Secrets of the Heart Read Free Page A

gift from Michael, and he took a purse full of coins instead. Then he left.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Jessica said tentatively. “I don’t know Lord Westhampton as well as the rest of you. What did he mean?”
    â€œI don’t have any idea,” Rachel replied frankly. “I was hoping Richard or Dev would have some idea—that perhaps there was some sort of male activity involved which you conspired to keep secret from us females. Or from me, at least—so I wouldn’t worry or be afraid or something.”
    â€œI haven’t a clue,” her brother responded, looking perplexed. “And if I were in on some male secret, you can be sure that Miranda would have wormed it out of my by now.” He cast a fond glance at his wife, who gave him a dimpled smile in return.
    â€œMaybe it is some sort of code,” Miranda mused. “I know Westhampton told me once that he had always been fond of puzzles and things like that.”
    â€œYes, he is.
    â€œThe fellow must have been mad, that is all I can think,” Richard added. “Best thing, I suppose, is to send a message to Westhampton, let him know what happened. Perhaps he, at least, will understand it.”
    â€œYes, I guess you are right,” Rachel agreed. “I will write him a letter tonight.”
    â€œI shall send one of the grooms up to Westhampton with it first thing tomorrow,” Dev assured her. “I’m sure there’s nothing to it, but best be safe, you know.”
    So later that night Rachel sat down at the small secretary in her room and dashed off a letter to Michael, telling him everything that the stranger had said to her and adding a few questions of her own. Dev entrusted the missive to his head groom, who would leave at dawn the next morning on one of Dev’s excellent horses, so that Michael would know as soon as humanly possible about the strange occurrence.
    But knowing that she had done all she could to warn Michael—if, indeed, there was any truth to the highwayman’s words—did not bring Rachel peace of mind. As she dressed for bed and took down her hair, her thoughts kept returning to the events of the evening, much as a tongue sought out a sore tooth. Suddenly everything connected to Michael seemed unsure and awkward.
    She and Michael were not close in the way that Dev and Miranda, were. There was not that intimacy between them that seemingly only love and passion could bring. But she had thought that she knew Michael well. She knew the subjects that interested him, the foods he liked and disliked. She could have named the tailor and boot maker he frequented, and the clubs to which he belonged, the names of most of his friends and even those of some of the people with whom he corresponded.
    However, the encounter with the Cassandra-like highwayman had left her wondering how much she really knew Michael. The man “Red Geordie” had spoken of seemed to be someone altogether different from the Westhampton she knew—a person involved in something that threatened someone else, someone who needed to be warned. Someone who would be acquainted with a highwayman. She kept thinking that the odd man must have been mistaken, that he was talking of another man besides her husband. Yet he said that he had recognized the crest on the side of the carriage. He had called him Westhampton—or had it been she who had offered the name and the man had simply agreed?
    Perhaps, as one of the others had suggested, the intruder had been quite mad. Or it was all some bizarre hoax. After all, neither Dev nor Richard had known what the man was talking about; they had been as much in the dark as she. And Richard had been friends with Michael since before Rachel herself had met him. Surely he would know if Michael was somehow involved with a highwayman. But Rachel could not escape the thought that a wife should not have to depend on someone else’s knowledge of her husband