Neither marriage nor happiness is reserved solely to persons of a high degree of rank in society. The husband hunter whose rank has destined her for certain employments in society may as confidently seek a husband worthy of her goodness and wit as any duchess.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Over thick, dark chocolate, Harriet sought to discover what had happened between brother and sister. She had done her best to avoid looking at Wynford, but in the midst of the Luxboroughs’ family cheer, she could not miss the rift between the siblings and hoped she was not to blame for encouraging Wynford to speak to Octavia.
They retreated to the second-best drawing room. Some brightness had left the room from the night before when everyone had been in high spirits, but Harriet pushed the drapery aside to let in as much light as the overcast day permitted and set the chocolate and ginger cakes near the fire, which burned brightly. Jasper’s mistletoe still hung from the chandelier, but she tried not to think about that.
Octavia wandered about the room, picking up a book from a side table, moving a vase. “You know,” she said at last, sitting down opposite Harriet on one of the sofas. “I think that Charles should redo his house. His morning room is painted such a dismal, gloomy blue color, not like these cheery walls at all.”
“This room always cheers me,” Harriet said. “And chocolate. Will you have some?”
Octavia nodded. Harriet poured, waiting, letting the girl pick her moment.
“I suppose you have been with the Luxboroughs a long time,” Octavia said.
“Ten years.”
“Since Charles came into his title.” Octavia stared at her chocolate without sipping.
Harriet waited for any further revelation. It was an interesting way to measure time, not in terms of her own life, but in terms of her brother’s. “Did he leave you behind then?”
Octavia’s head came up. She nodded and at last tasted her chocolate. “Oh, this is so good.”
“And now?” Harriet asked. “I thought him very attentive.”
Octavia put her cup down and picked up a ginger cake, breaking off a small piece. “But he doesn’t know me at all, you see. He thinks I am still...as much a child as I was when he left home. He treats me as the merest schoolroom miss, and he thinks that because he protected me as a babe when the soldiers came, now nearly twenty years later I can’t stand up for myself.”
“Soldiers came where?” Harriet prompted. Wynford Hall seemed the least likely place to encounter soldiery, unless in those years of fear of a French invasion some militia had been quartered nearby.
Octavia looked abashed. “We do not usually tell the tale.”
“Of course,” said Harriet, quelling her impatience. A story was best told freely when the teller was ready. “I did not mean to pry.”
“Never mind all that old history.” Octavia waved a small hand in the air. “You must see how difficult Charles is being when all I mean to do is to take myself off his hands by finding a husband, which I can do very well on my own with no interference from him. I have my book, after all.” Octavia reached for her reticule and pulled forth the little blue book with the gold lettering and held it in her lap.
“Does Charles want you off his hands?” Harriet asked.
“Oh, you may be sure he does,” Octavia said. “Perry told me as much when I first arrived. Charles wants to live the single gentleman’s life wearing his outrageous waistcoats and pursuing women like our cousin the marchioness. He wants no ties, no burdens.”
Harriet looked at the girl’s bleak expression and wondered how she had so misinterpreted her brother’s behavior toward her. “I don’t suppose your book has any advice on dealing with brothers?”
Octavia shook her head and tucked the book away. “But the book does advise a woman to know her own mind. Charles thinks I can’t possibly know my own mind. He thinks I am still that infant who needed protecting.”
Harriet sipped her chocolate, letting Octavia withdraw into her own thoughts. The pile of ginger cake crumbs grew.
“Just because I could not defend myself as an infant, he thinks I cannot defend myself now. He thinks I will be taken in by everyone I meet, by Captain Fanshaw, whom I have never met, or even by the marchioness, who is our cousin. But I am done with being anyone’s dupe. I know exactly what it is to be taken in, and I won’t let anyone deceive me again.” She seized her cup of chocolate and took a hearty swallow.
“An excellent resolution,” Harriet said. She was no nearer to understanding what had precipitated the rift between brother and sister, but she was beginning to understand Octavia’s determination to rely on herself. She sipped her chocolate, trying to think what Charles might have said over breakfast in that blue room to set Octavia off. Before she could ask, Octavia began again.
“You know what’s worse?” she asked, setting her cup down.
Harriet shook her head. She was inclined to agree with Octavia that Wynford was protective to a fault, but she had detected no other brotherly offenses in his behavior.
“Charles thinks I have no sense of propriety, which is the gravest injustice, as if I do not know exactly with whom I may correspond when he is nothing but a despicable...spy.”
“A spy?”
“Yes, he’s looked at my post. Oh, he denies it, but he accused me of writing to...” For a moment Octavia stared blankly at the cup and the pile of ginger crumbs. Then with a sigh she continued. “To a young man in the most indiscreet way, when I have only written very proper notes to you and to the dear marchioness.”
