Page 12 of The Duke’s Suspicion

The room she entered was so large and stately she assumed she must have made a wrong turn and found herself in the state rooms of the west wing. The walls were covered in ivory silk with gold damask, the windows framed by crimson velvet drapery held back by thick, tasseled ropes of gold silk. On two sides, the room overlooked the slopes and hollows of the wooded valley. She understood why Mrs. Dean considered it the finer view, though for herself, she preferred the dramatic ruggedness of the hillside.

Though the day was damp and cool, no fire had been lit in the marble fireplace. It might have been insufficient to heat the room in any case, though the firebox was so large she could have stepped into it without ducking her head. On either side of the fireplace stood a suit of armor, and on the wall above hung a tapestry depicting the Knights of the Round Table. Below it, nearer the mantel, had been mounted an ancient-looking sword, meant to suggest Excalibur, she supposed. It could not have been the real one, could it?

Warily, she took two steps closer. Thick Turkish carpets muffled the sound. Around the room stood groupings of furniture: plushly upholstered chairs on spindly legs, sofas with curved backs, tables of gilt and mirrored glass. A drawing room? A…a sitting room? She hadn’t the vocabulary for this sort of architecture. But who would sit here?

A duke, you dolt.

Erica flinched, though the voice spoke only inside her head.

All right, then. She was in the right place. But her journal could be…anywhere.

She forced herself to take a deep breath, hold it for a moment, and exhale slowly. Once, twice, thrice. Within four walls, she often felt panicky. Restless in small spaces. Overwhelmed in large ones. She tried to focus on the open sky beyond the windows, but dark clouds and lashing rain only increased her anxiety. Somewhere, her sister must be watching that same foreboding sky and fretting over what had become of her.

Forcing her gaze away from the storm, she swept her eyes once more over the rest of the room. Impossible to imagine her battered leather journal being allowed to mar any one of its gleaming surfaces. Ah, but behind her stood an antique secretary desk, placed near the door so a visitor would have to take no more than a few steps into the room to state their business to the one seated at it. She ran one hand over its polished edges. Just the sort of place a duke might keep his important papers…

“At the risk of repeating myself, Miss Burke, what in God’s name are you doing?”

She gripped a little piece of scrollwork so hard she feared it would snap off in her fingers. “Your Grace.” She closed her eyes, muttered a fierce, swift prayer, then jerked her chin a notch higher than its proper place to meet his gaze.

And promptly wished she hadn’t.

Even before the rebellion, she had not been the sort of woman to be taken in by a man in a red coat. A military uniform was all trickery, the sartorial equivalent of smoke and mirrors. The gold epaulets were designed to make his shoulders appear broader. The cutaway of the coat, to make his legs look longer.

Yet she had the distinct impression that his tailor had found no need to embellish on what nature had given Tristan Laurens.

Worst of all were those tight white knee breeches, which drew the eye to places a proper lady’s eye ought not to be drawn. And proved once and for all she was not a proper lady.

She squeezed her eyes shut once more. What was she thinking? He was a British soldier. That scarlet wool ought to make her think of nothing but the blood of thousands of her countrymen, shed in a futile bid for freedom.

“Miss Burke?”

She opened her eyes, lifting them only enough to focus on his high-shine black boots. “I beg your pardon. I—I was looking for… I’ll just go—”

The boots took two deliberate steps toward her, one for each word. “Go where?”

Why on earth had she imagined she would find her journal in his private chambers? “To—to look elsewhere?” She hated that note of doubt in her own voice. The satchel had contained important papers, and a duke surely had a study or an office or some other room where the business of the estate was conducted. But she would just as surely get lost trying to find it. Who knew which wing it might be in?

“I think not.”

Her chin jerked up again, seemingly of its own accord. “I beg your pardon?”

“I would not wish to impede your search, Miss Burke. Whatever it is you may be seeking.” Something, not quite humor, glimmered in his eyes, though it did not displace their usual dark intensity. “But I fear you are in some distress.” Now his gaze darted over her before coming to rest on some piece of furniture behind her. Was that a flush of color across his cheeks? “Hence, I presume, your…dishabille.”

Oh, no. She’d been distracted. But she couldn’t possibly have rushed from her room without…

As she clutched her arms instinctively across her chest, she felt the sides of the dressing gown gaping open. The braided silk cord designed to hold the garment closed had worked its way loose. She was standing in the private quarters of a gentleman with her shift on display. Briefly, she considered diving into one of the suits of armor to hide.

And never coming out.

Instead, he turned away, back toward the door through which he’d silently entered. “One moment, please.” He was gone long enough for her to tighten the sash of her dressing gown, but not long enough for her to think of escaping. When he returned he held her journal in his hands. “Could this be what you’re looking for? I intended to ask one of the servants to return it to your room.”

She hardly heard him. Yesterday’s encounter in the inn was replaying in her mind. Though Tristan readily extended the book to her, he maintained his grip for a moment longer than necessary, after her own fingers had clasped the cover. Her panic must have been visible on her face, for he said, a little defensively, “You may rest assured I am not in the habit of reading young ladies’ secret diaries.”

“It’s not a—”

Well, it was a diary, if by diary one meant a book containing private thoughts not meant to be shared. More accurately, though, it was not only a diary. She’d begun it to keep a scientific record. On occasion, however, other things found their way into the journal, with the result that its pages were a cryptic jumble of lists, memoranda, notes, and illustrations. She’d been forced to create her own system—if system it could be called—to keep track of it all. If anyone ever did decide to look into the book, she took some solace in the idea that no one else would be able to make heads nor tails of it.

“It contains the botanical observations I’ve made over the last few months,” she said, clutching the journal in one hand and the opening of the dressing gown with the other.