A Marquess, A Miss And A Mystery. ANNIE BURROWS

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       Chapter One

      There was nothing for it. Horatia Carmichael was going to have to do something drastic.

      She peered round at the congregation, who were gathering their prayer books and Bibles together as the Duke of Theakstone’s elderly chaplain mumbled the service to a close, and swallowed. The Duke’s private chapel was awash with lords and ladies. She didn’t think anyone below the rank of viscount had been invited to stay at Theakstone Court for the week preceding his wedding. Apart from her. Which made her feel a bit like Cinderella must have done at that ball to pick a bride for Prince Charming, or whatever his name was. She’d never paid all that much attention to fairy tales. They were always full of pretty people getting unlikely rewards simply for being pretty. Or titled. She’d have been far more impressed if, for once, cleverness had been the virtue that won the prize.

      But anyway, even though Cinderella was undoubtedly pretty, she must have felt completely out of her depth walking into a castle packed with titled people. Just as Horatia did, right this minute.

      But then desperate times called for desperate measures. Two months it had been since Herbert’s murder. Two months during which she’d waited, with mounting impatience, for the Marquess of Devizes to come and offer his condolences, so that she could pass on the information which could prove vital to tracing her brother’s killer.

      But the...the... She wrestled with a suitable word to describe the character of the man who’d been her brother’s best friend and colleague in his clandestine work...and could think of nothing polite enough to voice, not even in her mind, while in a chapel.

      But anyway, the point was the...the...she had it! The puffed-up popinjay hadn’t come anywhere near her. And, of course, she hadn’t been able to simply go to him. A lady could not just walk up to the door of a single man’s residence and gain admittance, not without drawing attention to herself. Especially not a single man with the kind of reputation he had. He was the kind of man who could persuade just about any woman into his bed with just one slow smile. And so he did.

      Nor would Lord Devizes have welcomed her visit, not even when he heard what she had to tell him. Marching up to his front door in broad daylight, or at any other time, would have drawn the attention of the very people they most needed to outwit. They would have put two and two together and that would have been that.

      Which meant she’d had to find some way to approach him that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

      The trouble was, since she was in mourning, she couldn’t attend any of the balls or parties where she might have simply walked up to him. Especially since they weren’t the kinds of events she’d gone to very often, even before Herbert’s death. That would have raised as many eyebrows as if she’d gone to one of the gambling hells she knew he attended, or walked into a cock fight, or a coal-heaver’s tavern, or any of the other disreputable places he’d gone with Herbert in pursuit of information. Or so Herbert had maintained. Though she hadn’t forgotten he’d gone to such places even before he’d started looking for the group of people he’d told her were trying to drum up support for the exiled French emperor, Bonaparte.

      It was a good job the Marquess’s half-brother, the Duke of Theakstone, had suddenly decided to get married, or heaven knew what stratagems she might have been obliged to adopt. Fortunately, a friend of hers, Lady Elizabeth Grey, had an invitation to the wedding, so all Horatia had had to do was persuade her to bring her along in the guise of a companion. She’d assumed that once here, while everyone was wandering around the grounds, or taking tea, she was bound to find an opportunity for sidling up to Lord Devizes and passing on her translation of the coded letter Herbert had given her, to decipher, the very night he’d been murdered.

      But, drat the man, even here she hadn’t been able to get near him. There were too many other females fluttering round him, like so many brainless moths dashing themselves against a glittering lantern. Or pigeons, perhaps. Preening themselves and cooing up at him. Well, whatever type of brainless creatures they resembled, at any given time, he always behaved like a...pasha, surrounded by an adoring harem. As though feminine adulation was no more than his due. He lapped it all up, doling out that lopsided smile of his like a kind of reward to any that particularly amused him, though his lazy-lidded eyes made him look as though he was on the verge of laughing all the time. As though life СКАЧАТЬ