Leopard in Exile (4 page)

considerably, for the Princess possessed a most republican soul. She adored the people of London, and

their entertainments, and the people adored her unreservedly in return. The amount of bad verse which

had been written to her raking blonde good looks was a daunting thing, and had inspired lampoons and

rebuttals in its turn, until it seemed that London was awash in a sea of rhyme—a far more fearsome

threat, as His Grace of Wessex whimsically confided to his valet, than any French threat.

But at last all the elements were in harmony. The date of the ceremony was fixed. Emissaries from

Denmark, Spain, Prussia, Russia, and even China crowded the nation's capital. Nobility from England's

New World Colonial possessions and nabobs from the East India Company vied with each other to

produce exotic entertainments for both the
mobile
and the
ton
.

And at last the day itself arrived.

"Sarah, where are you?" the Duke of Wessex demanded irritably, striding down the hall to his wife's

dressing room.

Herriard House, in London's fashionable East End, had been seething with activity since long before

dawn. The crush of traffic about Westminster Abbey today required that they set out no later than eight

o'clock of the morning to be in place for the one o'clock ceremony. In addition, Their Graces were giving

one of the score of parties to follow the wedding breakfast, and the house was already filled with guests,

borrowed servants, and chaos of the most select order.

"Sarah!" Wessex said again, thrusting open the door to her dressing room without ceremony. "Where—"

"Here, of course. Where else would I be?" his wife asked, her words nearly concealing the gasp of

outrage from Knoyle, Her Grace's abigail.

Wessex stopped, his gaze flickering over the room full of women. His Duchess sat before her mirror, her

back straight, her grey eyes brilliant, and her light brown hair in copious disarray as she suffered the

ministrations of her hairdresser. Knoyle hovered indecisively, unable to decide between overseeing her

lady's toilette or regarding the seamstress who was even now putting the finishing touches on her

ladyship's glittering rose-grey gown.

"Are you not yet dressed?" Wessex demanded, though the answer was patently obvious.

"Easy enough for you, my lord—you have a uniform to wear. I'm not so lucky," Sarah answered with

acerbic fondness.

Major His Grace Rupert St. Ives Dyer, the Duke of Wessex, dismissed his gleaming regimentals without

even a glance. His Grace was a tall, slender man with the black eyes of his Stuart forbears and the blond

fairness of his Saxon ancestors. The Dukedom could trace its beginnings to the merry court of the

Glorious Restoration, though the first Duke of Wessex, whose mother was that firebrand lady, the

Countess of Scathach, came from a line that was already both ancient and royal. All the Dyers possessed

a cold and ruthless charm, though the young Duke—whose sword-blade good looks had been

compared by more than one admirer to the kiss of
la Guillotine
herself—seemed to possess it in

abounding measure. His Grace had recently married, though was yet to set up his nursery, and was said

to retain an interest in matters at the Horse Guards, though what that interest was, there were few who

could say. For many years he had held a commission in the Eleventh Hussars, and in fact had purchased

promotion last year.

But his rank was little more than a screen for his more clandestine activities, and he and Sarah had

spoken of his resigning it. He was glad, now, to have retained it: the silver-laced blue jacket, scarlet

trousers, and gleaming gold-tasseled Hessians were far more comfortable than the Court dress, with

Ducal coronet and ermine cloak, otherwise prescribed for such an important occasion.

Sarah's own costume was a bulky thing of hoops and feathers, as much unlike the current mode as could

be imagined, and she was a freakish sight in the antique garb that the rigid Court protocol instituted by

Henry's Queen demanded.

"Our coach, madame, leaves in a quarter of an hour, whether you are in it or no," Wessex said with an

ironic bow.

"And the Princess will marry whether I am there or not," Sarah pointed out reasonably. "There are seven

other women to carry her train. Oh, do go away, Wessex. Terrify the servants. I vow I shall be with you

as soon as I may, and I can be there no sooner."

The Duke of Wessex, ever a prudent tactician, retreated with a silent flourish.

Sarah regarded the closed door with inward amusement. Her formidable mother-in-law and godmama,

the Dowager Duchess, had sworn to her often and often that all men were just alike, and would rather

face a line of cannon than a public ceremony, but until this moment, Sarah had been certain that her own

husband—whom she had apostrophized as a hatchet-faced harlequin upon their first meeting—was of

another order of creation entirely. It cheered her obscurely to see him as rattled as any other man upon

such an important occasion, particularly since His Grace was in so many respects unlike any other

husband.

She was not certain of the precise moment upon which she had known him for what he was, for the early

days of their relationship had been a series of shocks, riddles, and misunderstandings, complicated not a

little by Sarah's occult and precipitous arrival from another world to take the place of her dying

counterpart, this world's Marchioness of Roxbury. When she had unwittingly stepped into her double's

role, she had acquired not only an identity, but a fiance as well, and one had been as cryptic as the other,

for the Duke of Wessex was England's most noble… spy.

The craft of espionage was not a respectable one, considered, even by those who employed its agents,

to be both dishonorable and demeaning. The fact that it was necessary as well was a terrible paradox

that had forced Wessex to conceal his true nature and activities even from his own family. Even now, if

the truth of his endeavors on behalf of the Crown became common knowledge, the family would be

ruined socially, and have little choice but to withdraw to the country or even to Ireland.

But even with the stakes as high as that, Wessex had trusted his unknown bride with his greatest secret,

and that trust was the basis of the comfortable love that had grown up between them in the two years

they had been married.

Tendre
or no, I see little future for us if I cause him to wait! Rupert has worked so hard for this

day, both as the Duke of Wessex and as an agent of the Crown, that it is not amazing that his

nerves should be shot to flinders. I vow that mine are, and I have had little to do but receive

reports of the Princess's high jinks
!

