Chapter 12
Nic avoided breakfast the following morning, refusing to leave his rooms until negotiations had begun for the day. He told himself he was too tired to make small talk. That he hadn’t slept well. That he was just lying in for his health. It had nothing—all right, everything—to do with Dashiell.
Eventually the promise of wine lured him out of bed, and he sat at his workbench drinking while Ambrose watched on warily.
He’d brought up a breakfast tray that Nic was ignoring, and seemed unwilling to click his tongue in fond disapproval the way Rowerre would have—a fact that made Nic empty the last of the decanter into his glass.
“You had better fetch more,” he said, holding it out to his new valet.
“Of course, my lord.” Ambrose took it, but hesitated. “Perhaps you would also like some tea? I brought up—”
“Tea is for men who didn’t wake feeling like they’ve been trampled all over. Enough wine and I will soon feel much better, I assure you.”
Ambrose went out, leaving Nic to drink and stare at the tumble of sigil tape he’d left on his workbench the day before. Perhaps if he stared at it long enough the solid darkness would leap out and swallow him. Then he needn’t keep reliving Dashiell’s… everything.
At the thought of Dashiell’s everything, Nic tipped the remaining dregs of wine into his mouth, only for someone to knock on the door. Nic leaned his head back with a sigh. “What?”
“What?” Leaf repeated, opening the door without invitation. “What? Is that how I can expect to be greeted as your wife?”
“Leaf. What are you doing here?”
“Checking on you of course,” she said, closing the door. “Also, Millie and Lisbeth are embroidering and talking about romances and I just don’t see the appeal in a book where no one gets murdered.”
Quick steps brought her across the sitting room, and plucking at the pale cambric of her morning dress, she sat next to him at the table.
“Leaf?”
“Yes, darling?”
“You can’t be here.”
“Yes, but everywhere else is boring and we have to discuss our investigation somewhere safe. Besides, no one will know.”
With perfect timing, Ambrose backed in carrying a fresh decanter. After bumping the door closed with his foot, the new valet froze. “Lady Leaf, my apologies, I—”
“Don’t worry, Ambrose,” Nic said. “She was just leaving.”
“No, I’m not. Ambrose can be our chaperone if you insist on being so stuffy.”
The young man set the decanter on the small dining table, a wary look shot from Nic to Leaf and back. “I… I could tidy his lordship’s wardrobe?”
“Perfect,” Leaf said. “I’ll shout if he’s being ungentlemanly.”
“Very good, my lady.”
Ambrose waited a moment as though for a contrary order before turning stiffly and striding into Nic’s dressing room. Overloud sounds of activity soon emanated through the open door.
“Oh, are those your creations?” Leaf said, jumping up as she caught sight of the automata on the mantelpiece.
“Some of them. Mama has a lot more in her rooms.”
Leaf examined a mechanical echo and stroked a small cat that purred at her touch.
“They’re amazing, Nic.” Moving along, she picked up one of the many frogs and wound the key.
As it started to hop, she set it on the floor, where its throat bulged with a scrape of fine metal plates. “I can almost smell the pond.”
“You can,” Nic said, rubbing his eyes as though hoping to clear the wine from his hazy thoughts. “That’s tah eb bett mora nur bat nur bat haam.” He formed the sigils and the scent of pond bloomed and faded, leaving Leaf’s eyes wide.
“You put scent onto its reel? I didn’t even know smells could be conjured.”
“Really?”
“Really. How did you do it?”
Nic shrugged. “I worked from the basic format used to make sound and speech. The interesting failures kept me entertained for months, but then…” He gestured at the frog. “Swamp stink. And nicer smells of course, but I’m amused that the first I made was swamp stink.”
Leaf wound up the frog a second time and set her nose so close that the metal creature almost hopped into her face. “That really is amazing. And no, I’ve never heard of smells being conjured, but you should ask your Master sa Vare; he’ll know.”
“He’s not mine and I will absolutely not be doing that.”
