How to Tame Your Duke(48)

"You are still in danger, I presume," he said. "That's why Olympia sent you to me."

"Yes."

"Hmm. I believe, my dear girl, we would all have been saved a great deal  of trouble if Olympia had seen fit to send me his little package with  instructions included."

"He couldn't. He couldn't have sent me as I am, as an unmarried lady to a house without a mistress . . ."

Ashland slapped his glove against his leg. "The result was the same, however. Instead of protecting you, I seduced you."

"Perhaps it was the other way around. I came to you, if you remember."

"Regardless." He pinned his glove to his chest with his right wrist and  wriggled it onto his left hand with astonishing dexterity. "I shall  leave at once for London and determine what must be done. You will stay  here. You will resume your disguise. You will not leave this house, not  even to the garden. I shall leave instructions with my men to lock the  doors, to admit no one, to protect you at all costs."

Emilie gasped. "You can't do that!"

"I will."

"But these men, these agents, they know I'm here. Yesterday, just before  you arrived, I was out with Freddie and rode straight into an ambush. A  man sprang from behind the Old Lady; if Freddie hadn't known the moors  so well, and lost him . . ." She let the words dangle.

Ashland's expression didn't change, but the coiled tension in his body  wound, if possible, even tighter. "I see. And how long has my loyal son  known of your disguise?"

"Since the morning you left for London."

Ashland swore under his breath.

"So you see, I can't stay here. It's impossible." Emilie's hands  tightened on the towel, her flimsy and undignified shield from Ashland's  icy rage. "Now that they know where I am, and how I'm disguised."

"And who, exactly, are they?"

"I don't know. That's what we-what my uncle and my sisters and I-are trying to find out."

"I see." He tapped one finger against its opposite sleeve. His face had  turned hard, calculating, the way it must once have looked before  battle, on his clandestine missions in the mountains of Afghanistan.  "Very well. As I have no trained men here at the Abbey, you and  Frederick will accompany me to London. You will change into your  disguise at once and meet me in the front hall in half an hour. You will  obey my every instruction to the letter, without question, or I cannot  guarantee your safety. Is this understood?"

"I am not one of your army subordinates, by God!"

Ashland reached out and captured her chin in his gloved palm. "No, you  are not," he said, in a dusky voice. "But Olympia, God forever damn his  plotting brain, has entrusted your safety to me. You are nothing but a  pawn, my dear, and you must play your role or lose the game."                       
       
           



       

The leather of Ashland's glove was cool against her skin. Though his  hand was gentle, it engulfed her chin completely, humming with latent  power. "And when the game is won?" she asked.

Ashland's gaze slid over her face. "When the game is won, Emilie, the  victor claims the spoils." He passed his gloved thumb across her lips,  turned, and walked out of the room, his boots echoing against the marble  in sharp clacks.





TWENTY




The Duke of Olympia regarded the two figures seated before him with a  beneficent satisfaction. "An unspeakable delight," he repeated, smiling.  He steepled his fingers. "I had scarcely hoped for it."

"Nonsense," snapped the Duke of Ashland. "You had it planned all along. I  daresay you were wondering what the devil took me so long."

"Not at all, not at all. My Emilie is a formidable opponent." Olympia  turned his smile to the bewhiskered young person in the other chair,  which still gave Ashland a start. Even knowing what lay beneath those  whiskers and those spectacles, that sleek layer of pomaded golden hair,  he couldn't quite believe this was Emily. His Emily, whose supple body  had risen up so eagerly to meet his own, whose breasts he had weighed in  his hand scarcely hours before. Who had whispered such tender words in  his ear, who had kissed him as if she'd really meant it.

Not Emily anymore. Emilie.

He swallowed back the bitterness that rose in his throat. Emotion had no place here, at the present moment.

"She is indeed. But we are not here to applaud the workings of your  nimble brain, Olympia, nor the skill with which your niece has played  her part. We are here to determine what is to be done to resolve the  crisis. You will, perhaps, be so good as to deliver me a candid  assessment of the state of affairs." He allowed a slight emphasis to  fall on the word candid.

Olympia leaned back in his chair, still smiling. "Forgive me. I have  grown sentimental with age, and your case has perplexed me for so long.  Yes. Holstein-Schweinwald. A damnably mysterious problem. My inquiries  have turned up almost nothing."

Emilie's rigid back straightened another regal inch. "Where is Miss Dingleby?"

"Who is Miss Dingleby?" asked Ashland.

"Miss Dingleby," said Olympia, without changing expression, "has acted  as my agent in Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof for several years, since I  first detected stirrings of an unusual nature in that state."

Emilie gasped. "All along!"

"Surely you suspected. In the past few months, if nothing else."

"I knew she . . . I thought perhaps . . ." Emilie bit her lip.  "Ashland's right, isn't he? You've planned all this, from the  beginning."

Olympia spread his hands before them. "It depends on what you call the  beginning. I have always followed with particular intensity the  political affairs of your native land, my dear, having such a close and  avuncular interest there. The regular demise of your stepmothers  awakened a certain suspicion in my mind."

"You believe they were murdered?"

Olympia shrugged. "I have no proof. And yet a rather shadowy  organization exists across the states of Europe, passionate anarchists  all, committed to the elimination first of the Continent's established  monarchies, and then of government altogether."

Ashland's pulse skipped. "You think this is the work of Free Blood?"

"As you know, there's no more effective catalyst for political instability than a state without a legitimate heir."

Emilie had turned white. "My mother, too?"

"As I said, I have no conclusive proof."

Ashland was watching Olympia's face with keen eyes. "But you do have something."

Olympia rose from his desk and walked to a cabinet in the wall, from  which he withdrew a plain silver cup. He handed it to Emilie.

She turned it over in her hands. "The Holstein crest," she whispered.

"Miss Dingleby sent it back to me. She recovered it from your third  stepmother's bedside table, the night before your half brother was born  dead. Upon chemical analysis, the dregs were found to contain a potent  and particularly toxic abortifacient."

"Good God."

"You will note that all of your dear father's wives died in childbed,  delivering stillborns." Olympia resumed his seat with a gentle flip of  his superfine tails.

Emilie was still staring at the cup. Her long fingers trembled against  the tarnished silver; her lips were bloodred against her white face. The  sight of her distress made Ashland's chest contract, made his breath  stop in his lungs.

"Why didn't you say anything before?" she asked her uncle.                       
       
           



       

Ashland laid his arms across his chest in an effort to hold himself  together. "Because this sort of information is best kept to oneself  until the moment arrives to strike. Isn't that right, Olympia?"

"Correct. And you were in excellent hands with Miss Dingleby, who this  very moment is pursuing a channel of her own. We had your message, you  see, about the ambush yesterday morning. It confirmed our fears."

"What fears?" asked Emilie.

"That someone is privy to our investigation. Someone had discovered where we had hidden you."

"Succeeded where I failed," Ashland said crisply. He looked again at  Emilie. He had stolen glances at her throughout the jolting train ride  into London, in the cab from the station to Park Lane, and still the  mystery of her seemed hidden from him. His mind, trained to accept and  act on startling new information without hesitation, could not quite  encompass this. It wasn't simply that Emily was Grimsby; he'd always  felt a streak of odd tenderness for the tutor, which demonstrated at  least some sort of subconscious recognition of her true nature, thank  God. It was that Grimsby was Emilie, the lost German princess, radiant  and untouchable. He'd said scarcely a word to her all day. He didn't  know whether to throttle her for her betrayal, or to make passionate  love to her because she lay unmasked before him at last, or simply to  gaze at her in awe and longing.