Elizabeth Boyle (43 page)

You’ll not go without me
, her expression seemed to say.

Giles’s foreboding glower answered his wife’s stubborn determination.

“Well, since you seem intent on staying,” Lord Dryden huffed, “you may as well hear it all.” His father returned his spectacles to the bridge of his nose and continued. “De Chevenoy’s death, however untimely, has left our entire operation on the Continent in exceedingly dire straits.

“Surely, sir, the situation isn’t as grim as all that,” Giles commented, drawing a frown of disapproval from Dryden for the interruption.

“As grim as all that?” Lord Dryden exploded. “The fool man may be dead, but he forgot to take his journals with him.”

“Journals?” Sophia was no longer settled back on the sofa, but was perched at the edge of the cushion, her blue eyes glittering.

“Aye. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you understand the problem we’re facing,” Lord Dryden said to her. “Yes. A damned chronicle of his activities and all his contacts. From what I’ve gathered, there are volumes of them. The man was worse than Johnson and his blasted dictionary.” Dryden sat back and groaned. “His retirement, the damned fool liked to call them.”

“So he would have leverage if he was ever discovered.” Webb shook his head. “Am I correct?”

“Exactly,” Dryden said. “Now you see why I’ve never liked that damnable frog you thought so affable. He taunted me about their existence, all the while promising me they’d never end up in the wrong hands, as long as his accounts were kept full. But I never suspected he would just die like this and leave them unguarded.”

“So you want me to retrieve them?” Webb mentally made his departure plans even as he spoke. This wasn’t a job for any but the best of his father’s agents—which meant him or the Traherns—and with Sophia’s imminent confinement, that could only mean this briefing was for him.

“Go get them, you say?” His father’s outburst held the startling timbre of the first note of a dirge. “If I knew where the blasted things were, I’d have sent for you the moment I heard of his death.”

Webb nodded. De Chevenoy had been no fool and would hardly have been expected to keep such damning evidence in the top drawer of his desk.

Giles stood up and began to pace. “If these journals pose a danger to all our agents on the Continent, then they also pose a danger to those agents’ families.” He stopped and turned to his wife. “Especially yours, my dear. If any of this comes to light, Lucien can forget any hopes of reclaiming your family’s lost titles and lands,” he said, referring to her elder brother.

“I was coming to the same conclusion,” she said, her features lined with concern.

“Is your entire family back in France?” Webb asked.

“Just Lucien,” Sophia replied, glancing quickly at her husband and then at Lord Dryden. “With my brother Julien at sea, Lucien thought it best to leave his wife and children in Virginia, to look after my mother and father.”

Webb noticed while she mentioned her younger brother, she made no mention of her sister, Lily. While he’d heard from his mother that Sophia’s sister was safely married away, even the mere mention of her name sent a shiver of fear down his spine.

It had been on his last visit to Byrnewood that Lily’s unrelenting schoolgirl attentions had nearly driven him mad. Even worse, her romantic infatuation with Webb had become something of a Dryden family joke—one Webb found neither amusing nor worth repeating, though his sisters delighted in teasing him about Lily and their impending “betrothal.”

Webb shuddered. The last thing he wanted was an opportunity for Lily, married or not, to add fuel to his family’s pyre of humiliation.

No, he’d not risk asking for any more information about Sophia’s family. Better to think of Lily as married to her Virginia farmer with a passel of children clinging to her skirts than to consider she might be as close as upstairs.

He glanced over at Giles, the man’s brow furrowed with concentration. Here was where his thoughts should be, Webb realized, for it appeared his friend was caught amidst a seething dilemma—loathe to leave his wife in her condition, yet at the same time bound by duty to see her family safe.

Webb knew Sophia’s pregnancies were not easy for her, and Giles would never forgive himself if he wasn’t with her when her time arrived.

Webb rose from his seat and clapped Giles hard on the shoulder. “You must stay here, my friend. Besides, if you were to go now, your lady wife would only follow. Stay here and use all your wits to see that she doesn’t slip away to Paris, and I’ll go over and fetch de Chevenoy’s journals and be back in time for the christening.”

Sophia opened her mouth, obviously to lodge her protest.

