She looked from one to the other. Men such as these left her wits scrambled. Phillip Mercerault was a fine-looking man—not as handsome as Rohan—perhaps a year or two older, nearly as tall, his features strong and blunt. He had the look of a man who was rarely disconcerted. He looked as if he would accept a racing cat with a boy chasing it across the entrance hall of his home with great equanimity. He also looked as if he enjoyed laughter.
“Forgive me,
” Phillip Mercerault was saying now. “Ma’am, you must be weary. If I know the baron here, he rushed you from London to my refuge in a day.”
“We came from Mountvale House,” Rohan said. “We took three days.”
“And three nights, I assume. But here I am making comments that make me deserve to have my teeth slammed down my throat. Please come into the drawing room, and doubtless tea will come sailing into port in a very short time.” He turned to Susannah. “My housekeeper and cook are both sweethearts who spoil me endlessly. The only problem is that they are on a quest to make me fat, just as they tried to do to my father. They failed with him too. Cook’s cakes are beyond delicious.”
“This is a strange house, sir,” Susannah said, then blinked, for surely that was on the rude side.
Phillip Mercerault just grinned at her. “It has, hopefully, become even stranger under my reign. I have plans, ma’am, to fashion myself a crenellated tower onto the end of the west wing. Just one tower. I strive for imbalance and eccentricity. Dinwitty Manor has a reputation, you know. Perfect strangers come to visit and to stare. If I am ever at low ebb, my pockets to let, I shall simply charge admission. Yes, with a suitable admission, and Dinwitty’s inclusion in a tour book, we shall spread our eccentricity throughout the whole of England. Did you not, Lady Mountvale, drop your jaw when you saw the Moorish arches just to the side of the Tudor manor wing?”
“As I recall, she laughed her head off,” Rohan said. “Then she punched me because I hadn’t told her about the treat in store for her. You’ve a grand pile here, Phillip. Fashion away. The Medieval touch—I like it.”
“I was also considering a Medieval herbal garden. Perhaps you will be able to help me with that?”
Susannah was eating a lemon tart, having lifted it within a second of the time the butler had placed the shining silver tray on the table in front of her.
“Certainly. We will speak of it later.” He looked briefly at Susannah, but her eyes were closed as she chewed that lemon tart.
“That was delicious,” she said, wiping her fingers on the whitest, softest napkin she’d ever felt or seen. “As to your house, sir, I believe you will succeed admirably.” She was eyeing that tray of goodies again, and Rohan laughed. “When you marry, Phillip, you must be sure not to let your wife live here more than a week at a time or you will find yourself married to a very fat lady.”
Rohan then turned to his bride, who had just pushed the remainder of a scone into her mouth. “As for you, you’re too thin. Eat, but we won’t be here more than four days. You should be in quite perfect form by Friday.”
“I pray you will tell me the purpose of your visit, Rohan. You told me nothing at all in your letter. I trust I will be of use to you.”
Rohan and Susannah had discussed this on their trip to Dinwitty Manor, located only five miles east of Oxford. Phillip was aware of just about everything that went on in that town and in each of the various colleges. He knew everyone. They’d been friends forever. Yes, he’d immediately made up his mind to confide everything to Phillip. Actually, truth be told, Rohan hadn’t really thought all that much about anything, since all he could think about was getting Susannah out of her clothes and onto her back.
He had caressed her for an hour before their arrival at the inn in Mosely. She’d been so beside herself that he had barely gotten the bedchamber door locked before she hurled herself at him. Ah, that was glorious. He gave her a perfectly fatuous grin now.
She swallowed her scone, staring at him. She knew exactly what he was thinking. About that low-ceilinged inn in Mosely that smelled of delicious ale and sweat and the two of them. She had been perfectly frantic, utterly beyond herself; she’d become an animal again. It wasn’t to be borne. She leaned close to him and bit his earlobe hard.
He yelped, drawing away from her.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that again, Rohan Carrington!”
“The marvels of married life,” Phillip Mercerault said, leaning forward, and snagging an apple tart. He grinned at his guests. “I allow myself two a day, no more. I refuse to let her make me fat.”
Susannah wanted to make a jest about that, but she was too busy chewing a tiny apricot pie with fluted pastry edges.
Rohan and Phillip Mercerault visited the Reverend Bligh McNally the next afternoon in his small apartment on the second floor of an eighteenth-century townhouse just off High Street.
Phillip said, “How subtle do you want to be with this fellow?”
“I was thinking about breaking both his arms.”
“A beginning. It will gain his attention. Then subtle?”
“Something like that. It’s the entire truth I want, Phillip.” Rohan banged his fist against the door. No answer. He banged again, longer and louder this time.
Still no answer.
Rohan pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing at all.
“He could be out marrying another innocent girl off to some worthless little sot. Sorry, Rohan.”
“No, don’t apologize. George was what he was. What he did to Susannah, well, I’m sorry he’s dead, but if he were alive and I found out about this, I’d probably kill him myself. Actually, so would my mother.”