by Jane Feather
Now she had to tell William about the foolishness, the reckless pride that had led her to cross swords with such an enemy. She dreaded his condemnation, dreaded the cold contempt in his gaze as she laid it before him. His anger would be welcome, cleansing almost, but she was afraid his reaction would go well beyond anger. She had endangered not only him but everyone who worked with him. Herself, too, of course, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter.
She glanced up at the pretty ormolu clock on the mantel. It was one o’clock in the morning. William could be asleep, entertaining, out with friends, or on business. She couldn’t go in search of him now, but she would walk to Half Moon Street at sunrise.
Wearily, she shrugged off the cashmere shawl and undressed, pulling her nightgown over her head, her body chilled and achy. She washed her face and cleaned her teeth in desultory fashion, unpinned her hair and pulled the brush through it a couple of times, and crawled into bed, snuffing the bedside candle. The warming pan had long lost its usefulness, and she kicked it out of the bed, lying wide-eyed and sleepless between the cold sheets, staring into the darkness.
William awoke instantly, every sense alert at the sound of his chamber door opening. His hand instinctively slipped beneath his pillow to curl over the handle of his pistol, but almost immediately, he registered the familiar presence, and his grip relaxed. He hauled himself up against the pillows. “What is it, André?”
“A message, my lord.” The manservant straightened from the embers of the fire, a lit spill in his hand. Yellow light flared as he lit the wick of the candle on the mantel. “From Knightsbridge.”
William was out of bed on the instant, reaching for his brocade dressing gown. He took the folded sheet André held out to him. “What time is it?”
“Almost five, my lord.” André threw fresh kindling onto the embers. “Shall I fetch coffee?”
“Mmm.” William nodded as he broke the seal and unfolded the sheet. Outwardly, he was calm, but fear clutched at his heart. Jeanne and Marguerite. The missive was dated the previous evening.
William, this will probably reach you at dawn, so please forgive me for disturbing you at such an hour, but I have been wrestling with myself all evening. I do not know if I’m imagining things. I could so easily be; living as we do in such a state of permanent awareness, it’s all too easy to create bugbears out of thin air, but there have been two unusual visitors to the village in the last few days. First a packman and then a knife grinder. As a rule, we only get such visits around Christmas and occasionally at harvesttime, so two different itinerants in one week caused general surprise. Marguerite was so excited by the peddler and insisted we go into the lane to buy something from him. She informed him and most of our neighbors, who were all gathered there, that I was not her mother but her aunt. I don’t know whether that confidence matters in the village or not, but I would have preferred her not to have said it. The peddler went on his way, and no one seemed to pay us any more attention than usual, so I decided it wasn’t significant, until the knife grinder paid us a visit. He came to the door and seemed very anxious to be invited into the kitchen to examine my pots and pans and see if any needed soldering and if any knives required his grindstone. I managed to send him on his way eventually, despite his insistent manner, but the more I think about it, the more anxious I become. I decided I would never rest easy if I didn’t tell you, even if it’s of no significance. You have always stressed that we must be alert to anything out of the ordinary, however innocent it might seem. Forgive me if I have troubled you unnecessarily, but if you could visit in the next day or two, it would be a great relief to me and, of course, a delight to Marguerite. The child goes on well but talks of you every day.
Amitié, J.
William reread the letter, then tossed it onto the now blazing fire. He glanced at André, who was coming back into the room with a tray of coffee. “Who brought this?”
“The ostler from the Blue Duck in Charing Cross, my lord.” He set the tray on the dresser.
William nodded, satisfied. He had set up a postal service for Jeanne to use in emergencies. The wagoner left his farm with his produce for London in the early hours of the morning and always stopped at the Red Fox in Knightsbridge to collect any fee-paying passengers or parcels destined for the city. These he would leave at the Blue Duck in Charing Cross a couple of hours later. The ostler there was well paid to bring any missives addressed to Half Moon Street. No method was fail-safe, of course, but there were enough strands to this courier path that William was reasonably sure it would escape surveillance.
