“I am not,”replied Skye boldly, and she passed from the room with George Villiers. When they were in the hallway beyond, Skye said to him, “I would not be surprised if Lord Stokes met his end at the hands of Piers St.Denis. He is dangerous and desperate enough.”
“Do you truly think so, madame?” Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it himself. St.Denis was the logical culprit, having the most to gain, or so he believed.
“I do. See if you can link him to the crime, and the king’s troubles will be over, my ambitious young lord,” Skye told him. “The poor queen will not have to find him a bride, and the king can imprison him and thereby be free of his irritating company.
“But how?” Villiers was thinking aloud. “He has no friends.”
“There must be someone,” Skye told him.
“Only his half brother,” came the reply.
“Can he be suborned, my little viscount?” They were now standing in an alcove.
George Villiers shook his head. “I do not believe so.”
“There must besomethingthis man wants that he does not have,” Skye said. “Every one of us has a weakness, my young friend.”
“What is yours?” he asked her, smiling.
She chuckled. “I am past temptation now, George Villiers. I have wealth, health, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I look far better for my years than I ought to, or so my eldest daughter tells me—and she does not lie. The only thing I lack no one can give me. I want my Adam back! I have never missed anyone as I miss him. It seems as if he was always there in my life. But we are not conspiring here over me. It is St.Denis we must bring down. Younger brothers always envy the elder, and this one, I expect, is no exception.”
“He is not the younger, but the elder by a few hours,” said the viscount. “He is the bastard, and Piers St.Denis the legitimate heir. But he is loyal to a fault and would not betray his brother.”
“What if he could be legitimized, and made the marquis in place of his brother?” she suggested. “He is human, thisbastard, and while he may appear to have accepted his fate gracefully, I believe he would leap at the opportunity to change it. Particularly if a lovely and wealthy young wife went along with it, eh? Consider it, sir. Only an accident of birth has prevented this man from being the marquis of Hartsfield. You think, in the dark of the night, he does not consider it?”
“You are diabolical, madame,” George Villiers said admiringly.
“I am a practical woman, dear boy,” she told him. “When I want something that is perhaps thought unattainable, I seek a way to get it. Get the marquis’s brother to tell the truth of the matter regarding Lord Stokes, and you will have what you want. A clear field with the king, and a path strewn with riches and titles—which is what you want.”
“Jasmine did tell you about me,” he chuckled. “Your advice is sound, Madame Skye, and I shall follow it to the letter.”
“I have no doubt that you will triumph,” she told him.
“Tell Jasmine I shall write to her,” he said. “I did promise.”
It was the last she was to see of George Villiers for the time being. The following morning Skye set off back to Queen’s Malvern, where Daisy awaited her, still fuming ten days after the fact about their trip.
“If the king accepts yer excuse, then why are we going?” she demanded of her mistress, having heard the tale of Skye’s latest adventure.
“The king is not the problem,” came the reply. “It is the marquis of Hartsfield that I fear. He is not ready to give up, and probably won’t be until he is in hell. He appears to have given up any attempt to win Jasmine, but he wants the power that having the wardship of Charlie-boy would give him. He has already managed to remove one rival and escape justice. Now he will come after Jasmine and Jemmie, and I must warn them,” Skye concluded as she climbed into bed.
“Why not just send a messenger?” Daisy suggested.
“Just remember, my girl, that the king’s messenger never arrived here,” Skye told her. “It is far easier to remove a messenger than it will be to remove me. No! Tomorrow I rest, and the day after we go! If you want to remain behind, dearest Daisy, you may. I’ll not force you to make a journey you do not want to make.”
Daisy sighed deeply. “You’ll not leave me behind,” she said, resigned. “Haven’t I always been with you, my lady? But the truth of the matter is that I feel my age more than you do. We’ll take Nora along also to give me a bit of a hand.”
“What a fine idea!” Skye said enthusiastically, not daring to tell her old servant that she had already told Nora that she would be traveling with them to help Daisy.
“Good!” Daisy replied. “Then it’s settled. Now you get some rest, my lady. We’ll be traveling hard, I suspect, for you’ll not want to let that marquis of Hartsfield get ahead of us, eh?”
Nothing felt better than one’s own bed, Skye thought, as she snuggled down into her featherbed. “Aye,” she agreed with Daisy. “I don’t know what he plans next, but he is not beaten yet,” she said. “He’s up to some mischief. I can sense it in my bones.”
And, as always, Skye’s instincts were sharp. Piers St.Denis knew that he was unwelcome at court now, yet he remained, for the king was not able to bring himself to dismiss him and send him home. The queen, supposedly in charge of finding him a suitable wife, dallied interminably over a possible selection of eligible women and girls. And Villiers, now elevated to the rank of viscount, was unbearably obnoxious to him.
“You’d think he was a royal duke, and not just a pimple on the king’s arse,” he groused to his half brother.
“Unless he makes a serious mistake, he will be a duke one day,” Kipp said thoughtfully. While Villiers was indeedscornful of Piers, he had been nothing but distantly polite to the Hartsfield bastard, as Kipp was known about the court. In a strange way Kipp admired George Villiers. He allowed nothing to stand in his path, and his unflagging charm had won him many supporters among the powerful, unlike Piers, whose arrogance far overrode his charm of late. Piers hated to lose, and he played only to the king. Villiers was more clever, and played to the whole court, and it was certainly paying off for him. Kipp wished his brother would be more like him. Of late Piers’s hunger for revenge and for power was overwhelming his charm and his common sense. Kipp had attempted to warn him.
