A Spy's Guide to Seduction

by Kate Moore

  “It was my plan,” he said. He wore the usual accouterments of a gentleman out for a drive—a black hat and tan gloves, a fawn driving coat and polished boots. Little of his person was visible except his face, and yet Emily felt his presence next to her, exerting some pull, stronger than old Newton’s gravity itself.

  She sat very straight and fixed her gaze on the horses’ heads. “Did you learn anything more about Zov or Mr. Peach?”

  “I did. Isaiah Peach is actually Isaiah Kydd of the Seven Dials. He’s probably known to many of the guards, for he frequents a public house in Giltspur Street. Apparently, he’s available for hire cheap, and his acquaintances say he’s left London.”

  “And Zov?”

  “Is a man named Zovsky, who operates in Paris, much as Malikov did in London.” He paused. “My...sources doubt that Zovsky would come to London, as his appearance is known, and he would not risk being taken up in an inquiry.”

  Emily noticed the care he took to keep those sources confidential. Their partnership had its limits, which she would do well to remember. “So, we don’t know how Malikov’s identity got known, or who hired Peach, or how the poison, if it was poison, got into Malikov’s drink.”

  Lynley laughed. “We don’t, but remember what we want is the missing papers, and Malikov couldn’t have taken them.”

  “Still, it’s reasonable to think that the work of an informant in the Foreign Office is behind the murder as well as the missing papers.”

  “Congratulations, Em,” he said. “You think very much like the man who is on the hunt for that leak. He wants to find any remaining members of Malikov’s network.”

  Em! “And he expects us to do so?”

  Lynley grinned at her and nodded.

  At Beatrix Walsingham’s Castle Street house, Emily handed the butler her card and was invited up at once to a pale green drawing room.

  “Hello, Emily, how long has it been? I’m so glad you’ve come. I was in danger of eating all these cakes myself.” Beatrix gestured to a tray of iced yellow cakes. “You must have news to tell, as you’ve become engaged at last, I hear. And your sister is to have a baby.”

  Emily smiled and took the seat offered. “My mother is thrilled,” she said, explaining also that her mother was away, and remembering belatedly that Beatrix’s mother had died unexpectedly not three years earlier. Before Beatrix’s marriage to Walsingham, the two friends had compared notes on their mothers’ efforts to get them married.

  Beatrix was sympathetic as she poured tea, and Emily found it easy to fall into conversation with her old friend, as if they’d simply been interrupted for a few minutes instead of a few years. She told of Roz’s desire to be an opera dancer and gave Beatrix the version of her engagement that she and Lynley had fashioned together.

  Beatrix sighed at the conclusion of Emily’s account. “Now, if only I could see my brother settled. With our parents gone, I feel he’s been added to my care. Though he’s of age, you know what young men are. I feel he needs a woman to steady him.”

  Emily reached for one of the little cakes. She had not expected such an opening to the very subject most near to their investigation. Pretending to be Thomas Culley’s wife seemed less false than the charade she now played with her old friend. “Is there no one who’s caught his eye?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not. Do you go to Lady Vange’s ball?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may see him there. I’ve tried to interest him in this Season’s beauty, a girl named Allegra Walhouse. Do you know her?”

  Emily shook her head.

  “Well, he’ll have none of the girl. I suppose I’m well served for my matchmaking efforts.”

  “I will keep an eye out, shall I, and report to you?” It was both a truth and a lie at once. She could easily report to Beatrix, but her first report would be to Lynley, a report he would take to his mysterious colleagues in the Foreign Office.

  “Would you? I’m afraid Archer is in a bad crowd. He boasted to me that he won fifty guineas earlier this winter on a wager that a certain married lady would take a lover. You can imagine my shock, but he laughed at it and told me I have grown duller than dishwater.”

  In no time at all, the visit passed. Emily reached over to give her friend’s hand a squeeze. By giving up on husband hunting, Emily had unintentionally separated herself from friends who did marry. “Before I go, I must know that you, yourself, are well and happy?”

