The Spy’s Convenient Bride: The Macalisters, Book Five

by Taylor, Erica

  “When did he recruit you?”

  “In 1806.”

  “A decade is a long time to live such an uncertain life.”

  “It was entertaining and satisfying. The missions were varied so it held my attention. Different scenarios called for me to be a different person, do something different, learn different skills. It allowed me to escape my life. Not be Lord Luke with a dead brother, a dead mother and a dead father. In parts of the world where you survive on your instincts and skills you learned along the way.”

  “You felt alive.”

  “Yes.” It was something he’d never admitted aloud to anyone else. Not Templar, not Colette, not even Redley. He’d found himself as a spy, learned what he was capable of, pushed his own limits of what he was willing to do. The sacrifices he’d made, the people he’d met and swindled along the way, and then left without a backwards glance. It had been his life for ten years. Without his position working for the Foreign Office, Luke didn’t know how he felt, or who he was.

  “I can see why you want to return to it then.”

  “After my parents and brother died, I was… angry, with a restless energy I barely knew what to do with. Working as I have these past years channeled that into something productive and good, and it was something that was mine.”

  “And then the Prince Regent stuck you with a title you do not feel you earned, and you were forced into a life opposite of what you’ve been doing for a decade.”

  “Basically.”

  “Are there code names?”

  “Of course, we use code names.”

  “Those men I met, Martin and Poppins, were those their code names?”

  “No, those are their real names. Martin is Arrow, and Poppins is Saturn.”

  “And Halcourt?”

  “Wizard.”

  “Redley?”

  “Redley is Titan,” he answered.

  “None of those make any sense. They have nothing to do with you, do they?”

  “That is the point. It shouldn’t make sense, so it will not trace back to the individual.”

  “How are they assigned?”

  “We pull them out of a hat.” His lips quirked. “Literally.”

  “What about you, then? What is your code name?”

  He shook his head. “You will laugh.”

  “And yet you are going to tell me anyway.”

  He sighed. “Arthur. My code name is Arthur.”

  “The king of Camelot from the legends mother read me a child.” She snickered. “Of course, it is.”

  “I said you would laugh.”

  “It suits you.”

  “It has been a constant source of ribbing from the others.”

  “That night, when we were in Bath, you were all talking about… spy stuff?”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “I thought you were talking about horse racing! I was so confused during that entire conversation!”

  “I can imagine.” He looked down to regard her, wanted to see the laughter on her face. Her eyes were shrouded in the darkness of the moonless night, but he could imagine how the edges of her eyes crinkled in the corners, the mirth that would flash through her gaze. “You should sleep Vivian. You’ve had a trying day.”

  “I’ve had a trying six years. A day won’t break me.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  “You’ve had a trying day as well. Won’t you sleep? I can sit and watch over you for a while.”

  “The chance of that happening is nonexistent, so don’t even argue it.”

  She sighed. “It didn’t hurt to try.”

  “Thank you. For wanting to take care of me.”

  “You really should let me take care of you.”

  God, if she only knew how she did that already, simply by being a voice in the darkness, someone to give his confession to. He’d been without someone to talk to for so long… forever, really. Redley only listened, and it was akin to talking to a thoughtful stag. He would nod and shrug but waltz off as though nothing Luke said had meant anything.

  But Vivian… Vivian seemed to genuinely care about him. She noticed the bits of him he was normally careful to conceal with jokes and silliness. He hadn’t lied when he told her who he really was. He didn’t hide the damaged bits of himself, but he didn’t flout them about either. The way she looked at him and saw passed all that was unnerving. It was frightening, but it was exciting.

  “I think I might love you,” he said quietly into the darkness. His heart thumped widely against his chest, threatening to burst through. The seconds pressed on and still there was no response. “Vivian?” Still nothing.

  He looked down at her but couldn’t see more than the top of her head, her auburn hair dark in the darkness of the room. He rose slowly from the chair and carried her to the bed, and realized the reason she hadn’t given any response as he set her on the bed. She’d fallen asleep.

  Luke chuckled at the irony. He finally decided he’d fallen in love with the chit and she slept through his admission.

  He kissed the top of her head. “Goodnight, Vivian.”

  It didn’t matter, now that he knew how he felt. He would just tell her in the morning.

  * * *

  Dawn broke over the horizon, careful as it peeked its lovely, jovial face above the hemline of the trees. Vivian was awake to see it, which was to say, she was not happy about having to wake just before dawn to meet up with the mail coach as it continued through town. They’d been fortunate to stumble upon a town on its path west, or so Vivian thought until she realized Luke had likely intended such all along.

  She glared at his smug grin over the rim of her cup full of coffee. He’d been grinning at her since he woke her nearly half an hour earlier but there was nothing about morning that made her chipper.

  “You’re one of those ridiculous fellows who is much too energetic at this dreadful hour,” she observed.

  “What’s wrong with waking up in a good mood?”

  “Did you sleep at all?” she asked, and he shook his head. “Then you didn’t wake up at all. You should be grumpy and exhausted. Instead you’re grinning like you’ve found a year’s worth of sweets and can’t wait to devour them all.”

