Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“She has been pale for two days,” Rowan said, and hated how the words sounded the moment they left his mouth.
Frederick looked up from his glass with one brow raised, lounging in his chair as the club around them hummed with low conversation and clinking glasses.
“Women are occasionally pale,” Frederick said. “It is one of their mysterious accomplishments.”
Rowan’s fingers tightened around his glass. “She nearly fainted after returning from her walk.”
A quick flash of something too sharp to be amusement moved through Frederick’s eyes. Then it was gone, hidden beneath his usual idle charm.
“Did she say why?” Frederick asked, though his tone had lost some of its lazy amusement.
He shifted in his chair, one elbow still hooked over the armrest, but his fingers had gone still around the bowl of his glass.
“She said she was tired.”
Frederick watched him for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then his mouth tilted. “Perhaps she was tired.”
Rowan did not smile. The brandy sat untouched before him, amber beneath the lamplight.
He could still see Emmeline as she had stood in the hall two nights ago, too still, her honey-brown eyes bright with something he had not been able to name. Exhaustion, perhaps. He had touched her elbow and felt the slight tremor run through her before she hid it from him.
That was what unsettled him most—the possibility that something within her body had begun to fail quietly while she smiled through it for everyone else’s comfort.
“She is not herself,” he said, lower now. “She smiles when Aaron speaks to her. She answers me properly. She allows me near.” His jaw tightened because the memory of that permission struck his blood with heat even now. “But something is wrong.”
Frederick swirled his drink without looking at him. “You have become remarkably observant.”
Rowan’s gaze sharpened. “I have always been observant.”
Frederick sighed faintly and leaned back, though tonight even that gesture lacked its usual elegance. There was restlessness in him, a tension in his shoulders, a faint impatience in the fingers tapping once against the side of his glass.
“What is the matter with you?” Rowan asked.
“With me?” Frederick blinked too quickly. “Nothing at all.”
“You are restless.”
“I am always restless.”
“Not like this.”
Frederick’s mouth curved, but color touched his cheekbones in a way Rowan had never seen before.
“Well,” Frederick said lightly, taking too large a swallow of brandy, “if you must know, the dancer is on my mind again.”
Rowan stared at him.
Frederick lifted both brows, his mouth curving with easy indecency, though the color along his cheekbones had not quite faded. “Do not look so grave. A man is occasionally permitted to think of a woman.”
Rowan studied him over the rim of his glass. “This dancer has taken quite a bit of your mind lately.”
“I have a generous mind,” Frederick said lightly, shifting in his chair as he spoke.
Rowan’s eyes narrowed, and the faintest trace of amusement touched his mouth. “Are you smitten?”
Frederick choked so violently on his drink that he had to turn his head aside, one hand pressed to his chest while his face flushed an unmistakable red.
The sound was so undignified that Rowan nearly smiled despite himself. Frederick reached for his handkerchief, coughed once, and glared with more offense than force.
“Smitten?” he repeated. “Good God, Rowan, you wound me.”
“You are blushing.”
“I am flushed from the brandy.”
“You have had half a glass.”
Frederick looked down at the glass as though it had betrayed him. “A potent half.”
Rowan allowed the faintest curve to touch his mouth. “I have known you nearly twenty years, and I have never seen you blush.”
“I have also never heard you discuss your wife’s color with the intensity of a physician examining a fatal contagion.”
The smile vanished as quickly as it had come.
Marriage had changed him. He thought of her in his bed, her sandy blonde hair loosened across his pillow, mouth swollen from his kisses. He wanted her constantly now. He wanted her laughter. Her temper. Her trust.
Frederick drained his glass and stood too suddenly, the chair scraping back beneath him. “I must go.”
Rowan looked up slowly, his eyes narrowing with faint amusement. “To your dancer?”
Frederick adjusted his cuff without looking at him, but his mouth curled. “I might as well visit her and get the matter out of my system.”
“You look very certain that such a remedy will cure you,” Rowan said, leaning back in his chair as he watched the brittle ease in Frederick’s face.
“It has never failed me before,” Frederick replied, his smile bright and unconvincing.
Rowan studied him for another moment, taking in the too-careless set of his shoulders, the bright disorder beneath his charm, and the fact that Frederick was suddenly very interested in his gloves. “Enjoy, then.”
Frederick’s grin returned, but it sat poorly on his face. “Always.”
He left quickly.
Rowan watched him go, unease settling beneath his ribs with quiet persistence.
