Sweet Enemy (2 page)

Liliana ran a dust rag gently over a volume on eudiometry before placing it back in the shelves of the library. As most of the books had been tossed during the ransacking, she’d decided to recatalogue her collection. But the entire episode still troubled her. While she’d heard crime had surged in England since the end of the war, hearing and experiencing were two vastly different concepts. The local magistrate had concluded that her cottage must have been targeted because she’d been out of town for several weeks and credited her with chasing the villain off before he could burgle others, too.

She climbed down the rolling ladder and retrieved another volume—this one on Dalton’s atomic theory—dusted it on the way back up and slid it into the stacks. It caught on something, not quite fitting against the back of the shelf. Liliana pulled it out again, looking to see what blocked it, but saw nothing there. She shoved with more force and heard a
click
.

Odd
. When she tugged the book out once more,
she saw a crack in the wall behind the shelf. No, not a crack, but an intentional division—a
door
. She must have tripped some sort of lock. Her natural curiosity bubbling, Liliana shoved the books aside until she was able to open the door fully. The space couldn’t be wider than two hands square. And there was something in it.

She reached inside and pulled out a wrapped bundle, testing its weight. What could it be? It was light, no heavier certainly than one of her thinner books. Papers, maybe?

She scrambled down the ladder, excitement pushing aside her earlier concerns. Given that Claremont Cottage had been in her family for eight generations, there was no telling what the find might be.
But oh, if it were something of Papa’s…
Just the thought that it could be sped her feet. She had precious little of him. Only his scientific papers and a few scraps of silly coded messages he’d given her to solve as a game they’d played in the last few months of his life. He’d been taken so young, so unexpectedly—the victim of a vicious attack by footpads. Long before a man in his prime might have thought to preserve his legacy.

She cleared the desk and seated herself, laying the bundle out before her. The plain linen had yellowed slightly with age, but it didn’t appear too old—no more than a generation. Her father certainly could have been the one to secret the bundle. It took great restraint to unwrap the cloth gently as anticipation buzzed through her. When the material fell away, two packets of letters appeared, tied neatly with red ribbons. Love letters, perhaps? Maybe even between her parents. Wouldn’t that be excellent? She’d cherish a glimpse of her mother, whom she couldn’t remember at all.

Liliana picked up one of the packets and untied the ribbon. Silk shushed against silk as the knot gave way. Eager, she plucked the first letter from the stack and began to read:

Drat.
Her breath whooshed from her nose as she slumped back into the chair. Not love letters at all, at least not between her parents. Her mother had been dead seven years by then, having died when Liliana was just three.

She skipped to the last page of the letter and found it unsigned. She scanned the others. They were all in the same handwriting, dated between May and December 1803, but with nothing to indicate the author. They weren’t even interesting. Full of words but with no real content—just babble about the weather and farm husbandry and such. How disappointing.

She picked up the other packet and tugged the ribbon free. Masculine French scrawl covered the pages. Liliana read, her brow knotting in confusion. These letters had about as much substance as their English counterparts and were also unsigned. Who would have kept such drivel?

She checked the linen and found one loose paper still within its folds. She lifted the vellum. This letter was marked by a broken red wax seal. She flicked open the page, expecting something thrilling—like a treatise on horse manure as fertilizer.

Liliana sucked in a breath, choking on her harsh inhalation. December nineteenth? Two days before her father had been killed?

Meet me two days hence.

Her father had
met
someone on the night that he’d been attacked?

Memories of that night flooded Liliana’s mind.

Papa was going to love his Christmas present this year. Maybe even so much that he wouldn’t take her to task for playing in his laboratory while he was out. Really, she didn’t see why she shouldn’t be allowed in the lab without him. She was ten now—not a baby.

Liliana pinched the dropper, squeezing fat drips of cobalt chloride into the chemicals she’d already mixed. Her own invisible inks. She didn’t know what had Papa so distracted lately. It certainly wasn’t any experiment he was working on. He hadn’t been focused in weeks. But he still took time to play with her, and for months now, his favorite game had been to leave her coded messages to solve. So she’d decided to create different inks to take their game to a new height. With these mixtures, she could leave him invisible messages and he would have to figure out what chemical revealed them. She couldn’t wait to try it.

Footsteps scrabbled across the floor above her. Liliana looked up. A loud voice shouted something, but she couldn’t understand the words, muffled as they were by the layers of carpet and wood and stone that separated her from the upstairs parlor. She hastily stored the precious chemicals and then went straight up.

When she came around the corner, her heart squeezed into her throat. Papa had returned? She was caught for sure. But…he was on the floor. Carsons was bent over him, calling for a doctor. “Why does Papa need a doctor?” she asked, but no one paid her any mind. She rushed to his side, but when she saw him, she shrieked, recoiling. “Papa?” she asked in a trembling voice, dropping to her knees beside her father. His skin was purple in places, swollen, mottled with bruises, and blood trickled from his nose, his mouth, even an ear.

“—street thugs, sir?” Carsons was asking.

Papa’s head jerked in a diagonal motion. “Be.” He gasped for breath, a rattling sound that sent chills down her spine. “Trade,” he mumbled.

“Papa?” she cried, not knowing what else to say, what to do, how to help.

His hand snaked out, grabbing her wrist. He squeezed hard and she moaned, a hot tear slipping down her cheek. The one eye he was still able to open bored into her. “Find them. At summer.”

