Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 01]

by To Wed a Scandalous Spy

  In the hall outside the ballroom, Myrtle pressed upon a panel of the wall. It slid open to reveal a cramped, unadorned passage and staircase.

  Willa blinked. So that was how the servants maneuvered so quietly and efficiently. This revelation made her wonder if on the occasions that she felt as if she was being watched, perhaps she had been.

  The steps were a bit steep, but when they arrived on the floor where the family slept, the panel door slid back to reveal the hall immediately outside Randolph’s room.

  Willa was about to hurry through when Myrtle grasped her arm.

  “Listen.”

  There was no need to listen too carefully, as the voices in the hall were very clear. Willa realized instantly that Nathaniel was speaking.

  “Lord Liverpool, there is nothing to be done.”

  “Lord Liverpool? The Prime Minister?” she whispered to Myrtle, only to be hurriedly shushed.

  “Myrtle, it isn’t well done—”

  Another voice, a dry and precise voice, speaking with more urgency. “Tell him.”

  “What?”

  “Tell him the truth about your disgrace. It cannot matter now, so close to the end.”

  Willa leaned far enough to see Nathaniel. He was pale. As she watched, he closed his eyes. “I did,” he said. He rubbed his hand over his face roughly and took a breath. “Months ago, after the entire affair, I told him. Not every detail, of course, but I told him that I had taken the blame for someone that needed protecting, and that I would never—” He stopped, breathing harshly.

  “What did he say?” Liverpool asked quietly.

  “He said he already knew everything he needed to know about me.”

  Willa’s heart hurt for him. She had never heard him so anguished. She held very still now, listening every bit as hard as Myrtle was.

  “So he will die thinking ill of me.”

  “Then perhaps it is for the best,” Liverpool said grimly. “As a servant of the Crown, you should know that. This facade of traitor is incredibly valuable. Exposure now would waste everything.”

  Willa sank back, letting Myrtle have the door. She had been entirely right about her noble, brilliant Nathaniel. Thinking furiously, she sat on the top of the stairs. Why not simply tell the world what really had occurred?

  There came a new voice, a man whom Willa didn’t recognize.

  “I’m afraid your father has worsened, Lord Reardon. He will never regain consciousness. I don’t expect him to last the hour.”

  Too late. Willa’s heart sank. It was too late now for Nathaniel to make his father understand.

  Liverpool spoke. “Come, Doctor. I’ll have someone show you out.”

  Nathaniel said not a word. Her hand pressed to her heart, Willa ached for him.

  “Oh, dear Randolph, you straitlaced fool,” murmured Myrtle. She climbed from the servants’ passage, tears running down her face.

  Willa scrambled out after her, then searched the hall for Nathaniel. He was just entering his father’s rooms. She followed him through the sitting area, stopping before the bedchamber, where she could see the foot of the bed as he knelt beside it.

  Willa could hardly bear the devastation on his face. She wanted to go to him.

  If only she could be sure he wanted her there.

  Closing the door carefully, Willa stepped back and walked slowly back into the hall, her gaze on the floor.

  “You sour old gooseberry! You could have convinced Randolph!”

  Willa looked up at the sharp cracking sound and registered that Myrtle had copped the Prime Minister a good one across the shins. Realizing that there was no one else in evidence, Willa hurried to Myrtle.

  “Dear one, what are you doing?” She meant what was Myrtle doing attacking Lord Liverpool without reinforcements, but his lordship must have decided that Willa didn’t know a thing about the recent conversation with Nathaniel.

  “I’m afraid dear Mrs. Teagarden is overwrought with grief over her nephew,” he said coolly. He grabbed Myrtle by the arm and swung her firmly to a point of safety before him, where the silver head of her cane could not reach. Then he reached for a bellpull.

  Two footmen appeared, evidently by magic, and each took one of Myrtle’s arms gently.

  Pulling his dignity back together with a tug on his silk waistcoat, Lord Liverpool nodded to them sharply. “Help Mrs. Teagarden back to her room, there’s the lads. I believe we may have to administer a soporific. The poor woman is quite overcome.”

