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“What will your husband think of your flirtation with Colonel Werthy?”
Isabella stared at that single line scrawled across the cream-colored sheet of paper. Blinding sunlight flashed in her eyes. She blinked, and the words in purple wavered on the page.
What will Madoc think?
Her husband would have nothing to think, nothing to suspect. She wasn’t flirting with the colonel. They had explored Gibraltar Town and Athens together. They dined together nightly, at Mr. Ingram’s table, the only regulars beside Lady Peverell and Sheridan Ingram. Even Mr. Ingram’s grandson Colfax appeared once in three days. Sometimes they did stroll the Promenade or reserved deck chairs side-by-side.
That wasn’t a flirtation, merely friendship of two similar minds. The colonel could talk art. She knew more than a little about world politics, currently and historically. Their association was nothing more than that.
A figure crossed before her, blocking the brilliant Mediterranean sun before dropping into the chaise beside hers. “You’re frowning, Mrs. Tarrant.”
The very man in question, Col. Werthy looked the gentleman at leisure in a summer suit, straw boater, and diagonally striped Repp tie. She waited until he had lit one of his ubiquitous cigarillos then handed over the letter.
He scanned it before those glass-clear grey eyes met hers. “I didn’t expect you to be the next target. My apologies.”
“The next target? Other people have received letters like this?” Even as she asked, Isabella considered potential recipients. One of those would not be Gemma Stropeford with her missing diary. She and her husband had debarked in Gibraltar, deciding their better course would be a return to England. Isabella had admitted to some relief as they left ship, aided by a loan from Lady Peverell. She had not wanted to become either confidante or good friend to Gemma.
Werthy waved the single sheet. “You join a privileged circle. I know of three others. No doubt more clutch their poison pen letters close, trying to hide them.”
“Poison pen?”
“What else would you call this? It’s a mild version compared to others that I’ve seen, but it’s clearly designed to poison your emotions.”
“A mild version? Did you receive one?”
“Not I. I had opportunity to read one.”
“A single line like this?”
“Rather longer. Quite the diatribe.”
“Really?” She wanted to ask who else? and what was in the letter?, but those questions seemed the height of rudeness.
He drew on the thin dark cigar, and she caught a whiff of rich tobacco under the smoke. “Mrs. Tarrant, you didn’t ask the expected question.”
“I didn’t? But we’re not involved in a flirtation, are we?”
Werthy chuckled. “You never fail to surprise me. Are you not going to demand that I absent myself from your company?”
“I will not. This claim lacks proof.” She held out her hand, and he returned the letter with its vicious implication.
“No worries about what your husband will think?”
“I am innocent of any flirtation. Besides, they would need to know Madoc’s address in India. I doubt they do—unless they’ve invaded my cabin and absconded with one of his letters. Nor do I think they will travel all the way to Madras and personally inform him of my supposed perfidy.”
Laughter from three youths strolling past broke Isabella’s attention on the letter. Her gaze traveled along the crowded Promenade deck. Anyone could have written the letter.
No, not anyone. Only someone who knew she was married could have penned it, someone who’d seen her growing friendship with Col. Werthy, someone who wanted to poison that friendship.
Farther along the deck, in the chaises, she saw Mrs. Phoebe Drake, dark head bent over a fashion magazine. A few chairs on, Miss Arabella Swandon manipulated a hook in and out of a handwork project. The ecru string reminded Isabella of a fisherman’s sweater. The Gallaghers and their daughter stood at the ship rail, Mrs. Gallagher holding a wide-brimmed straw hat firmly on her head, the ribbon around her daughter’s boater fluttering in the breeze. A young woman with golden curls, shining in the Mediterranean sun, looked their way. When her gaze encountered Isabella’s, she ducked her head and hid behind a novel.
Isabella looked again at the scrawl of purple ink. The handwriting was upright, the words open and well-spaced, the letters formed loosely, the capital W’s and C tall and lean. It certainly didn’t look like the hand of a poisonous person. Only Werthy’s name was stated, not hers, and she was not the only woman to receive his attentions. The note had no date. At the top was the ship’s seal, engraved in gold, stationery from a first-class salon.
Isabella refolded the letter and slipped it inside its envelope, also with a gold seal. Here was her name, the M of Mrs. open with a waved hook for its start, the I of Isabella a tall line hooked at the bottom, the T with a hooked line at the top then straight down. The pen had torn a hole in the envelope when the nib crossed the last T in Tarrant. Here was the evidence of enmity and an angry heart.
