A Lady of His Own (35 page)

“At first our fathers were shocked, but that was soon overtaken by excitement.” Nicholas looked at Charles, wearily said, “To understand what happened next, you have to understand the Selborne wild streak.”

Charles raised his brows, fought not to glance at Penny. “Wild streak?”

Nicholas nodded. “I don’t have it, thank God. My father does. You haven’t met him, but he’s…I think the most apt adjective is ‘incorrigible.’ You knew Granville—suffice to say he and my father were kindred spirits. If anything, my sire was—still is—the more outrageous. Howard, Penny’s father, had the streak, too, but a milder version. He wasn’t so likely to instigate outrageous schemes, but he responded to the lure nonetheless.”

Nicholas sighed. “So there my father was, a young, titled, wealthy nobleman with connections to everyone, in Paris, then the shining capital of the world, with his closest friend and stalwart supporter by his side—with an opportunity to play a grand game with the French being laid before him.”

“A game?” Charles said.

“That’s how they saw it, the three of them—my father, Howard, then Granville. It was always a game, a great, glorious, outrageous game, with them always the victors.”

Charles exchanged a quick glance with Penny, then asked, “What were the elements of this game?”

“My father more or less drew up the rules. He agreed to advise the French, but because of his position within the embassy, they needed an intermediary they could trust, namely Howard and later Granville. Payment was to be a pillbox for Howard for successfully passing on the advice, and a snuffbox for my father for the advice itself. They’d both been toying with starting collections; this seemed to them god-sent. At that time in France, all things aristocratic were already being devalued, so those dealing with our benighted parents were ready enough to promise them items of a certain value, drawn from various private, often royal, estates, in exchange for said advice.

“
That
was the basis of the agreement. What the French didn’t know was that my father was truly brilliant—still is—at anything to do with Eurpoean diplomacy and foreign affairs. He sees into things, picks up nuances”—Nicholas shook his head—“I still go in awe of him, as does everyone in his section at the F.O.”

After a moment, Nicholas met Charles’s gaze. “The critical thing the French didn’t know was that my father fashioned his ‘advice’ from whole cloth.”

Charles blinked. “He made it up?”

Nicholas smiled wryly. “Therein lay the challenge of the game.”

Charles stared at him, then slumped back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. A full minute passed, then he looked at Nicholas. “I’ve seen the pillbox collection. We’re talking of one or two pieces of concocted advice passed every year for fortysomething years.”

Nicholas nodded.

“And the French never found out?”

“Not until after Waterloo. I told you my father’s brilliant, but not about military affairs. Initially, he avoided anything military in his ‘advice.’ The French didn’t care—back in the seventies they were more interested in politics, treaties, and bureaucratic secrets. They were so impressed by my father’s ‘advice,’ which always seemed so accurate, over the years they came to regard him as an unimpeachable source.”

“How,” Penny asked, “could his advice have appeared accurate if it was made up?”

“The French were asking about real situations—there was always a framework of real events.” Nicholas shifted, easing his bandaged shoulders. “In politics and diplomacy, when you’re studying events in another country, what you see is essentially puppets on a stage. You see what’s played out on the stage—but you can’t see what’s going on behind the curtain, what’s being done, what strings pulled and by whom, to cause the actions on the stage. With his insight, my father created alternate behind-the-curtain scenarios to the real ones, scenarios that nevertheless accounted for the actions the French could see.”

Charles nodded. “I’ve come across that sort of thing—misinformation of the highest caliber, almost certain to be believed.”

“Exactly.”

Charles shook his head, not in disbelief but in amazement. “I still can’t believe he managed it for so long.”

“Part of that was due to his success within the F.O. The higher he went, the more he knew, the more he understood, the more his ‘advice’ fitted the observed outcomes—and the more the French believed him.”

“What brought the game undone?”

“In a way, it was Napoleon. When the Peninsula Wars started, the French unsurprisingly wanted information on military matters. Initially, that wasn’t hard to refuse on the grounds it wasn’t something my father would be privy to, but then came Corunna, and the early losses, and, of course, Selbornes have always been patriotic to our toes.

