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He thumped his fist against the bed. If only he weren’t still bedridden! He couldn’t risk reopening his wound and being laid up even longer.

How could she take such risks? She must know that the holdup of her carriage had to do with her spying and not with a band of highwaymen looking for jewels and money.

Didn’t she know the danger she was in? He was barely able to keep back his information from Bunting, risking his own integrity, his duty—his very future—but clearly there was someone else aware of her clandestine activities, someone who would not hesitate to use force to stop her. Monsieur de la Roche’s chilling words came back to him.
If she should prove detrimental, she will be stopped.

He closed his eyes.
Dear Lord, please protect her. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing. Have mercy on her. Show me what I can do. What would You have me do? I have a duty to my country . . . yet, I—

He paused, opening his eyes and staring across the room yet seeing nothing but Lady Wexham’s face, her smiling brown eyes.
I cannot bear the thought of any harm befalling her.

He dropped his head into his hands, seeing no way out. He knew he must trust God in this. God, who saw much beyond what he himself could see. Finally, he was able to whisper, “I trust You, Lord, with her life. Please guide her, keep her in the palm of Your hand.”

Céline sat at her escritoire the evening of her dinner party. The guests wouldn’t arrive for another half hour, but she was already dressed and coiffed by Valentine. Now, there remained only the most important detail.

She picked up her pen and dipped it into the inkwell.

When she had finished, she sprinkled it with pounce then shook off the excess.

Valentine entered at that moment. “Is everything ready?”

She nodded to her maid. “Yes, you may take it and give it to Gaspard.”

Valentine took the paper from her without a word and glanced at it. Seeing it was dry, she folded it once and placed it in the pocket of her apron, a grim smile on her face.

Céline frowned, not liking the glimmer of triumph in her maid’s eyes. Of course, Valentine didn’t know what the message contained. She thought only that Céline was throwing out a false lure to MacKinnon.

Céline stood and smoothed down her satin skirt. “How do I look?”

Valentine eyed her critically then gave a sharp nod. “Very well.”

“I shall go to the drawing room then.” She took a deep breath, feeling more nervous than she normally did before a dinner party. Perhaps because so much more was riding on this one. In a few hours she would know if her butler had taken the bait. Gone would be the fantasy of the past week.

As she walked down the hall to the drawing room, she tried to ignore the yearning in her breast for something that could not be. What if she had met MacKinnon under different circumstances? What if he was on her side, shared her sentiments about her country? She gave a bitter laugh. In short, what if he were not British, much less a veteran of its navy?

Once he heard the carriages arrive on the street, Rees snuffed out his lamp and stood by the narrow window, watching the dinner guests disembark.

As the hour advanced, and he calculated everyone was seated around the dining table, he got up several times from his bed and went into the hallway, walking to the stairwell when nobody else was about. But he didn’t dare advance any farther, since the footmen and maids were still going up and down from the kitchen.

His shoulder hardly pained him. How he wished he could have convinced Lady Wexham to allow him to resume his duties of butler this evening. But she would have none of it.

Even with all she had to do before a dinner party, she had still
looked in on him for a few minutes, admonishing him with a laugh to stay abed and not worry—as if she knew how hard it would be for him to comply.

She had looked resplendent in a gold-colored gown that brought out the golden highlights in her hair and eyes.

“And if Tom or William should spill some soup on a count or minister, well . . . I shall simply smile and distract the guest from the discomfort of a wet waistcoat or pantaloons.”

Looking into her golden eyes, he was quite certain she would succeed. What man could withstand the power of her smile?

How he wanted to dislike her—to condemn her for what she was doing! But he could not. Every day found him more and more entangled by her web of charm.

Hours later, he stood at his window again, this time watching each guest depart. The last to leave was the Duc de Berry. As the echoes of his carriage wheels faded, Rees turned away from the window and went to his door. He opened it a crack and left it ajar.

He made his way back to his bed, prepared to wait, for he knew not what, but most likely for the sound of someone leaving the house. He had not dressed but sat in his nightshirt and dressing gown. It was futile to attempt to follow anyone if indeed anyone were to leave this night, but he did want to find out if anyone were to go skulking about.

He fought drowsiness since he’d slept little the previous night, frustrated with his immobility.

To pass the time, he went over this week he’d spent bedridden. Despite the pain and discomfort of a bullet wound and the frustration of being out of service, he would not trade this time for anything.

He thought over every moment with Lady Wexham, every expression on her face, every nuance of every word spoken. It had been a magical interlude—one he knew could not last. Soon he must carry on his work for his country—and she? What had she been planning since her encounter with the masked men from Hartwell?

Each afternoon he had looked forward to that hour when she descended from above stairs to his room in the basement and sat reading and conversing with him. For that time, he could pretend they were two equals who enjoyed each others’ company to the exclusion of anyone or anything else.

He tried not to think of the future.

What would happen to . . . Céline? He had not dared think of her as anything but Lady Wexham, but tonight, tense as he was about the danger she was in, he dared enunciate the syllables to himself. “Céline,” he whispered in the dark. A beautiful, feminine name for a beautiful, passionate woman. He imagined what it would be like to whisper it to her in the dark, against her neck, her hair tumbling around them both, as he breathed in the essence of her.

Something sounded in the hallway. Rees stiffened, his fantasies evaporating, every sense alert.

It came again, this time the sound of a door closing. He’d almost missed it, so intent was he on thoughts of Lady Wexham. It was back to Lady Wexham—and his reason for being in her household.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor from the back of the house—it must be Gaspard’s room—and passed in front of his door. They continued on to the service entrance, pausing only once.

As soon as they’d passed by, Rees hurried to the door. He pushed it open a few inches more and looked, but the person was already out of sight around the corner.

He heard the bolt being drawn back, so he went to the window.

