whole thing?”
“Apparently, it went to Southampton. The sheriff says the crates were loaded onto a ship that promptly left port.”
“What about my train?”
“What about it? It returned to whence it came, but a train is quite replaceable, with one being quite like the next—but my bulls, they are unique, priceless . . .”
“What of the ship, was it mine, too?” Sebastian asked with some impatience.
Leighton ran his tongue over his teeth. “No. Apparently, it sails under the royal standard of the German Emperor and the load had diplomatic immunity—God knows where it’s going!”
Germany. He hadn’t engaged with German affairs in months, and the only way his train moved was by way of a written order that bore his signature and seal. Whoever had given the order, it hadn’t been him. A suspicion crossed his mind like a strike of lightning. He flung back his drink after all.
“Mr. Leighton,” he said, “I give you my word that if I ever felt inclined to nab your antiques, I wouldn’t collude with the Prussians to do it and I’d certainly not leave an evidence trail the size of a train.”
Leighton’s chest was deflating. “Well,” he said. “When one puts it like that . . .”
Sebastian nodded sympathetically. “Sounds absurd, doesn’t it. Hardly worth a diplomatic incident, either.”
“No, of course not.” Leighton looked around the study, only now realizing his surroundings fully. He scratched his head. He cleared his throat with an awkward cough. “You might wish to look into the matter, Your Grace,” he said at last. “There appears to be a forger at large who sets your trains in motion.”
Indeed. Sebastian suspected the culprit was in the nursery upstairs.
When the crazed man of business had gone, Sebastian pulled the bell string on the wall behind his desk.
Bonville reappeared at the study door a few minutes later.
“Where is the duchess?” Sebastian asked. His wife had kept on celebrating the MWPA victory last night long after Sebastian had gone to bed. He hardly expected her to be up.
“I shall find out at once,” said Bonville.
When he returned, he confirmed that Her Grace was in the nursery.
It was a long walk across two floors of Claremont, but by the time Sebastian arrived at the door, he still hadn’t found an explanation for Annabelle’s behavior.
He opened the door with caution. The only thing worse than waking sleeping dogs was waking sleeping babies.
His son was wide awake, in his day dress, and attached to his mother’s side with the stubborn clasp of a koala bear. Annabelle stood at the window, pointing out things in the courtyard below. She glanced back over her shoulder and upon seeing Sebastian, a smile broke over her face. It heated his blood more quickly than the brandy. He approached her, transfixed by how beautiful she looked in her flowing morning robe and her tumbling hair held back with a simple ribbon . . .
“Where is the nanny?” he asked.
She tilted her face up at him. “I told Millie to take a good long nap. Apparently, your son was up all night, trying to grow a tooth. Weren’t you,” she cooed at the baby.
“Good morning, James,” murmured Sebastian.
James stared at him with eerily deep indigo eyes. At ten months old, he had developed a habit of fixating on people and objects he found interesting with all-absorbing intensity. A smile broke over his round face, revealing the culpable little rice grain teeth.
“Say good morning to your father, Jamie,” Annabelle said, and the featherlight weight of the Earl of Wiltshire promptly settled against Sebastian’s chest. Sebastian glanced at Annabelle over James’s ruffled lace cap and met sparkling green eyes. She was always handing him the child matter-of-factly, even when James had been a freshly hatched red-faced creature; tiny, twisty, and awfully breakable. Sebastian had felt terror when holding him, half of his heart, his whole future, literally in his hands. Ten months on, it felt natural. That had to have been Annabelle’s intention all along, in her quest to ward off the thoroughly distanced mannerisms that had marred his own upbringing. He slid his free arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her close, so he held both her and his son.
“My love,” he said. “Have you any knowledge of a pair of marble sculptures? Bulls from the Near East, I understand.”
She stilled against him. There was his answer.
When she faced him, her expression was serious. “It was for a just cause,” she said.
“That should satisfy the foreign office, then,” he said dryly.
He had gifted her blank sheets of the ducal correspondence paper on their first wedding anniversary, already signed and with a replica of his signet ring. “I don’t need to know when you use them,” he had told her in a declaration of unconditional trust. To his knowledge, this was the first time she had made use of her proxy power.
Annabelle smoothed the already perfectly smooth lapel of his jacket. “I didn’t tell you beforehand because there was a risk someone would confront you, and I assumed you’d rather not feign ignorance,” she explained. “In any case, your innocence would appear more authentic if you truly didn’t know.”
“This is outrageous,” he remarked.
“Did it work?”
He bounced the wiggling baby. “Perfectly. But the whole train . . . and the German Emperor, Annabelle?”
She had the decency to look apologetic. “It was Catriona’s plan. She involved someone at the German embassy—to smudge the tracks, as she put it.”