A Necessary Deception

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Oh no, and now some man, who seemed to have two manifestations—as the Mr. Lang who was supposed to have requested that she help Christien de Meuse, and the Mr. Lang who had blackmailed her in Portsmouth—was dictating her days. She must shake him loose as she had shaken loose her father.

  And her husband?

  “I can’t sit here.” She shot to her feet. “Please,” she murmured.

  Mr. Barnaby jumped, glanced at her, lunged to his feet. “I beg your pardon, do you want past?”

  “Please,” she repeated.

  She slipped past him. She expected him to follow. He returned to his chair instead.

  Alone in the passage, she took several deep breaths of relatively fresh air. Music soared through the thin barricade of the curtain. The pantomime was nearly complete and would become a play after the interval. Before the corridor filled with people, she needed to walk, to breathe, to . . . do something.

  But no respectable female could stride up and down alone in the passage behind the boxes. With a sigh, she returned to the box just as the curtain fell and the crowd’s voices rose to a roar of conversation and flirtation. As though someone had pulled a cork from an upturned bottle, the passageway flooded with people. Men swarmed from one box to another like honeybees seeking the sweetest flowers.

  At least six headed toward the Bainbridges’ box. Lydia stepped inside to chaperone Honore and keep Frobisher entertained so Honore could talk to the other young men.

  Those young men cut Frobisher out without any help from Lydia. They flocked around Honore with compliments and invitations, a poem to her blue eyes, and a nosegay of pansies. Honore glowed.

  Frobisher scowled.

  Lydia touched his arm. “You mustn’t be selfish, young man. This is Honore’s first Season. She hasn’t even enjoyed her ball or court presentation yet.”

  “Does anyone enjoy a court presentation?” Frobisher’s upper lip curled. “The king is mad and the queen—” He snapped his teeth together as though someone had smacked him beneath the chin.

  “Indeed.” Lydia smiled. “Watch your tongue, sir. You might be accused of sedition.”

  And so might she if she drew the picture running through her head, if viewers misunderstood her meaning—Frobisher sneering at the queen instead of taking his bow. Frobisher not on the right side of the law, not serving England if he felt that way about the royal family, evidencing enough contempt to speak against them in public.

  Or was it an act?

  Lydia wished she could produce the volume of an operatic soprano. She might shriek in a high A and shatter some of the paste jewels on the “ladies” in the pit.

  And a few on the ladies in the boxes, no doubt.

  “Why do you wish to enter Society if you hold us in such low regard, Mr. Frobisher?”

  Lydia scanned the crowded box. More men had come to pay their respects to Honore. A few spoke with Cassandra. Two gentlemen in particular had cornered her, though her smile and vivacious motions with her hands hardly demonstrated distress on her part.

  Whittaker was the distressed one. He had his back against the front of the box and his arms crossed over his broad chest. His mouth was set in a grim line, and he stared at Cassandra’s callers from between narrowed lids.

  “I don’t hold Society in low regard, my lady,” Frobisher was saying. “Your family especially intrigues me. So much beauty and talent in one group of ladies is unusual.”

  “Not at all.” Lydia turned abruptly and grasped his arm, holding him against the side of the box. “What do you want with all of us?”

  For a heartbeat, his eyes widened and flared. Then his expression grew bland again, and he gave her his sweet smile. “Why, nothing more than I’m getting—a seat in a box at the opera house, invitations to several balls and soirées, an opportunity to play a little faro or whist and perhaps make my fortune.”

  “Your fortune.” Lydia released his arm and stepped back as though he were a poisonous snake. “You’re nothing more than a gamester wanting to play the high stakes of the wealthy. You’re a Captain Sharp.”

  He blinked and shook his head. “My dear Lady Gale, I am wounded that you could think such a low thing of me.”

  Little did he know what relief she would feel if all he and Barnaby wanted was an introduction to the gaming set. She abhorred gambling so much that anyone who engaged in it deserved what fleecing he got.

