“Yes milady. Will there be a reply?”
“Maybe, but maybe not today.”
He nodded again, and slipped away. Lily stood, stroking Posy’s soft nose for a little longer, before she went back inside. The letter would reach its destination, she had no doubt.
Tom had been just another starving street urchin, until he had decided to hang about near Elbury House, and hold horses, sweep the street before them, and whatever else he might do, in the hope of a coin. Lily had watched him for weeks, and then convinced her parents to offer him a position as a stableboy. That decision had produced in him an undying loyalty to Lily.
He did not ask her about why she wanted him to carry secret letters – he simply did as she requested – he took the letter, and found a trustworthy urchin he knew – a different one each time, and sent the letter on to Frockmorton and Thackery that way. The process, Lily hoped, would make it impossible for anyone to trace the letter back to its source.
As far as replies, ‘Mr Brooks’ had an address at an unexceptionable rooming house – an address owned by someone else that Tom knew.
That was, perhaps, the biggest risk – but Lily saw no other way to go about things. Payment had been far easier to arrange – for Lily had no need of money, her family were more than wealthy enough for anything she might need. She had simply required that any payments earned by ‘Mr Brooks’ should be made to a charity – a home and school for servant girls who had been abused by their aristocratic masters, which charitable project had been set up by the Duchess of Windemere and her friends.
As she returned to the house, a warm sense of satisfaction filled her – her work would be seen and recognised, if not under her own name, and the money that it earnt would go to a very good cause.
<<<< O >>>>
“There is a Mr Smith asking to see you, my Lord. He seems a rather… unpolished… sort, if I may say so.”
Horton’s expression was carefully schooled, but his tone of voice made it clear what he thought of Mr Smith. Trent stifled a laugh. A few weeks earlier, his own opinion might have been very similar to his butler’s. But now, he knew better.
Mr Smith was one of the men who had been assigned to him by Baron Setford. The man was well born – but the fifth son of a third son, with nothing to distinguish him – except a talent for spying, and a loyalty to his country.
“Show him in, Horton. I am expecting him.”
“Very well, my Lord.”
The words were as expected, but the slight sniff and the raising of his chin made Horton’s view very clear. Perhaps he would need to have a word with his butler about the likely character of some of his visitors in the near future. A few moments later, the man was shown into the room.
“Please be seated, Smith. I assume that you have something to report?”
“I do, my Lord. I thought, until today, that what I would be reporting would be absolutely nothing out of order. But today, I discovered something odd, something I believe you should know about.”
At his words, Trent felt suddenly slightly ill. He had hoped, he admitted to himself, that there was nothing to find – that the Gardenbrook family were just as they appeared – fine upstanding people of good manners and breeding.
Even given how very atypical they were to have so many daughters, of the ages they were, and none yet married, he liked them, had felt quite sure that they were as they seemed. The idea that there might be something far more murky hiding beneath that calm surface distressed him.
“Something odd?”
“Yes, my Lord. I observed what appears to be secret correspondence leaving the house by very non-standard means. I have yet to trace it to its destination, or determine its contents, but it seems very much out of the ordinary for a message to leave a Duke’s household by way of a stableboy, and then a street urchin. I have left Johnson tailing the urchin, and Jenks watching the stableboy. I will let you know when I discover anything further, but I felt it necessary to report this at once.”
“Thank you. Do please inform me immediately, when you know more.”
Mr Smith rose and bowed, before taking his leave. Trent sat, completely still, staring unseeingly at the portrait of his father which hung on the wall opposite his desk. Smith was right – what possible reason could a Duke’s family have for clandestine correspondence? Yet the idea that the Gardenbrooks, and Lady Lily in particular, might be involved in anything inappropriate was unpalatable in the extreme – he struggled to give credence to the idea – yet the evidence seemed incontrovertible. He swallowed, refusing to consider why the idea horrified him so.
This was to be his life – this sort of discovery was what Setford asked of him – the quiet identification of members of the aristocracy who were involved in anything unusual.
Anything which might, in the end, lead to a threat to Crown and Country. The portrait of his father seemed to mock him, its cynical, disappointed expression already suggesting that he would fail.
He glared at it.
“I will not fail, father – no matter what you may have believed about me, until your dying day.”
His voice was soft, yet carried an intensity of emotion which surprised even him. He had loved his father – but despaired of ever pleasing him.
He turned away from it, the painted eyes too difficult to face, and rose from his desk. He needed to get used to this – for every family he was introduced to, he would need to look into, to have his men study for some time, so that he could begin to discover who he might trust, beyond others who worked quietly for Setford.
He had not expected, truly, just how much his life would change, as a result of accepting Setford’s offer of something meaningful to do.
Chapter Four
The next few weeks went by far too fast, and far too slowly for Lily. Frockmorton and Thackery were slow to respond to her letter, and then chose to negotiate on their offer, which annoyed her – they knew the quality of her work, and she was offended that they had tried this. So ‘Mr Brooks’ became annoyed, and a chain of letters resulted. It worried her, for it meant far too many pieces of secret correspondence, yet what could she do – she wanted fair value for her work.
