Educating Elizabeth

Chapter 30

Elizabeth awoke into a gray dawn, listening to the sound of deliveries being made to the Delamere House kitchen door just below her window. It was six o'clock when she struggled out of bed, having barely slept. A hurried glance in the mirror did nothing to dispel her fears that she looked like a dowdy, wrinkled old maid. After the myriad humiliations of the night before, she found herself reluctant to leave the sanctuary of her room and face the other members of the household.

She forced herself to leave her bedchamber and looked down onto the black and white marbled hall. She would not stay in this house for one minute longer than she had to. Laying one hand lightly on the banisters, she descended. To her relief, the breakfast room was deserted. She dined alone on tea and toast as the skies darkened and rain lashed against the windowpanes.

She crossed the deserted hall as the clock boomed seven, hoping to reach her desk before Sir John appeared and the duke and Nicholas returned from their morning ride. To her dismay, she barely had time to place her reticule on her desk before the connecting door to the duke's study swung open and Nicholas appeared. Her welcoming smile died as she took in his unusually stern expression.

"Miss Waterstone? Would you mind coming through to the duke's study?"

Elizabeth swallowed her unease and followed him through the doorway. The heavy damask curtains were half-drawn against the ravages of the rain and no lamps illuminated the early morning gloom. The duke sat behind his desk, his face in profile and his expression unreadable. Sir John lounged against the wall. Nicholas held out a chair for Elizabeth and took up a position to one side of her.

The duke linked his hands on the desk and appeared to contemplate his thumbs. "I've a question for you. Where is the code?"

Elizabeth raised her chin. "I'm not quite sure what you are talking about, Your Grace. I locked the last coded message you gave me in my desk as instructed." She glanced around at Sir John and Nicholas with carefully feigned surprise. "Are you telling me that the code has disappeared? Or are you accusing me of stealing it?"

The duke held up a piece of blue tinted parchment, which she recognized instantly. "I have the code, Miss Waterstone. It appears to have been damaged. Do you have the translation?"

"Unfortunately, Your Grace, as you have no doubt observed, I spilt water on the original and I've been unable to decipher it."

"Balderdash, Miss Waterstone." Sir John snapped. "I've seen you working on the translation for the last few days."

Elizabeth stiffened as Sir John abandoned the wall and took a threatening step toward her. The duke cleared his throat and Sir John went still like a well-trained hunting dog.

"We have all seen you puzzling over the code and we have all discussed the translation with you." Gervase held her gaze, his tone deliberate. "Are you trying to tell me you were too embarrassed to own up to the fact that you couldn't break it?"

Elizabeth almost crumbled at the duke's scathing tone and sternly reminded herself that she had not expected her task to be easy. "After Sir John's attempts to make me feel superfluous, did you think I would willingly admit I had failed?"

The duke rose to his feet and leaned forward. "With all due respect, Miss Waterstone, I think that you are lying. Did you deliberately deface the code so that no one else could read it? Where is the translation?"

"I did not deface it deliberately. It was an accident."

Elizabeth glared back at him, refusing to be intimidated and he sat down again. "Did you pass the translated code to your dear friend, Jack Llewelyn, when you met him yesterday at the coffee house?"

Elizabeth struggled to breathe as the conversation she had envisaged abruptly changed tack. "What do you know of Jack Llewelyn? Are you having me followed?"

"Of course I am. Nicholas has been your faithful shadow ever since you came to live here. You haven't answered my question. Did you give the code to Llewelyn?"

"No, I did not," she said calmly, thrown by this unexpected turn of events. "Mr. Llewelyn has nothing to do with the code. He cares for my brother Michael, who is an invalid."

Sir John gave a harsh laugh. "You expect the duke to believe such nonsense? Why would the son of the Duke of Carmarthen act as a nursemaid to your brother?"

Elizabeth frowned. "I didn't know that, Your Grace. I hired Mr. Llewelyn by letter. None of his references mentioned his antecedents."

The duke said nothing, seemingly content to let Sir John handle the investigation. Sir John advanced on Elizabeth until he blocked her view of the duke.

"You are an accomplished liar, Miss Waterstone, but you have been found out. I've already told the duke that your only surviving brother serves in the army in France."

