Chapter 21

A t five minutes to midnight, Rupert was pacing the library, waiting for Claire to arrive.

He wasn’t nervous about their meeting, precisely. But it was deuced awkward that they’d been caught together beneath the mistletoe. Not awkward for him, of course. He had no problem kissing Clarissa Weatherby whether it was beneath the mistletoe or at the front of the church, after the vicar said, I now pronounce you man and wife .

But Claire had made it clear that he wasn’t the one for her, and so Rupert hadn’t been planning on bothering her.

But mistletoe… now that was a tricky business. Because if you said you didn’t want to impose yourself on the lady, everyone assumed that was an insult, akin to saying she was hideous and unkissable. Rupert had figured the only thing worse than kissing Claire would be refusing to kiss her. It all made sense in his mind, but he wasn’t exactly a master of deduction, now was he?

He’d tried to do it the way a mistletoe kiss before a half-dozen of the most gossipy dowagers the ton had to offer was meant to be done. Very priggish and prim, prudish and proper.

But all of that had gone straight out the window as soon as he touched her. Because he was kissing Claire , and all the P-R words in the world couldn’t distract him from the fact that it was kind of a dream come true.

He thought he’d acquitted himself fairly well right up until the very end. He shouldn’t have kissed her on the forehead, but deuce take it all, this was the only chance he was ever going to get to hold her in his arms! He hadn’t meant to do it, but he’d been swept up in the moment, and his body had just… reacted.

Well, if she was furious with him, that would be his cross to bear, and nobody to blame but himself and all that. But tonight, he would be professional. He would stick to the suspects. To the investigation.

And there would be absolutely no kissing.

He heard the click of the knob. Rather than swing open smoothly, the door stuck. It had done the same thing when Rupert arrived. He was hurrying over to give it a firm yank when there was a thunk that probably involved Claire putting her shoulder to it, and then she was slipping into the room.

It was the most agonizing quarter of a second of Rupert’s life, waiting for her to turn around so he could see if she wanted to throttle him.

But when she turned, her eyes were bright. She looked excited to see him, although surely that wasn’t right. She was carrying a little book and a stack of letters.

She was also wearing a dressing gown in a celery green sort of color. He could see a hint of creamy white lace at her wrists and another peeking out above the neckline, and Rupert’s mouth went dry because he wanted to touch her badly enough as it was, and here she was, looking all soft and huggable. There was also the fact that he rather badly wanted to see what she looked like beneath all those layers, and her current attire looked like it might be devoid of pesky things like stays and petticoats that would prevent him from simply rucking up her skirts and touching her all over.

He shook himself. This line of thought was not the thing. “Thank you for coming. You weren’t spotted on your way down?”

“No.” She crossed the room and smiled up at him, actually smiled! His heart skipped a beat or three. “I was worried, given that Lady Emily is partial to bright colors that aren’t particularly conducive to skulking in the shadows. But I’m fairly certain I was not seen.”

“Good. That’s grand.” Rupert gestured to the sofa. “So, turning to the list of suspects—”

“Wait.” She grabbed his hand. Neither of them had gloves on, and he couldn’t help but notice how buttery-soft her skin was. “I’m sorry, I know we need to discuss the investigation. But something occurred to me this afternoon.”

“Oh?” Nothing was occurring to Rupert at the moment, other than how much he wanted to slide his hand up her wrist and keep going.

She released his hand, more’s the pity. She also bit her lip the way she was wont to do when she was really concentrating on something, and it had to be the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.

“In the orangery, when you told me what you overheard me say to Becky, I’m fairly certain those were my exact words.”

They probably were. That was how Rupert’s brain worked, after all. “That’s right. You asked me to tell you as exactly as I remembered it. So, I did.”

She stared at him for a beat. “And you remembered my exact words, even after two years.”

Rupert saw what she was getting at. “Oh, that. So, you remember the bit about how I can’t read very well?”

She was regarding him with an affectionate sort of smile. “Mm-hmm.”

“And I can’t write so well, either?”

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, old Rupert’s a bit dicked in the nob. As cracked as an eggshell. As jingle-brained as Lord Helmsley’s sleigh. As—”

“Rupert!” She laughed. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Seeing as I can scarcely read and can’t write much of anything down, I suppose the old noodle had to compensate somehow. There was nothing for it—I just had to start remembering everything people said.”