  Willa ran to Myrtle. “Dear, are you all right?”

  There were tears in the old woman’s eyes, and she sagged in the grasp of the footmen. She whispered something to Willa.

  Leaning close on the pretext of settling the woman’s cap, Willa glanced at Lord Liverpool. He was adjusting his coat, his attention on his dignity. “What, Myrtle? I didn’t hear.”

  “You don’t know a thing. Pretend you don’t know a thing.”

  Then the footmen helped Myrtle away, and Willa was left with the Prime Minister.

  She wasn’t much of a liar, but she was an excellent pretender. Willa pretended that she knew nothing before seeing Myrtle attack.

  “Good heavens, my lord! What was that all about?”

  She pretended not to see the way his gaze went shrewd, and she pretended not to shiver at the way he looked down the hall, ice in his gaze.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The estrangement was only supposed to have been temporary. But he had been so pained by his family’s immediate acceptance of the story, their instantaneous belief in his cowardice. It had stung him badly that his father could turn his back the way he had.

  So Nathaniel had turned away as well. Away from his father, away from Daphne, away from the glint of rabid enjoyment in Basil’s eyes.

  Randolph’s room had taken on the stillness of an empty chamber. Before, even when he had been sleeping, he had been present. It was different now. Nathaniel sat in the chair next to his father’s bedside, the same chair that he had taken at odd late hours during the last few nights.

  “You don’t look good, sir.” Nathaniel took one of his father’s wasted hands. “You don’t look good at all.”

  His stepfather’s hand was tragically unlike his own. Although Randolph was only in his sixties, his flesh had the papery look of extreme age and the bones showed through the loose-fitting skin.

  Still, it was the same hand that Nathaniel had swung on when he was six, the one that had stung like the dickens on his rear when he was twelve, and the one that had shaken his like a man for the first time when he was sixteen.

  He closed his eyes, trying to picture his father before him, hale as ever.

  “We wasted so much time, you and I. I was too proud. You were too reserved.”

  He took his father’s hand back between his own two. It was cool, and Nathaniel felt as if he should warm it.

  “Willa is no Daphne. Thank God. She is unlike any woman I have ever known. At first, you think she is a scatty creature, the way she says the oddest things. Then when you start to listen, you realize that she has a way of looking at the world as if it is a giant gift, handed to her done up in ribbon, and she is unwrapping it one delightful layer at a time.”

  He shook his head. “That makes her sound like a child, but she has seen hardship, as much as any of us. She has merely chosen not to hide there in the pain but to bloom from it.”

  His father’s hand was a little warmer now, so Nathaniel placed it gently under the covers and sat on the bed to reach the other one. Now that he was closer, he could see the bluish tinge to his father’s lips and the weak way his chest scarcely moved with each breath.

  “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you? I understand. I just didn’t want you to go thinking that I had failed you.” He paused. “Whether you believe me or not, I never did.”

  He sat for a while then in silence, watching Randolph’s stillness. Nathaniel almost felt as though if he took his eyes
from the slight movement of his father’s chest, it would stop altogether.

  And then it did stop.

  Nathaniel waited a moment and watched, not wanting to believe. Then he put down his father’s hand that would never be warm again and bent to kiss him on the brow.

  Nathaniel could feel cool duty taking over the sorrow. In a way, it was a relief. He could do something about the mission, about Foster, but there was no way to dispel the awful knowledge that he would never hear his father’s voice again, that he would never tell him something new that he had done and see the flash of humor and approval in his father’s eyes.

  The door opened into the chamber, and Victoria entered. Still dressed in her finery, as they all were. But her eyes were dry and her face untouched by lines of sorrow.

  “Hello, Mother. He is gone. You may commence to pretend to grieve.”

  Her eyes glittered. “I grieve,” she snapped. “Randolph has been my husband for thirty years.” She turned to gaze down at the man in the bed for a long silent moment.

