‘Wardale made no counter-accusation?’
The horses broke into a trot, as though Hal had given them a signal. He reined them back. ‘He wrote a last letter to his wife protesting his innocence and voicing his suspicions of my father. Nell showed it to Marcus and he told me of it.’
‘Oh dear.’ Julia tucked her hand under Hal’s elbow, feeling the need to offer some comfort. ‘But Nell cannot believe Lord Narborough guilty. However much she loves Marcus, she could not be on terms of such affection with Lord Narborough if she believed he had killed her own father.’
She thought some more as the horses took them into the shade of the elms. ‘Let us assume Wardale was innocent, and accept, of course, that your father is too—for, if nothing else, your own father would not plot to kill you.’ Beside her, Hal stiffened. That friction again. ‘That means we are looking for a very clever man who was in the right place at the right time to kill a man he knew was a threat to him.’
‘We?’ Hal queried.
‘I am your wife now.’ She leaned against his shoulder, thinking happily of last night. ‘And I am not going to sit around in ignorance expecting to be protected.’
Hal squeezed his arm against his side, trapping her hand more firmly. ‘Then do not treat Hebden lightly.’
‘We know he cannot have been the original murderer. Does Lord Narborough not suspect who it might have been?’
‘They operated in isolated groups for security. The three of them were trying to trace one French spy, to read his coded messages. They reported to a minister now dead. Even Veryan has not been able to trace any likely contacts or points of weakness, and he has better access than anyone to the files.’
‘Veryan?’ she queried. ‘Lord Ked din ton, Verity’s god father?’
‘Yes. He was a junior secretary at the time, so he knew nothing of it then. But last year, when Hebden began his campaign, he looked for clues, even set his new assistant on it. Nothing.’ He frowned. ‘And the young man met with a fatal accident shortly after he began the task. At the time it just seemed to be a random tragedy. Now, I wonder.’
‘Hebden is an intelligent man,’ Julia observed. ‘Amoral, dangerous and vengeful—but also clever. If he believed your father and Wardale innocent, then he would be a powerful ally.’
‘No!’ Hal said, reining in and turning on the seat to face her. He jammed the whip in its holder and took her chin in his free hand. ‘No, no and no, Julia. Marcus is right: we avoid that man like the plague. He can never be anything but a threat. I don’t know what he does to women—you all seem mesmerised by him.’
‘No, you wouldn’t under stand,’ she agreed. ‘You are too close to see it. And you are a man. But he is very like you.’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘What?’ Hal’s furious bellow had his leader rearing, sending the curricle slewing sideways across the drive. It took a moment to settle the animal. Julia kept quiet, clutched the side rail and concluded that frank speaking was not always ideal in marriage.
‘You are comparing me to that bastard?’ Hal finally demanded. ‘Are you all about in your head?’
‘Not in your morals or your honour, of course not,’ she said, half fascinated, half wary of the storm clouds in his eyes. ‘But you wonder why he is attractive to women. You are both very beautiful, very male, very fit young men with indecent amounts of charm.’ Hal snorted. Julia noted the flush on his cheek bones and concluded that he was rather flattered by the description.
‘He uses all that, quite deliberately,’ she said, thinking about Hebden, how he had looked at her, how he had used his voice and his body. ‘Looking back, he was as calculating as an actor. He knows perfectly well how attractive he is and he wields his personal attributes like another weapon, with calculation. Heaven help the woman he un leashes that on without any artifice and in all sincerity.’ Hal glowered.
‘You, on the other hand, are a gentleman. All that arrogance and self-confidence is quite natural, quite unconscious.’ The glower became a scowl. ‘The charm is used with good manners and restraint—which makes it just as lethal for poor, unsuspecting females. We are apt to believe in it, you see.’
‘Apt to believe I am a flirt and a rake, you mean,’ he said harshly.
‘Well, of course. Hal, I might not be very experienced, but I am female! And I cannot imagine anyone without your charm and address—and looks—being much of a success as a rake.
‘And I cannot pretend I do not enjoy having a husband who is—’ she felt the blush but carried on anyway ‘—experienced and attractive.’ He smiled at her, but she could see he was troubled. ‘Hal—what is it? Why are you and your father so con strained with each other? I see him and Marcus talking together, easy with each other. You and your father are always so polite, so distant. And why do you say things that make me think that you are not always happy to be the rake you say you are?’
For a long moment she thought he would not answer her or would pretend he did not under stand. ‘I’m the second son, of course. And I was always the wild one. Marcus is serious. He will make an excellent earl one day, take his seat
in the House, do all the right things. He even managed to lose his virginity in the correct manner—discreetly at the age of seventeen in a fashionable bordello that he had care fully re searched be forehand.
‘I, on the other hand just found girls—and sex—almost too good to be true. I was not the most attentive scholar at the best of times, if the subject was not military history or mathematics, so I’d give our tutor the slip and be off, exploring this much more interesting subject. I’d get beaten when I got back, but that seemed a fair exchange for kisses and exploratory fumbles in hay stacks.’
The horses were ambling now, the disciplined hand they were used to slack on the reins. Julia kept quiet and let him talk. ‘And then, of course, the inevitable happened and I thought I had fallen in love. The trouble was, she was not some willing milkmaid who had spent a few years being tumbled by rustic swains and knew what she was about. This was the squire’s daughter.’
‘How old were you?’
‘She was seventeen. I was fifteen. Looking back I’m not sure who seduced who, but there we were one summer’s afternoon in the long grass of a woodland glade—’ Julia gasped. ‘Quite. Just like the glade where you and I…met. I was clumsy, but enthusiastic. I have no doubt we were making a great deal of noise. And then a riding crop landed hard across my ado les cent buttocks and there we were surrounded by my father, her father and his head game keeper.’
Hal collected his team and drove in silence for a few minutes. ‘They arrived in the nick of time or I’d have found myself a very young bride groom, but you can imagine, perhaps, the impact of it all, being hauled off a sobbing girl while three large men yell at you that you are a whoreson, rakehell, good for nothing young goat. My father was deeply disappointed in me: I was turning out even worse than he expected. He has a strong moralistic streak and my be ha vi our deeply offended and distressed him, I can see that now.