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S everal hours later and against his better judgement, Gray found himself picking the lock to the French doors while Hadleigh stood guard. Because the lawyer had the bit between his teeth and wouldn’t be dissuaded and, because he had expressed his intention to investigate the trunks in Thea’s room to sift through those accounts, too, Gray had reluctantly become involved. To his friend he hoped it looked like diligence and a desire to return those damned letters rather than a primal need to protect the woman he loved from the unsupervised gaze of another man as she slept. In fact, Hadleigh didn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell of setting one foot in her bedchamber. If that made him an irrational, jealous fool, then so be it. She was his and that was that. Irrational, protective jealousy went hand in hand with being in love.

God help him. This had been the most trying twenty-four hours!

Beneath his fingers, he felt the barrel of the lock click into place and tested the handle. The door swung open silently on its blatantly well-oiled hinges. They crept inside and diligently checked the hallways before moving on.

‘There is a distinct lack of guards, don’t you think?’ Hadleigh whispered as they crept down the hall.

‘There’s a distinct lack of anything, if you want my humble opinion. Guards, papers, suspiciousness, motive...’

‘You doubt Gislingham is The Boss?’

‘I think there’s as much chance, if not more, of him not being the man we suspect as there is the chance he is. Something doesn’t add up.’ Or he was becoming so desperate for a way to prevent the inevitable implosion and awful aftermath affecting him and Thea that he was purposely, yet unconsciously, missing things. ‘I cannot shake the feeling that Gislingham is far too nice to be a master criminal.’

‘That’s what he wants you to think.’

‘Yet if this house was his lair, the centre of all his nefarious deeds, then it might look like a house on the outside, but it would be a veritable fortress within.’ To prove his point, they were able to slip up the stairs to the Viscount’s private apartments completely unseen with not so much as a sleeping servant at the front door in case they were visited in the night.

They made a search of the sitting room Gray had happily sat in almost daily during the past week and found nothing one would not expect to be in a sitting room. Behind every picture was nought but blank walls and beneath the giant Persian rug every floorboard was secured with sturdy nails. There were no secret compartments, no hidden escape hatches, no nothing. Harriet’s half-finished daub stood proudly on an easel near the window. A sorry effort which was little to show for the hours she had doubtless spent on it. Thea’s unfinished book lay on the table. Pride and Prejudice. A romance, because his Thea was a romantic at heart, he now knew. When Hadleigh wasn’t looking he traced his finger along the spine and allowed himself a little wistful smile. He hoped their romance had a happily-ever-after. She deserved it and perhaps so did he. If he could only navigate those blasted potholes.

They then searched the study where Hadleigh hastily stashed the rest of the love letters into his satchel and sat in the window seat, scrutinising the large leather account ledger by the light of the moon, with the burned note held aloft for comparison, while Gray hunted for hidden compartments in the furniture and floors.

‘Anything?’ Time was ticking along. They had been here an hour already.

‘Nothing.’ Hadleigh closed the book and returned it to its exact spot on Gislingham’s desk. ‘The handwriting is all the same, very curly and flamboyant, and very definitely not this.’ He pocketed the charred remnant looking peeved.

‘Thea acts as his secretary. The writing is probably hers.’ She was curly and flamboyant, too. There was nothing staid or average about his Thea. ‘Did you see anything amiss in the accounts?’

‘He lives well—but well within his means. Exactly as you said.’

The next door led to a messy dressing room. A testament to Bertie’s lack of talent as a diligent servant. Piles of Gislingham’s bright silk waistcoats lay on a chair. Cravats hung from doorknobs. Plainer waistcoats that looked far too sedate and too small to still fit the Viscount sat folded on an ottoman in the corner. His plethora of cufflinks and stickpins jumbled together in a deep glass dish. Gray pressed his ear to the bedchamber door and heard the soft, rhythmic sounds of snoring. As there was no other way forward, they had to risk it.

He opened the door a crack and peered through. The large lump under the bed covers suggested the Viscount was sound asleep on his side. His two canes were propped haphazardly by the nightstand, their gold tops shining silver in the single sliver of moonlight that seeped through the tiny gap in the curtains.

