Circle of Spies (16 page)

Heat welcomed them in the room the man ducked into, along with golden light that showed him more of Mister's face. Movement then stole his attention, and he looked over to find a grandmotherly woman turning from her chair at a small desk.

She smiled, as if it were perfectly normal for her husband to bring home strangers in the middle of the night.

“Sweet, this is Slade Osborne.” The old man made a few strange motions with his hands and headed for the fireplace. A tin percolator sat in the coals. “Oz, the missus to my mister.”

Oz? They were all of a sudden on such friendly terms that he got a nickname?

The missus apparently thought nothing of it. She stood with that same serene smile and came forward with her hands extended, leaving him little choice but to take them. “So good to meet you, Mr. Osborne. You may call me Grandmama.”

He heard England in her voice. A strange thing, given her husband's talk of fighting off the British in the War of 1812. But he wasn't about to say anything about that, not when her silk-soft fingers slid into his and gripped his hands tight. Welcome and acceptance shone from her eyes.

“Grandmama.” Yet the word sounded cynical on his lips. His mother would slap him upside the head for such a tone. He made an effort to soften it. “Good to meet you. You can call me Slade.”

The mister held out a mug of steaming coffee from the percolator. The missus let go of his hands so he could reach for it.

“Have a seat, son.”

Seeing no other worthwhile alternative, he sidled to the chaise and sat, taking in every detail he could find in the hopes that it would help him discover, later, where and with whom he was. The fabric of the chaise was worn soft, its pattern decidedly Turkish.

Overtop the fireplace a painting caught his eye, one of a ship with
Masquerade
on the hull tossing upon the waves. A storm was coming up behind it, but the captain who stood with spyglass in hand showed no signs of concern. And he looked more than a little like the gent before him. Imagination or truth that he had sailed?

The missus turned back to her desk and what looked to be drawing rather than writing. She adjusted her hoop as she sat, the three pearls
of her necklace swaying with the motion and then coming to a rest against her collar.

Slade took a sip of his coffee and focused on the man. The silence spun out. The old man folded himself into a chair and just stared at him. After a snapping two minutes, Slade cleared his throat and set his cup on the table beside the chaise. “Well? You said you wanted to talk with me.”

The old man gave him half a smile. “I
did
talk with you.”

“We exchanged three sentences.”

From the desk, the woman laughed. “Rest easy, Slade dear. If you hadn't measured up, he wouldn't have brought you here.”

This night just kept getting stranger. “So…”

The mister chuckled and pushed out of his chair again. “Would you hand me the prayer book, sweet?”

Grandmama bent down with a happy bounce, as if she had been waiting for just that request, and pulled open a drawer. After withdrawing a crude leather book that looked old as Methuselah, she closed it again.

Her husband took it from her and rested a hand on her shoulder. Just for a moment, no longer than their eyes met. But Slade saw the communication in that quick exchange. A touch of sorrow, a shade of hope.

For what?

Slade stood when the man turned toward him and saw little recourse but to take the book he held out. He turned the cover carefully, the pages brittle under his fingers. Within, the faded words were handwritten. “What is this?”

“Puritan prayers. My grandfather transcribed them well before the Revolution. Take it. Read them.”

“No.” He let the cover fall shut and held it back out. A book like this was too precious. “I can't take a family treasure.”

But the old man leaned against his wife's desk and folded his hands. “We've made other copies at this point, and everyone has theirs.”

“Even so.” He held it out still, though curiosity nipped at him. Puritan prayers. His father would love that.

“Take it.” The man's voice had shifted. It was soft now, and sure, and reminded him of his father's when he stood in the pulpit. Filled with
that something that had once grated and then comforted. Authority. “I've been waiting a lot of years to hear the Spirit's whisper telling me to whom to give it.”

Well. Slade lowered his hand, the aged leather still clasped within it. He had learned the hard way not to argue with the Spirit. “Then…thanks.”

The old man nodded and straightened again. “I'll see you out. Henry will take you home. And when you figure out who I am, feel free to come back for another visit.”

Slade couldn't think of a single thing to say to that. So he buttoned his lips and followed the man back into the night while the woman bent over her paper.

Ten

M
arietta pushed away from the table, never so happy to hear the chime of noon. Her gaze flew to the tall case clock in the corner, the one she recognized from her childhood. It had been Granddad and Grandmama's before they found a new one and passed this one along, apparently, to Walker and Cora.

Cora stood up just as fast, wincing. No doubt her servant liked Marietta's presence in her home about as well as Marietta did. The word
strained
hardly covered it.

But the lessons couldn't be done in the big house, where Mother Hughes or Dev himself could come upon them. Nor did weather permit an outdoor meeting this time of year. So here they were. Above the carriage house, in one of two rooms that Marietta had never even glimpsed before today.

Cora and Walker had managed to make the close space a cozy home, but Marietta clearly didn't belong in it.

She dug up a smile, though, waved to the wee one, and made the sign for her name. “Bye-bye, Elsie.”

Her grin made every nerve inside Marietta go taut. Because she knew it too well, when she scarcely knew the child at all. Elsie waved back, backwards, and then earned a gasp from her mother by making
the sign for
thank you
, even adding the one they had made for Marietta's name.

“See.” Walker, beaming, tousled his daughter's hair and pulled his wife in for a sideways hug. “She'll pick it up fast.”

“
She
might.” At least Cora smiled as she said it. Marietta knew well that Walker had had a battle on his hands, getting his wife to agree to this at all. Hence why it was the fourth of February, and they were only now having their initial lesson. “Come on, baby. Let's you and me take our nap.”

