Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (22 page)

"I thank you, Doctor. I will do as you advise now that you have been kind enough to bring me a new supply."

Dr. Wyndham bowed to Giles. "I will be leaving very early on the morn, my lord, so I thank you now for your generous hospitality. I will remark it to His Majesty."

"I say farewell and Godspeed on your journey," Giles said, in a pleasant host voice, though his gaze was still on Meriel.

"And, Doctor," Meriel added, "please take my maid Agnes with you, as I have sufficient servants at Harringdon Hall for all my needs. I doubt I will soon return to the court."

The doctor bowed his acknowledgment, and a servant opened the door for him.

"Did you speak true?" Giles asked her, and she saw hope again in his face.

"Who knows, my lord. I am a women of changing appetite and a need for variety." Her voice was now pure Countess Felice. "And with your permission, I will take my leave. You may remember that you have exhausted me."

Since her words pulled him in all directions, for some relief Giles lifted his fork and stabbed the linen with its three tines.

Frightened, Meriel stood and backed toward the door, which was opened for her by a porter who showed nothing on his face.

"I have given you no leave as yet, m'lady," Giles said, and waved the porter out of the library.

The door closed softly behind him, but Meriel knew servants and expected his ear was pressed close to the keyhole. "Why are you demanding my presence," she asked, swallowing hard, "since it is obviously so unpleasant? Let me go and you will surely be more at ease." She put a hand to her forehead in good imitation of fatigue.

"Then go as you wish. I have no need for company that is ever changeable." He turned his back and faced the fire. A log fell, spraying sparks against his hose. He did not move.

Meriel knew she should say nothing further to Giles, but she had no will to stop herself. "Always remember the oak tree, my lord."

Giles whirled about, hiding his puzzlement, as the door closed behind her. He longed to call her back, to demand an explanation of such a curious good-night. How could he ever forget this day? And what had this quarrel been about?

Slowly climbing the wide staircase from the hall to the gallery, Meriel shut away all thought of the angry and haunted look on Giles's face as she had left him in the library. She had to. That memory would be too heavy a burden to carry forward when her own feet seemed unable to lift up to the next step.

She faltered more than once, half turning to go back. The need to tell him the truth almost choked her. But fear stopped her. Fear for what the knowledge of Felice's fate would do to him. Fear for England. And fear of Giles's hatred for her pretense, which she could never bear.

She reached her rooms to find Agnes holding a heavy traveling cloak. "Wait until deep dark," the maid whispered, "and then the little doctor will take you to Great Yarmouth harbor to meet with a chandler on the waterfront. The chandler was caught smuggling by Chiffinch's men, so he will do as he is told to escape the hangman. He will take you out to the fleet as it passes on the morrow. Your boat must be standing offshore when the Dutch arrive."

Meriel questioned what she'd heard. "Dr. Wyndham will deliver me to the town?"

"Aye, we cannot ask a man from the earl's household. They would be loyal to their master, and the earl—"

"Would be informed and follow me on the instant. Or perhaps not."

Agnes smiled. "You jest. He is besotted with you ... as if he had you for the first time."

"That was cruel as only unwanted honesty can be cruel," Meriel said, and her voice trembled.

Agnes nodded. "Aye, forgive me. A spy learns she must take her amusement where she may ... as you will learn, if you have not already."

"I have had little of amusement in latter days." And as so much in her life lately, this was as true as it was untrue for Meriel.

Agnes insisted: "But you do see why we cannot involve the earl's men."

Meriel nodded her agreement, not trusting her voice. Never would she put Giles's life at risk for the spymaster, the king or— She nearly added heaven to her list, but decided that would be impolitic at this particular time of her life as a king's spy, when about to be at almost sure risk of her life. If a Dutch matchlock or noose from a yardarm sent her to death, she would not arrive at the gates of heaven with blasphemy on her tongue. She would have enough to answer for with lying, adultery— She pinched herself hard to intercept such thoughts. She would not fail.
Could not fail!