  “Maybe I’ve decided I’m in love,” he said with a wink.

  Vivian rolled her eyes. “In love with yourself perhaps,” she muttered darkly under her breath as she took another sip of coffee. The hot beverage did little to lighten her mood, and Luke’s enthusiasm was too much to contend with. “Just ignore me. I’m not pleasant in the morning.”

  He shrugged and moved about the room; a restless energy vibrated through him. How he could be so energized without sleep was beyond her.

  “You seem awfully excited about joining up with the mail coach. You know it’s not as fun as it looks.”

  “I will have you know I’ve been on the mail coach before. I’ve ridden in the back of wagons with sheep and was dragged behind a traveling coach once. I’ve even ridden underneath a phaeton, tucked up under the driver’s seat.

  “I imagine it was still more pleasant than the mail coach.”

  Luke laughed. “Where is your sense of adventure?”

  She leveled him with an incredulous stare. “My sense of adventure ran out when we literally jumped from a burning building.”

  “We survived.”

  “Only just.”

  He grinned. “Hence the adventure.”

  Vivian prayed for strength.

  He nodded towards the toast and jam that had accompanied their coffee. “Are you finished?”

  She’d have preferred something heartier for breakfast, like eggs and a ration of bacon, but since they were traveling incognito, it was prudent to take a more economical approach to breakfast. Apparently, people tight on funds did not indulge in bacon.

  “As finished as I will ever be.”

  “Good. Because I believe our chariot has just arrived.”

  Chapter Twenty

  As she approached the third Gothic
cathedral in as many weeks, Vivian was vaguely aware of the drastic turn her life had taken. A fortnight ago, she’d planted vegetables, hoping to find a way to ensure her and her mother’s survival through another winter. Now, she walked across the expansive lawn outside Salisbury Cathedral, about to embark on another search for Redley’s golden eggs in this merry chase he had sent them on.

  To say she was excited would be an understatement.

  She wasn’t excited for this game to go on, the dashing about England, dodging would-be assailants, assassins, and spies, and whoever was sent after them, to which Luke had no hard answers. The “I don’t know’s” were getting a tad old, even though she understood the reason for his uncertainty. That was part of the problem, she understood the need for all of it. But that didn’t make it any less tedious. The sooner they could be done with it all, the better.

  Though, if it brought them to more of England’s finest Gothic cathedrals, she might not complain.

  They’d arrived at Salisbury without any midnight dashes through the woods. None of the inns burned down. Their journey on the coach had been mostly uneventful. It had taken a day longer than planned when they’d missed one coach and had to wait till another came through. Luckily, they’d had a comfortable bed in their room and made the most of their stopover.

  “Will we be crawling through crypts or searching for glass artistry of your namesake?” she asked as they drew near the cathedral. Their approach could not have been more picturesque, and she was able to take in the full front of the cathedral; the three-pointed towers, figures and scenes carved into the exterior walls. Salisbury appeared wider that Canterbury, but shorter than Wells. Canterbury was the largest of the three they’d visited, and Wells was the smallest. Salisbury sat somewhere in between the two.

  “No, nothing like that. Redley would not repeat himself.” He paused, his head tilted up to the front of the cathedral. “I say, is the spire leaning or have I not had enough sleep?”

  “You’ve not had enough sleep.” She looked up at the spire. “And it is leaning.”

  His brow arched, and he clearly doubted her expertise.

  “The spire is much heavier than the base,” she explained. “The original engineering essentially failed, and they’ve had to add extra buttresses to brace it. But it still leans.”

  “Your knowledge of these cathedrals is astounding.”

  Vivian shrugged. “I needed a hobby, and my father had a multitude of books on Gothic architecture. The spire, despite how it leans, is said to be the tallest in England. Salisbury is also home to the world’s oldest working clock, or so they claim.”

  “Fascinating.”

  She turned to glare at him. “Am I boring you?”

  But Luke grinned brightly and her flare of irritation faded away. Maybe she hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “No,” he replied and kissed her cheek as he passed. “It truly is captivating to watch you wax on about these cathedrals. It interests you, and you make it interesting.”

  A blush raced up her neck, coloring her cheeks. “Then you’d best pay attention.”

  Salisbury was incredible, to be sure, but it didn’t sport the over-the-top grandeur of Canterbury or the calm welcome of Wells. The columns reached down the main sanctuary, reminiscent of the other two. The arches continued to the ceiling, convened in a point before they cascaded down the other side.

  “Do we know what we are looking for?”

  Luke didn’t answer.

  Vivian watched the frustration and indecision washing across his face.

  “Let’s start with the Magna Carta,” she suggested.

  The copy of the Magna Carta was housed beneath a thick pane of glass, but there was nothing remarkable about it, other than it was the document that shaped the foundation of their government. Vivian read through what she could make out from the cramped writing, while Luke fluttered about and examined the glass, which was simply glass, and the stone pedestal the display rested on, which was made of nothing but unremarkable stone. There was nothing hidden in any crevice, though Luke’s thorough examination of the dais did earn him disapproving frowns from the clergymen.

