“It’s quite amazing what a wife will keep from her husband,” Vale mused. “My innocence has been crushed since our marriage. But, yes, she did indeed finally deign to tell me why she was looking so pleased with herself recently.” Vale splashed more brandy into his glass. “The lengths to which you’re prepared to go to please a housekeeper make me wonder about the servant situation in Scotland. Good help must be thin on the ground.” Vale widened his eyes and took a drink.

“She’s more to me than a housekeeper,” Alistair growled.

“Wonderful!” Vale slapped him on the back. “And about time, too. I was beginning to worry that all your important bits might’ve atrophied and fallen off from disuse.”

He felt unaccustomed heat climb his throat. “Vale…”

“Of course, this means my lady wife will be near impossible to live with,” Vale said to the bottom of his glass. “She does get a trifle self-satisfied when she thinks she’s pulled something off, and I’m sure you’ve realized by now that she sent Mrs. Fitzwilliam to you with a purpose.”

Alistair merely grunted at that and held out his glass. Women and their mechanisms were no longer a shock to him.

Vale obligingly refilled it. “Tell me about these children.”

He closed his eye and inhaled, recalling their small faces. The last time he’d seen Abigail’s face, she’d been red with hurt and near tears. Dammit, he wanted a chance to make that better. Pray God he’d have it.

“There are two of them, a boy and a girl, five and nine, respectively. They’ve never been away from their mother.” He opened his eye and looked frankly at the other man. “I need your help, Vale.”

“SO THE DUKE of Lister found you,” Lady Vale murmured.

“Yes,” Helen said. She gazed down into the delicate dish of tea in her hands.

Lady Vale had ordered a tray of tea and cakes brought into her garden. All around them flowers blossomed, and bees buzzed lazily from bloom to bloom. It was a lovely setting. But Helen had trouble keeping the tears from her eyes.

Lady Vale laid a hand on her arm. “I am sorry.”

Helen nodded. “I thought I’d fled far enough away that he would not find me or the children.”

“As did I.” Lady Vale took a very small sip of her tea. “I think, though, that between my husband and Sir Alistair, there is hope that your children will be returned to you.”

“God willing,” Helen said fervently. She didn’t know what she’d do without her babes, couldn’t imagine a life lived without ever seeing them again. “Lister has offered to give them back to me if I return to him.”

Lady Vale went very still, her back straight, her light brown eyes clear and focused on Helen. She wasn’t a beautiful woman—her face was too plain, her color too ordinary—but her countenance was pleasing. Then, too, she had a new serenity about her since the last time Helen had seen her, a little over a month ago now.

“Will you go to him?” Lady Vale asked quietly.

“I…” Helen looked down at the teacup in her lap. “I don’t want to, of course. But if it’s the only way to see my children again, how can I not?”

“What about Sir Alistair?”

Helen looked at her mutely.

“I noticed…” Lady Vale hesitated delicately. “I couldn’t help but notice that Sir Alistair has come all the way to London for you.”

“He has been very kind to my children,” Helen said. “I think he may’ve grown fond of them.”

“And of you?” the viscountess murmured.

“Perhaps.”

“In any case, I think he must have an opinion about the matter.”

“He doesn’t like the idea, naturally.” Helen looked frankly at the viscountess. “But should that even matter? My children need me. I need them.”

“But if he can rescue them?”

“And then what?” Helen whispered. “What kind of life might I have with him? I don’t want to be another man’s mistress and yet there doesn’t seem to be any other way that I can be with him.”

“Marriage?”

“He hasn’t mentioned it.” Helen shook her head and smiled slightly. “I can’t believe I’m discussing this so bluntly with you. Don’t you disapprove of me?”

“Not at all. I did send you to his castle in the first place.”

Helen stared at the other woman. Lady Vale had a slight frown between her straight eyebrows, and one hand was rubbing her middle. But at Helen’s glance, she looked up and smiled very slowly.

Helen’s eyes widened. “You… ?”

Lady Vale nodded. “Oh, indeed.”

“But… but his castle was so filthy!”

“And I take it not anymore,” Lady Vale said complacently.

Helen huffed. “Most of it. There are still corners that I’m not going into without boiling water and good lye soap. I cannot believe you sent me there knowing how awful it was.”

“He needed you.”

“His castle needed me,” Helen corrected.

“Sir Alistair, too, I think,” Lady Vale said. “He struck me as a very lonely man when I saw him. And you’ve performed a miracle already—you’ve got him to journey to London.”

“For my children.”

“For you,” Lady Vale said softly.

Helen again looked at the teacup in her lap. “Do you truly think so?”

“I know so,” the viscountess said promptly. “I saw the way he looked at you in my sitting room. That man cares for you.”

Helen sipped her tea, saying nothing. This was so personal, so new and confusing, and she wasn’t sure yet that she wanted to discuss it with another, even someone like Lady Vale, who had been so kind to her.

For a moment, both ladies sipped tea in silence.

