“How so?” Catt asked, his voice hushed.
The man rolled the tumbler between his palms before he took another gulp. “I loved her, you know.”
Rocky stiffened. “Who?”
“Rosemary. Mrs.…”
He didn’t complete the name, but he didn’t have to. Catt and Rocky had heard all about Lewis’s alleged affair with Mrs. Dowden prior to her death. Apparently, it was true.
The butler lifted his head. His bleary eyes looked watery and red. “He didn’t deserve her. He has a temper, you know. She got caught in the middle and blamed…” He sighed. “I loved her deeply. If not for me, she might still be alive…” He shook his head, the lines around his eyes etching deeper as he finished his glass. “That is why it is disastrous for couples to engage in the household. I couldn’t let something like that happen again. So I’ve warned every new man and woman who come in. No one’s dared to ask Lady Belhaven about the rule directly.” He raised his gaze, glaring at Rocky. “Except for you.”
Catt stepped closer. The man seemed unstable. He didn’t want Rocky to be hurt in any way, physically or verbally. Softly, he said, “That was a terrible tragedy, but it isn’t indicative of what might happen.”
The man could have tried not to engage with another man’s wife. Even if it seemed that her marriage was less than happy. That deceit was what had led to her death, that and her own foolishness in leaving the house in the dead of winter without proper clothing. Whatever had happened, it was in the past.
Though it seemed that neither man involved had ever recovered from it.
Lewis shook his head and leaned back in the chair. He seemed to be enveloped in the past. “You’re young. You’ll learn.” His voice broke. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes as he stared out the window and whispered the name of the woman he still loved, over a decade later.
Rocky let Catt usher her away from the intoxicated, grieving butler. She couldn’t imagine being so in love with a person as to be affected so deeply by her loss more than ten years later.
If Catt suddenly died—
She shoved the thought viciously away and led the way back to the hothouse. She and Catt were now Crown spies. This wouldn’t be their only assignment. Chances were, the next would be even more dangerous. There was every possibility that he might die…or she would. It didn’t seem fair, not now that they’d finally found their place together. But she couldn’t fathom turning her back on Britain and knowing Catt, neither would he. The only thing they could do was trust in each other and look out for one another.
She didn’t even know what their life would look like beyond this assignment. For now, with her stomach twisted in knots, she couldn’t bear to think of it. She stepped into the warm, humid hothouse, letting the heat wrap around her like a hug. Then she turned to Catt. She wasn’t sure what to say about them or their future, so she focused on work again.
“Do you think he could be V?”
Catt followed her as she crossed to the work bench to claim one of the watering cans. She passed him the second one.
He looked dubious as he said, “It depends how often he drinks.”
Lewis had seemed confident that Lady Belhaven wouldn’t discover his imbibing. How could he know for sure unless he’d done it before? Many times.
She sighed. “It’s not likely he would be. That leaves…who?”
Someone with plenty of access to the hothouse. Lance Belhaven. Maybe Lady Belhaven, since she came in so often to check on her plants and the orders. The possibility for the culprit being anyone else sank lower and lower with each staff secret they revealed.
Catt set down his watering can and cupped her cheek. “We’ll find him. We’re close.”
Empty words, considering he couldn’t be any more certain than she was over their suspects or lack thereof. But the look in his eyes was encouraging. He believed that they would complete this assignment.
Hopefully sooner, rather than later. They’d been here for weeks.
Nodding, she pulled away to tend to the plants. She didn’t know whether the solution she’d created would encourage the plants to grow enough to make a difference by the time of the masquerade party at the end of the week. Perhaps if she’d fed the plants this solution upon her arrival, but a few days was far too short a time. There were a few plants that were mostly bud and no blooms; with luck, those buds would open by Friday, but it wasn’t guaranteed. She spotted more cards stacked on the front work bench, a testament that Lady Belhaven hadn’t heeded her warning at all. If they filled the orders, how many plants would they have left in good enough shape to display the pots around the house and ballroom?
