Behind the Mask (House of Lords) (24 page)

He knew now that this sort of operation was not his forte. Much as he had struggled in the beginning, he was starting to realize that the drawing room diplomacy for which he had been sent to Brussels was a far greater strength of his than this security work. He did not have the planning ability, the skill and foresight, to pull off a scheme of this magnitude, and he knew that he would need the combined talents of Strathmore and Crawley and the muscle of the militia to bring the princess safely through the week.

As he waited for his horse to be saddled, John Mowbray came out of the stable block. “May I speak with you, My Lord?” he asked.

Seized with dread, Colin nodded. Eleanor had told him that this man had been a childhood friend. Was he now to be taken to task for his behavior by a groom? But when they had moved to a quiet corner of the stableyard, Mowbray lowered his voice conspiratorially.

“There were some strange noises last night, out beyond the stables,” he said. “I went out to investigate, but I didn’t find much. Just a small piece of netting that looked as though it had been cut and a little scrap of cloth caught on the hedge.” He took a small piece of black cloth from his pocket. Colin took it and lifted it to his nose. Frankincense.

His interest piqued, Colin said, “Can you show me where?”

The groom nodded and led him through the stable building and out into the garden beyond. Back under the trees was a wide, well-kept paddock bordered on one side by a hedge, which enclosed a small rose garden. On the opposite side of the garden was a little arbor over which trailed a yellow vining rose. “Here, My Lord,” he said, gesturing to one side of the arbor. “I found the scrap on the vine.”

Colin looked carefully at the arbor, and then crouched down to examine the scrubby grass. It had been a dry week, but he could still see a half boot-print in the dirt near the edge of the arbor. The man had walked lightly and carefully, trying not to leave any prints, but when he had caught his sleeve or some other garment on the thorns his heel had dragged through the dirt. But why would the Serraray have been sneaking through the rose garden?

Try as he might, Colin could not puzzle out the answer, but he thanked Mowbray and filed the information away. Perhaps it would be of use later. As he rode into the village he kept a watchful eye, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was as if the Serraray had struck and retreated as quickly as a snake might when it was startled. Had Yates stumbled upon them and paid the price for it?

Though he knew it should be otherwise, Colin found his thoughts turning away from his murdered companion and to last night’s events. It was impossible not to think of what had happened in the library. He knew he should have held back, should have insisted they wait, rather than taking such a tremendous risk. But he was beginning to discover that when it came to Eleanor it was far more difficult to restrain himself than he would have liked.

He had always planned not to marry, it was true. And yet in some corner of his mind he had known that it was likely he would take a bride someday, either to please his parents or to ensure that he had a capable hostess in order to further his career. When Colin had allowed himself to think of marriage, of being saddled with a wife, he had always imagined that she would be someone who could live an entirely separate life, who could be satisfied with the gaggle of diplomatic wives who abounded on the Continent for her society, who would be out of his way and out of his hair. It would be ideal to have someone like that, who could keep herself occupied and trouble him only when it was time to plan one of the endless entertainments that seemed to be just as important a part of a diplomat’s job as the negotiations and the informal espionage. After seeing the way Eleanor handled every hurdle and stumbling block and complication that came her way, Colin had no doubt that she was ideally suited for such thorny work. But he had never really expected, in the rare times when he had pictured
any
sort of spouse, to be married to someone he wanted, someone he desired. It had never occurred to him that that was what a wife was for. He knew very few men among the diplomats and dignitaries on the Continent who were in love with their wives, and even some of those men strayed outside their marriages as a matter of course. Being in love with one’s wife was a roadblock on the path to the stellar careers to which most diplomats aspired.

Yet Colin was astute enough to recognize that he was treading on shaky ground. If he had not realized it before, last night had shown him just how weak he was where Eleanor was concerned. Any other woman he might have been able to resist. But just thinking of the smoldering look she had sent his way in the moonlit library made him shift uncomfortably in his saddle.

“What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Pierce,” he muttered to himself as he rode into the village.

Porter-on-Bolling was quiet, unusually so for what should have been a bustling Monday morning. Colin only saw a handful of people on his way to the doctor’s rooms, and each of them eyed him suspiciously as he passed. Clearly word of the murder had spread, and the villagers were wary of a stranger in their midst.

The doctor greeted Colin at the door and led him in. Yates’s body lay on the slab, covered in a white sheet. As the doctor lifted a sheaf of notes from the bench he cast a morose glance at the dead man, shaking his head sadly.

“I’m afraid it’s not good news, My Lord,” he said. “This man was poisoned.”

For a moment Colin could do little more than blink stupidly at the man. At last he managed to stammer, “Poisoned?” It was the last thing he had been expecting. He had seen men who had been tortured before; very few, it was true, but still enough to know that men did not torture other men only to poison them to death. Why would the Serraray do such a thing?

The doctor nodded. “I found signs of valerian in his system.”

“Valerian? Isn’t that used to bring on sleep?”

“In mild doses, yes. He was given a very strong, very concentrated dose, so much so that it stopped his heart. Here,” he said, going to the body and lifting one of the eyelids. “You can see that the veins in his eyes are engorged. A classic sign. It would actually have been a rather peaceful death, and a mercy after the other injuries he had suffered.” He handed his notes to Colin, who did not bother to look at them. Whether or not the doctor’s opinion was correct, it was the only one to be had. It would do little good to second guess him. “There wasn’t an organ in his body that wasn’t damaged somehow by the torture he endured before the end. It was a gruesome business, I’ll tell you that, and one I hope never to repeat. Who could have done such a thing?” The doctor looked expectantly at Colin, as if hoping there was an answer to his question.

