Espionage and the Earl

by Win Hollows

  Max smiled back and put a coin on the stained wood bar. “Another ale, and Darmon’s is on me as well.”

  “Thank ’ee, sir.” Darmon turned to him in surprise, looking over Max’s tailored clothes. Max had purposefully worn a simple beige linen shirt open at the throat and old-fashioned buckskin trousers that he’d be laughed out of White’s for wearing. He actually liked these clothes better than the foppish waistcoats and gold-chained watches he wore in London, but there was still no fooling hard-working men into thinking he was poor. He had no real need to in this town anyway, since the information he needed was neither secret, nor particularly interesting to anyone else.

  “You’re quite welcome, Master Darmon,” Max replied, clapping the man on the back. “What brings you to this fine establishment this eve?” Max was good at conversation, and he soon had the man talking about his work, his family, and the town gossip. Eventually, Max began to direct the talk toward his goal.

  “I heard tell there used to be some MacDowells that lived hereabouts. Whatever happened to that lot?”

  “Ah, yes, the MacDowells.” Darmon rubbed his chin, blue eyes thinking underneath his frown. “Hard workers. Owned a farm to the north of town for quite a while, but I believe the MacDowell children went back to Ireland after their father passed away.”

  Max felt his hopes receding. Of course they had gone back to Ireland. That was to be his luck on this mission, apparently.

  “Funny thing though,” Darmon continued. “If I remember correctly, old James MacDowell insisted on being buried in the Catholic Church’s graveyard wiv a fancy tombstone and everything. But the man attended Anglican services every Sunday ’til the day he died thirty years ago. Isn’t that strange?”

  “It is,” Max murmured, thinking of possible reasons for such an occurrence. According to Caleb MacDowell, his uncle James had moved away precisely to avoid the influx of Catholics. It made no sense, but perhaps that was the reason for it. Perhaps James MacDowell had wanted his burial site to be of note.

  He and the monk left early the following morning, garnering curious glances as they clopped through Chesham sitting on the driver’s seat of the blindingly bright barouche. He had given his tiger the day off to do as he may, wanting to keep this errand between himself and Losif. When they arrived at the small, stone church, the fog surrounding its grounds was just starting to be burned away by the sun. Max waited for Losif to clumsily climb down from the high seat before opening the heavy arched doors to the entrance.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the sanctuary, wherein wooden benches sat in rows facing a raised pulpit with stained glass behind it, a man came from the left side of the vestibule.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” Despite the fact there was no one else about, the old priest was dressed in spotless white and green vestments, a contrast to the dust-moted soft gray of everything else in the echoing room. “I’m afraid there’s no Mass today, although I do hear confess— Oh…” he trailed off, seeing Losif’s robes and cross clearly.

  “Hello, Father.” Losif came forward. “Although this one here”—he indicated Max—“could probably do with a confession or two, we are here for a different purpose.”

  The man’s lined face hinted at intrigue, his pale-green eyes bright with curiosity. “And what would that be?”

  Max stepped forward. “We are here to pay our respects to someone entombed here. A man named James MacDowell. He was Irish, but not Catholic. You may remember his unusual request.”

  The priest nodded slowly. “I knew this day would come. He told me it would.”

  Feeling his heartbeats come faster, Max asked him, “Do you know what it is we seek, Father?”

  “I suspect,” he confessed. “Come. I’ll show you the way.” He turned and led them out a side entrance into the gated cemetery.

  The morning was still chilly, mist clinging stubbornly to the ground as the sun’s rays crested over the trees standing watch nearby. There were tombstones, mausoleums, simple flat graves, and sepulchers all mixed together throughout the weed-ridden space, a maze that would have taken them hours to navigate if not for the priest leading them steadily through the gravesites. Max’s gaze alighted on names and dates as they passed by, the eeriness of death’s inevitability almost palpable on his skin. Serene faces of carved angels looked down over their charges’ graves, providing, in Max’s opinion, more comfort to the living than the dead. For once, Losif was silent as they traversed the holy ground.

