The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(7)

‘I am not aware of anyone.’ He had told her nothing about a family. I am all alone, Guin darling. You are everything to me, my world. We need no-one else, only each other. It was an effective way of isolating her, controlling her, until she realised there was no-one she could turn to, no friend, no confidante. No help. ‘No-one came forward at the inquest or attended the funeral. There has been nothing in twenty months and yet it was widely publicised at the time.’

‘It was not local, I believe. Not close to Lord Northam’s Dorset estate.’

‘No. It was in the North.’ The money had not lasted long enough to get them very far south of the Border.

‘It is unlikely then that the marriage is at all relevant to your present situation.’ Mr Hunt made another brief note. She was not certain whether that was a statement or a question. It was like having a hawk in the room, a falcon, sleek of feather, sharp of beak and talon. His hair was drawn back tightly at the nape of his neck and braided into a tail, and she found herself wondering how long it was when he released it. It was an unfashionable style, yet his brutally plain clothing was of the finest quality.

That dark golden-brown hair was attractive. So were those amber hawk-eyes and the strong, lean face. Guin realised that she was frightened of him, of the aura of tightly controlled force about him, the awareness that he would be very good at violence, skilled at it. Francis had not been skilled, only angry at life, at her, at everything that had not showered the bounty on him that he thought he was entitled to.

‘Your own family?’

How foolish not to have expected this, not to have armoured herself against just this interrogation. She had been expecting a Bow Street Runner, a reassuring, stolid, middle aged man, wise in the ways of the streets from which he had risen himself. Avuncular perhaps, in his blunt way. This was a gentleman, as intelligent as a lawyer, she suspected. As precise as a surgeon. It had been fear she had felt when he had entered her room. Fear and a treacherous shiver of attraction.





Chapter Three


Guin tried charm, smiled at Mr Hunt a little, head tilted to one side, invited him to share her rueful regrets. ‘My own family? Alas, no. My father disowned me when I eloped. My mother was dead by then. I have a brother and two sisters in Lancashire. They too cut me off.’

‘Even now you are married to a viscount?’ No, he was not in the least bit charmed. The man had probably never flirted in his life. Perhaps he was some kind of monk.

‘Even now,’ she agreed, her voice dry as she abandoned feminine wiles. ‘I was desperate enough to write to them for aid immediately Francis died. When I received back my letter torn into shreds I allowed my distress to turn to anger. What I wrote in response was, apparently, both unforgivable and unforgiven. None of them come to Town. My father has died now, although I had to find that out from the newspapers, and my brother inherited the baronetcy. He is not a wealthy man, not one given to visiting London or fashionable watering places. My sisters are married to Northern gentleman who prefer to remain on their own acres.’

‘So, who have you offended or threatened, Lady Northam? Who hates you or fears you? Who covets what you have enough to want you dead?’

‘I have no idea,’ she said with perfect honesty. ‘That is the truth. I have not quarrelled with anyone, Augustus was not courting any lady who had expectations when he married me. I have racked my brains for any memory of saying or doing something that might have hurt or upset anyone and cannot. I have no money of my own to leave, no expectation of inheritances. No secrets. Nothing.’

His eyes narrowed and she wondered if he thought that she was lying to him. ‘There is nothing that you know of or suspect, nothing that you put sufficient weight on,’ her new bodyguard corrected her. ‘Unless you are imagining these incidents, or they are the most improbable coincidences, then someone is trying to harm you, Lady Northam, and there has to be a reason behind it. Their motives must seem good to them, however trivial or obscure, or even insane, they will seem to us when we know them.’

Guin closed her eyes for a moment, almost breathless with the confidence in that deep, quiet voice. When we know, not if. When. We. There might be safety from this fear after all. But she could not give way now. Staying calm, doing nothing to worry Augustus – more than he was already worried, poor man – was essential. When she was calm, he was calm also, his entire focus bent on supporting her.

‘Lord Northam has a large family, I gather. Two daughters, one son-in-law, three granddaughters and two grandsons, in addition to his brother and his son and some distant cousins.’ He did not consult his book for that, she noted.

‘Yes. The daughters are pleasant enough to me – they think their father a doting old fool to marry so young a wife, but they just manage not to say it. Possibly reassurances about his will have helped with that.’ She hoped that did not sound acid, that had not been her intention. Of course her daughters-in-law would have been worried about the marriage, it was only natural. They had really been very decent about it all. Distant but decent. She wanted to get up, fidget about the room, move from under that cool, assessing scrutiny. Guin folded her hands in her lap and made herself sit still.

‘The granddaughters are my age, more or less, and perfectly civil, as are the grandsons. The boys descend in the female line and it is not as though any of them have expectations of inheriting the title, not with heirs in the male line. Lord Northam made it quite clear to them all that their positions in his will are unaffected by this marriage. I cannot see that they are threatened by my existence.’