Agent of the Crown (26 page)

Telaine took another long drink. “I’m looking
forward to that too.”

“Lainie!” Liam Richardson’s exuberant voice
rang out. “And… who’s this, fellows? The recluse of Longbourne?
Lainie, what did you do to get this fellow out after seven? We not
good enough for you, Ben?”

Ben waved his mug at them and grinned. “Don’t
take this the wrong way, fellows, but you’re not nearly pretty
enough.”

An “oooooh” went up among the crowd. Liam
clutched at his chest. “This what you left me for, Lainie? Hope
he’s worth it.”

“Oh,” she breathed, taking Ben’s hand, “he
is.” A roar of laughter went up around her, and several people
started talking at once, but she no longer minded being teased.

Maida came up and set down two more mugs.
“You people are having an awful lot of fun,” she said. “Lainie, you
sly fox, and here’s me never seeing what was going on right in
front of my face.”

“That’s all right, neither did I,” she said,
and got another roar of laughter. It seemed her friends would laugh
at anything tonight. Liam sat down next to her and pulled Isabel
Colton onto his lap. She squealed and laughed. Jack Taylor, solo
tonight, took a nearby table and waved for a drink. Her other
friends—how had she gained so many friends in so short a
time?—gathered in, laughing, talking, drinking, teasing Telaine and
Ben.

Somebody proposed Jack take over at the
pianoforte. Isabel disposed her legs across Liam’s lap and leaned
over to Telaine.

“You been out of Longbourne today, Lainie?”
she asked.

“I was up at the fort,” Telaine replied.

Isabel looked disappointed. “Thought maybe
you’d heard more about this news out of Granger,” she said.

“What news is that?”

“You haven’t heard? Little girl—maybe not so
little, eleven or twelve—went missing this morning. They’ve been
searching around the crevasse, but haven’t found her. Not likely to
find her now dark’s come.”

Telaine shuddered. “That’s terrible. Are they
sure she fell in the crevasse?”

Isabel shrugged. “Only place she could’ve
disappeared so fast, so completely.”

“Stop talking about other people’s troubles,”
Liam said. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

Isabel giggled, her good humor restored. She
bounced up and led Liam to the bar.

“That makes four,” Ben said.

“Four what?”

“Four kids missing,” he said. “Since I moved
here, anyway. All about that age, all from villages in the valley.
A couple from Longbourne, even. They think maybe they drowned or
fell down the crevasse—that’s probably why they’re looking up there
even if she disappeared from someplace else.” He finished his
second beer and wiped his mouth. “Let’s go someplace quieter.”

“Someplace darker?” Telaine suggested.

“Someplace warm.”

“Someplace you can admire my dimple?”

He took her hand again. “You know that means
I have to be right up close to you?”

She sighed. “I suppose I can live with
that.”

An hour later, she walked through Aunt
Weaver’s back door into the dark kitchen and stopped to lean
against the wall, smiling. All those years of being courted by the
nobles and gentry of Tremontane, and a country blacksmith was the
one to sweep her off her feet. He was gentle, and passionate—not a
combination she’d ever thought to find in a man—and his kisses made
her head whirl, and… She smiled again, closing her eyes in happy
reminiscence. And she’d almost thrown all of that away.

She went up the stairs cautiously, not
wanting to light a lamp and disturb Aunt Weaver. Though it was
strange, her going to bed so early; on nights when she didn’t have
knitting circle, she usually sat up knitting in the uncomfortable
drawing room.

“I’m home, Aunt,” she said, knocking on her
bedroom door. There was no answer, but the door jigged and then
swung open as if it hadn’t been latched securely. No one called out
sharply from within to shut the door and leave her business alone,
so Telaine pushed it open further. The room was identical in size
to Telaine’s, had the same furnishings, though Aunt Weaver’s mirror
wasn’t cracked, and it was empty.

Telaine contemplated the bed, which hadn’t
been slept in, then went into the room and felt the base of the oil
lamp beside it. Cold. There was a chest like Telaine’s at the foot
of the bed, not locked, and Telaine took a quick look inside and
found nothing but clothes. It was a boring room. She pulled the
door shut behind her and, after a moment’s thought, pushed the
latch open enough that the door was closed but not latched. Just in
case.

