She remembered how her own father had dealt with her brother when he had been caught sniggering over a group of village girls he had come across bathing in their shifts in the river: a tanned backside and a lecture on the conduct befitting a gentleman. The ladies of the household were not supposed to know, of course, although no one could miss the ginger way Thomas sat down for a day or two, or the way he blushed whenever a female came within speaking range.

  ‘No doubt you should have tried harder, but I imagine that coming home on leave and having to attempt to build bridges afresh every time can’t have been easy. Every time she saw you, you must have seemed harder and tougher and more difficult to reach. Anyway, it doesn’t mean you would be a bad husband to a different wife, if that is what is stopping you remarrying.’

  ‘What is stopping me remarrying now is the refusal of the lady in question to accept me.’

  * * *

  ‘You know why I refuse.’ There was more than a hint of gritted teeth about Gabrielle’s response, but there was something else. Surely not a shimmer of tears as the torchlight made stars that glimmered in the brown depths of her eyes?

  ‘Yes. I know and I understand.’ He put certainty into his voice. Conviction. ‘And yet I cannot help but feel we can do better than this. Find a compromise.’

  ‘Compromise?’ Gabrielle said indignantly. ‘Who would be compromising? Me. I was reading Mary Wollstonecraft the other night. “A wife is as much a man’s property as his horse or his ass; she has nothing she can call her own.” Marrying a decent man, one she...respects, makes no difference.’

  A footman came out with a loaded tray while Gray wrestled with that. ‘I need a drink. I am usually good at riddles, but this one has me at a stand.’

  He had to walk away from her, catch his breath, which appeared to be tied in a knot in his chest.

  I love her and I think she loves me, or so very nearly. But she cannot trust me and so I have to let her go.

  And he had to stop saying things that would make it more difficult for Gabrielle, even if the difficulty was simply making her feel sorry for him and guilty as a result. He understood enough about guilt to know now that it didn’t have to be logical to hurt, to be an ulcer on the soul. Her lack of trust in him hurt, though, he realised, illogical though it was. Why should she trust him when the experience of the women around her, the law, the attitude of every man she met reinforced her fears?

  The footman proved to be carrying champagne glasses and another followed behind him with a tray of canapés. Gray directed them both to the table and sat down again to face Gabrielle across four glasses and an array of lobster patties and assorted savoury oddments.

  ‘Are we expecting anyone else?’ The sparkle that might, or might not, have been tears had vanished and her smile was back, even if it was a teasing one.

  ‘I thought we both needed the sustenance.’ Gray lifted his glass. ‘To the ghost of Alexander the Great and inspiration on how to untangle our own Gordian knot, because I think this is the same sort of unsolvable puzzle.’

  ‘Alexander cut it with his sword because he said the prophesy did not state how it was to be untied,’ Gabrielle said. ‘It seemed the oracle was satisfied with his solution because he did become King of the Phrygians. We have no kingdom to conquer and I doubt that the Greek gods are keeping a watchful eye on us.’ She sounded almost as though this was not personal any longer, he realised. Gabrielle was a practical woman, a strong one. Perhaps she was already putting whatever feeling she had for him aside, facing up to the fact that they would part, preparing to regret it for a while.

  ‘True.’ Gray drained his glass and reached for another. He was not prepared to give up. Not on her, not on himself. Not yet. Something was nagging at the back of his mind, but all it resolved itself into was one of his tutors—Mr Turner, was it? Or the one before him with bad breath?—prosing on about Plutarch. In the original Greek. He ate a lobster patty, but it provided no inspiration.

  Gabrielle put down her glass and the tiny noise brought his attention back to the present. All four glasses were empty. That, at least, was something he could deal with. Gray raised one hand to summon the waiter and saw Gabrielle shiver. ‘You are cold. We will go in.’

  ‘It isn’t that.’ She had gone pale, he saw in the flickering torchlight. ‘Lord Appleton has just come out on to the terrace. I had not realised he was here. He looked at me in such...such a strange way.’

  ‘It is just the light.’ Gray glanced over at the major, who stood out like a red punctuation mark against the dark-clad men around him by the doors. He did appear to be looking in their direction, that was true. Gabrielle still seemed uncomfortable and he realised that he had almost forgotten Norwood’s death, the dark secret that haunted her.

  ‘Let me take you inside and then I will distract him if he makes you uneasy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her chin was up, her smile was bright as she rose and went with him, and Gray wondered at her courage. She was safe, he was sure, having heard her story, but even so the trauma must have left deep scars. Gabrielle greeted Appleton pleasantly, then glanced behind him. ‘I see my aunt waving to me, she must have wondered where I had vanished to. If you will excuse me, gentlemen.’ Then she was gone. When Gray watched her and saw that Lord George Welford was standing beside his stepmother he realised that Gabrielle’s desire to escape the proximity of Appleton must be pressing.

  ‘You are still in town, then,’ he remarked, too uneasy to think of anything more intelligent to say.

  ‘Yes, sir. But not on leave, I’m working at Horse Guards for a few months. Helping catch up on the filing,’ he added with a smile that struck Gray as false. And he’d addressed him as sir, which he no longer should now that Gray was not a senior officer any more. They were equal in rank now. Clearly the major’s thoughts were firmly on military matters. Matters from the past?

