She wanted to ask more questions, but Lady Raine decided it was time for peppermint sticks, so she kept the questions to herself. But she would find out what was going on with Theo if it was her last act before leaving London.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Monty was rarely irrational. He always had a purpose and never deviated from it. He may appear a brainless fool, and yet the reality was far from that. When he rose, he knew what he was doing that day. If there were no engagements, then he was barefoot in his shirtsleeves and trousers in the garden or reading with his feet hanging over the end of a chair.
He never just wandered anywhere aimlessly.
When you were constantly on your guard leaving the house, you tended to be the exact opposite in your home. No one visited him unless it was a Deville or Geraint—or now Iris.
Had he not been able to be himself inside these walls, he would likely be in Bedlam by now.
He’d thought a great deal about Iris in the four days since that kiss. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt like trouble was circling her.
There was her former brother-in-law’s behavior, and this business about friends of her husband demanding to enter her home. Then there was the letter and papers she’d given him. It all added up to something he was not comfortable with.
He read those documents extensively, and each had the mark of the devil. Some had “Brothers of Faith,” others, “the gods will be appeased.” But there were no names. Only details of land purchases or agendas. Times, dates, and other such accountings.
Monty’s instincts rarely let him down, so he was now positive the late Lord Challoner was involved in devil worshipping and his parents’ deaths. He just couldn’t put all the pieces together.
He would not alert Iris that he was worried about her welfare, and yet he was. She need not know he’d set someone to watch her and Henry. Her aunt and uncle would do so, he knew, but did they understand what her husband had been like, and the threat their niece could now face?
Seated at his breakfast table staring at the newspaper, he wondered what his next step should be to investigating these “Brothers of Faith.” This had to be his focus now as it had been for many years. Now that he’d set someone to watching Iris, he could channel his energy into this and try to forget the beautiful Lady Challoner and her soft lips and smooth skin.
She’d asked him why he seemed to play the part of two different people. He now had to set about persuading her he was still the brainless fool he’d first appeared to be.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t acknowledge, if only to himself, that he was glad she had seen through him.
“You are a fool,” Monty muttered, pushing Iris from his head yet again.
He had sent word three days ago to four men he could trust. One to watch Iris, and the other three to search for any information they could find about the Brothers of Faith and the men who had supposedly been the late Lord Challoner’s friends.
No murmurs, names. Nothing had ever surfaced about who killed his parents until now. He’d thought the trail was long cold, but now he had a place to start, and he would not stop until he found whoever was responsible.
Monty had told no one except his four trusted men about the new information, but he would speak to the Devilles and Geraint soon. Lingering in the back of his head was what he’d found that day sixteen years ago and then again in the letters Iris’s husband had in his possession.
Geraint believed, as Monty did, his father was not involved in some kind of cult or devil worshipping society, but would others?
“A missive has arrived, my lord.”
“Thank you, Haven.”
Opening the paper, he recognized the writing as Mary’s.
Today we are traveling out of London to attend the Duchess of Yardly’s birthday celebrations at Lord and Lady Caruthers’s residence. Apparently, the duchess has ordered many entertainments for her birthday. If I have to go, so do you, and don’t think I don’t know that you received an invitation because I do. If you do not come, it will not go well for you.It was signedMary.
He barked out a laugh. She could always get him to do that. Her and that reprobate husband of hers.
“Was there an invitation for me from the Duchess of Yardly, Haven?”
His butler nodded. “I’ll get it for you.”
He received a lot of invitations; most he attended, as was expected of Plunge. When Haven returned, Monty read the details on the cream card he was handed.
A celebration of the Duchess of Yardly’s lifewas the first line.
“If I’m being honest, I’m not sure we should celebrate her life,” he said to Haven. “The woman has been abusing and humiliating people for years.”
“I’ll ready the carriage.”
