Touch of a Lady by Mia Marlowe Page A

very well go to His Grace with it. That would lead to all sorts of questions about why he was in the grotto in the first place and if the shattered bottle were discovered and somehow connected with the missing ’08 . . . oh, why had he thrown the thing aside like that? He ought to have carried it out of the maze and maybe hidden it in the stables to implicate a groom or taken it down to the river where it would never be found.
    He wasn’t thinking clearly. And after taking a tumble tail-over-teakettle, he found himself staring up at a leafy dead end. He’d missed a turn in the maze.
    Rupert backtracked until he thought he knew where he was and pressed on.
    “Should tell Lady Florence,” he mumbled. “After all, this touches her more than anyone.”
    No, that would never do. Beside the fact that it would be indelicate in the extreme to describe the rutting festival he’d just witnessed to a lady of such decorum, Lady Florence had never spoken two words to him. He could hardly introduce himself, then proceed to destroy whatever lies she might be telling herself about the man whom her father had chosen for her.
    From somewhere in his pickled brain, a proverb floated to the surface.
    “ Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”
    That was the ticket. Rupert would tell Lady Florence’s friend, Lord Sanders. He’d know what to do about it.
    Now that his course of action was settled in his mind, Rupert picked up his pace…and walked into another leafy box canyon.
    He sank down onto the gravel path, head in his hands. He needed to think.
    It hurt to think.
    He slumped to lay spread eagle, face turned to the sky. There were few clouds overhead. It wasn’t likely to rain on him. Things could be worse.
    At least I have until tomorrow night to get out of this maze.
     

Chapter 8
     
    “We won’t be able to speak again till this is over,” Tristan said softly as he led Delphinia from the dining room where the long table had accommodated over fifty guests. They filed down the broad staircase to the ground floor ballroom where the musicians were tuning their instruments in disjointed runs and wavering long notes.
    Del wondered how he’d managed to time matters so they could promenade together. He wasn’t on her dance card for the rest of the evening. Unless she counted the very private gavotte they’d be performing on the second floor parlour settee later.
    “Are you having second thoughts?” she asked.
    “Not a one. You?”
    She shook her head. Delphinia supposed she ought to feel some trepidation over the prospect of being caught in a compromised position, but if it meant she’d have Tristan forever, she was willing to endure a short period of public censure. She was more worried about how Tristan would deal with the fact that she brought nothing to their union but a handful of empty fingers. She’d Seen their future together and knew it would be a happy and prosperous one, but she still had no idea how that might happen.
    As they left the grand stair case and continued down the broad corridor toward the ballroom, her hand slipped off the back of his hand and onto his broad cuff. A row of silver buttons graced the edge of the cuff before the lace on Tristan’s shirt sleeves spilled out. Del’s fingertip brushed over one of the buttons and she received a flash image from the precious metal.
    It shot into her mind like heat lightning, but dissolved just as quickly. Still, the button had tried to tell her something. She ought to listen.
    She repositioned her hand so she could cup a button and press her palm against it. In bright trilling tones, the silver spoke to her in no language she’d ever heard. Her vision faded. The hall before her disappeared into the mist as if someone had lowered a sheet of watered muslin before her eyes. Superimposed over that hazy reality, a shattered stained-glass window of images burst into her brain.
    She stumbled on her next step and Tristan was quick to catch her elbow.
    “Are you all