Miss Fortescue's Protector in Paris

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘I think so, too.’ Laura went to a small table near the window and poured them two cups of tea from the silver service laid out there. A ‘base’ it might be, but obviously a comfortable one. ‘I have worked for this office for a few years now, travelling around, meeting people at house parties and embassy balls, things like that. Herr Friedland claims he represents Crown Princess Victoria in Germany, but of course we know that can’t be true. We keep a close eye on the Princess and her court, as her mother does rather worry about her there. And of course, the herr and his contact, Madame Renard, needed watching. It turns out they were indeed trying to find information about the Princess on behalf of her son. Kaiser Wilhelm is a dreadful character, one who we fear will make trouble for England one day. Mrs Hurst has many contacts and they were hoping to use her to gain access to some of them, especially in the naval office. Kaiser Wilhelm seems especially interested in expanding Germany’s sea power. I am sorry I could not tell you all this before, but I do assure you that the League in London is a legitimate, and very important, organisation.

  ‘Now,’ Laura said with a sigh, ‘do tell me what happened last night and where Christopher is.’

  Her head spinning, Emily told her about the attack in the street, though not the foolish way she had run away from Diana’s hotel, and her suspicions of James Hertford. ‘But I don’t know if he has anything to do with this plot, or is just a disappointed suitor who has, shall we say, overreacted.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Mr Hertford has been in our sights for a while. He is in terrible debt and such men can be dangerous when they are desperate and foreign agents approach them.’

  ‘So he has probably been courting me so ardently for my money.’ Emily thought back, trying to think of any signs of trouble she might have missed. She had probably overlooked them since he was once so kind about the embarrassing incident of Mr Hamilton. ‘He seemed nice. He helped me once when I needed it.’

  ‘And he probably thinks you owe him for ever now. Such men often do.’ She tapped her fingers on the desk and gave a brisk smile. ‘Well, he will soon be taken care of. I should find William, I think he is in the office now, and then I will take him see to our young Sir Lancelot. You need not worry any longer, Miss Fortescue. Let me call you a carriage to take you back to your hotel. You must be exhausted.’

  Emily nodded, but she knew very well her worrying days were far from over.

  * * *

  ‘You are sure it’s Hertford?’ Chris demanded from Laura. His head was still fuzzy from the medicine the doctor had given him and his shoulder ached like burning devils, but it was nothing to his anger. He tried to push himself up, but the pain made him gasp.

  ‘Oh, do be careful, Christopher, the doctor says you must rest,’ she whispered, glancing at the door as if the torturing, bossy man with his needles and scissors was lurking. But he was talking with Will in the corridor and for the moment Chris was alone with Laura. She had just had time to tell him quickly about Emily’s suspicions of Hertford and the fact that Em had gone safely back to her hotel in an Office carriage.

  That bastard Hertford. It was always the quiet, meek ones who were such trouble. Chris would skewer him, roast him alive for hurting Emily.

  ‘Of course we don’t know for certain yet, but I am setting some of our best men on it this afternoon,’ she said, plumping up his pillows and jostling his shoulder. She really was a terrible nurse. ‘But we know he has been in contact with the Germans, thanks to our information on Herr Friedland. He has sizeable debts he’s eager to keep secret. I’m sure he thought marriage to a rich heiress like Miss Fortescue would help. And men such as him don’t like to take no for an answer.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Chris said grimly. ‘I will take care of it.’ He shoved back the blankets.

  ‘Not right now, you won’t,’ Laura said, again batting him down with her bejewelled hand. ‘You must recover your strength first, you’re no good to any of us this way.’ Her glance softened as she smiled at him. ‘You really were very gallant. You must care about her a great deal.’

  Chris thought of Emily, her laughter in the sunshine of their country idyll, the light on her chestnut hair. ‘Very much.’

  Laura sighed. ‘Then she is lucky. She really is a most intelligent lady, you know. She could be very useful to the Office.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Chris said fiercely. He wouldn’t let her put herself in danger ever again.

