Just like Trick. Her feelings toward him had grown, but she was afraid his hadn’t. The lies had started all over again, and so had the unexplained separations. No man could love a woman and treat her like that.
Was she destined, like Clytie, to follow him with her eyes all her life? Never succeeding in claiming his heart?
“Mrs. Kendra?”
She snapped the book shut. No use mooning about for these couple of days he’d be gone. He’d asked her to trust him, and she would do just that until she could force an explanation.
They’d come too far for her to let her marriage go without a fight.
Susanna wandered over to tug on her skirt. “Are we not going to finish the lesson?”
“Tomorrow, maybe.” Feeling better already, she smiled. “For now, let’s play blindman’s buff.”
Seventy-Two
“LORD GARRICKis not yet awake,” a stiff-necked butler told Trick.
“Well, then, rouse him.” Without waiting to be invited, Trick stepped into the sprawling, dark manor house and motioned Pendregast to follow. “Tell him the Duke of Amberley is here to collect on a debt.”
“With all due respect, your grace—”
“Aye, Iamdue respect. I believe I shall wait in the dining room until I receive it.”
With a jerk of his head to Pendregast, he started wandering in the direction he figured a dining room might be located.
Sputtering, the butler marched up the stairs.
The third room Trick looked into had a dining table. He promptly dropped into a dull-mustard upholstered chair. The rest of the chamber was no less drab. He’d seen no evidence of the remodeling Garrick had claimed was his reason not to host the house party, though the place was sorely in need of it.
Of course, the last thing a counterfeiter needed was construction workers roaming around his house.
“Forgot about this.” Pendregast took a folded note from his pocket. “It was sent by special messenger this morning, addressed to you.”
Trick broke the red seal and unfolded it. A letter from King Charles—he’d have recognized his distinctive hand even without the “Your loving friend, Charles R.” at the bottom.
The king wrote with good news that all was set, the plan to commence today and culminate sometime Monday evening.
Damn. “A day or two,” Charles had told him with his usual blithe indifference when describing the plan last week. Trick had latched on to the convenient card party excuse without considering the arrangements might prove too complicated to be carried out over a weekend.
Damn, damn, damn.
He couldn’t even go home and try to explain to Kendra. According to Charles’s letter, the king’s men would be waiting for him when he finished here.
“Is something amiss?” Pendregast asked.
“Aye. Nay.” He shook his head to clear it. “I just need to get a note off to my wife. I saw a desk in the sitting room next door—could I trouble you to fetch me quill and paper?”
While he waited, he composed the note in his head. Yet another half-truth. The web his marriage hung suspended on was becoming more and more tangled.
He had the note written by the time Garrick stomped into the room, hastily dressed and bleary-eyed.
“What’s this about a debt, Amberley?”
“I seem to remember you showing up unexpectedly at my home, right in time for supper.” Folding the paper, Trick plastered on a smile. “I just happened to be riding by this morning and noticed it was time for breakfast.”
“What?”
“And you brought friends as well, did you not? This is my friend, um, Harold”—he slanted Pendregast a quick glance—“Gaunt. Sir Harold Gaunt.”
