Chapter 30
“You have not turned a page in ten minutes,” Camelia observed Iris gently from the sofa opposite her.
Her sister’s bulging belly rose beneath the soft muslin of her morning dress. “You shall damage your eyes pretending so hard.”
“I am thinking,” Iris said.
“Liar,” Margaret sang from the carpet, where she and Pamela were arguing over a deck of cards. “You are brooding. There is a difference, you know. Thinking is dignified, whereas brooding makes that little line appear between your brows.”
“I do not brood,” Iris said. “I am perfectly—”
The parlor door opened. Mrs. Dallow, the housekeeper, peered in.
“Pardon, Your Grace,” she said to Camelia, then turned to Iris with an expression that wiped all flippancy from the room. “Lady Hentley has a visitor.”
Iris looked at her sisters and Pamela, who were just as curious as she was. “Who is it?”
“Your old housekeeper, my lady. She asks to see you. Begging pardon, she looks… rather distressed,” Mrs. Dallow added concernedly.
Mrs. Henkings is here?
The book slid from Iris’s lap to the carpet.
“I will come down,” she said at once, standing so quickly that the room swayed for a heartbeat.
“Iris?” Camelia pushed herself up, concern flaring in her delicate features. “Is something amiss?”
“I do not know,” Iris answered, which was true. Dread had already uncurled in her stomach like smoke. “It is probably nothing. Some little matter with the house. I shall be back directly.”
The Brentmere morning room smelled faintly of beeswax and daffodils. Mrs. Henkings sat on the very edge of a chair, hat still pinned to her gray-streaked hair, her strong hands clenched around her reticule, and her capable face had gone an unhealthy yellowish white.
“Mrs. Henkings.” Relief and worry collided in Iris’s chest. “Has something happened at Hentley House? Are you well? Is—”
“Oh, my lamb.” The endearment, used only in the most private, dire moments, cut through her questions. Mrs. Henkings surged to her feet, then seemed to catch herself, as though remembering her place in a ducal household. Her chin trembled.
“No,” Iris said, very calmly. “You will tell me at once.”
The housekeeper swallowed.
“It is His Grace, my lady,” she blurted. “The Duke of Knoxford.”
Every thought evaporated, and Iris’s body went oddly light, as if she had risen out of herself.
“What of him?” Iris asked, composed but for the way her fingers dug into the skirts
“There was an accident,” Mrs. Henkings said.
“His private skiff was found overturned near Waterloo Bridge, they say, yesterday morning. No one saw it capsize, but it was his, sure enough.” She pressed a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth.
“They have found no body. But the river…” She shook her head helplessly. “The river takes what it pleases.”
Iris heard a gasp behind her. Camelia stood in the doorway, clasping her mouth.
Iris’s lungs refused to work for a heartbeat; then air rushed in too fast, and slow panic began.
Absurd and violent images collided in her mind.
She did not want to picture him in that way; she wanted to see Blaise standing at the hearth at Hentley House, his broad shoulders filling the doorway of what had once been her study.
She wanted to feel his warm hand closing around her wrist again and savor the mocking curve of his mouth.
Iris began to shake; she sat heavily in a chair as Camelia’s housemaid faffed over her.
“You said presumed dead?” she asked shakily.
Mrs. Henkings reached into her reticule and drew out a folded scrap of paper; it was creased as if it had been opened and closed a dozen times. She placed it into Iris’s hands and kept a finger on her lip as she looked around to see if anyone could hear her.
“This came to me not an hour after the news. A boy brought it and said only that I was to put it straight into your hand,” she whispered.
Fear flared again, quick as a match. Iris eyed the slip of paper as if it might explode. It was Blaise’s handwriting. Her fingers did not feel entirely under her command as she opened it. The paper was coarse and thick. No seal, only a hastily folded edge.
You are the only one I can trust.
Meet me outside the Reynolds Club at night.
* * *
Iris waited patiently in the hackney outside London’s newest and most popular club. An hour was passing by, and she wondered if perhaps it was a trap. Just as she was about to escape, a tall, dark figure emerged and sat opposite her. She held her breath.
“Viscount Vale’s estate,” he called out, and his deep voice caused her to shiver. “You will catch your death like that.” He addressed her as the hackney lurched forward.
