Most surprising of all, he no longer wore the close-cropped black beard Antonia had seen him with just that afternoon. In fact, his heavy chin and jaw was the smoothest it had been in many years. He had always carried some stubble, even to the most formal of occasions, as if he couldn’t be bothered or didn’t have the time for an exacting shave. Antonia always assumed this an affectation, like the untidy hair and the jockey boots. Props taken from his performer’s bag for the benefit of his admiring female audience and, she suspected, to annoy his mother; the Countess was a stickler for convention in form and correct dress.
It was not the calculated devil-may-care cousin with the arrogant swagger who bowed over her outstretched hand in greeting but an affable young gentleman with a smile that bordered on shyness. It had Antonia sitting up and peering at him keenly. She said to tease him,
“A month in the Tower and you are a changed man, Alisdair.”
He put up an eyebrow.
“You and I both know, your Grace, I spent that month in Portugal.”
“Ah, so not incarceration but sunstroke sees you forsake your boots, hein?” She put aside her teacup. “This cousin you present to me looks a good deal more serious than the other one. But you should go without jockey boots more often. White stockings they show off your large calves to better advantage. And the beard, it had a certain appeal, but you are far more handsome without it.”
“Thank you, your Grace—”
“Your Grace? I compliment you and you go all formal on me? And now me I have you blushing! Who would have thought it possible. But I am not telling you anything you do not already know.”
Dair grinned. “No, your—No, Cousin. But I will take the stockings and shoes on advisement.”
“Julian he knows you are here and has invited you to a concert this evening perhaps?”
Dair shook his head. “No. After I sup with you, I have an appointment with Lord Shrewsbury.” When Antonia’s eyebrows lifted imperceptibly, he added, “To debrief him about my trip to Lisbon. But before I can do that, I need to discuss an important matter with you—”
“With me?” she interrupted, recalling the passionate kiss she had seen him share with her goddaughter. Offering him the wingchair adjacent to her chaise, she apologized for the untidy state of the carpet when his large feet found it difficult to pick their way through the piles of papers. When he was seated, she added with a smile, “Naturally, I will help you in any way I can. You know that, mon cher.”
He nodded and, suddenly overcome, easily slipped into her native French tongue. “Yes. Yes, I do know that, ma chère cousine… Jamie loves his microscope, and your visit to Banks House has provided the family and their servants with enough to talk about for weeks, as well as a certain notoriety in their little corner of the world. I suspect you knew the outcome before you drove out to Chelsea in state…?”
She gave a little tinkle of laughter, and then was serious.
“People in our position we have a responsibility to live up to the expectations of others, particularly those whose circumstances or position do not allow them the opportunity to come close to our social circle, least of all mingle within it. How could I not drive out in the big black traveling coach, with outriders, and me in one of my best gowns, looking every inch a duchess? What a disappointment had I turned up looking like this!”
Dair laughed and shook his head. “Never a disappointment, Mme la Duchesse. Whatever you say to the contrary, you are always every inch a duchess; the attire an inconsequential detail.”
“Me I hope that remains true in the months to come…” Antonia murmured, and braced herself to stand without feeling nauseous, prompted by the appearance of a footman in the doorway of the anteroom that connected the sitting room with the private dining room. “You do not mind if first we dine before we discuss this important matter? Pierre he will tear out what hair is remaining to him if I do not at least taste the dishes he tempts me with. I am only too pleased you are here staying with me,” she added with a smile, when Dair offered her his arm, and they walked through to the dining room and a table set with silver, fine crystal and Sèvres plate. “Your appetite at least makes my chef feel he is valued…”
While the cousins dined on lamb loin with a breaded mushroom crust, salmagundi, carrot puffs, stuffed cucumber and potato pudding, the conversation remained topical but not personal. They discussed the infirm Lord Chatham’s surprise visit to the Lords in his sedan chair, and the defeat of his motion to end hostilities in the Americas, by a vote of 76 to 26. They both agreed that the publication of Macpherson’s General History, condemning the first Duke of Marlborough’s avarice, was needless abuse, Macpherson having no right to cast a stone at Queen Anne’s great general. Both were intensely interested in the recent raids by American privateers on the Scottish and Irish coast, Antonia expressing the hope the crates of her personal belongings from her old Parisian home made it to the safety of an English port without being confiscated by traitorous pirates. Dair was quick to bite his tongue and not comment that those traitorous pirates were being aided and abetted by her kinsmen, the French, who continued to hide their treacherous two-faced cowardly dealings with the colonists behind a cloak of cordiality with the English. He knew open war with the French had to be just around the corner, months at most.
Antonia was not so distracted by her nausea or the present conversation that she did not notice the sudden tightness in her cousin’s strong jaw at mention of the French, so she skillfully steered the conversation away from the war with a mundane observation Horace Walpole had made to her in one of his letters. It had to do with the present folly of Society to keep later and later hours in London. She told Dair how Lord Derby’s cook had given his lordship warning he would be killed if he had to dress suppers at three in the morning, to which his lordship had asked him coolly how much he would have to pay to kill him!