  When she turned back to Nathaniel, there was nothing but cool composure about her. “I would appreciate your continued discretion this afternoon. Daphne and Basil are the triumph of the Season. There is no need to break it up for this.”

  Nathaniel nodded, his lips twisting sardonically. “Of course, Mother. Anything for Basil.”

  Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “You should be grateful for his tolerance of you. He said that perhaps you could redeem the shame you brought down on all of us.”

  Nathaniel did not look at his father again. He was gone. “Why bother?” Nathaniel said without expression, then turned and left the room.

  Willa waited outside Randolph’s rooms, unsure of her place in all this. Should she join Nathaniel and his mother in their grief?

  Although Victoria had appeared none too grief-stricken when she passed Willa in the hallway without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. Consequently, Willa had sat herself down in one of the embroidered chairs that graced the hall at frequent intervals, and waited.

  When the door to the sickroom burst open and Nathaniel emerged, she jumped to her feet. “Is everything—”

  He brushed past her, not seeing her at all.

  “Nathaniel? Nathaniel!”

  He finally paused at her call. “I need to be alone, Willa.” He spoke over his shoulder, not turning in the slightest. “I will spend the evening in my study.”

  “Oh. I just wanted to help—”

  “Help Myrtle. There is nothing you can do for me.” His voice was cool. Then he was gone, his long strides and clenched fists illustration enough of his barely controlled fury.

  Willa watched him go, her shoulders slumping. She wanted so much to comfort him, but she had never felt less like a wife.

  “Why in the world did you marry him? I know you are only the daughter of a scholar, and shire bred to boot, but surely you could have done better.” Victoria’s melodious voice drawled mockingly over her shoulder as she passed Willa. She paused to look back, as if to relish the devastation caused by her remark.

  There was no sting at all. What these people thought of her meant nothing. Willa shook her head, looking Victoria in the eye. “I know that you are as cold as a reptile, and shallow to boot, but surely you could have done more.”

  Then she turned her back on Victoria’s sputtering and went to find Myrtle.

  Willa slipped quietly into Myrtle’s grand chambers. The carpet was thick, and she made not a sound as she crossed the luxurious sitting room to a door she thought might be that of the bedchamber.

  She didn’t want to wake Myrtle. She only wanted to reassure herself. Randolph’s death had to upset Myrtle. She was such a saltbox that one sometimes forgot how fragile she truly was.

  Willa stuck her nose into the room, then crossed to the giant curtained bed. Tiptoeing to the slit between curtains, Willa hooked one finger into them to take a peek.

  She did not expect to see the intrepid little elf sitting tailor-fashion in the center of the bed, picking through a giant box of chocolates. Myrtle popped a bonbon into her mouth and cut her eyes at Willa.

  “Hop on in. If you want one of these you had best hurry.”

  Willa sat on the edge of the mattress. “You should be ashamed. I’ve been so worried. Victoria thinks you are on your deathbed.”

  “Oh, I am. I’ve been on my deathbed for years. Boring as hell, deathbeds. Can never lie there very long before I get a bug in my bustle.”

  “Aunt Myrtle, you astound me.”

  “Sweet pea, when you get older, you’ll stop playing their games and play your own. You shall see. Of course, you’re smarter than I was. You married money young. You’ll have all the fun I didn’t have until I met my Beauregard.” She looked unbearably sad for a moment. Then she snickered. “Beauregard would have loved this next bit.”

  “What next bit?”

  “The bit where I change my will. They’re still dancing downstairs, you know.”

  “Change your will? I thought Basil was Nathaniel’s heir?”

  “Oh, he’s the heir to the title and the estate. And Thaniel is certainly wealthy.” Myrtle gave a small evil smile. “But I’m wealthier. Much wealthier. Without my money, and with his gambling problem, Basil will be nothing in a few years. Land-rich, cash-poor.” She snickered again. “I cannot wait to see Daphne’s face.”

  “Now, Aunt Myrtle. I don’t like her, either, but if she has been counting on this inheritance, don’t you think it is unfair to withhold it?”

  “She has never been in my will. Only Randolph. I held Randolph on my knee when he was a baby. I loved that boy to pieces.”