In case they were spotted, Hadleigh went first, his pocket stuffed with a silver candlestick and a diamond stickpin. If caught, he was going to claim to be a common, opportunist burglar so that Gray could escape with his cover intact. It wasn’t much of a plan, but as he had point-blank refused to allow anyone to creep around Thea’s bedchamber but him, it was the best they had and would jolly well have to do.

Hadleigh skirted the edge of the room, then stopped dead, frowning at the bed. Then he gestured and Gray followed and couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

The Viscount was not alone.

Curled up next to him, their limbs intertwined in the tangled bedcovers, was Bertie.

Bertie!

Suddenly feeling guilty for the intrusion, Gray grabbed Hadleigh’s sleeve and dragged him back to the dressing room as so many things fell into place. The secrecy. The knowing looks. The determined protection of his privacy. The dire state of the Viscount’s sham of a marriage. The love letters that told the sad story, not of love lost, but of forbidden love. The most forbidden love.

I suspected you were the one. Now I know it. I refuse to feel guilty for loving you.

Homosexuality could still be punishable by death, so this illicit love affair had had to be conducted well away from prying eyes.

It made him feel sad. Life couldn’t have been easy for either of them, yet their love had survived twenty years of potentially giant potholes. But that didn’t excuse smuggling and murder—if indeed they were smugglers and murderers. Yet stranger things happened, as this revelation was testament to.

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that.’ Hadleigh raked a hand through his hair as they both stood back in the sitting room, stunned. ‘I think it’s fairly safe to assume from the dressing room Bertie doesn’t have his own room and if he does he rarely uses it.’

‘We should go.’ Gray felt queasy. Not at what he saw, because he had seen worse on his travels than that touching, affectionate display of what he now knew was enduring love, but at the ramifications for Gislingham and Thea on the back of it. Society, not to mention the authorities and the church, would be unforgiving. Ruthless even. He doubted even Thea knew exactly how much Bertie truly meant to her uncle.

‘Not until we’ve searched that trunk in the niece’s dressing room.’ Hadleigh was already through the door before Gray could pull him back. ‘We need to match that handwriting!’

‘Only the dressing room! You do not set one foot in her bedchamber.’

‘All right...’ Hadleigh eyed him curiously. ‘Any particular reason why?’

‘This has nothing to do with her.’

‘Is that based on feeling or fact?’

‘I know her. And you don’t.’ Gray’s feet took him to the third door along the landing, guided no doubt by those invisible cords and the intoxicating scent of jasmine. ‘Her dressing room is the next door along.’

Hadleigh gently tested the door and poked his nose inside before turning to regard Gray blandly. ‘Intuitive. It is indeed. And from a man who claims never to have set foot in any of the bedchambers here before...’

As there was no response that wouldn’t condemn him, Gray set his jaw and followed the lawyer inside. Instantly, he was overwhelmed with her. The chemise and corset he had helped her back into only hours before lay on top of the trunk and he hastily moved them out of the way before Hadleigh touched the garments. Beyond the door he could sense her. Feel her breathing, her tender heart beating, his beating stronger as a result. Messy, complicated, wonderful feelings he was nowhere near getting used to.

While the lawyer searched through the discarded reports, Gray tried and failed not to drink in the intensely personal sight of her belongings. The huge pot of pins on the dressing table to tame her wayward, vertical curls. The fat hairbrush she must use to rid it of the inevitable tangles. The pretty perfume bottle filled with her imported fragrance from the Orient. He could picture himself here. Watching her dress or undress, comfortably chatting about their day. Their life. Perhaps even their children. The image so vivid and perfect he had to make it a reality.

The creaking sound next door had them both standing to attention. ‘Gray?’ The soft voice beyond the door was filled with sleep, but she sensed him, just as he had her. The bed creaked again, the mattress shifting as if she had sat up. ‘ Gray? Is that you?’

