“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we have a problem with a guest.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t here to confront him. He blinked, needing a moment to adjust to this new, mundane topic. He’d worked himself up into such a lather that the idea that she had come not on a personal matter, but with a piece of hotel business, disconcerted him. Strangely, he felt a little puff of disappointment in his chest. Probably only because he’d roused himself to face the situation, and he was momentarily disoriented to learn that he wouldn’t have to. “Come in.”
“I was tidying a room.” She wrung her hands as she spoke, not even noticing the newly clean surroundings of his rooms—something he felt certain she normally would not have been able to resist commenting upon. “And I overheard something troubling.”
“Why were you tidying a room?” The prospect of her doing a maid’s job raised his hackles.
She waved her hand dismissively, which caused the disappointment that had deflated his chest earlier to spark into annoyance. “We were temporarily short on footmen.”
“Why were we short of footmen?”
“I’m sorry. We’re still working out some of the wrinkles.”
He was the one who should be sorry. If he had treated any of his other ventures with the disregard he’d shown the operations of the Jade in its infancy as he hid in his apartment, he would be back on the streets. He’d left Lucy to fend for herself, to handle everything, so what right did he have to scold her about how she was doing it?
“We have a guest checked in called Mr. Jespersen. He arrived the day after the opening. He wanted his room tidied, and as I was putting things to right, he was speaking to another man in Danish. They would have assumed I couldn’t understand them.”
He held up a hand. “You speak Danish?” He had to blink again, to shake his head. Nothing about this conversation made any sense.
“Yes, but of course they didn’t know that.”
“You speak Danish?” He was aware that merely repeating the same question made him sound dimwitted. And Lucy was clearly troubled by the story she was recounting and probably anxious to get to the point, but he couldn’t get past this new piece of information about her.
“Yes. I turned out to have a talent for languages.” When he merely raised his eyebrows at her, signaling that her explanation fell short of his expectations, she sighed and filled in the rest of the story. “I learned French and Latin, of course—those were standard subjects at Miss Grisham’s. But we had an elderly teacher, a widow who’d come to the school to teach music. She was Danish—she had married a British merchant and followed him to England. I prevailed upon her to teach me her mother tongue.”
“Because Danish would be so very useful?” He couldn’t help needling her, even in the midst of this very confusing discussion.
She flashed him a self-deprecating smile. “Actually, I was interested because of Mary’s travels through the region.”
“The letters from Scandinavia!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. I was quite obsessed with Mary in those years. I loved her with the vehemence only the young can muster.”
“Unlike now. You’re not obsessed with her at all now.” Damn, he couldn’t stop teasing her.
She ignored the barb. “My teacher was delighted to have someone to converse with, and we spent many hours talking. Of course, I’ve been out of school for seven years now, and I haven’t used it since. So I can’t be sure I heard what I thought I heard.”
“What do you think you heard?”
She didn’t speak right away, took a deep breath first, and he was flooded with a sense of foreboding.
“I heard a death threat. A murder plot.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Wait a moment.” Lucy pressed her fingers to her temples, massaging as if she could somehow make her mind absorb the unlikely words she’d just heard, so they could be transmuted into something that actually made sense. She scanned the faces of the people assembled in the sitting room at Emily and Lord Blackstone’s house. The men—Trevor, Lord Blackstone, and James Burnham—gazed at her with severe expressions. Emily looked sympathetic, her brow furrowed with concern. Catharine just grinned.
They’d spent the last ten minutes asking Lucy bewildering questions about the wars, things she had trouble answering, but which she could now tell were designed to probe her loyalty to king and country. And then they’d blindsided her with an astonishing revelation.
“You’re telling me,” she said, “that you’re all spies. Spies.” When Trevor had cursed and hastened her out of the hotel, insisting they call immediately on Lord and Lady Blackstone, she had assumed he wanted to seek the earl’s counsel. But this? This was nearly incomprehensible.
