by The Spy
James leaned forward eagerly. “Aha! Will it help us prove her guilt?”
Phillipa picked up a sheet covered in florid script and squinted at it. “That depends on what you think her guilty of. Personally, I find her guilty of being the filthiest woman I’ve ever come upon.” Shaking her head, she handed the sheet to James. “Here, for instance. What is the meaning of that particular phrase, may I ask?” She pointed halfway down the page.
James read where she indicated, then looked away. “Haven’t the faintest idea.” He shoved the page beneath the others, hoping his face didn’t look as hot as it felt. Phillipa’s inquiry had involved a particularly diverting activity that even James had never encountered before Lavinia. It had been one of her favorites, and he had been a bemused but willing partner more than once.
His stomach churning as he remembered her wicked charms, James forced himself to think of Amilah. Compared to Lavinia, even a veil-clad dancer of the demimonde seemed a fresh and wholesome diversion.
He’d thought of Amilah often in the past two days. The mystery of her teased at his mind, never quite letting go. He’d likely never know what possessed a young woman to tease a strange man into a storeroom to gift him with her virginity. Had she seen him from afar and longed for him?
She’d more probably seen him as a willing and not too objectionable way to divest herself of her burdensome innocence . . . although wasn’t that sort of innocence financially valuable to a courtesan?
The puzzle would have to remain unsolved, for he had much more pressing matters to attend to. He cleared his throat and wiped Amilah from his mind. No more dwelling on those eyes that so closely matched the Turkish blue of her veils—
“James!”
He jerked himself back to the present to see Phillipa glaring at him, eyes emerald green even when reddened. “Yes?”
She threw down the letter in her hand. “If I am forced to read this smut, the least you can do is to pay attention when I have a question.”
“What was your question?”
“Why are you so interested in this woman’s letters? What can you possibly gain by examining this rubbish?”
James looked down at the dozens of scattered sheets of Lavinia’s particular brand of seductive poison. “Justice,” he breathed.
“Justice? Or vengeance?”
James jerked his head up to glare at her. “What is the difference?”
She gazed at him somberly. “If you have to ask, you cannot understand.”
James rolled his eyes. “Pray, spare us your profundities, Flip.”
She visibly started. “Flip. You haven’t called me that since—”
James scowled. “Do not fret. It shan’t happen again.”
She smiled, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “How unfortunate. I liked it very much.”
“If it is pet names you are after, perhaps you ought to get out of those ridiculous trousers,” James said scornfully. And her shirt, which, without the waistcoat, did little to hide the unbound curves of her breasts. Good God, where had she been hiding them all this time? “What sort of woman are you, to dress so brazenly?”
She blinked, but her smile was wry. “One who prefers not to smell of mouse,” she replied.
“I think she looks most charming,” Fisher broke in, offering a besotted bow.
Phillipa smiled back at the young cryptographer until James felt his ears begin to steam.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Fisher,” she said.
“Oh.” Fisher blushed. “You may call me Fish.”
“Enough.” James could scarcely speak for the tension in his jaw. His best and last hope of proving Lavinia’s guilt was worthless, his son lay wounded and unwaking, his friend was no friend at all—
“Poor James.” Phillipa’s voice was light, but not mocking. “What have I done to you now?”
He turned to see her gathering up Lavinia’s letters while she watched him with rueful eyes. For the first time, he realized that she seemed far better fed and healthier than when he’d first encountered her.
What was it that Upkirk’s neighbor had said? “She seemed as though she had nowhere else to go.”
That was both of them, wasn’t it? Nowhere else to go.
Phillipa carefully stacked and stored Lady Winchell’s revolting letters, though she wanted nothing more than to burn them. To think that James had been returning to these awful, sickening things for months now as he searched for answers.
It wasn’t so much that the letters were sexual that repelled Phillipa. She had recently discovered that she herself was a sexual creature and had no issue with that.
