Castleford stood. “You could have written a letter for that. However, I will make every effort to avoid her in the future. We will leave you now, so that you can begin your plans for welcoming Albrighton onto his irregular branch of the family tree.”
Jonathan received a final glare from his cousin for that. Something between a smile and a sneer formed. “To be expected that of the two of us, you decided to blame me for the enemy getting that information about you on the coast. I’m the one who had what you wanted, after all, even though Uncle was the traitor.”
Jonathan did not miss a step as that revelation followed him to the door, even though the parting shot stunned him more than any pistol ball could.
“You are quiet for a man whose fortunes havejust been reversed,” Castleford said.
Jonathan had wanted to take his leave of the duke on the street outside his cousin’s house, but Castleford in his unpredictable way had insisted on returning him to the spot where he had found him.
“It is a victory that inspires reflection, not celebration, I am discovering. And it is not without its costs.”
“The curtailment of freedom, you mean. The obligation to be respectable and boring. The day will come when you will be nostalgic for your old obscure insignificance, I predict. The lower you are in our elevated world, the more suffocating that world can be. I am glad I was born at the very top, let me tell you.”
“I may choose to remain obscure and insignificant. My cousin’s intentions for my life are more detailed than I like.”
“It sounded predictable enough to me. Since you did not balk at the allowance or the connections, it must be his thoughts on marriage that impose too far.”
Indeed they did. He had no interest in that kind of marriage, no matter what the woman’s settlement. Had his desire or need for either money or respectability extended that far, he could have lured such a woman himself.
The duke’s eyes closed then, leaving Jonathan to his thoughts. The coach eventually stopped in front of Celia’s house. Jonathan stepped out.
“Are you not even slightly tempted to go for it all, Albrighton?”
Jonathan looked back in the coach. Rather suddenly Castleford appeared alert.
“He all but admitted it,” Castleford said. “If he tried to do you in, he felt threatened by you, and a bastard is no threat. Surely you want to know the truth now.”
Jonathan instinctively glanced over his shoulder, at the house and the window on the second floor.
“I am not sure that I do want to know, or that I can. My uncle claimed to be looking for the truth for years.”
“It sounded to me that your uncle serves a master with no interest in your learning anything. That business at the very end was intriguing.”
“I ask that you not repeat it. My cousin was just looking to cause trouble between me and the one relative who admitted I existed all these years. As for the rest, my mother did not tell me much, other than the earl married her on his deathbed. That is all. I wondered if it was true, and now I think it is, but that is not the same thing as being able to prove it.” He closed the carriage door. “I thank you for your aid today. I trust that seducing my cousin did not inconvenience you too much.”
Castleford laughed. He stuck his head to the window. “I would tell you all about it, but since she is now officially your cousin, that would be inappropriate.”
“Most inappropriate.”
Castleford looked at the house. “Even if you embrace Thornridge’s plans, you do not have to give her up. Miss Pennifold will understand. She probably expects nothing more than what she now has.”
He signaled to his coachman to go. Jonathan walked to the house.
Castleford was probably correct. Celia Pennifold expected no more. She had learned through hard experience years ago that her mother’s lessons about how men of society made marriages were all too accurate. She might even encourage him to grab Thornridge’s match. She might well agree to continue as a mistress.
It was the way these things were done, after all. The way it was supposed to be.
Laughter punctuated the night silence. A thick slice of light pierced the darkness. Three men came out of Brooks together, and wandered off to find carriages and horses.
Jonathan waited in the shadows. All men were creatures of habit, and the man he waited for was tied to habits just like the rest. Jonathan had learned most of them out of curiosity more than anything else. There had always been the chance, however, that the information would be useful.
He checked his pocket watch by the light of a nearby lamp. Unless something had happened to disrupt the pattern tonight, Uncle Edward would leave the club soon. Then he would walk down this street, to hire a hackney coach to take him home. Edward did not like the bother of waiting for his carriage to be prepared, and used it of an evening only when he attended a dinner party or the theater or a ball.
Jonathan positioned himself near a building that Edward would pass. He made no effort to hide. No one ever found him suspicious. He looked too much a gentleman to cause alarm.
The club’s door opened again. Edward’s face and hair appeared in the light. He said something to the servant, doffed his hat, and walked.
He noticed Jonathan as he approached. His pace slowed considerably. His grasp of that walking stick tightened.
“Lurking in the dark for old times’ sake, Jon? Getting nostalgic?”
Jonathan fell into step next to him. He chose the side with the walking stick, so Edward could not raise it easily. “I thought that I would see you tonight without imposing on your household.”
Edward gazed around, assessing their isolation.
“I am finished with that mission, Edward. I spoke with Thornridge too. I know he is the one who gave Alessandra the information for the government. I thought you were protecting him with this curiosity about her accounts and list of patrons. He shared that you were actually protecting yourself. You were correct when you said Alessandra would not be so stupid as to include her spy’s name in her accounts and such. You just needed to be certain.”
