The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(76)

‘He looks at me because he is guarding me.’

‘He is in love with you. If I am right, will you be my friend or will you take his side?’

‘If – I am your friend now if you make your peace with him.’ Could she trust the other woman or was this sudden display of trust a way of putting Guin off her guard, allowing Elizabeth’s ally close access?

‘I will try. Lady Northam – ’

‘Guin.’

‘Guin, be careful. You know who is behind these attacks on you, don’t you? No.’ She held up a hand. ‘Don’t say anything. Why should you trust me? Just be careful and I will try to return the friendship you have offered me.’ She turned before Guin could reply, walked rapidly across the terrace, the wind tossing the ends of her hair and the ribbons of her dress, her arms tight around her body as though she was holding in her unhappiness by sheer force.

The door opened as Bella approached and Jared stepped out. He had been watching them, Guin realised. Watching her. Bella stopped dead, half turned as though to push past him and then hesitated, raised her head to look him full in the face. Guin saw her lips move, but she could not hear what she said. Jared shook his head, then smiled, nodded and said something.

Bella covered her face with one hand for a second then turned, wrenched open the door before Jared could reach it and vanished inside.

He walked slowly across the terrace to Guin. ‘What did she say to you?’ she asked as soon as he reached her side.

‘Do you hate me?’

‘What did you say?’

‘No. Then she asked me if I could forgive her and I said yes. It was not a complicated exchange and I presume I can owe it to you?’

She could not tell whether he was glad or whether he resented her interference. ‘She needs a friend. Whether she would be repentant and want forgiveness if her marriage had been happy, who can tell? Perhaps she would be a different woman if that had happened. I hope we can trust her, because she seems to be suspicious and uneasy about Elizabeth Quenten and if that is not part of a subtle plot, then she may be a great help to us.’

‘You are right. And thank you for trying, whether or not she is sincere. It does neither of us any good to have that cloud from the past.’ He looked down at her, his eyes dark with thoughts that did not seem pleasant. ‘She was unhappy with Will, you say?’

‘He was the sort of man who betrays his own brother. How do you think he would be as a husband?’

‘Hell.’ Jared linked his arm through hers and strolled to the end of the terrace and the view. ‘All that to secure a love match and they end up trapped together by the marriage they thought they wanted.’

‘I did not know you are a romantic about marriage.’

‘Did you not?’ He spoke absently, his gaze seemingly fixed on the horizon.

And yet he proposes that I marry him and does not speak of love. Why not? Because he does not love me, I suppose. If I tell him how I feel about him, what will he do? Tell me the truth or lie?



‘What do we do now?’ Guinevere asked briskly, as though they had been speaking of nothing other than practicalities. When this business was over he would woo her seriously if she would allow him to. He had never felt like this about a lover before but then he had never had a countess in his bed and he could not tell whether it was the thought of Society’s pressures that made him so certain that they should marry, or something else.

Romance. Love? What do I know about that? What I observe, which is Cal and Sophie. Cal has changed, his whole focus has shifted. So has mine, but then so has my life. Guinevere –

‘Are you in a trance?’

That was sharp enough to cure unconsciousness. ‘No. Thinking.’

‘What is the plan for this evening?’ Guinevere was unhappy about something, he knew her well enough by now to tell that. There was plenty of reasons for her to be so, but Jared had an uncomfortable feeling that it was his fault, whatever it was. He had thought he had enough experience of women to understand them, but he was learning he was wrong. Or rather, when it came to the woman he was beginning to care deeply about, he was.

‘This evening.’ He wrenched his mind back to the problem in hand: keeping this woman alive, which was rather more urgent than wondering what was going on in her head or what he felt about her.

‘We need to bring up the subject of Thomas Bainton, drive a wedge of suspicion in between him and his real employer,’ he said. ‘I do not believe he is far away and this house is easy enough to get into – I doubt anyone has improved the locks since the seventeenth century but with a bit of work we can secure most of them and leave a vulnerable point we can watch. We need him and Mrs Quenten together, talking in front of witnesses, and the more agitated she is – if that woman ever does get agitated – the better.

‘Theo is doing an excellent job of appearing to have rather more enthusiasm than tact or wit. We’ll get him to start the ball rolling.’ But he was going to keep Theo out of this as much as possible. As a suspect the less he was involved the better and, if Jared was wrong about him, then the more he knew the more dangerous he was. He only hoped that faint nagging suspicion would go away, it would cause Guinevere huge distress if Theo proved treacherous. It was one hell of a balancing act.



‘May I carve you some beef, Mrs Quenten? It looks excellent.’ Theo laid slices of sirloin on his neighbour’s plate and looked round the table. ‘Anyone else? Oh yes, thank you, Ravenlaw, I will take some of the capon. You’ve a fine cook, Huntingford.’ He accepted the bowl of peas, helped Mrs Quenten to some and passed them along. ‘Difficult business, finding good staff. I’ve inherited a mixed lot from my father, I must say. The most useless set of footmen in creation.’