Unmasking the Spy (32 page)

Refolding the note, Alicia stared
at the garden. The tall hedgerows and plump bushes seemed to mock her with
their calm beauty. This was where she planned to make a fool of her husband?
He’d proved he had more character than she.

Perhaps her machinations would be
better spent in a plot to make the true Ian fall in love with the true her. She
could hardly hold him to double standards of self-serving hypocrisy.

Before she’d learned of his
deception, she’d thought Ian an angel and Rogue worthy of any sacrifice. Why
had she thought her husband any different than a combination of the two? He was
both her husband
and
her unforgettable masked man – her hero in
disguise.

He had made his selection, and
he’d chosen her. The
real
her. She could do nothing less in return but
prove herself worthy of that decision and fight for his true love.

What heartache they would have
missed if their masks had been cast aside sooner!

When Alicia awoke, alone and
unrested in the middle of her bed, she resolved never to do so again. She’d
make her husband love her if it killed her – starting this very morning. Her
mind whirling, she hopped out of bed and rang for her maid.

His almost-pledge to her that
last night as Rogue may or may not have been a lie, but his desire for her was
very real. With luck, she could use passion to catapult him into love. She
could do nothing, however, until she found him. He’d been avoiding her for days
and she wasn’t going to stand for another second of it.

Once she was clean and groomed,
Alicia set out to comb every inch of Heatherley until she found her husband.
Unfortunately, the first man she found was Louis.

His cloying cologne stank more
than usual, and neither his looks nor his disposition had improved since she’d
seen him last. He stood at the front door, arguing with the head butler and
gesticulating like a madman. Sighing, Alicia resigned herself to intervene.
Both men noticed her approach at the same moment.

“Mrs. Morrissey! I do hope we
haven’t disturbed you. This man arrived–”

“She
knows
me! I’m her
cousin!”

“–with two coaches. The first was
filled with wedding gifts, which seem to have been misplaced until now–”

“They went to his townhouse!
Nobody knew you were running off to the country until you sent letters from
Heatherley!”

“–and now he seems to think he’s
going to drop off a
person
.”

“A person?” Alicia asked, looking
from one man to the other.

“It’s Beatrix, of course. Don’t
play dumb, cousin. She’s your father’s stupid wedding present.”

Alicia clapped her hands together
in delight. The morning glowed a little brighter. “Beatrix is here? Sitting in
a coach? Oh, Louis! Bring her in! We’ll have to ready a room at once!”

The butler blinked, but recovered
quickly, and set about arranging a room and refreshments for their unexpected
guest. Louis gave an exaggerated sigh, tossed his head, and stomped off toward
one of the idling coaches. He returned with a bent, spindly vision who seemed
to throw off her frailty along with her shawl as she launched herself into
Alicia’s arms.

“Oh, pet. How I’ve missed you!”

“Aunt, you have no idea. I’m so
glad you’re here! How long can you stay?”

“Why, forever, I suppose.
Chadwick’s sent all my stuff with me.”

“He did ship you off, after all!”

“Of course he did, child. He
loves us.”

“That’s one way to look at it,”
interrupted Louis with one of his more earsplitting cackles.

“Which begs the question,”
returned Alicia with a raised brow. “What are you doing here? Certainly you
haven’t taken up a servant’s position at Chadwick House, assigned to keep track
of wedding gifts.”

“Gifts, no. This old bit of
baggage, yes. Chadwick wouldn’t send Beatrix without a companion. When I said
I’d do it, he had someone else follow us up with the presents.”

“Well, whether you meant to
please me or not, bringing Beatrix has made me happier than I can say. She’s
the best gift you could have brought, and I thank you.”

“Oh, I got you something else,
too.” Louis fumbled in a small bag and pulled out two delicate glass vases,
both beautiful and oddly familiar-looking. “Here.”

“I remember when you got these!
Papa bought them for you and you had the bad grace to argue with him about them
right there in Chadwick House.”