  ‘The filing?’ Horse Guards was the army’s headquarters, not a bad place for an ambitious officer to be in time of peace, but an officer with Appleton’s field experience was not going to be used as a lowly clerk.

  The other man grimaced. ‘Clearing up intelligence material from the Peninsula, sir.’

  ‘The French are no threat now, surely, whatever their intelligence officers might have got up to during the war.’

  ‘It isn’t the French we’re worried about.’ The major glanced around. ‘I’d welcome your advice, frankly. But we can’t talk here. Are you committed to stay longer or would you be able to join me for a nightcap? I’ve a bolthole in Albany.’

  ‘I will, with pleasure, if I can help. But I’m a civilian now. Call me Gray, all my friends do. If you aren’t going against orders talking about this?’

  ‘Not to a senior officer with your record, sir—Gray. I’d welcome your advice because you know about the situation in the Douro Valley.’

  Gray did not miss the movement of his eyes towards the reception room, where Gabrielle was still talking to Lord Welford, fanning herself with abrupt, nervy flicks of her wrist.

  ‘I was there for a while and reminded myself of the topography recently,’ he allowed.

  ‘Charming lady, Miss Frost. Always thought so when we were stationed in the area.’

  ‘Yes. Most attractive and intelligent, too,’ Gray said, doing his best to sound objective. ‘I’m doing my godmother a favour by squiring her around a little. Still, she looks settled enough now, I think I can come off-duty.’

  ‘I thought you might have...an interest,’ Appleton said as they made their way towards their hostess to thank her and make their excuses.

  ‘Not me,’ Gray said, putting amusement into his voice. ‘I’m steering well clear of the parson’s mousetrap for the present, however tempting the cheese might be.’

  I used to be good at acting, to hiding my thoughts and feelings. Now...

  Once it was necessary to show the face that his men needed to see—stern or dashing, confident or cautious. He’d needed to cultivate the art of hiding his feelings from senior officers, too.

  I think you’re an idiot, General. No, I’m not sure I’ll come out of this alive, but I’ll give it a damn good go...

  It seemed the feelings he had for Gabrielle were too close to the surface to allow for easy subterfuge about anything.

  They were close enough to the back entrance to Albany to walk, making small talk as they went about old comrades, a good bootmaker Appleton had found, the latest opera singer taking the town by storm.

  A batman appeared as Appleton unlocked the door, but he dismissed his military servant with a nod. ‘We’ll look after ourselves, Hodges. You take yourself off to bed.’

  ‘Sir. The decanters are in the sitting room.’

  They settled in front of the banked-up fire, brandy glasses in hand. Gray sat back, summoned up the old, hard-learned focus of army days and ignored the unpleasant sensation under his breastbone. Apprehension. A good officer did not admit to fear, however much he might feel it. But this was not fear for himself.

  ‘I’m tidying up some loose threads around Major Norwood’s last few months,’ Appleton began abruptly. ‘His servant told us he was spending a lot of time focused on the area around Quinta do Falcão.’

  ‘Miss Frost’s estate.’

  ‘Yes. Then there were rumours about a lone French officer being seen in the area in uniform once or twice—and some sightings that may have been him dressed as a local man.’

  ‘Someone Norwood had turned as an informer, do you think?’

  ‘No. He kept notes of those in code and we’ve broken that. There were a couple of Frenchmen, but we know about them.’

  ‘And what conclusions do you draw? Good brandy, this.’

  Appleton swirled the liquid in his glass. ‘It is. The last of my father’s smuggled cask before peace broke out.’ He shifted to put the glass down and Gray read unease in the movement. ‘Miss Frost had a younger brother.’

  ‘I believe so. With the guerrilheiros, I believe. Brave lad and tragically young when he died.’

  ‘Yes.’ Appleton cleared his throat. ‘The thing is, there was definitely a source leaking information about our troop movements in the area and that stopped after young Frost was killed. Then it began again, more or less at the time this mysterious Frenchman starts being seen around the quinta.’

  ‘Are you saying that Frost was a traitor?’ Gray swallowed the furious rebuttal. ‘And then what? Miss Frost takes over where he left off?’

  ‘Good God, no! He might have been, of course, but I doubt it. He was hardly more than a lad. No, I was thinking one of the people on her estate, the winery manager, for example. They travel all over the area, those people. No one takes any notice of them and they could be up to anything.’

  ‘Such a man would be loyal to the family,’ Gray said. ‘All those workers have been with the Frosts for generations, apparently. If Frost had been turned, the man might have carried on out of loyalty, or conviction—or just for the money—but I cannot for a moment believe that a patriotic youngster, as Thomas Frost seems to have been, would have turned traitor. He was killed by the French, for heaven’s sake. Besides, even if he was and one of his men kept up the business, why would you be pursuing the matter now? He is dead and surely there are better things for an experienced officer to be doing than chasing down Portuguese peasants?’

  ‘Because the man might have killed Norwood.’ He shifted uncomfortably again, picked up his glass and drained the remaining brandy. ‘And I have an unpleasant suspicion that Miss Frost knows something about this.’