  Well, perhaps not. Their families didn’t deserve to be impoverished by their carelessness, and she would hate to be the instrument of one of her peers losing an ancient family estate. Sadly, it happened on the turn of a card or a raindrop too slow to reach the windowsill during a storm, or whatever nonsense gamesters chose to stake their futures on.

  “Then why were you . . . gentlemen so anxious for introductions?” Lydia pressed.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Barnaby in earnest conversation with one of the young men who had entered the box with others of Honore’s admirers, then remained on the fringes of the crowd. Their heads were rather too close together for casual conversation.

  Or was she seeing spies around every corner?

  Face stiff, she returned her attention to Frobisher, only to notice that he too watched Barnaby and the young man, and his eyes glowed like those of a little boy in a sweets shop. Lydia half expected him to start bouncing from foot to foot. Instead, he excused himself and joined the other two men.

  Left to her own devices, Lydia edged her way around the box to Whittaker. On her way past Honore, she heard her younger sister laughing and chattering like a brook sparkling in sunlight. She waved her fan, tapped it on her chin, and rapped one young man’s knuckles as he reached for her hand.

  Surely Honore would forget her tendre for Frobisher now.

  Lydia focused on Whittaker, who had drawn his dark brows together in the grim scowl of an angry man. Beyond him, Cassandra, like her younger sister, shimmered in her silvery pink gown.

  “I’ve never considered balloon travel useful,” she was saying. “I thought it merely a lark. But if you’ve made scientific calculations with wind velocity . . .”

  “If she thinks she’s going up in a balloon,” Whittaker growled, “she’d best think again. I won’t have her risking her neck like that.”

  Lydia opened her mouth to respond. A voice echoed so loudly in her head she couldn’t think what to say. If you think, Charles had shouted, that you’re going to join me on campaign, you’d best think again.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Whittaker added.

  It’s too dangerous, Charles had claimed.

  “Many people fly in balloons.” Lydia tried to defend Cassandra’s position, as she had tried—and failed—to defend hers. “I think it looks vastly entertaining.”

  “Lady Gale—Lydia, nothing that leaves the ground like that can be safe enough to be entertaining.” Whittaker frowned at Cassandra. “She met those two in the park the other day and has been turning her attention from Homer to aerodynamics. The dead Greeks I can tolerate. Live aeronauts I cannot. It’s not decent.”

  It’s not decent, Charles had claimed, though thousands of officers’ wives accompanied their husbands on campaign.

  He didn’t want her with him. After only a week of marriage, he wanted away from her.

  “Don’t be autocratic with her, Whittaker.” Lydia injected as much urgency into her tone as she could manage. “Please.”

  “I’m not being autocratic. I want to keep her safe.”

  I want to keep you safe, Charles had insisted.

  I want my girls to be safe, Father said every time he stopped them from enjoying some lark.

  “If you will excuse me.” Whittaker turned toward his fiancée and shouldered the other men aside. “I’d like to walk, Cassandra.”

  “But I’m talking to these—oh, all right.” She flashed the gentlemen a brilliant smile. “Do call at our next at home. I’d like to know more about your plans.” She took Whittaker’s arm. “It’s so fascinating, Whit. There
’s a Russian man trying to affix propellers to a balloon . . .”

  Her voice faded into those of the crowd and the beginning of Macbeth, which no one seemed to notice. Not even Mr. Barnaby, who was still engaged in subdued conversation with Frobisher and the other man. The latter kept glancing across the opera house. Lydia followed his gaze but couldn’t work out to which box it was directed. Not the royal box at any rate. That meant nothing. The royal box was empty.

  Wishing theirs was too, Lydia strode to the curtain at the back of the box and glanced down the corridor toward Cassandra and Whittaker. He gripped her hands and gazed down at her, his brows still furrowed and dark. Cassandra blinked up at him with nearsighted vagueness, her lips pursed, her chin set, and a muscle jerking at the corner of her jaw.

