London Calling

A S
USANNA AND THE
S
PY
Novel

A
NNA
E
LLIOTT

a W
ILTON
P
RESS
book

L
ONDON
C
ALLING

Copyright © 2012 by Anna Elliott

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For more information, please visit
www.AnnaElliottBooks.com

Anna Elliott can be contacted at [email protected]

W
ILTON
P
RESS

Product Description

Romance and treason in Regency London

It is the autumn of 1809, and Susanna Ward’s life is more perfect than she could ever have dared hope. She is reconciled with her estranged family and engaged to the man she loves, Lord James Ravenwood. But across the English Channel, Britain’s war with the Emperor Napoleon still rages. And when a chance letter arrives from London, Susanna learns that James has secretly allowed himself to be drawn into the shadowy world of espionage and intrigue. To be with James, Susanna travels to London—and is soon caught up in a dangerous operation to uncover a ring of French spies and a traitor within the British War Office.

Susanna will risk her life to protect both her country and the man she loves. And yet as she sees James torn between love for her and duty to King and country, she realizes that the greatest danger may be to her own heart.

Set against the glittering backdrop of a Regency London Season,
London Calling
is a cozy mystery, appropriate for all ages. It is approximately 61,000 words or 244 pages in length.

Although
London Calling
can be read alone, the story builds on the events of
Susanna and the Spy
.

Chapter 1

Susanna Ward stared through her sitting-room window, barely conscious of the grand expanse of rolling green parkland that lay before her. Rutherford Hall, her uncle’s estate and now her own home as well, was a beautiful place, even on a chill September morning like this one. A touch of frost gilded the green of the lawn, and threads of white mist twined like gossamer through the branches of the trees.

But Susanna barely saw the scene before her. Rather, her thoughts were absorbed in the words of two letters that lay in her lap. There was no need to pick them up again; by now she knew them practically by heart.

The first was a missive from her Aunt Sophia, written from London, where her aunt had rented a house for the winter. It was, Susanna reflected grimly, all that might be expected of a letter from Aunt Sophia: a masterpiece of spite and mischief-making, breathless with underlines and exclamations.

In it, her aunt declared herself positively
amazed
to have recently seen Susanna’s affianced husband, Lord James Ravenwood, in London at a recent ball at those most fashionable of assembly rooms, Almack’s.

He left before I could get across the room to speak to him, but I am
sure
it was he
, Sophia wrote.
I had not a
notion
dear James intended a visit to town. Particularly as you informed me he had been called away on urgent business to his estate in Derbyshire. Do you know, my dear, whether he has any cousins or other female relations? When I saw him, he was accompanied by a woman. She was
very
beautiful, and I think she
must
have been a relation of some kind, to judge by the intimacy that seemed to exist between her and James. Though I do wonder that she was able to obtain a voucher for Almack’s. They are so
very
hard to secure. And this lady wore a dress that was very nearly
transparent
. And she had painted her toenails gold, besides, in a manner
hardly
respectable.

And the second letter was from James himself. It started out:
My love.
And it ended:
Will it sound like something from a bad romance novel if I say that I miss you at each and every separate moment of the day? I imagine you will tell me that it does. Laugh at the man when he is down if you like. But it is true. Every time my heart beats, every breath I take, I am thinking of you.

Which was, she thought, all very well and good. But it was postmarked from James’s estate in Derbyshire, and certainly made no mention of London, assemblies, or squiring about young women, beautiful or otherwise.

Susanna realized that her teeth were so tightly clenched together that her jaw ached. And her fingers twitched with the urge to tear James’s letter into tiny shreds.

Not that she believed her aunt’s spiteful insinuations. In a way, she wished that she could. Mere infidelity seemed positively tame in comparison to what she feared James was actually about.

She shut her eyes. And instantly her memory served up an image of James as she had seen him on the night they first had met: wounded, disheveled, his lean face ashy pale, a blood-soaked rag pressed over the gunshot wound in his shoulder.

When first she had met him, Lord James Ravenwood had been a spy, entrusted with the mission of hunting out Napoleon’s agents as they ferried vital information back to their Emperor in France. And now, four months later, Britain’s long and bloody battle with Bonaparte’s forces was raging as fiercely as ever, with small prospect of an end.

Susanna opened her eyes, staring unseeingly out at the parkland again. James had succeeded four months ago in unmasking a particularly dangerous spy and murderer. But he had almost lost his life in the process. And now—

Her fingers clenched themselves again. Now James must have accepted a new assignment. An equally dangerous one. And he had done it without a word to her.

Not, she thought, that she would have tried to stop him. She might as well try to stop the tide from rising as try to keep James out of danger or stop him from taking risks. But James had also promised her that their union would be a partnership of equals.

It was the memory of that promise that sent the hot blood rushing to Susanna’s cheeks. She welcomed the anger, though. Because if she stopped being angry, even for a moment, she was going to start being afraid. Afraid that James would be hurt. Or killed. Afraid that even now, right this moment, he could be—

Susanna snapped that thought off before it could take root. But she still felt suddenly cold.

She drew back a little from the window and stared at her reflection in the glass, her pale face framed by red-gold hair.

For a long moment she did not move.

Then she stood, and walked to her writing desk, thrust both the letters firmly into the center drawer and closed it with a sharp impact. Very well, James had lied. But that did not mean she was required to sit at home and wait for his return, reading his falsified letters‌—‌as though she were a child to be sheltered and comforted with soothing bed-tales.

Of course, had she been a man, she could have simply ridden to London at a moment’s notice. But a woman‌—‌a young, unmarried woman‌—‌could not even ride in a carriage on her own, let alone undertake a trip to the great City without a proper chaperone.

What she needed, Susanna thought, was an ally.

Her Uncle Charles, with whom she now lived, was a dear, but quite impossible for Susanna’s purpose. A gentle, kindly soul, artifice and pretense were as foreign to his nature as a tropical orchid to an English garden. He would be distressed that James had lied‌—‌and disturbed at the thought of his being in danger. And he would never consent to Susanna running into any kind of peril herself.

Then there was Julia, Susanna’s cousin and close friend. Julia would make a worthy confidante, but she was lately married to the local surgeon, Mr. Carswell, and it would be unfair to take her away so soon from her husband.

Susanna paused a moment, fingers drumming restlessly on the wooden desktop, before the solution occurred to her. Of course‌—‌her Aunt Ruth Maryvale. The very person.

She had met her father’s sister only briefly, when Ruth had come to stay at Rutherford Hall in August, but she’d taken an instant liking to the older woman.

Aunt Ruth was sensible, intelligent, and had a ready sense of fun, besides. And what was more, she had heard her aunt mention a plan to rent a house in London for the Season. If she could be persuaded to move her plan forward by a few months . . .

Susanna reached for paper and pen. She would ask her aunt to bring her to London. And then, somehow, she would find James‌—‌and find a way to keep him alive and safe.