by Jane Ashford
Gavin went down to breakfast expecting to find Laura there. He didn’t know precisely what he would say to her, but he was eager to see her. She would flush at the caress in his gaze. It would be amusing to tease her just a little. And with any luck, they might find themselves alone.
But when he entered the breakfast room, he found only Mr. Tompkins, resplendent in ivory satin, sipping a cup of coffee. Gavin suppressed an astonishingly sharp stab of disappointment and filled a plate from the silver chafing dishes on the sideboard.
“I hope you slept well after your little adventure?” the old man said.
Gavin eyed him as he nodded. Tompkins was so canny that one might think he was omniscient. But there was no way he could know how Gavin had spent the night.
“Splendid.” He sipped from his cup. “It appears that Miss Devane got it right. There have been a number of packets sent to Ireland from Vienna. And sent to some very suspicious addresses. I’ve forwarded messages to Whitehall. We should be just in time to stop whatever they plan.”
Gavin grunted.
“The countess was clever, taking advantage of Bonaparte’s planned escape. She thought to win by splitting the English forces.”
Gavin nodded, wondering why he found this so uninteresting.
“Sophie herself slipped through our fingers, however,” Tompkins went on. “She and her husband took refuge with the czar’s delegation.”
“That sounds like Sophie,” he muttered.
“Yes.” Tompkins raised his cup again, watching Gavin over the rim. “So you think Miss Devane is fit for our sort of work after all?”
Gavin went still.
“At one time, you were of a different opinion.”
“I said she did well yesterday,” Gavin answered carefully. “At least, once she had gotten herself into trouble, she was able to—”
“Of course, if she hadn’t gotten into trouble, we would not have uncovered some vital information,” the old man interrupted.
“I would have—”
“You have fallen into worse scrapes, I believe, during some of your missions.”
“I am not a woman, alone, and vulnerable to…” He couldn’t even say it. “If I had not been there, the outcome would have been…different.” Disastrous, he thought.
“Indeed.” Tompkins looked meditative. “So you think Miss Devane should work with someone, perhaps?”
“She should be safe at home!” Gavin replied, too agitated to contemplate the suggestion.
“Ah, well, perhaps we should all be safe at home.”
Gavin rejected this with a savage gesture. “Some of us are suited to risk. We enjoy being alone in strange places, discovering an enemy’s plans. But that does not mean—”
“And Miss Devane is not that sort?”
“She…” Frustration and fury held Gavin rigid. He wanted to lie, to say she wasn’t. But he knew that would be an unforgivable betrayal, the sort he had vowed never to commit.
He had fought his own father’s manipulation. He had spent his career watching men moved like chess pieces across the globe. He had seen scores of young men out to prove themselves trample on anything that got in the way. He had seen his sisters ruthlessly cut down whoever interfered with their families’ advancement. He had promised himself he would never behave in such a way, no matter how important it was, no matter what he wanted.
Gavin was shaken by a spasm of pain such as he had never experienced in ten years of perilous missions. Where was it coming from? What was happening to him?
He called on the resources that had sustained him through danger and physical hardship, through deprivation and anguish. He summoned every ounce of fortitude and control. The sensation was like windows shutting, one after another, all along the wings of a great house. The openings closed, and the pain lessened. The light dimmed, and the loneliness increased. But he was used to that, he thought.
* * *
“I beg your pardon for keeping you waiting,” said Mr. Tompkins to Laura a few minutes later. He had kept her safely out of the way in the study while he interviewed Gavin, and now his final decision was made. “I am in need of a confidential messenger. Someone who will not be noticed and will not be connected with my…usual practices.”
Though obviously disappointed by the smallness of the task, Laura assured him she could do it.
“There should not be any danger involved,” he added.
She looked as if she wished there were. Indeed, she looked as if she would like to throw herself in front of a runaway coach-and-four. Tompkins allowed himself a small smile. Very intelligent people could be amazingly obtuse, he thought.
“I will give you a letter, and you will carry it to a certain location and deliver it to the person you meet there.”
“That’s all?” She sounded almost insulted.
Mr. Tompkins’s smile widened. “There may be some…negotiation to be done. Indeed, I’m sure there will.”
“About what?” she asked, looking a little cheered. “What am I to say?”
“I will leave that to your own good judgment.”
“But what is the issue, what is in the letter? I cannot…”
He shouldn’t enjoy her consternation, Tompkins admonished himself. “It will all be clear when you are there. You have my permission to use your initiative and make whatever agreement seems right to you.”
She frowned at him.
“Is this another test?” Laura asked.
“You might look at it that way.”
“Haven’t I already shown that I—”
“Or you could consider it a favor for an old man.”
Her lip curled, as he had expected it would when he played that particular card. It was such a pleasure to work with people who couldn’t be gulled, Tompkins thought.
“Is there even a real messenger?” Laura asked.
