Nathaniel made no attempt to persuade her to join him in his bed when she turned toward her own apartments. He said only, "If you need me, you know where to find me."

"Yes," she replied. "Thank you."

She stood by the connecting door between her boudoir and Nathaniel's apartments for ten minutes, listening for the silence that would tell her he was asleep again. When she could no longer hear the creak of the bedropes as he settled himself for sleep, she sped down to the library, once again blocking her mind to all thoughts of discovery, worked her trick with the paper knife again, retied the letters, and replaced them in as near to their original position as she could remember.

It had been an unproductive night's work… except that she now knew that the spymaster did not trust her.

Chapter 9

"How long will it take us to journey to Burley Manor, Simon?"

"Burley Manor?" Lord Vanbrugh looked up from his platter of sirloin, regarding his wife with some surprise as she entered the breakfast parlor.

"Yes. I've just had a letter from Gabby." Georgiana flourished a sheet of paper that had arrived with her morning chocolate. "She wants us to send on all her belongings. She's staying with Lord Praed for-let me see, how did she put it-ah, yes, here it is, an indefinite period, she says."

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.

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"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.