Louis shrugged one shoulder. “I
didn’t want them then, and I don’t want them now. I’d just as soon throw them
in the river as look at them. If you don’t want them either, that’s just what
I’ll do.”

“I’ll take them.” Alicia reached
out and plucked the slender vases from his hands.

“Aren’t you going to invite me
in? Or to stay the night?”

“No,” Alicia answered with cold
finality.

Louis jerked his head back in
surprise. “Why not?”

“Not to put too fine a point on
it, but you’ve caused me nothing but heartache and I don’t want you in my
house. I hope you head back to London first thing in the morning. As I’m
married now, you have no further use for me, and I never had use for you.”

“We’ll see,” Louis replied with
an injured sniff and a surprising lack of cutting rejoinders. Instead, he spun
on one heel and pranced out the door.

Alicia looped her arm through her
aunt’s. Almost skipping with happiness, she led Beatrix to the yellow sitting
room and seated her in a cushioned chair in view of the fireplace. She rang to
have her husband alerted of their guest’s arrival and collapsed in a chair
across from Beatrix, eager to hear news of her father and highlights of her
aunt’s adventures.

She was laughing at her aunt’s
tales of the many foibles that befell Louis along their trek when soft
footfalls caught her attention. They were not those of her husband, unless he’d
grown many, many more feet. Delighted to find all four of Ian’s sisters
crowding the doorway, Alicia leapt to her feet to lead the introductions.

“Aunt, I’d love for you to meet
my new sisters. Here are Miss Poppy Morrissey, Miss Julia, Miss Mavis, and Miss
Carlotta. Ladies, may I present my great-aunt, Miss Beatrix Kinsey?”

While each of the sisters
performed polite curtsies, Beatrix struggled to her feet and peered at them
through a slightly crooked quizzing glass. Noting a thin smear of paste around
the edges of the lens, Alicia had a sneaking suspicion that this particular
tool had been the one hurled at her father when the whole betrothal fiasco
first began.

“All misses, are you?” Beatrix
asked in her soft, tremulous voice, before turning to give Alicia a pointed
look. “Guess none of
them
have been compromised.”

Alicia clapped a hand to her
forehead as her eyes rolled back in her head. Trust Aunt Beatrix to break the
ice with such an implication. She peeked through her fingers at the four
dark-haired beauties, dreading to see whether Mavis was going to rail into her
again.

“Oh, not
yet
,” cried Carlotta.
“None of us has taken our bow, although I suppose that has nothing to do with
being compromised. How funny it would be to have everything all out of order!”

“It wouldn’t be funny, Carlotta,”
Julia rebuked her with a frown. “It would be disastrous.”

“I may not have taken my bow, per
se,” Poppy broke in, extracting her fan from her pocket. “But you cannot deny
I’ve been ‘out’.”

“Oh, that’s true!” Carlotta
exclaimed. “You very nearly had a suitor.”

“She did have a suitor,”
interjected Mavis, folding her slender arms over her chest and casting an irritated
glare at her youngest sister.

“Well, I don’t know. Can he be
considered a suitor if he doesn’t come up to scratch?”

“We were in
mourning
, Carlotta.”
Poppy flapped her wrist and the delicate fan cast a gentle breeze across her
curls. “Although I had hopes to the contrary, a year is a long time for a man
to be patient.”

“Humph. We were in half-mourning
most of the time,” Carlotta muttered with a pout.

“We were in half-mourning half
the time,” corrected Mavis. “And even six months can be six months too long to
a man.”

“Well, we’re out of mourning now.
Poppy will snap up another suitor in no time,” Carlotta said confidently and
turned to grin at Beatrix. “And
then
perhaps one of us will get
compromised!”

Feeling it prudent to jump in at this juncture,
Alicia murmured, “I don’t believe she was suggesting you ought to aim for such
a goal, Carlotta.”

