The Deception (Baron 3)

He touched his fingertip to the large mole. “Are you satisfied?”

Evangeline nodded, and quickly wrote her initials on the lower corner of the paper. She handed it to DeWitt. “Have you a packet for me?”

DeWitt handed her a thin envelope. Evangeline stuffed it into her cloak pocket and rose.

“Jamie was right. You are a cold bitch. I told Houchard that women aren’t to be trusted, but he insisted that you were different, that he had such a hold over you that you would never dare to betray us. He believed Edgerton more than me.” He shrugged. “We will see. I’ve always found that women’s consciences are fragile. I will ask Edgerton what this hold is. He wants you, you know. And he will have you, eventually.”

She found a laugh, one that was filled with all the contempt she felt for that traitorous bastard. “Your opinions are doubtless a result of your character, Mr. DeWitt. I believe our business is concluded. I’m away.”

“Yes, a bitch,” he said quietly, gave her one more long look, a fair brow arched. She quickly gave him John Edgerton’s London address and turned to leave the church, but DeWitt’s voice stopped her. “That man, Trevlin. Be certain that he doesn’t suspect anything. If he does, he’s dead.”

She felt a leap of panic, but didn’t show anything except her impatience with him. “Don’t be a fool. The man suspects nothing. See to your own affairs and leave mine to me.”

Evangeline turned on her heel and walked deliberately away from him, out of the church and into the bright sunlight. He was a handsome man, one who would undoubtedly gain entrance anywhere he wished to go in London. The mole, though, that gave one pause. She had a lot to write in her journal about Conan DeWitt.

The duke of Portsmouth stood at the wide, bowed windows in the drawing room of his town house on York Square, staring at the rivulets of rain that streaked down the glass. He held a letter from Evangeline in his hand, one of her governess’s bloodless progress reports. It was written in the most formal of styles, impersonal, lifeless, and he wished he had her white neck between his hands, damn her. It was the fifth one he’d received from her. She could have been an utter stranger. Certainly she wasn’t the woman he’d caressed, whose breasts he’d stroked with his hands, whose mouth he’d kissed until he’d believed he’d spill his seed if he didn’t have her.

Now she was a stranger. She’d removed herself as far as she could from him. He was surprised that the pain of her final words to him still lingered, still pulsed deeply in him, making him wonder what had pushed her to say those things to him, what he had done to provoke them. And her insistence on not coming to London. None of it made any more sense to him today than it had the day before when he’d yet again chewed over it endlessly.

“Dearest, you might as well tell me what troubles you.”

He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, and automatically shook his head. He hadn’t meant to be so obvious. It was distressing, but then again, his mother knew him nearly as well as his father had. He wouldn’t ever cause her distress. Thus he smiled and said, “There isn’t anything, Mother. It’s a dismal day, enough to drag a man’s soul to his feet. Dreary and dismal, nothing more. Don’t fret.”

The dowager duchess of Portsmouth, Marianne Clothilde by name, regarded her beautiful son. Like his father, he protected her, even when it was foolish to try. But she said only, returning his smile, “How goes Edmund?”

“Madame de la Valette reports that he will soon be penning his first novel, he is that precocious. She sends me the opening paragraph to his budding opus.” He handed his mother a single sheet of paper. Edmund’s printing was well executed. There were four sentences. She read aloud: “It was a dark and stormy night. There wasn’t a moon. There were stars. There is more to come, but patience is required.”

She began laughing. “It’s wonderful. I believe Madame de la Valette is a genius.”

“She probably told him what to write. It’s nothing at all.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist, Richard. I’ll wager that Edmund’s thoughts are behind it, and Madame simply provided a few suggestions. I must write him this very day and praise him. I will ask for the next part of the story. I will tell him that patience is difficult with such a splendid beginning as this.”

“It is good, is it?” the duke said, his voice gruff and filled with such pride that she wanted to cry.