  They moved on, down the long corridors. They searched through the stained glass windows, hunted for meaning in the names and the dates littered in stone throughout the cathedral.

  “What about this?” Vivian pointed to a double archway, reminiscent of the scissor arches they’d seen at Wells.

  “Nowhere to hide anything,” he said with a sigh. “Why could he not tack something up on the marble arch and paint a big red arrow?”

  “Well that would be too easy and far less interesting.”

  “Do they have a font?” He craned his neck to look down the aisle. “A baptismal font, the thing for the baptisms and sprinkling of the water—”

  “I know what a font is.”

  Luke spun about. “I don’t see one. It would be like Redley to hide something in the holy water.”

  “Seems presumptuous.”

  “Exactly.”

  But there was no permanent font and the one used for baptisms was only carted out when needed.

  “What about the sarcophagus of William Longespee?” Vivian suggested.

  “The who and the what?”

  Vivian sighed. “It’s no wonder Redley worked it so I would be here with you. You’ve no clue about anything.”

  “I’m clever in other ways, just not obscure facts about Gothic cathedrals.”

  “William Longespee was the first person to be buried here. He was the illegitimate son of Henry II, and Henry II was the one who had conflict with Thomas Beckett.”

  “Okay, you’ve my attention now.”

  Of course, he would be interested if Thomas Beckett came into the story.

  “And Longespee brought the Magna Carta to Salisbury.”

  “That sounds promising. Where is this sarcophagus?”

  “I’m not a map.”

  “Yes, but with all your knowledge you ought to know.”

  She shook her head with a chuckle. “We will have to ask.”

  The first clergyman they found gave them a surprised look before pointing a long finger towards the opposite side of the church.

  The sarcophagus was along one of the corridors, in full view, and therefore an unlikely place for Redley to hide a message inside the sarcophagus, as he had at Canterbury. There were also no crevices or hidey-holes or any place to tuck a note.

  “May I help you?” asked a voice behind them and Vivian and Luke whipped around. A deacon stood behind them, arms linked behind his back, regarding them warily.

  Luke recovered first, and offered the deacon a polite smile. “We were just marveling at the exquisite craftsmanship of this sarcophagus. Do you know the last time it was opened?”

  The deacon eyed him doubtfully but nodded. “In 1791. It might interest you to learn we found the corpse of a rat in the remains.”

  “A rat?” Luke asked, his tone holding something Vivian could not place for a moment. A rat… a traitor…

  “Do you still have the rat?” Vivian asked.

  Obviously uncomfortable, the deacon nodded. “If you’ll follow me.” He turned and strode away from the tomb.

  “You are brilliant,” Luke whispered in her ear. She beamed under his praise.

  The deacon led them to a small side alcove, a museum of sorts. And in the middle sat a glass box containing the shriveled corpse of a dead rat.

  “There is a dead rat in a glass case,” Vivian stated quietly.

  “Bet that wasn’t in your architecture books,” Luke added dryly.

  There was nothing else of note about the rat corpse, its container, or anything else in the room. It wasn’t until the deacon returned that everything suddenly made sense.

  “I believe you are looking for this.” He offered Luke a cream envelope.

  Luke didn’t take the card immediately but regarded the deacon with renewed interest.

  “Oh, yes, you might need an expla
nation,” the deacon said. “A gentleman came in here the other day, offering a sizable donation for the safe keeping of this letter. Now, we don’t normally accept such requests but this one was intriguing. He said simply if two people came here, a man and a woman, and they asked about William Longespee, and then asked about the rat, I should give this to them.” He offered it again, but Luke’s eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, and I should mention a pineapple,” the deacon added. “Apparently it was some sort of countersign.”

  “This man, was he about my height, pale blond hair, inquisitively piercing blue eyes? Didn’t speak a word?”

  The deacon shook his head. “Not at all. He was older than you by a good thirty years, full head of graying brown hair. Had a remarkable jeweled cane. Talked a lot. Very charming.”

  Luke looked at the paper again, frowning. Vivian knew it didn’t make sense, that someone else had delivered this message for them, but what else was there? It wasn’t inconceivable for Redley to have recruited help.

  Luke accepted the card and tucked it into his coat pocket.

  Vivian offered the deacon a polite smile. “Thank you. This might be of great help to us.”

  “Might I know the reason for this?” he asked. “Like I said, it’s an unusual request but the better part of me was curious.”

  “It’s a game,” Vivian explained. “Every year a few of my husband’s Oxford chums get together and create an elaborate hunt, if you will, across England. Finding clues and solving riddles. It’s great fun.”

  The clergyman didn’t believe her, but he nodded. “It must be.”

  “Are we the first to inquire about Longespee and his rat?” Luke asked. “Has there been anyone else of interest in the past days?”

  “There has been no one.”

  Luke nodded again. “Thank you.”

  They stood in an awkward silence for a long moment before the deacon said, “Yes, well, I will leave you to your hunt.” And with one last nod, he walked away from them towards the other end of the church.

  * * *

  Luke slipped a finger beneath the seal, which was right side up, and tore through the wax, unfolding the paper to one singular parchment.