To Desire a Devil (Legend of the Four Soldiers #4)(14)

She looked down the hall. The door to Lord Hope’s room still stood open. He was in there all alone.

She squared her shoulders and marched to the open door. “I’ve brought some more tea and biscuits,” she announced briskly as she sailed into the room. “I thought you might actually drink it this time.”

Hope was lying in the bed, turned toward the wall, and at first she thought he might be asleep, silly as that notion was after the commotion of before.

He didn’t turn. “Get out.”

“You seem to be under a misapprehension,” she said conversationally.

She started to set the tray on the little table beside the bed, but there were shards scattered in an arc away from the table, comprised of what had once been an ugly china clock and a matching pair of ceramic pugs. Added as it was to the previous tea things she’d brought up before Lord Vale’s visit, it was beginning to be quite a pile.

She turned to a table near the window—well out of reach of the bed.

“What are you babbling about?” Hope muttered.

“Hmm?” The table was already occupied by a vase and a brass candelabra, and Beatrice had to maneuver the tea tray carefully to avoid yet another spill.

“The misapprehension you said I was under,” Hope growled in a testy voice.

“Oh.” The tray settled, Beatrice looked over at him and smiled, even though he still had his back to her. “You seem to think I’m one of the servants.”

There was a silence from the bed as Beatrice poured the tea. Perhaps he was covered in shame at her mild set-down.

“You do keep bringing me tea.”

Or perhaps not.

“Tea is very fortifying, I find, especially when one feels under the weather.” She added sugar to the tea—she’d noticed he seemed to like his tea very sweet—and brought the teacup to the bed. “But that does not mean I enjoy being addressed in such sour tones.”

He still faced the wall. She hesitated a moment, the cup held uncertainly in her hand; then she placed it carefully on the table. It was an ugly cup with an orange and black decoration depicting a rather lopsided bridge, but still. One didn’t like to see the china smashed.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked.

One large shoulder shrugged, but otherwise he didn’t move. What had happened between him and Lord Vale?

“It’ll warm your spirits,” she whispered.

He snorted. “I doubt that.”

“Well.” She smoothed her skirts. “I’ll leave you, then.”

“Don’t.”

The single word was so low she almost missed it. She looked at him. He hadn’t moved, and she wasn’t sure what to do. What he wanted.

His upper arm lay outside the coverlet, and she took a step forward and reached out a hand. It was entirely improper, but for some reason, it seemed right. She touched his hand, large and warm. Slowly she burrowed her fingers under his hand until she grasped it in her own. He squeezed her fingers gently. She felt a point of warmth start in her breast, spreading gradually like a widening pool of warm water until her entire body was lit from within and she identified the feeling. Happiness. He made her wildly, inappropriately happy with just the squeeze of his fingers, and she knew she should be wary of this feeling. Be wary of him.

And then he spoke, low. “He thinks me a traitor.”

Her heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

He turned then, finally, his face a mask, his eyes shadowed, but he did not let go of her hand. “You know our regiment, the Twenty-eighth of Foot, was massacred in the Colonies?”

“Yes.” The massacre was common knowledge—one of the worst tragedies of the war.

“Vale says that someone gave away our position. That we were betrayed to the French and their Indian allies by a man within the ranks of our own regiment.”

Beatrice swallowed. How terrible to know that so many had died because of one person’s perfidy. And the knowledge of a traitor would be even more terrible for Lord Hope. Somehow, she still wasn’t sure how—and really she was just about dying to ask—his seven lost years were connected to Spinner’s Falls and the tragedy there.

All this went through her mind, but Beatrice merely said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t understand.” He tugged her hand for emphasis. “The traitor had a French mother. Vale thinks I am the traitor.”

“But… but that’s silly,” Beatrice exclaimed without thought. “I mean, not the French mother part—that makes sense, I suppose—but that anyone would think you a traitor… that… that isn’t right at all.”

He didn’t say anything, merely squeezed her hand again.

“I thought,” Beatrice said cautiously, “that Lord Vale was your friend?”

“As did I. But that was seven years ago, and I fear I no longer know the man.”

“Is that why you struck him?” she asked.

He shrugged.

Beatrice shivered at the confirmation of her fears. She remembered Lord Vale’s warning in the hall: Be careful. Still, she wet her lips and said, “I think anyone who truly knows you would realize that you don’t have it in you to be a traitor.”

“But then you don’t know me.” At last he let her hand drop, and the warmth began to leak from her body with the loss of contact. “You don’t know me at all.”