Page 29 of The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady
Jacob slammed the book shut, no longer interested in what it had to say. “You have spent what…a day? Two, among them and you have found out this much? What is their plan? Why do they need a list of who will be at the ball, or why do they care what we do here at Ravencliff? I have nothing to do with their politics.”
“You are an Englishman who is living on the very land that they feel in their hearts still belongs to them,” Tom pointed out, with a wry shake of his head.
Jacob got up and went to the window, staring out at the impossible green of the fields that stretched far away to the forest. “I asked for none of this. I am not to blame for their situation any more than my father was when he was given his title and lands.”
“Does it matter? You live here, on their lands, surrounded by men who would rather you did not. Have we not learned how fiercely a man will fight when he feels his home is threatened? The bloodiest battles were the ones where…” here Tom faltered.
“You might as well finish it,” Jacob replied, his expression grim. “We both said it enough aboard ship. The bloodiest battles were the ones where we were clearly in the wrong.” He set his jaw. “Such thoughts are treason, Tom, especially here and now. Are you sure you trust the men who came here as our guests?”
Tom met his gaze steadily. “How many of them have fought at your side? I would bet my life on every last one of them. In war we do things we are not proud of sometimes.”
“In peacetime, too. I have asked that girl to do things I should not have asked her to. She is caught in an impossible position. More so if she…” Jacob could not say the rest, for her words felt too fragile to repeat out loud.
Her heart races when I am near. She loves and wants only to be loved in return. But needs her father as her only tie to her past, and needs her country for without it she has lost her brother for nothing.
“I have done things that I should not have. I wish to God I had never come here. My brother was right. I would do better to leave the estate in his hands, and return to London. Is there truly any need for me to administer such a tight control over matters here?” He rested his head against the glass, staring without seeing the outbuildings, the beehive of activity that was the estate at midday.
“You held as tight a control over your ship, and because you did, we all came home. There are not many that can say the same,” Tom said softly. “Though it answers not what you will do about the girl. You will send her home after this, will you not? It seems torturous to keep her here.”
Jacob turned away from the window, unsure how to answer at first. “But is it any better there? Twice now I have been witness to her father’s abuse. What manner of man he was prior to losing his own estate means little compared to what I see in him now. He is a man driven by anger, and he has no compunction on taking it out on his own flesh and blood. Is she not better protected here?”
“You have feelings for her?” Tom said, and Jacob could not help but hear the disapproval in the other man’s voice.
“I would not compromise her. Despite what she said, I have done nothing…” Here Jacob faltered, for he wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. He remembered holding her briefly in the woods, the way her hand had felt in his.
“You have then,” Tom’s expression was stern and unyielding.
Jacob drew himself up stiffly. “I have held her hand. Nothing more. I would have had more contact with her upon a ballroom floor.”
“Except you would not, for she is a servant and unlikely to be invited to any balls,” Tom pointed out and Jacob shot him a startled look.
“I think that is a thing we are both forgetting. Sheismore than a servant,” Jacob said thoughtfully.
Tom frowned. “I rather distrust that expression upon your face. If you are planning something, Your Grace, then I need to remind you of the last piece of this particular puzzle that you seem to be overlooking.”
“And what is that?” Jacob asked, learning against the corner of his desk, with his arms crossed as Tom fidgeted beneath his gaze.
To his credit, Tom held his position. “Simply this. That your life seems to be in danger, and you are too preoccupied with playing spy to notice.”
Chapter 21
The next day, Elias slid into the empty seat beside Alicia upon the bench at the midday meal, leaning past her to help himself to the bread piled in a basket on the center of the table. “You have me following the wrong brother,” he said quietly, when she looked at him in surprise.
“You need not follow anyone at all, I was entirely mistaken in that,” she said tartly, drinking the last of her milk and setting the mug down with a thump.
He sketched a mock bow in his seat, ending with a silly bob of the head that left several of the maids seated nearby laughing. Alicia saw the envious looks darted her way and sighed inwardly, for she little cared to be creating more reasons for them to hate her, already having quite enough of her own.
“Stop that,” she muttered crossly, staring at the remains of her meal, her appetite quite fled. “As I said, I have no interest in either brother.”
Elias reached for the butter only to have the girl across the table just about dive for it, that she might be the one to place it within his hand herself. “You should, though. The younger is up to the top of his boots in intrigue, and the older…well, let us say, is to be made example of.”
Alicia turned toward him, not caring who was watching. “You are warning me of something. Why are you constantly warning me of things I cannot control? Are you wanting to make me leave?”
He glanced uneasily around the table before bending close, earning her another glare from the trio seated across from them. “I was cruel to you…not all that long ago. When I was sent to keep an eye on you—”
It took great effort to school her features, to smile as though she were flirting, to allay suspicion. “What do you mean, sent to keep an eye on me?”
“You were seen to have become…too close to things here. They knew—”