  The faded blue eyes dimmed further behind unshed tears. “And do you know what that bitch Victoria did? She killed him. She killed him as surely as if she had tossed him from the Tower with her own hands.”

  “But I thought it was his heart—”

  “Yes. His heart. His heart that his physician warned him about last winter. His heart that should never have made the journey to London in the spring. His doctor told him not to, that he couldn’t take the strain of travel.”

  Myrtle narrowed her eyes. “But Victoria couldn’t miss the Season, he said. Victoria insisted on coming to the balls and the soirees and salons, even if it killed her husband to do so.”

  She drew out her minuscule scrap of lace and dabbed at her eyes. “And it has. It’s killed him dead.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  Myrtle sighed, then shook her head. “Everyone dies, sweet pea. I have seen so many family and friends die in my lifetime. Randolph was in pain, every breath an agony. It was a mercy.”

  “I see.”

  “And all that is left is the living. And the money. With Randolph passing, I must contact my solicitor immediately. Besides, it is my money to do with as I please.”

  “I suppose,” said Willa doubtfully.

  “Well, what about you? You and Thaniel—Nathaniel. Don’t you want some?”

  “No,” Willa said firmly.

  “Not a bit of it?”

  “Not one cent. Not if it means you must die first.”

  “Why, sweet pea, I do believe that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in years.”

  “Well, don’t get all slobbery on me. Can’t bear sentiment,” Willa snapped in a perfect parody of Myrtle herself, which sent the elder lady off in a flood of cackles.

  “Oh, Willa, you do keep a body young.”

  “Good. Stay with me and you shall live forever.”

  “You know, for the first time in years, I wish I could. I truly would love to see how you turn out, pet.” She peered at what Willa had in her hands. “Did you bring me something?”

  “I brought a book I thought you’d like.” Willa showed her the worn volume. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Oh, sweeting, my eyes don’t work as well as they used to.”

  “I was going to read it to you, anyway,” Willa assured her. “It’s a translation I did mys
elf, so you likely couldn’t decipher my crabbed little notes in the margins.”

  Myrtle tilted her head to look at it more closely. “What is it about?”

  “It’s a marvelous fiction, full of adventure and intrigue.” Willa opened the small book and began to read.

  “‘Every ruler needs a few men he can count on …’”

  24

  The fortunate thing about training to be a spy was that one learned so many useful skills.

  The man outside Reardon House crept quietly to the coal chute on the side wall. A nice bit of flammable rag, a quick strike of his flint and steel, bend, lift, throw—run. He wasn’t fast at all after all he’d been through recently, but it mattered little. By the time his little present caught, he’d be out of sight, poised for his next move.

  He let the lid of the chute down gently, silently, and stumbled down the darkened alley behind the mews until he was lost in the shadows.

  Such a handy skill.

  Nathaniel had been staring into the fire in his study for hours but had found no answers in the flames. He had been prepared for Randolph’s death for some time, so why was it so shocking? Obviously, he’d been unable to conceive of a world without his stepfather—

  “My father, damn it!”

  He would not trouble himself to use the proper address ever again. No one was left who cared, anyway. Randolph had been the only father, the only example, the only hero, Nathaniel had ever known. That was a good enough definition for him.

  He rubbed his head, his mind drawn back to that day so many years ago. He’d been trying to annoy Simon into a fight—God, what a poisonous snot he had been as a young man!—but Simon had simply walked away.

  So Nathaniel had followed him. Simon hadn’t been much older himself then and had perhaps not been as careful about being trailed as he ought to have been. It had not been easy and Nathaniel had nearly lost him a half-dozen times, but that only made him work harder. He’d been a lazy lout. If it had been simple, he likely would have quickly become bored and gone on his way. Simon’s very elusiveness inspired Nathaniel’s curiosity until nothing could have stopped him.

  Nathaniel had seen Simon approach a building, then pass directly past the front door. Then he’d followed the older man down an alley and watched him clamber easily up a wall and disappear through a window.