Lavinia Winchell’s letters, on the other hand, were purposely intended to be deeply shocking, to arrest the attention and rivet the reader in an awful net of revolted fascination. By the very act of reading them, Phillipa felt as though she had willingly participated in a sort of obscene manipulation.
This terrible woman was the one who had seduced and betrayed James. Knowing that James had had a lover was one thing. Meeting that lover through these explicit and disquieting descriptions of sexual acts was quite another. Lavinia’s hands had been on him. His body had been within hers. The things that they had likely done together—things that Phillipa had never dreamed of before today.
She was in agony. Yet she dared not show a single sign of it.
Worse still was that she could see that Lavinia was still at the center of James’s thoughts. He was obsessed with the woman. True, he was obsessed with destroying her, not bedding her—but he was fixated nonetheless.
Was there even room in James’s heart for another, no matter that she loved him well? Phillipa watched as James paced the room, rubbing at his jaw with one hand. He was as blind to her as if she were still a man in his eyes. Even Amilah had only had his body, not his soul.
That bit of goods clearly yet belonged to Lady Winchell.
James finally fled the code room and Phillipa’s presence. There was someone he needed to see and even though the encounter was bound to be painful, at least Ren Porter wasn’t female. James had had quite enough of women for one week.
But the sickroom visits over the past six weeks were not enough to prepare James for the cold rage in his friend’s eyes.
“Fancy you stopping by,” Ren greeted James. He was sitting up in bed, seeming surprisingly well—yet the friend James had known for years would not meet his extended hand. “To what do I owe this honor?”
James stepped back under the force of the quiet fury in Ren’s voice. “I came as soon as I could get away.” He took a chair nearby. He hadn’t expected a tearfully joyous reunion, but this was very odd.
Unless someone had told Ren of James’s error. But who? The only one the club had sent to represent them was Jackham, and all that Jackham knew was that Ren had been jumped down by the docks. The club manager knew nearly nothing of the leak in the Liars, and even less of James’s part in it.
“Who has been to see you?” James tried to keep the anger from his voice, but he’d wanted so badly to explain himself to Ren, for absolution perhaps, but definitely in the hopes that his old friend would understand. Now the bleakness in Ren’s restless gaze spoke of more damage than mere words could undo.
“I’ve been reading the papers, or rather, my nurse has been reading them to me. Mrs. Neely was kind enough to save every newssheet from the time I was . . . asleep.” Ren thumbed through the stack on his lap. “So kind of her, don’t you think?”
Actually, it had been James’s impulse to save the newssheets and he’d given Mrs. Neely die charge. Now, as he realized what Ren had been reading, he cursed his own stupidity. It would all be in there, every word of gossip and innuendo but unfortunately, few facts.
Agatha’s public disgrace, her royal redemption, the shot fired in front of Parliament, James’s medals. The entire mess, some of it slanted in decidedly unfavorable ways, from James’s perspective.
“Medals,” murmured Ren. “How proud you must be.”
A
handful of papers hit the wall opposite James, sending a flutter of pages to the carpet. On the top rested a drawing by an influential political cartoonist, the very one which had sentenced Nathaniel Stonewell to be forever known as Lord Treason.
James rubbed his face. “Ren, I—”
“Mrs. Neely read the wedding announcements to me just before you came. Did you know that my fiancée is now happily married to a solicitor from Brighton?”
James swallowed. He’d never thought about the girl Ren had been so mad for before his accident. She’d been informed of course, but no one had been given Ren’s location for security reasons. James vaguely remembered his friend squiring about a pretty blonde before he’d gone covert. Ren had talked of little else for weeks but the girl.
Who had deserted the engagement posthaste, apparently.
“God, Ren. I’m sorry—”
“Are they nice medals, James? Shiny and bright? Do you polish them and keep them under your pillow?”