  Lydia took half a step forward, not certain whether or not she should intervene. She’d been so concerned about protecting her family from her own blackmailer, especially protecting Honore from Frobisher’s attentions, that she hadn’t considered needing to protect Cassandra from her fiancé. If he was just as domineering as Father, preventing a Bainbridge daughter from pursuing an interest that hinted of independent thought, something must be done about it. Cassandra mustn’t end up feeling as inadequate as did her older sister, nor as lonely.

  Lydia took a step forward.

  A hand landed on her arm. She jumped and turned to see Mr. Barnaby standing beside her.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s all right. How may I assist you?”

  “We need to talk someplace where we will not be disturbed. Will you please ride with me in the park tomorrow without any interference from others?” His tone, his expression held an intensity that sent a frisson of apprehension down Lydia’s spine.

  She licked suddenly dry lips. “Could we take a carriage? I prefer that to riding, if I’m to talk.”

  “Of course.” He released her arm and bowed. “Tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  To hear what? Truths or lies?

  “Now, if we may be so impolite, my lady,” Barnaby said, “Gerald and I must take our leave. We are committed elsewhere.”

  “All right.” Lydia stepped aside.

  Barnaby, Frobisher, and the other man to whom they’d been speaking swept past her. The latter two engaged in dialogue still. The word faro drifted back to Lydia.

  So they were off to a gaming party. She curled her lip and turned back to the box to chaperone Honore and the gentlemen remaining in her company.

  “What do I have to say?” Cassandra’s voice rang down the passageway. “Five words, Whittaker. We are not married yet.” She wrenched her hands free of her fiancé’s and dashed along the corridor.

  “Cassandra, don’t,” Lydia and Whittaker called together.

  Catching up with her, Whittaker reached out to grab hold of Cassandra.

  Lydia stayed his hand. “Let me go after her. You’re making a scene.”

  “She’s making the scene. I only want—”

  Lydia grasped his shoulder and turned him toward the box. “Look after Honore. I’ll be right—”

  A cry rang above the tumult inside the auditorium. Lydia swung around in time to see Cassandra miss her footing at the top of a flight of steps and begin to tumble to the bottom.

  10

  Christien’s shoulder throbbed. The numbing effects of the laudanum had worn off, and now his head was clear, his memories sharp.

  He lay half propped up in the big bed, listening to the sounds of the house. It ticked and creaked, as did most houses at night, but no one seemed to be about. He hadn’t heard a single voice or footfall on corridor or step in the past half hour of wakefulness. Someone had been in his room, but long enough ago the fire burned low along with the candles on the mantel, and when he struggled to rise, he found the water in the pitcher tepid at best.

  A bell pull dangled in one corner of the room, a thick rope decorated with gold embroidery. He stretched out his left hand with the intention of pulling it and requesting fresh candles so he could read, a pot of tea or coffee to drink, perhaps some food to eat.

  He curled his fingers around the pull. Silken threads dangled halfway to the floor and twisted above to the ceiling and the mechanism that would ring in the kitchen below stairs. Long and soft like Lydia’s hair. Or as he imagined her hair would be flowing down her back. The curls that perpetually escaped their pins and bounced against her cheek right in front of her ear charmed him, lured him. He’d longed to stroke it, even cut it off in that prison office when he feared he would never get released from the living death of Dartmoor. In the parlor, in the park as she attempted her less than graceful mounting of the gelding, that curl bounced and swayed, shimmering with blue-black lights.

  He released the rope without tugging it and pressed a hand against his brow. He must think of something about Lydia other than his attraction to her—whether or not to take her into his confidence. He hoped it would compel her to leave London, as much as he wished for her to remain near, selfish man that he was. He wanted her to take her family and return to Devonshire, where the men who wanted him dead couldn’t include her in the accident that would again befall him. The fatal accident, if they had their way.