Agnes and Meriel waited together, without speaking more, until a moonlit midnight was faintly visible through the diamond-paned window. Meriel tied the pocket, containing all her reciphered messages from the Dutch spies in London, beneath her gown and fastened the ties of her cloak about her throat.

Agnes attempted to hand her a small pistola. "You may have good use for this."

Meriel thrust it from her. "It would be madness. More like I would shoot myself!"

Agnes shrugged and handed her a small sheathed knife, untying it from around her leg.

Meriel could not help a nervous laugh. "You are as armed as a grenadier, Agnes."

"Take it," Agnes insisted, and watched with approval as Meriel tied it about her thigh under her gown. Then they shook hands in the new style of farewell.

Meriel clung to Agnes's hand. "Do you wish that you were accompanying me?"

"No, Meriel St. Thomas," Agnes said, all but shuddering. "I am clever, but not brave."

"Ah. I think there is a compliment in that somehow." Meriel pulled her cloak tighter. "Agnes, you know what you must tell Lord Giles when he discovers me gone."

Agnes nodded, expelling a deep breath. "I will tell him that the king did send for you and you obeyed as a loyal subject to save the earl from His Majesty's displeasure. What can even a peer do against his monarch?"

"He would defy His Majesty for me if he knew." Meriel was certain of that answer though the words quavered on her tongue, but she could delay her departure no longer.

"He will never know the truth, m'lady," Agnes said. "An unfortunate carriage accident on the dangerous roads of this shire will take the Countess of Warborough's life, leaving her battered body for the Earl to inter in the family crypt."

Meriel clenched her fists. "Chiffinch thinks of everything."

"Aye, he is always one plot ahead. Don't doubt it."

Silently, Meriel slipped out the door and down a backstairs to the box parterre exit. There was no guard barring her way. Giles trusted her. The thought stabbed under her breast for he would soon know his trust misused. Until he got the terrible news of her death, he would think her at best a liar and eager whore to His Majesty. Better that, Meriel thought bitterly, than to know the worse truth. A man did not forgive a woman who had played him for a fool.

She had gone no more than a few steps when the worried white face of Dr. Wyndham appeared on the raked gravel path. He brought a finger to touch his lips for silence and motioned for her to follow him across the lawn away from the pole lanterns edging the garden. She breathed in the heavy green odor of newly scythed grass and knew that whenever in future years, that scent would come to her it would bring her back to this night at Harringdon Hall, the moon hanging high in the sky. And to the sound of her own feet running away from Giles and the happiest hours of her life, against which she would measure all future pleasures. And find them wanting.

The doctor took her arm and guided her some distance before they reached his coach and they were off, slowly at first, and then faster back down the rutted road to the harbor at Great Yarmouth.

Meriel wrapped herself in her cloak and turned her face from the doctor, looking out the window into the night and seeing nothing. She could not converse. She was too busy blocking all the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her as they pulled away from the place that had been so briefly her true home. She had belonged there for days as she had never belonged for years in Sir Cheatham's home and certainly not in the charity orphanage at Canterbury.

She gripped tight to the upholstered seat. If she allowed tears to begin, there would be no end to them and no way she would fully be the Countess Felice for yet another few days. And she must deceive the Hollanders and live on to hold Chiffinch to his word that Giles never know Felice had not gone reluctantly to the king, having regained her love for him.
He must believe that!

The coach clattered from the dirt road onto the cobbles of the town and on through streets that were dark but for an occasional watchman, crying the hour and weather, holding a lantern high on its pole. At last they reached the wharf and stopped in front of a shop that showed no light.

"Lovely lady," the doctor said in a rumbling, sad voice that refused his effort to soften it. "Pray, let me tell you of my complete admir—"

"No, Doctor, there is no need. You have done your whole duty under duress, I don't doubt, and I thank you for your particular kindness. Now return with a restful conscience to your family and to Whitehall."

He took her hand and put a small glass vial into her palm, closing her fingers about it. "If you are found out, and put to the torture ... this will help."

"Surely the Dutch are civilized people—"

"In war there is no time to be civilized."

Meriel shook her head with finality. "I cannot meet my God as a suicide."

