“I’ll do my best.” He gathered up the clothes he’d discarded in haste. “As for Elland, we’ll pay a visit to the General Register tomorrow to look into the names you found in that letter. For now, will you join me downstairs? Until we’ve figured out the Elland business, I intend to go very cautiously—to listen a great deal, and say very little. But it would be very useful to have your observations on my colleagues.”
She snorted. “I doubt they would like it. A woman, listening in?”
He grinned at her. “If they’re here to damn me as a turncoat, their opinion can go hang. And if they’ve come to befriend me, then they’re expecting and hoping to find a changed man—in which case, they can take what I offer, or nothing.”
After a moment, color bloomed on her face, and she nodded.
* * *
Jane had found a new use for needlepoint. She sat in a handsome armchair in the corner window of Crispin’s study, her skirts gracefully arranged in the blaze of morning light, the embroidery frame in her lap as Cusworth showed in supplicants.
To a man, they startled on spotting her. She had dressed to be noticed, in a cherry-red silk gown fringed dramatically in silver-threaded lace, a dress as bright and sparkling as her mood. The color was too vibrant for a pale English rose, of course. It made her olive complexion glow. When they stared, she smiled serenely.
Crispin, meanwhile, trained his regard on the newcomer, his brows slowly rising as the silence drew on. “Are you quite well?” he would finally ask. No, his remark silently implied, there is nothing odd about the lady’s presence.
Then the newcomer flushed or fidgeted and took a seat opposite Crispin, trying his best to forget about the woman.
They all did a fine job of it in the end. Conservative or radical, liberal or independent, men were raised with the skill of overlooking a lady. Jane helped by sewing with conspicuous vigor, making a good show of being fascinated by the flash of her own needle. But her mind remained on the conversation across the room. She took note of every detail, to discuss with Crispin later.
Many of the old Peelites, now proudly parading as Liberals, were desperate to acquire Crispin’s support. Their leader, Prime Minister Palmerston, had done much in his time to make prisons more sanitary places, and so most of them came into the room assuming that Crispin was already won over. But while Palmerston’s social policies were humane, his opposition to the extension of the electorate had never struck Jane as laudable. “I wonder,” she said, after another old Peelite strode out, “if you might not remain independent, at least for this session. Lord Chad is very persuasive, but what will you gain by committing to the platform now? You’ll have no voice of your own, only a trial period in which they’ll expect you to fall in line in order to show what a loyal party member you’ll make.”
Crispin nodded, tapping his fountain pen thoughtfully. “On the other hand, an independent is a yipping dog. He may cause some annoyance, but he won’t win anyone over.”
“Small steps,” she said gently. “And your barking yesterday changed minds, though you had no friends on the floor to support you.”
As the door opened again, he laid down his pen and she turned hastily back to her embroidery.
Crispin’s chair scraped—he had thrust himself out of his seat. She broke form and glanced up, and then dropped her needle.
“Well,” said her uncle from the doorway as he looked between them. “Isn’t this picturesque.”
“Cusworth, you may show this man out,” Crispin said, but her uncle lifted his hand.
“It won’t take but a minute. And I do not come to quarrel.”
Crispin glanced to her—silently asking her to make the decision. Her heart had moved into her throat. She swallowed it down. A snake was better kept in plain view. “A minute seems short,” she said. “If you mean to grovel, I hope for an hour at least.”
Uncle Philip narrowed his eyes. “You came out quite cheeky, didn’t you, Jane? I thought we had stomped that tongue out of you. But you were cleverer than I’d hoped.”
“You will address me alone,” Crispin bit out, “or you will go.”
“Oh, I don’t think my niece wants for your protection.” Philip’s brown beard, trimmed with dandyish precision, did not disguise the smirk he gave Jane. “But very well. So long as she moves around to where I can see her.”
Her laughter startled her—and Crispin, too, judging by his face. “It seems we think of each other in precisely the same way,” she said. “I suppose one could call that an understanding, Uncle. A sympathy of minds.”
