He snorted. “I doubt that.”
“Well.” She smoothed her skirts. “I’ll leave you, then.”
“Don’t.”
The single word was so low she almost missed it. She looked at him. He hadn’t moved, and she wasn’t sure what to do. What he wanted.
His upper arm lay outside the coverlet, and she took a step forward and reached out a hand. It was entirely improper, but for some reason, it seemed right. She touched his hand, large and warm. Slowly she burrowed her fingers under his hand until she grasped it in her own. He squeezed her fingers gently. She felt a point of warmth start in her breast, spreading gradually like a widening pool of warm water until her entire body was lit from within and she identified the feeling. Happiness. He made her wildly, inappropriately happy with just the squeeze of his fingers, and she knew she should be wary of this feeling. Be wary of him.
And then he spoke, low. “He thinks me a traitor.”
Her heart stopped. “What do you mean?”
He turned then, finally, his face a mask, his eyes shadowed, but he did not let go of her hand. “You know our regiment, the Twenty-eighth of Foot, was massacred in the Colonies?”
“Yes.” The massacre was common knowledge—one of the worst tragedies of the war.
“Vale says that someone gave away our position. That we were betrayed to the French and their Indian allies by a man within the ranks of our own regiment.”
Beatrice swallowed. How terrible to know that so many had died because of one person’s perfidy. And the knowledge of a traitor would be even more terrible for Lord Hope. Somehow, she still wasn’t sure how—and really she was just about dying to ask—his seven lost years were connected to Spinner’s Falls and the tragedy there.
All this went through her mind, but Beatrice merely said, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t understand.” He tugged her hand for emphasis. “The traitor had a French mother. Vale thinks I am the traitor.”
“But… but that’s silly,” Beatrice exclaimed without thought. “I mean, not the French mother part—that makes sense, I suppose—but that anyone would think you a traitor… that… that isn’t right at all.”
He didn’t say anything, merely squeezed her hand again.
“I thought,” Beatrice said cautiously, “that Lord Vale was your friend?”
“As did I. But that was seven years ago, and I fear I no longer know the man.”
“Is that why you struck him?” she asked.
He shrugged.
Beatrice shivered at the confirmation of her fears. She remembered Lord Vale’s warning in the hall: Be careful. Still, she wet her lips and said, “I think anyone who truly knows you would realize that you don’t have it in you to be a traitor.”
“But then you don’t know me.” At last he let her hand drop, and the warmth began to leak from her body with the loss of contact. “You don’t know me at all.”
Beatrice inhaled slowly. “You are correct. I do not know you.” She went to take the tea tray. “But then perhaps the fault for that is not wholly mine.”
She closed the door gently behind her.
EVEN THOUGH BEATRICE visited Jeremy Oates at least once a week—and more often two or three times—his butler, Putley, always pretended he did not know her.
“Who shall I say is calling?” Putley asked early the next afternoon, his pop eyes staring at her in what looked like appalled surprise.
“Miss Beatrice Corning,” Beatrice replied as she always did, suppressing an urge to make up a name.
Putley was only doing his job. Well, at least that was the most charitable explanation, and Beatrice did try to be charitable when she could.
“Very well, miss,” Putley intoned. “Will you wait in the sitting room whilst I ascertain if Mr. Oates is at home?”
Charity was one thing, ridiculous adherence to form was another. “Mr.” Oates was never anywhere but home. Beatrice rolled her eyes. “Yes, Putley.”
He showed her to the second-best sitting room, a musty room with very little light and an overabundance of heavy, dark furniture. She used the time waiting for Putley’s return to compose herself. Beatrice was still a little warm from her discussion with Lord Hope, and she’d felt ever so slightly guilty after she’d left his room. After all, should a lady set a gentleman down so thoroughly when he was bedridden and had just had a falling out with his best friend whom he’d not seen in nearly seven years? Wasn’t she being just a tad mean? But then again, he’d been so very nasty with her. She knew he must be frustrated—enraged, even—by everything that’d happened since his return to England, but really, must he use her as his whipping boy?