“Excellent.” She rose, and he came to his feet. She waved him to the door. “The gong will sound soon. If you’ll join Uncle Humphrey in the conservatory, I’ll tell Partridge there will be one more at table.”
“Thank you,” he said and meant it. He followed her from the room.
After a pleasant if occasionally conversationally challenging lunch, Christopher strolled to the Bigfield House stable. He’d parted from Ellen, as she’d finally invited him to call her, in the conservatory, where, between them, they’d settled Sir Humphrey in his wicker chair. Ellen had sat beside him, holding his hand and listening as he’d started telling her something about his goats, only to ramble off into some story that had no relevance to Ellen, Christopher, or even the goats.
She’d signaled that Christopher could leave, and he’d nodded and departed. But he was pleased he’d been able to keep Sir Humphrey’s mind on track for most of the time they’d been at the table.
At least he’d done that much for the old man, contributed that much to Ellen’s and her aunt Emma’s peace of mind.
After chatting with the head stableman and reclaiming Storm, Christopher turned the gray’s head north and made his way between the fields and eventually around to cross onto manor lands. While he rode, he reviewed the results of his morning’s endeavors. Despite having fallen victim to the machinations of the local grandes dames, despite having failed to speak with Robert Martingale, overall, he felt singularly pleased with what he had achieved.
He’d taken the first steps toward finding the answers Drake wanted. “Now for the next stage.”
At ten o’clock the next evening, Christopher was silently making his way beneath the trees bordering the lawns of Goffard Hall.
Giving Bigfield House a wide berth, he’d ridden over the fields and had arrived half an hour earlier. Glad that the moon wasn’t full and what there was of it was partially obscured by clouds, he’d slipped from shadow to shadow, circling the house, checking the layout of the place—the relative position of the stable and other outbuildings and all exits from the main house.
Guests had still been arriving, rolling up in curricles and gigs; while taking care not to be seen, Christopher had watched long enough to confirm the narrow age range of the arrivals and the singular lack of females.
Now, having gained a reasonable idea of where the main reception rooms were in relation to all else—and also having noted a light burning in a well-proportioned study on the far side of the house and glimpsed an older gentleman, presumably Mr. Kirkpatrick, working behind a desk there—Christopher made his stealthy way toward the sound and light emanating from the large reception room in which the card party was being held.
Ballroom or drawing room, he couldn’t yet tell, but when he crouched in the bushes on the outer edge of a stretch of manicured lawn and set eyes on the terrace abutting the middle section of the long room, he grinned.
It was high summer, and the evenings were mild. With all the bright lights plus the crowd in the room, the French doors to the terrace had, unsurprisingly, been left open. Even better, the gauzy curtains hanging over the doors and the windows along the flagged length hadn’t been pulled aside; shifting and rippling in the faint breeze, they created a filmy, diaphanous veil that would obscure all details of the night-shrouded garden and the shadowy terrace from those inside.
Christopher was too old—too experienced, too patently aware—to attend the card party himself. Even if Toby, twenty-five to Christopher’s thirty-one, had remained to assist, he wouldn’t have passed muster, either, even if he’d tried to pretend he was twenty-one or -two. No matter how vague Toby sometimes appeared, as soon as anyone looked into his eyes, the caliber of the mind behind those eyes became obvious.
Assuming the Kirkpatricks were passing counterfeit notes through their card parties, having Christopher or Toby turn up on their doorstep requesting admission would have sounded a loud and strident alarm—the very last thing Drake, and therefore Christopher, wanted.
The best he could do was covertly observe and see what he could discover.
The terrace—largely draped in shifting shadows courtesy of several nearby trees—provided the perfect position from which to do so. Indeed, there was a patch of deeper shadow engulfing one end, and the curtains of the nearest window didn’t quite meet. Through the resulting gap, he would be able to get an unobstructed view of the action inside the room.
Silently, he crept forward, making for the steps at that end of the terrace while keeping an eye on the open doors. But it was early yet; he doubted any of the young men whose hazy outlines he could just discern inside the room, gathered in clumps here and there, possibly around card tables, would yet have reached the stage of desperately needing fresh air.
He reached the steps, went swiftly up them, turned to the shadow-drenched corner—and froze.
Someone was already there.
No—not someone. Ellen Martingale.
Her curls, the silly feathered hat she wore, and the frills on her riding jacket and skirt that concealed her curves all screamed her identity.
With her gaze and her attention locked on what she could see through the gap in the curtains, she hadn’t noticed his approach.
As silent as the surrounding shadows, he prowled closer, until he was standing less than a foot behind her. Ready to slap a hand over her lips if she screamed, he bent his head and, in decidedly clipped accents, whispered, “What the devil are you doing here?”
He’d underestimated her; she startled, but she didn’t scream. Instead, after a tense moment when he sensed she concentrated on forcing her lungs to draw in air, she turned her head and, over her shoulder, cast him a narrow-eyed glare.
Ellen held him silent with her eyes while she waited for her senses to settle enough to trust her voice. She’d nearly swallowed her tongue in her desperation to mute her entirely understandable shriek. Compounding her difficulties, every nerve she possessed was ridiculously aware of him standing so close—mere inches away.
Far too close, but asking him to step back—even reaching out and pushing him back—would only draw his attention to her ridiculous susceptibility. If at all possible, she wanted to avoid that. So she gritted her teeth, waited for her reaction to subside, then looked back at the scene inside the Goffard Hall drawing room. “Your questions about Goffard Hall,” she murmured. “About the household and these card parties. They started me thinking.” She nodded at the activity on the other side of the glass. “There’s something wrong about this, isn’t there?”
If she’d harbored any doubt as to the validity of that conclusion, the sudden silence that greeted her words settled the matter.
After too long a pause, he asked, all level tone and idle curiosity, “What makes you think that?”
She cast him a glance that was just a touch contemptuous. “Why are you here?”
Christopher muted a snort.
Having successfully rebutted any argument he might think to make, she returned to surveying the room.
Jaw clenched, he looked over her shoulder.
After a moment, she added, “Besides, if there’s anything untoward going on, it’s my brother—my innocent and entirely unsuspecting brother—who’s involved.”