Webb shook his head at her. “Though I bow to your superior skill in burglary, my lady, I have no doubts I can enter either of de Chevenoy’s houses without detection and retrieve his journals.”

“Bah!” Lord Dryden tossed aside the paper he’d been perusing. “If it were that simple, do you think I would have summoned you all the way to Bath to discuss it? There is more to this than I’ve said. Sit down, both of you, and listen.” His sharp tone sent Webb and Giles scurrying back to their respective seats, like two schoolboys caught in some mischief.

Lord Dryden opened a leather-bound portfolio and began sorting though the jumbled dispatches “De Chevenoy’s estate has been placed under seal by order of the First Consul, Bonaparte.”

“Bonaparte?” Webb said, more to himself than aloud.

His father nodded. “Aye. De Chevenoy had been cultivating a fast friendship with the First Consul. Since Bonaparte is anxious to cement his position with all the opposing factions, he saw de Chevenoy with his vast contacts from the old regime as a means for bringing the nobles back to France. So it should come as no surprise that our wily Corsican has posted guards at each house to “protect” the property and that he has ordered de Chevenoy’s solicitor to guard the estate with his life.”

“More likely to give that upstart and his henchman, Fouché, time to ransack the estate,” Webb muttered.

His father shook his head. “While I would never underestimate Fouché, it appears that the First Consul is adamant that the de Chevenoy estates be protected.”

“But why and from what?” Webb asked.

“Not ‘from what,’ but for whom. No one is allowed in, other than the servants, until the heiress is brought home.”

“The heiress? What heiress?” As far as Webb knew, de Chevenoy had lived like a monk, secreting himself away on his estates or in his Paris home, granting hardly anyone access into his clandestine and dangerous life.

Dryden handed Webb a single sheet of paper, a devious gleam in his otherwise imperturbable features. “See for yourself, my boy. De Chevenoy willed everything to his daughter.”

Webb scanned the document, an apparent copy of de Chevenoy’s last will and testament. He needn’t ask how his father obtained this so quickly, for his father’s connections never ceased to amaze him. “A daughter? Why, I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“Yes, Adelaide,” Sophia commented. She turned to Lord Dryden. “If I may, m’lord?”

“Yes, go right ahead,” he said, granting her a nod of approval and a small smile of pride. “You obviously know more about it than these two wastrels.”

Webb and Giles exchanged looks of condolence at once again being shown up by Sophia in front of their superior.

“De Chevenoy’s family,” she began, “like mine, intermarried with their English connections. De Chevenoy’s mother was English, as was his wife, the Lady Mary Haynes, until she became the Comtesse de Chevenoy. I met her only once, when I was young. Since her ladyship and my mother had been friends as girls, we visited the comtesse in her apartments at Versailles just after Adelaide’s birth. The comtesse died of a fever a few years later.”

Entranced at this unbelievable revelation, Webb leaned forward to listen to Sophia’s tale. De Chevenoy married? And had a child? In all their years of working together, the man had never let slip one word of a wife, let alone a daughter. “But what happened to this Adelaide?”

Sophia looked up, obviously caught in her own private reveries of the past. “From what my mother told me, the comte sent his daughter to a convent in Martinique when the first pamphlets began littering Paris with ideas of revolution. If there was to be violence, de Chevenoy couldn’t bear the thought of his only child being anywhere near it. Many thought him a fool to retreat from Versailles so early, but those who heeded his dire warnings now live.”

Lord Dryden reached into his packet again and drew out a small, palm-sized portrait. He handed it to Webb.

Webb gazed down at the young girl, probably no more than ten maybe twelve years old. Her smile glowed brightly back at him, her green eyes dancing with innocent mischief, and her fair, blonde hair curled about her shoulders in the promise of one day being a glorious crown of gold. “But he never mentioned having a daughter,” Webb said, more to himself than anyone else. He looked up at his father. “She’s probably quite enchanting now.”

So this, he realized was why his father wanted him for this mission—perhaps his talent for being ‘too full of charm and manly vigor,’ as his sister once described him, was about to come in handy.

“So you want me to appeal to de Chevenoy’s daughter. Find a way past the guards and into her home.” Webb grinned at Giles. “Ah, the joys of the unmarried state. Now I see why you aren’t being slated for this one, old boy.”

