Beauty and the Spy (4 page)

"Your folio. Your nature folio." Said with deceptive innocence. "Like the work undertaken by the recently departed Mr. Joseph Banks. There's a recognized need now to document the flora and fauna in the English countryside, and the Barnstable region has heretofore been neglected. We've been looking for just the man to do it, and I think that man is
you
. You will take notes, make sketches. And you'll live at The Roses while you do it. It was your mother's favorite of our homes, as you recall, and it's been all but neglected in recent years."

Had his father just suffered a stroke? "Banks was a
naturalist
," Kit explained slowly. "I'm a
spy
."

"Yes, well, that's what you became after you shot your friend over that wild girl years ago and I packed you off into the military—"

"It was a
duel
," Kit muttered. "I was
seventeen
."

"—but when you were a very young boy, Christopher, you wanted to be a naturalist."

Kit couldn't believe his ears. "Yes. For about five
minutes
."

But the earl appeared to have drifted into some kind of reverie. "Don't you remember? Up trees, following squirrels and deer, bringing home snakes, nests, things of that sort. Always observing. Swimming at the pond. Making little sketches. Your mother thought it was adorable. And wasn't there a rare mouse in the region?"

"Vole. There's a rare
vole
in the region," Kit said testily.

"You see? You know all about it." The earl said delightedly, as if this proved his point.

All at once, with a sinking feeling, Kit comprehended. "Ah," he said flatly. "I see. I'm to be exiled regardless."

The earl gave him a smile that managed to be sunny and evil all at once. "Now you're catching on."

"You can't…
exile
me simply because I called a man an idiot."

His father regarded him in placid silence.

"Or for calling a man… a bastard."

Serene as a lake, his father's silence.

"Or for… womanizing?" Kit faltered.

"Oh, I can," the earl disagreed cheerfully. "For all of them. I warned you once before, Christopher. You now have two choices: you may travel to Barnstable and begin work on the folio, or you can leave for Egypt. Choose."

His father, Kit realized, was deadly serious. And when his father was deadly serious, no amount of reasoning could penetrate his resolve, which was how Kit had found himself installed in a military academy with head-spinning speed after his duel so many years ago. Kit stared at the earl, and his mind's eyes drew him a painfully vivid picture of the hard-won countess, and all of the myriad, glorious pleasures and comforts of the
ton
, shrinking inexorably from view as his ship drifted from English shores.

And as for Barnstable and The Roses… well, Barnstable was just a few hours' hard ride from London, but it might as well have been Egypt, simply because it wasn't London.

"You
need
me here. I'm the best agent the crown has."

He was absurdly gratified when his father didn't disagree with this patently unprovable statement. But he also didn't relent.

"Egypt or Barnstable, Christopher. And if you choose Barnstable, I want you to make a thorough job of that folio. Every plant, every creature… I want them carefully, lovingly documented. You have one month in which to accomplish it, after which we shall review your continuance in his Majesty's Secret Service. If I hear of you womanizing, if I hear of you doing
anything
other than working on your assignment, if I see you in London during that time, if I hear of you being anywhere
near
London… I will personally escort you on to a ship bound for Egypt where you will then take up a quiet little government post Do I make myself clear?"

Silence fell like a gavel.

Kit decided he could at least do this with a little dignity. "I choose Barnstable," he said quietly.

"Good. I should miss you if you went to Egypt."

And then his bloody father actually
smiled
.

Kit would not be softened by fatherly expressions of affection. "If I complete the assignment to your satisfaction before a month is over?"

"You may return," his father said placidly. "
If
you're confident you've completed it to my satisfaction. You can take a day to prepare for your journey. And now, you may go."

Kit pushed back his chair and stood—all gingerly, of course.

"And son…" his father's voice was idle in a way that told Kit his next words were in no way meant idly. "I don't need to tell you again to leave the issue of Morley alone, do I?"

His father knew him too well. "Of course not sir. I thought it was understood."