She peered up at him. “You can truly remember everything people say?”

“Just about. I mean, if there’s three or four people talking at once, things get a bit skimble-skamble.”

She bit her lip again. “Could I see?”

“Sure. I mean, if you like.”

She thought a moment. “Have you ever seen Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night ?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“I happened to act out a scene from it at a house party a few months back. I still have parts of it memorized.”

She proceeded to recite a little speech from the play. Once she was done, she nodded. “Go on.”

He said it back to her:

“ She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? ”

Blimey, that was hard to get out. Because wasn’t that just how he felt about Claire?

He didn’t have too much time to stew about it because as soon as he finished, she grabbed his hand again. “Rupert! You’ve truly never seen that play before?”

“What?” He couldn’t attend with her soft skin upon his. “Uh, nope.”

“And you just recited an entire soliloquy after hearing it once!”

He didn’t see where she was going. “I… suppose so?”

She pulled at his hand, leading him over to the rose silk sofa, where she settled facing him with one leg tucked up underneath her. They were facing the fire he’d built while waiting for Claire to arrive. It was nice. Cozy.

Claire shook her head. “You don’t seem to appreciate how remarkable that is! I’ve never met anyone with such a good memory.”

He shrugged. “Sir Henry said it was unusual. That’s why he wanted me. That and because I’m about the last person anyone would suspect of working for the Home Office.”

She gave him a wry grin. “That’s why he wanted me, too. No one even notices a wallflower, much less suspects them. Although Lady Emily has ruined my guise with her pretty dresses.”

“She certainly has,” Rupert said, his voice coming out rich and appreciative. “I can’t imagine anyone not noticing you.”

He clamped his mouth shut, because he hadn’t meant to say something like that. The investigation. He needed to stick to the investigation!

He tried get back on track. “I doubt I’ll ever have that problem. After all, who would ever suspect me? I’m the stupidest fellow in all of England.”

A mulish set came over Claire’s jaw. “That’s not true.”

“Claire,” he said, voice thick with disbelief, “how can you say that? As I mentioned earlier, I can barely read .”

The mulish expression had not budged an inch. “I will acknowledge that your mind functions somewhat differently from most people’s. But you have gifts—impressive ones—along with your challenges. And, although you do have a somewhat casual manner of speaking that people might interpret as being less than serious, I have never found your underlying logic to be lacking.”

“Oh, that.” Rupert waved a hand. “That was Sir Henry’s suggestion. You see, the stupider I sound, the less people will suspect anything. I’ve always enjoyed using a bit of cant, and he encouraged me to lay it on as thick as I could.”

“Ha!” Claire cried, pointing a finger. “I knew it! And, speaking of Sir Henry, would you care to know what he had to say about you?”

Rupert chuckled nervously. “I don’t know, would I?”

Claire’s eyes were fierce. “He described you as one of his best men.”

That took the wind right out of him. Really, who could blame him? He , one of Sir Henry’s best men?

It was absurd. And yet… Claire wasn’t the type to lie.

After a moment, he managed to whisper, “Did he really say that?”

She lifted her chin. “He most certainly did.” She unfolded a letter from that stack of hers and handed it to him. “Here, see for yourself.”

As if that wasn’t going to prove his point—it was two pages of Sir Henry’s swirly, tightly-packed handwriting. As antsy as he was at the suggestion—the ridiculous suggestion, might he add!—that he was anything other than the village idiot, it would be Twelfth Night before he managed to pick his way through all of that.

Claire scooted over, so she was sitting right next to him. She pointed to a paragraph near the bottom of the first page. “It’s right here.”

She waited patiently while Rupert squinted at the paper, mouthing the words as he slowly read.

Given the urgency of the situation, I will send as many additional assets to the Helmsley estate as can be made available. In particular, one of my best men will return any day from a lengthy assignment on the Continent. I will have him on the first carriage north.

He gasped audibly when he reached the words best men and covered his mouth with his hand. Because… that was him . It had to be. He’d just returned from two years on the Continent, and Sir Henry had plucked him from the ship, briefed him on the assignment, and stuffed him in a mail coach bound for York that very afternoon.