  The priest turned and led them down a flattened path toward a chest tomb upon which stood a large cross. As they neared it, the priest stepped to the side so that Max and Losif stood directly in front of the seven-foot stone monument. “This is James MacDowell’s resting place.”

  Max took a deep breath, the scent of wet earth and minty pennyroyal filling his lungs as he beheld the Irishman’s burial tomb. He took in the custom filigreed detailing around the corners and the relief work on the front, knowing the farmer must have saved down to the last penny for such a thing. The figures in stone relief depicted Christ on the cross, a spear piercing his side at the hands of a Roman guard. The spearhead radiated rays of light where it touched Jesus’s side, and several people lay bowed to the ground around him.

  Max felt a rush as he looked at the carefully carved stone scene before reading the inscription above it:

  Once I saw dimly, but through the light of St. Raphael’s eyes, I now look upon our Holy Savior’s true healing power.

  Page 38, Line 17.

  “What does it mean?” Losif whispered, stroking his wiry beard.

  “I have been asking myself that for thirty years,” the priest said, putting a hand on the top of the tomb. “St. Raphael is an archangel and the patron saint of bodily ills and physicians. He has always been associated with healing. If James MacDowell did indeed possess what I feel in my heart he did, perhaps he felt that St. Raphael would watch over the … object after he died.”

  Losif had withdrawn a small notepad from the folds of his robes and was copying the inscription into it with a tiny nub of a pencil.

  “Page thirty-eight, line fourteen,” Max murmured. “What’s that about?”

  “I’m not sure,” the priest replied. “However, Mr. MacDowell did leave a small collection of antique volumes of literature to the church when he passed. If you’d like to look at it, you are welcome to do so.”

  Max nodded. “Thank you.”

  “On one condition.” The priest held up a finger.

  Max raised a brow.

  The old man smiled, his thin lips quivering. “You must vow that if you find the Lance of Longinus, you will not use it for your own gain. For that is what we are discussing, is it not?”

  Putting a hand on the priest’s shoulder, Max looked straight into his eyes and didn’t bother to deny it. “You have my word. It will only be used for good while it is in my possession.” He used his words carefully, knowing he could not guarantee anything once the artifact had been given to Tsar Nicholas. However, if war was averted by handing it over to the stubborn Tsar, Max considered it well worth whatever the Russians did with it afterward. The priest would surely understand that if he knew.

  The priest nodded in return and walked purposefully back down the row of graves, surprisingly quick for his elderly appearance. Once they had reentered the church, the priest took them into his study where he removed three volumes from a built-in bookcase on the wall. Setting them on the desk, he laid them out one by one, explaining, “These are the tomes he left. I myself have read the appropriate lines from each, but was not able to discern any further meaning from them.”

  Although he itched to begin deciphering the clue here and now, he knew this would require deliberate study of the literature when his mind could expand the possibilities of the inscription. For now, he would take what he needed in order to do so later. When he skimmed over the titles, it was with relief that he wouldn’t need to take the books themselves, for they were all common pieces of l
iterature familiar to him: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aristotle’s Poetics, and Plato’s The Republic. They could be found in almost any bookstore in London, not to mention his own library. However, these editions contained the exact pages and lines referenced in MacDowell’s epitaph.

  The priest allowed him to carefully part the stiff pages of each book and copy down the exact words from each relevant line onto a sheaf of paper. He deliberately didn’t think about the meaning of the phrases as he wrote or he knew he wouldn’t have any peace on the journey home. Losif also copied the lines from over his shoulder into the notepad he carried. When they were through, Max thanked the priest and made a sizable donation of coins to the altar box before taking their leave.

  What he had left with, he didn’t know yet, but nothing on earth would stop him from finding out.

