Trinidad West

by Cecily’s Secret

  “Now how does Miss Cecily Bettencourt of Yorkshire, England, know so much about me?”

  Cecily chose to interpret this noncommittal reply as an acknowledgment of her correct guess. Belatedly remembering to be intriguing, she threw him a mysterious look and said, “I have my ways, Mr. Comestibili. I have my ways.”

  Franco didn’t reply. Indeed, he appeared to be so lost in thought that he was paying no attention to where he was going. Cecily took advantage of this and steered him back in the direction of the house. She felt she had dazzled him enough for one morning.

  “Goodness, I’m famished,” Cecily said. “I find I’m quite looking forward to the picnic lunch my aunt has planned. She has an excellent French cook, you know. I don’t think I agree with the people who say French cooks are superior to our English cooks, but they do provide variety. What is your opinion, sir?”

  “Of French cooks?” he asked, watching her closely.

  “Yes.”

  “I find them very interesting.”

  “Interesting, indeed.” She tried to give the impression she understood his meaning, but she wasn’t at all sure she did.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll find my aunt’s cook especially interesting,” she said, thinking of all the exotic flavors she had first experienced at Lady Weldon’s table.

  They had arrived at the wide steps that led up to the terrace at the back of the house.

  Franco turned to Cecily and said, “I think I’ll walk out to Lord Weldon’s stables and take a look around. I understand his horses are the envy of the county.”

  “Yes, indeed. The finest-bred horse would be in good company with them and no horse could want for better treatment than the Weldon horses receive.”

  Franco gave her a perplexed look, then bowed abruptly, said “Good day,” and turned on his heel, leaving Cecily to wonder what she had said wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  The rest of the party had already gathered and begun eating when Perry strolled out of the house, trying hard to look like his concept of the world around him hadn’t just been shattered, albeit in the most intriguing way. He pretended to scratch an itch on his cheek. He felt like his face was flaming red but it didn’t feel flushed to the touch.

  All he had wanted to do was determine if Mr. Bettencourt had any incriminating documents stashed in his room. It hadn’t seemed likely but Perry had to check. He felt that the least he could do was be thorough, to make up for not having the slightest idea of what he was doing. He had searched every drawer, every pocket, even every shoe. Either the man was very good at what he did or he wasn’t a spy at all.

  Or he knew his room might be searched. That left another room to be searched. His daughter’s room. Cecily’s room. A clever spy would make good use of a family member whom nobody would suspect. A dedicated spy might not hesitate to involve his daughter in his nefarious schemes.

  Perry hesitated half a dozen times on his way from one bedroom to the other. Spying on a man—a suspected traitor—was one thing. Going through a lady’s bedroom was downright improper. And what if Cecily returned to her room and caught him rummaging through her things? What would she think of him then? He turned around three times, only to remind himself that he was here to do a job, not to court a woman. It felt like he had dithered away at least an hour in indecision by the time he slipped into Cecily’s room. It had been barely five minutes and only one servant had seen him making his gradual way down the hall, stopping and starting, turning and muttering. The servants probably already thought he was mad to dress the way he did. One more reason for them to consider him a lunatic hardly mattered.

  Once inside, Perry wasted no time. He peered under the bed but he avoided looking at the bed itself. He could not allow his mind to turn in the direction of Cecily and her bed. He could not afford to think of her lying beneath those covers or to wonder what sorts of dreams she had. Besides, he thought, turning resolutely away, a maid would find anything hidden in a bed.

  He looked through drawers, trying very hard not to let his eyes linger over the delicate stockings and soft gloves that turned out not to be hiding anything at all. He picked up a workbasket of the type that ladies used to hold their needlework. It held a tangle of threads and ribbons but nothing that looked like a work in progress. Perry slipped his hand into the basket and felt something hidden beneath the lining. He worked his hand between the fabric and the basket and pulled out a worn book. He had to see what it was—in the name of thoroughness.