They both laughed and cordiality was restored, so much so that by the time pudding arrived, Antonia, who had managed to keep her nausea under control by eating very little, was able to indulge in a scoop of pistachio ice accompanied by a thin barberry-flavored wafer. And Dair forgot why he was dining with his cousin, and instead poured forth his feelings for Miss Aurora Talbot.
Antonia masked her incredulity and listened without comment. But as she finished off the last spoonful of pistachio ice in the tall crystal glass, she believed in his sincerity utterly. Now the change in him made perfect sense. It was not so much that he had changed as that he had become the man he was always destined to be. If she was privately astounded her goddaughter was the woman who had brought this about, and in whom Dair had invested all his hopes and dreams for the future, it was not because she did not see the potential in Rory to be the love of a good man’s life. It was that it was her cousin, who had been within Rory’s orbit for many years, had finally noticed, and fallen irrevocably in love with her. She could not have been happier and naturally assumed this was the important matter he wished to discuss with her.
They returned to the sitting room for tea and macaroons, the deep-piled carpet before the fireplace miraculously cleared of the paraphernalia pertaining to the organization and refurbishment of four homes, and neatly stacked in piles on a long mahogany table up against one wall. It was with the tea things before her and the butler going about the business of pouring out into porcelain cups, that Antonia enquired if Dair’s secret betrothal was the important matter he had wished to discuss with her.
The Duchess’s innocent enquiry brought Dair out of his reverie with a heavy thud, and he returned to the real reason he needed to speak with her. If it were possible, he was even more reluctant to do so. The newfound intimacy of understanding between them made it that much more difficult to broach the subject of the identity of his contact in Lisbon. Yet, it was unavoidable. Confirming the identity of the double agent meant the man could return to England, and in so doing could pass on all he knew about France’s dealings with the American rebels and expose the double agen
t within Shrewsbury’s own Secret Service.
Antonia was naturally puzzled when her cousin returned the conversation to his secret visit to Portugal.
“You wish to speak to me about your business in Lisbon?”
She became alarmed the matter was serious indeed when, after accepting the cup of tea, Dair shifted from the wingchair to perch on the end of her chaise longue.
“The principal reason I went to Lisbon was to meet a contact, an important agent, a double agent in fact, working not only for France, but more importantly, working for us against the French. He has vital intelligence—information—that could save the lives of thousands of our troops. He also knows the identity of the traitor within Shrewsbury’s own service.”
Antonia held out the sugar bowl and watched Dair use the silver tongs to drop a small lump of sugar into his milky tea.
“Did you ask this individual if your brother he is the traitor Shrewsbury says he is?”
Dair heard her note of censure and took a moment to stir his tea before saying levelly, “He believes, as I do, Charles is an intellectual idealist whose ideals were played upon by forces loyal to le Roi to further their own ends.”
“I see. So this individual you met, he must think he knows Charles well, as well as you, to make such an observation, hein?”
“Yes, Mme la Duchesse,” Dair replied. He asked she put aside her tea dish, fearing that in her surprise she might spill her tea given what he was about to tell her.
She did as he asked, the use of her title, and the look in his dark eyes, setting her heart racing. Before he could say anything further, she said in a whisper, “Your brother… Is Charles… He is-he is safe?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. He and Sarah-Jane have settled in a house in the town of Versailles, just outside the palace grounds. According to Charles, it has a lovely walled garden and is close enough to the palace he can stroll across there when required.”
Antonia nodded and breathed easy. “Yes. Yes. Me I had a letter from Sarah-Jane. She and Charles they are happy in their new house, which pleases me and her father very much.”
“The agent I met in Lisbon calls himself M’sieur Lucian, M’sieur Gaius Lucian. Although, that is not his birth name. I admit when he told me his true identity, I was unconvinced—No—I was floored. You could have knocked me out with a feather! But we spent several days together and by the end I had to admit there were echoes about his person which reminded me of the young man he once was. So he could well be who he says he is, but I am not the man to make that determination.
“After all, it is more than ten years since I last saw him, and if it is he, he is much altered. My memory of him is not favorable. I always wanted to plant him a facer for his posturing insolence. It was only Julian’s intervention that stopped me acting violently towards the prancing twit! Flitting about in heels higher than any female wears, and with an irritating laugh that should never be uttered out of the mouth of a man. And he had this irksome conceited habit of carrying his viola with him wherever he went. He’d strike up some discordant composition, usually within my hearing, that made me want to smash the instrument over his powdered head to shut him up.”
Antonia patted Dair’s hand that had balled itself into a fist on his knee.
“I know whom you describe, mon cher, and me, I understand your irritation. I loved him dearly because he was the son of my dearest best friends, and my nephew. But me too I wanted sometimes to rap his knuckles with my fan. It was all one big show, you realize?”