But she laid aside her needlework and walked to Crispin’s side. A twisted dark part of her—perhaps that part that made her blood kin to Philip Mason—was flattered that her uncle considered her a threat.
Crispin gave her his chair and stood beside her, one hip perched on the edge of the desk. “All right,” he said curtly. “Speak and be gone.”
But Mason would not be hurried. He sat back, lacing his hands over his belly, and considered them in turn. “I don’t come to congratulate you. Any piece of showmanship can sway a crowd of monkeys, and this Commons, I fear, is a circus all around. But I think, going forward, we must set rules for our disagreements. There is a code even among thieves, is there not? I know a great deal about you, Burke. A great deal. And I will admit it—you know no less about me. So it would be wisest, for both our sakes, and for the sake of the country which we both serve, to move forward in good faith, ignoring what came before. Otherwise . . .” He shrugged. “We both end up skewered. That does no good to anyone.”
“I see no objection to that,” Crispin said.
That was not the answer Jane wanted from him. But perhaps he had no choice. He hadn’t struck her as a man to fully trust her uncle even when they were working together. But this Crispin could not count on the discretion of the other one. He had no firsthand knowledge of whether his old entanglement with Mason had the power to undo him now.
“Very good. Then you will do two things to prove it,” her uncle said briskly. “You will hand over the funds that you were holding for our party. They were never yours, as you well know. And you will drop any inquiries into Elland.”
Jane’s breath caught. She had never expected him to say that name aloud.
Crispin tipped his head. “In exchange, of course, for your signature on the documents required to release Jane’s trust. Is that your proposal?”
Mason’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
Crispin’s smile looked cold and sharp. “I will release the party funds to you the moment my wife’s rightful inheritance is in her possession. But Elland?” He shrugged. “Curiosity is a vice of mine. And that had nothing, I think, to do with politics.”
Mason’s palm slammed onto the table. “It has nothing to do with you! Yet you poked your nose in it anyway!”
“And our midnight prowler?” Crispin said. “Was that your nose, poking in from afar?”
Mason seemed to shrink in his seat. “Here?” he whispered. His glance darted wildly around the room. “When? What did he take?”
Unease prickled through Jane. She had never seen her uncle look frightened before.
“Damn you,” Mason said, his voice lifting as he rose. “If you’ve ruined the both of us—!”
As he loomed, Jane’s instinct was to recoil. She fought it, glaring. She would not let him make her cower.
Crispin’s hand closed over her collarbone, massaging her. Her uncle’s glance dropped to note this intimacy. His rage popped like a bubble; his shoulders sagged. “Too late,” he said in disgust. “Too late, isn’t it?” His lip curled. “I should have seen it coming: who better suited than a lowborn harridan and a highborn fool? But you will not enjoy your marital bed long, Burke. If you keep poking where you don’t belong, then we’re both dead men. And your lovely wife—well, dream tonight of the new fool she’ll find to keep her entertained.”
“I had no idea you thought so highly of me, Uncle.” She did not disguise her malice. �
��Why, I sound like a regular black widow. But I assure you, any scheming you sense is aimed solely at you.”
He laughed down at her. “You’ve no love for me, girl, but what of yourself? Bullets hit women as easily as men.”
“Enough threats,” Crispin drawled. “Out with you.”
“Blast you. I’m not the one you should fear!”
“Then who?” Jane asked, rising too. “Go ahead, unburden yourself. Who is behind this mess to do with Elland?”
He stared at her, jaw working. “If I thought him an easy target, wouldn’t I have had done with him?” He scoffed. “Fools, both of you. Playing about, with my throat on the block!” He stalked toward the door, then wheeled back. “Leave Elland alone,” he said fiercely. “Forget you heard the name. Or we’ll all end up in an early grave.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning dawned bright and clear, the air so balmy that Jane took her tea outside in the garden, beneath the trees coming into leaf. Then, before the house could fill with petitioners, she and Crispin set out for the General Register office. Over dinner the evening before, they had gone round and round, debating what to make of Mason’s threats. “I would not take him seriously,” Jane had said, “save that he looked so afraid.”
