The tavern that Emory had always considered a friendly place for a pint seemed to be collapsing around him, the wood-paneled walls narrowing, the scarred plank floor tilting.
“Celeste Blanchard?” He pressed Arthur for confirmation, praying he’d misheard. “Surely you are mistaken.”
“I wish I were,” Arthur said, hands cradling his tankard. “But I heard it from her own lips. I simply don’t know what to do about it.”
Neither did he. As it was, his mind moved faster than a well-oiled piston. “You cannot think her a spy.”
Arthur regarded him. “You’re certain she isn’t?”
“Yes,” Emory said. “Oh, she’s clever enough, and she’s quite capable of twisting a fellow around her little finger, and I grant you she has an astonishingly good grasp of engineering principles, but—”
Arthur raised an eloquent brow.
“But I cannot have been so taken in,” Emory finished lamely.
Arthur shook his head. “That is the role of a spy, Thorndyke—to take us in, to convince us to confide our deepest secrets.”
His sisters called him the most pig-headed of men. Perhaps they were right, because Arthur’s impeccable logic made no dent in his own certainty.
“No,” Emory insisted. “I won’t believe it. What’s more, I’ll prove it to you.”
Arthur leaned back in the chair. “How?”
Emory straightened. “I’ll speak to her myself.”
“No offense, my friend,” Arthur said with a chuckle, “but you aren’t exactly known for subtlety.”
“Which is all to the good in this instance,” Emory assured him. “You can be certain of my veracity. I will let you know what I discover.”
What a difficult evening! Sitting at the dining room table, listening to the conversation among Loveday and her family, Celeste had been acutely aware that she was the visitor, the stranger, and that her right to remain might be taken away at any moment.
At least Loveday had been willing to give her a second chance. The two had reached a rapprochement and spent the latter part of the afternoon discussing plans, but some of the zest was gone. Every once in a while, Loveday would look at her out of the corners of her eyes, and Celeste would know she was wondering.
Had Celeste finally told her everything?
Was an aeronaut force on its way to England?
Were they in danger?
She did her best to pretend all was well. She smiled, conversed, suggested ideas for the air ship Loveday was designing. She even accompanied her friend to the henhouse in the orchard the next morning, even if she could not quite fathom why Loveday found the birds so fascinating.
“They are not noted for their ability to fly, n’est-ce pas?” she asked as Loveday bent to pick up one of the hens.
“Not at all,” Loveday confirmed, stroking the speckled feathers. More of the hens clustered around her muslin skirts, clucking softly. “But they are excellent listeners.”
Celeste studied the hen’s reddish head. “I see no ears.”
Loveday smiled fondly down at the bird. “Penny keeps her ears concealed, don’t you, my sweet? You could tell our friend Celeste many secrets after hearing me expound on my dilemmas over the years.”
The hen cocked her head and regarded Celeste with bright brown eyes, as if she knew exactly what was going on in Celeste’s mind.
“Pardon me, miss.”
Celeste and Loveday looked up to find Morwen, the Penhale maid, standing in the doorway of the garden wall.
“Mr Thorndyke is here again,” she said with some asperity.
Loveday set the hen on the ground. “I’ll see him.”
Morwen’s gaze swung to Celeste. “He spoke with your father, miss, then asked to speak to Miss Aventure. Privately.”
Privately? Celeste and Loveday exchanged glances.
Loveday clasped her hands behind her back. “Tell Mr Thorndyke that Miss Aventure will meet him on the rear lawns. I’ll take a walk along the cliff. I’ll be in full view at all times. Celeste can call if she needs me.”
The maid hurried off. Celeste sent her friend a grateful smile, and the two headed out onto the lawns. As Emory came around the house along the walk through the shrubbery, Celeste put her hand on Loveday’s arm.
“Slowly, now. We must not appear eager.”
“I’m not in the least eager,” Loveday assured her. “But I admit to some curiosity. It would seem too early for declarations, but I suspect, traditionalist that he is, he’d likely seek permission from my father first.”
