Beauty and the Spy (18 page)

"We aren't
lovers
, it wasn't a
quarrel
, and it's been over for some time. That is, more accurately, he's no longer my fianc�'. When my father died, Douglas promptly jilted me, because his
mama
told him to, as the heir to a marquis couldn't
possibly
marry a penniless girl. And today he returned to inform me that he intends to marry my best friend, and to ask me to be his mistress."

This recitation seemed to strike the usually glib viscount dumb. Susannah was strangely gratified: So it
was
every bit as bad as she'd thought it was.

Kit remained thoughtfully quiet for some time. "Do you plan to cry?" He sounded curious.

"
No
," she said incredulously, as if the very idea was an insult.

He studied her carefully, the tiniest of furrows between his eyes. Then he fished about in his pocket, came up with a handkerchief and held it out to her.

She promptly burst into tears.

"I'm not
dis-dis-traught
, mind you," she choked out. She lowered herself fumblingly to a tipped log.

"Of course not," he agreed equably, calmly. He settled down next to her, stretching his long legs out.

"I'm bloody
fur-fur-ious
."

"As anyone would be."

"It's j-j-ust…
everything
that has h-happened, you see…"

"There's been a good deal."

"He's a bloody
c-c-cad
."

"The very bloodiest." Kit reached down, selected a twig thoughtfully from the floor of the woods. "Shall I call him out for you?" He said it idly, twiddling the twig between his fingers.

The sobs stopped almost immediately. Susannah slowly turned eyes round with astonishment on him. "You'd d-do that for me?"

Kit rolled and rolled the twig, as though he intended to start a fire with it "Perhaps I'd only make him bleed a little."

She gave a short laugh, half-bitter, half-startled, and dashed her knuckles roughly across her damp cheek. "You could do that? Not kill him, I mean… only wound him a bit? Wouldn't that be… well, difficult?"

He turned away from her for a moment. "Oh, yes," he said, finally. His smile was faint, a rueful, grim thing. "I could do that."

He turned back to find Susannah watching him speculatively, as if weighing her options. "He isn't worth the danger to you," she decided.

This made him smile. "Your concern for my safety is flattering, Miss Makepeace. But why you'd believe he'd pose any sort of danger to
me
... "

She turned away and unfurled the crumpled handkerchief in her fist; her thumbnail began worrying the embroidered initials on it, CMW, tracing them over and over. Only an occasional forlorn hiccup remained of her storm of tears.

"How do you know that
I'm
not dangerous?" she said suddenly, and slanted him a look from between her lashes.

A little burst of admiration warmed him; he felt like applauding.
Well done, Miss Makepeace. All is not lost if you can still flirt
. "Oh, I've no doubt you are," he assured her. "With stones, at least."

She smiled, a little. And then she sniffed, and dabbed with quiet dignity at her eyes. They said nothing for a time, simply sat together, fingers of sunlight piercing the trees and enclosing them in warmth and swirling dust.

A squirrel cluttered irritably overhead, sounding for all the world as if it were shaking its tiny fist at them.

"I slapped his face," she confided suddenly, in almost a whisper. Sounding half-ashamed, half-thrilled.

"Hard?" Mildly said.

"I'm afraid so."

"Good. Then you left him in no doubt as to how you feel about his… proposal."

"No," she said sadly. "No doubt."

She fell silent again, and he honored it. Odd how peaceful the aftermath of a storm of tears could be.

Susannah smoothed the sodden handkerchief out in her lap, over and over, as though preparing to lay a table on it "Have you ever been in love?" she asked softly.

He almost laughed. Ob, bow like a woman to ask such a question. Flippant words poised to leap from his tongue.

But then he turned and took in her mottled, flushed cheeks, her eyes still brilliant with tears. She was trying to discover, he realized, how much he knew of broken hearts.

He inhaled deeply, exhaled. All right, then.

"Yes," he told her gently.

Her eyes widened; she was seeing him anew, perhaps. And then she looked swiftly away, as if it was difficult to see him this way.

