Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I t was the lady’s fear that dispelled the last of Martin’s suspicion. And she was a lady. The carriage and diction could not be counterfeited. A pretty lady, with lovely hazel eyes. Not in her first youth, he thought. Martin put her age at a few years short of his own. Perhaps she was in her late twenties or early thirties.

Not a wanton, either. She had blushed scarlet when she saw him and had covered him quickly. Nor had she said or done anything that could be interpreted as flirting. She was still wearing a bonnet, cape and gloves, as if she had just arrived. That was not proof of her innocence in whatever plot had brought him here, but he found himself believing her.

“I mean you no harm, ma’am,” he said. “Or is it ‘Miss’?”

She ignored the question. “You might say that even if you did mean me harm,” she pointed out.

“Perhaps if we introduce ourselves? My name is Martin Findlater. And you are?”

He succeeded better than he expected. She sighed as the tension left her body, and then smiled. “Viscount Findlater? Chloe’s brother?”

At his nod, she moved directly to the nearest bedpost and began untying the rope. “I am Jessica, Lady Colyton,” she told him. “Dom is my half-brother. Sort of. I mean, he is my half-brother, but it is an irregular relationship.” Her face flamed again.

She was the Countess of Colyton? The infamous Countess of Colyton? Martin knew of her. Who didn’t? Even Martin, who hated gossip, had heard at least the main points of her story. She was a base-born daughter of the previous Duke of Haverford. The same duke who sired Dom Finchley, his sister’s husband, though Dom’s mother had been married and Dom had been claimed as his own by her husband.

Lady Colyton and two other merry-begotten females had been raised as wards of the Duchess of Haverford. The stain on their birth didn’t prevent all three women from making excellent marriages.

As far as he knew, the other two were still with their husbands. Lady Colyton had left hers. It had been the talk of the ton at the time, though Martin tried never to pay any attention to rumours, and these had died out quite quickly. Squashed, he supposed, by the current Duke of Haverford, who was very protective of his half-sisters.

“Then we are connections through my sister and your brother, Lady Colyton,” Martin said. Whatever her antecedents, and whatever had happened in her marriage, she had been raised as a lady. He would treat her as such. She had moved to the bottom of the bed and was dealing with the knot there.

“Indeed,” she said. “Ahah!”

His ankle was suddenly loose. “That was quick.”

She was at the second bedpost now, and released the knot even more quickly. “These were in a half bow,” she explained. “One more to go.” She picked up the lamp from by the window and moved it to give her light while she untied his last arm.

Meanwhile, Martin had stretched his free hand down to his groin. A label had been attached with a ribbon to his personal equipage. Perhaps it would give a clue to what this was all about.

“Do you think the people who brought you here will still be in the house?” Lady Colyton asked, her voice quavering at the thought.

“I don’t know, my lady, but I will check when I am free,” Martin offered.

“There!” She stepped back with a pleased smile even as the rope released.

Martin sat up, returning the smile. “Thank you, my lady.” He was already unbuckling the cuffs to which the ropes had been tied, releasing first one wrist and then the other. “Have you seen my clothes?” he asked.

Lady Colyton shook her head. “I have just arrived,” she explained. “I came straight upstairs from the entrance hall.”

“No matter.” He was making equally short work of the cuffs on his ankles, taking care first to tuck the blanket around his middle. And if Lady Colyton was offended by his bare shoulders and chest, there was little he could do about it. “My lady, I wonder if you would be kind enough to ask a servant to fetch me a drink? I do not know how long since I had one, or what they gave me to knock me out, but I have a powerful thirst.”

She bit her lip again. He wanted to soothe it with kisses, which was as inappropriate a thought as any he had had. “Is there a problem, my lady?”

“What if someone is in the kitchen?” she asked, frowning, her lovely eyes clouded with anxiety.

“The cook?” he suggested. Is the woman simple?

Lady Colyton was shaking her head. “The cook only comes in the morning,” she said. “The maid, too.”

She was here on her own, he realised. She said ‘the maid,’ implying there was only one. Had she been part of the plot against him, and was all this anxiety an act? His head hurt, and it was hard to think, but he wanted to believe she was being honest. He shied away from considering why he was so keen to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Very well, Lady Colyton,” he said. “If you will turn your back while I arrange this blanket, we shall explore the house together.”

He wound the blanket around him toga style, and took a moment to examine the label while Lady Colyton was not watching. The message was addressed to “Jessica.” Lady Colyton then. His suspicion surged.

“Jessica, it is time for you to do something for yourself. We’ve given you a rogue for the holiday. Have fun.” It was signed E. M.