He drank his coffee hastily. Ordinarily, he would ride to Knightsbridge, but if it was necessary to move Jeanne and Marguerite immediately, he would need a carriage. He drew aside the curtain and looked out at the graying light. He was still positive, since the Lizard had changed his game, that there were no watchers on the house, but if he was mistaken, pursuit would be easy enough to detect in the semideserted streets at this hour of the morning.
He dressed rapidly, instructing André to summon a hackney. “Find one as respectable-looking as possible, and tell the jarvey I’ll need him for the whole morning, but he can expect six guineas in payment.”
André went off, and William pulled on his boots, slung his riding cloak around his shoulders, and ran downstairs. The hackney stood at the door, the horse’s breath steaming in the early-morning chill. The animal looked glossy and well cared for, and the jarvey jumped down from his box as William appeared, opening the door with a flourish of his cap.
“My lord, an honor.”
“Knightsbridge, Primrose Lane,” William responded. “There’s no great hurry, so don’t draw attention to yourself with any fancy tricks with the whip.”
The driver looked a little disappointed, but he slammed the door on William, crammed his cap back on his head, and jumped back onto the box, whistling up his horse.
Deep in the shadows of the neighboring alleyway leading to the mews, Hero kept close to the wall, her heart pounding. After sleepless hours going over and over the encounter with the Lizard, she had steeled herself to tell William the whole sorry story. The minute a peek of gray had shown in the eastern sky, she had dressed and let herself out of the still-sleeping house by a side door, knowing that if she put it off for even an hour her courage would fail her. But just as she’d turned the corner of Curzon Street, the hackney had pulled up outside the house. Instinctively, she had darted into the mews alley, conscious of how conspicuous she must look at this hour of the morning on the deserted street. As she cowered in the shadows, William emerged onto the street.
She peeped cautiously around the corner as he stopped to talk to the jarvey. William looked tense and worried, an expression she didn’t remember ever seeing before, even at the direst moments in Paris, and for the life of her, she could not summon the courage to step up to him now. Whatever was troubling him, this was not the moment to add to it with her own confession. But she knew it couldn’t wait long. He needed to know everything there was to know. If she’d understood anything in the time they’d been in Paris, Hero understood that. She strained to hear what he was saying. His voice was low, but she distinctly heard his instructions to the jarvey: Primrose Lane, Knightsbridge.
Hero withdrew her head, pressing herself back against the wall as the hackney passed the entrance to the alley. What could there be in such an out-of-the-way spot that would draw him at such an ungodly hour?
Something to do with his present business for the émigré army, presumably. Maybe there was an émigré family in Knightsbridge whose support he wanted. But why would he go on such an errand at dawn? And in a hired hackney? From what little she knew of Knightsbridge, it was where wealthier tradesmen, men who worked in banking or other such professions, had their residences. Solid burghers with whom William could have little or nothing in common.
But even as she thought that, Hero knew it sprang from her own world of a
ristocratic privilege, and William had no time for that world and its prejudices. She hadn’t thought she had, either, she reflected ruefully, but upbringing laid deep roots, it seemed.
Once she was sure the carriage had turned off Half Moon Street, Hero abandoned her hiding place and began to walk home. Why had he looked so worried? Was he in danger? And then the obvious question: Could she help him?
But she would be discreet. She would wait for an hour or two before taking her own anonymous hackney to Knightsbridge. Once there, she could take a covert look at Primrose Lane. If William was under threat, then maybe she could do something to help. And if he wasn’t, if his business in Knightsbridge was clearly none of hers, then she would retreat, and no one would be any the wiser. A little voice niggled: Why would he have business in such an out-of-the-way place that was none of my business?