Then Helen remembered something. She set down her teacup. “Oh! I forgot to tell you that I’ve finished copying out the fairy-tale book about the four soldiers.”

Lady Vale smiled in pleasure. “Have you, indeed? Did you bring it with you?”

“No, I’m sorry. I quite forgot in…” She was going to say in worry over the children, but she simply shook her head instead.

“I understand,” the viscountess said. “And in any case, I need to find someone to bind it for me. Perhaps you can hold it for me and I will write when I have an address for you to send it to?”

“Of course,” Helen murmured, but her thoughts had already returned to Abigail and Jamie. Were they warm and safe? Did they cry for her? And would she ever see them again in this life?

The tea suddenly tasted like bile in her mouth. Please God, let me see my children again.

“THE EARL OF Blanchard is giving a luncheon party in honor of the king,” Vale said. “And Lister is an invited guest.”

They were still in the sitting room, and Vale was on his third glass of brandy, though he seemed to show no ill effects.

“Blanchard.” Alistair frowned. “Wasn’t that St. Aubyn’s title?”

Reynaud St. Aubyn had been a captain in the 28th Regiment of Foot. A good man, a great leader, he’d survived the massacre at Spinner’s Falls only to be captured and later killed at the Indian camp. Alistair shuddered. St. Aubyn was the man he’d told Helen about—the man who had been crucified and set alight.

St. Aubyn had also been Vale’s good friend.

Vale nodded now. “The man who has the title is a distant cousin, a widower. His niece acts as hostess for his parties.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow.”

Alistair stared down into the empty glass in his hand. Tomorrow was when Etienne’s ship would dock, but only for a few hours. Would he be able to see both the Duke of Lister and Etienne in the same narrow period of time? In all likelihood not. If he went to the luncheon, he faced the real risk of missing Etienne’s ship. Yet, if he were to weigh the children against information about the Spinner’s Falls traitor, the children would clearly win. How could they not? They were life where the traitor was death.

“Is that a problem?” Vale asked.

Alistair looked up to meet the viscount’s perceptive gaze. “No.” He set aside his glass. “Are you invited to this grand luncheon?”

“Alas, no.”

Alistair grinned. “Good. Then you can do something else for me while I invade Blanchard’s luncheon party.”

Chapter Seventeen

Every night the sorcerer would come to the knot garden and smile and gloat over the soldier he had ensorcelled. But by day, the sorcerer closed himself in his castle and thought up evil schemes.

One day a swallow joined the birds resting upon Truth Teller’s stone shoulders. This swallow happened to be one of the number formerly imprisoned by the sorcerer, and somehow the bird must have recognized her savior. Gliding down to the yew hedge, the swallow plucked a single leaf. Then she spread her wings and flew high into the sky, away from the castle. . . .

—from TRUTH TELLER

The luncheon party had already started by the time Helen and Alistair arrived on the Earl of Blanchard’s front step. They’d been delayed because Alistair had been waiting for a mysterious message at the hotel. Just before they’d left, a small scrawny lad had brought him a dirty letter. Alistair had read it, grunted in what sounded like satisfaction, and sent the boy away again with a shilling and another letter, hastily written.

Helen tapped her foot as they waited for the door to open.

“Relax,” Alistair growled softly beside her.

“How can I?” Helen said impatiently. “I don’t know why that letter was so important. What if we missed the luncheon altogether?”

“We haven’t. The carriages still clog the street, and besides, these things go on for hours; you know that.” He sighed and muttered, “You should’ve stayed in the hotel room as I suggested.”

Helen glared. “They’re my children.”

He cast his eye heavenward.

“Tell me again what your plan is,” she demanded.

“All I have to do is get Lister to relinquish claim on the children,” he said in a maddeningly soothing voice.

“Yes, but how?”

“Trust me.”

“But—”

The door was opened by a harried maid at that point. “Yes?”

“Late as usual, I’m afraid,” Alistair said in a loud, cheerful voice entirely unlike his normal tones. “And my wife has just now torn a lace or some such. Perhaps you can show us to a room where she can put herself to rights?”

The girl wrenched her horrified gaze from Alistair’s face and stood back to let them in. Blanchard House was one of the grandest houses on the square, the interior hall lined with pale pink marble and gilt. They passed a white marble statue of Diana with her hounds, and then the girl opened a door leading to an elegant sitting room.

“This will do excellently,” Alistair said. “Please, don’t let us keep you from your duties. We’ll show ourselves in when my wife is ready.”

The maid bobbed a curtsy and hurried away. The occasion of a luncheon honoring the king no doubt involved every available servant.

“Stay here, please,” Alistair said. He pressed a hard kiss to her lips and swung toward the door.

And froze.

“What is it?” Helen asked.

On the wall by the door was a huge painting—a life-sized portrait of a young man.

“Nothing,” he muttered, his gaze still on the painting. He shook his head and turned to her. “Stay here. I’ll return and collect you after I’ve talked to Lister. All right?”

She had barely nodded when he strode from the room.