"Do you love Douglas?" He was surprised to find himself asking it, but suddenly it seemed imperative to know. He'd been prodding at this young woman for days, teasing her, unfolding her, in part for his own entertainment. And discovering, to his surprise and discomfiture, there was much more to her than he'd suspected.

But he'd never really given any thought to the content of her heart.

"I do," she said softly. "I did. That is, I thought I did. Which, I suppose, amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?"

He was struck silent by the bravery of her words. "Perhaps it does," he agreed softly.

He thought about the poor young buffoon who'd just been slapped and sent packing, a young man who thought the solution to his own misery was to keep Susannah�who loved friends and gaiety, who was more passionate and brave and unique than even she knew—in a house in London and attend her only every now and then. Like a pet parrot.

He must have tensed, for the twig he'd been twiddling snapped between his fingers.

Kit released the pieces of it to the floor of the woods, and then searched for words, something of comfort and use to her. God only knows, he wasn't any good with diplomacy, or soft platitudes. He only knew how to offer his own truths.

"I know it's difficult now, Susannah…" he began hesitantly, "but try… try not to think too badly of Douglas, if you can bear it Young men are so often at the mercy of their parents and society. I expect he thought he was making things better for born of you. And… well, he may always regret the loss of you."

She lifted her head and gazed at him, studying him like a map. He submitted to it without blinking, lost momentarily in the lovely complexity of her eyes. All those colors. Like the pond dappled in morning light, those eyes were, the shifting play of green and gold; tears had made spikes of her chestnut lashes. It was all he could not to brush a thumb across them, taste the salt of them, to ran the cool back of his hand against her flushed cheek, soothing it He wondered why it had begun to seem more unnatural
not
to touch her… than to touch her.

At that thought, something kicked sharply inside him, once. And men it unfurled, slowly, slowly, filling him with an ache both unutterably sweet… and as old as time.

It occurred to him then:
She might very well be right. She might just be a little dangerous after all
.

"Who is Caro?" she asked suddenly.

Hell
. He narrowed his eyes at her by way of reply, and she smiled, amused at him and pleased with herself for the ambush.

"Do you want to know the worst of it?" She paused, and took in a steadying breath, released it "When Douglas appeared this morning, I thought
…at last
, I
have
someone. I'll have my old life back. I'll have a family. Did you know that all I have of my old life are my clothes? And those only because I threatened a man with a vase for them."

"They're excellent dresses," he assured her gently.

She smiled at that, and shook her head much the way he shook her head at her every time she showed up for a day's work exquisitely groomed. "They certainly are," she agreed with him, in the spirit of accuracy. "Anyhow, when Douglas came today, I thought… well, he'll propose, and men I suppose I'll finally have a family of my own. Because a few days ago my aunt told me that my father… wasn't even my real father."

"James wasn't your father?" The quick intensity in his voice made Susannah start a little.

"No. I asked about my… my talent, as you suggested. And my aunt… well, all Aunt Frances knows is that my father went away one day, and when he returned, he had a very little girl with him:
me
. He never explained it to anyone, he never married as far as anyone knows, so you see, I've no idea at all who I truly am. And now…" She made a sound; it was almost a laugh, except laughs were seldom so ironic and heartbreaking. "I have no one."

But Kit felt the hair oh his arms lifting. He knew, somehow, the answer to his next question. "Susannah, the name of the town where your father found you… do you know it?"

"Gorringe. Named, apparently, by a duke who—"

"—was looking for a rhyme for 'orange.'"

She looked at him in surprise.

He
wasn't surprised.

He shifted his gaze into the leaves overhead instead. It was like looking up at a collection of puzzle pieces, the sharp-edged oak leaves bunched thickly but still cut through with light, and he thought the metaphor apt: For all he had was a collection of facts and coincidences, and he couldn't quite make them join; there were gaps between all of them. There was a girl sitting next to him who had lost everything twice over now. James had not been her father, and he had been killed after mentioning Morley to Kit And now it seemed as though someone was trying to either kill Susannah, or at the very least, thoroughly frighten her.

And Caroline had written him from Gorringe, shortly after she'd disappeared, no doubt with Thaddeus Morley.

