Page 83 of The Bastard's Iberian Bride
“The tartan you’re wadding up was a wedding gift to me from Kincaid, though God knows why he would give it to me. And you lie, Bink Gibson. Youarea gentleman, as much a gentleman as Bakeley or your Lord Hackwell. It’s the other you play whenever you want to. It’s what you’ve been playing for years.” Her hand flapped out again. “But it is fine with me, if you do not choose to be the gentleman you are tonight, or ever. Because you should know, sir, I am no ‘my lady.’ What do you think I am? I am the daughter of two spies—one died on the Continent, and the other was buried alive in the country.” She bit her lip and blinked furiously. “Who am I? Shaldon, the great bloody villain, died without telling me anything. You must tell me whatever he told you.”
His hands itched to hold her, but she was not out of heat yet. He helped himself to bread and meat and cheese instead. “Youarea lady, Paulette. And you aremylady.”
“No. I am your wife. I am not a lady. Ladies are sniveling, weak creatures wholly dependent on men, and I choose not to be one of those. I will take what money I can gather and go to London and meet this solicitor, Tellingford, and find my trustee and get the rest of my money.”
She paused for a breath, and looked toward the window, and the skin on his neck rippled.
What else was she plotting to do? And what was she not telling him. For sure, there was some of that in this fuss.
She swung a level gaze his way. “I will take care of myself, and you may run away to India if that is what you wish to do.”
He chewed carefully and swallowed. He would not be going to India, ever. The dream of rajahs and riches faded blissfully away, with not one tiny whiff of a pang. “A solicitor in London is in charge of the trust—”
“Which is now coming to me, since I have married.”
Actually, technically, it was coming to her husband, in the usual way. He did not need to raise that conflagration, since he was the husband in question.
Bakeley had pulled him aside on Sunday just before his departure, and he’d been in such a hurry to get to her, he’d barely heard.
Now, the words flooded back into his memory.
He would get to this solicitor first. Before she could lay hands on any documents explaining the usual trust arrangement or hear the news directly, a new game would be in play. The money would be signed over to her full control.
“Bakeley said this solicitor was the executor of your mother and father’s estates, and arranged the terms of Shaldon’s guardianship over you. He is holding property to be given to you upon Shaldon’s death.”
His spine tingled. Whatever that solicitor held might be the thing putting her in danger.
“And someone else wants it.”
Her brow furrowed, her gaze flitted, hither and yon, while she chewed on those snippets of information. There’d be no rest until he talked to the solicitor.
He filled a plate and handed it to her. “Eat something.”
She bit into the bread and covered her mouth while she chewed. “As I said, my father was a spy. He died on the Continent, was all Mama would say.”
He’d seen more than a few spies passing through the Peninsula. Paulette’s father could have been one of them.
“When did he die?”
“I don’t know exactly. I was little more than a child when my mother received word eight years ago, but I believe it took some time for the news to reach us.”
They’d learned of the death in 1811 then. In the years before and after that, he’d been in the thick of the Peninsular battles. Death had visited the area then, freely and often.
Bink rested his fork on the plate. The Portuguese priest had passed through around then. And before him, Josiah Dickson, he who would be Agruen.
That dark memory filled his vision again. A woman as small as Paulette, so beaten she’d not been able to speak. Bink had stumbled into the fight in a Portuguese hovel while on patrol.
He rubbed at a pain in his temple. Dickson was bloodied, the other man too.That man did it, Dickson had said.
Dickson, who’d been at the Major’s table the night before.
Bink beat on the other man until Beauverde showed up and pulled him away.
And months later, in the humble hut of a defenseless mother and her girls, this one in Spain, Bink found out the truth about Agruen.
A soft touch on his arm brought his gaze to the present, into eyes dark as that Spanish woman’s, but so very alive with intelligence and concern. “It’s Agruen then. Something to do with him.” Her voice was low and fierce.
Somehow, she’d gone inside his head and taken a look around. The flood of intimacy brought him back to the problem at hand.