Martin would hand it to the widow and see how she reacted. “Lady Colyton, you can look again. I think this is intended for you.”

He handed her the label and she read it. Her eyes widened. If she was feigning her astonishment and her indignation, she was a better actor than any he had ever seen.

“This is appalling,” she told him. “And wrong, too. By what I have been told, you are a gentleman, through and through, and certainly no rogue. How did that stupid woman come to select you?” She frowned in thought. “In fact, Lord Findlater, how did you come to be here at all? They knocked you out, you said?”

“A drug in my food or drink, I imagine. Can you tell me where I am, my lady? The last thing I remember is eating my breakfast at the inn in Upper Beckthump.”

“We are near there. Two miles or a little more, I believe. And it is late afternoon, Lord Findlater.”

“Only a mile?” That was a relief. As long as he could find something to wear, he could be reunited with his luggage and Lady Colyton could be left to enjoy her holiday in solitude, if that was in truth what she wanted. “It sounds as if I have been here for hours, which makes it less likely that someone is still lurking in the house. However, let me check that the house is safe for you, my lady, and then I shall be on my way.”

Her brow wrinkled as she shook her head. “It is snowing, quite heavily. I suspect you may be stuck here for the night, my lord.”

Martin pulled a drape aside, and Lady Colyton was correct. From the little he could see—for it seemed as if night had fallen—it was snowing a blizzard. He could do nothing about the weather, and he needed something to drink. Water, beer, milk even. Anything to quench his thirst. “Can we check downstairs first, my lady? Starting with the kitchen?”

He led the way down the stairs with one of the lamps, lifting his improvised toga out of the way so he could walk without tripping. “Is it this way to the kitchen?” he asked, as he headed to the back of the hall behind the stairs.

Lady Colyton was following behind him with the other lamp. “I imagine so. I haven’t been here before.”

The door at the back of the hall led to a short passage with two doors on one side and one on the other. Martin opened the first two. The stairs to the cellars. Dark. No noise or sign of occupation. A small office or perhaps a bedchamber—the housekeeper’s or the butler’s, perhaps. No occupants. Not even any furniture.

The third door opened into a kitchen. The lamps left dark shadows in the corners, but Martin could see well enough to tell that the room was spacious, clean, and well organised. Something fragrant cooked in a pot on a large closed stove, and a cloth-covered tray at one end of the kitchen table hinted at what he assumed must be Lady Colyton’s dinner.

She had not waited for him to proclaim the kitchen empty before following him. She put her lamp down on the table, swept off the cloth, and lifted a jug to her nostrils. “Cider,” she declared. “Will that work for you, Lord Findlater?” She was already fetching a china mug from a row of them.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

After handing him the mug, she investigated the pot on the stove, using a cloth to lift the lid. “Stew,” she said. “There is plenty for both of us, my lord.”

The tray also had a loaf of fresh bread and a plate with two tarts—berry, from the juice that was seeping through the pastry lattice work on top. Another jug held what looked like milk. A butter dish and a bowl of whipped cream completed the offerings.

“Cover it up again,” Martin suggested, “while we check the rest of the house. Or stay here, if you wish, and I’ll do the search.”

“I’ll come,” Lady Colyton said, replacing the pot lid. She put the cloth back over the tray and picked up her lamp.

Martin opened the other doors in the kitchen—a pantry, a scullery, and a short passage that led to the back door. It was locked and barred. “No intruders. I am not expecting to find anyone,” he repeated. “I have been here for hours, at least. I was already tied as you found me when I woke, perhaps two hours ago, and I saw no one and heard no one until you arrived. I wonder what is through here.”

A short passage led from the kitchen to the dining room past a china closet. The dining table was set for one person. “This is where they expected you to eat,” Martin observed.

“I will find another setting when we come back down,” said Lady Colyton.

The other door in the dining room returned them to the entrance hall. A door on the opposite side of the hall let onto a large parlour that made up the rest of the floor. It could be divided in two by doors that folded out from each side of the room, and the back portion had glass doors to the outside. They were also locked.

“Upstairs,” Martin suggested, and once again led the way so Lady Colyton would feel safe. He opened the door to the room opposite the one in which he had been tied up, paused in the doorway at what he saw in the candlelight, then took several swift strides to check that his first glance was correct.

The clothes he had been wearing at breakfast were laid out on the bed, and his travel bag was on a low table. There was a note with the clothes. He snatched it up and read it.

