The Lady By His Side(120)

From the corner of his eye, he saw the earl’s lips twitch mockingly; Antonia’s father could very likely read his mind on that score.

But Francesca looked upon him with approval. “Good. You may leave the rest of the details to your mother and me to arrange.”

“We wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise,” the earl murmured—and earned himself a narrow-eyed glance from his countess.

Then Francesca returned her gaze to Antonia and Sebastian. “With that settled, the only other point that, at this time, we need to discuss is the timing.” The countess arched her brows. “When do you wish your wedding to be?”

The earl shifted and caught Sebastian’s gaze. “I gather this intrigue of Drake’s that these two were assisting with is still ongoing.”

“It is?” Francesca’s brows rose. “I’d forgotten about that.” She looked at Sebastian. “Did you not deal with whatever it was down in Kent?”

“We did.” Sebastian heard the grim note that had returned to his voice. He glanced at Antonia. “But the matter in Kent appears to have been only part of a greater whole, one with the potential to be a wider threat, possibly even to the country.”

Francesca frowned. “How long will it take for this intrigue to be resolved?”

Ten barrels of gunpowder somewhere in London. Sebastian arched his brows. “Two—possibly three—weeks. I doubt it will drag on for much longer.”

Francesca’s face cleared. She waved dismissively. “Three or even four weeks is of no moment.” She paused as if calculating, then focused on Antonia and Sebastian again. “Given the current season, you have a choice. You could be married in mid-November—not later than the third week, or we would risk early snows. But it’s that, or late February or March next year.”

That didn’t sound like much of a choice to Sebastian. He glanced—hopefully—at Antonia.

She met his gaze, smiled easily, then turned to her mother and stated, “Mid-November.”

“Excellent!” Francesca looked enthused. “Then that, too, is settled.” Her emerald gaze fixed on Antonia. “But with the wedding so soon, we will need to start on your gown without delay.”

Immediately, the conversation swung to consideration of the weights of various sorts of silks and the virtues of different types of beading and lace.

Sidelined, Sebastian glanced at Chillingworth.

The earl caught his eye and grinned. “You see? The first lesson you need to learn is that it’s best to simply smile, surrender, and let them run.”

Sebastian noted the contented expression on his soon-to-be father-in-law’s face.

He looked at Antonia and her mother, both now animated to much the same degree. Knowing his father’s counsel would be the same, he smiled, relaxed against the sofa, and followed the earl’s advice.

If smiling, surrendering, and allowing them to run was another part of the price men like him had to pay to have women like Antonia, her mother, and his mother in their lives, so be it; in all matters social, it was a price he was entirely willing to pay.



* * *



In the parlor of a manor house deep in the quiet countryside, a man stood before a many-paned window. His upright posture that of the army officer he once had been, he looked out at the nearly leafless trees in the wood on the other side of a short stretch of poorly tended lawn, and in a deep, authoritative voice, succinctly reported on the progress of the mission he had agreed to undertake. “Boyne, most helpfully, stepped in and silenced his older brother, Lord Ennis, before Ennis could pass on anything of our plot to anyone.”

From deeper in the room came a creak, and the old man seated in the Bath chair parked in the dimness into which the weak autumn light did not reach grunted. “By which you mean Boyne panicked and acted to save his own skin, as such men are wont to do. I did warn you he had overestimated his brother’s commitment to the Young Irelander cause. Like many an Anglo-Irish peer, Ennis paid lip service to the notion of a free Ireland, and while he might have contributed to the cause’s coffers, blowing up some government building in London would not have been something he would have condoned.”

The man before the window frowned, safe in the knowledge that the older man couldn’t see his expression. His lips compressed, then he relaxed them and said, “Regardless, Boyne got the money he needed from Ennis and was at the rendezvous to receive the gunpowder and pay off the captain.” He hesitated, debating his next words, but the old man would probably hear of it anyway; his ability to learn of actions and details all the way down to minutiae despite being buried in the country and barely able to move from his chair was nothing short of miraculous. In an even tone, the ex-guardsman reported, “Boyne also killed his sister-in-law. He feared Ennis might have mentioned something to her, so he tied up that loose end for us, too.”