  Now that he’d been introduced to a few important hostesses, he didn’t need Lydia’s company. That he wanted it didn’t matter. Her safety did. And if he told her the truth, she wouldn’t betray him. The blackmail assured her silence.

  “Quel désastre!” Christien pressed his left hand against the pounding pain in his right shoulder. The agony was beginning to seep up to his head the longer he stood.

  He sank onto the edge of a chair and propped his chin in his hand. The shoulder would hold him back for more days, possibly weeks. He needed to move, to work. Lydia was his only hope.

  Another reason to take her more deeply into his confidence and pray she believed him.

  He feared his prayers would not be heard. His work had forced him to tell too many lies over the years, lies that sometimes caused harm to others. They were necessary. This was war. Yet righteous as his actions might be in the eyes of man, Christien feared they were not in the eyes of God. Telling the truth to someone would feel like a spring shower washing the grime of winter away from cobblestones, brick, and mortar.

  But the other man calling himself Mr. Lang, the one who had blackmailed Lydia, would too likely stand in his way, having convinced Lydia that Christien was an enemy of England. His own Mr. Lang, the legitimate government agent who had directed Christien’s path for a decade, hadn’t made contact since reaching London. Christien’s messages had gone unanswered.

  Many explanations occurred to Christien as to why. Lang often got called away, had to slip into France to rescue an agent. With matters going badly between England and America, he could have been sent to the other side of the ocean, trusting Christien to follow instructions and work on his own, as he had so often managed over the years.

  Lydia didn’t trust easily. With a husband like Sir Charles Gale, Christien understood why. He had been a neglectful and selfish husband.

  An unfaithful one.

  Christien hadn’t liked him, even while he helped him. He needed to help him. It made up for those he’d hurt in the performance of his duty to his country. But for a man with a beautiful, intelligent, and talented wife like Lydia to die with the name of another woman on his lips . . .

  Christien’s left hand curled into a fist. “How could he wrong her like that?”

  Gale’s behavior had opened the way for the second Mr. Lang, the wrong Mr. Lang. But how to convince Lydia that Christien knew the right one, or a different one, for that matter?

  The letters of introduction, of course. Sometimes the differences in handwriting could be difficult to detect, but it was worth a try.

  He’d suggested she look and tell him what she found. She never had. She hadn’t remained in his chamber long enough to say anything beyond
courtesy and had never been alone long enough to give herself the opportunity to share a word with him.

  Despite the pain, he must not let himself take medicine again. Despite the pain, he must learn what she had. He could wait and ask her the next time she deigned to visit him, or . . .

  He glanced at the brass clock on the mantel. The hour was early by ton standards. The first act of the play would scarcely be over. No doubt the servants all lounged in their hall, enjoying their night off from tending to the family. He could go to her room and look for correspondences with no one the wiser.

  He knew the location of her room. He’d heard her talking. He couldn’t hear words, only the rich timbre of her voice. She’d been scolding the cat. He caught the meow responding as though they shared a dialogue. He’d smiled.

  He didn’t smile now. His face tightened with every step toward the door. Putting his foot down, however gently, sent fresh pain shooting through his shoulder. No matter. He must go, must find out, must make plans in the event the two handwritings were the same.

  If they were the same, he must abort his mission and flee—with Lydia.

  Awkward in a nightshirt, with one sleeve cut out to accommodate the sling, and a dressing gown only draped over the right shoulder, he haltingly made his way to the door and pulled it open. In the opening, he stood and waited, listening. Inside, the house lay quiet. Outside, carriages rumbled past, and some drunken-sounding young men stood in the square and sang off-key. He couldn’t hear so much as a mouse creeping about, let alone a member of the family or staff. Not even the cat.

  Reassured, his way lit by candles in sconces affixed at intervals to the walls, he painstakingly began his way up the steps. He needed to grip the banister and take one step at a time, setting first his left foot on the tread, then his right. One . . . two . . . three . . .