As she poured the last of her solution into a potted geranium, she noticed markings on the leaves of the lily next to it. “Catt?”
He rounded the table immediately. By the time he reached her, she was busy running her fingers over the plant. The holes were man-made, just like the last. Damn and blast! They hadn’t left the hothouse unattended for very long, fifteen minutes at most.
The moment he noticed where her attention was directed, Catt’s eyes widened. “I’ll get the package Morgan sent.” He beat a hasty retreat from the hothouse as Rocky found a pair of forceps. When she peered into the lily’s throat, she found a rolled-up slip of paper there. Delicately, she extracted the paper and unrolled it.
As expected, the message was in code. She waited for Catt to return, anticipation clawing at her insides. Fortunately, she didn’t have long to wait. He returned within minutes with the sheaf of papers the Duke of Tenwick had sent.
They started by deciphering the leaves first. The code was complicated, but given the explanation the duke had sent with the cipher, he believed the leaves to signify numbers only. The slip of paper contained the accompanying instructions. If the Duke of Tenwick was right—and, given the confidence every spy she had met had bestowed upon his brilliance in decoding messages, Rocky had every reason to believe he was—then the leaves they decoded with difficulty appeared to be some kind of date or time. Or both.
“This Friday at midnight,” Catt murmured under his breath.
She concurred. “The night of the masquerade.”
They set to work on the second part of the message, scrawled in an entirely different kind of code, albeit still a brief one given the minute size of the paper. This one was even more brief.
It read: Henry VIII.
Rocky’s heart beat quicker as she raised her gaze to meet Catt’s. He looked just as excited as she was. If they were right about the date and time, then Monsieur V intended to attend Lady Belhaven’s masquerade dressed as King Henry VIII.
“Do we send it?” Catt spoke in a hush, his voice tight.
“Yes.” In order to lure Monsieur V out into the open, they would have to ensure that his recipient got the message as planned. She rolled the paper back up and used the forceps to carefully insert it into the throat of the lily once more. “Can you check the cards? Where will the lilies be delivered?”
Catt strode to the front of the room to find out while she worked at her delicate task.
When he returned, his eyes held an excited gleam. He held only two cards. “I’ll send a message to Morgan with these names and addresses and the content of the message that will be delivered.” When he met her gaze, he grinned. “We’ve got him, Rocky.”
Chapter 24
Rocky fidgeted with the strap on her dress. She was dressed almost identical to a dozen other Cleopatras at the masquerade tonight, the better to blend in. She would rather have worn breeches than this flimsy piece of fabric.
Next to her, Catt was dressed as a domino. The hood of the burgundy cloak covered his telltale blond hair and the accompanying black half-mask hid his features. Unfortunately, Rocky had no mask to complete her anonymity; she had to hope that her years among the servant class had taught her well enough on how to blend in and be forgettable.
Normally as servants, they wouldn’t be attending a masquerade but Morgan’s instr
uctions had been clear. They needed to attend to catch Monsieur V. Hopefully, no one of the household would recognize them in costume. Of course, if Monsieur V really was one of Lady Belhaven’s servants, there would be another of them in costume who wasn’t supposed to be.
Rocky tensed at the thought. They’d failed in their task to identify the spy and now they risked Monsieur V being able to pass the secret information to his contact at the party. She could not let that happen.
“We’ll get him,” Catt whispered, leaning down so his voice didn’t carry. His voice was firm and confident.
As he found her hand and squeezed it, some of her nervousness melted away. She took a deep breath and nodded, scanning the throng for anyone dressed as King Henry VIII.
