Page 2 of The Duke’s Suspicion

Gradually, her eyes were able to pick out his shape, now on the far side of the small room. A narrow seam of light formed a square on the wall behind him—a window, blocked by wooden shutters. She heard a rattle, a scrape, a hiss. Flame sparked to life in his hands then became the warm, flickering glow of a candle.

“That blast of wind blew it out,” he explained with a glance past her at the door. Was it her imagination, or was there an accusatory note in his voice?

The candle lit his features from below, giving them a sardonic cast. Impossible to tell whether he was handsome or plain, dark or fair, young or…well, his voice, his ease of movement, certainly did not suggest an old man. And he was tall—taller than Papa. Than either of her brothers or her brother-in-law. Taller even than Henry…

Oh, why, in this moment, had she thought of Henry? But so it always went, her mind flitting from one idea to the next, fixing on precisely the things she ought to forget, and forgetting the things she ought to—

Her journal!

With a shudder of alarm, she slithered a hand between the wet, clinging layers of her pelisse and her somewhat drier dress and pulled the book from its hiding place. As she hurried toward the light, the man drew back a step. With the candle between her and her journal, so the stranger could see nothing but its binding, she turned the book over in her hands, then thumbed through its pages to assess the damage. The leather cover was damp; rain had wetted the edges of the paper here and there. It would look worn and wrinkled when it was dry, but so far as she could tell, the journal’s contents were miraculously unharmed. A sigh of relief eased from her.

When she laid her journal on the tabletop, the candlelight once more threw itself freely around the room. The stranger was looking her up and down, his expression both incredulous and stern. A familiar expression. Cami wore it often in Erica’s presence.

Of course she looked a mess. Who wouldn’t, under these circumstances? Icy rivulets ran from her hair down her face, and beneath the howl of the wind, she could hear the steady patter of water dripping from her skirts onto the floor. If this were a scene in one of those novels her sister denied reading, the hero would probably invite her to strip off her drenched clothing and dry herself before the fire. Something shocking would likely follow.

But there was no fire. And this man showed no intention of acting the part of a hero.

As if to confirm her thoughts, he shook his head and folded his arms across his chest. “What in God’s name are you doing out in a storm like this?”

* * * *

When Major Lord Tristan Laurens asked a question, he expected an answer. He certainly did not expect the subject of his interrogation to bristle, fling a lock of wet hair over her shoulder—spraying him with rainwater, almost dousing the candle—and reply, “I might ask you the same.”

Unblinking, she faced him across the table, communicating quite clearly that if he was waiting for her to bend first, he might wait forever. He had some experience coaxing information from unwilling sources, and he knew better than to begin by barking at them. But her arrival had caught him off guard. He had never liked surprises.

The silence that stretched between them was eventually broken by her fingers drumming against the cover of the book she’d unearthed from her bodice. She radiated a nervous kind of energy that refused to be contained. When another moment had passed, she plucked up the book, tucked it against her breast, and began to move around the room. Its narrow compass, crowded with ramshackle furniture, prevented her from pacing.

Or perhaps the predictable, orderly, back and forth motion of pacing was anathema to this woman.

She put him in mind of a bedraggled spaniel, with her slight build, rapid movements, and curling hair hanging limply on either side of her face. Though, admittedly, far more attractive than any spaniel he had ever seen. The precise shade of her red hair was difficult to determine under such dim and damp conditions. He tried to imagine what she might look like bathed in the warmth of a shaft of sunlight but gave it up as a bad job. Sunlight was unlikely to be granted them anytime soon.

When her wandering feet brought her within arm’s length of him, he held up one hand in hopes she might cease. Her jerk of surprise made him wonder if she had forgotten his presence entirely.

“The storm doesn’t show any signs of abating. Perhaps we ought to begin again.” He made a crisp bow. “Tristan Laurens.”

Her gaze raked over him, and for a moment he thought she meant not to respond. “Mr. Laurens,” she said after a moment and curtsied.

Ought he to correct her? At the very least, he might have introduced himself as “Major Laurens,” as he’d not yet resigned his commission. “Lord Tristan” was entirely incorrect now, of course. Both Father and Percy were gone, had been gone for some time. Still, it felt strange to think of himself as a duke, stranger still to call himself “Raynham.” Men of seven and twenty did not usually acquire new identities in quite so abrupt a fashion.

In the end, he let her assumption stand. After the weather cleared, they would go their separate ways, and his rank would be irrelevant.

Her fingertips danced over the book she was holding. “Miss Erica Burke.”

“Erica?”

It was not a given name he had heard before, and her inclusion of it hinted at the existence of an elder sister who generally took precedence as “Miss Burke.” Her Irish accent was distinct but not unpleasant. From Dublin, if he had to guess. And his guesses were usually correct.

“Erica is the Latin word denoting the genus to which several common species of flowering shrubs belong.”

She must have given a variation of that explanation many times; it had the air of a rehearsed speech. So she knew at least a bit of Latin and a little botany: the marks of what passed for an educated gentlewoman. Then again, she might be a bluestocking.

Or something more unusual, and more interesting, than either.

His surprise at the explanation must have been evident on his face, for she continued, with a little grimace of resignation, “Heather. It means ‘heather.’ My father named his children using Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum as his guide.”

Though mildly curious about the names with which her siblings had been saddled, he focused his immediate concern on the fact that her family had let one of their number out of their sight. A young woman wandering about alone faced dangers far greater than a little rain, especially in a time of war, when so many were desperate.

Having learned his lesson about speaking sternly, however, he dipped his head in a nod of greeting. “It is a pleasure, Miss Burke, to meet someone else who has known the travails of having been named by an eccentric father. Mine was a student of the Arthurian legends.”