Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“ A re you sure?” Lottie paced across their mother’s private sitting room, scowling. “I do not like the idea of your suddenly marrying a man I’ve never met.”
“But we should have met him,” Isabella insisted. It was another bit of information she should have had long ago. Not knowing might have resulted in never meeting Rowan. She shivered. All secrets behind them now, though. They could move forward hand in hand.
Annie stopped Lottie’s pacing and pulled her down to the sofa. “Mrs. Garrison trusts him. The admiral trusts him. They consider him a son.”
“Then why has he not come around before?”
Because titles spooked him like a loud noise spooked a horse. But Isabella hadn’t told them that. No use putting walls up between them all before they even met him. “Mr. Trent does not blossom in social situations. He prefers work to conversation.” Isabella pushed off the old wardrobe where she’d been leaning. “Forget Rowan, though. Tonight, after the Haws arrive, I will sneak out of the ball to search their rooms once more.” And perhaps tomorrow morning, Samuel would be safe, and Rowan would be able to speak to him about a happier betrothal. “Lottie, is there anything left to do to prepare for the guests’ arrival?”
“Nothing. The doors are flung open, the roses exploding absolutely everywhere. There are even petals floating in the punch.” She’d gone with a wild garden theme, and they each were dressed like a flower. Lottie was a rose in a deep-red gown with emeralds at her neck. Andromeda wore bright yellow like a sunflower. Prudence had decided to be a pink peony, Imogen a daisy wearing white with yellow diamonds at her wrist. Felicity was a violet with several secured tightly in her hair.
Isabella had gone in search of a book on Irish flowers, had discovered the prettiest wild rose with petals fading from white to pink with a yellow center. She’d done that weeks ago, before she’d discovered her heart beat for Rowan. Telling, that. Her fashion choices had known before she had. She wore a white gown with a thin white overlay. The bottom of the skirts had been dipped in dye so that pink rushed up them, fading into white. She wore a pendant necklace with a single yellow sapphire dangling at its end. Pink and white and yellow—an Irish rose for a man who loved Irish stories.
“We should line up to greet my guests,” Lottie said, charting a brisk path for the door. The others filed out behind her—Annie, Imogen, Prudence, and Felicity, pretty as flowers but drooping. Heavy clouds gathered overhead, after all.
Isabella trailed them into the hallway, jumping as Gertrude ran around the corner, sliding in her stockinged feet on the marble floor. At seventeen, Gertrude had not yet made her debut. Their mother had believed in waiting a bit longer before forcing a girl to become a wife, and they had remained true to her wishes.
“Let me dance once,” Gertrude pleaded. “Please!”
Lottie hugged her. “You may watch from the balcony with June.”
“But Alex is allowed to attend tonight.” Her eyes blazed with injustice. The Earl of Avelford, Annie’s young brother-in-law, could always poke Gertrude’s rage into an inferno.
Annie wrapped her arm around Gertrude’s waist. “He’s an earl, and he must begin to show himself as a respectable gentleman before he sits in the House of Lords. Trust me. He is not anticipating it. He’d much rather be at the picnic we’ve arranged in the nursery for you and June.”
“It’s not fair.” Gertrude sagged into Annie’s embrace.
“I know. Come now, let me fix your hair.” Annie guided their sister back to the family’s personal chambers, and Lottie led everyone else downstairs.
“What time is your Mr. Trent supposed to be here?” Imogen said.
“I do not know. We’ve not had much time to talk in the last week.” In fact, she’d seen him only once when she’d snuck late one night into the Hestia and found him sleeping at the desk in his study.
When his eyes had fluttered open, he’d given a groggy smile and said, “Am I dreaming?”
She’d wanted to prove to him that she was all too real by stripping bare and letting him sing pleasure across her skin. But he’d been too tired, his desk a mess of legal papers and half empty cups of tea and coffee. She’d helped him to his bed and asked why he was so ill-prepared from a paperwork perspective to take on another inn. Very out of character from what she knew of him. But half asleep he’d told her, with a yawn, that the mess was not for the Blue Sheep. That was coming along smoothly. The mess was for her.
“Trying to figure out how to keep a duke’s sister happy.” He’d dragged her onto the bed beside him and curled his body around her from behind. “The expansion will have to happen”—yawn—“much more quickly than I’d planned if I’m to give you everything you’re used to. Everything you deserve.”
“I don’t need any of it.” She’d kissed his knuckles. “No silks. No mansions. Just a few rooms and you.” For a long time, there’d been nothing but the sounds of their breathing, the sounds of an exhausted man sinking deep into slumber. “I’m not with child,” she admitted into that heavy, breath-filled air. And she’d wished it wasn’t so.