"Here is my mother," Susannah said shyly. "You wanted to see her. I thought I'd show it to you today."

Very gently, she settled the miniature of her mother into his open palm.

A beautiful woman. It was Susannah's face, or very nearly.

Kit needed to look away from her to make his decision; up into the trees again.

It was maddening. The answer hovered on the periphery of his vision, but it dodged away every time he spun to face it Excitement and an overwhelming frustration surged.

Perhaps he
was
going mad. Perhaps his suspicion of Morley
was
unreasonable. Perhaps his instincts weren't instincts at all, but the delusions of a man too long immersed in the necessary, disciplined paranoia required of a spy.

And perhaps pigs fly.

The threat of Egypt hung over his head like the sword of Damocles. But when he looked again at Susannah Makepeace, he knew he didn't have a choice.

"Let's forget about drawing today, Susannah. I'll take you to Gorringe instead."

It was two hours to Gorringe over extravagantly rutted roads, which Kit suspected might be as effective as moats for keeping visitors away from the town. The journey might have gone more quickly on horseback, but he wasn't sure his ribs and arm could withstand the ride, and he preferred the relative shelter of a coach to making open targets of both himself and Susannah, since he was convinced someone was determined to hurt her. He was armed with a pistol tucked into his boot, another inside his coat alongside a sheathed knife, and the supreme confidence that he could best almost anyone—or two, or three—who attempted to accost them, despite the fact that his arm was freshly out of a sling.

At last, a short stone bridge arcing across a stream took them into the town, and Gorringe bloomed into sight before them.

Gorringe was a lovely surprise. Small, clean whitewashed houses, huddled together like gossiping neighbors along a cobblestone road that clattered very agreeably beneath the carriage wheels. Flower boxes burst with bright summer blooms; a few shops—a bookshop, a tavern, a cheesemaker—appeared on the main road. Against all odds, Gorringe seemed a neat and thriving little town, very self-contained and peaceful in its way.

"Does anything look familiar to you?" he said to Susannah. She'd gone very still, tense. She gripped the edge of the seat.

"I wish I could say yes," she answered hesitantly. "It's lovely, isn't it? It looks as though one could be happy here."

The wistfulness in her voice cut him. He'd always had the luxury of knowing he was part of an ancient lineage, that he had cousins and uncles and aunts and spread all over England. Many of his ancestors were complete reprobates, but those were offset by numerous noble Whitelaw achievements and a sprinkling of genuine heroes. He had two sisters, who both loved and annoyed him and were loved and annoyed by him in turn, a father, and a whole treasury of memories of his mother.

A flash of jeweled colors winked on the edge of his vision, and this was how he found the church: It presided over the small homes from the center of town, solemnly medieval and yet surprisingly elegant, inset with stained-glass windows. The windows were a bit of a surprise, as so many had been destroyed years ago, when the church was eager to eradicate all traces of popery. Hence, images of the Virgin Mary and the saints were scarce. Perhaps these windows had been spared because their subject matter was more neutral.

"I thought we'd begin with the church. They may have records of your birth, Susannah, if you were born here."

She didn't answer him. He could see the anticipation in the set of her jaw, in her pale lips. Her fist was closed possessively over the miniature of her mother. He said nothing more; he knew she was too tightly wound to welcome reassurances right now.

They proceeded up a path that cut through a tidy churchyard featuring headstones both ancient and new. Susannah glanced at them and quickly glanced away: her mother, or her real father, could very well be beneath one of them.

Kit secretly loved churches. The pews of this one glowed darkly, seasoned by centuries of prayer and polished by centuries of shifting bums, and the stained-glass windows threw brilliant green and red and blue shapes down onto the floor. He'd been right: These
were
simple windows: three of them on either side of the room, roses and lilies twined around the borders of each. The words faith, hope, and charity, were etched in extravagant Gothic lettering across each one.

"Hello." A politely cautious voice came from the apse. "May I help you?"

