“Are you going to deign to answer me, Carlisle, or are you going to remain silent and brooding, interrupting my morning coffee?” Strathmore asked insolently.
He sighed. “My departure from the League may be a necessity.”
“Sodding hell.” The duke made a wild gesticulation with his cup, resulting in another shower of scalding liquid, this time raining on his lap. “Fuck.”
“Always a man of scintillating conversation.” Leo could not resist the jibe. Even so, he was concerned. Strathmore was a decided ruin this morning, more so than he had been of late. “Are the nightmares growing worse?”
Once, heavily influenced by whisky, Strathmore had confessed he still suffered nightmares from his time in captivity in Paris more than a decade before.
“To Hades with the nightmares, Carlisle. Tell me you are not leaving the League.”
He pondered the notion of his departure yet again, turning it around in his mind, and any angle from which he approached it, he only felt surprisingly free. Content. At peace.
“I cannot tell you that, and I will explain why directly.” He paused. “First, I must have your promise everything I am about to share will remain between the two of us alone. I am keeping the Home Office and the rest of the League in the dark. If you find issue with that, advise me now, and I will take my leave.”
“I am loyal to you,” Strathmore assured him darkly. “Though only Christ knows why. Tell me what the hell is going on, if you please.”
He took a deep breath. “I married a Fenian.”
Strathmore, who had the misfortune to have just taken a sip of coffee, spat the dark liquid into the air and all over his already besmirched trousers. “Tell me you are jesting! I beg you.”
“Capital thing that your trousers are black,” he observed, perhaps unkindly. “And no, I am not jesting. Nor would I about a matter so grave.”
“Why? How? Jesus, I had not even realized you’d wedded anyone. Did she hold a pistol to your head? Threaten to slit your throat? Cudgel you over the head and give you amnesia?”
He was not surprised Griffin was unaware of his matrimonial state. He had not bandied it about. In general, aside from his libidinous parties, he kept to himself. He showed a façade to London and threw himself into his work for the League. Few people, aside from those who had attended his ill-fated fête and the Duke and Duchess of Trent, knew he had a wife at all.
“I married her to save her,” he said then, realized as he said the words aloud it was the truth. He had not married her because the Duke of Trent had forced his hand. He had married her because he had seen in her the other half of his heart, and he had been selfish and greedy, and he’d allowed his avarice to triumph over even his duty to the League. “But first, I shot her. I had received information she was involved with the ring of Fenians responsible for planning and carrying out the Phoenix Park murders.”
“Holy God, Carlisle.” Griffin gaped at him as if seeing him for the first time. “You are truly the madman everyone says you are.”
“Yes,” he agreed, inclining his head, “I am. And you, my friend, ought to seek out church this Sunday. I cannot help but feel you and the Lord have some grievances to work out. Your language certainly suggests it.”
“You married a bloodthirsty Fenian, and you are suddenly concerned about the state of my soul?” Strathmore chuckled. “I shall worry about my eternal damnation and leave you to fret over yours. I cannot help but think wedding and protecting a murderess is a far greater sin.”
“Take care. You are speaking of my duchess.” Those his tone was calm, beneath his skin raged a seething, protective inferno. He would allow no man to disparage his woman before him. Not even if it was a man whose aid he needed to recruit. “And she has never murdered anyone.”
At least, not that he was aware of.Good God, what a thought. He ought to be troubled this omission did not concern him more than it did. But the heart was a strange and fickle organ, and it loved who it loved. And he loved Bridget. Christ, how he loved her.
“You said she has ties to the ring responsible for the Phoenix Park assassinations,” Griffin reminded him, outrage underscoring his tone. “How can you defend such a creature?”
It was a question that had plagued him initially, driving him mad as he sought the answer, so he did not hold the asking of it against the duke. “I believe the ties are forced. Her brother is Cullen O’Malley, one of the ring of suspects imprisoned for the plots. I believe her connection to the ring extends from him.”
“Youbelieve.” No fool, even though he looked like hell and had just passed several sleepless nights, Griffin hit upon the fact Leo most wanted to bury beneath other information. “Are you telling me you do not know for certain what her ties are? Have you not asked? Have you not investigated on your own?”
“I have asked,” he admitted grimly, his mind flitting to all the times he had attempted to extract information from his reluctant, stubborn, rebellious, maddening, beautiful bride. “She has not been forthcoming. And of course I have investigated. I’ve been making discreet inquiries with my sources from the moment I realized who her brother was. I’ve turned up nothing thus far, save a mountain of evidence against him.”
“I beg your pardon.” Strathmore’s tone was incredulous now. “The omnipotent Duke of Carlisle has married a Fenian, who refuses to disclose the nature of her relationship to the barbarous murderers who slayed the Chief Secretary of Ireland and his undersecretary? And you are simply accepting her lack of cooperation?”
He swallowed. When phrased in such bold, confronting fashion, he could not deny the answers to Strathmore’s queries. “Yes to both of your questions.”
“Have you taken complete leave of your senses?”
Yes.It was painfully apparent he had. Falling in love made a man lose his wits faster and more thoroughly than any other condition.
He ground his jaw. “No. I merely know my wife. Better, even, than she supposes I do. I know she is involved, but I also know there is a good reason for it. A reason she refuses to divulge to me. That is why I need you.”
“Me?”