This was not what Celeste had been expecting. The man had come bearing designs the last time. She dropped her hand. “Permission from your father? As in a marriage proposal?” Her feet froze in the grass.
“Yes, just so. I don’t know what else he might have to say to Father before seeing you.” Loveday took a couple more steps before apparently noticing Celeste had not followed. She glanced back. “Celeste?”
Celeste swallowed. She had not really expected her second worst fear to be realized quite so soon. “Coming.”
They met Emory partway across the lawns. With the back of the house framing his dark coat and trousers, he looked tall, formal. He snatched the low-crowned hat off his sandy hair and bowed to them both.
“Miss Penhale, Miss Aventure. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I must determine the wind’s direction,” Loveday announced and promptly marched toward the cliff.
Emory watched her go. “Kind of her.”
“How might I be of assistance, Monsieur Thorndyke?” Celeste asked.
He brought his gaze back to her. “Straight to the point. I admire that. Allow me to do the same. It may have come to your attention that I hold you in the highest regard.”
Explosives like the ones her mother tossed out seemed to sparkle around him. She thought she might be going to faint. This could not be. Not now. She did not know who she was anymore. How could he know her well enough to admire her?
Deep breaths. When she felt less lightheaded, she spoke. “And I am impressed by the work you do,” she countered. “Such clever innovations. Tell me, have you solved the problem with the timing of the piston?”
“I believe I have. It may be a matter of the thrust to weight ratio. If we were to adjust…” He trailed off, and some of the animation leaked from his face like steam through a faulty valve. “That is, we are working on the matter.” He glanced to where Loveday had paused beside a fat shrub that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Comte d’Angeline.
Emory offered his arm. “Would you walk with me?”
“Certainly.” She put her hand on his arm but made sure to angle them across the lawn on a heading that would keep Loveday in sight.
He was silent a moment, gaze going out over the sea, sparkling blue-green below.
“Is something troubling you, Monsieur Thorndyke?” she felt compelled to ask.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I had a conversation with Arthur Trevelyan yesterday.”
Her breath caught, but she kept her tone light. “Oh? I did not know the two of you were acquainted.”
“Since we were boys,” he explained. “I’ve always considered him a friend.”
A friend who shared secrets? Oh, please, non! “And did you find him well?” Celeste asked politely.
“Yes, yes, quite well. It was the topic of his conversation that concerned me.” He dropped his voice as if he, too, thought the chickens in the orchard might listen. “I understand you are the daughter of France’s chief aeronaut.”
She could claim surprise or deny it, but she was so tired of pretending. “I am, but I must ask you not to shout that about. Not everyone will be as understanding as Captain Trevelyan and Mademoiselle Penhale.”
He glanced to where Loveday was striding back and forth along the cliff, arms swinging as if she were exercising. “She knows, then.”
“She does, but her family does not. We thought to spare them… concern.”
“Understandable,” he said. “I’m struggling to take it in myself. You could likely do old Boney a great service by revealing what you know about our high-pressure steam engine.”
The unkind nickname did not bother her as much as it had only a few days ago. “Perhaps. But I no longer have any interest in serving Napoleon, in any capacity. My life is in England now.”
She felt the tension leave his arm. “Good. Excellent. I shall take you at your word.”
Celeste gazed up at him. His brow had cleared, his smile was satisfied. He would accept what she said—no posturing, no questions. He was either an innocent fool or the most forthright man she’d ever met.
“Thank you,” she said.
His smile broadened, and the day felt warmer, brighter. He stopped in the middle of the lawn. “Will you be attending the Midsummer Ball?”
Celeste blinked at the non sequitur. At the abrupt removal of both her fears. “Yes, I believe so.”
“Might I request the first two dances?”
Like a hummingbird, joy zinged past her. “I will save them just for you.”
“Excellent.” He took her hand and bowed over it. “I will anticipate the evening. Until then, Miss… Aventure.”
Celeste curtsied, and he released her to stride from the grounds. She couldn’t seem to move as Loveday hurried to join her.
