Amanda Scott (31 page)

Turning upon her heel, she pushed past her astonished brother and strode straight toward the doorway, forcing Marwyn to step quickly to one side to let her pass. As she crossed the gallery she heard Jocelyn say, “What the devil—?” but the rest of his words were lost to her as she ran up the curving stairway behind the Ionic screen to the second floor. Once inside her own bedchamber, she slammed the door behind her and strode quickly across to the window, her breasts heaving with anger, disappointment, and dismay.

Tears filled her eyes, but she brushed them furiously away. She would not cry. Nothing Sir Antony had done was worth crying about. Of course, if she cared about him, then perhaps she might be more upset. But she didn’t care. Not in the slightest. She told herself so over and over again as she peered through watery mist, sobbing deep racking sobs and trying to pretend she was merely observing the view from her window. A moment later she realized her hands were clenched into two fists and pressed into her skirt, and she forcibly relaxed them. Then it was necessary to brush the tears from her eyes again. Still angry but breathing more calmly, she turned to search her dressing table for a proper handkerchief. All she could find was a tiny dab of lace that was of no use to her at all.

She ignored the first knock at her door. It was no more than a light tap and deserved to go unheard, although she believed it must be Lady Cadogan or Eliza returned from the dressmaker and wishful to know what all the commotion was about. The second knock was firmer, clearly not the knock of a feminine hand. Meriel bit her lip.

“Go away, Joss,” she said gruffly.

“It isn’t Joss.”

Meriel stared at the door, then glanced quickly around to assure herself that she was truly in her own bedchamber. The knock came again, harder yet, and she stepped swiftly back toward the window, coming up hard against the little table in the embrasure. It rocked, and she grabbed at it to keep it from falling over.

There was panic in her voice. “You cannot come in here. Whatever are you thinking about? You ought not even to be on this floor. Go away!”

“I am coming in, Meriel.”

“You can’t!” she shrieked as the handle began to turn. Torn between the urge to fling herself at that door and an equally strong urge to flee, though she knew not where, she stood where she was, clutching at the table behind her and watching.

The door opened, and Sir Antony stepped inside, firmly shutting it behind him. “As you see,” he said, “I can do precisely as I say I will do.”

“My brother will kill you,” she muttered.

“I sincerely hope he will not try. His experiences in the wilds of America notwithstanding, I can give him twenty or thirty pounds and a few years of practice in the art of self-defense.” He was not smiling, but there was a look of understanding in his eyes. “He will not interfere, my dear. The task was not an easy one, but I have convinced him that to do so would serve no good purpose. I left him, in fact, trying to keep your aunt in hand. She and your sister have returned from their expedition to Bond Street, and Lady Cadogan, I am persuaded, would prove to be a much more formidable opponent than Tallyn.”

“You choose to jest, sir, but what you have done is no laughing matter.”

“I will not pretend to misunderstand you, Meri,” he said gently. “I do not think you refer to my invasion of your bedchamber. May I sit?”

“As you please.” She gestured toward the two chairs on either side of the little table behind her and moved to sit in one of them, still watching him warily. “I do not know what you mean to accomplish, Sir Antony, but I shall never forgive you for what you have done today.”

He did smile then. “I hope you will at least listen to me.”

“Very well,” she replied ungraciously, “though I cannot think what you might say to the purpose.”

“I think you might if you give it some thought,” he said easily. “Carruthers told me he explained to you about the department we both worked for.” When she nodded, he continued, “It is unfortunate that over the last century or so, our upper classes have developed an absurdly sanctimonious attitude toward the gathering of information about our enemies. ’Tis sheer foolhardiness to pretend that we are above that sort of thing, when our survival as a nation depends upon seeing the matter in a clearer light. Do not think, however, that I was anything other than opposed to the notion of employing an unsuspecting female to deliver that first message to Leclerc.”

“Why did you not carry it yourself, if you were working for Mr. Murray?”