  Perry scowled at the dark-red leather cover. It was so worn that he couldn’t read the title. And it felt wrong. He opened it slowly, trying to see it without looking too closely at it, just in case it was Cecily’s diary. But it wasn’t a diary at all. It was another book—Love’s Lessons—hidden within the empty cover of some nameless tome that had been sacrificed to hide a guilty pleasure.

  Perry smiled. He would never have suspected Cecily of reading tawdry romance novels. He wondered what it said about her.

  Then he opened Love’s Lessons. It wasn’t a novel. Not at all. It appeared to be an illustrated instruction manual. Perry turned a few pages, his eyes moving from one detailed illustration of couples making love to another. And there were descriptions. Detailed descriptions of activities he had not even known had names.

  This could not be Cecily’s book.

  It had to be Cecily’s book. Who else would have hidden it in her workbasket? When he paused to think about it, he realized it may have been just about the only place an unmarried woman of her class could hide something like this. Maids cleaned her room and took care of her clothes. Unless she was the lady of the house, she would not likely have access to a single truly secret hiding place. Except perhaps for a sewing basket that she never used. No maid would ever have a reason to do more than pick it up to dust underneath it.

  Perry sat down on a dainty bench at the foot of the bed and let the book fall open in his hands, revealing a picture of a naked man and woman. They were standing pressed together, the woman’s back against the man’s front. One of the man’s hands was clasping one of the woman’s breasts. The other was between the woman’s legs. Beneath the picture, the text read, “The front-to-back embrace allows the man access to both the woman’s most sensitive areas.” Perry was feeling some definite discomfort in his own most sensitive area.

  Was this what Cecily thought about late at night? Was this what she read before she went to sleep? How on earth could she go to sleep after looking at this? But of course, she wouldn’t sleep after such a bedtime story, would she? She might toss and turn restlessly for a while, in the very bed he’d been trying to not think about, before she gave in and pulled her nightgown up over her legs, up to her waist and her hand drifted down…

  Perry snapped the book shut. He could not afford to have these thoughts. He felt quite certain that thoughts like these could get a spy killed. Maybe that was the plan. Maybe it wasn’t Cecily’s book after all. Maybe the spy had hidden it for a spy hunter to find. It would throw any man off the trail. It had almost worked.

  *

  Perry flexed his hands. He thought he could still feel the soft leather cover of the book that certainly could not be Cecily’s as he paused on the terrace to look at the pretty scene spread out before him. Bright white tablecloths had been laid out on the grass, on which a dozen or more people were relaxing. The young ladies, looking like a bed of flowers in all their pretty colors, were sitting with their feet demurely tucked under their skirts. The gentlemen lounged in various degrees of reclining positions. Ranged around the outskirts of the picnic, the older ladies and some of the older gentlemen were comfortably seated in chairs brought down from the house.

  The glory of the scene was the two tables, set end-to-end, donning more of the sparkling white linen and heaped high with food. There were pâtés, aspics, cheeses, breads of all shapes and sizes, tarts, tea cakes, fruit, cold meat of every variety and bottle upon bottle of wine.

  Perry’s stomach made a demanding g
rumble and he headed down to the lawn at a brisk pace designed to give an impression of repentant haste. With a greeting to his hostess and an apology for his tardiness, he proceeded to pile a plate with food and look around for a place to sit. He discovered to his great annoyance that the dark-haired man sitting on the ground between Cecily and her father was the Italian and not only was he sitting closer to Cecily than was proper, but one of his hands, which he was leaning back on, was resting on Cecily’s skirt. Henry, who should have stopped such a thing, didn’t seem even to notice. He was avidly listening to the insufferable man.

  Perry put his plate down on the ground and sat between Henry and Franco. He would have liked to place himself between Cecily and the Italian, but there was no way to do so without making a complete nuisance of himself. As soon as he settled his plate comfortably and securely on his lap, a footman came along and offered him a glass of wine, which Perry accepted more enthusiastically than he supposed he ought.

