Page 51 of The Untamed Heart

He smiled at that, and Eustacia told herself she was reading too much into the warmth she saw there. But there was something, something a foolish girl whose heart was not as guarded and sensible as hers was, might think looked perilously like affection.

Hatherley Hall, Little Valentine, East Sussex, 28th September 1816

“Well?”

Hawkney looked up from his desk as Marcus strode into the room.

“Ah, and a good day to you too, Marcus,” he said wryly.

“Don’t give me that. You’d have not summoned me if it wasn’t important.”

Hawkney smiled. “It is indeed important. I had a letter from a Mr Prufrock this morning. Apparently, Lucius told him to send any information directly here, which was good of him.”

“Prufrock?” Marcus repeated. “That rings a bell. A fussy little clerk at Horse Guards, I think. A decent fellow, though. Thorough and precise, unlike some of them.”

“Indeed. Well, reading between the lines, it seems Lucius set him an impossible task, but the fellow came up trumps. He found your missing order, Marcus.”

Marcus stood very straight, tension singing through his body.

“At ease, old man,” Hawkney said gently. “Keller wrote the order to stand you down, and he assigned it, but the messenger was killed.”

Marcus let out a short breath. “Oh, thank God.”

All the rumours, all those people who murmured about how he had risked his men for his own chance at glory… now he could refute them with hard evidence. The relief seemed tangible.

“Yes, I rather felt that way myself,” Hawkney said with a smile. “I doubt the messenger was as sanguine about it, however.”

A sharp stab of guilt jabbed at him for having been so pleased the fellow had met his end in such a way. “No, poor fellow. It would have been a dangerous journey to get that message through to me. At least I know the truth now, and that there were no nefarious intentions from Keller. I never liked the man, nor him me, but there is a difference between incompetence and deliberately trying to get a fellow killed. Especially when so many men died because that order never reached me. He’d not just have been responsible for trying to murder me, but for all those other deaths. It’s unthinkable.”

“True enough, and yet it’s an ill wind, Marcus. We might be under Napoleon’s thumb if you had not stood.”

Marcus glowered and waved this away. “For heaven’s sake, I wish people would stop making such sweeping statements. That battle was only one of many that turned the tide in our favour, and—”

“And if any of them had failed, it might have created a chain reaction and produced a very different result.” Hawkney said, forcefully overriding Marcus’s objections.

“Oh, stop being a bloody duke for five minutes, can’t you?” Marcus said crossly.

Hawkney’s smile was dryly amused. “Would that I could do so, Marcus. It’s a damned curse, I assure you.”

“Well. Good news, at any rate,” Marcus said, shrugging. “I can finally put those rumours to rest, and it seems my blackmailer has nothing to blackmail me with.”

“He never had. He was just banking on the guilt you carry like an albatross about your neck into making you step away from the exhibition. You realise this does not mean Keller did not send that letter, only that he did not deliberately try to get you killed?”

Marcus pulled a face. “Yes, your grace, not being a complete idiot, I did realise that.”

Hawkney regarded him pensively. “Don’t let your guard down, Marcus. Someone out there hates you enough to try their hand at blackmail. Don’t forget that.”

“Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine today? However, I will not forget.”

Hawkney huffed out a laugh. “Fair enough, for my part I am sorry to have dragged you away from your gardening—which seems to be doing you the power of good, by the by—but I thought it best that I share the information in person rather than in a note. I imagine Sherry and Lucius will be with us soon enough with whatever information they have gathered, so perhaps we will have an end to this mystery soon.”

“The sooner the better,” Marcus replied gruffly.

Hawkney nodded his agreement.

“Would you care to stay for a bite to eat?”

Marcus shook his head. “No, I’d best get back. I have a sitting this afternoon,” he said, aware he was reluctant to miss sharing a meal with Eustacia and the rest of the household. He’d come to look forward to eating in the cosy kitchen at Seagull Heights as much as working in the garden. What he would do when the wretched portrait was finished, he could not yet fathom. Perhaps he would buy himself a little cottage somewhere, a place with a bit of land, and close to Little Valentine. Would Eustacia be pleased if he did so?