But assuming he told any of the truth, following his suggestion—keeping their heads in the sand—seemed a very good way to ensure their vulnerability. And so: to Somerset House, on the trail of three names somehow associated with Elland.
Crispin was armed. Rubbing her eyes—they had not had much sleep, between their earnest discussion and . . . other matters—Jane watched him check his pistol before holstering it inside his coat.
Lightly she said, “You know how to use that, I hope.”
He grinned at her. “If your uncle calls again, I’ll demonstrate.”
The brougham lurched into motion. “There will be hundreds of Thomas Clarks,” she mused. “It will take hours to find the right one.”
His mouth twitched as he looked up at her. “But Baggott Shufflebottom? If there’s more than one of those, I’ll eat my hat.”
She gave a wry tug of her mouth. “Mr. Shufflebottom deserves our sympathy.”
“Oh, agreed,” he said easily. “If not for his name, then certainly for where he ended up.”
That was a sobering thought. She glanced out the window at the gray street. The morning’s brief sunshine had been swallowed by clouds. The gloom felt appropriate.
How long would it take to be transported to Australia? Shackled and chained. She could not imagine.
She could not imagine sailing at all, in fact. She had never set foot outside England. “Have you been overseas?” she asked. It was a great irony that she knew more of Mr. Burke than Crispin did, but so little of Crispin himself. “Not the Continent, I mean. But farther? India, say, or America?”
Crispin shook his head. “I had a great-uncle who worked for the East India Company in his youth. He used to promise to take me to Calcutta with him one day. His house was like nothing I’d ever seen—filled with strange and marvelous statues, carved wooden screens, fountains with flowing water, enclosed by great skylights . . . He told wonderful stories. I wanted nothing more than to grow up and travel the world as he had.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I tried,” he said after a moment. “Not civil service, but the diplomatic corps. But you know they reformed the selection process back in the forties, instituted an exam. Suddenly it wasn’t one’s connections and breeding that mattered so much as one’s brains.”
“I don’t think you lack for those,” she said, “regardless of what you say.”
“But discipline,” he said with an easy smile, then shrugged. “I sat for it. The exam, I mean.”
She pulled a face. “Oh. I’m sorry—”
“No. I passed.” He smiled more faintly now. “I did quite well, in fact. Two years of cramming. I felt sure the German would be the end of me—I’ve no talent for languages. But somehow I ranked in the top ten percent.”
“Then . . . why am I not addressing Ambassador Burke?”
He laughed. “I’d still be twenty years away from an ambassadorship. But as it turns out, I wasn’t selected.”
“Despite your marks? That seems odd.”
She saw the hesitation come over him. “You know so many black things about me,” he said slowly. “I dislike to contribute another one.”
But he was mistaken. These pieces of his more distant past she was eager to collect. They were part of the larger puzzle, and her curiosity, her need to understand the man he had been so she could find some way to square it with the man he was now, felt like a fire in her. “I would like to know,” she said. “I would like to understand you better, Crispin.”
He looked troubled. “Would you? How much of it, Jane? All of it, or only the bookends?”
Bookends to the man he had forgotten. And yet . . . hadn’t that man grown out of the boy who’d come before him, who dreamed of travel and diplomacy, and spent two years buried in his books in pursuit of a dream?
“Maybe they’re all of a piece,” she said quietly. Logically, it seemed true. And in her prayers as well. “So tell me. What happened?”
“I took a second in classics at Cambridge,” he said. “By the skin of my teeth. I don’t know why I chose to read classics—I never had an interest. Atticus had done so, I’m sure that’s why. At any rate, I stayed on afterward. Spent most days in the library, cramming. By the second year, I felt certain of everything but the German. My parents wanted me in town for the season. To keep an eye on me, perhaps.” His mouth crooked. “I was not, let us say, particularly well behaved on the nights I did not spend in the library. Word must have traveled. Anyway, they procured a German tutor to lure me south.” Here he took a large breath, then lapsed into brief silence. “I’m not sure there’s any point in remembering this.”