“I see,” said Harriet. She felt the violation of it, the injury and hurt of a beloved brother’s lack of trust when Octavia felt herself blameless. She, too, had accused Wynford of spying when he followed them to the Burlington Arcade, but the word, with its implication of secret intentions, was wrong. She tried to turn Octavia’s thoughts in a happier direction. “I’m sorry to hear that things are in such a sad way between you, just when he is to take you to Lady Hardwicke’s ball.”
“Well, I should forgive him, I know, but how can I when he has not an ounce of respect for my understanding or my ability to manage my own life?”
“How did he come to misjudge you so?” Harriet asked. There must be another side to the story. She guessed that a shift had taken place in Octavia’s feelings, a shift that the girl was just beginning to understand. She had come to London suffering from the hurt inflicted by the unnamed young man, but now it was Wynford who wounded her.
Octavia remained silent, looking down at the crumbled ginger cake. “I suppose he can’t help it, you know. He can’t forget saving me as a babe under those stupid fishing nets.”
“The old history? Do you want to tell me about it?” Harriet invited.
Octavia’s eyes took on a faraway look. Then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Yes.”
“When Charles was eleven, I think, and I one, our mother took us with her to France to her grandfather’s vineyards near the town of Saumur. I don’t know why she did it. It was not a good time to be English and traveling in France, but our mother could always pass for French. Charles has told me that she passed for the wife of a country merchant. We were to stay for the summer, but we had not been long in the country when something happened in Paris, and we had to leave at once, traveling fast, only in the early hours and at dusk.
“We were to cross the Channel in a fishing boat from a beach near Dieppe, but there was a storm, and the boat didn’t come. We waited a day or so more—I don’t know how long, but Mama took us to the beach to play late one afternoon with the clouds clearing, and that’s when the soldiers found us. Mama had a glass to look for the fishing boat. She saw the soldiers first and made Charles take me away. He was supposed to leave the beach, but he could not move quickly carrying me, so he burrowed in the sand under some fishing nets left there to dry.”
Octavia paused. Harriet held her breath, suspended in the story. It was like the moment of being tossed from a horse. One hung briefly in the air, powerless to undo one’s error, as the ground rushed up.
Octavia drew a shaky breath, and plunged on.
“Charles pressed his thumb to my lips to keep me from crying out. I bit him, and he still bears the scar, but they did not find us. The soldiers killed our mother while we hid. Charles did not hear her cry out. He waited a long time, hoping, I think, that she would call to us. Once it grew dark, he got us to the meeting place. He had some crumbly cheese in his pocket, which he gave me to eat. In the night the Englishmen came, and Charles told them what he feared. They found our mother’s body farther down the beach and took us all back to England. My brother had to tell the story over and over again to someone in the government, but it was years before he told me what had happened.”
Harriet held herself steady, her hands around the fragile cup. For all of Octavia’s composure in the telling, it was a tale at odds with a room full of comforts. Warring impulses coursed through her. She wanted to embrace the girl. She wanted to apologize to Wynford for thinking him excessive in his concern for his sister’s safety. And she wanted to know the truth. Certain particulars of the story struck her as having great significance—the clandestine nature of the visit, the mysterious event in Paris, the delayed fishing boat, the telling of the tale to someone in government. Above all, she thought, a boy who had seen and felt what Wynford had seen and felt might become a most fierce protector of his sister.
“You must wonder at my story, Miss Swanley,” Octavia said. “Papa told me long ago that I must be very careful with such a history. He did not want anyone to pity me, you see, or to think badly of Mama for taking us to France. It all happened so long ago.”
“Thank you for telling me, Octavia.” Her throat ached, but she kept her voice as level as she could. “We will say no more about it, if you wish, but I think you may be right about your brother.”
“About my brother?”
“Yes,” Harriet said. “He was just Jasper’s age when it all happened, wasn’t he?”
“Jasper’s age? Oh.” Octavia paused. A look of rueful comprehension came into her eyes. “I never think of him as young, but he must have been.”
“He was,” Harriet said. She had utterly misjudged him, never imagining that the memory of such horror lurked under the smooth air and manner of a London gentleman. “He can’t forget holding you under those fishing nets can he?”
“I suppose he can’t.” Octavia acknowledged. She sighed. “But how can I get him to see that I’m no longer a babe?”
* * * *
Goldsworthy liked Charles’s new line of inquiry. They sat in the gloom of his office on the dark afternoon as the snow began to descend. Wilde had left coffee and some sweet, honey-coated pastries on the big desk.
“That’s the ticket, lad,” Goldsworthy said. “Spies are never disinterested parties. They are men—”
Charles raised a brow.
“—or women, who have known...betrayal.” Goldsworthy’s eyes darted back and forth as his mind worked. “They’ve learned to distrust appearances.”
