Paying the Virgin's Price (Regency Silk & Scandal #2)(36)
They were the friends of my youth. But now I feel unclean by the association.
The book shook in her trembling hand, as she tried to imagine the frail man upstairs penning the angry words. Although he was most particular with his own reputation and that of his children, she had never seen him cross with anyone in all the time she had lived with the family. But perhaps he had been a different man twenty years ago. She paged eagerly on.
Another shouting match with Kit over the cipher business. Too much whisky on all sides and not enough sense. He called me a traitor. I called him out, told him to solve the damn cipher if he is so eager to find the spy in our midst. But he cannot. The thing is unbreakable.
Without Will there, we'd have come to blows. Very embarrassing. But nerves frayed all round. This cannot go on much longer.
Traitor? She had never thought of Lord Narborough as less than an honest man and proud defender of his country. But he did not deny the accusation. And then, another note, coming almost as a postscript to the last.
Hebden says he has cracked the cipher. Now the truth will out. There is no stopping it.
And all that was left of the next page was a ragged tatter. Someone had seized the thing and ripped it from the book. She ran her fingers along the place where the pages should be stitched, and counted the little bits of paper: one, two, three pages missing. And at the top of the next page, a single line, hanging as though forgotten.
Dear God, forgive me.
Her pulse quickened. It proved nothing. But whatever had happened was worse than she suspected. Accusations of infidelity and treason on both sides. The missing pages, as though someone did not wish the truth to be known.
And that last statement, which could mean anything, but appeared damning when taken with all the rest. What was she to do with the information? It appeared that Nathan might be right. And it left her with a difficult choice to make. She'd lived in ignorance of any problems in this family and known Lord Narborough to be nothing more than a fond old man, caring deeply for his wife and children. But his health had worsened after the appearance of Nell and then the Gypsy. Was this because he feared the truth being revealed?
Had she found this information even a week ago, she'd have been tempted to turn her back on it. Better to let the matter rest and put the book back upon the shelf, instead of stirring up old troubles that could hurt more people than they helped. But now?
She took the book and set it in the bottom of her valise, and then covered it with a pile of folded stockings. She would pray that no one noticed its absence during the visit, and then she would take it back to London to show Nathan Dale. If he felt a pressing need to know the identity of the Hebden murderer, she would help him. It did not matter whether it was to avenge a lost love or free himself from the harassment of the same man that haunted her own past. She would do it, because in only a few weeks, she had grown to love and trust him beyond any loyalty she might feel to her old friends.
Because her objective opinion on past events, based on the contents of the little book, was that the truth could be every bit as bad as he assumed.
Chapter Twelve
During the week that Diana was away, Nathan could think of little else but her return. Although it was unlikely that he'd have seen her until the next Tuesday, even had she remained in London, he had not realized the comfort he felt in knowing that a chance meeting was possible. Now that she was gone, each mile between them was a hardship.
He went to the tables each night, just as he always had. But he played listlessly, paying little attention to the desires of men and women across the baize. Where once he would have watched without emotion as his opponents bankrupted themselves, now when games got out of hand he could no longer contain his disgust, with them or himself.
As yet another broken fool began rooting in his pockets for some treasured heirloom to cast away, Nate stood up from the table, hours earlier than normal, proclaiming loud enough for all to hear that he would rather play cards with the kitchen cat than to watch another soul publicly shame themselves at his expense.
As he pushed his way through the crowd, he heard the ladies muttering amongst themselves that, while they still found Mr Dale was quite attractive, of late he had not been nearly as diverting as they had hoped.
He smiled to himself at this. Her absence had convinced him that there was only one woman in London that he wished to entertain. But was it better to initiate contact, or to wait until she was returned and was ready to see him? Surely scrawling a line or two to welcome her back to London would not be seen as forward. But had she even returned from Stanegate? He did not know. When they had parted, she had been able to give him no firm date of return. As always, her schedule was at the mercy of the Carlow family.
He quietly damned them all for their hold over her life, and damned himself for placing her in the situation. A week without seeing her had seemed like an eternity. It had given him too much time to relive the previous meetings and imagine possibilities for the next. Assuming that there would be a next meeting. What if she had decided not to follow through on their plan, and realized that it would be better to remove herself from him? It was no less than he deserved. Perhaps she had found some other gentleman whose company she preferred. Or maybe the next meeting was assumed, and he would find her waiting in the park on Tuesday.