"You always were a clever boy, Christopher."

The large ormolu library clock measured off seconds of incredulity.

"With… without resources?" Susannah repeated, just in case she hadn't heard her father's solicitor correctly.

"Penniless." Mr. Dinwiddy mercilessly enunciated each syllable. "That's what 'without resources' means, Miss Makepeace."

Bewildered, Susannah swiveled her head about the library, as if searching for help, for some clue to the man her father had been.

His throat had been cut, they said. Such a violent, dramatic punctuation mark to a life so quietly led. And all morning Susannah had graciously accepted murmured condolences from mourners, wishing she could summon tears, or a smile—but there was only this dull grief that cast a strange haze over her senses. Grief over the loss of a man who had never been anything but kind to her. And grief over the fact that she would now never truly know him.

She doubted it was the sort of grief that a daughter ought to feel for a father, the kind that welled up out of a broken heart. And so mingling with the grief was guilt and, if she were being perfectly honest with herself, anger, too. She'd
wanted
to know him. She'd
wanted
to love him.

He hadn't allowed it.

"Miss Makepeace?" Mr. Dinwiddy's voice came to her.

She swiveled back to him. "Penniless? But… I don't understand. How—that is to say—"

"The goodwill of shopkeepers and merchants has enabled your father to purchase almost everything in this house—including your clothing—on credit for years now. The servants have been paid, but no other creditors have�and
I
will not be," he added ruefully. "Your father's properties and furnishings will be confiscated immediately to satisfy his debts. I suggest you vacate the premises as soon as possible."

Penniless
. The word throbbed in her head, and she couldn't get a proper breath. She stared almost unseeingly at Mr. Dinwiddy, and her mourning gown—beautifully cut and very dear, and apparently unpaid for—suddenly seemed sewn from lead.

Somehow a fly had found its way into the library, and it was orbiting Mr. Dinwiddy's shiny head. Susannah watched, half-hypnotized.

Mr. Dinwiddy's face was impassive. And then his head creaked to a tilt, and his expression became oddly… considering.

"Have you any relatives who will take you in, Miss Makepeace? No others are mentioned in your father's will."

"I don't… I'm not…" A strange ringing in her ears frightened her.
Am I going to faint
? She had never before fainted in her life, though once or twice she'd feigned light-headedness at a ball in order to get a moment alone in a garden with Douglas. And because it clearly made Douglas feel manly.

The fly decided to settle above Mr. Dinwiddy's right ear. Mr. Dinwiddy swiped a palm over his perspiring dome, disturbing it; it resignedly resumed its lazy circling. The solicitor cleared his throat. "Perhaps, Miss Makepeace, you and I can come to… an arrangement."

"'Arrangement'?" Hope animated Susannah briefly. "Arrangement" seemed a better word than "penniless."

"I have a home in London in which you may live in exchange for…" He paused. "Entertaining me… once or twice a week."

Susannah frowned a little, puzzled.

Mr. Dinwiddy waited, his eyes tiny and bright behind his spectacles.

When the meaning of his words at last took hold, she leaped to her feet and backed away as though the solicitor had suddenly burst into flame.

"You—how—how
dare
you!" she choked out. Her face burned.

The solicitor shrugged.
Shrugged
!

Susannah drew a long shuddering breath and drew herself up to her full height. "I assure you I will be
well
cared for, Mr. Dinwiddy. My fianc� is the son of Marquis Graydon. And once I tell him of your… your…
suggestion
, no doubt he will call you out."

"Oh,
no
doubt." But the solicitor sounded more weary than sarcastic. And then he rose from his chair with a leisureliness that shook Susannah's confidence to the core. "Good day, Miss Makepeace. You may wish to keep my card"—he extended it; Susannah jerked her head away and balled her hands into fists, as though she feared one of them might betray her and reach for it—"in case you find your fianc6 other than… gallant."