That too had been a battle hard won, one fought with Mother Hughes as well as Cora herself. And oh, the glint in Mother Hughes's eyes. A glint Marietta knew well, though she usually chose to ignore it. The one that said that the woman might have a sugarcoating, but that's all it was. A coating. Still, she was Lucien and Dev's mother. She deserved respect. But sometimes Marietta had to put her foot down, as she had done with this.

“I'll walk you down, Yetta.”

She merely nodded and swung her cape over her shoulders, careful to keep her back to the little family as Walker bade them a temporary farewell. Just as she was careful to keep her gaze locked on the rickety stairs as she descended.

Once their feet were on solid ground, Walker halted her with a hand on her elbow. “Thank you, Yetta. I can't say it enough. Thank you.”

She opened her mouth, but words wouldn't come. Or rather, appropriate words wouldn't. The ones that vied for a place on her tongue were impolite, risky, and…and so very important that they would not remain unsaid another day. She strode away, into the stable where the whinny of horses would give them some semblance of privacy. And then she turned.

He was only a step behind her, the muscle ticking in his strong jaw. The gratitude was gone from his smoke-blue eyes. “Go ahead. Ask.”

“I don't want to. I don't, Walk. But I have to know.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the images away. Elsie, with her familiar hair, familiar smile, familiar face. And Marietta's husband, the one who made them familiar. “Is she Lucien's?”

Walker's breath eased out as one of his beloved horses craned over
the stall door and gave him a welcoming nudge. He stroked the brown nose, but his gaze stayed glued to Marietta's face. He swallowed. “No.”

“No?” Relief should have welled. She should have been happy to think that her husband had not been unfaithful, had not been dallying with his slaves.

Instead, her knees gave out, and she sank down against the half-door behind her. “Dev.” Of course it was Dev. The memories came in rapid succession now, a quick calculation thrusting her back to the right time. Three years ago. One too-long look, one too-wrong wish. His sizzling gaze, and the anger that pulsed through it when Lucien had happily declared it time to retire and had pulled her from the room.

The scream that had echoed through the halls a half hour later. She had sat up in bed, had been ready to go investigate. But her husband had pulled her back down and held her close, muttering something about a clumsy servant bumping into something.

Cora's cry. She'd known it even then. But when she did indeed see a bruise on the girl's arm the next day, she assumed Lucien's suggestion had been right.

But no. She had been attacked. And it was all Marietta's fault.

Her breath coming in heaving gasps, she lowered her forehead to her raised knees. “No. No. I'm sorry. I should have…I never even…you came two days later. You married so soon. I never thought to question.”

“No one expected you to. You weren't raised to ask those kinds of questions.” Why, then, did his tone sound so incredulous? Probably for the same reason he spat out her grandfather's favorite exclamation of “Thunder and turf!” and did a quick pivot away and then back. “How couldn't you know, Yetta? How could you not know what they were like? How could you even marry a family that owned slaves, knowing well how so many of them are treated?”

Her hands shook. Maybe it was the cold. Or maybe she couldn't stop trying to lie to herself even now. Fingers fisting in her gray skirt, she looked up into the accusation. He had aged in the last six years, of course. But as he towered over her now, he looked like he had then, as he flung the world's problems at her like they were her fault.

And in this particular case, maybe he was right. She swallowed back the bile that rose up on the heels of truth. “I didn't care. You'd left me, and I just didn't care.”

She expected an explosion. A curse. Maybe even for him to storm off. Instead, his shoulders sagged and he leaned into the door beside her, propping his elbows on the top of it. “It was the only thing I could do. You know that. Surely by now you can understand.”

She had understood then. But that hadn't made it hurt any less. “You crushed me. I loved you, and you walked away.”

“There was no other choice. What kind of life would we have had? Me, a quadroon who would never rise above a trade worker, and you the rich daughter of an important white family?”

It hadn't stopped him from giving her her first kiss in her daddy's stable when she was sixteen. Hadn't stopped his lips against all those promises of love and dreams, each one etched in her mind forever. All of them dust. “I would have gone with you.”

“You would have been miserable.”

“You can't know that!” She averted her face, knowing her voice had been too loud. “You never gave me the chance to prove my mettle. You ran.”

“Yeah. I ran.” And he obviously wasn't about to apologize for it. She stared at the stall across from her, at the swishing tail of the horse that watched her warily. Walker toed the wood on which she leaned. “I wasn't going to. Stephen said I had to.”

Stephen
? No. “He didn't even…” She halted when she felt the weight of his gaze. “You told him.”

“I couldn't run off with my best friend's sister and not even tell him I loved her.”

Yet he could run away from the woman he claimed to love without a word. If she hadn't seen the light and gone to investigate, she never would have known he was leaving.

She had. They fought. He ran.

She had spun into the social world with a gusto born of wrath.

And she had proven her mettle. Proven it to be not of gold but of the cheapest alloy. Pushing herself up, she leaned beside him, still facing the opposite stall. “You saved her. Cora, I mean. By marrying her.”

“Easiest decision I ever made. She's a good woman, Yetta. She's made my life complete, her and Elsie. I love them both more than I thought I could love anyone.” He nudged her with his elbow, and when she glanced up, she saw his handsome, happy smile. “You'll find that yet.”

Marietta shook her head and looked away again. “I squandered my chance, Walk. I've made decisions I can't undo.”

“Don't talk like that.” He pushed away from the stall door and stepped in front of her, his brows knit. “You're young yet. And as bleak as things look right now, they'll change. They always do. The war will end, the Knights will fall, the dust will settle. You'll be able to get away from these people and start over.”