A dark, cloaked figure walked up the steps, pausing and looking about him. Then he reached the street, looked up and down before heading quickly down the pavement—the same way Valentine had the night Rees had followed her.

But he was certain it was not a female tonight. The figure was too large to be either Lady Wexham or Valentine. Rees rubbed his finger across his chin, thinking. The most likely person was Gaspard. The only way to know for certain was to go to his room.

Making up his mind, he spun around and headed back to the corridor.

When he arrived at the chef’s door, Rees grasped the knob and put his ear to the panels. Silence met him. He turned the knob and paused again before pushing the door open an inch. Holding his breath and straining his ears, he still heard nothing. He dared push the door open fully. Silence greeted him.

He walked slowly forward, his eyes already accustomed to the dark. If the room were indeed unoccupied, he would go back and retrieve a candle.

He arrived at the bed, remembering the room’s layout from his previous search. He felt around it; it was empty as he expected but still warm from recent occupation.

Rees returned quickly to his own room, lit a taper, and walked back to the chef’s room. He closed the door behind him and used the taper to light a lamp then blew out the taper. He doubted Gaspard would be back anytime soon, so he wasn’t afraid of the light.

He didn’t know what he expected to find in the room. If there was anything, Gaspard would surely have taken it with him tonight.

He began a methodical search, beginning with the area by the bed. There were no more scraps of paper under it. He shook out the clothes piled on a chair by the bed and tried to lay them back down as he had found them, continued on through the stacks of French newspapers then to the cookbooks atop the chest of drawers. Once again, a few folded recipes fell out. He refolded them to place them back, then paused, his fingers on one that looked more recent. The paper looked new.

33.41.21.72.83.55.65.61.21.17.89.25.41.512.74.512.74 . . .

Rees’s hands began to shake. There were two rows of numbers. The series looked just like the encoded messages their undercover operatives stole from French couriers on the Continent. Many contained messages from Napoleon himself to his marshals in the field.

Rees had seen enough of these ciphers in his work as junior clerk in the Foreign Office. It was his job to break them.

He placed the folded paper in his breast pocket.

Here, at last, was irrefutable proof of Lady Wexham’s treasonous activities. With this, she and Gaspard could hang.

Giving the room one last glance to ensure that he was leaving it the way he had found it, he blew out the lamp after relighting his taper and made his way out of the room.

When he returned to his own room and lit a lamp, he got back into bed and unfolded the ciphered message. As he did so, a thought occurred to him. Gaspard’s room had not been locked.

He pondered this a moment but came to no conclusions, not knowing if the locked door the previous time had been out of the ordinary or not. Perhaps in his rush to leave for his rendezvous, Gaspard had neglected to lock it.

He turned his attention to the more important matter of deciphering the message. Praying for wisdom, he studied the numbers.

The various combinations of numbers stood for letters. All he needed was to find a pattern.

Reaching over to the table Lady Wexham had been so kind as to provide him, he took a pencil and piece of paper and began to write, playing around with the ciphers to see if there were any rhyme or reason to them.

20

C
éline looked up at Gaspard, who stood beside her desk in her private sitting room, bracing herself for what she knew was to come. “You are certain?”

Gaspard snorted in his Gallic way. “
Mais oui!
The paper is gone. I noticed a few other things moved as well, though he left little trace. But I made sure to arrange things in such a way so I would know if anyone had been in my room.”

She sighed. “It could have been no one else in the household, could it?”

His lips flattened, his dark eyes looking at her as if in pity. “You are letting your heart deceive you.”

Her cheeks colored. Was she becoming that transparent?

He touched her cheek with his calloused thumb. “Never fear. You have done nothing so
terrible
, but it’s perhaps time to put an end to it,
non
?”

She lifted her gaze to meet his once again. Like Valentine, he had been with her since she was seventeen, and many times acted as the father she lost so young. “What do you mean?”

He gestured with his chin to the upholstered chair against the wall.

“Of course, please take a seat.”

When he sat facing her, his hands folded atop his white apron, he explained. “Roland has fixed it for two days’ hence.”

She swallowed, knowing he referred to their departure. She had been expecting the news any day, yet the prospect filled her with sorrow. “Tell me.”

“You must prepare everything as you said.”

Roland had approved her plan of leaving for their annual country visits. She nodded. “Very well.”

“I will travel with you as far as Deptford then head west.”

His rough hand cupped her cheek lightly. “Do not worry,
ma petite
, I will see you in France.”

Her eyes teared up. Would they all survive? “Please, do so.”

He took a step back. “Have no fear.
Bien
, I shall leave you and begin my preparations to leave for the country.”

“Very well.”

“Remember, two days.”

Céline stared at him, realizing her heart was not ready to leave.

Rees clenched and unclenched his hands, feeling at a crossroads. Even though he hadn’t yet broken the code, his mind battled with what he was going to do with the slip of paper he’d found. At the moment, it lay under his mattress like a live coal, burning a hole through the ticking.

With it, he would condemn Lady Wexham as a traitor.

But what choice did he have?

At that moment, there was a knock on his door. He knew it was Lady Wexham, since it was the time she usually spent reading to him. He’d thought all morning about the visit, fearing and longing to see her all in one. “Come in.”

She entered, looking as fresh and delightful as ever in a sprigged muslin gown of tiny blue flowers and matching ribbons at the waist and cuffs. Her hair was dressed simply, coiled about the back of her head in a loose knot, with soft tendrils escaping from it.

She paused a moment on the threshold, holding the book in her arm, a tentative smile on her lips. “Good afternoon. I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

He made a motion at his semi-prone state. “Very little, I’m sorry to say.”

She approached his bed. “You must be patient a little longer.” Her focus shifted to his shoulder. At least he was dressed today. “Has one of the footmen been in to change the dressing?”