“Not all of us,” said James. “I am most definitely not a spy.”
“Nor I!” Emily chimed in.
Lucy looked at Catharine, who shrugged, looking like a child caught misbehaving. She didn’t seem to regard the situation with the same gravity as Trevor and Lord Blackstone. “I wouldn’t say I’m a spy, exactly. I assist from time to time. It’s Blackstone and Trevor who are the real spies.”
“After I was discharged from the army, thanks to my injury,” Lord Blackstone said, nodding toward his missing hand, “I was recruited to help with London-based intelligence operations. Trevor came with me.”
She turned to Trevor, the man she thought she’d known. Lucy had come to an understanding, these recent weeks, that there were several versions of Trevor inside the one man. When she’d first seen him that stormy night she arrived, she’d thought him hard, a far cry from the mischievous boy she’d known. She’d assumed that like her, the past had marked him. Not just their hardscrabble childhood, but war. Men didn’t survive war without consequences. And what were any of them besides a complex mixture of all they had survived? But occasionally, despite it all, he’d shown her flashes of the old, jesting, carefree Trevor of the past.
She just never would have imagined in a thousand years that “spy” would be part of the mixture that was present-day Trevor. The idea was nothing short of astonishing.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Trevor said. “Telling people who don’t need to know only endangers them—and our missions.”
“Of course,” said Lucy, waving away the apology, even as hope blossomed in her chest. Maybe that was why he’d been squirreled away on the top floor—he was working on an intelligence mission and not merely avoiding her.
“And there was nothing to tell, really. Not anymore. Things have been quiet lately, since, God willing, the war is over, so I thought my intelligence days were largely behind me. Blackstone had been looking into the murders of two army officers, but I haven’t worked on a mission in months—not in any meaningful way.”
All right, so apparently there wasn’t another explanation—he just hadn’t wanted to see her. As she’d feared.
“Miss Greenleaf,” said Lord Blackstone. “I have indeed been nosing around the details of two murders. Two military officers murdered on the same day a year apart.”
Lucy had to stifle a gasp, feeling like a green girl compared to the others, who discussed murder with the same degree of detachment as they might the weather. “And you think what I heard might be related to those murders?”
“We can’t know,” Blackstone said. “Perhaps I’m too suspicious, but it comes with the job. I can’t help observing that your hotel guest is of Danish heritage.”
Understanding was beginning to dawn. He thought the murders were politically motivated. “Denmark-Norway was allied to Napoleon before the Treaty of Kiel, which saw Denmark join the alliance against Napoleon,” she said, thinking out loud so that she could make sure she comprehended what they were intimating. “You are suggesting that perhaps our guests did not make the leap with King Frederick—that they are French sympathizers?”
“A murder plot being discussed by Danes invoking the motherland—it does cross one’s mind.”
James, who had been watching the conversati
on silently, looked at Catharine and sighed. “Especially given the murders Blackstone has already uncovered.”
“And with that in mind,” Lord Blackstone said, “could you please tell us everything you remember about these men—not only what they said, but what they looked like, what they wore. No detail is too insignificant.”
Lucy recounted her brief visit to room 203 as thoroughly as she could, silently berating herself for not paying as much attention as she might have. She’d been focused on understanding them—and then on getting out.
“And you’re sure he said he wanted to make this person—this man he seems to be after—pay for what he did to Denmark?” Lord Blackstone asked after she’d finished speaking.
“Yes.” She’d been confused about a few things as she’d struggled to comprehend the rapid conversation, but that she hadn’t mistaken.
“That alone suggests there is more at work than simple murder, even if what she heard isn’t connected to the other killings.” said Catharine.
“Listen to you all!” Emily cried. “Isn’t simple murder enough cause for alarm?”
“Of course it is,” said Lord Blackstone, “but we mustn’t let ourselves get carried away. Emotion has no place in a mission.”