The vicar shuffled toward them. His head was tiny, his neck fleshy and boneless-looking, like a turtle's, and his vestments swamped him. When he was near them, his chin moved up and up and up, as though some internal machine was slowly levering it. His gaze finally arrived on Kit's face.

"Good afternoon, my lord," he said pleasantly. "You
are
a 'my lord,' aren't you, son? I'm the Vicar of Gorringe, Mr. Sumner."

The vicar had clearly reached that satisfying stage of life when he didn't particularly care what he said to anyone. Kit, personally, was looking forward to that particular stage.

"We are visitors to your fair town, Mr. Stunner. I was just noticing your windows—they're splendid."

"Aren't they? They aren't original, you know. A… generous benefactor donated them some years ago, along with our mausoleum behind the church. I suppose be believed he'd be buried there, but God had other plans for him, as He so often does. Is there something I can help you with today?"

Kit had noticed the special warmth given to the words "generous" and "benefactor."

"We rather hoped you might be able to assist us with a query. I've been known to be a generous benefactor, on occasion. I might even require a mausoleum some day."

"I'll certainly try to help, sir."

Susannah, in a mute form of blurting, thrust out her hand with the miniature in it Kit supplied the question: "Do you know this woman?"

Hesitating a moment, the vicar gently took the miniature and gazed down at it for an inordinately long time, perhaps leafing through decades of memories.

"lime does get to blurring, you see, at my age." His eyes peered up at them serenely. "Things, and places, and people all run together…" He drifted off, gazing toward the windows.

There was a long silence. Acting on a suspicion, Kit leaned forward and gave a discreet little sniff. Wine had most definitely been part of the vicar's midday meal.

"All run together… ?" he prompted politely, before Susannah's head shot from her neck like a cannonball out of impatience.

"Er, yes. All run together. But I aver, you're the
spit
of your mama, young lady."

The expression on Susannah's face was glorious. The words lit her from within like one of the stained-glass windows. Kit felt again a tiny, sweet clutch in his chest.

"You knew my mama?" Hope made Susannah's voice weak.

"Pretty, pretty thing, she was," the vicar mused dreamily. "Had a daughter baptized here. We didn't see much of your mother in church, otherwise, I'm afraid, and I cannot quite recall her name. It's been some years, though sometimes it feels like only yesterday. But then, of course it wasn't yesterday, at all, was it, because look at you—all grown." He beamed at them.

Kit hoped for the parishioners' sake that the curate gave the sermons, not the vicar. He hoped there
was
a curate.

"Anna," Susannah said excitedly. "Her name was Anna!"

The vicar frowned. "No, that wasn't it."

"But—" Susannah glanced at Kit who widened his eyes and gave a slight shake of his head, and she wisely decided not argue the point "But you
do
remember her? What was she like?"

"A pretty, pretty thing." The vicar sounded surprised to have to say it again.

Kit intervened quickly. "One more question for you, sir: Do you by any chance recall a woman by the name of Caroline Allston?"

He felt Susannah's eyes on him, quite as intense as a pair of torches.

"Caroline Allston… Caroline Allston…" the vicar mused. "Can't say that I do. Was she pretty?" he asked hopefully.

"Very." Well, it was true, wasn't it? And "pretty" did seem to be the thing that branded someone into the vicar's memory. "Dark hair, dark eyes, fair skin. Very difficult to forget once you saw her. Was perhaps about eighteen years old when she first lived in Gorringe."

"Miss Allston does sound pretty, sir. But no, I cannot recall anyone specifically by that name. You're welcome to look at the records, as you don't look the sort to steal them."

Damned with faint praise
. The vicar led them back to a room that housed the church records: shelves of books recording births, deaths, marriages, and baptisms—any occasion the church at Gorringe had marked.

"I'll leave you to it, then. I ask that you come to see me before you leave so that I may lock up after you."

"When were you born, Susannah, do you know? How old are you?" Kit was tracing a finger over the spines of the registries, looking for likely years.

Susannah didn't speak for a moment. Her mind was obsessively playing and replaying his words of five minutes ago. And finally she could contain them no longer.

"'Was she pretty?'" she mimicked the vicar's creaky tones. "'
Very,'"
she answered, in a very good imitation of the viscount's own baritone.