  Beatrix’s smile reappeared. “I am. Fashionable people would laugh at me, I know, but I like motherhood. It may not be the thing to pay so much attention to one’s babies, but I confess they fascinate me. They go so rapidly from knowing nothing of the world to speaking and counting and questioning everything.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say it. Would you call on Roz if you can? She’s approaching her confinement, and it would do her good to hear you talk.”

  “Of course. She probably feels like your poor elephant.”

  “She does.” Emily laughed.

  “You see, I do keep up. I read your letter in the Times.”

  In parting they agreed to meet again and compare notes on their relations.

  Lynley stood on the flagway to assist Emily up into the curricle.

  He turned the vehicle, and they headed back to Candover House.

  “Tired of spying?” he asked.

  “Am I so easily read?”

  “Yesterday, there was danger and excitement. Today must seem tame.”

  “That’s not it exactly. It’s more the falseness of the thing. I did not feel so false pretending to be Mrs. Culley, as I do pretending an interest in my friends for the sake of gaining information from them.”

  “Did you gain any information?”

  “Beatrix’s brother Archer won fifty guineas earlier this winter on a wager that a certain married lady would take a lover.”

  “Lady Ravenhurst?”

  “Beatrix didn’t know, or didn’t say, but Lady Ravenhurst is unhappy in her marriage.” It struck Emily that one could be isolated in the midst of a great city, a city of a million people. The thread connecting the two women she’d visited had been loneliness. And now that she thought of it, Malikov had been lonely and isolated in death. And perhaps his loneliness had begun with his becoming a spy, with choosing to step out of the circle of genuine friendship, to become instead an observer and a manipulator, a keeper of information on others, rather than a man who exchanged the true thoughts and feelings on which attachments were founded.

  “Lynley, if you were taken by the Russians, England would not send a man to silence you?”

  “You think Malikov’s government ordered him killed?”

  “That’s why he wrote Zovsky’s name in the beer, isn’t it?” The possibility troubled her. Malikov could not have been an entirely good man, but he had been loyal to his country, and his country had abandoned him in a foreign jail and, perhaps worse, had contrived to have him killed.

  “Possibly, but Zovsky may have acted on his own to protect himself.”

  “It’s just that—” Emily broke off. What she’d been about to say shocked her and was better left unsaid. She would not let errant thoughts just spill out, as he had.

  “Just what?” he asked.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she said. She did not want to find Lynley lying cold and still in a pool of beer. What she wanted, and it had been strikingly clear to her in a flash, was Lynley lying naked in a great bed. “Perhaps our paper thief will reveal himself at Lady Vange’s ball.” She smiled up at Lynley with what she hoped was a sweetly docile expression.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There are those who would advise the husband hunter to conceal her intelligence from gentlemen who take an interest in her. In this writer’s view, such advice is utterly misguided. Few qualities are as attractive or as misunderstood as genuine intel
ligence. In the future we may be able to name the several different forms that intelligence takes. At the present time, we may charitably interpret such wrong-headed advice to mean that the husband hunter should not attempt displays of pedantry. No one needs to know of her superior knowledge of languages or maps, scientific principles or moral abstracts. Rather she should confine herself to that display of attention which reveals her powers of observation and insight.

  —The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

  Emily thought it possible that not everyone in London had squeezed into Vange House. After all, Lady Vange’s invitation was a coveted one. Guests had decked themselves out in glittering jewels and gold braid and had applied sufficient pomade and perfume to rival the sweeter scents of the potted orange trees and Cape jessamines that circled the great ballroom. If a spy had joined the throng, he could easily lose himself in the packed crowd.

  Emily had believed, however, she was in no danger of losing Lynley, as his height made him unmistakable. In such a crush a lady could lose a glove, a fan, or an earring, but not a fiancé.

