She nodded again. “Him.”
There was a pause. “You cannot be mistaken about him? There are several gray-haired men at the party.”
She shook her head. “There are no others with that particular voice. All raspy and quiet. I came looking for you because I heard that voice out on the balcony threatening to ‘take care’ of the person who went after the plans. I had to assume that did not mean offer him brandy and a cigar.”
“And you assumed they meant me.”
She shrugged. “All of the other Rakes at the party had already left.”
“Did you recognize the man he was talking to?”
“I didn’t see him,” she said, shaking her head. “And he did not sound as distinctive. Is Lord Burke’s first name Robert?”
He went as still as one could in a moving carriage. “No. Why?”
“Because Pamela mentioned someone named Bobby told her the message was important.Didyou suspect her?”
There was another pause, a longer one. “Yes.”
Could she ask this? Did she really want to know whether he had deliberately approached Pamela to glean information? If he had, it would mean he would go to uncomfortable lengths—uncomfortable for her, at least—to literally seduce information from a suspect. If he had not, then didn’t it suggest that he didn’t care whether his mistress was an enemy spy?
If she asked, would he give her an answer that would push her even farther away? If he answered, did she really want to hear it?
“Do you think she suspected you, too?”
“Hopefully not after the scene in the library.”
She nodded. It was all she could think to do.
She was about to deliberately change the subject to something else—anything else—when the carriage slowed to make a turn. A familiar turn.
As if things couldn’t get worse.
“Where are we going?” she asked, leaning forward.
It was a smaller lane that looked as if it disappeared into a stand of oak. A stand of oak where Pip and Lizzie had picked bluebells back in the day. A stand of oaks that was part of the Ripton Hall land.
Beau didn’t bother to answer, since once they turned one more corner they saw the tidy little brick Queen Anne Dower House tucked in at the edge of the trees.
It had always seemed like a dollhouse to Pip, a place where little girls shared high tea with Lizzie’s eccentric aunt who had written lurid stories with ghosts and pirates.
The house had been closed up since her death several years ago. It seemed that it was open again. Billings, the first footman, and Mrs. Webb the undercook from the big house stood on the stairs along with two maids and two footmen.
Oh, St. Agnes’s ankles, not here. Not where everyone knew her down to the date she had lost her last baby tooth. She had just started to feel as if she could breathe again.
“Whyhere?” she demanded frantically.
Beau frowned, seeming bemused. “Because the duchess offered it. I told you. I didn’t have time to make other arrangements.”
“No. You said the duchess suggested we go away. Not where we were going. I thought we would at least get as far as a village or two over where we could have some privacy!”
The frown deepened. “I also told you Drake would be meeting me. This is a convenient place. Don’t enact a tragedy, Pip. You know perfectly well this is all for show.”
She felt that statement kick her in the chest. Tears stung the back of her throat. “For people who know me better than my parents do.”
He studied her a moment. “What exactly don’t you want them to know? I suspect they already know the nature of the marriage, as any house servant would.”
“That you loathe me.”