“M’father knew whatever he told the French stood a good chance of being believed. He considered telling the appropriate authorities of his ‘game,’ but decided they would probably not approve, and quite possibly not understand. So, essentially on his own, he decided to embark on military misinformation by including in his otherwise diplomatic advice snippets about military affairs. To do so, he cultivated a friend in the War Office. Given his high status, that was easy enough. He didn’t need to know much, just enough to, with a minor comment, steer the French in the wrong direction, or misadvise them of the timing of events—that sort of thing. Nothing the French actually wanted to know about, just low-level events, very hard to check, very much open to change at the last minute.”

“And they continued to be taken in?”

“Yes. At that time, he’d been their ‘advisor’ for decades and had, as far as they knew, never let them down. He’d also encouraged them to think he was addicted to his collecting.” Nicholas shrugged. “I’m not sure that he’s attached to the snuffboxes themselves so much as that they represent each ‘triumph’ he’s had in misleading the French.”

“I take it,” Charles said, jumping ahead, “that the murderer has been sent here to, in effect, render punishment?”

Nicholas’s expression turned grim. “That seems to be the case.”

“You said they found out after Waterloo.” Penny’s head was reeling. “How? What happened?”

“Remember what it was like then,” Nicholas said, “just a year ago? The near frenzy, tales of the ‘Corsican Monster,’ and so on. My father was tired of it—he wanted an end. Especially when Granville insisted on enlisting.”

Penny straightened in her chair. “Your father came here, just before Granville left. He tried to talk Granville out of going—I heard him.”

Nicholas nodded. “He didn’t want Granville to go. He tried to convince him by sending a last message to the French, tried to get Granville to believe that that was enough for him to do. Granville ran the message, of course, but he wasn’t about to stop there. He still rode off the next day.”

“What was that last message?” Charles asked.

Nicholas met Charles’s eyes. He was patently exhausted, but gamely went on, “My father knew very little of Wellington’s plans. No one did. But through the years of the Peninsula campaigns, my father had, through misdirecting the French, learned a great deal of Wellington’s strategies. When it comes to predicting how people will react when faced with given situations, my sire possesses an innate flair. So he tried to predict Wellington.

“He had access to excellent maps. He studied the terrain, and accurately picked the battlefield. He wanted a snippet, something to divert French attention, just a tiny push in the wrong direction. And this time he didn’t care if they found him out, because he knew this time the dice were being rolled for the last time.”

“What did he tell them?” Charles was leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

Nicholas smiled. “He told them precious little, but he dropped one place name.”

Charles stared at him, simply stared. “Don’t tell me. It begins with an ‘H.’ ”

Penny glanced at Charles, surprised by the sheer awe in his voice. She looked back at Nicholas.

Who nodded. “He told them Hougoumont.”

Charles swore softly, at length, in French.

“Indeed.” Nicholas shook his head. “For all that I think he’s a madman—” He broke off, gestured. “What can you say?”

Charles swore again and surged to his feet. He paced back and forth, then halted and looked at Nicholas. “I was on the field, not near Hougoumont, but none of us could understand why Reille was so obsessed with taking what was simply a protective outpost.”

“Precisely. He thought it was more than an outpost, because he’d been led to think so. My father is a past master at planting ideas without ever actually stating them.”

“
Hell!
” Charles raked a hand through his hair. “The French will
never
forgive him for that.”

“No. And I don’t think it’s only that, either.”

Charles looked at Nicholas; after a moment, he nodded. “Once they had reason to suspect, they looked back, and realized…”

“With the passage of years there would now be enough information available—diplomats have a terrible tendency to write memoirs—to expose at least some of his early ‘advice’ as completely bogus.”

“And once they started looking…good God! Talk about rubbing salt into an open wound.” Charles slumped back in his chair; his expression grew distant and progressively stony. “That’s why,” he said softly, “they’ve sent an executioner.”

Nicholas studied his face, then asked, “Are you using that term figuratively, or literally?”

Charles met his gaze. “Literally.” He glanced at Penny, verified that although she was pale, she was her usual composed self. “In the world of informers and ‘advisors,’ there are such people.”