  Laura’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you think so, though I do wish you would consider asking her. She is smart, perceptive. Just think about it. And in the meantime, don’t do anything reckless. So many people rely on you.’ She laid her hand gently on his arm and leaned closer. ‘I also think you need to tell her more about your own work. She cares about you and she can be trusted. It’s a rare and enviable thing.’

  ‘Is everything well?’ Emily asked softly. ‘I’m sorry, but I had to come look in on you. Will and the doctor say you will recover.’

  Chris glanced up to find her standing in the doorway, freshly dressed in a blue-and-white-striped walking suit and veiled hat, her face pale and worried, but so, so beautiful. The loveliest thing he had ever seen.

  Laura smiled brightly and stood up to pull on her gloves. ‘Quite well, my dear. I was just admonishing the patient to follow doctor’s orders. No dancing yet.’

  ‘I will make sure he does,’ Emily said.

  ‘Then Will and I shall call again later and have some provisions sent over from Gordston’s food hall,’ Laura said. ‘Caviar does wonders to strengthen the blood! Goodbye, my dears.’

  After Laura and Will left, Emily straightened the bedclothes around Chris and sat down beside him. She did look beautiful, but also tired, worried, and Chris hated that he was the one who had done that to her. His strong, wonderful Emily.

  He also wasn’t sure where to start in telling her the truth, how much to tell her. How much she would hate him after. ‘I suppose you know now that my work is not just sitting behind a desk,’ he blurted.

  Emily gave him a weary smile. ‘I gathered as much from Lady Smythe-Tomas. But I don’t really understand.’

  He gently took her hand in his. It didn’t feel soft and delicate like other ladies’ hands. Her fingers were long, elegant, strong, with ink-stained tips and a few light calluses along the edge of her palm, as if she was no stranger to moving a crate of wine or a bale of silk if needed. Just like Emily herself. Strong, independent, smart, serious. All the things he had always admired about her. She was always, unabashedly, herself.

  She was like him in so many ways, wanting to use what talents they had to make the world a better place. But his job involved danger, too. When it was only himself, it didn’t matter. Emily was an entirely different matter. He had to protect her at all costs. Chris knew that her father felt in a very similar way, as did their friends. Emily was special and the thought of the world without her was unbearable. He had thought he had to keep her away to keep her safe.

  Chris saw so clearly now that he had been very wrong to think that. Emily could bear anything, understand anything, overcome anything. And that was why she was so wonderful.

  ‘When I left university,’ he said, not daring to look up into her eyes. If he did that, he would be lost. ‘I had no idea what I wanted to do. Will was already well on his way at the Foreign Office, but I was young and foolish and had no patience for his sort of work.’

  Emily gave a wry little smile, as if she understood his old impulsiveness, but she said nothing.

  ‘I had no discipline for the military,’ he went on. ‘My father suggested the church, as he had an uncle who would assist me to a living, but I am no good at sermons, either.’

  ‘I dare say all the ladies in the congregation would be in love with you, anyway,’ Emily said. ‘You would be quite distracting.’

  Chris laughed. ‘Perhaps that would have been the only perk of the job? I suppose t
here could always have been a tea plantation in India. But I went a bit wild for a time, was quite aimless.’

  ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘I had a visit from Lord Ellersmere, Will’s superior at the Office. He had heard that I had a knack for making friends rather easily...’

  ‘Which you certainly do.’

  ‘It never seems like a career skill, though, does it? But I discovered that when people like someone, they tend to spill their secrets. And some secrets are very valuable indeed.’

  Emily frowned at him. She looked adorable even then. ‘Have you been discovering my secrets all this time, then?’

  ‘I wish I could. I want to know everything about you. Though I doubt your secrets are quite the sort the Foreign Office is interested in.’

  ‘What sorts are those?’

  ‘Sorts of people who are not as devoted to Queen and country as they should be. It was useful to play the silly wastrel, the flirt, the one who pays no attention to anything but his cravats and the next pretty woman.’