  Of course, she’d been wrong. She had arrived with her father and Lynley, and could find neither. Now that the dancing was about to begin, she’d quite lost her fiancé, and was in danger of being spotted by Miss Throckmorton. Emily glanced round for an opening in the shoulder-to-shoulder throng of young ladies. Fans fluttered, feathered headdresses bobbed, and voices squealed. She gritted her teeth. She really did not like large, giddy gatherings. Through the imposing doors at the side of the ballroom, she could see the hall that led to the ladies’ retiring room. Escape beckoned. Lynley would have to hunt spies on his own.

  Before she could take a step, her arm was seized in a painful grip, and she was yanked from the room. In the hall her captor spun her around and pushed her to the wall. She looked up into the smooth, cool face of Lord Barksted.

  “You wanted a word with me?” She looked pointedly at the man’s hand on her arm. “You had only to ask.”

  Barksted’s bold glance dropped to Emily’s bosom. “Happy for you, Miss Radstock, that you landed a fiancé after so long a time on the shelf. Apparently, Lynley likes shop-worn goods.”

  “Happy for you, Lord Barksted, that in being so long on the town yourself, no woman need go to the trouble of liking you at all.”

  A look of menace passed over Barksted’s face, exposing yellow, tobacco-stained teeth clenched tight. “You’ll have to do better than that to insult me, miss.”

  He expected her to cower, but Emily drew herself up and leaned toward him, enduring the spirits on his breath. “And you’ll have to grow some wit if you wish to remain a welcome guest anywhere.”

  From within the ballroom came the first notes of the opening quadrille. Guests hurried past them through the grand doors. Barksted glanced round and seemed to recall their surroundings.

  He inhaled and spoke again. “Your fiancé is as meddlesome as he is handsome. If you wish Lynley to retain the perfection of his features, you will exercise your influence to keep him from sticking his oar in my business.”

  “Would that be the business of intimidating women?”

  His grip tightened painfully on her arm. “I should have known that you and Lynley were a pair of meddlers.”

  Emily felt the danger of slapping him or planting him a facer. He was a man who would hurt a woman. She glanced across the hall at the door to the retiring room. “Lord Barksted, consider where you are and to whom you speak. Do not imagine me unprotected in the world, and do not imagine that your own credit can withstand such ill-bred behavior.”

  “Neither your sex nor your title protects you from my wrath should you or your imbecilic fiancé cross me again, Lady Emily.”

  Some commotion in the hall made Barksted turn his head. A gentleman barreled into him, loosening his hold.

  “Ravenhurst,” he cried, reaching for the man’s arm. “Look where you’re going, man.”

  Emily stepped sideways and dashed for the retiring room.

  The room reserved for Lady Vange’s female guests was lined with benches and fitted up with painted screens for privacy and tall cheval glasses for preening. Six women received the attentions of two chambermaids and a lady’s dresser, assisting with repairs to dress and appearance and offering mild refreshments to those who might feel faint.

  The utterly feminine scene was at odds with Emily’s rage. She wanted to tear Lord Barksted limb from limb. He was a despicable man, much worthier of a firing squad than poor Chunee.

  She waved off an approaching maid and headed for the privacy of one of the screens. She needed to recover her calm, and then she needed to find Lynley. As she neared the screen, she heard sobs coming from behind it. She glanced a question at the dresser, who shrugged her shoulders.

  The bereft sobbing continued with great gusts, which could not be good for anyone wearing stays. Evidently, someone was having a worse time than Emily.

  Emily picked up a glass of lemonade and approached.

  “Hello,” she said.

  There was a pause in the sobs.

  “I’m coming in,” said Emily.

  “No one must see me.”

  “It’s only me.” Emily peeked around the screen. A golden-haired young woman in the white of a girl’s first Season had curled up in a chair between a side table and a standing glass. Her eyes and nose were red, and her over-elaborate coiffure tilted disastrously to one side.