James stood. “Ren, please listen—”
“No!” Ren came off the pillows in a convulsion of rage. “I give you no hearing, no reprieve, Cunnington. You cost me everything! Everything!” He slumped back, apparently sapped by his outburst. “Leave me alone. You and all your fellow traitors . . .”
Shocked, James stepped forward. “Ren, the Liars had nothing to do with it—”
“Get out!” Ren was white and shaking, but his eyes burned dangerously.
James drew back, then turned to go. “I’ll be back, Ren. When you’re feeling more like yourself.”
As he shut the sickroom door behind him, he heard another handful of newssheets strike the wood at his back.
Ren was a destroyed man, and James had done this to him.
With Lavinia’s help.
James felt no qualm interrupting the evening meal of the most powerful man in Britain. Lord Liverpool still had napkin in hand as he entered the parlor where James had been placed by the Prime Minister’s exceptionally austere butler.
“Cunnington, you do realize the hour?”
“Yes, my lord.” James bowed tightly, but could not sit. “I have come to beg more time.”
“Ah.” Liverpool tossed the napkin to a side table and clasped his hands behind his back. “The ten days have nearly passed and you have nothing on Lady Winchell.”
“No, I have nothing.” James looked away. “Her letters are useless, her lover has disappeared, and she is too cunning to allow any incriminating information to slip.”
“Well, then.” Liverpool nodded briskly. “We must release her at once.”
“No! I have one more day!”
Liverpool sent James a quelling look. “Are you crying me nay, sir?” The words were mild but the tone could chill fire.
James swallowed back his alarm to carefully rephrase himself. “My apologies, my lord, but if I could only have more time. I can—”
“The point of the matter is, Cunnington, that you cannot.” Then Liverpool seemed to take pity on him. “One learns with maturity to choose one’s battles wisely. If I should pursue this case against Lady Winchell with no evidence, I should lose the support of a number of very influential members of the House of Lords. They, very rightly I might add, dislike the idea that their ladies could be arrested and imprisoned without proven guilt of anything other than being overly emotional.”
“But we know—”
James halted at Liverpool’s uplifted hand. “Yes, Cunnington. We know. But they do not. I cannot operate this government well if it has been torn asunder over this issue, not when there are so many other more pressing issues at hand. My decision stands. The lady is released.”
James seethed but said no more. What could he say? A part of him knew the Prime Minister was quite right in taking the larger, unemotional view—but that part was diminished and obscured by the great rushing fury that flowed through him along with every drop of blood in his body.
Consumed with his rage, James had only a dim memory of taking his leave of the Prime Minister and flinging himself into a seat in a hired carriage that he grimly directed back to the club.
Lavinia was free. The murdering, manipulative whore who had stolen his honor was free to return to her luxurious and indulgent life with all charges dropped.
Lavinia was free.
If only he could be.
Ren swung his feet to the floor and eased himself into a standing position, biting his lip against the agony that shot through his legs and back. Shattered, the nurse had told him of his right leg. Likely never be the same, having been broken in so many places.
His head exploded with pain at every beat of his heart. He ignored it. His pulse was loud in his own ears as he forced himself to walk. A large standing mirror had been pushed aside to make room for that other bed that lay so empty now. Ren caught a glimpse of himself in motion and peered closer, fighting his blurred vision for a better look.
His face was a horror. His hair was gone in great swaths where it had been shaven to stitch his scalp closed. What was left was matted and uneven. Thick red scars swam over his patched head like rivulets in sand. His face was swollen still, even after so long, but the worst was the scars. They traced over the right side of his face, one long slice carving right into the corner of his mouth.
Well, that explained his difficulty speaking. He’d once been called handsome and liked it. That would never happen again.
No matter. He turned away from the glass. He had more important things to think on. Moving carefully, he tried each limb for strength and ability. Coldly, he evaluated every ache and agony, allotting them no more than an instant of his attention.
Much of his weakness came from lack of activity, he decided. What could not be fixed with rest and food he chose to ignore. His sight might never truly return to normal—but there was little reading done while pursuing vengeance, was there?
