Page 1 of An Honorable Deception
ONE
15 August 191O
Fairfax House
London, England
Yates let the barbell clang back into its brackets and pushed up to sitting, his eyes searching for the utilitarian clock on the wall. Sweat dripped from his brow, forcing him to wipe it off before he could make sense of the time. Three in the afternoon. He had just enough time to bathe and dress before he had to get to James’s church on the other side of the city for his appointment with a potential client.
If he didn’t roast to death in the meantime.
He moved to the open window, but the breeze that trickled through did little to cool him. London was often miserable in the summer, but today it was doing a fair imitation of the pits of the netherworld. And it would only get worse once his sister and her husband left for their holiday in Northumberland tomorrow.
It was absolutely no fair that they got to escape the city while he was stuck here, voting on bills he scarcely caredabout in Sessions and working on business for their private investigation firm, the Imposters, Ltd.
Absolutely unfair. They’d already made him suffer two months of solitude after the wedding before they agreed to move back to Fairfax House and let Merritt’s rented townhome go. It was cruel to subject him to his own company again now. Though at least Merritt would, after the first long weekend, be traveling regularly back to London for work. Misery did love its brother-in-law’s company.
Lionfeathers, but it was hot. He mopped his face with a towel and charged from the room, ready to find Marigold wherever she was and let her know, yet again, what a horrible, horrible sister she was to abandon him like this and go back to the cool sea breezes and comforts of Fairfax Tower without him. Wasn’t it bad enough that she only joined him in the gymnasium for half an hour a day lately, and then only to do the lightest, easiest of exercises?
He followed her voice to the drawing room, pausing when he caught tones that were neither hers nor Clementina’s nor Gemma’s. Did she have a guest? One who would be outraged if he barged in wearing only the leotard and pajama-style trousers he wore when taking his exercise?
He listened a moment more and then relaxed. It was only Lavinia. She might be as much a lady as his own sister, being the daughter of Lord Hemming as she was, but she was also their closest neighbor in Northumberland and had seen him in every possible mode of dress over the years.
He barreled through the door, perhaps with a bit more gusto than it really demanded. “Cruel creature,” he pronounced upon entering, scowling at his sister.
She sat on the couch, her hair still done up in an elaborate braided coiffure, one of her magnificently ridiculous hats on the cushion beside her, and her dress looking straightfrom the highest of haute couture boutiques in Paris, despite having come from their own attic. She was setting tongues ablaze, he knew, daring to wear fashionable ensembles when she was in a delicate condition.
Three more months, by the doctor’s estimation, before she presented him with his first niece or nephew. He alternated between unbridled joy and unfettered panic at the thought.
Everything was going to change. Everything already had. No trapeze acts, no acrobatics that required two people in their investigations. What was worse, she looked so blastedtired, and her face was pale beneath her smile.
Marigold quirked a brow at him. “Are you still pouting about staying in London?”
“Of course I am.” It was his sworn duty as her pesky little brother, after all, to complain to her. “It’s hot as blazes.”
She chuckled. But even that sounded tired. “So come with us.”
If only he could. Were it only the Sessions, he might well choose to duck out of them. There was nothing really urgent up for vote—not that his vote mattered on, anyway. But if tonight’s early-evening appointment resulted in a case, he’d have to be here to investigate it. Rarely did their cases allow for working from their own home county.
The last one that did had been anything but pleasant. Which reminded him to send a smile to Lavinia. “Hello, Vin.”
Only when he glanced at her did he realize that she’d been looking athimever since he barged in, an amused expression on her face. “Yates.”
Lady Lavinia Hemming was, without question, beautiful. And he could admit—to his sister, anyway—that he’d been in love with her for most of his life. But that was before he realized his father had left him not so much as a shilling withwhich to run the estate. Before they’d had to let most of their servants go and—gasp—learn to cook their own food and take on work to make ends meet.
He’d known, as he sat in the solicitor’s office beside Marigold and heard that there was nothing left of the Fairfax fortune, that Lavinia was never going to be his wife. Then she had caught scarlet fever, nearly died, and been all but bedridden for years from the ensuing heart condition. Her parents hadn’t been exactly keen on letting a young man into their daughter’s bedroom, either, so he’d scarcely seen her for years.
And he’d had to focus on earning his family enough income to survive on.
Six years later, he’d learned to look at her without that punch to his gut. Which was good, since she’d been courted by no fewer than a half-dozen leading gentlemen once she finally came out last year after her recovery. Most of them this summer, when she returned to London after the first few horrible months of grief from learning her mother was a traitor and then mourning her death. There were those momentary twinges of jealousy as he watched her dance with other gentlemen, but that was natural. To be expected. And he shrugged them off after only a second, proving what he’d been saying to his sister for years now: He was over his infatuation.
Lavinia didn’t appear to be exactly glowing after her societal success, though. If anything, she looked as weary as Marigold, and without the handy excuse. He frowned at her. “You look like a stout wind could blow you over. Have you been sleeping?”
Lavinia rolled her green eyes. “Yes, Father.”
“Eating?”
“Yes.”