“So?” she asked.
“He knows. Your Arthur told him.”
She stared after Emory. “And?”
“And he wants the first two dances at the Midsummer Ball.”
Loveday reared back. “Well. Not quite a declaration, but a statement nonetheless. A gentleman does not request two dances unless he is smitten.”
That hummingbird was looping around her heart now. “Perhaps he is only being kind. He understands I know few people here.”
Loveday shook her head. “Dancing the minuet with your great aunt Hornpraddle is kind. Importuning a lady for the first two dances is something else entirely. You have made a conquest, Celeste.”
The hummingbird dove for her stomach. “Perhaps, but that only raises a matter of greater concern.” She turned to face Loveday. “How do you dance in England?”
The closer the Midsummer Ball approached, the more excited and shrill and unbearable Loveday’s sisters became. All she heard from dawn until dusk was debut and ballgown and lead off the set. She was of half a mind to tell the whole family about Celeste’s mission and the incredible danger the nation had missed because of a squall in the Channel—the verbal equivalent of a good shaking.
But of course she could not. For imagine if there had been no ball to look forward to, only day after day of normal existence, and her knowledge pressing upon her mind like a storm front. She ought to be grateful that such a burden had been taken from her. She had not even the relief of the trip to Exeter, for it had been canceled when no further information about the prince’s plans had come.
She would very much like to talk it all over with Captain Trevelyan. She walked on the cliffs at least once a day, but inexplicably she did not see him sitting upon his stone. Did he now believe there to be no danger from the south? Or was his household in as much of an uproar as her own?
When the ball was three days away, her parents invited the Trevelyans to dine. Loveday and Celeste had been in Truro, ostensibly to call upon Madame Racine, but really to see for themselves that young Colin was on the road to recovery, and from him to discover that the new boiler had been ready to test. In the excitement of seeing the pressure gauges swing to the right and the relief valve behave as it should—only to have disaster strike again—both she and Celeste had completely forgotten the hour. What had possessed Rudy Clement to bolt tin to the copper? They’d be picking up pieces days from now. When the bells of the church pealed three times, Loveday and Celeste had gasped and practically winded poor Rhea getting home in time to wash and change for dinner.
Luckily Mama seemed to think that her flushed face was the product of some kind of suppressed emotion at seeing Captain Trevelyan seated at their table. It did feel rather strange to be beside him rather than in her usual place.
Very strange, indeed.
Or perhaps it was simply that her new dinner dress was slightly lower in the neckline than she was used to. It was a soft green silk, embroidered with lilies about the neckline and hem rather than the heavy-looking puffs and vandykes so popular this season. Less decoration was better, in her opinion, and she tried not to wonder if he thought she looked well.
“Have you heard the news, Mr Penhale?” Mr Trevelyan said when the fish was brought in. “His Royal Highness has been spotted incognito in Lyme Regis, visiting an engineer that my son tells me is famous for some invention or other.”
Excited babble broke out around the table.
“Can it really be?” Mama said. “He has actually left London and is halfway here?”
“What I would like to know is how it is possible for him to travel incognito,” Cecily Trevelyan wondered aloud. “Everyone in the country knows what he looks like if they have ever opened a newspaper.”
“But an engraved drawing may not be a good likeness,” her mother reminded her. “Besides, sometimes we do not believe the evidence of our own eyes. Why, remember the time I saw Lady Boscawen in Bristol? I nearly walked past her without so much a bow because she was not in her proper place. Thank goodness her husband crossed the street just then and called her by name. So one’s surroundings become part of one, do they not?”
“So true,” Captain Trevelyan said. “Why, should any of Miss Aventure’s acquaintance travel here from France—”
“Or Portugal,” Gwen put in.
“Gwen, dear, I hope you do not plan to interrupt the gentlemen in this way at the ball,” Mama said severely.
“She might not be recognized at all, simply because she is not in her usual context,” the captain concluded. “However, as a former member of the Walsingham Office, I must say we could never depend on something so ephemeral as context. We always assumed we would be recognized at any moment.”