“Yes, very good, and it’s been just three weeks. It appears that Madame de la Valette is making excellent progress. I miss the boy, you know.” She looked down at what she saw was hunger in her son’s beautiful eyes. Hunger? For his son? Yes, that must be it. But then, why didn’t he simply return to Chesleigh? That or bring Edmund here? She tested the water, saying, “I’ve been thinking, dearest. Edmund is no longer a baby. Soon he will need his father’s guiding hand. Could he not come up to London with Marissa’s cousin? I am curious to meet her as well.”

The duke eyed his mother suspiciously. Her dark eyes, so like his own, were guileless, which made him all the more wary. Like his father, his mother never missed anything. As a boy, he’d always failed whenever he’d tried to lie to either of them. “I think,” he said acidly, “that you have been talking to Bunyon. Damn the fellow for his infernal meddling.”

The dowager duchess merely smiled at her son’s show of temper. Naturally she’d spoken to Bunyon, but oddly enough, he’d said very little, which, she supposed, she admired. Loyalty was important, a

fter all. But her son had acted differently, more aloof, more thoughtful perhaps since his return from Chesleigh. She’d thought that he was still grieving for his friend Robbie Faraday, but no, she’d decided that wasn’t it. Nor had it anything to do with Sabrina Eversleigh, now Phillip Mercerault’s wife. Ah, but he was touchy. And alone, terribly alone, she thought. She didn’t know what to do, and that depressed her profoundly.

Marianne Clothilde lapsed into silence. Perhaps he wanted a new mistress, she thought, always a realist, something she refused not to be. Her son was every bit as lusty as his father before him—ah, but then his father had found her, Marianne Clothilde, daughter of an impoverished earl, and that had been when all his lust had stayed at home, with her, in their bed or wherever they happened to find themselves. She smiled at that wondrous memory. However, her son was very much his own man, despite the likeness to his father. She’d believed when he’d done as his father had wished and married Marissa that he would settle down, but he hadn’t. He’d never said a single word against his young wife. He’d never said a word against his father-in-law, who was a despicable man. And then Marissa had died.

Marianne Clothilde sighed. She was beginning to wonder if the duke would ever find a woman to suit him, a woman to complete him. What was Marissa’s cousin like?

She said to his back, for he’d turned to look out onto the rainy park opposite the house, “You know that Bunyon never tells me anything. I wish he would because you’re as closed as a clam.”

“Even now you could be lying for him. No,” he continued over his shoulder, “I’ll take the bastard, no, not that precise word exactly, at least not to my mother. I’ll take Bunyon to Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon and cave in his stomach.”

It was then that she realized he’d never answered her question. She smiled at his very stiff back. “You know, dearest, I’m growing bored with inactivity. Perhaps you would consider bringing Madame de la Valette and Edmund to London.” She added, with just a whiff of a whine, “I miss my only, dearest grandson. I would like to see him before I doubtless become very ill and unable to, and then die. Can’t you bring him and Madame de la Valette here? For your only, dear mother?”

The duke turned to face her, and she momentarily forgot her acting at the haggard look in his eyes. He slashed his hand in the air, saying in a harsh voice, “Madame has no desire to come to London. When I informed her that I wished it, she threatened to leave Chesleigh. When I told her she had nowhere else to go, she said it was none of my affair what she did. Then she sent me straight to hell, if I recall correctly.” Marianne Clothilde blinked. She attached herself to what was really important. “You informed her, my son? From what Bunyon has told me, she is a pleasant young woman, but also possesses great pride. Also, she is a poor relation, dependent upon you. Perhaps you were too high-handed in your treatment of her.” As his only answer was an uncompromising stare, she continued, “What is her name, dearest? I cannot keep referring to her as Madame de la Valette.”

“Evangeline,” he said, his voice low and deep. His mother, suddenly enlightened, nearly lost her bearings. But she didn’t. She wanted to know so much, but she wasn’t stupid. The duke had stepped behind a barrier even she couldn’t breach.

She said merely, “What a lovely name.” Then she rose from her chair and shook out her skirts. She was a tall woman, still possessed of a graceful, willowy figure despite her fifty years. She walked to her son, lightly kissed his cheek, and said, “I have thought so many times that you are quite the most handsome gentleman of my acquaintance.”