He needed his mind sharp, but his body need only be functional. He no longer had any intention of living forever.
Only to live long enough to make things right.
Lady Raines and Lady Etheridge were arguing when Phillipa made her way from the code room to the common room on the secret side of the wall.
She was free to roam the club now, but not to leave. No matter. There was nowhere else where she could do so much for Papa.
The spies’ den had always seemed oddly familiar to her, as if she knew what lay about every corner before she reached it. She’d been down into the kitchen this morning and seeing Kurt again had explained it all. When she’d thanked him for the extraordinary breakfast, he’d only mumbled, “Not as good as your mum’s.”
Only then had it had truly reached her that this frightening giant had been a close friend of her mother’s. It was as though a candle were lighted in the depths of Phillipa’s memories.
She’d been in this place, with these people, before. These were her father’s compatriots and her mother’s dear friends. Unlike Arieta where she had lived so quietly that she had known few of the villagers, this place might be the closest that Phillipa could ever truly call home.
Or at least, she might if James could ever accept her.
Now in any case, it seemed his sister had no objection to her presence, for Agatha wasted no time drawing Phillipa into the debate she held with Clara.
“I simply don’t agree,” Clara was saying. “Mr. Underkind is not the artist that Sir Thorogood was.”
Agatha shrugged. “Perhaps, but Mr. Underkind takes on topics that I want changed myself. I didn’t always agree with Sir Thorogood’s mission, not when innocents were affected, like the wives and children of some of the men that were lampooned.”
Clara stared at her friend for a long moment, then turned to Phillipa as if seeking her support.
“Tell me, Phillipa, you’ve lived in London for a number of months, haven’t you? Which cartoons do you prefer? Mr. Underkind’s or Sir Thorogood’s?”
Phillipa couldn’t imagine why the spymaster’s wife cared for her
opinion either way, but she tried to answer anyway. “To be honest, I like them equally. The drawings were perhaps better in Sir Thorogood’s, but Mr. Underkind seems more compassionate somehow, at least compared to Sir Thorogood.”
She pondered the comparison for a moment longer. “Didn’t I hear that Sir Thorogood was actually a woman? If so, she must have been as sharp-tongued as a harpy. I pity her poor husband, if she indeed has one—”
A snort came from behind her. The spymaster himself stood in the doorway, snickering helplessly into one fist. Phillipa stared at him. He’d seemed such a sober, dignified gentleman before.
Clara stood and circled the table to stand before her husband, fists on her hips. “I’ll show you sharp-tongued when I get you home, Dalton Montmorency!”
“Show me now.” With a quick motion, he wrapped his wife’s waist with one arm and pulled her close for a kiss that made Phillipa’s ears buzz with fascinated embarrassment.
“Come along, Phillipa. When they get going, it takes a while for things to subside.” Agatha led her from the room, but not before Phillipa looked back to see Clara’s hand on her husband’s buttock. It was a very nice buttock too, although not as nice as James’s.
Agatha rolled her eyes. “And I thought Simon and I were shameless. We manage to confine our wrestling to our own four walls . . . mostly.” The last word was said with such dreamy lasciviousness that Phillipa felt herself coloring all over again.
Agatha noticed. “Oh, dear, now I’ve gone and made it worse, haven’t I?” Then she eyed Phillipa with a hint of her old suspicion. “Then again, you did live unchaperoned with my brother for many nights. Tell me, are your intentions toward James honorable?”
Perhaps it was the audacity of the question, or perhaps her mind was still on James’s buttocks, but Phillipa’s reply was short and immediate. “Not in the slightest.”
That surprised a laugh from Agatha. “This should be interesting. My brother has been much too grim of late. What he has been through warrants it, to be sure. Still, I do believe I shall be your champion, my dear Phillipa. With me on your side, Jamie doesn’t stand a chance.”
