by Juliana Gray
“I—sir—I haven’t got any troubles.”
Olympia lifted one eyebrow. “Really, sir? None at all?”
“No more than—that is, no more than the next man.”
“Forgive me. I must have mistook. You look quite as if—well, the weight of the world and all that.” Olympia waved his cigar hand, sending a ribbon of fragrant smoke to curl around the young man’s ear. “Do join me.”
The man cast a helpless glance up the deck. “But I can’t.”
“Can’t? You wound me.”
“I—that is, I require fresh air. For my health.”
“Good God. At this hour?” Olympia shivered. “I shouldn’t be surprised if I catch cold, myself.”
“Well, the thing is, I never catch cold. So I should be all right.” Another glance up the deck.
The fellow was either a nincompoop or an expert actor. Olympia suspected the former, but couldn’t rule out the latter. On the other hand, he himself wasn’t the real prey in this affair, was he?
“Lucky man, then. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thank you, sir.” The man’s face relaxed into abject gratitude. “Good night, sir.”
“Of course,” Olympia went on, puffing his cigar, “there’s something to be said for a bracing lungful of the briny stuff, isn’t there?”
“N—no, sir!” the fellow gasped, grasping the rail.
The duke removed the cigar and stuck out his hand. “Olympia.”
“Olympia?”
“My name.”
“Oh.” The fellow found his hand and shook spasmodically, in such a manner that he might just as easily have vomited on it. “Langley.”
“Mr. Langley. Business or pleasure?”
“I beg your pardon?” He was edging his way along the railing now, like a young bug attempting to crawl from beneath a magnifying glass.
Olympia sucked happily on his cigar. “I mean the purpose of your voyage, Mr. Langley. Business or pleasure?”
From the hollowed-out terror on Langley’s face, Olympia guessed neither.
“Sir! I mean, Mr. Olympia. I don’t—”
“Just Olympia will do, as it happens.”
“Both!”
“Both?”
“Business and pleasure,” Langley said miserably, and then something caught his eye up the darkened deck, near the bow, and he made a staggering motion, looked helplessly back at Olympia, and turned to grab the rail with both hands and howl at the moon.
Well, not quite. For one thing, the moon wasn’t quite grand enough to attract a good howl this evening. For another, Langley’s despair seemed to have squeezed all the howl out of him.
Olympia, however, had also caught sight of the fair apparition that now hovered near the bow, shimmering of nightdress and iridescent of complexion, the cause of the howl that refused to rise in poor Langley’s throat. He extracted another puff from his cigar and said, “Go on, then. I won’t tell.”
Like a racehorse, the man galloped off, hooves clattering along the sleek wooden boards of the promenade deck. Olympia stood long enough to observe the darting forth of Miss Ruby Morrison toward the forbidden arms of Mr. Langley—no feigned passion, that—and turned away to step back inside the shelter of the deckhouse, where he stubbed out his cigar in the nearest receptacle and considered a recuperative glass of brandy.
Young love always turned his stomach.
Before he could turn down the corridor to his cabin, however—a noble suite amidships, served by a private White Star butler in addition to his own faithful valet—his keen eye detected a hint of shadow where no shadow should exist on board the dim-lit RMS Majestic, at the unfavorable hour of three o’clock in the morning, atop the open ocean.
For such an immense man, Olympia could move with featherweight silence when the circumstances required it. His massive feet made not the slightest indentation on the pillowy White Star carpeting; his Atlas shoulders vibrated not a single particle of air as they slipped down the corridor. Many a seasoned scoundrel, finely trained in the art of espionage, knew that footfall as the very last sound he didn’t hear.
Olympia’s shipboard shadow, therefore, must have possessed an inhuman superabundance of senses, for the duke was no more than halfway down the corridor when it made a tiny flurry of a movement and disappeared.
By damn, he thought.
He pressed ahead and turned at the exact spot where he had seen the shadow, which proved—as he had suspected—to be the short corridor ending in the hatch out to the promenade deck.
