Georgie looked up, a glimmer of mischievous amusement in her blue eyes. "Isn't it scandalous?"
"It sounds just like Gabby," Miles Bennet observed, taking a draft of ale from his pewter tankard. "Although not at all like Nathaniel."
"Well, it's clearly our bounden duty to go there and save her reputation," Georgie declared, reaching across her husband's shoulder to take a mushroom from his plate.
"Gothere?" Simon and Miles declared in unison, looking appalled.
"Descend on a man without warning when he's involved in… in… intimate, private business?" Miles continued, shaking his head in horror.
Georgie swallowed her mushroom and stole another. "Gabby's as much a sister to me as my own," she said. "Mama would insist it was my family duty to rescue her from social disaster." She gave a smug little nod of her head.
"You crafty minx." Her husband slapped her hand aside as it began a renewed forage of his plate. "You're not fooling me for one minute. You're just nosy!"
"Not at all," Georgie declared with an air of injured innocence. "If it gets out that Gabby's staying un-chaperoned under a bachelor roof, she'll be ruined. Papa would say it was as much your duty as mine to offer our protection. In fact," she added thoughtfully, "he'd probably expect you to call Lord Praed out."
"Good God! What a hideous prospect. No man in his right mind would attempt a duel of any kind with Nathaniel Praed."
"Not if he intended to come out of it alive," Miles agreed, chuckling. "Georgie my dear, a man does not interfere in the private concerns of his friends."
"What a pair of lily-livers you are " Georgie said in disgust. "Well, I am going if you're not! Gabby needs me." She turned and swept from the breakfast parlor.
Simon groaned.
"You could always forbid it," Miles suggested tentatively, regarding his friend with some compassion.
"It wouldn't work," Simon said with conviction. "Georgie may act the demure helpmeet and look as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but she's a DeVane, remember."
"Ah, yes."
Gloomy silence fell over the breakfast table as the two men contemplated the obdurate personality of the De Vanes.
"Of course, she could be right," Miles said finally. "If it ever did get out…"
"That's not what interests my inquisitive wife in the least," Simon said forcibly. "She wants to gossip with Gabby and find out exactly what's going on. Can you imagine how Nathaniel's going to view such an imposition… the three of us descending-"
"Hey! Who said anything about three?" Miles exclaimed hastily.
"You don't think I'd go without you!" his friend demanded. "Oh, no, dear boy, we're in this one together."
"I'mnot married to a DeVane," Miles pointed out.
"Nathaniel's as much your friend as he is mine."
"But this isn't about Nathaniel, it's about Gabby's reputation. And she's your kin, not mine."
"And you're my cousin and therefore connected to that enfant terrible too."
"Oh, that's outrageous! Of all the spurious, tenuous threads of connection…"
"Nevertheless, my dear fellow, you're coming with us." Simon pushed back his chair and rose from the table. "I can't permit Georgie to go alone. Two women under a bachelor roof is simply doubly scandalous. Her father would visit me with a horsewhip!"
"And you're unable to rule your wife," Miles observed.
" 'Fraid so," Simon agreed with an accepting shrug, his hand on the doorknob. "We'll say we're passing through and thought we'd ask for a night's hospitality. With any luck, one evening with Gabby should satisfy Georgie's inveterate curiosity."
"And you think that'll fool Nathaniel?"
"No, of course it won't. But he'll not turn us away even if he refuses to speak two words all evening. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?"
"No," murmured Miles moodily as the door closed behind Lord Vanbrugh. "Far from it." He put up his eye glass and examined the chafing dishes on the sideboard. but for some reason his appetite for breakfast had diminished.
******************************************************************
"Oh, it looks as if you have a stack of work to do," Gabrielle observed, entering the library in the bright sun of relatively early morning.
Nathaniel looked up from the desk and ran a hand through his crisp dark thatch of hair. "Yes, dispatches," he agreed. "You'll have to amuse yourself, I'm afraid."
"I'm perfectly capable of doing so, sir."
Nathaniel nodded, then abruptly pushed back his chair. He took a sheaf of papers off the desk and strolled casually to the bookshelves.
Gabrielle wandered over to the window, looking with apparent idle interest across the stone-flagged terrace to the frost-tipped lawn beyond.
The fine hairs on the nape of her neck were prickling as she heard his movements and visualized his hands removing the volumes of Locke, his fingers manipulating the lock of the safe, his eyes searching for the telltale hair.
Nathaniel glanced over his shoulder at Gabrielle's averted back. He'd waited for her to be in the room before he checked the safe for signs of tampering.
Turning back to the safe, he began to manipulate the lock. Before opening the door, he looked behind him again and swore loudly. "Hell and damnation!"
"What's the matter?" Gabrielle said calmly, turning from her contemplation of the garden. Her eyes were calm, her ivory complexion as translucent as ever. "Have you forgotten the combination, Sir Spymaster?" One of her crooked little smiles accompanied the teasing question.
No revealing reaction there, Nathaniel decided. Not a flicker of anxiety in her gaze. "No, but I caught my fingernail in the lock," he said, sucking his index finger for the sake of verisimilitude, before gently easing open the door of the safe.
"Oh, there's Jake," Gabrielle said loudly, flinging open the window and calling the child's name in echoing tones.
Startled, Nathaniel looked back at her for the barest instant, the door of the safe in his hand. He returned his attention to the safe in time to see the hair fluttering to the floor.
Gabrielle was talking to Jake through the window, apparently oblivious of Nathaniel as he bent to pick up the hair.
"What are you up to this morning, Jake?" She pinched the child's nose.
"Primmy and me are going for a nature walk," he said solemnly, peering around her with an anxious twitch of his mouth at the dark shape of his father in the back of the room.
The governess stood behind him, smiling nervously, twisting her gloved hands. "Now, don't disturb her ladyship, Jake."
"He's not disturbing me," Gabrielle reassured. "What do you collect on your walks?"
"We don't collect things," Jake said. "We only look."
"Oh." Gabrielle could think of no response to this. The DeVane children had taken the business of collecting very seriously and competitively-insects, tadpoles, flowers, butterflies-and she'd discovered its appeal soon enough herself. Just looking at things seemed rather dull work for a six-year-old.
"We don't like to bring dirty things into the schoolroom," Miss Primmer explained.
"No, I suppose not," Gabrielle agreed.
"An' Nurse doesn't like anything in the nursery." Jake added his mite. "She says it's bad enough with all the flies and things that come in on their own."
"Come along now, Jake." The governess took the child's hand. "We have to be back by eleven o'clock for your lesson with the globes. His lordship will want to know this evening how well you've learned about the oceans."
Jake's expression lost some of its liveliness and his eyes darted anxiously beneath Gabrielle's arm as she held open the window. There was no reaction from his father, so he dutifully took his governess's outstretched hand and bade Gabrielle good-bye.