He opened it and stared at it, then spoke a word she had only ever heard before in Portugal, on the lips of soldiers who had not realized they were being overheard by a woman. He did not apologize.
He raised his head and looked at her for a long while in silence. “He could do with a few spelling lessons, could he not?” he remarked. “Not to mention penmanship.”
“It is no joke, Percy,” she said.
“No, indeed it is not,” he agreed. “Instead of threatening me, which I might have taken as a joke, he has threatened my lady and very seriously annoyed me.”
She might have taken exception to that description of herself asmy ladyat any other time, but this was not any other time.
He continued to look at her without moving for a few moments longer. “With your permission,” he said then, “I will summon a few more people here. Men. Shall I summon my mother too? Or Lady Lavinia, perhaps?”
“No,” she said, remembering one phrase of the letter—that luver of your’s.“Which men?”
“My steward,” he said. “Mr. Knorr, that is. My two friends. Cyril Eldridge. My uncles.”
It suddenly occurred to Imogen that it really was possible that Dicky’s valet had been murdered; that Mr. Bains had been coerced into withdrawing his permission for Colin to accompany them to Portugal as Dicky’s batman; that James Mawgan had been planted quite deliberately in that position. Yesterday it had all seemed too preposterous to be taken seriously. It still did today. But someone had just threatened her life—again. That seemed too ridiculously melodramatic as well, but it had happened.
“Very well,” she said.
He strode to the door, gave some instructions to Mr. Crutchley, and came toward her after closing the door again. He took both her hands in a bruising grip.
“Perhaps I should be horsewhipped,” he said, “except that this ispreciselythe reason they need to be confronted. I am sorry, my l—. Ah, dash it all, I am sorry,my love. I willnotallow anything to happen to you. Iwillnot. Of that you may rest assured. And when this is over, you may consign me to hell and I will go there without a murmur.”
He raised her hands one at a time to his lips and kissed them fiercely before releasing them and striding over to the window to stand with his back to the room. The letter was sticking out of one of the pockets of his coat.
The uncles and cousin and friends were the first to arrive, all in a body, all clearly bursting with curiosity.
“We will wait for Knorr,” Percy said after one glance over his shoulder.
They waited in silence until there was a firm tap on the door and Mr. Knorr stepped inside.
A mere moment later it opened again, and Mr. Crutchley admitted—of all people—Cousin Adelaide. She looked about her disagreeably and made for the chair closest to the fire.
“The others may say until they are blue in the face,” she said, “that the ladies have not been invited, but there is a lady down here already, a young one, and she will not be left alone at the mercy of a roomful ofmenwhile I have anything to say in the matter.”
She seated herself and continued to look disagreeable.
21
Percy had realized from the start that he was playing a dangerous sort of game of dare, something with which he was long familiar. The difference this time was that he was not doing it merely for his own amusement. He had not expected it to be easy. Hardford was a convenient base for smuggling—right on the coast but up away from the valley, with a secluded, relatively safe landing place and a way up to the top, which was private ground—an earl’s property, in fact—and hence less likely to be the target of patrols by customs officers. There were roomy cellars in both the dower house and the hall itself, and until recently the owner of both was willing to aid and abet the trade even if he was not actively involved in it. And even after the death of that earl, the new one had been obliging enough to stay away for two full years.
Oh, he had not expected that rousting them permanently off Hardford property would be easy. He had even realized that he was putting himself in possible danger by being so open and determined in his opposition. He could not forget Colin Bains with his broken legs. He had never suffered from a wild imagination, but he did not believe he was weaving too fantastical a tale about the series of events that had preceded—and followed—the departure of the late Richard, Viscount Barclay, for the Peninsula. Nevertheless, the possibility of danger had not particularly bothered him. He had thrived upon it, after all, for ten years.
Never in his wildest fancy had he imagined that the threat of danger would come, not to him, but to Imogen.
How fiendishly clever,had been his first thought upon reading the letter.How did he know?had been his second thought. But it was not altogether surprising. Percy had really quite recklessly endangered her reputation by trotting off to the dower house for each of the last several nights and not leaving it until early morning. It would be more surprising if no one knew. The wholeworldprobably knew.
He was more angry than he had ever been in his life. But it was a quiet, leashed anger. There was no point whatsoever in blustering and lashing out with either words or fists—not unless or until he had a target for those fists, anyway. And at least half of his anger was directed against himself.
He drew the letter from his pocket and turned from the window.
“Smuggling is rife along this stretch of the coastline,” he said. “I called a meeting of the whole of my staff yesterday morning and made it clear that I would no longer harbor either smugglers or their contraband on my land.”
“Smuggling is rife alongeverystretch of coastline, Percy,” Uncle Roderick said. “There is no way of stopping it, I am afraid. And I must admit that I enjoy a drop of good French brandy now and then, though I am careful never to ask my host where it came from.” He chuckled.
“That was probably not wise of you, Percy,” Uncle Ernest said. “And it will do no good, you know. Your servants may pay you lip service for a while, but they will surely slip back to their old ways soon enough. If I were you, I would let the matter drop now that you have made your point.”
“You had better sharpen your cutlass even so, Perce,” Sidney said with a grin.