“Tell me what you know, Colonel.”
“Now that sounds like a determined mind.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He held his cigarillo over the chaise arm. The smoke wafted away from them. In that silence, something—the lines around his eyes, a vagrant intonation half-sensed—something caught her attention, and Isabella gave him a sharper look.
Col. Werthy had the lean athletic grace that made her think of a mountain lion seen at the zoo in Philadelphia. Attention to his attire gave him a sharp mien echoed in his military bearing. He never set himself forward, but he was a presence that couldn’t be overlooked. Sheridan Ingram had disclosed that he saw Werthy in the ship’s gymnasium whenever he managed to attend. He had the good graces of Lady Peverell, that redoubtable scion of nobility, as well as Hyatt Ingram, wealthy financier. They both cut through pretensions like a sharp blade through butter.
His smile dropped. “The artist’s eye,” he murmured. “That risk I didn’t expect.”
Isabella felt a pang at that implied slight to her talent, and her voice sharpened. “Because I paint pretty landscapes and avoid sketching my fellow passengers?”
Rather than answer, he looked away, his gaze following people strolling the deck or standing in conversation.
She spotted the dilettante Lionel Wexford talking to a young man clad in a fisherman’s striped shirt. Farther along the railing a mutton-chopped elderly gentleman stared at a gull diving around the one of the ship’s four masts.
She broke the stretching silence. “Will this change things between us? Will it change our friendship? Are we going to change over one line in purple ink?”
Those clear grey eyes returned to her. He had his own artist’s eye, piercing beyond the obvious, and she feared he saw just how much she enjoyed their relationship. He smiled and infused warmth into his answer. “No. No, Mrs. Tarrant, we aren’t.”
Yet she mistrusted that forced heartiness. Isabella tucked the letter in her sketchbook then swivelled her legs off the chaise. “Walk with me.”
The breeze ruffled her hair. The skirt of her blue polka-dot dress fluttered around her ankles. If she could walk him away from everyone else, where they wouldn’t be overheard, he might tell her about the other recipients. If she knew about them, she might be able to find a common link.
The vivid blue sky was bright against the dark blue waters surging around the ship. They passed a couple strolling the deck, arms linked and heads bent to each other, a mother herding a daughter and son away from the shuffle board game played by two teenaged boys, a man walking alone, and two young women chatting and giggling.
As they neared the bow, Isabella veered toward the railing. Out from under the upper deck and against the rail, the sun was brilliant and the the wind stronger. Her skirts tangled around the railing, reaching for the sea. Overhead the sky was a blue haze, but far to the east, storm clouds threatened the waters that they sailed toward.
Werthy took off his boater and stared at the distant clouds. The wind ruffled his dark, wavy hair. It tore his tie from his linen jacket, and the striped ends streamed across his chest.
No one was within fifteen feet of them, and no one seemed to watch them. Now was the time to ask the important questions. “Who else? Who else has received a letter?”
Werthy gave a cutting gesture.
Isabella huffed. “You said three others were in this privileged circle of recipients. Will you tell me who they are? Do you know how long ago these letters started?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think to investigate?”
“I think a minor evil unchecked will turn into a greater evil. Did we not just fight a war with a minor cause that exploded into a major issue?”
“A hit, a palpable hit,” he quoted Hamlet and touched a finger to his brow. Those literary injections and his wide-ranging knowledge of his world were two reasons she valued his company. “I have no first-hand knowledge of those letters. Nor do I have permission to name the third.”
“You’ve piqued my curiosity, Colonel, but I will not censure you for discretion. I did not come on this voyage to poke my nose into other people’s business.”
His gaze swept the deck, tracking their walk past the shuffle board game and back to the deck chairs. He eyed the closest person, a lady swathed in a shawl, her attention was on the teenagers shouting over the shuffleboard game. “Join me for luncheon,” he finally said. “You may find it edifying.”
Luncheon was out. As much as Isabella wanted answers, she wouldn’t disappoint a friend. “I regret that I have another invitation, but I thank you.”
“Lady Peverell?”
“Not today, no.”
“Nedda Cortland?”
Now what did Col. Werthy know about Hyatt Ingram’s personal secretary? “The very same,” she murmured. She would not tease the information from him. He would either share it or not. She stepped away from the railing, preparing to depart.
“Bring her with you. No doubt she will prefer a Gold Star luncheon to a mere Silver Star. Or does she enjoy her half-hour snatched away from her employer?”
“If she consents” was all that Isabella would commit to.