“Quite so,” his father said.
“Indeed,” Celeste murmured and addressed herself to her asparagus.
“Well,” Gwen said a little defiantly, “the only context in which I should like to see the Tinkering Prince is our own. Oh, Papa, Lyme Regis is not so far away that he could not journey here in three days, is it? Please say it is not.”
But Papa shook his head. “It is well over a hundred miles.”
“Probably nearer one hundred fifty,” Mr Trevelyan said. “Fifty miles a day is quite impossible unless he takes to the air like a crow.”
Gwen’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
Celeste and Loveday slid twinkling glances at one another. If the air ship drawings became a reality, the prince might indeed fly!
“If he is visiting an engineer,” Loveday said, “he might not be prepared to attend a ball. Why, he might have only chambray shirts and doeskin breeches in a single valise, and a pair of trunks filled with nothing but engine parts.”
Celeste laughed, and even Captain Trevelyan smiled at her whimsy.
Gwen was not smiling. Neither were Rosalind, Cecily, or Jenifer. “I shall never be presented, shall I?” Gwen moaned. “How am I to make my bows if there is no one to bow to?”
“The same way I or Mrs Trevelyan made ours, Gwendolyn. There isn’t a girl in Cornwall who has had to be presented to a prince or a queen in order to come out.”
Mrs Trevelyan nodded. “One simply takes one’s place in company at a ball like this, or one given by your family, and gets on with the business.”
“But imagine being noticed by His Royal Highness,” Jenifer sighed dreamily. “One could take precedence over every girl in the room then, could not one?”
“That’s not likely to happen to you,” her sister informed her.
“Girls,” Mrs Trevelyan said in a warning tone, and they subsided into discussions of evening frocks and silk and arrangements of the hair.
“It is quite certain, then, that the prince will not be able to attend?” Loveday asked Captain Trevelyan under cover of the chatter.
“At least you need not be concerned about your come-out,” he said with a smile, “and may concern yourself with other matters.”
“I have been out in company these two years already,” she said. She enjoyed balls and assemblies, as long as they did not interfere with her work. “As far as other matters, I do think he ought to be informed that—” She lowered her voice. “—Napoleon is rather more serious about an air invasion than we had thought.”
“Our mutual friend said he was not. That he had almost given it up.”
“But if not for a squall that would no longer be true. Indeed, one might come this close—” She held her fingers a quarter inch apart. “—to reciting Queen Elizabeth’s ‘heart and stomach of a king’ speech when the wind comes up again.”
His shoulders shook with a chuckle before he sobered. “The trouble is, we cannot make him or anyone outside our own circle aware of the circumstances without naming names. And neither of us, I think, is prepared to do so.”
“No, indeed. I cannot bear to lose my friend in such a fashion. I would rather be wrong about her than betray her.”
“She has not given us reason to do any such thing as yet,” he reminded her. “Emory agrees with you. He believes her to be true.”
“I should think so. He has asked her for the first two dances at the ball,” she blurted, swinging from affairs of state to affairs of the heart like a silly coracle in the waves. He would think her a complete ninny, unable to keep her mind in serious channels.
“Has he, indeed?” Captain Trevelyan asked in surprised tones. “Well, I had best not be a laggard, then. I must follow his excellent example. Miss Penhale, will you honor me with the second country dance? Only the one, I am afraid, and that only if it is a slow one. I do not think my leg will bear quick movements.”
Her jaw sagged as she stared at him in astonishment. Here were singular events afoot, with invasions being scotched by fits of bad weather, the Prince Regent paddling about in plain clothes in Lyme, and captains of the army asking for dances when they’d barely been able to walk scant weeks ago.
“Miss Penhale? Have I spoken amiss?”
“No,” she managed. “I mean, yes. I mean, yes, I will be honored to accept.”
If it were to be announced that the moon was expected to fall out of the sky three nights hence, she might almost believe it.
But she hoped it would not. Every ball must have a moon.