There was so much about him that she didn’t know. Great acres of his past life, of his childhood and growing, that he had never confided. In fact, Hero reflected, he had never confided anything personal to her really at all. Just that one thing about the dangers of losing one’s reputation, one’s place in the world. But even that had simply been issued as a warning without background explanation. It had involved something personal, someone he had loved, but he had closed the subject down, leaving her tantalized but none the wiser. Hero knew it had something, if not everything, to do with that wretched rejection at Yarmouth, but their renewed loving still felt so fragile, as if anything could bring it to another awful, senseless ending, that she had not dared to question him again. Somehow she had hoped that as their ties grew stronger, more secure, that story would reveal itself quite naturally as a simple progression of their loving intimacy.
But she knew in the deepest part of her soul that if there was ever to be a future for her in this relationship, then she had to have the answer to that rejection. If that meant pushing the boundaries that William had set so firmly for them, then so be it. And suddenly, Hero realized that the uncertainty, the dreadful anxiety of walking on eggshells around him all the time, was too much. It was no way to conduct a love affair. William must trust her with his self, with his past, with the hopes and fears, the joys and terrors that informed the person he was. If he couldn’t, wouldn’t, then there could never be a future for her with him. She could not subdue her own essential self to the narrow confines of physical intimacy with which William seemed comfortable.
TWENTY-TWO
The man, Gilles, arrived to take up his position in the square garden soon after dawn. It was boring work, and he huddled into his woolen driving cloak against the dank morning chill. The grand double-fronted house opposite was just coming to life, the curtains in the front of the house opening, smoke from the revived fires gusting from the several chimneys. A maid appeared on the front step and threw a bucket of water down the steps to clear away any debris from the night.
Only one person appeared on the street itself, a cloaked figure walking quickly up to the door. The watcher frowned as he recognized the object of his surveillance, Lady Hermione Fanshawe. Quite apart from the strangeness of her being out in the street at this hour, there was something unusual about her clothing. He was used to seeing her in the most fashionable of dress, but this morning, in a plain wool cloak and half boots, her hair tied back in a simple knot, she could have passed for a parlor maid.
Where had she been all night? No, not all night, he amended. His colleague had watched her return from her evening’s amusement just before one o’clock in the morning. They had no instructions to watch the house all night, and Alain had gone to his own bed after noting the time of her return on the report sheet in the lodging he shared with Gilles. Sometime between then and now, when Gilles took over the surveillance, it seemed the lady had gone out again.
He hesitated, reasoning that if she’d just come back, she wouldn’t be leaving again for a while. Not within the hour, at least. Time enough to report her nighttime activities to his master. It was sufficiently unusual to arouse suspicion, and his orders were absolute. Citizen Dubois was to be informed immediately of anything out of the ordinary. He hurried across the square and flagged down a hackney, its driver nodding sleepily on his box, blue smoke from his pipe curling in the early mist.
“Jermyn Street.” The man clambered in as the jarvey cracked his whip.
They reached his destination in ten minutes on the still-quiet residential streets, and Gilles knocked a rapid rhythm on the blue-painted front door. It swung open as if of its own accord, and he stepped into a narrow hallway. The door closed behind him, and Everard Dubois emerged from the shadow, sheathing his knife. It was a simple precaution and one the Lizard maintained with utter dedication. One could never be absolutely certain who was on the other side of a street door, even when the correct signal had been given.
“You’ve left your post . . . why?” he demanded of his visitor, stepping into a cramped parlor to the left of the door.
“She just came back,” was the succinct response.
“Back . . . from where?”
“I don’t know, citoyen. I’d just gone on duty, and she came walking down the street. Let herself into the house just after six.”
Dubois frowned and kicked at a falling log in the small hearth. “She left Almack’s with her aunt just before one. When did she go out again?”