For all that she wasn’t technically a peer, Lady Belhaven’s masquerade was a crush. Every downstairs parlor and withdrawing room was decorated with one or more of the plants from the hothouse. The rest had been scattered here, in this lofty ballroom. The room, nearly three times the side of the hothouse, was only one story high, but no less magnificent for the low ceiling. A quartet set up in the only corner devoid of flowers. Along the perimeter of the room, chairs were nestled in pairs between more potted plants. A narrow arch led to a buffet room with food and drink constantly replenished by servants. Lady Belhaven had hired a handful of temporary staff members to help set up, tend to the guests, and clean up after the masquerade. Although the Duke of Tenwick hadn’t confirmed as much, Rocky suspected that one or two of those temporary servants were Crown spies.
The duke himself was in attendance, dressed to mirror Catt and a number of the other guests in a black domino. His very pregnant wife was dressed as a harlequin—a common enough outfit, though with her protruding belly she did not at all go unremarked. The pair, along with Lord Tristan Graylocke and his wife, Frederica, were guarding a voluptuous woman dressed as Venus who appeared to have trouble sitting, given the way she grimaced. According to the missive the Duke of Tenwick had sent Catt and Rocky before the event began, this woman was their informant, the French spy they had captured and convinced to sing for them—the only person the Crown had at hand who would be able to confirm Monsieur V’s identity should they come face to face.
In comparison with the round Duchess of Tenwick, who looked as impish as her costume suggested, Tristan and Frederica looked tame. The lady was dressed as a moon maiden in a silver dress with moons and stars in her hair. They went well with the moon-eyes she and her husband exchanged when they thought no one was looking. He was also in silver, though with the way his doublet and shirt billowed out, coupled with his mask, Rocky guessed that he was meant to be a knight. His ancestral suit of armor must not have afforded him enough range or silence of movement to suit his spying needs.
Gideon and Felicia were also there, both in Grecian costumes—Gideon dressed as Pan and his wife as a Greek goddess or maiden. The pair stuck fast to the other two young women who must have come to make the heavy Graylocke presence at the event seem like a family affair. Miss Charlotte Vale, Frederica’s younger sister, looked like a rosy-cheeked Bo Peep with her blonde hair dressed in ringlets. Lucy Graylocke, with her hair in a similar style, played Red Riding Hood.
Although the red drew the eye, even Lucy and Charlie’s costumes blended in with the colorful crowd. There were harlequins and columbines, Cinderellas and even a wolf or two, Greek and Roman gods, cross-dressing women, skirts that fell no lower than the knees, historical costumes, sultans, fortune tellers, cupids, Scottish, Chinese, and Egyptian clothing, and even some in formal ball attire with the inclusion of a mask. The room, which might comfortably have fit two hundred people, certainly fit more than that.
How were they ever supposed to find a man dressed as King Henry VIII in this? Since at this raucous gathering it drew less attention to be in pairs than to be alone, when Catt offered Rocky his arm, she took it without question and they strolled the perimeter of the room in search for their man. The party, well under way, had thus far yielded no results, though guests continued to arrive, mingle, and depart in a dizzying whirl of bodies.
Catt and Rocky chatted of inconsequential things like the weather as they walked, in case someone listened in on their conversation. Rocky only attended to the conversation with half a mind as she searched the crowd for anyone dressed in Tudor clothing. Her breath caught as she spotted someone, a man. Was that…Lance Belhaven?
“There. By the door. He just entered.”
Rocky jumped at his soft voice and glanced at the door. Fiddlesticks! There were two of them!
“I found one, too.” She pretended to brush a strand of her hair away from her cheek, using the movement to gesture to the man standing next to his brother and grandmother.
“Bloody hell.”
Rocky agreed with him wholeheartedly.
“It’s nearly midnight. How are we to know which is our man?” He muttered the question under his breath, but she still heard.
“Let’s make our way back to the Graylockes. We’ll follow Lance, they can follow the other fellow.”
Catt turned their trajectory and swore. “Confound it, there’s a third!”
Three King Henry VIIIs. Three possible suspects for Monsieur V. Had the slippery spymaster planned it that way?
“Forget the other two. V must be Lance.” She didn’t recognize the other two, not at this distance.
His jaw clenched as he scanned the crowd and lowered his voice some more. He leaned closer, whispering into her ear as he trailed his finger along her arm like they were lovers.