"Is the gown ready?" she asked.

"A moment more, Your Grace," the modiste said.

Wessex galloped down the stairs two at a time, Atheling following him with his shako, pelisse, and

gauntlets. The Duke stopped at the foot of the stair to receive his accoutrements and permit last-minute

adjustment of his uniform. Atheling settled the shako precisely upon the Duke's newly-shorn flaxen hair

and made a last adjustment to the drape of the bearskin pelisse before stepping back to indicate his

ministrations were at an end.

At that moment, Buckland, the butler, who was standing beside the front door with a look of ill-use upon

his sallow, lantern-jawed countenance, cleared his throat and made an imperceptible movement forward.

"Your Grace has a visitor," he pronounced.

"What,
now
?" Wessex demanded, more than a little astounded. Behind Buckland, Wessex could see that

the parlor door was locked. Presumably, his caller was within.

"Indeed, Your Grace." Buckland's manner assumed even more of expressionlessness, indicating how

very much he disapproved of the caller. But the household staff had strict instructions to admit without

question anyone who came to call upon His Grace (though also to secure those not known to them), for

as a consequence of his duties to the Crown, Wessex's acquaintanceship was extraordinarily broad.

Wessex sighed, and tucked his shako more firmly beneath his arm. "Very well. I will attend to the matter

at once. But let me know the moment Her Grace descends."

The butler inclined his head. Wessex stepped past him and unlocked the door to the small ground-floor

parlor.

There was a small coal-fire burning upon the grate, for even in summer the ground-floor rooms were

inclined to be damp. A large high-backed settee had been drawn up to face the fire, and the brandy

decanter removed from the small table before the window to the floor beside the settee. Whoever

Wessex's caller was, he had made himself entirely at home. Wessex shut the door with a firm click.

"I daresay, it's a trusting gentleman," a plaintive unseen voice complained in a rumbling bass.

"What the devil are you doing here?" Wessex demanded, recognizing the identity of the speaker at once.

The frame of the settee creaked as the caller got to his feet. Though he was impeccably dressed in the

sober height of morning fashion, with a blue superfine coat over biscuit-colored smallclothes, he was a

not inconsiderable figure in any company, for Cerberus St. Jean was a giant of a man, well over six feet in

height and nearly as wide, with massive shoulders and skin the smooth ebony color of brewed coffee.

The son of slaves brought to England a generation before, St. Jean was a native-born English freeman.

He had been educated as a son of the household in which his parents had once served, and had

matriculated at Cambridge. There, he had been recruited by Wessex's own master, and was one of the

few of Wessex's fellow politicals with whom the Duke maintained a public relationship, for St. Jean's

intelligence-garnering was of necessity confined to domestic soil, though through his startling talent for

impersonation, he could take on a dozen parts and play them out flawlessly, from Limehouse slavey to

emigré
Marquis.

Wessex had been introduced to St Jean for the first time more than a year ago, when his own duties had

been focused more on the sifting of gathered intelligence and less upon the gathering of it. Since then,

Baron Misbourne had decreed that Wessex must be withdrawn from the field, for on his last dangerous

mission to France, Wessex's face had become too well known in high places. It had been something of a

relief to move upward from the strictly-enforced ignorance of a field agent to mastery of more of the inner

workings of the White Tower Group.

"I've come to give you the word about some gentlemen that you may meet this afternoon. Lord White—"

(this was the albino Misbourne's work-name, in the event he must be spoken of outside the walls of the

house on Bond Street) "—has received intelligence that trouble is brewing in the Colonies, and you will

be in the company of many of the New Albion lords to-day."

"Trouble is always brewing in the West," Wessex answered. Wessex had only made a few brief visits to

the New Albion colonies over the past ten years, and had never been briefed in-depth upon Albionese

political affairs, though he knew in the most general way that the Tower was active there. "Devil take it,

St. Jean, have you nothing more specific for me on this day of all days man a watching brief?"

St. Jean bent to retrieve his drink. The crystal tumbler was dwarfed by the size of his enormous hand.

"Only that you must pay attention to the Albionese lords today—who they speak to, and who speaks to

them. Now that they must pay for the labor they once exacted as of right, the plantations, especially those

in Virginia and the Carolinas that border on French Louisianne, complain that they will be bankrupt Lord

White is concerned that this talk may become open rebellion, which we cannot afford while the Tyrant

holds Europe."

"They are squeezed very hard," Wessex commented. "With the Mississippi and the Port of

Nouvelle-Orléans closed to England these past four years, the cost of shipping their goods out of an

Atlantic port doubles their costs. Still, I find it hard to sympathize with their distress that slavery has

ended. Men are not cattle to be bought and sold."

The matter of pan-British abolition—for French and Spanish interests in the New World were still a

ready market for slaves even today—had preoccupied Parliament for almost twenty years. Since 1772

there had been no slavery in England herself, and any slave brought to England was manumitted with his

first step onto English soil. By 1778, this was true of all four of the United Kingdoms.

The Abolitionists, led by, among others, Olaudah Equiano of Cambridgeshire, himself once a slave, drew

their membership from every level of society. Even King Henry himself had spoken in their favor, and at

last the tide of special interest had turned. In March of this year, the King had been able to put his

imprimatur upon the bill put forward by William Wilberforce to abolish in all its particulars the slave trade

in Britain and her New World dominions—including Prince Rupert's Land and New Albion—as well.

No longer would British ships lawfully carry a human cargo to foreign ports, nor would any Englishman

be permitted to hold slaves, no matter the country of his birth and residence.

"Still, they will resent it," St. Jean said mildly. "And to enforce the law will gain the Crown few friends.