She gave him a long stare that he entirely failed to hold, recollections ruining his focus as much as the wine. Leaf narrowed her eyes. “Have you been drinking?”
“Before breakfast? What a terrible idea.”
“But you have been, haven’t you?” She looked to the empty wineglass and the decanter Ambrose had left on the table. “Are you all right, Nic? Did something happ—?”
“No. I merely have rotten habits. Now, you said you wanted to talk about our investigation, so talk.”
A worried frown darkened her brow, and for a moment Nic feared she would take his hand or make some other show of sympathy calculated to induce tears. Thankfully she refrained, instead returning to her chair with a sigh.
“We ought to go over what we know,” she said. “To begin with, I watched Uncle Ricard last night.”
Nic winced. He had utterly forgotten to watch the man, so caught up he had been on Dashiell. Two men had died and all he had thought about was the vowsmith’s knee against his beneath the table.
“He looked to be in decent spirits,” she went on, “although nothing out of the ordinary. Spending time with Millie always cheers him up. Our fathers just diced for a while and then bid the company good night. That they left together and early does, I suppose, lend some weight to your suspicion, however.”
For the second time, Nic found his imagination taking him too far toward what might happen beyond the duke’s closed door, although this time when he pulled his thoughts back, it was a naked Dashiell that waited.
Nic’s breath hitched.
We both would have been happier if we’d had this closure years ago.
Leaf nudged him. “Nic?” She gasped and lowered her voice to an excited whisper. “I thought there was something you weren’t telling me. Is that what’s wrong? Did you and Master sa Vare—”
“No! Shh!”
Nic looked around to be sure Ambrose was still in the dressing room. “All right, yes, but you can’t tell anyone.”
“What was it like?”
He thought of Dashiell’s hot chest pressed against him. Of the hunger with which the vowsmith had gripped his hips. Of his cock filling Nic up completely.
“Fine.”
Leaf had that look again.
“All right, it was great, but it’s not like it was my first time. And you don’t have to look so smug.”
“Great? That’s all I’m going to get? After everything I did to get you two time alone.”
“What… what more do you want?” Nic met her curiosity with a mixture of amusement, horror, and all too strong an urge to share every detail.
“I don’t know. Millie tells us all sorts of things from her trysts. It sounds very exciting, but also a little…” Leaf made a face. “Is it so worth it?”
“Yes.”
“You answered that fast.”
How could he put into words how it felt?
He had wanted Dashiell for years, only to have to tuck that desire away deep down where it could no longer hurt.
And then when he’d been sure he was over it, the man had walked back into his life and slammed him into a wall with a need that bordered on desperation, before taking him by the very window seat where they’d first kissed.
Nic shrugged. It was easier not to think about why he had already downed three glasses of wine on an empty stomach that morning. Except that said stomach was starting to rebel.
“All right, well, we should probably decide what to do next,” Leaf said, letting the subject drop.
“I feel certain that Uncle Ricard killed Gillingham, but we’ll need to prove it.
Unfortunately, we have no witnesses, no definitive evidence, and I cannot convince myself that if making Papa invoke the clause was his motive that he would have murdered your valet first. Unless—”
She broke off on a gasp and gripped Nic’s arm. “The paper,” she said. “You said he had a piece of paper. And he claimed he had to wait on my uncle.”
“Yes, but we know he didn’t.”
“No, although if you wanted to get into a guest’s room, that would be a good excuse, wouldn’t it? Uncle Ricard has all his papers with him and even some archival material that we brought for the contract. Could His Grace have sent Rowerre to steal something from my uncle?”
Though the question of what and why hovered on Nic’s lips, the possibility made a terrible sort of sense. “You think Rowerre might have been killed because your uncle wanted back what was stolen?”
“If it was important enough to steal, it’s important enough to want returned.” She jumped up. “We need to search my uncle’s rooms.”
Lord Ricard’s guest suite was near Leaf’s on the second floor. She had wanted to go at once, but Nic had needed food. And water. And half an hour sitting still. And even then he was only moderately confident he wasn’t going to be sick.
