Page 108 of The Captive Duke
St. Just sat beside her, a man comfortable in his skin if not entirely comfortable with peacetime. “You’ve recently buried a spouse. I am remiss to bring up such a dolorous topic when you’re in mourning.”
Gilly had been the one to bring it up, not the colonel.
“I am in mourning,” Gilly said, “but not, I think, for my late husband. Shall we walk farther, Colonel? The sun will soon set, and the light is so pretty.”
He winged his arm at her, and Gilly tried to enjoy his silent company. He was charming enough and all that was considerate, like Christian. He bore a pleasant scent and was of a height with Christian too.
But it wasn’t the right scent; it wasn’t ginger and lemon with an undercurrent of rose. St. Just was a hair too tall, a tad too thickly muscled, his eyes green not blue.
He was a good man; he wasn’t the right man. He sought a return to war, for which Gilly did not blame him, but part of why she was in love with Christian was that despite his past, he’d turned his sights to peace and to a future free of violence and destruction.
As Gilly could.
As she had, and this notion, too, was a wonderfully happy thought.
The duke’s appetite was in good repair, and to Marcus, that was depressing enough. His Grace laughed heartily at some joke Marcus’s ancient steward told, flirted with the tenants’ daughters, and generally comported himself with more bloody charm than a regiment of officers on leave. This Mercia had been easy to forget, the hearty, healthy man in great good spirits.
When Mercia had left London, he’d still been swilling hot water instead of tea, downing oranges to address inchoate scurvy, jumping at shadows, and barely capable of riding on his own through the park. He’d received not one caller, though dozens of calling cards from the best families had been left at his door.
Marcus’s spies might have been lying, but chambermaids were usually too stupid to know when they were being pumped for information, particularly if they were being swived silly at the same time.
“What emerges as your first priority as you put Greendale back on solid footing?” His Grace asked. They were walking their horses to the stables after spending much of the afternoon ambling around the Greendale property. They’d toured only the tenant farms in the best repair, Marcus being unwilling toreveal the full depth of the estate’s problems to anybody save his man of business.
“I cringe to say it, but probably liquidating what isn’t entailed, though that has become complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
Life had been so much easier when one’s enemies could be murdered outright.
“I must wait to get my hands on the personal estate until the lawyers have done with their fussing.”
“They should be able to turn loose enough money to maintain the estate,” Mercia said. “Bloody vultures. If you need funds, you have only to say.”
“Good of you.”
The words cost him, but Marcus fiddled with his horse’s mane in an effort to appear appropriately self-conscious.
“I can put in a word at the law offices for you if like. I might be going up to Town in the next few weeks, in any case.”
This was news. “For the opening session of the Lords?”
“Personal business. If I do go, I’d appreciate your spending some time at Severn in my absence.”
“Particularly if it’s during that exercise in manual labor, frustration, and sweat known as harvest, I can accommodate you. Does this have to do with our struggling countess?”
For whom Marcus did, in fact, have a few stirrings of genuine pity.
For the first time in that entire day, Mercia’s eyes looked bleak, lost even.
“Some misfortune has befallen her since Greendale’s death,” he said.
Delightful.“I heard the inquest grew unnecessarily nasty. Unfortunate, but it’s behind her now. If I’d been on hand, things might have gone differently.”
Very differently.
“I don’t believe she was ever truly under suspicion.” Mercia drew his horse up in the stable yard, and neither man nor beast looked the least bit fatigued, whereas Marcus had been spurring his gelding for the last three miles. “She’s had a string of accidents that haven’t struck me as accidents.”
What were cousins for, if not to confide in? “Somebody means her harm?”
