The most pressing task at hand for him was amassing evidence of her innocence to provide to Carlisle. The sooner he could remove Daisy as a suspect, the better. Troubling questions remained, of course. Her connection to the Irish shop girl and Padraig McGuire, chief among them. He recognized that his love for her did not exculpate her. Of course, the hardened spy within him even had to acknowledge that there was a chance she was guilty as sin after all, and he had allowed his feelings to cloud his judgment.
Either way, there was only one conclusion to the situation in which he found himself. Daisy was either guilty or she was innocent, and Sebastian was either a fool or he wasn’t.
To that end, he would continue to follow leads and build a case for Carlisle. He had every hope that they’d bring him to the inevitable conclusion that Daisy had no parts of her father’s plotting with the Fenians. That the woman he was so bloody drawn to—the woman he’d fallen hopelessly in love with against his every instinct and all his years of training combined—had no more to do with dynamite plots than the queen herself.
“Pardon the interruption, Your Grace, but you’ve some correspondence this morning,” Giles interrupted, his tone faultlessly formal.
He lowered the neglected paper and acknowledged his butler, accepting the correspondence as though it was likely as harmless as a letter from a maiden aunt. Sebastian waited until Giles had discreetly resumed his place by the sideboard before tearing open the seal of the letter. His eyes scanned the familiar, brief scrawl, that old, worn knot resurging. His blood went cold.
The message was coded, its contents seemingly innocuous enough.
Would you care to meet for a morning ride? The skies look too ominous to wait until afternoon.
It was unsigned, but that hardly mattered. He knew the note’s author just as he knew he had a pair of hands and the sun glinted in the sky above him even though he couldn’t see it from where he sat.
Carlisle wanted to meet at once.
And nothing about a sudden summons from the Duke of Carlisle was ever a matter for rejoicing.
Dread, heavy and hard and unpalatable as hell, twisted in his gut. This brief idyll with Daisy was bound to be disrupted. But damn it if he hadn’t enjoyed every moment of it while it had lasted.
The devil, it seemed, would always collect his due. He may love Daisy so much that it made his chest physically ache, but he wasn’t free to pursue that love just yet. For now, he was bound by his honor, his word, his loyalty to the Crown, and his family legacy. He felt them all like steel manacles circling his wrists. Keeping him prisoner. From the moment he’d taken his vows, his life had ceased to be his own.
Everything had changed, but just the same, nothing had.
He folded the note in thirds, carefully keeping his expression bland for the sake of the footman and butler dancing attendance on him. He should have remained in Daisy’s chamber, her body sleek and soft and warm and naked in his arms. He could have woken her with his kiss and then slid his cock home inside her.
Instead, he had risen early and dressed in customary fashion, requesting the papers and his breakfast. He had done all this because despite the fact that he would like nothing more than to pretend as if he was free to love Daisy the way he wished and the way she deserved, he was not. And lingering in her bed only prolonged his own torture and inner torment.
Ah, but if only he had stayed, kissed her sweet lips, rolled her onto her back…
But no. He supposed the note would have found him anywhere. Still, it would have been a damn sight more pleasurable to have spent the morning sucking his wife’s pretty pink nipples than reading a piece inThe Timesabout the Government of India and the Ameer of Cabul before running off to do Carlisle’s bidding. Sebastian slid the note into the pocket of his coat, resumed breakfast for several more bites, and then announced that he would need his mount saddled while he changed into riding dress.
Yes, it was time for the devil to collect his due.
The ride to Carlisle’s personal residence was chilly, made more miserable by a ceaseless damp that had descended upon the city. For such a summons as this, his instructions were to always rendezvous at Blayton House. As they traveled in the same circles and feigned friendship as often as possible, two dukes might quite easily and inconspicuously call upon each other. More of Carlisle’s hiding in plain sight, as it were.
It didn’t take long to reach Blayton House, and before he knew it, Sebastian was handing off his reins to a groom and being led deep into Carlisle’s inner sanctum by his forbidding, hoary-haired butler. Carlisle stood upon Sebastian’s entrance to his study.
“Trent.” Carlisle was the face of genial civility. “Fancy a drink?”
It was the role he played for the world—drunken lothario, hardened rake, lighthearted man about town. In truth, the Duke of Carlisle was an odd fish—severe, harsh, dark, and deadly. Sebastian had once witnessed him gut a man with his blade before calmly wiping it clean with a monogrammed handkerchief.
For some odd reason, the sight and scent of that long-ago moment returned to him now. France, ten years before, on the outskirts of Paris. They’d been on a mission to free Griffin, and they’d been beset by a small party of German soldiers. The odds had been against them—Sebastian and Carlisle against five—but they’d prevailed. Carlisle had been a savage, killing two of the Germans with his bare hands and a third with his knife. Sebastian had dispatched the other two. Strange, so strange, that he should recall that day just now.
The butler disappeared, the door clicked closed.
Sebastian faced his superior. “Will I need a drink for whatever reason you’ve ordered me here?”
“Two minutes,” the duke muttered, his expression turning as grim as a death mask.
It was highly unusual for Carlisle to reveal he had the capacity to experience emotions. Seeing this side of him disturbed Sebastian, who watched as his superior stalked to the sideboard, snatched up a decanter, and poured whisky into two glasses. Not even after killing the three Germans had Carlisle been this disjointed.
Sebastian extracted his pocket watch, heeding Carlisle’s warning that it would not be safe to speak freely until two full minutes had passed. He accepted the whisky the duke offered him, tilted back his head, and swallowed the contents in a fiery gulp. It burned a path straight to his gut.
He flicked another glance at his watch. “Two minutes has passed.”
“A bomb was discovered early this morning by a night constable,” Carlisle said, taking a hearty swallow of his own spirits before continuing. “It didn’t detonate, thank Christ. The poor sod saw a smoldering box and was foolish enough to extinguish the flame. Thanks to his foolishness, the residence of the lord mayor still stands.”