Charles drank his coffee and waited. Though it was rare for Goldsworthy to share his thinking, there was more coming. Lynley had told him that Goldsworthy had been in the spy business for over twenty years. The man was ancient and ageless at once like a mighty oak with a gnarled trunk and a green head.
“She avoids being in company with Wellington, does she?” Goldsworthy prompted.
“She does, though he’s the man more than any other who could help a royalist widow establish her claim to property in France.” Charles had now seen her turn away from the duke three times.
Goldsworthy chuckled. “And our duke has always had an eye for the ladies. Her avoiding him rather confirms your suspicion that she was in Paris during the occupation. So who else might have noticed her? How old would she have been?”
“Twenty-three, perhaps. No more than twenty-five,” Charles said.
Goldsworthy’s lively eyes did their thinking dance. “If the marchioness was in Paris during the occupation, she could have caught some Englishman’s eye, and if his intentions were less than honorable, if she suffered at his hands, she might be susceptible to Zovsky’s recruiting methods.”
Charles had considered the possibility and its limits. He and Perry now had intelligence reports of various parties and balls at which the English officers and their Russian counterparts had mingled in that time of reveling in the allies’ victory and the delights of the great city suddenly reopened to them. If they were right, somewhere in the mass of gossip and detail would be the story of a scandal, of a dashing officer who pursued a young Russian woman and broke her heart or, worse, ruined her.
“The theory is not without its limits,” Charles admitted. “Even if such an event is part of the marchioness’s history, the man who wronged her would have to be dead now for her to move so openly about London.”
Goldsworthy shook his great head. “She’s a bold one. You’ve seen yourself that she goes everywhere even though she must avoid Wellington.”
Charles nodded and shifted the conversation back to the most important point. “Betrayal may be her motive, sir, but what we don’t know is her mission.” Charles could make no sense of it so far. “She takes little interest in men with obvious government ties, except for Edenhorn. She is remarkably open in her movements. She takes pains to let me know where she is going and with whom. One sees her daily in public places. One could almost suppose her innocent except that she tries so hard.”
“Raises your suspicions, doesn’t it?” The big man chuckled.
It did. From the beginning he’d doubted the marchioness’s authenticity. Her willingness to provide a family tree, her open references to the vineyards of Saumur and the members of his family, her persistent presence wherever Charles went... Perry had discovered with Faraday’s help that some of the ink on the family tree was quite recent, no more than a few months old. Great Uncle Victor was a fabrication.
* * * *
Harriet spent hours pondering Octavia’s revelations, unable to stop thinking about Wynford, the man who wanted to dance with her. Her contrary impressions of him had undergone two complete reversals in an hour. As the spy who read Octavia’s post, he appeared nearly as overbearing and blind to his sister’s happiness as Harriet’s own brother had once been. As the boy under the fishing nets, she thought he might be forgiven almost anything in his desire to protect his sister from harm.
Harriet wandered the house, absently collecting items from Lady Luxborough’s list that were meant to go into the country the following week with the remaining servants. Unaccountably, among them was the sheet music for the old carol, “The Holly and the Ivy,” which Pris had been practicing for weeks. Harriet discovered the music under an embroidery frame left on a chair in the second-best drawing room.
When she picked it up, she read the words of the old song to push Wynford from her mind. “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood. The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn. The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall.” Then she laughed at her quick descent into melancholy, knowing that Pris laboring at her instrument was not the least bit likely to inspire melancholy in anyone but her music master.
Instantly her thoughts returned to Wynford. Octavia’s revelation of the family history was at odds with Wynford’s usual composure and his untroubled manner as a single gentleman with a flirtatious smile.
Harriet did not quite understand how the boy on the beach and the man who teased her for a dance could be the same person. Snatches of conversation between them would come to mind to make her stop in the middle of a room. Then she would pick up Lady Luxborough’s list again and return to work.
There was more to the story than the horror Wynford had faced as a boy. By Octavia’s own admission, she had related a secondhand account. The girl had not questioned elements of the tale that struck Harriet as pointing to quite another explanation for Lady Wynford’s death on that beach.
It was nearly four, quite dark, and snowing steadily when Harriet at last placed Lady Luxborough’s full workbasket on the demilune table in the front hall. At that moment Cat’s distinctive howl came from the back of the stairs behind the door to the yellow room. When she opened it, he exploded into the hall, ran circles around her, and skidded to a stop at the front door, regarding her expectantly. Her thoughts immediately underwent another revolution. Her position in the world was clear. She was not an eligible young miss to spend an afternoon wholly absorbed in thinking about a man like Wynford. She was a doer-of-favors, a collector of odds and ends, a dog-minder, an afterthought, as easily left behind as Cat.
“Oh dear.” She laughed at him. “They’ve probably not missed you yet, and it will be too late to turn back.” He danced a bit at the door. “I’ll get my cloak,” she said. “But you’ll have to wait for morning for a proper walk.”