"No, no. You misunderstand. This is not a poison, though I studied poisons and their antidotes during my student days at the University of Padua, Bologna and ... ah, yes, but 'tis a strong poppy juice." He lowered his voice as best he could. "It makes pain bearable, e'en the pain of death. Indeed, e'en the pain of parting from a great love, sweet lady."

She nodded, grateful for his thought of her, then could not resist a way to jolly him. "But, good doctor, if I take this physick, will I not then need your red Counteracting pills, and I do not fancy—"

"Pray, dear lady, do not jest more or you will break my heart with your courage."

She bent across to kiss his cheek. "Doctor, I must jest, for it is all in life that ever saved me." She stepped from the coach without another word, but in the dark, she slipped the vial into the pocket that held the doctor's other physics. It made a comforting weight.

The chandlery door opened and she was pulled inside as the coach moved on slowly down the quayside. Two shadowy figures confronted her, dressed, as far as she could see from a guttering candle, in rough sailor's canvas breeches and shirts.

"We be clearing the harbor just afore first light," said one. He led her to an upturned keg beside a barrel table. "There be small ale, my lady. No wine."

"Ale with my thanks. The nights are cool by the sea."

The man grunted. "Be hot enough when the Hollanders get on to ye."

Ha! A chandler who thought to bandy words with a countess, e'en a counterfeit countess. Cromwell's Roundheads and their republican teachings had much to answer for. She grinned into the dark of the shop.
Hey, well, I am beginning to think like an aristocrat.

Meriel drank off most of the ale and put her head on her arms and dozed, though she was aware someone turned the hour glass thrice.

"I almost regret this is what we must do to save our necks from the king's spymaster," one of the men said to the other.

"Aye, she be a calm 'un," answered a gruff voice.

Meriel smiled. If they could only hear her heart pounding like all the drums of a regiment of foot. She slept no more after that, but watched as the men gathered coils of rope and lashed several small kegs together.

" "Tis time, lady."

"You don't know my name."

"Knowing nothing is safest, though we see ye're quality."

Meriel finished the last of the ale and followed them outside to a small fishing shallop with a half deck, oars for rowing and two sails fore and aft. She walked down a short plank, and the men threw off the mooring ropes. They rowed away from shore and then set the sails and tacked with the wind around the breakwater toward the open sea.

"Best get ye belowdecks," a sailor told her, as the wind rose and the little flat-bottomed shallop bounced through the waves, spraying the rowers.

She felt as if she were in Charon's boat, crossing the river Styx to dark hell. Though she shook her head to deny the thought, still it lingered.

By full sunup they were in the Channel, with nets out to lee and stern, hauling in fish. Meriel watched the fish flop to their gasping death under the rowers' benches, and thought she might not so enjoy breaking her fast with a plaice or cod next time, which reminded her that she was not hungry, though she should be.

It was near to noon and clouds had overcast the sun when they came up a swell and saw many sails massed in the distance.

"There be the damned Dutchies, now," said the chandler, who had never mentioned his name and did not now.

Giles sat long in the library after his wife retired. He sent his porters to their beds and stared at the door, half expecting it to open once more and Merry to appear in the flickering light of the dying fire. He imagined her rushing to him, throwing her arms about him, begging his indulgence of a brief womanly distemper. She sat on his lap, and he bent near to reach her lips and felt the full fire of them envelope his, the tip of her tongue come out, all shy yet heated, to amuse his.

He groaned, needing to send the sound of it into the far corners of the room, needing to rill the room with his desire. He stood and strode to his books, his comfort, looking at the familiar titles, books that he had loved to absorb and to smell the supple leather and to feel the rich paper crinkle under his hands ... and now not even Cervantes could delight him.

Giles wanted everything to be as it had been for that too-short time in her bed and in his oak tree.... His no more, but theirs because they had shared their love in it.

The pendulum clock struck one, then two, and he knew that there would be no sleep for him this night. He rose and walked into the night chill of his sunken garden and saw the moon reflected in his pond. Or was it a light from her window?