  Emily stared down at their joined hands for a long, silent moment. ‘I have always known there was more to you than that. You just seemed so insistent that there was not.’

  He squeezed her hand tightly. ‘I know that. You always see too much. That was why I always had to be more careful with you than anyone else.’ He remembered their first kiss, in the sunlight at the lake at Miss Grantley’s, and how it had shaken his whole world. How nothing had really been the same since then. ‘And right now, it’s important that Friedland doesn’t realise we know he is working with Kaiser Wilhelm rather than the Crown Princess. Germany poses many dangers to England. But I’ve been good at my job until now and have enjoyed it. But lately...’

  ‘Lately?’

  ‘A man can’t do such work for ever. I see what Di and Will have, the security, the friendship, their partnership, and I—I don’t know what to do next. I shall have to think very hard about my work once we leave Paris.’

  Emily sighed. ‘You and me both. I know my father worries about me and worries about how I will run the business alone. I suppose I worry, too, I just never want to admit it. I also look at Di and Will, and Alex and Malcolm, and I feel—sad.’

  They stared at each other for a long, tense moment, not speaking, but sharing so much only in that look. So much understanding. So many things beyond words. Chris kissed her hand, inhaling the sweetness of her perfume, wishing that moment could last for ever.

  She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead and moved away. ‘You should get some rest, Chris. You need your sleep. I’ll stay here for a while, but no more talking, yes?’ She tucked the blankets close around him, looking rather sad, rather far away.

  He took her hand again, just for a moment. ‘Em—don’t worry about Hertford any longer. He will never bother you again.’

  She shook her head, her brow creased with a worried frown. ‘Chris, if you think...’

  ‘No, I won’t hurt him. Just—let me help you, Em. For once in your life, just let someone help you. Let someone care about you.’

  She said nothing, but she gave him a gentle smile. ‘Only if you will do the same. Now, get some sleep. You must heal and rest will help. I will stay with you.’

  He didn’t want to close his eyes, didn’t want to lose her, but he was indeed feeling very tired. Everything that had happened, the doctor’s medicines, it was all catching up to him. He nodded, and closed his eyes, holding on to Emily as he drifted into the darkness.

  * * *

  Emily sat and watched Chris as he slept, not even noticing the light turning pink and pale beyond the window, hearing the voices and clatter of carriage wheels from the street below. She only saw Chris, how young he looked while asleep, how free from the cares he had borne all alone for so long. Like a carefree, golden god, resting in his bower.

  She smoothed the blankets around him and felt an overwhelming wave of something she would never have thought to feel for Chris. Tenderness. It was the sweetest, saddest, most astounding thing she could ever have imagined.

  She had always prided herself on her independence. She had to be. She had no mother, no siblings, she had to find her own way in the world. She had never felt quite like other girls, except for Di and Alex. It was one reason she had rejected every suitor who presented himself to her, who her father suggested. None of them understood her. None of them had what she imagined she would need in a partner. What she dreamed of. Someone who knew and accepted her for who she really was.

  Now she saw that, in truth, none of the men had been Christopher.

  Even when Chris seemed so light-hearted, flirtatious, careless, hardly a man she could make a proper life with—there had always been something about him. Something she couldn’t quite forget, let go of.

  Now she knew why that was. Chris was an actor, a consummate actor, but her business training, her dealings with men of every sort, negotiating contracts, reading the market, had given her her own instincts for people. For when they would make a deal and when they wouldn’t. The way Chris would sometimes look at her—watchful, serious. The conversations they would have, his quick wit, his power of observation. The way he could fight when attacked. None of it had quite added up and that had always fascinated Emily as much as it puzzled her.

  It was all because Chris was a spy.

  He muttered in his sleep, and she whispered softly to him until he quieted again. He looked so angelic in his sleep. No wonder he could fool people into trusting him with dangerous secrets.