"But… but… Mama
said
you would understand, Susannah."

Douglas stood before her, his fingers curled whitely into his hat, his face drawn with distress. And usually when Douglas showed any signs of distress, Susannah would comfort him, place a soothing palm against his cheek, perhaps, for that was the sort of thing fianc�s did for one another. But now—

"Pardon us, miss! Step lively, now!" boomed a cheerful cockney voice. Two stocky, booted men were staggering across the marble floors bent under the weight of the pianoforte. Susannah stepped aside; briefly she saw her own reflection, distorted and pale, in the instrument's polished surface, before it vanished out the door, forever.

Douglas threw a quick, longing look over his shoulder toward the door. He'd done that a few too many times in the last five minutes.

"Douglas—" She heard the plea in her voice and stopped. She was
damned
if she would beg. She'd never begged for anything in her life.

Damned
. Now there was a word she had never before included in her vocabulary.

But one needed the fortification of such words when one has just been jilted.

Susannah's mind reeled with the sheer
speed
of the spread of the news—
Susannah Makepeace is penniless
�as if the fly orbiting Mr. Dinwiddy had in fact been a spy for all the mamas in the area. Douglas's own mama had leaped so quickly into action she might as well have been whisking him away from the plague.

"
Whoop
! Lift yer feet for me, miss, there ye are luv, my thanks." Two more men were rolling up the soft parlor carpet as merrily as if they were playing with a hoop and stick. They hoisted the great tube of it up under their arms and wended their way toward the door, and the carpet's heavy fringe trailed across the curve of a bulbous cream-and-blue Chinese vase, like fingers dragged against the cheek of a lover. The vase wobbled threateningly on its pedestal once, twice… it stilled. Susannah exhaled. She was glad it hadn't broken.

She might need to hurl it at Douglas.

"It's… it's for the best, Susannah." Quoting his mama again, no doubt.

"How, Douglas? Please explain to me
how
it can possibly be for the best? Or perhaps"—she added bitterly, and she could not recall saying
anything
bitterly before in her life—"you should have your mama come explain it to me."

They stared at one another wretchedly as cheerful cockney voices drifted in from the courtyard, where the crewmen were loading carts with the things she'd taken for granted since she was a girl. Carpets, chandeliers, candelabras, books, settees, beds.

Her life.

"Don't do this, Douglas," she cried softly, despising the hint of plea in her voice. "I love you. And you love me, I
know
you do."

Douglas made a little sound in his throat then, and took a sudden step toward her, his hand outstretched in… in what? Supplication? Comfort? Farewell? Whatever it was, he apparently thought better of it, for he dropped his hand and shook his head roughly, as though clearing his mind of her. And then he turned abruptly and went the way of the pianoforte and the parlor rug, smashing his hat down on his head as he went.

He never looked back.

Susannah stared after him. She could feel what surely must be the jagged edges of her heart clogging her throat, and her hand went up to touch it there.

"Make way, miss, thank ye kindly!"

A man was marching down the stairs, his arms piled high with her beautiful gowns. The silks and velvets and muslins slipped and slid in his grasp, and suddenly, to Susannah, they all seemed like kidnap victims struggling to escape.

"Put… those… down.
Now
."

The glacial ring of her own voice strengthened her�she hadn't know she'd had such a voice at her disposal, and it certainly seemed to give that big man pause. He froze midstep and stared at her wide-eyed.

"But miss, we've orders to take all of—"

She seized the heavy vase from its pedestal and hoisted it slowly, meaningfully, over her head. The man's eyes followed it up there warily.

"You have until the count of three." Every word chiseled from ice.

He raised a brow and took the tiniest step forward, daring her. Susannah brandished the vase warningly.

"One… " she hissed. "Two…"

"Susannah?"

Susannah turned her head swiftly. Amelia stood in the doorway, her dinner-plate eyes bulging with astonishment.

There was a rustle from the stairs.

Susannah swiveled. "
Three
!" She drew the vase back.