It was a question to which his agent had no answer and didn’t offer one. Dubois swore vigorously, and Gilles took an instinctive step back, but the Lizard’s wrath was directed at himself. He had neglected to keep watch on the house overnight. Somehow he had not considered that Lady Hermione Fanshawe might be roaming the streets of London during the dark of the moon. But then, until that moment at Almack’s when he realized the lady and the lad on the fishing boat in the Channel were one and the same, he had underestimated her. He had still foolishly thought her bound by the conventions of her upbringing while she was living the life that upbringing dictated. Her brother had been in Paris, but that was no reason to suspect his sister of being part of that deadly operation. Now he knew better.
He thought rapidly, then instructed in crisp tones, “Very well, she’s clearly unpredictable. We need to step up our surveillance so we’re prepared for anything. We’ll bring the hackney into play in case she decides to use one the next time she leaves. You’ll be in charge there, and I’ll send Alain back to watch the house.”
The agent nodded. “Oui, citoyen.” He left at once, and Everard Dubois stood before the fire, gazing sightlessly into the flames, wondering where this path was going to take him next.
The house was up and about when Hero let herself in. A startled parlor maid scurried past her with a scuttle of coals for the drawing room fire as she headed for the stairs to the bedchamber floor, and another young girl, on her knees brushing the staircase, pressed herself against the banister with a little yelp of surprise.
Hero offered her apologies as she stepped carefully to the side of the stair. In her own chamber, she rang for Maisie and discarded her cloak and gloves.
“Lord love us, Lady Hero, what have you been doing, up and about at this hour, all dressed like, and not even ringing for me?” Maisie exclaimed as she took in Hero’s outdoor garments.
“I woke early and was feeling restless, so I went for a walk in the square,” Hero responded, sitting down to unlace her boots. “Would you be a dear and bring me some breakfast? A boiled egg, some toast, and hot chocolate would do. I have to go out again within the hour.”
Maisie clucked a little with the license of a confidential retainer. “And will you be changing your clothes, my lady?” she asked rather pointedly.
Hero had not considered her outfit when she’d dressed in such haste earlier, wishing merely to look as inconspicuous as possible. Beneath her wool cloak, she was wearing a plain serge gown that she would have worn at the estate in Hampshire for roaming around the countryside or fishing in the Beaulieu River. It
was quite unsuited to the streets of fashionable London. But then, her errand wasn’t taking her out and about in fashionable London. She needed to be as discreet as possible, and if she could pass as an upper servant, so much the better.
“No, I’ll stay just as I am, Maisie. I’m going on a private errand.”
Maisie said nothing more but went off to see about breakfast. Hero laced up her boots again. She should let Aunt Emily know she was going to be out for the rest of the day, but if she showed herself in this garb at the lady’s bedchamber, there would have to be explanations. She went to the secretaire to write a note, explaining that as it was early in the day and she knew dear Aunt Emily wished to keep to her room after the excitements of Almack’s the previous evening, she thought it best not to disturb her. She would be home in the early afternoon. Hero signed the note with a flourish, sanded it, and folded it just as Maisie returned with the breakfast tray.
“Will you be wanting me to accompany you, Lady Hero?”
Hero shook her head and cracked the top of her egg with a tiny silver spoon. “No, there’s no need, Maisie. Why don’t you take the morning to yourself? I doubt I’ll be back before this afternoon.”
Maisie looked gratified. Free time was a rare commodity. “Well, thank you, Lady Hero. I own I’d be glad of a chance to visit my sister. She’s housemaid at Lady Denizon’s in Brooke Street.”
“Then you must certainly do that.” Hero dipped a finger of toast into her egg and carried the dripping morsel to her lips. “Could you ask Jackson to send a footman to fetch a hackney for me?”
“I’ll tell him to bring it in five minutes, ma’am. So you can finish your breakfast.”
Hero controlled her irritation at Maisie’s well-meant solicitude and finished her egg with a little less haste. But after a few minutes, she drained her chocolate even as she stood up, impatient now to be on her way. She hurried down to the hall, where Jackson stood at the front door waiting for her.