“I had already done a great deal, and it was feared that I had aroused a suspicion in some quarters by my frequent, often brief trips into France. Though I managed to see you quickly through the French customs, you will recall that I was not so fortunate myself. Indeed, I was thoroughly searched, as was my luggage. I might well have carried Murray’s message in my head, as I have done before, but we could not be certain I would not be detained. Then, too, we wished to see if our suspicions were correct. As you know, they were. I was assaulted on board the
Albion
.”

“By your own valet.” She grimaced. “Did you suspect him at once?”

He shrugged. “I was certain of it when I realized I had not been robbed, but I had suspected him even before that. My previous man left without notice, and Trent appeared rather too providentially to take his place, you see. I might have turned him away, but we thought it would be more educational to have him where we might watch him. With Fouché out of favor as he was, we wanted to know just what the French would be up to.”

“Fouché is not so out of favor as you thought,” Meriel said quietly. “He may no longer be minister of police, but he is just as active as before. He has organized an entire network of spies here in England, and some sort of royalist plot appears to be in jeopardy. Here, I will show you.” She got up and went to get the letter out of her reticule. Handing it to him, she said, “I doubt not that Peter Trent is one of Fouché’s agents.”

Sir Antony nodded. “His real name is Pierre Truquer. We were able to learn quite a lot about him in France.”

“But why did he attack you on deck? He might just as well have done so at any time in your cabin.”

“He did not sleep in my cabin,” Sir Antony said. “Nor did I, if you will recall, when we were aboard the
Camden
. Your sister Gwenyth did. And I took good care, as well, never to let him take me unawares. Once he had searched my trunks, as he had ample opportunity to do, I suppose he thought he must search my person, and it never occurred to him, of course, that a woman would have the message he searched for. I daresay he never suspected you until your message was delivered to my house.”

“He said I must have got a message from Père Leclerc. Does that mean the priest is in danger?”

“No, for Trent cannot be certain, and no one else knows anything. Apparently the soldiers acted upon suspicion and nothing more. They were gone before we arrived, but the good father was not, I believe, anticipating an arrest. Trent merely guessed from your message to me today that you were somehow involved in the business. I daresay he might have thought before that if you had been sent to the priest to help you get out of France, it must be because the priest was an English agent. He was with Carruthers and me, but he must have realized there was no time for a message to have been passed then, for once I learned you were somewhere on the river between Rouen and Le Havre, I wasted no time in an attempt to speak further with the good father. We left on the instant. For that matter, Leclerc didn’t so much as try to tell me there was a message, though I might have guessed it for myself had I chosen to consider the matter.”

“How?” she asked, now drawn into his story despite herself.

He grimaced. “You do not think you were meant to act as courier all over France, do you? Leclerc brought you his letter in the innyard and presented it to you right under my nose. Short of telling you the whole and demanding that you give me his letter, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Fortunately Trent did not see you receive the letter. I had set matters in hand to gather evidence against him, but until I did, I did not wish to do other than give him his head.”

“You were not so surprised as you pretended to be to find Mr. Carruthers in Mantes-de-Jolie, then?”

He shook his head. “He was searching Trent’s things. Pocketed a few of my belongings in order to make it look as though he were a thief if Trent walked in upon him. Instead, you captured him with Trent right there to see you. I was afraid, despite everything, that Trent might suspect you were carrying information, and I can tell you I was in a quandary, wondering if you’d be safer if I left you to travel alone and carried Trent away with me. I decided at last that it was better to know the enemy and to keep you under my eye. And that was also why Carruthers joined the party. Two of us to keep an eye on Trent seemed safer than one. There was also your reputation to consider. To travel into Paris under my protection alone might have looked odd even to your delightful sister. And when we reached Paris and you had seen Deguise, I assumed your involvement was ended. I was wrong, clearly, but until you questioned me about invisible inks and Carruthers told me about your interview with him, I did not realize that either Deguise or Leclerc had decided to use you again to send messages back to England.” He smiled ruefully. “Carruthers had the devil of a time to keep you from giving this damned letter into his keeping, you know.”

“You wanted it for bait.”