After a moment, he frowned at Nicholas. “Why didn’t you tell me this as soon as I informed you why I was here?”

Nicholas looked back at him. “Would you have believed it?”

When Charles didn’t immediately answer, Nicholas continued, “Think back to what you said last night. You had most of the information, and from it you deduced we, the Selbornes, had been passing secrets for decades. The evidence is the boxes—the pillboxes here and the snuffboxes my father has. Who would believe they’d all been paid for essentially by one man’s imagination? You know more than most about the business, yet you admitted you found it difficult to believe.”

Nicholas paused, then said, “There is no evidence my father passed concoctions and not the truth. It’s much easier to believe, given the boxes and their value, that he passed real information for decades, and for some reason has now fallen out with his ex-masters.”

Charles held his gaze, then straightened in his chair. “You’re right except for one piece of information, and that you don’t know.”

“What?”

“There’s evidence by default that whatever your father passed, it wasn’t real. My ex-commander, Dalziel, is very good as his job, and he never could find evidence of any F.O. secrets actually turning up on the other side.” Charles stood, and stretched; at long last, the whole jigsaw was in place, barring only the executioner’s identity. He looked at Nicholas. “If it comes to it, and I don’t believe it ever will, not now, I’m sure Dalziel will be able to trace, and prove, instances of your father’s misdirection.”

“Oh.” Nicholas blinked up at him, then asked, “So what do we do next?” He grimaced. “I hope you’re reading your ex-commander correctly because you haven’t seen the snuffboxes.”

“Knowing Dalziel, he’ll be more interested in talking with your father.”

“In that, I wish him joy. The old man drives me insane.”

Charles grinned. “He’ll probably take to Dalziel.” He studied Nicholas’s careworn face, and sobered. “When did you learn of”—he gestured—“your father’s wild game?”

Nicholas snorted and closed his eyes. “He never told me. He, Howard, and Granville all knew I wouldn’t approve, that I’d force them to stop, so they kept it their secret.”

“They didn’t tell me, or anyone else, either,” Penny said.

Nicholas nodded. “I found out last December when by chance I came upon him in the priest hole here. He was examining the pillboxes. Once I’d seen them, they had to be explained. That was the first I’d heard of it.”

Charles hesitated, then said, “Your father retired from the F.O. in ’08.”

Without opening his eyes, Nicholas nodded again. “But I was there by then, and senior enough to have dispatch boxes frequently with me at home, preparing them for the secretary or the minister, or analyzing the latest developments.” He sighed. “My father was always a night owl. He knew how to handle the boxes. It was easy to take a peek when everyone else was abed. I never guessed…”

“Why would you?” Charles paced. “When the murderer killed Gimby, you must have suspected what he was after. Why didn’t you leave?”

Eyes still closed, Nicholas’s lips twisted. “Granville was gone, and so was Howard. The French didn’t know me specifically, but I assumed whoever they’d sent would believe that, as my father’s son, I’d been a player in the game. Then when Mary was killed, I realized he must have been sent to get some of the boxes, too…” He shrugged, winced, and caught his breath as his wounds pulled. “It seemed wiser to stay, and give him a target here…and you were here, too.”

“Better here than at Amberly, or in London?”

Nicholas’s lips quirked, but he didn’t reply.

Charles looked at Penny, read her concern; Nicholas was wilting fast. “The next thing we need do is to lay the whole before Dalziel—we can work on that tomorrow. There’s nothing more to do tonight—we may as well retire.”

Nicholas nodded, opened his eyes, and struggled to sit up.

Sliding a hand beneath Nicholas’s arm, Charles helped him to his feet. Nicholas stood, almost swaying, then he gathered himself. “Thank you.”

Penny rose. She and Charles walked with Nicholas, one on either side, up the stairs. When they reached the top, Nicholas smiled, tired but faintly amused, and saluted them. “I can manage by myself from here.”

Impulsively, Penny put a hand on his arm, stretched up, and kissed his cheek. “Take care. Ring if you need help. Charles has guards doing the rounds all night, so don’t be surprised at the footsteps. We’ll see you at breakfast.”