  “My acquaintance says they yield ten percent more wool in a good year than his neighbor’s sheep and he loses far fewer to disease than he used to,” Franco was saying while Perry got himself settled. “You really should contact him about them, Mr. Bettencourt. He is anxious to see how other breeders fare with them.”

  Perry met Cecily’s glance and she rolled her eyes at him in a most delightfully unladylike manner.

  “By God, I will, sir. I could do with some hardier stock in my herd. Munk, my lad, I’m glad you joined us. Comestibili here’s been telling me about the most remarkable sheep. I tell you, I’m rethinking my opinion of the Italians. I had no idea they were such hands with sheep.”

  “Sheep conquers all,” Cecily said to a forkful of roast beef.

  Franco wisely ignored her and said, “But did you not meet your wife in Italy, sir?”

  Henry growled and drained his glass. “I was younger than young Munk here. I hardly knew a ram from a ewe.” He signaled for a footman to refill his glass. “I hope you’ll give me your friend’s name,” he said to Franco, “but I’ll tell you, until all this nonsense on the continent is over with, I won’t be able to contact him.”

  “Nonsense, sir?” Franco asked.

  “Yes, you know, Napoleon and the war and all that.”

  Perry had been idly spreading a very fine pâté on a wedge of bread, concentrating most of his attention on not looking too often at Cecily. She had a most disconcerting way of looking up at him every time he looked at her. It was possible, he considered, that her eyes were drawn to the fine cut of his coat, but it was highly unlikely. At the mention of Napoleon, however, Henry commanded his full attention.

  “It’s next to impossible,” Henry continued, “to do business with people on the continent. I’ve been tearing my hair out for nigh on a year now trying to arrange for the shipment of an Austrian ram that would put some prime blood into my stock. There’s no end to the channels to be gone through just to carry out a simple communication, let alone a shipment of goods. And mind you, that sheep has been paid for for months now. Just ask Cecily if you don’t believe what distress it’s been causing me.”

  “I’m sure you could not imagine more severe distress, sir,” Cecily chimed in obligingly while trying to remove a crumb from her wine.

  “Do you mean to say, Mr. Bettencourt, that you have recently been engaged in commerce with Austria?” Perry could hardly credit it. Why had his employer not been able to discover this without the aid of an amateur spy?

  “Well, sir, “Henry replied. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it commerce until I’ve gotten what I paid for and I’m beginning to fear that won’t happen until that French upstart has been put in his place.”

  Perry pushed his hair back from his forehead. He wished again that George were with him so he would have somebody to share this stunning revelation with.

  As he ate his lunch, only half listening to the banter between Cecily and Franco, he thought about all the evidence his employer had of correspondence between Henry and an unknown foreign agent, which was believed to have been conveyed through various banks and businesses in three countries in order to work around the war. He had assumed it wasn’t unusual for British agents to be aware of such correspondence without knowing its contents and perhaps it was. He understood now why his employer had stressed that Henry was only suspected of spying for France.

  Now he could send a cryptic note off to London saying that their suspicions were unfounded and enjoy the rest of the party. But what about the information his employer had that there would be a French spy present at Weldon House? Until they had received that information they had only been keeping the most casual eye on Henry. Perry wished he knew where that information had come from. Another spy, he supposed. He would like to know who had nearly been the ruin of a man whose only crime was being an excessively avid breeder of sheep.

  Of course, that same unknown person was also responsible for Perry coming face-to-face with the woman he had previously only admired from Lily’s drawing room window. Whether that was an act to be thankful for, though, Perry wasn’t certain. Having her within arm’s reach wasn’t making him any happier than he had been before he knew who she was. He had hardly slept the night before. He had tried counting sheep and counting backward and reciting all of Shakespeare’s sonnets that he could remember, and even a few he couldn’t entirely remember, but his mind kept insisting on returning to the image of Cecily in that revealing ball gown. But in his mind, the gown had slipped off her shoulders and she was lying on his bed waiting for him to join her.