She went downstairs again and confirmed that
the heavy black cloak was missing. So Aunt Weaver was out on
another one of her mysterious errands. Telaine hadn’t caught her at
it since the first time, but she didn’t spend a lot of time
monitoring the woman’s actions. After her discovery of two nights
before, she’d started wondering if she should.

She intended to confront Uncle about it via
telecoder the next day, when she went into Ellismere, though she
wasn’t sure what she would say. If he didn’t know, should she give
away Aunt Weaver’s secret? What if Telaine was wrong? In any case,
she didn’t want to go on wondering.

Grinning to herself, she took a seat at the
kitchen table and waited in the dark kitchen. Serve Aunt Weaver
right for accosting Telaine this way the night of the shivaree. The
night Ben had kissed her for the first time. He was wonderful. She
sat there, remembering their times together, anticipating the next
day when they’d add to those memories, feeling again his kisses on
her lips and cheek and throat, so beautiful.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when
the door creaked open, then slammed hard. Aunt Weaver cursed.
“That’s a tricky door,” Telaine said.

There was a silent pause in which neither of
them moved. “What are you doing?” Aunt Weaver demanded.

“Just waiting up for you. Wanted to make sure
you got in all right.”

“That’s a kindness.” It was sarcastic enough
that Telaine might have cringed if she weren’t so full of amused
righteousness.

“Where’ve you been?”

“None of your business.”

“Probably. But I’m curious about why you feel
the need to sneak around.”

She could see the outline of Aunt Weaver,
unmoving in the darkness. “Do you tell me what you get up to when
you’re at the Baron’s manor?” Aunt Weaver said.

“No.”

“Then I ain’t sharing my business with you.”
Aunt Weaver strode past, going into the front room to remove her
cloak. “Stay out of this.”

“What ‘this’? Look, it’s clearly important to
you—”

“It’s Longbourne business. You’re leaving
eventually.” Aunt Weaver went to the foot of the stairs, then
paused. “You’ve got enough to do without taking on more. Leave this
to me.”

She was up the stairs before Telaine could
come up with a response. Something was going on in Longbourne, or
possibly in all of Steepridge, and she— She shook her head and
ascended the stairs to her own room. Aunt Weaver was right; she
would leave, and she shouldn’t interfere any more than she already
had. It just felt…wrong. And she wasn’t sure why.

Telaine handed
over money and the telecoder form and thought about what to do
while she was waiting for the reply. Pity there wasn’t a Device
that let you talk to someone directly, no waiting for the message
to be turned around, no worry that the wrong someone might read
your message or its reply. She went out into the street and decided
to explore. Outside the Ellismere town hall she bought a newspaper
and took it to the park across the street to read.

The front page story was about the Crown
Princess’s divorce. Telaine’s breath caught. Poor Julia. She read
the story and gradually went from sad to furious. The journalist
who’d written the story was clearly sympathetic to Julia, but that
hadn’t stopped the woman from humiliating her by including an
interview with the “other woman” who’d told everyone she was
carrying Lucas’s child.

At least the family wouldn’t have to deal
with the nightmare of an entailed adoption, paying Lucas’s
mistress’s upkeep and that of her bastard child. Knowing Lucas, it
wasn’t impossible he’d try to force the Norths to adopt the baby
into the royal house. Thank heaven Julia was out of it. The divorce
would be finalized at the end of the week.

Telaine folded the paper, unable to read any
more. She should have been there for her cousin. Going through the
dissolution of her marriage bond, enduring the gossip, all while
heavily pregnant…Julia had needed Telaine’s support, and she hadn’t
been there to give it.

Maybe it was time to think about giving up
espionage. It certainly made her life harder. It had kept her from
being at her cousin’s side when she needed her. If she hadn’t been
an agent of the Crown, she could have told Ben her true identity
two days ago. But now, telling anyone she was Telaine North Hunter
would mean coming up with a reason why Telaine North Hunter was
slumming it in Longbourne. That would mean lying to Ben again,
because of rule number one: never, under any circumstances, no
matter how much you love or trust the person, tell anyone you are
an agent. You had more lives than your own in your hands, as an
agent.