Catharine clapped her hands with something that seemed very much like glee, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her husband was still looking at her with exasperation. “A mission will be just the thing to liven up the summer. It’s ages until the Season starts!”
“Don’t you have to ask someone about all this?” Lucy asked lamely, still a bit overwhelmed. Could they really just decide to take this on? “Don’t you have to talk to someone in charge?”
“That would be me,” Lord Blackstone said.
Emily shook her head as one would at the antics of a troublesome child. “I am married to London’s spymaster, Miss Greenleaf. It’s quite maddening.”
“So,” said Lord Blackstone, ignoring his wife, “I should think our next move is obvious.”
“She’s not doing it.”
Though Trevor spoke quietly, he drew everyone’s attention. Lucy had temporarily forgotten him, which was itself a small miracle considering how much he had been on her mind in recent days. But he had barely spoken all evening, merely brooded in a corner, watching the conversation unfold.
The earl looked like he was about to say something when Trevor suddenly stood up. “She’s not doing it.” His anger seemed to explode out of nowhere, and the contrast between this version of the declaration and his previous, quiet one, was striking.
“Are you talking about me?” Lucy asked, looking back and forth between the men.
Lord Blackstone remained seated, but his posture stiffened as if he were bracing for a confrontation. “I know you said no spying in the hotel, but—”
Trevor held up a palm to silence the earl. “I have no choice now. I can try to keep the hotel out of espionage, but apparently I can’t keep espionage out of the hotel. I accept that. I won’t turn a blind eye to a potential plot against England unfolding under my nose.” He paused, as if to stress the weight of his next sentence. “But she stays out of it.”
“She’s the only one who can understand them,” Lord Blackstone argued.
Lucy stood, too, increasingly piqued at the bewildering conversation that seemed to have something to do with her.
That prompted Emily to stand and take her arm. “Lucy, these gentlemen have an awful habit of talking about people as if they aren’t there.”
“They do, don’t they?” Catharine said, also rising. The serial standing of everyone in the room lent the proceedings an air of strained confrontation that further unsettled Lucy. “My dear,” Catharine went on, “I think what Blackstone is implying is that he’d like you to listen in on these men, to try to learn more about their plot.” Then she took Lucy’s other arm, so that the three women effectively made a little barricade. Lucy didn’t quite know what they were standing up against, but she appreciated the support.
“That seems like the logical thing to do,” Lucy said now that she understood what was being proposed. “It should be easy enough for me to listen in. I can even dress as a parlor maid—they’ll never suspect I can understand them.”
“That is not happening,” Trevor snarled.
Lucy didn’t miss the glance the earl and Catharine exchanged. If she’d interpreted everything correctly, Lord Blackstone was the spymaster and Catharine and Trevor worked for him. Emily and James were the long-suffering spouses.
“We’ll find someone else,” said Trevor. “One of our men. Dress him as a footman.”
“One of our men who speaks Danish?” Lord Blackstone said, his irritation poorly disguised.
“There’s got to be someone.”
“I’m sure there is, but do we have the time to find this mythical someone? Train him, orient him to the hotel?”
“No,” Lucy said. “Even if this is merely simple murder, as you say, someone’s life is at risk. I can’t know that and not help.”
“Thank you,” said Lord Blackstone.
“I won’t allow it.” Trevor’s voice had gone eerily quiet. When he spoke like this, it was somehow more menacing than shouting.
Lucy turned to him. She hated to defy him, but he was in the wrong. “You don’t have the authority to allow or disallow this.”
A vein throbbed in his forehead. “It’s my hotel.”
“And Lord Blackstone’s,” she said softly. “And the other investors.’”
“I have the largest share,” Trevor said, grinding his teeth.
Silence settled over the room for a moment.
“But you don’t have any share of me.” Lucy stared into angry green eyes. “I am the sole owner of myself.”
