Love's Tangle by Isabelle Goddard Page A

person. But how could that be? The soft movement of a door sounded behind her but so caught up was she in a confusing whirl of thoughts that she heard nothing.
    Then a voice, slicing through the air. “And what precisely do you think you’re doing?”
    Gabriel stood in the doorway, his riding dress muddied and torn, his whip still in his hand. She whirled around, her back shielding the nakedness of the open drawer and her hand closing over the locket.
    “Mrs. Lucas asked me to deliver a message,” she improvised.
    “And since when has my housekeeper found it necessary to employ a dairymaid as messenger?”
    She was struck dumb. “You are silent. Now why is that?” All trace of geniality had vanished and she felt her soul wither. “But let us presume for one moment that Mrs. Lucas has been so unseemly as to send you here—where is the message?”
    Her mind was ragged. Bewildered by what she had found, she needed time to think. In desperation she cast around for a new pretext but before she could find the words, he had raised his hand to silence her.
    “Spare me the lies, Nell! I have continued to trust you despite your questionable conduct but I can see that I have been mistaken. Today I find you in my private room, your hands in my desk, a blatant trespasser once more.”
    His chill glance swept her figure and unnervingly came to rest on the tell-tale closed hand. “And a thief, it seems.”
    He was standing so close that she could see every fleeting emotion and his expression did not bode well. He wrenched her hand open and the locket fell to the ground. When he bent to pick up the miniature, she thought his brow furrowed as he scooped it from the floor.
    “I trust you have a valid reason for stealing my jewelry.” His voice was the thinnest and sharpest of steel. “You had better explain yourself—and start now!”
    Elinor felt anger flicker within her and slowly gather pace. She had been right to think there was a mystery attached to Allingham—the matching lockets proved that. The truth, whatever it was, must have meaning for her but it had been deliberately hidden. She drew herself up to her full height and when she spoke her voice was as cold as his. “It is you, Your Grace, who needs to explain. How has this miniature come into your possession?”
    “What the devil! Why should it not be in my possession? You found it in my study, in my desk, and it is an image of my uncle.”
    “Your uncle?” she faltered, her certainty deserting her. The miniature bore so little resemblance to the forbidding portrait in the Great Hall that she had felt not a flicker of recognition.
    “What has that to say to anything?”
    “I don’t know, I don’t understand.”
    “You are not alone, Nell Milford. What I do understand is that you are unruly, disobedient and guilty of the most brazen transgression. If you stay in my employ, which I doubt, you will be punished severely. Now leave.”
    “I cannot, Your Grace. Not until I know. You have been withholding a secret that matters dearly to me. Why have you not been honest?”
    “What the deuce are you talking about?” The arctic glare had been replaced by an irritated frown.
    “I cannot believe you had no knowledge of this locket and no understanding of its meaning. In your own words—tell me the truth and spare me the lies!”
    “Is this to be a Banbury story? Speak plainly and be warned that those who set out to gull me have a habit of coming off very much the worst.” The glare was back but Elinor knew no fear.
    “I am convinced the half locket in your hand holds the clue to my mother’s past and perhaps to my own identity.”
    “What nonsense is this? What connection can there be between an image of my uncle and a dairymaid?”
    “I am no dairymaid.”
    “You’re certainly no dairymaid that I’ve ever come across.”
    His natural good humor was beginning to undermine his wrath. Then he remembered her crime. “If you think to bamboozle me with this