Sophia laughed. She leaned toward the desk and told Lord Dryden in a conspiratorial whisper, “I think your son believes, my lord, that you want him to woo the heiress to secure your journals.”

His father let out a bemused chuckle, much to Webb’s annoyance.

“What is so funny?” he demanded.

Sophia stilled her laughter long enough to reveal the joke. “I don’t think even the King could command you to do that, since Adelaide died before her boat even docked in Martinique.”

“Dead?” Webb and Giles said in unison.

Webb shook his head. The lively portrait felt suddenly cold in his hand. Hastily, he set it back on the edge of the desk. “De Chevenoy left his estates to a dead daughter?”

Lord Dryden nodded. “Yes. The man refused to believe her lost, so he continued to act as if she were alive. Even insisted I pay her board at the convent, so the good sisters would be inclined to send letters home from Adelaide. Keep up appearances, as they say.”

“You must be quite popular with the Mother Superior,” Webb commented.

His father let out an exasperated breath. “She is quite in my debt with all the gold I’ve sent her. I don’t know how and I’m not sure why, but de Chevenoy went to great lengths to ensure that, as far as his solicitor and everyone else was concerned, his daughter spent the last nine years sheltered in a West Indies convent awaiting her father’s summons to return home.”

“And when Napoleon finds out …” Webb didn’t have to finish his statement.

Everyone knew exactly what the greedy little Corsican would do—keep everything of value for himself and bestow the lesser holdings onto his family or his current favorite.

“De Chevenoy’s solicitor wrote to the convent and directed the abbess to have the girl sent home.” Lord Dryden smiled, a rare event in itself, as he held up a tattered dispatch. “We were able to intercept the note, and I have composed a response, for which I could, Lady Trahern, use your elegant hand and command of the language to translate and write.” He rose and crossed the room to hand her his reply.

While Sophia scanned the lines Lord Dryden had composed, she glanced first at the note and then at the portrait still sitting cock-eyed on the desk. Webb knew by the wicked grin finding its way to Sophia’s lips and the sparkle of mischief in her eyes that she’d quickly unraveled his father’s devious plans.

She winked at his father. “I see now why you need our help—if I take your reply to mean what I think it does.”

“It does,” his father answered mysteriously.

Sophia nodded in agreement. “I’m not sure what the necessary party might say, but I think once the gravity of the situation is explained, said party will see that it is not only a duty, but a way to repay the debt our family owes you.”

She handed the sheet and the portrait to her husband, who read the text quickly, ending his perusal with a hearty chuckle. Husband and wife shared a brief glance at each other and then looked at Webb as both of them started to laugh again.

Before Webb could find out what amusing plans his father had devised, Giles handed both items back to Lord Dryden.

Sophia reached behind the sofa and gave the bell pull a firm tug. Within minutes a young maid entered the study, bobbing her head at her mistress, while casting speculative glances with her large brown eyes at the stranger at the master’s desk. Sophia whispered her instructions to the girl, who then left as she entered, staring fearfully at Lord Dryden.

I know how you feel, lass
, Webb thought as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and all eyes in the room gazing thoughtfully in his direction. The uneasy sense that he was attending his own funeral returned. “Well, since everyone else seems to know the plan, would you mind enlightening me?”

Sophia nodded to Lord Dryden. “He’d better hear it from you.”

“We intend to send our own ‘Adelaide’ home to claim the de Chevenoy inheritance.”

Webb didn’t see anything amusing in this idea, though where his father would find a qualified agent on such short notice was a wonder. “Am I to assume you have someone in mind?”

“Yes.”

Webb knew enough to be cautious when his father responded in one-word answers. “How old would this chit be? Nineteen, maybe twenty?”

“Twenty-one,” Sophia said. “Adelaide was twelve when she was sent away.”

Webb considered all the agents in the office and came up with a blank as to whom his father intended to send. “A substitute who speaks French without any trace of an English accent.”

“Precisely.” Lord Dryden began cleaning his spectacles for a second time.

Webb’s intuition told him his father had more bad news.

Something akin to hearing one’s last rites.