In seconds she would come to the door and check. He knew that with the same certainty that he knew she would likely never forgive him for what he was about to do. He gestured frantically for Hadleigh to leave, feeling sick to his stomach and riddled with guilt at the only option fate had left him with, then answered, ‘Yes, my love. It’s me. I crept in. I hope you don’t mind.’ What else could he do but lie? As the lawyer hid in the shadows he grasped the handle and opened the door at the exact same moment as she did. She was smiling. Beautifully rumpled in the moonlight. ‘You crept in?’

‘Don’t hate me.’ He hated himself enough. This was the worst sort of betrayal. One she would likely never forgive him for if she ever found out. Their goodbye. ‘But I missed you.’

‘I missed you, too.’ Feeling like the worst sort of chancer, ne’er-do-well and scoundrel, he opened his arms and she stepped into them, and in doing so he fell into the biggest, deepest pothole of his life.

Thea woke late and Gray was gone. She wasn’t surprised. He was a gentleman despite his impulsive ways and he would want to protect her modesty. She could still see the indent his head had made on the pillow, still smell the lingering scent of his spicy cologne, so she wrapped her arms around it and hugged it close. It was a poor substitute for the man. She smiled as she pictured him unable to sleep and then doing the outrageous and coming to her in the night. It was such a spontaneous, devil-may-care, live-in-the-moment, Gray-like thing to do and hopelessly romantic. She still couldn’t quite believe it.

Then he had climbed into the bed beside her and, at her instigation, made love to her with such aching, impassioned tenderness that it had brought poignant tears to her eyes. His final words before she had drifted blissfully back off to sleep in his arms had also been heartfelt.

‘Just remember I love you. Always. No matter what. No matter how dire things are or how bad they seem.’

They made her sigh just thinking about them.

With an undisguisable spring in her step, she dressed and allowed her maid to fix her wayward hair loosely. Gray loved all her mad curls, so she would forgo the usual plethora of pins for him. She practically floated into her uncle’s sitting room to find him sat on a chair striking a pose as Harriet stood behind her easel, measuring his angles with her outstretched paintbrush while Bertie stood by, looking highly amused at the ridiculous tableau.

‘You look lovely today.’ He eyed her up and down appreciatively. ‘You’ve changed your hair. It’s softer. Suits you.’

‘Thank you. I feel lovely.’ She did. Warm and ripe and thoroughly loved.

‘Tuesdays will do that to a person.’ Bertie’s face was deadpan, but his eyes were dancing as if he knew she’d been thoroughly ruined and was happy to have been so. ‘Tuesdays...and handsome gentlemen with soppy black dogs.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But her cheeks were heating at the memory of exactly how splendid her Tuesday had started. Harriet had never mentioned that particular bit of bed sport in all her descriptions, but it had been most enlightening. Her man had a very talented mouth.

Her man .

She wanted to sigh again at how marvellous that sounded, but withheld it because Bertie was grinning at her. ‘How is the portrait going?’

‘It’s at a critical stage. Frankly, I think it’s beyond saving. Your uncle, though, is quite delighted with it.’

‘Good heavens, then it must be bad.’ She wandered behind the easel and looked over Harriet’s shoulder. It was a definite face—that was something—not her uncle’s, but at least it had discernible features.

‘What do you think, darling?’ Her friend stepped back to admire her work, too.

‘Fabulous colours.’ The bold striped waistcoat jumped off the page, making her uncle’s vivid choices seem tame, but part of Uncle Edward’s hair was also apparently blue. Prussian blue, to be exact. She met his eyes and watched him stifle a chuckle. He really did have the most warped sense of humour. ‘I think you’ve really captured his essence.’

‘I’ve already had some footmen clear space in the gallery opposite dear old Pater. I decided he’d be able to avert his eyes if I was hung next to him and there’s no fun in that. He can glare at me in disappointment for eternity now.’ The chuckle escaped then and soon turned into raucous laughter. ‘The old grouch will be spinning in his grave.’

‘Has Lord Gray been to check on Archimedes yet?’ Any hope that she had made the question sound casual died when she watched the three of them share a very unsubtle, but pointed look.

‘Not as yet, darling. I’m sure he’ll be here presently. He does seem rather devoted...to poor Archimedes, of course.’ Harriet studied her thoughtfully. ‘You look different.’