“Why not?” Beatrix asked with a mischievous smile.
“It worked for you.”

“Aunt–”

“So you did trap him,” Mavis said
with narrowed eyes.

“Not by choice,” Alicia began,
only to be interrupted by her great-aunt once again.

“They ruined each other!” crowed
Beatrix. “It was brilliant. She managed to escape the clutches of Louis, and he
managed to throw off the heavy shackles of bachelorhood.”

“I’m not sure my brother would
agree with your definition of bachelorhood,” Julia said, the threat of a smile
struggling on her lips.

“What do men know?” scoffed
Beatrix, shocking a startled smile out of Mavis.

“Not much,” she answered. “Mama
hadn’t left the house since… for a long time, but Ian could’ve taken us to
court if he’d wanted to. We could all be married by now.”

“He didn’t want to,” Julia said.
“He said he’d never step foot in London if he could help it.”

“Well, he did say you could take
Miss Livingstone,” Carlotta piped up.

Mavis goggled at her sister. “We
didn’t want to go to Town with your
governess
!”

“We could’ve all gone! I was
nearly seventeen when he said it.”

“We’d have needed a better
chaperone than she, I’m afraid,” said Julia with a little shrug. “Besides, I’m
not sure we’d all fit in his townhouse. I’ve never clapped eyes on it.”

“Me neither.”

“We know you haven’t, Carlotta,” Mavis
said with ill-contained exasperation. “But perhaps his
wife
has been
there.”

Alicia jumped when five sets of curious
eyes pointed in her direction. “Er, no. I’m sorry to say, I’ve not seen it
either. We came straight here after the wedding.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t really have
one! Perhaps he stays in
hotels
,” crowed Carlotta, clapping her hands
together.

“I am certain our brother does
not stay in anything so vulgar as a hotel,” Poppy replied from behind her ivory
fan. “Just because we haven’t seen his townhouse doesn’t mean he hasn’t got
one. We haven’t been to London, remember?”

“Alicia’s been to London. She’s from London!”

“Mrs. Morrissey isn’t Ian’s
sister, Carlotta. And where’s your respect?”

“She said I could call her
Alicia! I begged her to first-name me from the start.”

Poppy shuddered behind her fan.
“Good Lord, child.”

“I’m not a child. I’m her sister!
She said those very words. It’s not like you all call me ‘Miss Carlotta’ except
when you’re angry.”

“And this,” Julia interrupted
with a weak smile in Alicia’s direction, “is why sending the four of us to
London under the chaperonage of the lovely – if elderly – Miss Livingstone
would have been a singularly Bad Idea.”

“I suppose… I suppose I could
take you sometime,” Alicia offered hesitantly. “I’m still youngish, and since
I’m married to your brother, I would think I’d be as respectable a chaperone as
any.”

“Oh, would you?” Carlotta bounced
on her toes then threw her arms around Alicia in a sudden hug before leaping
back to beam at the others. “You see? She’s our sister. And a jolly good one!”

“Er, perhaps not all at once,
though?” Alicia added as an afterthought. “And I suppose I ought to check with
Ian as well.”

“Ian,” scoffed Carlotta with a
wave of her hand. “Child’s play. Have you ever met anyone so easy to get along
with in all your life?”

*          *          *

Hooding his eyes from the
piercing rays of the setting sun, Ian slogged across the grass toward the back
of his house and shoved open the door. Alicia lounged against one wall, looking
delectable, if a little impatient. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she’d
been watching for him. With a nod and a little half-smile in her general
direction, he stepped around her, heading into the main hall. She followed.

They were going to have to speak.

“Good afternoon, wife,” he
offered.

A smile lit up her face. “Good
afternoon, husband.”

He waited, but she didn’t seem
inclined to say anything more. Rubbing the back of his hand across his
forehead, he asked, “How do you like Heatherley?”

“Heatherley is beautiful. How
wonderful to have grown up here.”