“Oh, very real,” he assured her. “And I consider the transaction extremely important. Vital, in fact. I will be dreadfully cast down if it doesn’t go well.” It was easy to sound sincere when you were telling the truth, he thought with amusement. And how often did one get the chance?
“Oh.”
“Go and get your things. I will have the letter for you when you come back.”
Laura nodded and started to rise.
“Oh, and Miss Devane?”
She turned.
“You mustn’t speak of this to anyone.”
She looked deeply offended, as he had known she would. But it would keep her from stopping to chat with…anyone on her way to her room, Tompkins thought complacently.
* * *
When Laura returned to the study, Mr. Tompkins handed her a heavy sealed envelope. “You must take this to number sixteen Mariastrasse. Do not ring. Go inside, to the second floor, the room at the back. The messenger will meet you there.”
Despite herself, Laura felt a thrill of excitement. This was far better than life as a governess. “I am to wait while he reads the letter?”
He made an affirmative gesture.
“So it will be a man?”
Tompkins smiled at her small trick, but he didn’t admit anything.
“And then…deal with him?” She still hoped for a bit more guidance.
He only nodded.
There had to be more to it, Laura thought. There was something she wasn’t grasping. As she left the room, she vowed that whatever it was, she would show him that she could handle it.
Spring was well along in Vienna now, and despite the armies massing to the north, people were delighting in the warmth and the buds beginning to swell on the trees. The streets were full of smiling strollers, and children romped and laughed in the sun.
She found the address without difficulty. It wasn’t far. Approaching number sixteen, she looked for signs of anything unusual. There we
re none. With a sudden qualm she imagined walking into the house of some Viennese burgher and trying to explain why she hadn’t bothered to ring or knock.
But she trusted Mr. Tompkins more than that. His plans would be impeccable, she thought. Marching up the two steps to the front door, she tried the handle. Unlocked. She opened it cautiously and stepped inside. A mundane entryway. Shutting the door, she listened and heard only silence. The place might have been empty.
Laura walked up the stairs to the second floor, and then along the central hallway to the room at the back. Its door was ajar. Taking a deep breath, she went through it, and came face to face with an impatient-looking Gavin Graham. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“I…Mr. Tompkins sent me.”
“Why?”
Not entirely recovered from her surprise, Laura looked around the very ordinary room. “He said there would be a messenger to meet me.”
“He sent me here to retrieve a letter from a messenger,” declared Gavin.
Confused, she held out the letter.
After a moment’s hesitation, he tore open the seal and pulled out the folded sheets inside. They were blank. “What sort of game…?” He frowned at her.
Laura shook her head. Had Mr. Tompkins meant her to negotiate with Gavin? she wondered a bit wildly. About what?
“This is ridiculous,” he said. Striding to the door, he grasped the knob to open it. It didn’t turn. “What the deuce?” He rattled the panels violently. The door didn’t budge. “It’s locked.”
“It can’t be.”
“Well, it is.”
They gazed at each other. Laura was putting together certain twinkling looks Mr. Tompkins had given her and remarks he had made, with today’s mission and the locked door. It was an odd sensation, becoming a piece in one of the old man’s plots. What was he hoping for?
Gavin rattled the door again. It remained solid. “Someone followed you here,” he accused.
“No.” She was sure of this.
“You didn’t see them. You haven’t the experience to—”
“I saw the watchers you set on me right away. Indeed, I convinced one of them to work for me instead.”
He had no answer for this. He kicked the door. “If you are so clever, you must know who has locked us in.”
Laura thought she did, but she wasn’t going to say so.
Gavin went to examine the room’s single window. It was heavily barred. “We are trapped here.”
She was supposed to negotiate with Gavin, Laura thought. But she had already tried to talk to him, and gotten nowhere. Mr. Tompkins didn’t know that. What did he expect from her? She hid a smile. Perhaps he had concluded that if she could negotiate with Gavin Graham, she could face any challenge the world might throw at her.
Gavin took a penknife from his pocket and inserted it in the keyhole of the door, probing the mechanism.
A mixture of excitement, nervousness, and elation rose in Laura. She was to risk everything on this one encounter, she thought. Mr. Tompkins must think there was some chance of success. She had to use every faculty she possessed to fight for what she wanted. “If we think it through together, I am sure we can get out,” she said.
“I will get us out. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
Gavin threw her a look. “Whoever locked us in here is probably waiting for reinforcements,” he pointed out.
“That is why we should join forces. How can one person alone think of everything?”
He turned and really looked at her for the first time since he had opened the letter.
Laura felt as if the air had rushed out of the room, making it very difficult to breathe. “We worked very well together the last time.”
“After you had gotten us both into serious trouble.”
“I’m sure I could do better, with a good teacher.”
Letting go of the doorknob, Gavin took a few steps back and drew a ragged breath. He felt as if he were in the last safe place on earth, beleaguered, surrounded by threats on every side. And with him was the one person in the world he most wished to protect. He could feel all those inner windows that he had slammed shut opening. “Don’t you understand?” he asked her. “Sophie Krelov may have sent men after us, or perhaps it is someone else…” There were so very many people it could be, he thought with despair.