  Chapter Ten

  Elorie kept her eyes on the blue Aubusson rug underneath the tea table in the drawing room, proud of herself thus far. She had not shown any weakness, no signs of the terror coursing through her body as everyone conversed around her. Her hands lay calmly in her lap without shaking, and she made sure her face revealed nothing at all. Ruben might be lurking anywhere outside her house, waiting for her, but inside was much, much worse. Though she had dreaded this day for four years, it was no less deadening to see it finally play out.

  “Your Grace, won’t you have another cucumber sandwich? Elorie had them made especially for you today,” her mother purred, sending Elorie a narrowed side-glance from where she sat in her chair a few feet away.

  The Duke of Morley, seated in his own chair while Elorie and her father occupied the settee, smiled at Elorie. “Thank you, certainly,” he replied in a low baritone, reaching with a veined, waxy hand toward the saucer plate her mother held out for him.

  The Duke had always reminded Elorie of a sickly raven, tall with long arms and black hair. His gaunt face housed deep-set eyes and a bladed nose with slitted nostrils. Everything about him was polished, from his bespoke clothes down to his very skin, every drooping surface coated in a sort of clammy slickness. He always carried a crystal-headed black cane, which he only sometimes seemed to need the use of. His age would warrant a valid claim to such an accouterment, knowing as she did that he was a decade her father’s senior. However, having only met him twice, Elorie didn’t know if his inconsistent reliance on it was due to a finicky condition or vanity.

  She forced herself to meet his heavy-lidded eyes and tilt her lips in a smile. “Of course, Your Grace.” She said it quietly, as she was expected to do. The Duke liked his women shy and bashful, Elorie knew well. It sent tentacles of cold revulsion through her insides to give this man anything he wanted, but that was the deal.

  And what he wanted was her.

  “You have grown even more beautiful since last we met,” Morley commented, the plate of sandwiches sitting limply on one leg.

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” She bowed her head, fighting the urge to lick her dry lips and draw more attention from him.

  Watching her, the Duke took a breath in through his nose and blew out again through his nostrils slowly. “My Lord, would you and your wife mind giving Elorie and I a few moments alone? I would like to express my sentiments to her about our future.”

  Cosette looked to her husband with a wide-eyed glance. Technically, it wasn’t beyond the pale for them to be alone at this point. However, given what had happened last time in this very same room, even Cosette’s face went bloodless for a brief moment.

  “Not at all, Your Grace,” the Earl replied jovially, getting up from the settee’s cushions. “I think it’s a fine idea.”

  Elorie’s lungs froze, though she had already anticipated this might happen. Of course her parents wouldn’t care. This was what they had wanted all along.

  Her mother swallowed and said nothing as she rose and linked arms with her father to leave the room. Their soft footfalls and then the click of her father’s shoes as they hit the tiled entry seemed like ticks of a clock counting down to her impending fate.

  Then the room was silent as she was left alone with the fiancé she had been betrothed to marry for the past four years.

  The duke rose in a smooth motion from his chair as soon as the double doors to the salon were closed behind them. Elorie held very still as he approached the settee and took the seat next to her.

  He brushed her plaited hair back over her shoulder with careful fingers, letting the backs of his knuckles graze her neck. “How old are you, child?” he asked, putting a palm on her rigid back.

  Elorie felt tendrils of nerves in her stomach at his touch, but was determined to act the proper lady. Mama would be proud of her composure “F-fifteen, Your Grace.”

  “Fifteen,” he marveled. “And what is it you want to be when you come of age? Would you like to be a duchess?” His hand moved from her back to trail down her arm. The back of his hand skimmed the side of her small breast, and she jumped.

  Elorie schooled her features into a placid smile as Mama had shown her. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  The duke chuckled, a long strand of black hair falling from his queue as he reached across her torso to grab her hip. Elorie gasped as he hauled her into his lap. “There, that’s better.”

  Her stomach churned into knots, his heavily scented shave soap making her queasy. She had never been touched this much, not even by her parents. He was so much larger than her, and she felt like a rabbit she had once seen struggling in a dog’s mouth at her cousin’s country home.