  Cecily was laughing again at something the Italian had said. Perry had just decided he had been better off when he had needed to think of business first when Cecily threw him a quick smile that made his heart beat faster. What did it mean? There was something of the feeling of a shared joke in the look. He didn’t recall sharing any jokes with her. Perhaps she was thinking of something one or the other of them had said while they waltzed the night before, though to tell the truth, Perry had no clear recollection of what he had said to her. He only knew that he’d rambled on about some nonsense regarding party-going in London until he’d received the very gratifying reward of her smile. Then he’d rambled on some more until he got another smile. There had been six distinct smiles in all, two most satisfying chuckles and one outright laugh.

  But now the Italian was monopolizing her attention and, though she wasn’t bestowing any of those bewitching smiles on him, she was gazing up at him with an enraptured expression.

  “I would very much like to see the rest of the house,” Franco said. “Perhaps you would take me on a tour, Miss Bettencourt.”

  “A tour! What a splendid idea, sir,” Lady Weldon exclaimed gleefully. She was sitting in one of the chairs, monitoring the young people with a careful eye.

  “Amelia has been studying all the family stories,” she said. “I’m sure she’d be delighted to guide a tour.”

  Perry watched Franco’s face fall and he could not resist smiling at his rival’s disappointment. While Lady Weldon floated about the picnickers, issuing commands and generally managing things, Perry watched Franco watching Cecily and he didn’t like the look he saw on Franco’s face. It didn’t reflect the uncomplicated desire and admiration that Perry felt when he looked at Cecily. There was a dangerous-looking gleam in Franco’s eyes that raised all sorts of unpleasant suspicions in Perry’s mind. He wished he could find out even a little information about this man. It seemed that perhaps he wasn’t quite finished with spying after all, even if it would be spying for his personal satisfaction.

  As he watched, Cecily looked up at Franco, whose expression changed so quickly and effortlessly that Perry almost doubted what he had seen a moment before. But when Franco leaned down to Cecily and whispered something that set her giggling, Perry knew it didn’t matter what the other’s intentions were. Even if he meant only to amuse, Perry didn’t want to give him the chance to do it.

  A few moments later Perry found himself glowering at the
edge of a cluster of people climbing the back stairs toward the house. Franco had offered Cecily his arm before Perry had as much as gotten to his feet, but could that have been a wistful glance she had thrown over her shoulder in his direction? More likely in the direction of that untouched apricot tart she had left on her plate, Perry suspected. At least it was safer to think so.

  Once inside the house, Perry no longer had the leisure for glum thoughts. Wilfred sidled up to him and Perry knew they would probably be attached for the rest of the afternoon.

  “Going on a tour, eh?” Wilfred inquired. “Can’t say it’s my first choice of a way to pass the time, but I suppose it’s an interesting enough house to look at.”

  “I suspect a man like you has more important matters to attend to,” Perry whispered hopefully as Amelia pointed out the treasures on their pedestals in the grand foyer.

  “Dare say I do, but this may prove to be interesting.”

  “What, a tour of your own house?”

  “I’m more interested in the players than the play, if you know what I mean. I see some entertaining developments brewing, don’t you?”

  “Wilfred! If you can’t be quiet, go and do something else. You seem to be the only one not interested in what I’m saying. And as for you, Mr. Munk, don’t encourage him.”

  Perry and Wilfred hung their heads in an appropriately contrite manner and obediently followed with the rest into the depths of the house.

  As Amelia described the origins of the various sections in the maze of a house, Perry could not help but notice that two out of three words she spoke were directed to a smallish young man with a receding hairline.

  “You see it too,” Wilfred declared when he saw Perry watching the young man. “Maurice Chadwick. Second son of a baronet. Can hardly keep his seat on a horse, but Amelia says he paints them like an angel, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Can’t say I’ve ever seen an angel paint anything.”