A figure stood against that hatch, barring his way. An upright and shapely figure of the very best sort, belted firmly into a dressing gown of olive-green damask, who returned his look of suspicion with a pair of beautifully arched eyebrows.
A flow of pure oxygen swept through Olympia’s chest, awakening each atom of bone and muscle and cartilage, blowing away the ennui in a single gust and filling his empty sails with air.
“Good evening, Mrs. Schuyler,” he said. “What a great and unexpected pleasure.”
“Good evening, sir. Come to take the air again?”
“I have, in fact.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. The chill is unexpectedly severe.”
Her chin brooked no opposition. The oxygen spread down along his limbs, warming his fingers and toes. “Mrs. Schuyler, I assure you, there’s no need to enact a defense, as charmingly gallant as it is. I know very well what lies behind that door.”
“You do?”
“I left Mr. Langley’s company not a minute ago. A fine chap, if a little watery, though he may solidify with age and responsibility. I hope he manages to overcome the objections of Miss Morrison’s connections. I rather suspect that responsibility will fall on the shoulders of Miss Morrison herself, however.”
Mrs. Schuyler’s palms, which had been resting protectively against the door, fell to her sides. “I see. You don’t mind?”
“Mind? Why should I mind?”
“You must have perceived where the Morrisons’ preferences lie, in respect of sons-in-law.”
Olympia laughed quietly. “My dear Mrs. Schuyler. I have not the slightest interest in a girl of Miss Morrison’s age, no matter how delectable the wrapping. I do trust the Morrisons were not pinning any serious hopes on my lechery?”
“They do observe, quite naturally, that you have no direct heir.”
“I am happily satisfied with the heir I possess, a fine and serious young fellow who is just now beginning a career at Oxford, which I expect will do him credit. My brother’s grandson. I have no objection whatever. I find a man accepts a dukedom more graciously when he hasn’t lived in its expectation all his life.”
“I don’t disagree. I’ve seen many promising young men ruined by the certainty of inherited wealth.”
The rush of elation was beginning to quiet now, into something more deeply pleasurable. “Then you’ll understand, Mrs. Schuyler, that I have no interest whatever in an alliance with your young friend.”
But Mrs. Schuyler knew her duty. “She is very beautiful. You have a reputation—forgive me, sir—as a connoisseur of beauty.”
“So I am. But I am not—forgive me, Mrs. Schuyler—inclined toward marriage, certainly not at this stage of my life. I am content to admire.”
She made a sound of disbelief. Even in the dim electric lighting of the corridor, her skin retained the glow that had captured his attention earlier: the calm pearlescence of a lady who maintained her hat and gloves and serenity through all misfortunes of health and weather. Her thick, dark hair hung in a braid that had somehow curled its way over her shoulder and into her bosom—probably against her wishes—and her eyes had that American habit of looking at you in an unyielding way, as if to deny you the privilege of your dukedom. As if to suggest you were just an ordinary human being, after all. She had to be more than f
orty, but how much more? The lines about her eyes were inscrutably fine.
“May I be so bold as to ask you a question, Mrs. Schuyler?”
“Of course, though I can’t promise to answer it.”
“Shouldn’t a competent chaperone be marching outside right now, to snatch her charge from the rapacious jaws of Mr. Langley?”
“I am not Miss Morrison’s chaperone. I am her companion.”
“You have some responsibility for her virtue, I believe.”
“Her virtue is safe enough. For one thing, it’s far too cold out there. For another thing, she’s with Mr. Langley, who is, as you so aptly observe, a watery fellow.”
“Not the sort of chap to ravish a young lady out of hand?”
She smiled. “If Miss Morrison decides she wants to be ravished, she’ll have a hard time convincing him to bow to her wishes. Mr. Langley is the kind of man who reads Richardson for pleasure.”
There was something about the way she said the word pleasure.
Olympia nodded sympathetically. “I see. You’ll give them a few more minutes, then?”