It was near midnight when the footman knocked on the study door.
Rowan had been working for the better part of three hours, though little of the estate report before him had truly entered his mind. The figures blurred into columns of duty and ink, while his thoughts returned again and again to Emmeline.
“Enter,” he called.
The footman stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was one of the men Rowan had employed privately in the search for Juliet, a narrow-faced, capable fellow named Pierce.
He bowed once. “Your Grace.”
Rowan set down his pen. “You have something.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Pierce’s eyes flicked once to the closed door, then back. “I found the supplier of the paper used for Lady Juliet’s most recent note.”
Rowan’s body went very still.
“Elaborate.”
“I followed the watermark, Your Grace. It belongs to a stationer near Bond Street. Very fine establishment. Expensive. The clientele is quite narrow.”
Rowan rose slowly. “Give me names.”
Pierce hesitated.
Rowan’s voice dropped. “Do not make me ask twice.”
The man swallowed. “A handful of families. Two countesses, Lord Pembroke, the Duchess of Ashbury’s secretary, and…” He paused, discomfort tightening his jaw. “The Marquess of Calham.”
For a moment, Rowan heard nothing. His mind simply stopped around the name.
Frederick.
He blinked once. Twice.
Then everything began moving at once, too quickly and with vicious clarity.
Frederick riding out on the wedding day, returning with Juliet’s note.
Frederick’s frequent disappearances.
The supposed dancer.
The flushed face tonight. The restlessness.
Rowan’s blood went cold. “Damn him,” he said under his breath.
Pierce stood rigidly.
Rowan reached into the desk drawer, took out a purse, and tossed it to him. “You have done well.”
The man caught it. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“You will say nothing of this to anyone. Not a soul.”
Pierce bowed quickly. “Of course, Your Grace.”
“Go.”
When the door closed behind him, Rowan stood in the study for one more second, both hands braced against the desk.
His oldest friend had looked him in the face for weeks and lied.
He moved.
He took the stairs two at a time, crossed the corridor toward Emmeline’s chamber, and did not allow himself to think until he rounded the corner.
Then he stopped.
She was already there.
Emmeline stood just outside her chamber door, one hand still resting on the latch before she turned.
Her hair was partly unpinned, loose sandy strands falling against her cheek, and she wore a soft gown tied at the waist. She looked tired, yes, but there was something alert in her face too, something strained and sleepless.
For one brief, ruinous second, the sight of her nearly stopped him.
“Rowan?” she asked, her eyes widening as she took in his face. Then she stepped toward him, her fingers tightening at the edge of her dressing gown. “I was coming to find you. I need to speak with you about—”
“Come with me.”
She faltered, almost startled. “Rowan, please. There is something very important that I must tell you.”
“There is no time.” His jaw tightened, the strain in his face cutting through whatever anger had carried him there. “We have urgent business.”
Her lips parted, and for an instant he saw something flash through her expression.
“What has happened?” she asked. “Where are we going?” “Frederick’s.”
Her expression changed so quickly that, had he not been watching for guilt, he might have missed it.
His chest tightened.
“Now?” she asked.
He held her gaze. “Yes.”
Her eyes filled with something like fear. Still, she nodded. “Very well.”
When the carriage stopped, Rowan was out before the footman could lower the step properly.
The butler paled when he saw him. “Your Grace—”
“Where is Calham?”
“My lord, I—”
Rowan pushed past him. “Frederick!”
His voice cracked through the house like a gunshot.
Emmeline hurried in behind him. “Rowan—”
“Frederick!” he roared again.
A door opened somewhere above. A servant appeared at the corridor’s end and vanished again.
Frederick entered the parlor moments later in shirtsleeves and a hastily tied cravat, his face pale beneath the lamplight. “Must you wake the dead as well as my household?”
Rowan crossed the room in three strides, caught him by the lapels, and drove him back against the wall hard enough to make the pictures rattle. “Where is she?”
Frederick’s hands came up at once, gripping Rowan’s wrists. “Lower your voice.”
“Where is she?”
“Rowan,” Emmeline said behind him, breathless, urgent. “Please—”
“Stand back,” he said, without looking at her. Not harshly. He could not be harsh to her. “Do not come near.”
Frederick’s gaze flicked toward her. It was quick, but Rowan saw it.
The last thread snapped.
“You knew,” Rowan said, his voice dropping into something far more threatening than shouting. “I traced the paper from Juliet’s note. It led me here.”
Frederick’s jaw tightened.