  She straightened, glanced at Emily, and gave a hiccup. “Do I know you?”

  “Not at all, so you won’t mind my help. Here, drink this.”

  The girl accepted the lemonade and drank. She was the sort of ripe, delicate beauty, all rosy-cheeked and dewy-eyed, usually besieged by suitors.

  “Whatever has happened to overset you?” Emily asked.

  The girl sniffed and fumbled for her reticule. A pair of men’s tan York gloves slid from her lap to the floor. Immediately, she began to sob again, her bosom heaving, and the lemonade sloshed dangerously in the glass.

  Emily retrieved the glass and scooped up the gloves, setting both on a small round table. She stepped up to the girl and put an arm around her shoulder and held her until the storm subsided.

  “What terrible thing has happened?” Emily asked.

  “He gave...me…gloves.”

  “And?”

  “He glanced and smiled at me all evening. Then he strolled over and handed me gloves.” She shuddered.

  “Who is he?”

  “Archer.”

  Emily glanced again at the gloves, a man’s good quality tan York gloves. If Archer had brought the gloves to the Vange ball, did that mean he expected to meet the gloves’ owner? “Whose gloves are they?” she asked.

  “My brother’s. Archer just wanted to know how to get a pair of stupid gloves to my brother. I thought...” A sob intervened. “I thought he was going to ask me to dance. I was never so humiliated.”

  The girl paused to listen to the music, and Emily braced herself for more sobs. “Nothing is going right. He’s dancing with her, and nobody knows where my stupid brother is, and my Season is ruined.”

  Emily drew up a stool to sit by the girl. She said nothing to diminish the girl’s pain. She knew a thing or two about a ruined Season, though she was at a loss to understand how a pair of gloves had caused such despair.

  “How did the gloves end up with Archer?”

  “Oh, they are from Lady Ravenhurst. My brother is forever leaving things in her house or carriage.”

  Emily held herself very still. To the girl the gloves were a sign of a beau’s indifference, but if the gloves had come from Lady Ravenhurst, there could be no doubt that they were the very gloves the spy had used at the Ravenhurst party in the foiled attempt to get government papers out of the house.

  “You remember the Radical Race,” the girl prompted. “That’s when
everything started to go wrong.”

  Emily did remember. She had not seen the race, but she had certainly heard about the successful attempt weeks earlier to drive a huge van pulled by four horses across the frozen lake in Hyde Park. Most of fashionable London had turned out to see the thing done. It was exactly the sort of event that the serious-minded of Emily’s friends had condemned, risking horses’ lives for a wager.

  While one part of her mind followed the girl’s association with the gloves, with another she tried to puzzle out what had happened to the gloves since. Archer must not be a spy, or he would not dispose of the gloves to this girl so casually.

  “Well,” said Emily, “forget the gloves and the race. What you must do is go back into that ballroom with your head held high and dance the soles of your slippers off. You must make this Archer see that you don’t care a fig for his folly in pursuing an older married woman.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Emily nodded emphatically.

  “What do I do about the stupid gloves?”

  “I’ll take them. Who is your brother, by the way?”

  “Clive Walhouse.”

  Emily froze. The bits and pieces of observation and gossip rearranged themselves in her brain. Clive Walhouse might be the person they sought, and this girl was the beauty Beatrix hoped her brother Archer would pursue.

  The girl turned a questioning gaze up to Emily. Perhaps, Emily could do Beatrix a good turn. “Let’s worry less about your brother, and more about you. Your hair needs attention.”

  The girl jumped up, turned to the cheval glass, and gasped in horror. “I look a fright. No one will dance with me. Ever again.”

  Emily took her by the shoulders and turned her away from the mirror. “What’s your name?”

  “Allegra.”

  “Let one of the maids repair your coiffure. I know a gentleman, an excellent dancer, who can whirl you about the floor for everyone to see how lovely you look and how impervious you are to the slights of foolish young men.”

  “Really?”