Iris felt her cheeks flush as he studied her. She waited until the street looked quieter and emptier.
“You are one to speak of death!” she snapped.
In the flicker of a streetlamp, Blaise’s face came into sudden stark relief, and she perceived his angular cheekbones, the dark stubble along his jaw, and the scar that ran from brow to jaw like a pale, vicious stroke.
It caught the light and then disappeared again as they trundled back into shadow.
But it was enough for her to sigh in relief.
He is alive.
“You have heard, then.” He slouched lazily in the corner, but she could see the tension in the line of his thigh, in the way his gloved hand tapped a rhythm against his knee. “About my tragic demise.”
“Oh, could you have made it any scarier?” Iris asked, fighting the emotion in her voice and the fresh tears that threatened to fall.
“I left my sister’s house in such a hurry, but I told them I would be at Hentley House.
I pray they do not venture there. You are already more interesting dead than you ever were alive. ”
“Impossible.” His mouth kicked up at one corner in that infuriating way she missed. “I was exceedingly interesting alive.”
“You are a conceited creature.” She realized she was staring too intently at the wet gleam of his hair, at the solid breadth of him in the dim carriage. She wrenched her gaze back to the window. “How dare you?”
“How dare I not die?” he asked sarcastically.
“How dare you frighten me!” Her voice rose before caution could choke the words. The hackney clattered over cobbles.
“Were you worried about me, Little Blossom?” The endearing name caused her to shiver. “Believe me, frightening you was not high on my list of aims.”
“No? Where did it appear on the list precisely? After upending your skiff in the Thames or before having my housekeeper weeping in my sister’s morning room?” She threw her arms up in despair.
The lamplight caught his eyes, making them look almost black, and she noticed the emotion behind them.
“You cried?” he asked, too softly.
“Of course not,” she lied.
One of his brows rose, but he did not press, which was both a relief and an irritant.
“You received my note then,” he said instead.
“It was quite melodramatic. You sound like Pamela’s gothic novels.”
Blaise chuckled, and the sound tugged at her heart. It took all her strength not to reach out and pull him to her. Now was not the time, especially when she did not know where they were going.
“I was short on time,” he said. “And I rather thought you might enjoy the drama.”
“I do not—”
“You are in a hackney at midnight, rushing to meet a man the world believes drowned.” His smile was faint and crooked. “You might not enjoy it, Little Blossom, but you cannot deny you are suited to it.”
The old familiar sting of being seen, too clearly, burned under her ribs.
“What is this about?” she demanded. “If this is some elaborate jest—”
“You think me sadistic enough to fake my own death for a jest?” he cut her off.
“I think you’re capable of nearly anything if you believe it would serve your purpose,” she said. “You never did explain what those purposes are, exactly.”
He huffed a low breath, somewhere between a laugh and a curse.
“In this at least, I shall attempt to satisfy you,” he said. “You know about Daniel Vale?”
“Only what have you told me.” She inclined her head.
“I told you the edges,” he said. “Not the center.”
The wheels jolted them as the hackney turned onto a narrower street. The air shifted, growing colder.
“Go on then?” Iris urged him.
“Daniel’s dream was always my brother’s title,” Blaise went on.
“He was never meant to be anything more than the spare of the spare, but he fancied himself a great man thwarted. He helped Benjamin elope, you know. Stood beside him as his secretary, and I did not even know about this. He witnessed the vows, signed the register, and I am certain he hid them.”
Iris stared at him. “Where are we going, Blaise?”
“I am getting there,” he said calmly. Daniel told me himself at Hentley.
He thought I would be grateful for his offer to fix everything.
” His mouth twisted. “His proposition was simple: I am to disappear, and the world will go on believing I am dead. My poor nephew will continue to cling to his illegitimate status and education until the scandal drags him down. Then Daniel will step in like a savior. He will ‘rescue’ Marcus from disgrace and assume the dukedom in my absence, and everyone will applaud his nobility.”
“But Marcus remains illegitimate in the eyes of the world,” Iris said slowly. “Because all evidence of his parents’ marriage is in Daniel’s hands.”
“So, Daniel believes.” Blaise’s gaze held hers steadily.