Summer?
Terrified and confused, all she could say was “W-what?

“At…summer.” His grip slackened, and he slipped into a coma from which he never woke.

“Be. Trade,” she murmured. It had sounded so nonsensical at the time. But…she looked down at the letter she still held in her hand.
We have been compromised. Meet me two days hence.
Liliana tested the words on her tongue again. “Be-
trayed
.” Tears sprang to her eyes. Her father’s death hadn’t been a random tragedy. He’d been lured to it. By this note.

She stared at the offensive paper, grabbing the English packet of letters. The handwriting was the same. While they weren’t signed, this last had been closed with a seal. A noble seal.

She rushed to her shelves, searching…searching. There! She found a dusty old copy of
Debrett’s
. Its spine likely hadn’t been cracked in fifteen years or more, but it should still contain what she needed. She laid the heavy volume on the desktop and flipped it open, scanning the histories of the noble families of England, looking for the seal that matched the one she held in her hand.

Tonight she’d learn
who
betrayed her father. Then she’d find a way to make sure they paid.

Shropshire, April 1817

H

He sincerely hoped that included matricide.

“Let me understand you plainly, Mother,” he growled, resisting the urge to brush the road dust from his coat onto the pristine drawing room floor. “You called me away from Parliament claiming dire emergency…” He swallowed, his throat aching with the need to shout. By God, he’d nearly run his horse into the ground to get here, aggravating an old war injury in his haste. His lower back burned almost as badly as it had when he’d been run through. He breathed in, striving to keep the irritation from his voice. “Because you would like to host a house party?”

Genevieve Wentworth, Lady Stratford, sat serenely on a floral chaise near the fireplace, as if he’d politely dropped in for tea instead of racing at breakneck speed to answer her urgent summons. Geoffrey eyed her suspiciously. His mother was typically a calm woman, but he’d been known to send seasoned soldiers scurrying with no
more than his glare. She hadn’t so much as flinched in the face of his anger. No, in fact, she looked strangely triumphant. His stomach clenched. Mother was up to something, which rarely boded well for the men in her life.

“Geoffrey, darling, do sit down,” she began, indicating the antique caramel settee across from her. “It strains my neck to look up at you so.”

“I should like to do more than strain your meddlesome neck,” he muttered, choosing to remain standing despite the ache that now screamed down his leg. He turned his gaze to the older gentleman standing behind her.
“Et tu, Brute?”

His uncle, at least, had the grace to look chagrined. Geoffrey shook his head. Uncle Joss always had been easily led. Geoffrey knew his mother played Cassius. This conspiracy had been instigated by her.

Joss squared his shoulders. “Now, m’boy, I must agree with your mother. It’s high time you accepted your responsibilities to this family and provided an heir.”

Hell. So that was what this was about. Well, he wasn’t going to fall in with their scheme. He’d nip this and, after a hot meal and a night’s rest, be on his way back to London. The Poor Employment Act wasn’t going to finish writing itself, and Liverpool wanted it ready to present next month. What was more, Geoffrey had received a disturbing letter that needed to be dealt with. He itched to return to Town to investigate whether the blackmailer’s claims held any credence. The note implied that his late brother had been paying the scoundrel for his silence to protect the family, but Geoffrey couldn’t believe a Wentworth had done anything treasonous. Still, the threat needed to be neutralized.

“Host all of the parties you want, Mother. I’ve never tied your purse strings.” He pivoted toward the door, determined to escape yet another lengthy discussion about duty. Pain flared through his back and leg. Christ, he’d very nearly given his life for duty. Yet his mother didn’t
understand that. No, in her mind, duty was defined by one word—
heirs
. “I shall be quite tied up in Parliament for the foreseeable future, so you needn’t worry about inconveniencing me with your entertainments.”

He’d barely stepped one booted toe into the rose-marbled hallway when her words stopped him cold.

“It is not I, dearest, who is hosting our guests, but you.”

Me?
He scoffed for a moment before the rest hit him.
Is?
As in right this moment?

The fist in his stomach tightened. The ride to Somerton Park had quite jarred his teeth loose. He’d blamed it on spring rains, but it could have been…Hell, it would have taken a
legion
of carriages to rut the road so deeply. He scanned the hallway.

Where were the servants? He’d yet to see one, not even Barnes. Sure, Geoffrey had bounded up the front steps straightaway, but there were always a few maids milling about in the entryway or the main rooms, unless…

Unless they were all busy seeing to the settlement of guests.

He turned slowly, his only family rotating back into view. Uncle Joss’ easy smile faltered at whatever he saw in Geoffrey’s expression, but Mother’s widened with a familiar gleam that struck fear into every wealthy titled bachelor in Christendom.

Geoffrey advanced, his boots clicking an irregular rhythm against the drawing room’s walnut floors. He prayed his suspicions were incorrect. “What have you done?”

“Taken matters into my own hands,” his mother confirmed in a satisfied clip. She stood, her skirts swishing smartly as she retrieved a handwritten list from atop her escritoire. “I have been observing ladies of suitable age, station and character for quite some time now.” She waved the list for emphasis. “Since before you returned, even. In fact, wartime is an excellent time to judge one’s integrity, at home as well as on the battlefields. It is
imperative that the future Countess of Stratford be above reproach.” She sniffed, probably expecting him to argue, as his older brother would have done were he still alive. Since Geoffrey wholeheartedly agreed with his mother on that one point, he remained silent.