There was, of course, but Colin had no wish to start a panic. The villagers were in no danger from the Serraray as long as they did not threaten them. So he said, “I am afraid I have no information for you there. You will see that the body is prepared and sent on to the family?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

Colin thanked the man and with a last look at the body of the man he had known so briefly, he went back out into the street. As he rode out of the village he began puzzling over the doctor’s report.

Colin knew very little about herbs and plants, but he did know that valerian grew in England and on the Continent. It was not something commonly found on the north coast of Africa. The fact that it had turned up in the body of an Englishman murdered by Berber thugs was troubling on many fronts. The idea that the assassins would use a poison with which they were not familiar either meant that they were desperate and recklessly willing to try anything or that they had help from someone who had more experience with plants native to British soil. If the first, then it meant that they very well might strike again out of desperation, and he would have to be far more vigilant. If the second, it meant that Colin was facing far greater danger than he had originally imagined, and it also meant something more, a possibility he had no wish to confront: the possibility that there was a traitor to the crown working with the Serraray, assisting and guiding them. If that were true, it would make them a much more credible threat. It would also mean that they would be better hidden and supplied than Colin had anticipated, making them harder to thwart. Either way, this new information meant further complications.

Colin was relieved to see flashes of red coats through the trees as he rode into the stableyard. It appeared that Eleanor had decided to have the militia set up their camp beside the little rose garden, for several men were already pitching tents as their leader, a man with bright red hair and a bushy moustache to match, stood with Strathmore at the edge of the yard. Colin rode up to them and leaped down from his horse.

“Colonel Taylor,” he greeted the man, who shook his hand warmly. “Thank you for coming. I’m Pierce.”

“Yes, My Lord,” the colonel said. “It is our pleasure to be of service. We got here as quickly as we could. Your man Strathmore here was just telling me about your assistant. My condolences.”

“Mr. Yates. Yes, I’ve just been in the village getting the report from the doctor.” He looked pointedly at Strathmore, who seemed to get the message.

“If you’ll excuse us, Colonel Taylor, I’ll go and see about those blankets.”

The colonel nodded gruffly. “Very good.”

Colin followed Strathmore back through the stableyard, feeling a twinge of guilt as he handed his horse off to a groom. He had noticed that Eleanor cared for her own horse, grooming him after every ride. As an eldest son, Colin had never been expected to do such a thing. His parents were quite enamored of the traditions and trappings of their wealth and rank, and he had always been told that future earls did not groom their own horses. It had been an oft-repeated theme in his youth, what future earls did and did not do. When he looked back on it now, Colin supposed that it had been that atmosphere that had driven him into the Foreign Service in the first place. He remembered coming home from Cambridge, where at least if people were aware of his rank it didn’t matter quite so much, and returning to the stiflingly formal environment of Townsley, where everything was always done just so. He had stayed just that one summer, the year he turned twenty-two, and then he had gone to London. A school friend of his, Finn MacKenna, had written to say that the Foreign Service was looking for good men. MacKenna had understood better than most Colin’s desire to break free from the mold his parents had very carefully designed for him. As the eldest son of a great Irish landowner, MacKenna shared Colin’s desire to define himself, to show that he was more than his parents’ money and position. Colin had jumped at the chance he offered, and had impressed Viscount Palmerston’s predecessor the Earl of Aberdeen with his knowledge of foreign politics, which had always been an area of interest for him. Aberdeen had been convinced Colin could excel in the Foreign Service, and he had not been wrong, though there had been some missteps. Colin had been glad Aberdeen had not been in the Foreign Office when the debacle in Vienna had occurred—he had always admired the man and disappointing him might have been worse than disappointing his own father. Of course, the current Earl of Townsley had never been particularly impressed with his eldest son. Miles, Colin’s younger brother, was far more to their father’s tastes, being an aficionado of hunting, riding, fishing, and all the other country pursuits the earl favored. But with Miles at Cambridge now, Colin knew his parents had been hoping he would return to Townsley. His father was not young, and no amount of wishing on Colin’s part could keep him hale and hearty forever. Eventually he would have to go home and take up the business of being an earl.

Perhaps it was fortunate that he would soon have a bride who appeared to know exactly how to run a large estate. With Eleanor by his side he was not quite as apprehensive about his eventual inheritance as he might have been. In many ways, the fates had been kind to him. Yet he could not see this marriage as anything but inconvenient, despite Eleanor’s myriad allurements. Pleasant though it would be to have her in his bed, figuring out how to also have her at his side would pose a challenge, one which he did not have time to consider now.

When they reached the library, Colin had to fight not to think of what had transpired there the night before. He leaned on the table as Strathmore waited for him to speak. “It was poison,” he said at length.

“Poison?” Strathmore’s face was, Colin supposed, an exact mirror of his when he had first heard that word. “Why would anyone torture a man and then poison him?”

Colin explained the implications of this most recent development. As he did, Strathmore’s frown grew deeper. When he had finished, his assistant clutched at the back of a chair. “We have a traitor, then.”