Free The Demon's Mistress by Jo Beverley

past and plan the difficult future.”
    â€œYou think he’s avoiding them? Oh, heavens. He never goes to manly places such as Tattersall’s, or Cribb’s, does he? Or to clubs or coffeehouses. I’ve been pleased, thinking it safer. But it keeps him from his friends.”
    â€œOr his friends are avoiding him,” said Harriette. “Find out. Find them.”
    A footman announced dinner and Maria rose, flinching under those instructions. She didn’t want to get involved like that. She feared getting too close.
    As she left the drawing room she wondered what to do about the theater party she had planned for the evening. She had invited guests to her box at Drury Lane to see Mrs. Blanche Hardcastle play Titania. There was no reason not to go, except that she and Vandeimen had never been apart in an evening, and she worried what he might do.
    What did he do when alone in his room?
    He wasn’t drowning his sorrows. Though she hated to, she’d questioned the butler, and the decanters in his room were being used sparingly. She knew, however, that he wouldn’t need to be drunk to kill himself, and he probably still had his pistol.
    She’d have to stay home tonight, though if he lurked in his room and shot himself, she couldn’t see how to stop him.
    He appeared however as they crossed the hall, ready to escort both of them into dinner. Of course, she thought as she placed her hand upon his arm. He would always punctiliously give the service for which he had been paid.
    She ate a dinner for which she had no appetite, wondering if she could use his powerful sense of duty and honor to save him.
    Harriette, bless her, picked up conversation as if nothing had happened, and talked about plans for the garden.
    The play was doubtless excellent, and ethereal Mrs. Hardcastle with her long silver hair was perfect as the fairy queen, but Maria paid little attention. She sat in her box seeking ways to put Vandeimen in contact with his past, his future, and his friends.
    As Sarah had said, they had been born neighbors in Sussex and all called George. A patriotic gesture, he’d explained, in response to the actions of the French sansculottes against their own monarch.
    â€œWe were lucky, I suppose,” he’d said. “We could have all been called Louis. That would have been too much for our staunchly English fathers to stomach, thank God.”
    They’d been christened on the same day, in the same church, and been playmates in the nursery years. As lads they’d been inseparable, and in the end, they had all joined the army at the same time. Their talents and inclinations had differed, however, and their military careers had swept them apart. Con had chosen the infantry, Van and Hawk cavalry. But then Hawk had been seconded to the Quartermaster’s Division.
    They hadn’t seen a great deal of each other during their army years, but he didn’t talk about them as if they were estranged. So why weren’t they in touch, at least by letter?
    Lord Wyvern was probably busily involved with his new estate in Devon, but he could still write.
    Hawk was Major George Hawkinville, heir to a manor that went back to the Domeday Book. His father, Squire John Hawkinville, was still alive, living at Hawkinville Manor. Her gazetteer had described it as “an ancient, though not notable house in the village of Hawk in the Vale, Sussex.”
    The same gazetteer had described Vandeimen’s home as “a handsome house in the Palladian manner,” and Somerford Court as “Jacobean, adapted and adorned, not entirely felicitously, in the following centuries.”
    The main word used to describe Crag Wyvern in Sussex was “peculiar.”
    Wyvern had been a second son, but Vandeimen and the major were both only sons. Strange that they had joined the army.
    Major Hawkinville was still at his duties abroad, apparently, but Wyvern must know of the heavy losses Vandeimen had