Elizabeth forced herself to meet Sir John's pale eyes, which gleamed with triumph. "You are an intimate of both my stepfather and my mother. You must know I've another brother, sir. Even if you claim not to have met Michael, my mother must have spoken of him."

"I regret to inform you, Miss Waterstone, that your mother told me your brother Michael died of his wounds and that you alone persist in pretending he is alive."

"My mother lies almost as much as you do, Sir John," she whispered.

"Might we get back to the matter of the code, Sir John?" The duke's soft voice intruded on the violence gathering on Sir John's face and he reluctantly moved away.

Shaken by Sir John's all too evident desire to harm her, Elizabeth locked eyes with the duke. "Your Grace, I didn't give the code to Jack Llewelyn." She struggled to find the words to defend her brother's companion even though she sensed the duke's reluctance to hear them.

Her hopes of reaching the duke died as his eyebrows rose. "Indeed, Miss Waterstone? I think there is more to it than that. If you are as intimate with him as your clandestine meetings suggest, surely you would know his background and his propensity to betray his country?"

Elizabeth opened her mouth to refute the duke's damning statement and then closed it with a snap. She didn't have the time or the necessary ammunition to discuss her relationship with Jack Llewelyn. She needed the duke to return to the subject of the code and leave his suspicions of Jack Llewelyn behind.

To Elizabeth's relief, Standish knocked on the half-opened door and distracted the duke's attention. "Excuse me, Your Grace. We have searched Miss Waterstone's room as you requested and we have found nothing."

The duke nodded. "Thank you, Standish. You know what to do next." Standish withdrew and the duke turned to Sir John. "Will you go and fetch Miss Waterstone's reticule? She usually leaves it by her desk."

Elizabeth waited tensely until Sir John returned from his office with her patched reticule. Her fury over the duke's high-handed orders to search her possessions was hard to restrain. Without asking for permission, the duke tipped the contents out onto his desk.

Elizabeth sat forward, ready to protest as the duke began to sort through her things. A flash of color seemed to catch his eye. He picked up a bracelet.

Elizabeth could only stare in disbelief as he dangled a gold bracelet, adorned with diamond and ruby hearts, from his fingertips. She knew that the bracelet hadn't been in her bag before. Had Sir John put it there to further incriminate her?

"Where in damnation did you get this?"

With a shock, she realized that his molten gray eyes reflected only disdain and disgust. She found it difficult to form a coherent reply.

"I don't know, Your Grace. The last time I saw such a thing was at my mother's house..."

"This is Angelique's missing bracelet. The one she lost gambling to your stepfather." He threw the trinket at her. "Did it give you pleasure to wear it knowing it had been stolen from my mistress, or did your stepfather give it to you as a reward for seducing me?"

Elizabeth shook her head as his anger washed over her. Dimly she remembered Angelique discussing the loss of her bracelet and her feeling that she had seen the trinket before when Mary had first shown it to her at Mr. Forester's.

Although her plans depended on her silence, her fingers curled with a wild desire to claw at Sir John's smug face.

The duke, after a last contemptuous glance in her direction, turned his attention to the other items from her reticule.

It was almost a relief when he shook the book she had left in her reticule and a piece of parchment fell out. She couldn't bear to look at Gervase's face as he uncovered her 'treachery' and focused instead on the bracelet, which lay abandoned at her feet.

Sir John hurried to the duke's side as he unfolded the parchment and began to read. Sir John smiled over Elizabeth's head at Nicholas. "Thank God, it is the code translation. Le Fleur tells the assassin exactly where to position himself along the parade route. Now we stand a chance of stopping him."

The duke nodded. "I would appreciate it if you could take this to the Foreign Office with all speed. The victory parade is only two days away."

Sir John took the code and placed it in his pocket. He paused at the door to look back at Elizabeth. "Do you want me to take Miss Waterstone with me, Your Grace? I'm sure that the local magistrate would be delighted to find her some suitable accommodation in the cells."

Elizabeth clamped her teeth hard on her bottom lip. Not only did she doubt that Sir John intended to take the code to the proper authorities, but she also feared that, if she was forced to accompany him, she might never reach the security of a prison cell either.

"No thank you, Sir John. I will deal with Miss Waterstone myself."

She relaxed her grip on the arms of her chair as the duke moved from behind his desk to stand over her like a predator finally cornering his prey. It occurred to her that it was probably the last time they would ever be alone together.