“We’ll find a way out!” declared Laura.
He knew the spark in her eyes. He had seen it there before, and he had seen it in his own. It held an ardent desire for life and hope for approval, a determination to act, a delight in walking the edge.
Gavin stood rigid, trying to contain emotions that held him like iron shackles. He swallowed, the muscles of his neck and shoulders bands of iron. He couldn’t live without her, he realized. The talk of her leaving or taking some dangerous post—it had been all talk. She had been there, in the same house. He had seen her every day, spoken to her. It had been simple to put off consideration of how he really felt. But now he couldn’t deny it any longer. He loved her as he had never loved another living being. He would sacrifice whatever was necessary to keep her by his side, he understood with a terrible mixture of despair and exultation.
He needed to say something.
“Uh.” Gavin looked at the wall behind her head, searching for salvation.
She gazed at him as if she knew something unusual was happening.
He took a jerky step toward her. “It’s no good,” he said. “You must marry me.”
Laura blinked. “But—”
“I’ll find some post at home,” he added passionately. “There must be something I can do in London.”
“But your work?”
In two strides he was beside her. He caught her upper arms and pulled her close. “Don’t you understand? I can’t leave you.” He shook her a little. He was furious and yet vastly relieved to have said it.
“Can’t?” she whispered.
“I won’t be able to work without you. I’ll be continually diverted. I’m a ruined man.” Pulling her hard against him, he kissed her. “I love you,” he finished, and it felt like an ending indeed—and a beginning. She was his, she would always be his. Wouldn’t that make up for anything?
He pressed her closer. His lips demanded all her attention. He felt a wild reckless joy when Laura gave herself up to his embrace. Nothing else in his life had ever made him feel this way.
Somewhat later, when both of them were breathing rapidly, Gavin raised his head. “That’s settled, then. We will find someone to marry us here in Vienna.”
“Gavin—”
“I won’t wait until we’re back in England,” he interrupted, his hands proprietary on her. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“No, but…” Laura shook her head. “Your work, your travels, you can’t give them up.”
“There’s no more to be said on that score.”
She pushed a little away from him, eyes soft from his kisses. “You’ll miss it. You’ll be unhappy.” She tried to move farther back, but he wouldn’t let her. He didn’t answer her objections, however. “It won’t work,” she protested, her voice full of heartbreak.
“If you think you are going to refuse me again…”
“How can I not?” Laura grasped his lapels as if she could shake him as he had her. “You’ll hate being back in England,” she declared, her eyes filling with tears. “You can’t say you won’t.”
He couldn’t.
Laura struggled, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I won’t be the cause of your unhappiness. I love you too much.”
Gavin felt a sudden lightness at her admission. He tightened his arms around her.
“We would destroy each other in England,” said Laura.
“We will find some way to—”
“You said I could be your partner,”
she added breathlessly. “Well, I will be.”
“My wife,” he agreed.
“And your partner,” she repeated. “You have seen that I am not afraid. I will join you in your work.”
“Laura. That isn’t possible.”
“What about the ship? Do you think I cannot endure hardship?”
“You cannot imagine the kind of—”
“Don’t you trust me?” she accused. “Even now?”
Gavin looked down at her, and some final barrier gave way. “I would trust you with my life and everything I have. But I do not trust myself to function if you are in danger. I couldn’t let you go off and…”
“Then I would simply sneak away without your knowledge,” replied Laura, attempting to tease him.
His laugh was half a groan. “You would drive me mad in a month, worrying over what you would do.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Because I would tell you, as a true partner does.”
Their eyes met again, and held. His arms tightened around her. Each could feel the other’s heartbeat.
“Could we really…?” Gavin desperately wanted to believe.
“Ahem.”
Laura and Gavin turned at the sound and discovered George Tompkins standing inside the open doorway. Neither of them had heard the key turn or his entrance, or had any idea how long he had been there.
“Perhaps I can suggest a solution.”
Laura stared at him, not daring to hope.
“It is true it would involve some compromise,” Tompkins continued.
Gavin watched him like a predator.
“You would have to give up certain habits, like galloping off to join the hill tribes in Afghanistan, Graham.”
Laura started to protest.
“And you, Miss Devane, would have to admit the value of experience in the field, and occasionally even defer to it.”
“I have never denied…” she began.
“Tell us,” commanded Gavin at the same moment.
Mr. Tompkins allowed himself a moment to look at the two of them. He had rarely seen such a handsome couple, he thought. But more than that, he didn’t believe he had ever encountered such a canny pair. They were going to cut a swath through the foreign service, he concluded with immense satisfaction. “I am very much in need of a source of information in Cairo,” he told them. “And I cannot afford the least suspicion to arise about that source.”