Edward stopped, right there on the street, in the dark between two streetlamps. “Will I be needing my pistol, Jonathan?”
He did not mean for protection, or for a duel. “I don’t know. Will you?”
“Not unless you or your cousin exposes me publicly. The rest already know. The Home Office. The ministers. Nothing was said to me, but I am sure they know. I suppose nothing was done because this traitor became useful to them.”
“At least you do not try to make excuses. I will give you that. You call it what it was.”
“I always knew what it was.”
“Then why did you do it? Money?”
Edward walked on, his posture less correct, his gait a bit weary. “Hardly. It was a woman. God help me.”
Jonathan guessed he was supposed to express shock in the pause that followed. Instead he found the response fascinating.
“I had known her for ten years. Loved her for most of them. They had her in prison. I thought I could spare her.” Edward shrugged. “Alessandra accepted me as a patron, and I encouraged her to be indiscreet about the things her other clients said in passing. Little did I guess she saw my interest as suspicious, and went to the Home Office. They made sure the indiscretions continued.”
“You had access to much better information than she could ever hear in bed.”
“Passing on what I knew in my governmental capacity would expose me too clearly and quickly. I thought to satisfy them this other way and not truly be a traitor, I suppose. I took solace when most of the information proved useless or worse.”
“Except once.”
Edward tensed. “I assumed the details of your mission were also inaccurate because I would surely know if such a mission were planned. After the disastrous results, I realized someone had seen a pattern and suspected me. Used me. The last few years it became an elegant game. I pretended I did not know they knew, and passed on what they fe
d me.”
“You make it sound almost patriotic.”
“Damnation, I know what it was. What I was. But little harm resulted from what I did. Sending them bad information proved to be a useful tactic. I never compromised you, or any of the others I worked with. At least not knowingly. I swear to that.”
They stopped at a corner, and faced each other in the dark mist. There really wasn’t anything more to ask or say. Jonathan did not even experience much anger. He thought it ironic, however, even scandalous, that Edward had not had to answer for this in any way, either public or private, before this night.
“Did you not worry that one day someone would hand me or another man a mission, and you would not be the puppeteer, but the prey?”
Edward exhaled deeply, the way a man does when he is trying to control a strong emotion. “Has that happened now, Jonathan? Or are you here independently?”
“The war is long over, Uncle. If men are still sent on those kinds of missions, I do not want to know about it. As for me acting for personal reasons—” He did not try to pretend that Edward was blameless. This man had assumed there was no mission on the coast, however. It was another man who made sure there was. “My cousin has made you beholden to him with this. He knows everything, and he holds your fate, your good name, and maybe even your freedom in his hands. I expect being his lackey and living in fear that he will expose you is punishment enough. You do not have to worry that I need my own revenge.”
They passed under a streetlamp then, and Edward’s face was visible. Slack from relief, ashen from fear, his expression spoke of his torture the last five minutes. Once they left the pool of light and were back in the dark, Jonathan stopped walking. Edward kept on, his stick dragging the ground like a lame third leg.
“Was she spared, Uncle? The woman for whom you did this?”
Edward turned and looked at him. “She survived. She is living near Nice with an artist now.” He turned and walked on, until the night absorbed him.
Jonathan walked the other way. Whoever thought Edward would betray his country because of his love for a woman? As reasons for being a traitor went, however, it was at least one that Jonathan understood.
Chapter Twenty-five
“It is odd, that is all,”Celia said. “I havefoundtwo other houses that will do, but my inheritance of this one remains in limbo.”
“Perhaps it is Mr. Dargent’s plan to leave you unsettled and worried. It gives him an eternal claim on your attention,” Daphne said.
They stood in the middle of the garden, after a long stroll along its beds with Verity and Audrianna. Now Audrianna was at a table on the terrace, writing down all the improvements they had decided would be made, and Verity was writing down lists of plants. No one would recognize those two now as the ladies they were. Spring’s mud decorated their hems and boots, and the simplest bonnets shielded their complexions from the sun.
“Anthony knows it cannot remain unresolved forever, Daphne. He needs to make his claim on it or lose that claim. I want to believe he had a change of heart, but I fear I am wasting all of your time with today’s planning.”
“It is never a waste to spend time with friends. This is mostly an excuse for that.”
They strolled to the terrace. Audrianna set down her pen as they arrived. “It is all here, but you must do your drawings, Celia. And I fear it is more work than women can manage.”
“I could send over some of our gardeners,” Verity said while she focused on penning her lists. “But perhaps Mr. Albrighton will insist on helping. He is most eager to be of service to you, Celia.” She glanced up. “Carpentry and such.”
A little stillness fell among them. Not a long one. A five-count at most, but it was there, unmistakably.
Verity’s bonnet could not hide her insinuating smile as she bent over her lists. Daphne suddenly appeared almost too composed.
Celia glared at Audrianna, who turned bright red.
“It slipped out,” she confessed. “I all but forgot you had told me privately. We were talking about how he stayed in Daphne’s house, while you did too, and Daphne made one of her bad jokes about trifles, and I—well, I—” She appeared miserable and contrite, but also ready to laugh.