And while that particular drama played out in secret, the Season moved closer, and many more families returned to London and began to host events. Lily found herself distracted – when she should have been writing poetry, she sometimes simply sat and stared at nothing, as her mind replayed social events and interactions - certain specific interactions, she had to admit. With Lord Canterford. Who became more and more intriguing, every time that she saw him. For he did not behave as the other men did – he did not fawn over her, or her sisters, did not appear to be seeking a wife at all.
Yet he was at every event they attended. She could not understand why. From what she had heard, he was a quiet man, who did not gamble – who had funds to spare, so did not need a woman with a dowry. At most events, although he was everything that was polite, she rather thought he was mostly suffering from ennui at the whole thing. So why was he always there?
But that very difference was what made him attractive. He had, as half promised in his riposte to Hyacinth at their first meeting, danced with her, and all of her sisters. She found herself pleased with that fact – for it indicated that perhaps she had judged him harshly in assuming it to be only flattery. And she wanted, despite her initial intentions, to like him – indeed, she already did, rather more than she had ever liked a man not of her family before.
That alarmed her a little, for she had no concept of how to deal with her reactions to him – it was completely uncharted territory – yet she was beginning to actually look forward to Balls and soirees, to look for him when she arrived, and to hope that he might dance with her, might single her out. She decided to put these new feelings to good use, and attempt to express them in her poetry – for poetry explored human emotion, and touched the reader through its ability to make them feel, to react.
Doing so was harder than she had expected, fo
r she found that she did not, really, wish to examine her own responses to the man at all closely. On this particular afternoon, she sat at her escritoire, the pen unregarded in her hand, as she stared out of the window, where the sun gilded London’s rooftops into an illusion of wealth.
She was daydreaming about the Ball to be held at the Duke of Melton’s home that evening. Would Lord Canterford be there? Just the thought of dancing with him made her heart beat faster. She had always, even through her two previous Seasons, thought the girls around her, who became sighingly enamoured of particular gentlemen, to be ridiculous. Now, she was beginning to suspect that she understood exactly how they felt. It was rather lowering to discover that she might be subject to such foolishness herself.
Yet she could not seem to remove her thoughts from the man. She forced herself to turn back to the journal before her, to the poem in progress. The poem which, when she read it through again, seemed alarmingly like an ode to infatuation. Irritated, she closed the journal, and put everything away, returning the escritoire to its innocent normalcy. Perhaps tomorrow the poem would seem better, or she might be inspired to write on a different topic entirely.
She unlocked the door, and went downstairs – hoping that an hour or two in her sisters’ company would set her to rights. When she reached the parlour, however, she walked into the midst of a vigorous debate on the relative merits of various gentlemen.
“I do not believe that Lord Wiltingham is worth any woman considering! He is rather a dandy, I have heard that he gambles terribly, and… he managed to step on my toes twice while we danced. Not to mention the fact that he is so full of his own self-importance that I doubt he would ever be interested in what a woman had to say.”
Hyacinth’s tone was dismissive.
“Still, he is quite handsome, don’t you think?”
Rose raised an eyebrow, and Lily was quite certain that she was baiting Hyacinth, who, as expected, reacted strongly to her words.
“My dear sister, in what way might handsome compensate for arrogant and pompous? Can you not imagine what a horror it would be, to spend one’s life with a man like that?”
“Well… yes, you may have a point. Why are the handsome men all so positively distasteful in other ways? Or already married?”
Rose’s plaintive tone drew a short laugh from Lily, at which point the others noticed that she was present. She waved a hand at them, before they could say another word.
“I refuse, dear sisters, to enter into this discussion. We could talk for weeks on the topic, and not reach any satisfactory conclusions, beyond the fact that either we are all astoundingly hard to please, or that we are all far more astute and observant than most women our age. Can we not speak of something more interesting?”
Camellia smiled at her, a little wistfully, a little cheekily.
“You are right, Lily… yet… I do rather find gentlemen interesting… although in ways far more… improper… than as a subject of conversation.”
Hyacinth looked at Camellia, and raised an eyebrow.
“And just exactly what, Camellia, would you know of the improper ways in which a gentleman might be interesting?”
Camellia actually blushed.
“I might have allowed Lord Tarrant the chance to be… rather more forward in his attentions than was perhaps wise. But it was most educational. And made me actively avoid him thereafter. However, it did allow me to assess the possibility that a kiss from a man who I cared about could be most pleasant.”
Lily gaped at her for a moment. Obviously, she had been so absorbed in her poetry, and her avoidance of most of the men that she knew, that she had missed Camellia’s interactions completely. Hyacinth snorted.
“I might have known it would be you who was first to sneak off and allow a man to take liberties! Perhaps Lily should learn from you – she needs to marry soon! Although… Lily seems to have an admirer, doesn’t she? The only new man we’ve met this year, and the only one who seems to have no known vices. Perhaps, Lily, you won’t be a spinster much longer, if Lord Canterford continues to pay you attention.”
Lily felt the blush rise in her cheeks, and sternly told herself not to react. If Hyacinth so much as suspected that she liked the man, she would tease unmercifully.
