“Has she, indeed? That will be good for her, at least. But I must tell you, Lord Tarvin, that I am not at all inclined to favour such a hasty match, and to a man who is not at all known to us. He is a man of some wealth, she assures me, and presumablyhe is of good standing in his own neighbourhood, but we know nothing of him and he does not accompany her on this journey, which does not speak well of his care for her. If you have any influence with her, and you must have or you would not be here, I hope you will advise her to consider carefully before taking such a step. Marriage is not something to be undertaken impulsively, on a whim.”
“I regret that my influence over her is negligible.”
“Mine also, sadly,” she said with a wry shrug of one elegantly clad shoulder. “I do not think she takes the least notice of any of us.”
“It may be that this Tom Shapman has more of a hold on her mind than we had supposed,” Edward said carefully. “She seems very upset by his confession.”
“Tom Shapman!” she said, her expression hardening. “That man killed my husband, Lord Tarvin. If she cares anything for him, then she has poorer judgement than I had ever suspected.”
Tess arrived at that moment and dinner was announced almost at once. Edward was scooped up by Lord Rennington, and Tess by Kent and a pretty young woman. He searched in his mind for a name, and since pretty young women were more memorable than youngest sons, he quickly identified her as the earl’s youngest daughter, Olivia. At dinner, Tess was far from him, too far to hear what she said, although what glimpses he caught of her showed her drooping and eating very little. By the time Edward was able to escape from the dining room, she had already retired to bed.
He went up himself as soon as he decently could, but he had not been in his room long, and had done no more than loosen his neck cloth with a sigh of relief and pour himself a bedtime brandy, when there was a scratching at the door. Deakin went to answer it.
“Tell whoever it is I have gone to bed,” Edward said, throwing himself into a chair beside the fireplace, where a low fire burned.
As soon as the door opened, Tess rushed in, wearing only a nightgown and robe, her hair in a long plait reaching to her waist. “I must talk to you!”
“No, no, no, no, no!” Edward cried, jumping up and grabbing her by the shoulders to propel her back to the door. “Talk, yes, but not in my bedchamber at this time of night… or any time, come to that.”
“We cannot talk out in the corridor.”
“If it is urgent, you can get dressed, I can restore my neck cloth and we can go downstairs to the drawing room, with a proper chaperon — your mother, ideally, but any member of your family would do, and Simpson would be about, too. Good heavens, Tess, have you no sense of propriety at all?”
“Oh.” She deflated at once, her face desolate. “I… yes, of course. How stupid of me.”
“If it is not quite so urgent, we will have all day to talk in the carriage tomorrow.”
Her expression brightened. “You will come with me, then?”
“Of course I will. I would not miss it for the world.”
“You make it sound like an amusement — a balloon ascension, or a juggler, or some such,” she said sullenly.
“Tess, you infuriate and intrigue me in equal measure, but you and your problems are far more interesting than a balloon ascension, I assure you.”
She grinned impishly. “I infuriate you, do I?”
“You do, especially when you turn up in my room at this time of night. What time is it? Gone eleven, and we have an early start tomorrow, so go and get some sleep. If we can be on the road by eight, we will be at York by the middle of the afternoon, all being well. Go now. Go on. Shoo.”
Laughing, she skipped away, and Edward closed the door firmly behind her.
“That girl will be the death of me, Deakin. What am I to do with her, eh?”
“Whip her until she submits to authority,” Deakin said, as he eased Edward out of his coat.
“Would that work? I have a feeling it would not. She might very wellpretendto submit, but go her own sweet way in secret. Yes, I am sure she would, for I suspect she has been doing it for years. Any other ideas, Deakin?”
“Lock her up in an asylum.”
“And yet, I do not think she is insane. She may appear irrational, but I suspect she has a good reason for everything she does. All I have to do, if I can, is to find out what those reasons are. I should like to know, for instance, why she betroths herself to Ulric when she is clearly very attached to this woodworker fellow, and even encouraged him to offer for her. And why, I wonder, is she so obsessed with this house of hers in Pickering, which sounds like a very ordinary little house to me, not likely to hold any great treasure. It is a puzzle.”
Deakin carefully unbuttoned Edward’s waistcoat and gently removed it. “If you ask me, my lord, I should say you were getting in very deep with that young lady. She’ll have you wrapped round her thumb as quick as winking, if you let her.”
“You think I should be careful, do you?”
“No, my lord. I think you should cut and run back to London as soon as you can. She’s trouble, that Miss Nicholson, big, big trouble, and you’re one who’s always been so clever about avoiding troublesome young ladies. You need to escape from her as fast as you can, before you find she’s caught you so tight in her web there’s no getting away at all.”
“Thank you, Deakin,” Edward said evenly. “You may go now. I can manage the rest.”
