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“A man so good-looking has no right to be a butler!”

Céline felt a warmth rise to her cheeks. She, too, had noticed MacKinnon’s looks, especially when he’d stood so close and made that strange remark about her addressing him as “Mr. MacKinnon.” She looked at her reflection, pretending to adjust the lace trim edging her neckline. “Why, Valentine, it’s not like you to be so dead set against anyone for his looks.” She smiled inwardly. Mr. MacKinnon had probably rebuffed one of Valentine’s overtures, for her to hold him in such contempt.

She met her abigail’s gaze in the mirror. “In any case, I shall judge Mr. MacKinnon’s abilities for myself at my dinner party next week.”

“Let us hope he does not embarrass you with some clumsy faux pas among your guests.”

Céline laughed and left her maid straightening up her clutter, though inwardly she couldn’t help a worry that her temporary butler might not prove up to the task of a dinner party full of important guests.

Rees awoke the next morning with a start, his heart racing with fear. Lady Wexham was calling to him and he was trying to reach her.

He closed his eyes again, trying to recapture the scene. She’d been in trouble of some sort. Rarely did he dream so vividly. His hand reached out as if to recall the dream. It had been dark. They’d been riding—or had it only been he and she in a carriage? He’d seen her pale face as if through a glass.

He rubbed his hand across his face to awaken himself fully, but it only caused the images to further fade.

It had only been a dream. It held no significance, no doubt brought on by his worry over the coming dinner party he would be responsible for as butler. His heart gradually subsided to its natural rhythm, but the sense of foreboding didn’t leave him.

Lord, show me what, if anything, this means
. He listened but sensed only stillness. He continued praying a few moments longer.

Finally, knowing he wouldn’t fall asleep again that morning, he pulled off the bedcovers and grabbed his dressing gown from the straight-back chair beside his narrow bed. He glanced at his pocket watch lying atop his neatly folded clothes on the chair. It was only half past five, still too early to rise. As butler, he was also privileged with later hours than those under him, who would be stirring soon. He was not required to make an appearance until breakfast time—for the servants between eight o’clock and nine—depending on when each one had finished his morning chores. He’d also been greatly relieved to discover that as a butler, he was privileged with a room to himself apart from all the other servants, who lived on the top floor. Only Mrs. Finlay and the French cook shared the basement
floor, but their quarters were at the opposite end of the basement at the rear, near the kitchen.

Although it was referred to as the basement, it really was only a half basement, two-thirds submerged underground, but with enough room aboveground to afford a narrow horizontal window at street level by the service entrance.

He stood at the window now, pushing aside the filmy curtain—another sign of his employer’s thoughtfulness, in providing a servant’s room with privacy from passersby. The view from his window was of the concrete bay containing the service stairs to the sidewalk. The clomp of the milkmaid’s clogs sounded on the street above, fading as she moved on to the next house after filling up their can of milk. The lamplighter climbed up to the lamp, dousing its flame. Everything else on the street was quiet.

His thoughts drifted to the strange twists and turns of life that had brought him to this fashionable address from the small cell he’d called his office in the bowels of the Foreign Office.

There he’d sat translating and cataloging documents and deciphering messages intercepted by their agents across the Channel. Painstakingly preparing reports for Lord Castlereagh, and for Mr. Fox before him, hoping someday to catch someone’s eye and be promoted into the realm of real diplomacy, perhaps as a chargé d’affaires in some foreign embassy or post.

But after ten years, Rees had lost hope of advancement. Then scarcely a month ago, the promotion he’d been striving for had been dangled before him like the French fleet before Nelson.

But it came at a price. A steep one.

Rees rubbed the bridge of his nose, still not sure if he’d done the right thing in accepting the assignment thrust upon him. Not that he’d been given much choice.

He remembered his initial excitement at the senior clerk’s words: “I have a new assignment for you. One that can yield high dividends if you play your cards right.”

Rees said nothing at first, distrustful of the young man’s words. Alistair Oglethorpe, third son of a baronet—as he’d let Rees know his first day at the Foreign Office and at every opportunity since then—had come in only a few months ago and been put in charge of the junior clerks, who had a much longer tenure.