“It’s the least I can do, after he went to so much effort. One doesn’t cross an ocean in cold blood.”
There were, he noticed, a few gray hairs threaded inside that thick braid, which lay so enviably across her chest. The top of her head reached the top of his shoulder, so she had to tilt her neck to address him. She had a long, ornamental neck, and yet somehow sturdy as well, the sort of neck that could hold up a practical head like hers. He examined her eyes, which were a clear and almost colorless blue—he knew this because he had noticed them earlier, during dinner, when the brilliant chandeliers illuminated her—and did not flinch before him. Not even a flicker.
He didn’t have a name for it, this sensation. It was more of an instinct, honed over the decades; a marrow-deep recognition of like to like. This person. There you are. At certain points in his career, he had tried to enact a more scientific study of identification, to recognize certain personal characteristics, certain tendencies, clothes, gestures. But in the end, he discovered, his instinct had always worked best: elegant, simple, efficient. Nearly flawless.
Nearly.
“May I ask you another impertinent question, Mrs. Schuyler?” asked the Duke of Olympia.
“Yes, with the same caveat as before.”
“You are, for obvious reasons, better placed than I am to observe the habits and intimacies of the ladies who sail with us this voyage. You are also, I believe, an unusually perceptive woman. Has any particular member of our little shipboard society behaved in a manner that strikes you as, perhaps—I want a word—unusual?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Olympia sighed and peered upward, as if this delicate maneuver might better be accomplished hanging upside down in the manner of the orangutans.
“Someone who does not quite fit in among the others. Someone who perhaps keeps to herself, who dresses in such a manner as not to attract attention. Who behaves, in some inexpressible way, not quite like the other passengers.”
Mrs. Schuyler smiled gently. “Like me, do you mean?”
“Hmm. Yes. I take your point.”
“Sir, if you can’t make yourself more plain, I must beg you to excuse me. Miss Morrison has had her five minutes of happiness, and I really must return her to her duty.”
“One moment, then.” He put his hand under her elbow and drew a step closer. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t gasp. She smelled rather delicately of orange blossom, which was not the scent he would have expected, but which seemed, on detecting it, to suit her perfectly. He dropped his voice to a few vibrant decibels. “I have been informed by the authorities”—he left it at that, the wonderfully vague word authorities—“that a foreign agent is traveling under guise of a female first-class passenger aboard this vessel, in order to deliver a certain set of sensitive diplomatic papers to a member of the French government. As a trusted confidant of the British side, I am afraid it falls to my duty to discover and prevent this unlawful transfer.”
Her eyelids fell in a slow blink. “My dear sir. I don’t understand.”
“The situation is, of course, more complicated than—”
“But—how extraordinary—are you trying to tell me you’re a—dear me, what’s the word—a spy?”
“A spy, madam? Of course not.” He detested the term.
Her right hand moved to her mouth, just in time to smother a peal of laughter.
“My goodness,” she said. “How perfectly—dear me—I never expected—”
“Madam?”
“Ha, ha—a trusted confidant—ha, ha—falls to my duty—oh, my—”
“You are amused, Mrs. Schuyler?”
She drew in a shuddering little breath and composed herself. “My dear sir. I’m so grateful. You’ve enlivened a rather tedious evening into a most delightful farce. But I’m afraid I really must see about Ruby, before she convinces poor Mr. Langley to commit some terrible impropriety, for which he will rail himself later. I’m afraid your—ha, ha—I beg your pardon—your sensitive diplomatic papers must rest undisturbed for another night.”
She removed her elbow from his grasp and laid a hand on the door latch. Her mouth was pink with amusement, still tilted upward at each end. Smiling.
Having chosen a life’s work that was thickly greased with the element of surprise, the Duke of Olympia was never shocked to be shocked. He found, however, as he gazed down at Mrs. Schuyler’s amused and delicious mouth, that he was more than capable of a touch of—well, what was this sensation, crawling around in the cavity of his chest, which had a moment ago been filled so happily with that exhilarating rush of pure oxygen?