“Findlater, I trust you like the surprise. I’m sorry about dosing you, but I didn’t think you’d agree. You’re a nice man, but you really need to loosen up. Anyway, please present my apologies to the lovely widow. When I accepted Edith’s proposal that I be the lady’s Christmas Rogue, I didn’t know grandfather was going to insist on me attending his Christmas house party. I was on my way to apologise to Lady C. when I ran into you at the inn, and the rest you know. No need to thank me. Just have a nice time, and make sure the lady does, too. From what Edith says, she needs it as much as you do. A. P.”

Archie Porrit. The scurvy cur. Martin had met him in London last year, and they had become unlikely friends, for Porrit was a typically restless second son with a large allowance and no worthwhile occupation.

Porrit had tried to introduce Martin to the occupations of a gentleman of leisure, but the experiment had not been a success. Martin didn’t enjoy drinking to excess, he was bored by games of chance, and while he enjoyed watching horse races, boxing matches and the like, a little went a long way.

As for his one visit to a brothel, Martin couldn’t help but imagine his sister and stepsisters, if they were as poverty-stricken and desperate as the denizens of that loud, gaudy, and odorous house. He paid the young woman Porrit had selected for him a double fee for her trouble and went home without partaking of the offered entertainment.

“Does it explain what happened?” Lady Colyton asked.

Martin looked at her, shaken from his own thoughts and wondering what she meant.

“The note.” She nodded toward his hand, which had crumpled the note into a ball, quite without him realising it.

The note! Of course. He handed it to her, and she smoothed it out to read it.

“A. P.?”

Martin peered at her, wondering if her question was an act. Her surprise and shock at finding him tied to her bed might simply have been because he was the wrong lover for a planned assignation. Porrit’s offered apology certainly made it sound that way.

“Arthur Porrit,” he told her.

She narrowed her eyes as she thought, then nodded, as if to herself. “Ah. Edith Mannering’s cousin. Why on earth would she imagine I would welcome a liaison with a man I have met once? Twice if you count a chance encounter in Hatchards.” She frowned again. “If it was chance. I was with Edith, the conniving witch. Do you think they were plotting this even then, two weeks ago? Oh, wait till I get my hands on her… I trusted her, and she did this!”

She ended with a growl, as if words had failed her. Certainly, the lady sounded like an innocent victim. Uncle Swithin would counsel that Martin reserved judgement. Martin was trying to be a better man than Uncle Swithin.

“We have both been the victims of our supposed friends,” he ventured. “There is a bright side to this, Lady Colyton. There are no villains lurking in the house. I daresay Porrit is halfway to his grandfather’s estate in Hereford, along with whoever helped him. His valet, I imagine. The two are as thick as thieves.”

“When I saw Edith yesterday to fetch the keys to the house, she was getting ready to leave for her grandfather’s Christmas house party. Oooh, I could just…” She apparently could not imagine a fate bad enough for her friend, for she clenched her fists and stamped her feet, then visibly pulled herself into a more ladylike posture.

Her voice was calm when she said, “I shall leave you to get dressed, my lord. Casual dress, if you prefer. I shall not be changing for dinner. I shall be downstairs setting a place for you at the table and bringing through the dinner tray.” She bobbed him a slight curtsey, as if they had met at a ball and were now saying farewell.

Martin watched her leave the room, still in two minds about whether this had been an assignation gone wrong. He knew there were many rumours about Lady Colyton, but his sister Chloe had told him bluntly that they were lies, spread by the Dowager Lady Colyton after the younger lady left the older lady’s son. Or, according to Chloe, after Lady Colyton escaped an abusive marriage.

There’d been something else. Something he’d heard recently. Something that cast an unfortunate light on the lady. No. He couldn’t call it to mind.

He should be dressing, not standing here in a blanket trying to understand a lady who, whether innocent or not, was certainly no one he should be interested in for any moral purpose.

And there he went again, thinking of immoral purposes. “It is most unfair,” Chloe had told him. “Poor Jessica. Just because her father was not married to her mother, everyone believes the worst about her, and yet they accept my darling Dom without hesitation, and their father was not married to his mother, either.”

Martin had better watch his step. Innocent until proven guilty, that was the ticket. Quite apart from not wishing to offend Lady Colyton, he would hate to give Chloe a disgust of him. Nor would the lady’s brothers be inclined to be forgiving—one of whom was Chloe’s husband, and another the powerful Duke of Haverford.

Time to get dressed, and then go down to have a quiet meal with the most attractive and mysteriously compelling Lady Colyton. Keeping his hands to himself. And his lips. And any of the other treacherous parts of his body that had ideas of their own.

He was a gentleman, and would control himself if it killed him.