  Elorie blinked back the memory. She was not a little girl any longer, and she certainly didn’t intend to let him haul her into his lap again. Still, every instinct in her screamed to run, to attack, to render him incapacitated before he could so much as blink at her with his hooded eyes.

  “I am pleased to be wed to you in month’s time, Elorie,” he said, a feverish excitement simmering beneath the surface of his deceptively calm voice. “Do you feel the same?”

  Hell would freeze over before she would be pleased to be his bride. “Of course, Your Grace.”

  Morley put a finger to her chin and forced her face to turn toward him. “You must call me Aldwin from now on.” His eyes bore into hers. “You will be my wife, and I want you to think of me as your husband.”

  She fought to keep a sneer from her lips, but she knew something in her eyes must have flashed, for he paused and then laughed, his sour breath fanning her face.

  “You will still fight me for it, won’t you, child? Good.” His hand cupped her jaw and then dropped to her thigh.

  Panic welled up in her chest.

  His long fingers slid up her thigh, creating pleats in the cotton frock she wore. Was this what was supposed to be happening? Mama had told her to behave and let the duke inspect her, talk to her. She supposed this was part of the inspection, but she wasn’t sure why he cared about her legs too awfully much. They would always be hidden beneath dresses anyway, even if she went to live with him.

  She tried to set her hands in her lap, but he pushed them to the side. His hand reached under her skirts then, clawing up her leg to the juncture of her thighs. She tried to squirm away from him, but he shushed her.

  “I think I should go now,” she whimpered, a cold sweat breaking out on her skin as she attempted to clamp her legs together.

  He let out a hoarse bark of laughter. “You’ve been bought and paid for, sweeting. You belong to me, no matter the wait ’til you come of age.”

  Elorie pushed at him, and he grabbed her hair plait, wrenching it viciously while covering her cries with his hand. She held still as his heavy breathing invaded her ear, and he “inspected” her with his fingers. When it was over, she ran from the room and curled in her bed until her mother found her a long time later. Cossette had said nothing after she’d forced Elorie to explain her rude exit, and they’d never spoken of it again, as if it hadn’t happened at all.

  A burst of anger pulsed through her, and she shoved his hand away,
wrenching his fingers backward to an unnatural angle.

  Morley jerked his hand back with a growl. “So the kitten has claws now? We might have to … clip those, so to speak, at least until you’re tame.”

  Rage built in Elorie’s breast as she viewed the man who would soon be her keeper, with every right to any part of her he wanted. “I will never be tame,” she stated, letting a sliver of the Viper show in the coldness of her face.

  Morley blinked at what he saw there, and for a brief second, Elorie saw fear in his own eyes.

  Good. He should fear her. He should fear ever doing anything to her like he did before, lest he find himself choking on his own blood and vomit. Elorie remembered the first time she had stood up to him, to her mother, to everyone. It had been the day after he’d touched her.

  “There is a contract, non?” she urged her father, who sat at his office desk with wide eyes as she had barged in on him. “A betrothal contract with the Duke of Morley for my hand?”

  Her father spluttered, “Th-that isn’t really your concern, pet. It’s between us men.”

  Elorie shook her head. “I have to sign it, though. Am I right?”

  “Well,” her father reasoned. “Yes, but don’t worry. You don’t have to read it. You just have to put your name at the bottom.”

  Her mother entered. “Elorie, what are you doing?” She strode over and took her by the arm. “Ladies do not ask their father’s business.”

  She wrenched her arm out of her mother’s grasp. “It is my business,” she yelled, rendering both her parents speechless. They had never heard her raise her voice, and most certainly not to them. “I will not sign any betrothal contract, not yet.”

  “Sweeting.” Her father came around the desk but didn’t breach the invisible barrier Elorie had spaced between herself and them. “There’s no need to fret. You won’t be marrying His Grace until your eighteenth birthday.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I won’t do it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Cosette scoffed, patting a meticulously curled lock of hair above her ear. “Of course you’ll do it. You don’t want your family to suffer for your selfishness, do you?”