She moved onto his bench, settling beside him, gathering up his hand. “Why? This isn’t the part you forgot.”
“It is the part I didn’t understand,” he said very quietly, “until the Duchess of Farnsworth explained it at the ball.”
A sizzling little jolt ran through her. It felt red, venomous.
She was very careful to keep her grip steady over his. Not to let him see the jealousy brewing in her. “You were in love with her,” she said. “Charlotte told me so.”
His huff sounded like the first syllable of laughter. “Charlotte babbles. You must have noticed. She relies on her listeners to curate her words for good sense, and half the time it’s a useless attempt, I tell you.”
That wasn’t a denial. “She said the duchess was the diamond of her season. That every gentleman admired her.”
The tension eased from his face. He turned his hand in hers, threading their fingers together. She resented her glove for keeping his skin from hers. “You’re a generous woman,” he murmured. “Do you know that? You could coax a stone to speak, and make it feel clever besides.”
She laughed. “You’re hardly a stone. Although . . .” Her cheeks flamed. Was she truly about to say this? “You are capable of turning tremendously hard.”
His guffaw rocked him back in his seat. The look on his face was delighted amazement. He lifted her hand, kissed her knuckles. “I will have to prove that anew,” he said, “once we get home.”
She ducked her head to hide her own smile. She felt at such liberty with him, and in turn, it opened glimpses into parts of herself she’d never guessed to exist. She was bawdy.
“What I feel for you,” he said, low and rough, “is incomparable to anything that came before it. I hope you know that.”
She swallowed. Her skirt, ashes-of-roses silk, glimmered in the patterning of light through the window. “Thank you.”
It was not the right answer. But she could give no other. She felt the words sticking in her throat, wanting out; she would not listen to them. She had gone as far as she could. The future was real. No amount of pretending woul
d prevent its arrival. She would keep what dignity she could in the meantime.
“The duchess,” she prodded. “You—” She did not want to say it. “Fell in love with her.”
She heard his long breath. “I offered for her.”
That was worse. She wanted her hand back. She sat very stiffly. “Oh.”
“And she accepted,” he said. “And then, the next day, took it back. Her father intended her for Farnsworth.”
“Married against her will.” She did not want to feel pity for the woman! But she knew what it was like to feel forced.
“No, in fact not.” He sounded thoughtful now, oddly detached. “I think she hadn’t known Farnsworth might be within her reach. He’s a standoffish man by nature—difficult to read. But once she realized she might wear a coronet, she scrambled to undo her promise to me.”
“Crispin.” With sympathy, she studied his face. But he looked unmoved, his bland smile entirely persuasive.
“Of course, I was devastated,” he said. “But I wished her the best, through gritted teeth. I took the tatters of my pride back to Cambridge, where I sat for the exam. Then, when news came of my marks, it did a good deal to steady me. And then, I—” He abruptly closed his mouth. Cleared his throat. “And this is where my memory grows dark,” he said with a shrug. “But I must have come back down to London. Found myself alone, in private, with Laura—I expect to share the news with her, that I had come in at the top of the rankings.” A very slight smile. “I had my pride, after all. No doubt I thought to torment her with visions of the glamorous life I would lead in Paris or Washington—when in fact I probably would have been running errands in Kabul, but no matter. We were alone, and we were interrupted by her father—and Farnsworth.”
“Oh dear.”
“Quite. And from there . . .” His face darkened. “Farnsworth stormed off. Not sparing a moment for explanations. We had not been touching—but the situation. A darkened room, privacy, standing so close together. A man of pride, Farnsworth. With one look he leapt to dark conclusions. Laura’s father threw me out, then concocted a lie: I had forced my attentions on Laura, harassed and stalked her after she turned down my suit. Farnsworth believed it—he never bothered to ask Laura for the truth. He decided to punish me, to teach me a lesson. He sabotaged my career, so the diplomatic corps did not take me. And . . . I believe he told my father the same tale. My father—”
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