  ‘You just said—’

  ‘I don’t mean that she was a spy. She’s a lady, after all.’

  You should see her with a knife...

  ‘But if she saw something of the confrontation that had Norwood killed she might be keeping silent out of loyalty to her workers. Or—and this is what really does concern us—one of the neighbouring families might have been involved. She is very close to the MacFarlanes, is she not?’

  ‘This sounds like a complete farrago of nonsense,’ Gray said crisply. ‘It isn’t even making bricks without straw. You haven’t got the clay or the water either. All you have is a brave young man being killed fighting for his country, a grieving sister, reports of a mysterious Frenchman in the area and a dead riding officer who might have been killed at any point upstream from where he was found. And, frankly, from what I’ve heard of his activities, it was more likely a furious father or vengeful husband than an agent for the French. The local port producers of English and Scottish extraction have—and had—everything to gain from an Allied victory and nothing at all to gain from a French one.’

  ‘How so? The French had a substantial war chest for bribery.’

  ‘Do you think the French, victorious, would encourage the production of port? Britain is the biggest market and always has been, Portugal is England’s oldest ally. The French would ruin the industry.’

  ‘A good point. And I had heard rumours about Norwood’s womanising,’ Appleton admitted.

  ‘More than womanising. He was not above using force to get what he wanted.’ That was true as far as Gabrielle was concerned, so even if Norwood had never forced another unwilling woman Gray was quite happy to give the impression that he was.

  The other man’s expression showed his distaste. ‘Disgraceful. How did you know?’ He narrowed his eyes as the obvious thought stuck him. Gray could have kicked himself for elaborating. ‘Not Miss Frost, surely?’

  ‘Certainly not. Local young women,’ Gray said. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, I was told in confidence.’

  ‘Then this could have nothing to do with the Frosts.’ It was not quite a question.

  ‘Upon my honour.’ Gray spoke without having to think about it, then braced himself for the self-loathing. He had just pledged his honour in a lie to a gentleman, to a fellow officer. But there was not a twinge. His conscience, his precious honour, were both silent.

  Because I love her and I trust her and that was the right thing to do.

  ‘I think you are chasing a wild goose with this,’ he added.

  ‘I suspect you are correct,’ Appleton said with a sigh. ‘It felt as though I had a glimpse of something—the tail feathers of the proverbial goose vanishing around the corner, more like! Now I know about Norwood’s activities I have to agree. That is a much more likely explanation of his murder than a spy among the British port producers. They are all too ready with their knives in Portugal—just like the Spanish. And if the murder is unconnected with the French, then the rest is just too vague to trouble further with. Let’s open another bottle and drink to new beginnings.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two hours later, taking care how he placed his feet, Gray made his somewhat unsteady way home. Occasionally he prodded his conscience, much as he might a sore tooth, to see if it had woken up and was preparing to give him hell for lying on his honour. Not a twinge.

  ‘It is all about trust,’ he informed an unresponsive lamp post. ‘I trust her. I just need her to trust me. And why should she? She’s an intelligent woman with no reason to believe that once I’d got a ring on her finger I’d behave any differently from any other man.’

  The lamp post offered no counterargument to this depressing statement, so Gray wandered on through the dark streets, in and out of the pools of light cast by the lanterns outside the smart town houses he passed. He was aware that he was a trifle bosky, but not so far gone that he did not keep a firm grip on his cane and an eye on the shadows, alert for trouble. The wealthier the district the richer the spoils for any footpad brave enough to try for a victim there.

  ‘It’s empistosýni... That’s what it is,’ he informed the startled footman who opened the door to him.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Trustfulness. That’s what we need.’ So what was he doing thinking in Greek? That damned Alexander the Great again. Definitely drunk. Most definitely time to go to bed and dream of knots.

  * * *

  ‘The Terringtons’ ball is always an event,’ Aunt Henrietta said, ten days later. ‘You cannot miss it.’

  ‘A ball before the Season starts?’ Gaby asked. ‘Surely no one is holding balls in early November.’

  ‘Augusta Terrington noticed how many people are up in town at this time of year and decided that a ball held now would stand out far more than one held when absolutely everyone was doing the same thing. And now people come early just to be in London in the hope of an invitation.’

  ‘So what is so special about it, other than being so early?’

  ‘Augusta transforms the ballroom with a different theme every year and guests are asked to dress accordingly. There are never any half measures—last year the theme was The Frozen North and even the footmen were wearing white from head to toe, their hair powdered with silver dust.’

  ‘So what is the theme this year, Stepmama?’ Lord Welford roused himself from the pose of languid boredom that he appeared to think made him appear a sophisticated man about town. ‘One needs time to find the perfect costume.’

  ‘It is still a secret,’ Aunt Henrietta said, leaning forward and lowering her voice as though they were in the middle of Almack’s and not in her own drawing room with only the three of them present. ‘But my abigail heard from Lady Fortune’s woman, who is walking out with one of the Terrington footmen that it is something to do with the Ottoman Empire because the staff are all being fitted with baggy trousers in silk and the footmen are going to be wearing embroidered waistcoats over bare chests!’