“Yes. Yes, I do now. But my younger self could not see through the outrageous performance.” He laughed harshly. “Imagine that? Me, the most accomplished performer in the Secret Service, oblivious to his own cousin’s subterfuge!”
Antonia let out a little sigh of sadness. “It is too sad… A whole family lost… I console myself that he Evelyn did not live to see both parents and Monseigneur leave us in the way they did…”
Dair frowned. “But the person I just described to you, the cousin whom I had no time for over a decade ago, he is the gentleman I spent time with in Lisbon; or so he aimed to convince me! M’sieur Gaius Lucian purports to be Evelyn Gaius Lucian Ffolkes, your nephew and heir to the earldom of Stretham-Ely.”
Antonia shook her head. “No. No. No. This man, he is a liar! Evelyn, he was lost to us many years ago. He eloped with a most unsuitable girl who died a few years after they were married, in Florence, I think. And after that—” She lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness, “—we lost all contact with him. Monseigneur, he spent a small fortune searching for him. His sister, Evelyn’s maman, as you may imagine, was distraught with grief; first at his elopement, and then when he disappeared. He was her only child. Never a day went by when she did not burst into tears at some moment, thinking about him. It was too, too sad for my sister-in-law and her husband. And that is why, when word reached Monseigneur from Krakow, that his body—Evelyn’s body—it had been fished out of the Vistula River, it was some closure for his poor parents. Of course, we, none of us, believed he was truly gone, and there was a grain of hope that the body it was not his because it was so badly mutilated. But when his signet ring it reached us, and his father identified it as belonging to his son, we knew then he was truly dead. So this man, this M’sieur Lucian, he is a liar, Alisdair.”
Dair had listened without comment or reaction to the Duchess’s argument. Had he not spent time with this M’sieur Lucian, and been convinced by him that he was who he said he was, he would have been the first to agree with her. But all that she told him, he already knew, and it had been countered by Gaius Lucian. And so he persisted to convince her otherwise.
“What if I told you the body in the river was not his? What if I said the signet ring was sent to finally convince the Duke and his parents he was indeed dead, because at that point in his life he wished himself dead, and he did not wish to be found? Is that not plausible?” When Antonia gave a little shrug but did not dispute this, he put aside his empty tea cup, and continued. “I am sure there is much more to his story than what I was told, but my time was limited, and it was not my place to be this man’s confessor. I was to make contact with our double agent in Lisbon, find out certain particulars, and return that information to Shrewsbury. But, it seems, our agent has his own ideas of what he is prepared to divulge, and when. He will only do so when given safe passage to England, and once in the country, immunity from prosecution. So it is imperative I believe he is who he says he is, and that Shrewsbury does, too. Only then can we trust the information he gives us as the truth.”
“You want me to say I believe this man to be my nephew, back from the dead? But I cannot, and will not believe it. Not until he is standing before me and I look in his blue eyes. Then, perhaps, I will give such an assurance.”
“Believe me, cousin. I was no more astounded or skeptical than you are now that this man is who he claims he is. After all, he is nothing like the prancing pony I remember. He can’t even play a viola. Well, at least I do not think it possible. He is missing two fingers from his left hand. I reckoned his age to be nearer to mine, but he looks ten years older—”
“If he were alive, he would be turning thirty.”
“This man looks forty if he is a day. His neck and hands carry the scars of torture. He is wiry and gaunt, as if he had gone a long time without proper sustenance. He does have blue eyes—”
“Small consolation.”
“—and everything he told me—and I do mean everything—about his family, his boyhood spent in Paris and here, at Treat, about Monseigneur, you, his time at Eton with Julian, teaching the Duchess to play the viola, even events that included my father—all of it is correct.”
“Imposter! He could have told all these stories to a close friend, a servant even, and it is that sinister person who pretends to be my nephew. All to make a grab for the inheritance, me I do not doubt it!”
Antonia waved a hand in dismissal and groped for her folding fan. Suddenly, she needed air. W
hy had the windows been shut and the curtains pulled? At her bidding, two footmen rushed to pull back the curtains and push out the windows to their full extent. And where was Michelle? Or for that matter, any of her four attendants. She looked about, at the chinoiserie painted six-paneled screen in the corner of the room. It hid from view a commode and a wash stand that held a water jug and porcelain basin. She wondered if she could make the dash to the basin in time should the wave of nausea she was riding prove overwhelming. Usually Michelle, or any one of her attendants, was close, ready to thrust the basin at her should she require it. That they were not in the room increased her panic. And it was this panic, this feeling that she may suddenly need to run behind the screen and be ill, that made her sound irritated with her cousin.
“Why do you not bother Julian with this matter? He could tell you the same. He was close to his cousin for many years, until he ran off with the Farmer-General’s daughter and they lost contact. I am certain he could also put his hands on the letters his father wrote to many agents on the Continent seeking information about Evelyn. I am sorry, Alisdair, but this M’sieur Lucian he is a fraud.”
Dair Devil Page 33