“You really shouldn’t have drunk anything so early,” she said for the fifth time as they made their way to the man’s door.
“Probably not, but it worked.”
“How so?”
“Well, I feel awful about something different now, don’t I?”
Leaf’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you said it was great. With… you know… I mean.”
“It was, yes.” Nic winced, trying not to think about Dashiell’s muscular thighs and failing. “Can we just focus on this?”
For a moment it seemed like she would ask more, but their arrival at Lord Ricard’s rooms stayed her tongue. Instead, she shot him a warning look, and pushed the door open.
Hello?” she called, poking her head into the room. “Uncle Ricard?”
No answer, no sounds. Leaf stepped inside, beckoning Nic to follow.
“Let’s be quick. There aren’t too many places to look, so with both of us we should be done in a few minutes. I’ll check the archival boxes,” she added, heading for the dressing room. “You look around the writing desk and in all the drawers out here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She didn’t rise to the bait, just disappeared through the door with a swish of pale cambric.
Heaving a sigh, Nic took in the main room and the enormous number of papers Lord Ricard had brought with him.
The writing desk was covered in half-finished correspondence and stacks of received letters, while piles of ledgers sat lined up along the sideboard.
Rowerre’s page had been torn from something, so Nic riffled through each ledger in turn, taking care not to mess up Lord Ricard’s seemingly meticulous system.
None were missing pages, so he moved to the drawers.
“So did you lie on the floor?” came Leaf’s voice from the adjoining room. “You and Master sa Vare.”
“Leaf!” Nic pulled open a drawer harder than intended, sending the contents rolling around. “Not really the time for this conversation.”
“You say that a lot.”
“It comes up a lot.”
“Well, when is a good time?”
“When is a good time to ask for details about your not-quite-husband’s illicit sex life?”
“Yes.”
Nic closed the drawer. “Never?”
“Oh.”
He moved to the sideboard and yanked each drawer open in turn to find them all empty. No more questions emerged from the dressing room, leaving a silence that had weight.
Nic sighed. “Leaf.”
Paper rustled.
“Leaf, I’m sorry I snapped. It’s just hard to talk about him.”
No answer. Nic touched his forehead and let go of a second, heavier sigh.
“Against the window,” he said. “It’s poetic really, since that window seat is where I first kissed him.”
“Nic.”
“It won’t happen again, though. I’m sure he is quite done with me now.”
I’m glad we got our closure. Even if we had to wait nine years for it.
“Nic.”
“So I’d really rather not talk about it.”
“Nic!”
“What?”
“I think… I think you need to see this.”
He found her kneeling on the floor before a row of flat boxes lined up against the dressing room wall.
Each had been labelled with a year, 1770 to 1790, but Leaf had a smaller box open on her lap, one crammed full of neatly stacked papers.
The topmost page at which she stared looked like the contract being negotiated downstairs.
It even had both the Serral and Monterris crests traced upon it.
“What is this?” Nic took the page. “What is it doing—?”
The question died on his lips.
Contained herein is the as-yet unvowed
marriage contract between
Valentine Nicholas Edmund Monterris,
His Grace the Duke of Vale
and
Charles William Algernon Serral,
the Most Honourable Marquess of Charborough
To be negotiated autumn 1788 by
Master Vowsmith Nicholas Everel and
A second vowsmith hadn’t been listed. Nic couldn’t lift his gaze from the paper. He kept reading the names as though with scrutiny they might change.
“I guess you were right about them,” Leaf said, a note of sadness in her tone.
“But… then why did he marry my mother?”
Nic looked up to find Leaf slowly shaking her head. “And why did Papa marry mine?”
“You didn’t know about this?”
The question was more accusatory than he had meant. So much his father had never said. So many secrets even his heir wasn’t to know.
“No, I had no idea.” Leaf couldn’t stop shaking her head, her eyes glazed. “No one ever told me.”
Staring at the contract, Nic couldn’t but recall how calmly his father had informed him of his future, yet it must have been in his mind that this was not the first time a Monterris and a Serral had been contracted to wed.