He sat in silence, too stunned to say anything.

Claire finally nudged him with her elbow. When she spoke, her voice was full of humor. “You look scandalized . You look the way most people would if they’d read something horrible about themselves. Not that they’re good at their job .”

Good at his job? Rupert had never been good at anything in his life. “But I’m not,” he protested.

Claire was having none of it. “You saved Oliver Baxter from his would-be assassin and made the whole thing look like an accident. You are demonstrably good at your job.”

Not that he had a mirror handy, but Rupert would have bet he looked more scandalized than ever. He gave a nervous laugh. “Be careful, now. If you keep that up, I’m liable to go getting a big head.”

“Normally, that would be a potent threat. But not in your case. It happens that I think you deserve to have a significantly higher opinion of yourself in general.”

Rupert was fairly certain he was blushing. He cleared his throat. The investigation . He needed to stick to the investigation. “I suppose I should at least try to live up to your faith in me. Which brings us to the suspects. I was able to speak with Ulysses F. Humphrey.”

Claire leaned forward. “I haven’t been able to speak with him yet. What did you think?”

Rupert explained why he didn’t think it was Humphrey. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a terrible excuse for a person. Chap owns a big sugar plantation in Antigua and is every bit as awful as you would expect a slaveowner to be. But he wasn’t worried about Baxter passing an abolitionist agenda in the slightest. Said it would never happen.”

“Do you think he could’ve been saying that to throw you off?” Claire asked.

Rupert inclined his head. “While it’s always possible, I don’t believe so. He was drunk as a wheelbarrow when we had this conversation. Most men can’t prevaricate in that condition.”

“I had a similar thought about the Duchess of Kimbolton,” Claire said.

“The duchess? You don’t say?” Rupert screwed up his face, thinking. “Sir Henry didn’t mention the duchess when he briefed me.”

“My partner, Lady Winnifred, added her to my list. She has eleven sons, many of whom have been cut out of livings by Mr. Baxter’s push to grant them based on merit rather than nepotism. She’s irked at Mr. Baxter, all right, but she was very open about her resentment.” Her eyes sparkled, and Rupert might’ve forgotten how to breathe. “She told me how she exacted her revenge—by eating the last of the mince pies. They’re apparently his favorites.”

Rupert chuckled. “Well, remind me not to cross the duchess.”

Claire gave him a wry grin. “To be sure, she is a fearsome foe. But, as you alluded with Mr. Humphrey, I do not think she would have been so open about her disdain for Mr. Baxter if she realized someone was trying to murder him. She was not what you would call circumspect.”

“That leaves Richard Garroway.” Rupert tried to keep his tone neutral and not sound like a jealous lunatic as he said, “I believe you’ve had the opportunity to speak with him, yes?”

“I did, on the first night and on several occasions since. Honestly, he’s not as intolerable as I expected.”

As compliments went, it was on the milquetoast side. And, as many times as Rupert reminded his heart that this in no way meant that Claire thought fondly of him , it insisted upon swelling to three times its original size.

The fact that she had insisted that he wasn’t an idiot—a ridiculous proposition, he knew—didn’t help either. But worst of all was the way she was treating him, which was like a partner. She genuinely wanted to know his opinion, to analyze potential suspects with him.

For the fellow widely regarded as the biggest idiot in England, it was heady stuff.

Claire was describing her conversations with Garroway, explaining that he actually agreed with Baxter on most of the issues, including parliamentary reform. “Of course,” she concluded, “he might have been lying. But I don’t think he was. He seemed sincere.” She peered at him across the sofa. “What do you think?”

“You have good instincts, and, going over your conversations, I agree with your conclusions. We won’t strike them entirely from our list. As you note, they could be putting on a front. But I think we should concentrate our energies on more promising suspects.”

Claire made a bleak sound. “But we’re fresh out of suspects.”

“Then we need to come up with a few.” He rubbed his jaw, which had grown raspy in the hours since his last shave. “Let’s see… I don’t think it would be Lord or Lady Helmsley, or Lawrence and Emily. Of course, that could be bias on my part, considering they’re some of my favorite people on the face of this earth.”

“I agree,” Claire chimed in. “As you note, it’s possible that we could be wrong. But there isn’t a scrap of evidence, at least from what I can see, that suggests that any member of the de Roos family is involved. And I think your suggestion that we should focus our attention on our most promising leads is a wise one.”