“Oh.” Not asleep entirely, then. He’d heard her.
She’d not asked him what that almost silent syllable had meant. The possibility of a child had not been the glue binding them.
Had it?
The stairs in the narrow hall Imogen and Isabella descended seemed suddenly cold, as if a surprisingly cool summer wind had crept through a crack somewhere.
Rowan paced the length of the hallway outside his rooms at the top of Hestia until Poppins appeared out of the dark stairwell. “Is he coming?”
“Yes. Why are you lying to him?” Poppins leaned against the wall, crossed one ankle over the other.
“That is none of your business.”
“It is. Mr. Haws is a paying guest, and I get to decide if I want to work for you.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
Rowan stopped in the middle of opening the door to the room across the hall from his study. “You’re right. Haws is using the item in my safe to pressure a man into marrying his daughter. I won’t help him do that. He can keep it somewhere else.”
Poppins whistled. “Well then, I’ll still work for you. What a bounder.”
Rowan pushed into the room and through the various odds and ends stored there—old furniture and boxes of linen, various sundries for the hotel. No one entered this room but him and Poppins, and in the very corner was a large, rather ugly box—his Italian, iron floor safe. He lifted the key from his pocket and pressed it into the hidden cavity. Poppins did the same. Opening the safe required two keys. Neither man could open it without the other.
The mechanism inside clicked, and Rowan swung the door open. The letter lay there bright and square like a snake waiting to strike.
“Seems so harmless,” Poppins said, shutting the safe and locking it.
“It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
Answering that question meant a long discussion about Isabella. Not happening. “I know. That is enough. Do you trust me, or do you quit?”
Poppins shrugged. “I’ll stay around. For now.”
Footsteps on the other side of the door heralded the arrival of Rowan’s guest, and he met Mr. Haws in the hallway, locking the door to the hidden room behind him.
“Mr. Haws,” Rowan said, bowing deeply, “I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience. The safe will be in proper working order by the morning, I assure you.” He held out the letter to the older man.
Mr. Haws snatched it up and slipped it between his waistcoat and his shirt. “It is an inconvenience. I’ve somewhere to be. Right now. And do you know where? At the Duke of Clearford’s House. We are the guests of honor. Not supposed to say anything, but we’re soon to be closely related. My little Bethy has caught the duke’s eye.”
Rowan bowed again, afraid for the man to see his face. “My congratulations.”
“You will be able to advertise on my name, Mr. Trent. The best in society might not venture past your doors without the patronage of an esteemed man like myself.”
Poppins mumbled something about the best already breathing within these walls.
Somehow Rowan smiled. Without baring his teeth.
“Do not worry,” Mr. Haws said, “I’ll still remember the working fellows when I’m raised far above you. But do not expect such informality as we currently enjoy. It wouldn’t be right for a duke’s father-in-law to be so familiar with a man of your sort.” He chuckled and disappeared down the stairs.
“That man is an arse,” Poppins said.
Rowan strolled to the window at the end of the hall. It offered a clear view of the street, and Rowan waited, watching his pocket watch. “That is all, Poppins. Have a good evening. I’m going out tonight.”
“You? Out?” Poppins’s laugh echoed off the walls.
“No. You, out, now.”
Still laughing, Poppins bounced down the stairs.
And Rowan changed his clothes, stripping quickly out of his usual practical but fine shirt and waistcoat and trousers and donning materials of a rougher sort, borrowed from one of his footmen. He swung an old, beaten brown greatcoat over his shoulders and pulled a worn hat over his head. He’d return to change into his formal evening wear later .
After.
Rowan peeked down at the street once more. Hestia’s front door opened, and Mr. Haws barreled out, escorted by daughter.
He had little time, and it was draining from the hourglass swiftly. He popped up the collar of his greatcoat and pulled the hat brim low. Then he left Hestia from the back alley and watched from the side of the building as one of Hestia’s hackney coaches set off with Mr. and Miss Haws inside. The man had not had long enough to put the letter somewhere other than his pocket.
But Rowan had had days to prepare for the Haws’s trip to the ball being held at Clearford House.
The driver of the coach crept forward with the pace of a snail. Rowan could easily follow at a distance, and when the crush of carriages grew too thick for the coach to move more than a few yards at a time, it sought a new route, turning into an alley between two buildings. Narrow, dark.
Rowan followed, trying not to think about the woman in the coach, trying only to keep tight control over the cold gun heavy in his greatcoat pocket. Not loaded.
Mr. Haws didn’t know that.
The carriage stopped, the wheels crunching against rock and mud in the shadows that Rowan stepped out of.