Free Playing with Fire by Sandra Heath

Lucina.”
    Tusun regarded the marsh. “Are you are sure you can find your way out of here again, Effendi?” he inquired a little impishly.
    “Are you questioning my navigating talents, you rogue? I’ll have you know that every officer in His Majesty’s navy can find his way out of any backwater, even one such as this.”
    The tabby cat meowed as it came to rub around Tansy’s skirts again. She picked it up to cuddle, and Tusun scowled. “Cats are bad luck on a boat,” he declared, almost predictably.
    Martin shook his head. “On the contrary, every vessel should have a cat; they keep the rats at bay.”
    Tansy cuddled the animal close. “I shall have to give you a name,” she whispered to it.
    Tusun shrugged. “My mother was foolish enough to like cats. She had one she called Miw. It is the name the pharaohs gave to all cats.”
    But Tansy had already decided. “I shall call her Cleopatra,” she said. “Cleo for short.” The tabby immediately looked up at her and began to purr.
     

Chapter 11
     
    Sir Julian was taking breakfast in his house in Park Lane. He wore his dressing gown over his shirt and breeches, and there was an embroidered skullcap on his head. The morning sun flooded into the dining room, which looked onto the gardens behind the house. Snowdrops and crocuses flowered on the pocket-handkerchief lawn, where the overnight frost had now melted. It was, Sir Julian reflected a little sadly, the last time he would see them in bloom here. But he wasn’t sad enough to want to change his mind about selling.
    A coal fire flickered in the hearth, its flames pale and almost transparent in the bright light from the window, where Ozzy was taking the sun on the sill. The tomcat had enjoyed a feast of crisp bacon fat, which had been neatly cut up for him on his special plate on the table, Sir Julian being no stickler for etiquette. Now a cheeky robin fluttered to the ground just on the other side of the window, which annoyed Ozzy very much. His tail lashed, and he began to make angry clicking noises with his jaws.
    “Oh, do stop that, you foolish creature,” Sir Julian muttered, picking up his newspaper and attempting to read. But Randal kept intruding upon his thoughts. At last the newspaper was set aside, another cup of thick black coffee was poured, and proper consideration was given to the man who threatened to stir up so much mud from the bottom of the lake. How very alarmed Randal must have been when he discovered the scandalous family secret that could conceivably rob him of everything. Was that the real reason for the match with Amanda? The security her fortune would provide if he did lose all because of the secret? Yes, of course….
    Sir Julian’s eyes cleared as he began to unravel Randal’s motives. Of all the likely heiresses, how clever to choose her, for once she was Lady Sanderby, the letter’s revelations would ruin her life too. Randal was taking the calculated risk that her uncle would not be able to bring himself to do that to his own flesh and blood. He was also relying on the fact that Felice’s doting lover would continue to protect her son and her good name, as he had for all these long years. Sir Julian could imagine Randal’s apoplectic fury at finding his future so completely in the hands of a man he loathed, and who loathed him.
    It would be no less than justice if it were to come out at last, but there were degrees of justice, and Felice had been desperate to bury it all so that it never saw the light of day. Sir Julian reached into his dressing gown pocket for the battered leather pouch that never left his side. There, in a double lining, he kept a folded theater handbill, dog-eared now and fragile, but still legible. It was for David Garrick’s farewell performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Monday, June 10, 1775. But it wasn’t the handbill itself that Sir Julian studied now, for in the margin was the message Felice had sent to him by the box keeper.
     
    My