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning, as Lucy was staring at her ledger, contemplating the difference between simple murder and treason, the butler approached, executing a perfect bow. Finally, she couldn’t help but think, someone around here who knew how to do his job properly.
He handed her a card. “There’s a gentleman here for you, Mrs. Greenleaf. I’ve put him in the small yellow parlor, as it’s not in use by any of the guests this afternoon.”
“Jeremy Lloyd” was inked on the card in a bold, unfussy script. Lucy didn’t know how to feel. She’d never had a gentleman call on her before. She wasn’t even sure it was quite proper. She huffed a small laugh that caused Davies to say, “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Greenleaf?”
“Nothing! I shall be along directly.” It was just that the situation had suddenly struck her as a trifle absurd. She’d allowed Trevor some fairly shocking intimacies in recent weeks, and now she was concerned over the presence of the perfectly respectable Mr. Lloyd in a semi-public room of the hotel?
“Mr. Lloyd,” she said, summoning a smile as she entered the parlor. “I’ve taken the liberty of assuming you’ll join me in the cup of tea I was just about to have.”
“Good day, Miss Greenleaf.” She glanced at Davies, who had entered behind her, to see if he’d noticed the discrepancy in her title when Mr. Lloyd addressed her as “Miss,” but he was already retreating, his face implacable. “Thank you, a cup of tea would be most refreshing.”
Lucy was just about to inquire about the weather when her guest said, “I’ve come with a proposition.”
“Oh?”
“You’ll recall that we are reading Rousseau at the salon next week.”
“Indeed. I look forward to it, though I can’t say that Monsieur Rousseau and I see eye to eye on many things.”
“That’s why I’m here. After you left our meeting, everyone was saying what a wonderful addition you’ve made to our group. I was hoping I might engage you to make some remarks after next week’s discussion by way of introduction to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. I thought perhaps that might be our next book. It can be construed as a response to Rousseau, can it not?”
She didn’t even bother to try to hide her e
nthusiasm. Probably it was unseemly, but she couldn’t find it in herself to have a care. “Yes! Rousseau argues for the education of women, but only so they can serve men. Mrs. Wollstonecraft takes a different view of things.”
“We haven’t formally read any Wollstonecraft in the group, but I’ve been wanting to introduce her works. This seems a logical spot for it.” He smiled, his eyes dancing. “And suddenly, we have an expert on Wollstonecraft in our midst.”
“A happy coincidence! I would be delighted to introduce the book at the next meeting.”
“Coincidence?” He leaned forward on the settee. “Miss Greenleaf, I have to say, it seems almost providential that I’ve made your acquaintance.”
“Providential?” came a deep voice from the open doorway. “That’s quite the claim.”
Lucy’s face begin to heat, which she resented. She felt as if she’d been caught doing something untoward, but she’d only been conversing with an acquaintance in a parlor—with the door open, at that. “Mr. Lloyd, may I introduce Mr. Bailey, owner of the Jade. Mr. Lloyd hosted the salon I attended two evenings ago.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Lloyd said, turning his always warm countenance on Trevor, who merely pursed his lips and gazed at the visitor for longer than seemed strictly polite.
Then Trevor turned to her. “Lucy,” he said, and she had the distinct sense that he was purposefully drawing out her Christian name. “Room 203’s guest has left for the morning, and the Earl of Blackstone is on his way here. But I shall tell him you’re…” He looked back at Mr. Lloyd. “Otherwise engaged.”
“Please do not let me keep you from your work, Miss Greenleaf,” Mr. Lloyd said. “I shall be on my way, delighted to have secured your agreement to my proposition.”
Lucy made her good-byes, all the while feeling Trevor’s eyes on her. When Mr. Lloyd left, he raised his eyebrows expectantly.
She raised hers, too. He’d said it himself two nights ago, after she’d arrived home so late—she didn’t owe him an accounting of her activities. When his face didn’t change, she said, “Room 203 awaits, does it not?”
The Likelihood of Lucy Page 19
