A Lady of His Own by Stephanie Laurens

Granville, possibly with your father’s connivance, was running secrets to the French via the smuggling gangs. He got said secrets from either Amberly or Nicholas, but regardless, Nicholas at least is involved.”
    She nodded. “Yes. And—”
    “You don’t think Granville enlisting to fight the French at Waterloo argues against his involvement? Or that perhaps he wasn’t aware of the nature of what he was doing?”
    She met his gaze. “No. Granville…he was ten when you left to join the Guards. You didn’t really know him. He was a reckless, feckless boy, and he never grew up. Yes, he was spoiled, indulged in every degree, but as he didn’t possess a malicious bone in his body, everyone simply smiled, shook their heads, and let him be.
    “Ferrying information to the French? He’d have considered that a great lark—the thrill, the danger, would have seduced him. He wouldn’t have really thought about what he was ferrying, that wouldn’t have been important. Pursuing excitement and thrills— that was Granville’s sole purpose in life. That was why he joined the army for Waterloo. Any contradiction honestly wouldn’t have occurred to him.”
    He studied her eyes and thought she was wrong, but she’d pushed herself to accept what was for her a hugely painful interpretation. No hypothetical argument was likely to sway her.
    And what she thought—the question of whether Granville and, the point she was trying to think of even less, her father before him had been knowingly involved in treason—was not of immediate importance. Not with her “cousin” Nicholas about, ferreting around, stirring up things even more effectively than he himself was.
    She was watching him measuringly, lips and jaw set. Before he could speak, she did.
    “If Granville is labeled a traitor, even posthumously, Elaine will be ostracized, to a lesser extent Constance—she’s now Lady Witherling—will be, too, and neither Emma nor Holly could hope to make a decent match. No gentleman of the ton will want to marry a traitor’s sister.”
    She paused, then added, her gaze steady on his, “I would prefer not to be known as a traitor’s half sister, either, but at twenty-nine with my fortune my own, at least my future doesn’t rest so completely on society’s opinion.”
    He waited, but she didn’t ask for any promises or assurances that he would keep her family safe, that he would find some way to protect them from the consequences should the truth prove as dire as she thought.
    All of which made him even more determined to do so.
    She’d trusted him with all she knew; he was tempted to ask what in their conversation last night had tipped the scales, but he wasn’t sure he truly wanted to know. She saw through him, to the real him, more easily than anyone save only his too-perceptive mother.
    “I should mention that my commander, Dalziel, has investigated thoroughly but could find no evidence of any sensitive information from the Foreign Office actually reaching the French.” He grimaced. “Indeed, until I realized you’d already stumbled on something illicit, I was half-inclined to think the affair might prove to be all smoke and no fire.”
    He caught her gaze. “However, even if we prove that what you suspect is true, and Nicholas is apprehended, the details will not be made public. Nicholas won’t stand trial, nor, indeed, will most of England even know of his apprehension or his crime, and even less of any others he might name as coconspirators.”
    She frowned. “You mean it’s simply buried? Not”—she gestured—“paid for?”
    “Oh, no—if he’s been involved in treason, he’ll pay.” He smiled one of his coldly dangerous smiles. “It’s just that no one will hear of it.”
    She blinked. “Oh.”
    While she digested that, he rapidly reviewed all she’d told him, all he now accepted, all he now suspected. “The first thing to do”—he looked up as her eyes snapped up to meet his—“is to take a look