Kit snorted a laugh.

But really, Kit had waxed almost lyrical about Caroline Allston—
Cam
, no doubt. Susannah wondered if Caro was carved on the viscount's heart the way it was on the oak, scarred and thick with age.

"I'm twenty—at least I thought I was," she said it coolly, though why she thought she was entitled to coolness was beyond her understanding.

"And what day do you normally celebrate your birthday?" he said, as though her tone hadn't changed at all.

"The twelfth of August."

"Soon, then," he said cheerfully.

Ah, now he was trying to distract her. And she did love birthdays. Thought this pending birthday might be a trifle less climactic than her others, given that she'd held a grand party and received the gift of a horse for her last one.

Something occurred to her that swept petty jealousy right from her head.

"What if my name isn't really Susannah?" The thought horrified her. "What if my father—that is, James Makepeace—changed it? What if my name is Myrtle, or Agnes, or—"

"Something splendid or exotic, like Alexandra, or Katarina?"

Suddenly she felt strangely light-headed. "I could be anyone at all," she murmured, half to herself. "Anyone."

She felt oddly formless, unanchored, as though she could drift away or be absorbed into the air like vapor if she didn't soon find some bit of information, an actual name, or a mother, or a date of birth, to serve as ballast.

"Are you going to faint?"

Kit was watching her intently; he sounded more curious than concerned. As though she were a mystery to analyze, rather like voles. She had to admit, however, that she found this approach bracing. It made every surprise or upset or triumph seem merely part of an interesting puzzle, and it sobered her rather quickly.

"No."

He regarded her solemnly another moment, ascertaining the truth of this. Then he gave her the sort of smile she could make a crotch of forever reassuring, warm as an arc of light.

Someday she might not blush when he smiled at her. Today would not be the day.

They returned to working in silence for a time, paging through the registries, running their fingers along the names. Fortunately Gorringe was a small town. Unfortunately, a good half of the women in the town seemed to have been named Anna, and they all seemed to have been abundantly fertile. None yet had given birth to a Susannah.

"There another names in the world," Susannah groused. "Mary—perfectly acceptable name. Martha. There's another one."

"Myrtle," Kit suggested absently from over his book.

"Precisely," Susannah agreed. "You'd think these people would have heard of one or two of them."

The faded writing and poor light in the room taxed their eyes as they pored over the lists of names, whole lives, hundreds of them, summarized by three or four simple notations: birth, marriage, more births, death. Despite the business at hand, Susannah's thoughts were evenly divided along two tracks, when really they should have been focused on the one.

And men, because she couldn't help it:

"
'Difficult to forget,'"
she mimicked. It was a spot-on imitation of Kit's low, refined voice.

Kit looked up from his work and stared at her. "
Is
something troubling you, Miss Makepeace?" he asked mildly.

Oh, she hated mat mild tone. "
Who
is Caro? And why did you ask about her?"

He returned his head to the book he was perusing. "You ask that almost as though you expect me to answer it" He sounded amused, distracted. Dismissive.

And this infuriated her. "You know everything about me—"

"Correction: We know nothing at all about you."

"You know what I mean! And
I
have a reason. You are simply secretive because… you are
afraid
to be otherwise. You hide from
everything
."

His head slowly, slowly lifted up.

I
take it back
! she wanted to say immediately, because his expression frightened her. His eyes fairly glittered, hot and blue; he was furious, this time at her. But something taut in his face made her think that she had somehow hurt him, too. Perhaps even… unnerved him. As though she had somehow unwittingly reached a place in him he didn't know how to defend, and so he could only offer up this silence.

She couldn't look away. He
wouldn't
look away.

When he finally spoke, she flinched. But his words weren't the kind she'd been expecting.

"'August of 1799,'" he said. '"Born to Anna Smith: Susannah Faith.'"

Her heart nearly stopped. "What?
Where
? I… I exist!"

She forgot she was frightened of him and scurried over to his side, and his posture eased as he moved aside to allow her to read the entry. "Who was my father?"