"All right, all right, no need to take on so, miss." Surrendering, the man lowered his bundle of dresses to the stairs; the fabrics settled there with a sound like a collective sigh of relief. "I'll just move on, shall I?" He lifted his hands placatingly.

Susannah lowered the vase and hugged it to her chest, and the man, seeing that whatever demon had possessed her a minute ago had now vacated, clambered confidently down the remainder of the stairs until he stood before her.

"And I'll just take that, too, shall I?" he said gently.

Susannah sighed and handed the vase to him, and he took it out the door, whistling, the very picture of no hard feelings.

She sank down on the stairs and covered her face in her hands, breathing hard, horrified and strangely exhilarated all at once. Her father's death had unleashed a veritable Pandora's box of emotions, all of them interesting, none of them pleasant.

She'd just threatened a man with a
vase
over
dresses
.

Amelia was silent, and at first Susannah thought she might have left. But then she saw the toes of her friend's shoes through cracks in between her fingers: blue kid walking boots.

"Do you suppose it was pride, Amelia?" she finally asked, pulling her hands away from her face.

"Pride?" Amelia was staring down at her, looking distinctly nervous.

"As in, 'goeth before a fall.'" Susannah quoted bitterly. It seemed as sensible a reason as any for the sudden collapse of her life.

Alarmed, Amelia unconsciously touched a hand to her blond curls. "
Were
you proud, Susannah?"

"Yes," Susannah said emphatically and a little cruelly, in case Amelia felt a little
too
proud of those blond curls and those blue kid walking boots. Amelia's hand flew from her hair and began to fuss with her skirt instead.

There was a silence. "What are you going to do?" Amelia all but whispered, finally.

"I—" Susannah stopped.

The servants had been tendering their notices for days now. Good servants were hard to come by, and they'd all found new jobs easily enough; one by one they'd bid her fond but pragmatic farewells.
They
were all on to new lives in new places. But as for Susannah…

Well, she knew how to run a large household. That was, she knew how to instruct
servants
how to run a big household. She wasn't qualified enough to be a governess, really, unless one wanted one's daughters tutored in dancing and the number of flounces considered most stylish in 1820. In short, she hadn't the faintest idea what she would do.

Of course, there was always Mr. Dinwiddy's offer.

Susannah was suffused with a fresh wave of hate.

Until a few days ago, her life had been one long sunny afternoon, a song in a major key. And now… soon she wouldn't even have a place to live. Her palms went clammy, and she rubbed them against her skirt. Pride might very well have led to her fall, but it was the only remaining timber of her life, and she clutched it to her. Damned if she would give Amelia any sort of reply.

Damned
. She was growing fond of that word.

"And Douglas… ?" Amelia added carefully, when Susannah remained silent.

Something in Amelia's tone made Susannah look intently at her, and for the first time ever she found the face of the eminently transparent Amelia Henfrey… closed.

So this is why she came today. She knows. She just wanted to make certain
. Susannah wondered if Douglas's mama had sent a note to Amelia's mama:
There's a position opening up
…

Before she could reply, Mrs. Dalton appeared, dressed for traveling in sensible dark clothing. She was the last of the current household members to leave and she, too, had acquired another young lady to oversee and plague with her dutifully judging presence. "This is for you, Miss Susannah, as a farewell," she said briskly, handing over a sampler.

Susannah read it: charity begins at home. "Thank you, Mrs. Dalton," she said, with the irony the gift deserved.

Mrs. Dalton nodded modestly. "And this arrived for you, too, Miss Susannah, in the post. From a Mrs. Frances Perriman in Barnstable." She extended a gloved hand holding a letter.

Susannah had no idea who Mrs. Frances Perriman in Barnstable might be, but the letter was indeed addressed to Miss Susannah Makepeace. And Susannah felt so alone in the world that she decided that Mrs. Frances Perriman, whoever she was, was her new best friend.