Thea drifted to the sideboard to fix herself some tea. ‘It’s the hair. I’ve decided to give my scalp a holiday and stop nailing my coiffure to my skull.’ Once she was out of view of both her uncle and Bertie she couldn’t resist beaming at her friend, then walked two fingers along the edge of the sideboard. Two fingers which hesitated at the ledge, then leapt off the end. ‘Today, I am a quite different Thea from the one I was yesterday.’

Harriet grinned back, instantly understanding. ‘How positively splendid. Did you sleep well?’

‘I am thoroughly rested .’ Although now that she thought about it, she wouldn’t mind a passionate kiss to start the morning properly. ‘I might wander down to the stables to check on Archimedes.’

But Gray wasn’t in the stables and nor had he been there, which might have been odd considering he was usually up with the lark like Thea was, but, seeing as they had both used the bedtime hours for pursuits other than sleep, she wouldn’t blame him for sleeping in. She had, after all, and she had worn him out. Alone, she made no attempt to stifle the grin of achievement and decided to saddle a horse to ride to Kirton House instead and be unapologetic about the reason. She wanted to see him. Wanted to kiss him. Wanted to drag him back to the brook for more shamelessly wanton lovemaking.

But as soon as Kirton House came into view through the trees she saw something wasn’t right. There were strange men everywhere and lots of horses. Several wore uniform—she recognised it as that of the Excise Men—but Gray was nowhere to be seen. That made her panic and, recalling the overheard conversation from Ipswich, set her old, suspicious mind whirring.

Instinctively, she tied her horse to a branch out of sight and quietly picked her way through the copse by the brook to come level to the house without being seen. It was then she saw the guns. Big ones. Shotguns and pistols. So many of them in a huge crate, all being loaded and passed around like port after dinner to the forty or so strange men in the stable yard who appeared very confident handling them.

‘Hurry up, you fools! We don’t want to alert the whole of Suffolk to your presence. Unload and get inside!’ She recognised Lord Fennimore’s impatient bark and tried to pick him out from the crowd to no avail. Beyond, within the confines of the stable, were more men. She was certain she recognised the back of Gray’s aged cousin as he quickly disappeared through the wide door frame, but she was too far away to be certain.

Sensing something was now very wrong, Thea crouched low, darting across the meadow from ragged bush to ragged bush, getting as close to the outbuildings as she dared without leaving the safety of the tall grass. When that proved fruitless, she darted towards the rear of the stable, sinking her bottom to the ground and pressing her back against the slatted wood to attempt to hear what was going on inside, while castigating herself for her suspicious nature. Gray was different. She felt it in her bones. He was good and kind and...

‘I expressly warned him not to seduce the chit!’ Lord Fennimore again. Angry.

‘Well, if you don’t mind me saying—’ A new voice. Aristocratic. Deep. ‘—it’s a damned good job he did. Their passionate little romance saved our bacon. We’d have been done for last night without his quick thinking.’

‘Something that would not have been necessary if you had stayed put last night and not risked the entire mission with your carelessness!’

‘Do you think it’s a real romance?’

‘Hard to say...’ Two more strange males, their tones teasing. ‘But from the look of him, there’s something there. I’ve never seen him quite so angry.’

‘Angry! Why, he’s positively seething. He looks ready to punch one of us at any second.’

‘Back off!’ Gray’s voice, accompanied by the noise of reins and buckles jangling.

‘I think he’s a bit taken with Miss Cranford.’ Thea’s hand covered her mouth a second before the wounded cry burst forth. She was the chit he had seduced? ‘He called her my love ...’

Bile rose in her throat as the world shifted on its axis. Last night had been a lie? It had all been lies! The two slices of toast a winking Harriet had forced her to eat to keep up her strength threatened to make an instant reappearance at the bitter aftertaste of forbidden fruit. She could hear fate laughing at her in the background. Realising Impetuous Thea had fallen for another vulture. A bounder. A ne’er-do-well. A scoundrel who would make calculated, premeditated love to her to cover up whatever it was he was really doing.

She stumbled, half-running, half-crawling, back to the trees blindly, silent, bitter tears streaming down her cheeks at the universe’s cruel punishment. Her heart ripped callously in two.