"What exactly did you intend to do with this code, Miss Waterstone? Give it to your stepfather?"

"No!"

The duke's laugher made her shiver.

"What should I do with you, then Miss Waterstone? You have betrayed your country and my bed. Did you imagine I might save your pretty neck from the hangman's noose because of the tender passions we shared?"

Elizabeth tried to speak and found that she had too little command over her voice. The duke yanked her to her feet. He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head back until her eyes met his.

"You may be sure that I will be speaking to your friend, Jack Llewelyn, anyway. Tell him it would not be wise to leave Mr. Forester's house until he has seen me." The duke removed Elizabeth's spectacles and closed her cold fingers around them. "You never duped me, Elizabeth. I knew what you were from the beginning and I indulged you because it amused me."

The duke stepped away so abruptly that Elizabeth grabbed at the chair for support. He turned to his desk, stuffed her scattered possessions back into her reticule, and tossed it to her. Then he strode toward the door and flung it wide.

At the bottom of the staircase she could just make out a pile of luggage stacked on the marble floor.

"Get out, Elizabeth. If you try to come back I will have Standish set the Runners on you."

Elizabeth elevated her chin and walked past him, her reticule clutched to her chest. Ignoring the luggage, she headed straight for the front door, which Standish hastily flung open for her. A dense curtain of rain greeted her but she paid it no heed as she picked up her skirts and descended the slippery steps.

A shout behind her made her pause but she refused to turn back. Nicholas appeared at her elbow, her bonnet and cloak in his hands. Wordlessly, he thrust them at her and she tried to smile.

She waited until the door of the mansion slammed behind him before opening her fingers to reveal the shards of glass in her hand from her crushed spectacles. Ignoring the blood that streamed down her fingers, she put on her bonnet and cloak and set off.

The duke stood silhouetted at the window as she trudged along the pavement. She was fiercely glad the rain masked the tears that fell unheeded from her eyes.

Eventually, when her feet were so cold and wet that she could no longer feel them, Elizabeth wandered into Hyde Park and sank down on a sheltered bench under a group of willow trees. The park was deserted. The fashionable crowd who usually frequented it on an afternoon during the Season had all disappeared.

Her stomach growled, reminding her of the many fruitless hours that had passed since her dismissal by the duke.

The only signs of life on the rain-washed streets had been the men trying to cordon off the parade route and hang limp flags from the street lights.

Elizabeth wiggled her toes and stared ruefully at her ruined kid slippers. If only Nicholas had had the forethought to bring her a pair of boots as well...

She swallowed as she recalled his unexpected kindness and hoped that he wouldn't get into trouble with the duke because of it. Had the duke expected her to pick up the luggage Standish had left in the hall for her? She sniffed disdainfully. She hadn't paid for any of the garments inside the boxes and she had no interest in claiming them. Let the duke pass them on to his next mistress.

On that dismal thought, the willow trees swished around her with a hushing sound. She wished she had the trees' ability to bend so gracefully.

Where was she to go? If she went to the Foresters, she would have to deal with her stepfather and try to conceal her suspicions from him. After her bruising encounter with the duke, she had grave doubts that she was capable of deceiving an experienced cardsharp like Mr. Forester.

Had her stepfather deliberately sent her to the duke in the hope that she would become of use? It seemed more and more likely, and explained the duke's last unpleasant remarks to her.

Elizabeth refused to picture the duke's contemptuous face. She had to think about protecting Jack Llewelyn and Michael from the duke's impending interrogation. If the duke suspected her of dallying with Jack Llewelyn, it might give him a new focus for his anger.

Angelique's kind face swam into Elizabeth's mind. But Angelique's loyalty to the duke was unquestioned. She would find no welcome there.

A sudden gust of wind separated the emerald curtain of willow leaves and revealed the bleak park beyond. It was starting to get dark and the park gates were locked at sunset. Knowing that she had no real choice, she picked up her reticule, drew her cloak around her, and headed for the northern gate of the park and Birdcage Walk beyond.

She knocked on the room numbered twenty-three and held her breath until it opened a crack.

"Mrs. Waterstone? Good God, you are soaked to the skin! Come in and warm yourself immediately."

Elizabeth gave Lord Vincent Delacroix a grateful smile as he ushered her into his warm and inviting room.

"Thank you, Lord Vincent, I didn't know where else to go..."