“We did. Once we decided such a letter must exist, we determined to make Trent attempt to get hold of it. Finding it in his keeping was all we hoped for. It never occurred to me, my little idiot, that you would refuse to give it to him if he asked you for it. That, may I tell you, was quite as stupid as carrying your British passport right in your reticule while you were jauntering across France.”

She stared at him. “Was that why you were vexed with me when we reached England? I remember wondering. I never thought about it, but I see now that we might have had a bad moment or two if any of those soldiers had insisted upon searching us.”

“You might well say so. But to get back to today, I also misjudged Trent, and for that I must apologize. The thought that he would be so stupid as to attempt to murder you in your brother’s house with a dozen servants nearby simply never entered my head. I do realize, by the by,” he added, regarding her rather sternly, “that you take great pride in your independence of spirit, but why did you not scream for help at once?”

A rueful smile touched her lips. “I could not,” she said. “When first he grabbed me, I seemed to have no voice, and by the time I might have screamed, his knife was at my throat. I believed he meant it when he said he would kill me.”

“Than what possessed you to struggle with him at all?”

“I didn’t. I found that the statue was within my reach and I simply hit him with it.”

He got to his feet, reaching for her. Though she had a strong notion he meant to shake her, she made no attempt to elude his grasp, but let him pull her from her chair. When she stood before him, however, she found that her courage had deserted her. She could not make herself look higher than the center button of his waistcoat.

“It is done now, Meri,” he said quietly. “Have I put myself entirely beyond forgiveness?”

She caught her lip between her teeth, wondering how it was that she could still misjudge his temper, and how it was that the mere sound of his voice could stir a warm glow within her body. After a small silence when he made no effort to press her for an answer, she looked up at him to find that he was regarding her with a peculiar tension in his demeanor.

“Perhaps not altogether beyond it, sir,” she said, smiling at him and raising a hand to smooth away the tension from his face. “I believe you wished only to protect me.”

He caught her hand in his and pressed it to his lips. A moment later she was in his arms again, and there was nothing languid about his embrace. Nor was his kiss as gentle as the last time he had kissed her. Unfamiliar but entirely delightful sensations threatened to overwhelm her. She made one feeble attempt to push him away, and then, finding it impossible, grasped his coat with both hands and clung to him, responding with a fierce passion to match his own.

“Protection was not all I had in mind,” he murmured against her cheek. “I fell in love with you on the coastal packet when I discovered you had thrown coal all over the floor of the ladies’ saloon.”

“I didn’t!” she protested.

“But you did,” he reminded her, “when Gwenyth was ill.”

“Oh, dear, so I did,” she said somewhat distractedly. “What you must have thought of me! I keep expecting you to be angry or at least irritated by things I did—traveling alone, carrying a pistol, and the like—only you never were.”

“I was, on more than one occasion,” he countered, “but the feelings never lasted. I loved you for what you are, my sweet. ’Twould be folly to seek to change you.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s twice you have mentioned love, sir. I meant only to enjoy a mild flirtation, but I’m afraid I have fallen in love with you too. What on earth shall we do?”

He held her away from him, looking down at her in amusement. “Considering that your brother was convinced to allow me to come up here only by virtue of his strong conviction that I mean to offer for your hand, I think we had better get married, don’t you?”

“But I cannot. The children—”

“Meri,” he said gently, drawing her close again, “Tallyn is perfectly capable of looking after them, and it is his duty now, not yours. You will, I trust, soon have children of your own to look after. The only thing I cannot promise you is a mountain to match your Cader Idris. Is that an obstacle too great for us to overcome, my love?”

She knew he was right about the children. Jocelyn handled them well, and he would look after Plas Tallyn too. Her duties were done. As her body stirred in response to Sir Antony’s gentle, idle caresses, she realized that she was ready to take on new duties. She looked up into his face, imagining him striding beside her up the slopes of Cader Idris. The vision came easily to her mind, and she realized that she wanted to show him all her favorite views along the way. She smiled. “I suppose we may visit Wales from time to time, sir, may we not?”