Which they were. But, in this case, they didn’t discuss anything romantic or illicit. They discussed treason and how best to thwart it.
“What proof do you have? We can’t discount the other two on a hunch, not when we’re so close to capturing him.”
“V had access to the hothouse. He must be someone we’ve crossed paths with,” she said, her voice little louder than a hiss.
“Unless he’s had someone else place the codes for him.”
Her mouth thinned. It was a possibility, and one they’d entertained on more than one occasion with the suspects who didn’t fit the description. “We’ll find out which it is at midnight, won’t we? Once the grandfather clock chimes, one of the three will attempt to leave the ballroom.”
All they had to do was follow the right man.
The crush was so tight that they barely made it halfway across the ballroom toward the Graylockes in the corner when the chime of the grandfather clock sounded. Bong, bong… It was nearly overpowered by the music as it came to the energized end of the song. Applause followed from the guests, masking the grandfather clock.
Rocky whirled to check on her suspect. “Lance is moving toward the exit.”
“So are the others.”
She dropped her hand from his sleeve and whirled to check for herself. They were. “Hell and damnation! We have to follow.”
He nodded. “I’ll take Lance—”
“No, I’ll take Lance. He’s my suspect.”
Catt let out a short sigh, but didn’t argue. “Fine. I’ll take the one by the door. What about the third?”
She turned. “Where are the Graylockes?”
His mouth thinned as he searched the crowd for an ally as well. No one. Not a single person they could confirm to be a spy in the mash of bodies.
A flash of red caught Rocky’s eye. “Go after your man before he escapes the party,” she told Catt. “I see someone and will relay the message.”
He nodded but didn’t argue further, parting ways from her instead.
That flash of red belonged to Lucy Graylocke. The Duke of Tenwick’s youngest sibling wasn’t a spy for Britain—in fact, Rocky had been instructed to keep the family’s hand in spying a secret from Lucy and her mother—but Rocky had no choice. All she had to do was get Lucy to keep close to the last man and prevent him from leaving the ballroom. She never needed to know why.
Ahead, a flash of a pink dress and blonde curls alerte
d Rocky to the fact that Miss Vale’s attention had been claimed by her next dance partner. A strike of good fortune, for it meant that Lucy was alone. When Rocky clasped her by the elbow, she gasped.
“Rocky? Don’t startle me like that!”
“I need your help.” Rocky’s voice was strained with urgency.
The playful air around Lucy vanished immediately. “How?”
“There’s a man, King Henry over there—” Rocky pointed. “—who I need to keep in the ballroom.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes. As a budding fiction writer, she smelled a story even when there wasn’t one to be found. Though of course, in this case, there was.
“Why?”
“He said something untoward and I intend to confront him.”
“So why don’t you?”
Blast! Rocky hadn’t thought through her story before she’d approached. Her heart hammered as she saw Lance slip closer to the door. He was nearly away!
Out of desperation, she pointed to him. “I lost the man in question in the crowd and I can’t be sure which he is. I think that one, but I can’t follow both at once. Will you keep the other man in the ballroom just in case?”
Warily, Lucy asked, “Why do you need to talk to him so badly? What did he say?”
Lud, why did she have to be so curious on the matter? Rocky grappled to concoct a suitable explanation. She settled on the first answer she thought Lucy wouldn’t question, given her personality.
“He told me that women shouldn’t have lead botanist positions because we’ve got nothing between our ears.”
Lucy’s expression darkened. “That fiend! I’ll—”
“Just keep him in the ballroom. I’d rather have at him, myself.”
Lucy nodded, her chin set and her eyes glittering like chips of ice. She squared her shoulders like she was about to enter a room filled with the most vicious matrons in the ton. Lucy was much stronger than her overprotective brothers gave her credit for. She could probably handle the truth. In fact, she would probably be an asset to the Crown.
Charming the Spy (Scandals and Spies Book 4) Page 20