Oglethorpe raised a pale brown eyebrow. “Well, aren’t you interested? Or do you prefer to continue toiling away at your desk in obscurity?”

Rees ignored the question, having grown inured to the man’s barbs. “Very well, what is it you wish me to do?”

Oglethorpe twirled a quill between his fingers. “Too much information is going across the Channel and getting to Bonaparte. We need to tighten our scrutiny of the émigré community.”

Rees frowned. While the Foreign Office supervised all British spies on the Continent, the Home Office was responsible for monitoring any spying activities in the British Isles.

Oglethorpe’s next words captured Rees’s full attention. “We’re sending you over to the Home Office.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Oglethorpe smiled, an expression that always came across as a smirk to Rees. “It’s quite simple, old boy. They have oversight over all the French émigrés living in England and you know French.”

Rees’s childhood French had been honed by the months he’d spent in a French prison when his frigate had been sunk off the coast of Brest.

“They need someone who knows how to ferret out anything peculiar.” Oglethorpe shrugged. “You have been able to break codes. I told Lord Sidmouth I had a man who could fill the requirements of what they’re looking for.”

Rees’s excitement began to grow. Perhaps a real opportunity for promotion was presenting itself.

Oglethorpe leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk and tapping its surface with the tip of the quill. “We’d like you to play at butler in a prominent French household in Mayfair.”

Rees grappled to understand what Oglethorpe was telling him. “You want me to what?”

Oglethorpe’s smirk deepened. “To spy. You’ll assume the role of a butler. It shouldn’t be too difficult for you. Just look stiff—the way you’re accustomed to around here—and stand at attention.”

When Rees had dared to question the orthodoxy of such an assignment for a clerk, Oglethorpe leaned back in his chair and eyed him through his glass. It irked Rees that his superior was but three-and-twenty—eight years his junior.

“It’s this way, Phillips. Anyone we have with the skills for such an assignment is either over in France already or would be recognized in a fashionable house in the West End.” He chuckled. “Who would recognize a junior clerk with your—ahem—background?”

Oglethorpe loved to lord his aristocratic standing over Rees’s middle-class one—ignoring the fact of how recent his father’s minor title was. He rubbed his hands together as if he had thought of the scheme himself. “It’s a perfect ruse. You know French and excel at trifling details. You have a talent at seeing patterns where others don’t. It must have to do with staring at those scribbles all day. If there’s anything out of the ordinary in that household, you’ll be the one to spot it.”

He yawned behind a pale, manicured hand. “Really, you should be honored. You can enter that tonnish realm and partake of its splendors, as a butler, of course.” He laughed then shuffled the papers on his desk—reports Rees had been up late to compile—and adopted a dismissive tone. “It shouldn’t take you long, if indeed Lady Wexham is sending information back to Boney’s people. You’re to report to the Home Office tomorrow morning. They’ll fill you in on everything.”

As Rees stood to leave, Oglethorpe threw out the last inducement. “You’ll be well rewarded. Sidmouth told me himself, if you help draw out a French spy, the Crown will show its appreciation.”

So, it came to lowering himself to masquerading as a butler for
a few weeks in a countess’s London establishment, or spending the rest of his days in a basement cubicle in Whitehall answering to a pompous ignoramus.

From one basement to another.

Céline rang for a fresh pot of tea before returning her attention to her guests. “Tell me, Kimberley, how have you been amusing yourself since you’ve arrived in London?” She was fond of her niece, even though she was only related to her by marriage. She and her mother had come to pay a morning call.

They talked for several minutes about the different balls and routs Kimberley had attended since her coming out.

“I am so relieved she had her presentation before Princess Augusta’s death,” her mother, the new Countess of Wexham, said. Céline retained the title only as a courtesy. “Can you imagine if we had waited until now when they are all in mourning?” She shuddered. “As it was, the Queen’s Drawing Room was well attended when Kimberley made her debut.”

“There is nothing like a young lady’s presentation,” Agatha simpered, looking up from her tambour screen.

Since Kimberley and the countess were her direct relations and the new heirs, Agatha fawned over them. Céline suspected she was hoping to be invited to live with them in their Grosvenor Square mansion—the house that had been Céline’s home until the old earl’s death.