Disappointment. Aggrieved disappointment.
His training saved him, as it was designed to do. His face remained passive, his eyes never blinked. He straightened his figure—thank God for towering height, at a moment like this, even if it left him in constant danger of braining himself on a threshold—and said: “I see. By all means, let us rescue Mr. Langley.” A brief bow. “Good night, Mrs. Schuyler. I hope we shall meet shortly at breakfast.” Emphasis on shortly.
“Indeed, Your Grace. Good night.”
He began to beat a regal retreat, and paused.
“Ah. One small matter. I hope you will relieve my curiosity. How did you know I was approaching, a moment ago? I protest I took the greatest precaution to remain silent.”
The little smile turned into a skeptical knot as she looked him over, as if to say, Silent? A great shambling giant like you? How you deceive yourself! But then she found his eyes again, and there were these wonderful little crinkles at the corners of her own, which soothed his rumpled pride in a gentle and unexpected way.
“Were you not smoking a cigar, sir? I believe I caught the wind of it. My late husband used to smoke that very brand.”
***
By the time Penelope returned to her berth, having collected an astonished and unrepentant Ruby, having kindly seen off a mortified and apologetic Mr. Robert Langley, she was too exhausted to reexamine the details of her extraordinary conversation with the Duke of Olympia in the darkened corridor of the promenade deck.
She made sure, however, to run her hand inside the hidden compartment of her trunk before she fell asleep, to reassure herself that the stiff and unassuming portfolio she had placed there that morning remained securely in its place.
Day Two
SS Majestic
At sea
“But you won’t tell Mama, will you?” said Ruby, in her most cajoling voice, as they dressed for breakfast.
“That depends, my dear.”
“On what? Tell me! I’ll do anything.” Her eyes were a damp hazel, shaped into worried puppylike ovals.
Penelope reached for her gloves. “You must realize that Mr. Langley has chosen e
xactly the wrong strategy. Subterfuge is never the best means of winning favor with the family of the lady of one’s hopes.”
“But they gave him no choice. He approached Papa—”
“And Papa didn’t precisely refuse, did he?”
Ruby turned away and pinned her hat in place with a series of ruthless jabs. “Not until Mama said her piece.”
“Then to whom should Mr. Langley be seeking to appeal, in order to ingratiate himself with the family?”
“Mama,” Ruby said reluctantly. Her hands fell to her sides as she contemplated the fair reflection in the mirror. She tilted her head one way, and another, searching vainly for flaws.
“And is Mr. Langley likely to win over Mama by arranging clandestine meetings with her dear and innocent daughter? Particularly when there’s a coronet dangling in the other direction?”
“But there isn’t. I’ll never marry one of those awful chinless aristocrats.”
“The Duke of Olympia has a magnificent chin,” Penelope said sharply.
“It’s bare, like a baby’s. Robert has such a dishy set of whiskers.”
Penelope marched to the door. “Regardless. If you’re determined to marry Mr. Langley, you’ve got to be more clever about it.”
“How so?”
“My dear girl. As every sportsman knows, you can’t win unless you understand your opponent. What he desires most, and more importantly—” She rested her hand on the knob and paused grandly.
“Yes?”
“What he fears above all.”
Ruby’s eyebrows narrowed to a dangerous point, and—even more dangerously—she didn’t reply: not as they left the cabin and walked toward the first-class saloon for breakfast, not as they found their places at the exact eighth stroke of the clock, just in time to receive coffee gratefully from the hands of a white-coated steward. Not even when Mrs. Morrison bid them both a wordy good morning, though Mrs. Morrison—like most chatterboxes—never noticed.
In fact, Ruby only found her dulcet voice again when the Duke of Olympia approached their party.
“Good morning, ladies,” he began, punctuating the greeting with a polite incline of his noble head, but that was all, because Mrs. Morrison had already jumped out of her skin in delight.