  He had been willing to sacrifice so much for his country. Society loved him for his fun ways, but they didn’t respect him as they did his brother. She understood the feeling of being underestimated. Many men didn’t want to make business deals with a woman. But Chris was brave in a way she could barely imagine.

  Emily suddenly realised something horrible, wonderful, terrifying. She loved Chris Blakely. Loved his fun, his laughter, his courage, his discretion. Everything about him. And maybe she had ever since the first time she saw him in the garden at Miss Grantley’s, so long ago. Who would have imagined it when her father proposed a false courtship in Paris?

  But what good could it ever do either of them? Their lives were so very different. Yet there it was. Her most secret heart. And she feared that would never change. She would never love anyone but him.

  ‘Em?’ she heard him whisper hoarsely.

  She looked down at him with a gentle smile, hoping he would never see her secret. ‘I’m right here. Don’t worry about a thing.’

  He smiled back. ‘That should be my line to you.’

  ‘Oh, Chris.’ She kissed his forehead. ‘I think that is for both of us...’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Oh, yes, he is still here,’ the concierge of James Hertford’s lodgings told Chris when he enquired at her grilled window. ‘Though he owes me for the rest of the month, that was the agreement, and he won’t pay up. He says he is going to fetch his lady friend and leave today!’

  Chris handed her a pile of bank notes, afraid that the ‘lady friend’ the villain was going to fetch was Em. He thought of her sweet tenderness as she nursed him back to health, the sadness and fear he had seen in her eyes even as she tried to hide it, and that made him even more angry. ‘I hope this will cover his rent, madame. And any damages.’

  ‘Damages!’ she cried, but Chris had already started up the stairs. The door at the top of the building was open.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t already decamped to England, Hertford,’ Chris said, watching the man creep towards the stairs with his valise. It felt strangely as if he watched the scene from a distance. His anger at Hertford had been burning so hot as he waited to recover enough to confront him, as he turned over and over in his mind the thought of how Hertford had treated Emily. Now that anger had turned icy cold and that made it burn even more.

  Hertfor
d spun around, his case clattering to the floor. In the dim light of the corridor, Chris could see the wild shock on the man’s face, his pale, clammy skin and the dilated, frightened pupils of his eyes. Like most bullies, it seemed Hertford was a rank coward. It seemed he knew Ellersmere’s office was on to him and now he was fleeing like a rat. But not before he had terrified Emily.

  ‘Surprised to see me, are you?’ Chris said, leaning against the railing with his old, insouciant carelessness. ‘Or perhaps you were expecting someone else?’

  James’s eyes narrowed and he seemed to collect himself, standing up straighter. ‘What are you doing here, Blakely? Visiting a paramour? I’m not surprised. Some people have no appreciation for the better things in the world.’

  Chris remembered how Hertford had seen him with Emily at the Moulin de la Galette. Had it set off his jealousy? ‘You never did deserve her. Your behaviour could only ever have driven her away.’

  Hertford’s face twisted in fury. ‘She never even saw me! I, who loved her, who would have cherished her. I would have given her everything...’

  ‘Except what she needs. Love, security, freedom. When were you going to tell her you had lost everything to bad debts? Lost even your honour? Were you going to live off the Fortescue money, once your German pay-off was gone?’

  ‘What do you know of that?’ Hertford cried furiously.

  Chris realised he had done the cardinal sin in his work—revealing too much to his target. But he did not care. ‘I am not the fool you take me for. Leave her alone, for good and all—or we will be having a very different conversation.’

  Hertford dropped his case, glancing back as if desperate to find a way out. But they were on the top floor and there was no escape. ‘What are you going to do, Blakely? I demand to know!’

  Chris was disgusted by the man’s desperation, disgusted by what that and his unrequited passion for Emily had driven him to—and Chris feared he might once have been the same. But no longer. He couldn’t even look at the man for another moment, couldn’t stand what he had done, what he was. He would be gone soon, no longer a threat to Emily or anyone else. Chris would make sure of that.