Daphne’s arm came around her shoulders. “We do not judge, Celia. If you are content, we are as well.”
Content. An odd word. She supposed she was content. Certainly things with Jonathan had been very good this last week. Not only the sensuality, which now seemed imbued with new emotions. Also the little things, such as how he looked at her in the morning, and the kisses he gave her in passing.
So why did nostalgia sometimes color her contentment, as if she lived a memory? It was much like she felt as she moved through this house that she soon might lose.
“Since we all know, and now you know that we all know, I have an invitation,” Audrianna said. “We are going to the theater tonight, Celia. Verity and Hawkeswell are joining us in our box. And, I believe, so is Mr. Albrighton. I want you to come as well.”
“I do not think that Jonathan will welcome my attendance, Audrianna. He expects to settle things with Thornridge soon. This is not a good moment for his name to be linked to mine, if he hopes to realize those expectations.”
Her friends exchanged glances. They understood, of course. These dear women accepted her, but they also did not pretend that her birth and history did not matter.
“You will only be sitting in a box with him, Celia,” Verity said. “Why don’t you allow Mr. Albrighton to decide if he thinks that will interfere with his expectations?”
Verity asked Daphne for help with one of the lists then. Audrianna tilted her head back, so the sun could find her face. “The scents out here are so rich. Don’t you agree, Celia? One can smell nature coming alive again.”
“Your condition probably makes you more sensitive to it all than most others, Audrianna, but I agree that spring stirs all the senses toward hope, with its promise of new beginnings.”
He found Celia on the terrace, sitting on the bench near the garden door. The sun had begun its descent and the breeze had cooled. She had removed her bonnet. A sketchbook rested on her lap but she did not draw.
He angled his head to see the page she had been working on. “The ladies and you have planned changes out here, I see.”
“It was an excuse to see each other.” She gestured to the sketch. “This will never see fruition. Eventually Mr. Watson will send someone to do that inventory.”
He sat beside her. “I do not think so, Celia. I am almost sure he will never come.”
She looked at him, puzzled. Then her expression cleared. “Jonathan, did you give Anthony that money?”
“I did not. I was obedient to your wishes.”
“Thank you. I could not bear the thought of your doing that.”
He took the sketchbook, and paged backward to see what else she had drawn. “I did speak to Anthony, however. Several days ago.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her curious skepticism.
“Did you, now?”
“Mmm.”
“What did you say?”
“Let me see if I remember. The usual greeting. A request for a private word. A reminder that I was an old friend of your family, that sort of thing. It was very cordial. I may have suggested that no gentleman would try to coerce a woman into his bed by the means he was using. Yes, I do believe that came up too. I think that I may have indicated that I would not take it well if he made any further moves against the property.”
“Since no move has been made, you appear to have been persuasive.”
“I have been told that the ability to persuade is one of my talents.”
Her fingertips cupped his chin and she turned his head so he faced her. “Jonathan, did you hurt him?”
“Of course not. His arm may have been a bit stiff for a few days, due to my enthusiasm for the conversation, which somewhat exceeded his. However, I did not hurt him, in the way a man would use that word
.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“Only a man with a guilty conscience would take what I said as a threat. I did suggest he might want to ask some mutual acquaintances about me. If he did, and they led him to think better of his plan, it had nothing to do with me.” He imagined Dargent seeking out the men with whom his father had consulted during the war. Anthony probably had not slept well since.
Celia looked in his eyes. “I should scold you. My mother essentially took offers for me, and he made the best one. As much as I dislike him now, he was not the one to break the rules of that game.”
“He has done well enough without the money this long, and will continue that way. Nor did he make the best offer. He just had the right family, and your innocent love. But it is done now. If Mr. Watson has not written to arrange that inventory by now, he never will.”
She frowned halfway through his response. Frowned so deeply that he doubted she heard the rest of it. He realized why. It was not like him to err like that. How like Celia to not miss it.
“How do you know he did not make the best offer? Did my mother confide about that to you?”
“It is a small thing, Celia, and long in the past. What is important is that you can build your gardens and put down your own roots here if you choose.”
He tapped at her drawing. She looked at it and smiled. Then the frown formed again. She scrutinized him, suspiciously.
Such were the wages of being distracted by a lovely woman. Of being so comfortable that one did not parse every word three times over before speaking. “Celia, I know he did not offer the most because I offered more. It is not what you think. I was leaving town for God knew how long.”
Her expression fell in astonishment. “You? What on earth for, if you were leaving town?”
Why indeed? Looking back, it appeared a futile, noble gesture. At the time, it had seemed the right thing to do. “It was as good a use of the money as any, and I expected to have more eventually. You were still too innocent, Celia. Too much a child. I thought I would delay it a couple of years. That is all.” He shrugged. “Your mother thought differently, and explained that I would not be an appropriate protector for you at any time, and no matter what my intentions.”
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