Rupert rose from the sofa, full of excited energy, and started pacing around the room. He couldn’t believe that Claire actually wanted to hear his thoughts. It was downright invigorating to have his suggestions taken seriously. “Let’s see… who could have it in for Baxter? There’s Percival Ponsonby. We were all at school together, Baxter, Ponsonby, and I. Baxter and his chums stuck him with a nickname—Priggish Percival. Well, obviously, Ponsonby didn’t much care for him after that. I’ve noticed him avoiding Baxter all week.”

Claire tapped her lip, considering. “I don’t blame him. Still, that was what, fifteen years ago?”

“Just about.”

“I’m not sure it’s an inducement to murder, especially after all this time.”

“I’m inclined to agree, so let’s see...” Rupert resumed his pacing. “There’s also Granville Smith-Nugent-Smith. He lost a bet to Baxter back in 1818. They wagered two hundred pounds that Smith-Nugent-Smith couldn’t ride a kangaroo—”

“He couldn’t what ?”

“You know, a kangaroo.” Rupert bent both arms at the elbows, holding his hands up by his shoulders, and gave a couple of hops. “Bouncy sort of creature. Comes from New South Wales.”

Clarissa shook herself. “Yes, I am familiar with what a kangaroo is. What I am failing to grasp is why Mr. Smith-Nugent-Smith would believe he could catch one, much less ride it.”

Rupert shrugged, dropping his arms. “That, I can’t tell you. But Smith-Nugent-Smith sneaked over to Queen Charlotte’s menagerie at Kew and gave it a go.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t there, but I saw him the next day. Wasn’t moving too well. Seems he had a deuced bad time of it. But it was in the betting book at White’s and everything, so he had to pay up. He was quite put out about it.”

Claire shook her head. “Still, as irritating as it doubtlessly was, it’s over and done with. I don’t see that murdering Oliver Baxter would solve anything.”

“I suspect you’re right. Let’s see, there’s also…”

Rupert proceeded to relate every scandal he knew involving the house party guests. Which was quite a few, as members of the ton were rather talented when it came to scandal, and his brain was talented at remembering these things. There was Francis Ditherington, a young blood just out of university. Baxter had once made a withering remark about his brand-new fuchsia satin waistcoat. Then there was Lady Dewdney, whose daughter Baxter had declined to dance with back before he’d married Rosalind. He hadn’t bothered to expend much tact, from what Rupert had heard.

“Nicholas Higginbotham used to hold Baxter’s seat in Parliament,” Rupert offered. “But then, four years ago, Baxter defeated him in the election. And then there’s Phyllis Cuthbert—the gossips all thought she would be the one to marry Baxter, but then her brother went and lost her dowry at the gaming tables, so he wound up marrying her cousin instead.”

“Rupert!” Claire laughed. “Go back! Do you mean to tell me that the man Oliver Baxter ousted from his seat in Parliament is in attendance at this very house party? That’s quite the coincidence.”

Rupert paused his pacing. “You know, it does seem like a better reason to hold a grudge than a man having insulted your waistcoat.”

Claire started to reply but was cut off by a familiar click , distinct in the nighttime silence of the castle. He recognized that sound.

He and Claire turned toward the door in horror.

Someone had turned the knob, but, as it had done before, the door stuck, buying them scant seconds.

Not that Rupert was doing anything with those seconds. Oh, no—he was standing in the middle of the room, gaping at the door like one of those big-eyed stuffed monkeys they had over at the British Museum.

Suddenly, Claire reached out, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and hauled him over the back of the sofa.

He landed on top of her, and his whole body jolted.

The sofa faced the fire, which meant its back was toward the door, so they had a bit of concealment, but not much.

Rupert tried to think, but deuce take it all, he wasn’t so good at thinking in the best of times, and having a soft, squirming Claire beneath him on the sofa was not enhancing what few cognitive abilities he had.

He could hear whoever was out in the hall struggling to open the door. “Claire,” he hissed, “what are we going to do? What possible excuse could we have for being alone together in the library at midnight?”

Claire’s only answer was to wrap her arms around his neck and press her lips firmly against his.