But…being an agent gave her a rush like she’d
never known. Giving it up—what would she be willing to give it up
for? Her family, certainly. Ben? Maybe. Who knew where their
relationship might go? Until Longbourne, she’d never considered
life as something other than a spy. Now she found such
consideration surprisingly easy.

She imagined being the Deviser she was
passing herself off as, pictured having a workshop somewhere
and…her imagination failed her. What else did she want that she
didn’t already have? She didn’t know the answer, but felt in her
bones that whatever the answer was, it would surprise her.

She walked slowly back to the telecoder
office and received two encoded reply sheets. She was so familiar
with the code now she could read it almost as easily as if it were
plain text. One told her the fort received new shipments of arms
once a year, the old, outdated weapons were returned to the central
depot, and the most recent shipment had been made three months ago
and the outdated weapons received two weeks later. The second told
her, again, to find out what contraband Harroden was shipping to
Steepridge and report. She rolled her eyes. As if she needed to be
reminded.

Telaine did some calculating in her head. The
fort would now have three weapons shipments: one from the
government, a damaged one from Harroden, and a replacement one from
Harroden. She was willing to bet Captain Clarke had no idea how
often weapons were supposed to come in. No wonder the Baron was so
loath to send back the damaged weapons; they couldn’t go back to a
depot they’d never come from, and the more often shipments went
back and forth from Harroden, the more likely someone would
notice.

But she’d seen far more crates and boxes than
could be accounted for by the weapons shipments. It was those boxes
whose contents she’d have to discover. She put the papers in her
pocket to destroy later.

She hadn’t been able to figure out a way to
ask Uncle about Aunt Weaver, even in code. She’d have to confront
the woman personally. If she was wrong, no harm done. If she was
right…she’d have so many other questions.

She rode back with Abel in what was now
customary silence. Tomorrow she’d work on the weapons. Tonight
she’d speak to Aunt Weaver; she didn’t want to wait any longer to
learn the truth. With luck, this evening she’d spend time with Ben.
Just thinking about him made her heart feel light. How had she
gotten to be twenty-three without ever feeling this way?
How did
you expect a secret agent to have any kind of personal relationship
when you couldn’t tell anyone the truth? Having Ben in your life is
a miracle.

They got back to Longbourne late; the
telecoder office had been slower than usual, and Stakely had almost
had to sit on Abel to make sure he waited for her. The forge fire
had been extinguished for the night, and lights burned in the
windows of Ben’s house. She thought about knocking on his door, but
she was tired and hungry and now that she was here, she found she
couldn’t wait to confront Aunt Weaver.

Her aunt was in the sitting room, knitting.
“Supper’s in the cold room,” she called when the door squeaked
open. Telaine found a few pieces of chicken, which she devoured
along with a glass of cold milk. She washed her face and hands and
went to sit on the uncomfortable horse-hair cushion across from
Aunt Weaver. “How was your day?” she asked politely.

“Can’t complain.”
Click, click.

“How about your evening? Going well?”

“Well enough. Your young man came by. Told
him you weren’t back yet. He said to say he’d see you
tomorrow.”

So we won’t be interrupted
. “My cousin
Julia is getting divorced.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Not for her. He’s sort of a bastard. In the
pejorative sense.”

“What did I tell you about using fancy uppity
words?”

“I wouldn’t with anyone but you. Do you want
to know why?”

“I got nothing better to do.”
Click,
click
.

Telaine leaned back, thought better of it,
sat upright. “It’s an interesting story. Well, it might not
interest you, but I like it. I didn’t grow up in the palace. I
mean, I did, but not from infancy. I didn’t live there until I was
eight. I was so young, I’d lost my father, and I had trouble
adjusting to life there. Did a lot of running around, hiding from
tutors and governesses. I got to know the place the way most people
don’t. You know what my favorite place was, all that first
year?”

“Couldn’t begin to guess.”