“What he did not account for is that sentimentality is his weakness. He claims to despise my brother, but that is only half true. He loved being important to him. When Benjamin married, I believe Daniel stood beside him. When he ruined that marriage, he kept one thing he could never quite bring himself to destroy.”
“The proof,” she breathed. “He kept it.”
“Somewhere,” Blaise said confidently. “I suspect it is hidden in his London house. He is too vain to leave it moldering in some solicitor’s office in the country. He would want to be able to gloat over it in private.”
“And you intend to… break into his home?” It sounded foreign on her tongue, like speaking in an unfamiliar language. Iris prided herself on exact accounts, polished silver, and spotless conduct, and now she was in a hackney at night on the way to commit a crime.
Blaise watched her, and some subtle amusement eased the hard line of his mouth.
“Do not look so horrified,” he said. “You have already committed far more scandalous offenses in my company.”
Heat leaped to her cheeks, instant as a slap, as memories unfurled. She could feel his mouth at her throat, his hand tangled in her hair, and hear the things he had coaxed from her in that wicked room.
“That was...” She clutched her reticule tighter. “Different.”
“Was it?” His voice softened, roughened. “Breaking into a cousin’s study to retrieve a stolen document seems pale in comparison.”
Her breath snagged, treacherously. She hated that even now, in the middle of this madness, some part of her responded to him.
“Where is Daniel now?” she asked, forcing the conversation to what they were about to do.
“Enjoying my hospitality with a trusted cousin of mine,” Blaise said. “He is at my house, preparing himself for the dukedom. Alistair is sitting with him as we speak.”
“So, that explains the skiff.”
“Yes, Alistair agreed that Daniel was unlikely to come quietly if we simply asked for the certificate. So, we… persuaded him. A fake death and a few hours alone with him will give us time to find the proof we need that Benjamin and Diana got married before Marcus was conceived.”
“And what, pray, happens when Daniel realizes that you are alive and you have no intention of obligingly disappearing from England?” Iris found it difficult to wrap her head around all of this information.
“That depends on what we find tonight,” Blaise said. “If we secure proof of the marriage, Daniel’s leverage evaporates. Marcus becomes what he always should have been: the unquestioned heir, and Daniel returns to his petty plotting without a dukedom to dangle before him.”
“And if we do not find it?”
He was silent for a moment. The hackney rattled past a row of darkened shops.
“Then,” he said eventually, “I will have to decide how much more of my life I am prepared to sacrifice to protect my nephew.”
Iris heard the protectiveness in his voice, and she understood the cadence of someone who had made a virtue of suffering and believed they must bleed to prove their love or their worth. She exhaled through her mouth.
“So, you thought,” she said quietly, “that if you must trespass and steal and perhaps hang, you might as well drag me along?”
“If I hang, I assure you, you shan’t be there,” he said swiftly, and there was a flicker of real alarm in his face that startled her. “I would never risk you, Iris.”
“You already have,” she said, and he flinched.
He reached into his coat and withdrew a small, folded paper cap, which he offered across the narrow space.
“If you feel yourself in danger at any point, there will be a hackney waiting to take you straight to Alistair. You will be safe.”
“You prepared an escape plan for me and not for yourself?” Despite his plan, she did not wish to leave him behind.
“I am not entirely without common sense,” he replied. “Nor am I idiotic enough to cross Mrs. Henkings by letting harm come to you.”
Iris snorted despite herself.
“You might have asked anyone else,” she said. “Alistair, for instance. Or a thief. Why me?”
His gaze softened unexpectedly in her direction.
“Because I trust you,” he said simply.
The hackney began to slow, and Blaise’s attention shifted to the window.
“We are nearly there,” he murmured. “Last chance to turn back, Little Blossom. I can have you returned to your sister’s door before anyone realizes you were gone.”
She thought of Camelia’s worried eyes, her father’s gentle hand on hers, and Margaret’s encouraging words.
They had been tiptoeing around her ever since she left Hentley.
How cautious they were. She remembered the quiet ache that opened in her when Mrs. Henkings said Blaise was dead and the furious rush of relief she felt when she read his handwriting.
“You said I was the only one you could trust. You cannot rescind that now, Blaise. I shall hold you to it, and I will come with you.”
Blaise smiled as the carriage rolled to a stop.