“I do not think that he singles me out in any way Hyacinth! He has danced with all of us, and is everything that is polite, but seems nothing more.”
Lily wondered though – her own words reminded her of why she found the man intriguing. Hyacinth looked at her, and shook her head.
“Lily, with an attitude like that, I despair of you. You are near a spinster already, and yet you make no effort to pursue the only decent man we have met in the last year.”
Lily glared at her sister.
“Really Hyacinth! If I am near a spinster, then so are you, for you are but one year younger than I am.”
Before Hyacinth could reply, their mother and brother entered the room. Lily swallowed – had Thorne heard? It seemed that he had.
“Why Lily, have you come to see the truth of it then? Did I just hear you acknowledge that you are a spinster? What momentous event has awakened you to this realisation?”
“My dear brother, it seems that your hearing is impaired – for I was simply pointing out to Hyacinth that I am not yet a spinster, any more than she is.”
The Duchess shook her head and sighed. She loved her children dearly, but there were days when she found their teasing of each other frustrating – it so often obscured the serious matters which needed to be addressed. When she spoke, her voice was soft, and almost a little sad.
“Lily dear, whatever you wish to call it, you cannot deny that you are now two and twenty, and yet unmarried. You have not lacked for suitors, yet still, there is not one man who has roused your interest – I begin to worry that you will end a lonely spinster. Is there no gentleman you might even consider?”
At her mother’s words, the image of Lord Canterford slipped into Lily’s mind. She pushed it away. He was quiet, almost dull – too serious – surely a man that serious would not appreciate a wife who wanted to be so outrageous as to write poetry and get it published? She could always hide it, of course… but she was heartily sick of doing so.
“No one, Mother. And I assure you, I have given every eligible man careful consideration.”
“Then perhaps your sisters will marry first?” the Duchess looked at her other daughters, all of whom avoided her eye. “No matter how some of the more old-fashioned members of society might view that, I would not object.”
The room was silent, as all of the sisters avoided responding.
<<<< O >>>>
Trent looked at the paper in his hand, his brows furrowed in a frown. His men had intercepted one of the urchins delivering the secret correspondence from Elbury House – a scruffy child who was new to the area. They had bribed him with a meal, and a drink with just enough gin in it to make him fall asleep. While he slept, the letter had been carefully opened, copied, and restored to its original state, in his pocket – when he woke, he was none the wiser.
Nothing about it made sense.
It appeared to be a letter to a publishing company – one Frockmorton and Thackery – from a Mr L Brooks, seemingly one in an ongoing correspondence about the fees being negotiated for them obtaining the publishing rights to a volume of poetry. If it was code, it was no code that Trent, or the cryptographer that Setford had provided, had ever seen before.
But… if it was what it seemed, on the surface, who was Mr L Brooks, and what possible connection did he have to Elbury House, and the Gardenbrook family?
Trent did not know – but he had to find out.
<<<< O >>>>
Lily woke early, and lay there, considering the day ahead. Today, she would go shopping. Book shopping, at Bigglesworth’s Books, to be precise.
Today, she would hold the first published volume of her poetry in her hands. Even if it didn’t have her own name on it, it was still wonderful to t
hink that it would actually exist, as a physical book.
The morning seemed to go past terribly slowly, and Lily could not settle to anything, until the time at which she might reasonably go out. She forced herself to be calm, and attempted to write but found herself, instead, staring at that annoying poem again, even more convinced that it seemed to be quite clearly about love, rather than anything else. Sighing, she put it away, and attempted to read a novel – that failed too, as she simply could not concentrate.
Finally, the clock on her mantel indicated that the time had arrived – the carriage would be brought around within the hour. She called for Nell, her maid, and dressed in a suitable day gown. Soon, she was seated in the family carriage, accompanied by Nell, and with two footmen to ensure that she stayed safe. She watched the streets go by outside, and wished that it were possible for a Lady of her station to go anywhere, do anything, without needing so many to attend her.
She shook her head at her own foolishness – the chance of that happening was so slim as to be non-existent. At least she was able to go about with just her maid, so long as there was at least one footman nearby. And Nell was a very… flexible… chaperone.
They drew up outside Bigglesworth’s, and Lily had to force herself to sit quietly until the door had been opened and the steps let down., had to force herself to move slowly, rather than disgracing herself by rushing through the door like a hoyden. But she managed it.
She walked about the shop for a little, looking at various books, before going to the counter.
“Good day, Mr Bigglesworth. Has that book I ordered arrived, by any chance? It was due to be released this week, was it not?”
Mr Bigglesworth adjusted his spindly eyeglasses on their precarious perch on his nose.
“I do believe that it has, Lady Lily, just this morning. I have two copies on the shelf, and one put away here for you.”
He bent down, and rummaged about under the counter, eventually producing a book, wrapped in a piece of soft muslin, with a little paper tag tied about it with string. Almost ceremoniously, he unwrapped it, and placed the blue leather-bound volume in her hands. For a moment, Lily could barely breathe.
A Spinster for a Spy: Book 1: Lily - Clean Regency Romance (A Duke's Daughters: The Elbury Bouquet) Page 3