Bernice, the countess, folded her hands in her lap. “Since then, Kimberley has received so many callers.” She smiled indulgently at her daughter. “Such nice young gentlemen like the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Delamere have been quite assiduous in their attentions.”

The color rose in the girl’s cheeks.

Céline smiled. “Have any of them found favor with you or are you keeping them all at bay for the moment?” she teased.

Kimberley looked down at her gloved hands, which clutched her reticule. “I don’t know . . . they’ve all been so civil.”

“There is no rush to settle on any one gentleman yet,” Céline hastened to assure her. “You’re but seventeen and in your first season.”

Kimberley’s blue eyes widened. “But Lady Wexham, didn’t you wed during your first season?”

Céline smoothed the worked muslin of her gown. “Yes, that is so. But I hold that a young lady has plenty of time and should enjoy her first season.”

Agatha pulled her embroidery needle up from the frame. “A young lady can’t afford to let a good offer pass. More than two seasons and she is in danger of being considered on the shelf.”

Céline reined in her irritation at her sister-in-law. It seemed whatever she said, Agatha would take the contrary position.

Bernice sniffed. “Plenty of young women marry at Kimberley’s age. Why, I myself made what my parents considered a very good match at eighteen. As did you,” she added with a pointed look at Céline.

Céline’s sympathy for young Kimberley grew. Between her mother and great-aunt Agatha, they would have her married to the highest bidder, regardless of how suited the couple was to each other. She hated the thought of young ladies being forced into marriage against their will with no thought to their future happiness. To be shackled to someone merely for sake of name or fortune could become a nightmare once the vows were exchanged and the couple settled down to married life.

She laughed to lighten the atmosphere. “You must enjoy your seasons, Kimberley, and trust that you’ll meet the right young man in good time whether it’s one season or several.”

“Several? I should think not!” Agatha declared, knotting her thread. “I’m sure Kimberley will meet nothing less than a duke or marquess this very season.”

Céline eyed her sister-in-law, wondering what possessed her seamstress to suggest that particular shade of evening primrose against her complexion. “I’m certain she shall meet many young gentlemen. She has no need to fear being left on the shelf.” She gave Agatha a pointed
look. The earl’s sister had never married. No man would offer for so disagreeable a personality regardless of her portion.

Agatha pinched her lips together and concentrated on her stitch, an ugly flush staining her sallow cheeks.

Céline considered taking a hand in young Kimberley’s season. At least she could help the poor chit broaden her opportunities before she was forced into some loveless marriage. She considered what to do as she poured the tea William had just brought in.

When they had all been served, she eyed the ladies over the rim of her cup. “I should like to give you a ball, Kimberley.”

The girl gasped. “A ball? Truly, Aunt Céline?” She turned to her mother, a smile breaking open on her mouth. “Did you hear that, a ball for me!”

“How very thoughtful of you, Céline.” Despite her words, the new countess’s words held a complacency that showed she considered it a matter of course that Céline should host a ball for her daughter. Céline tried not to let it annoy her. By now she should be used to the fact that if she had borne the late earl a son, Bernice with her bobbing ostrich feathers would not be flaunting her status in Céline’s drawing room.

“When is it to be?”

Kimberley’s tone held such enthusiasm that Céline’s irritation disappeared. “Let’s see . . .” She tapped a finger against her chin. “We need time to get out the invitations. It needs to be a large ball. We’ll clear the drawing room and the rear sitting room as well, and open the connecting doors. I shall hire musicians, we need flowers, and of course, a theme.”

“Oh yes, a theme!” Kimberley leaned forward. “Lady Thorncroft’s ball was fairies and sprites.”

Céline nodded, casting about for something original. Although she was used to entertaining, she hadn’t held a ball since long before the earl had passed away.

As the ladies took up the discussion, deciding whom to invite and when to hold the ball, Céline continued pondering. She wanted
to attract the best crowd and make sure enough eligible bachelors showed up for Kimberley’s sake. If her mother was going to pressure her into a betrothal her first season, the least Céline could do was ensure the poor girl would have a wide array to choose from.