Revealed (10 page)

And hindered remarkably by the fact that she was seated at the end nearest to Lady Worth.

Who, as it turned out, was insane.

The evening began thusly: Once everyone had arrived and greetings done, they proceeded to the dining room. Unfortunately, Phillippa was not matched with Mr. Worth; he, as a member of the family, was escorting somebody’s aunt. Therefore she was forced to make small talk with an uncle to someone, twice removed, who had an eligible son. It was the only topic of conversation the man ventured, and he did so repeatedly.

Once the first course was served, Phillippa thought she could safely begin her inquiry. Alas, she was wrong.

“Mr. Worth,” she began, over a spoonful of turtle soup, “I’m pleased to see you here this evening.”

He looked up at her. If he was startled, he didn’t show it. “And you as well, Mrs. Benning. I did not know you were acquainted with my sister-in-law.”

“Oh, I’m acquainted with a great many people, Mr. Worth,” Phillippa replied, “but I—”

“I can think of a few people you’re not acquainted with, Mrs. Benning,” Lady Worth jumped in. “Their names are Jackie, Jeffy, Michael, Rosie, Malcolm, Roger, Frederick, Lisel, oh, dear little Benjamin . . .”

At the odd look Phillippa gave her, Lady Worth clarified. “They are orphans, Mrs. Benning. Students at the school I fund.”

A quick glance at Totty only earned Phillippa her companion’s raised brows.
I told you so,
they said.

“There are dozens and dozens of others,” Lady Worth continued, unmollified by Phillippa’s stricken expression, “and new children in need every day. Bright children, talented children, whose misfortune—no fault of their own—has lost them all opportunity in our cruel world.”

She paused for breath, obviously expecting a response to her impassioned plea. Phillippa opted for a noncommittal, “Lovely soup, Lady Worth,” and proceeded to focus her attention on consuming it in a leisurely manner.

Phillippa was used to people wanting her money. She was one of the richest heiresses in Britain and had been since birth. When she was seven, she almost fell prey to a man who swore to save the puppy population of Surrey from the painful death of a cruel winter with her pocket allowance. But even he saved the hard sell for later on in their conversation.

Determined to pursue her own line of questioning, Phillippa gave her attention once again to Mr. Worth. “I wondered if your work would have kept you from attending,” she said.

That did startle him, his spoon pausing halfway to his mouth.

“You are often absent from society, is all I mean. Until recently, that is.”

A wry smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Work does not hamper me. The offices at Whitehall close before dinner, just like everywhere else.”

“So your sporadic attendance in society is due to . . . ?”

An eyebrow joined the upward tilt of the mouth. “My prospects for enjoying an evening, of course. For instance, last week I thought to attend Almack’s, but I did not enjoy it, so I left. But then I went to the Fieldstones’ and had a most interesting time.”

It was Phillippa’s turn to pause and meet his eyes. They twinkled with amusement—far too much for her liking.

“I imagine your social schedule is dictated by the same whims, Mrs. Benning,” he drawled.

“Marcus is very involved with the school as well, Mrs. Benning,” Lady Worth, having recovered from the previous slight, found her tongue and employed it once again. “I daresay it takes up a lot of the time used by more frivolous people in more frivolous pursuits. Not that I think you frivolous!” Lady Worth stammered. “No, no, its just, of course, you don’t have work to attend to daily, and . . .”

She trailed off lamely, her face beet red. Phillippa almost felt sorry for her. She was trying awfully hard.

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Worth? It must be very prestigious if you’re at the Whitehall offices. Unless, of course, it’s secret.”

“No secret at all—and not terribly prestigious, I’m afraid,” he answered, as the soup bowls were taken and the next course, a cold lamb roast, was brought round. “I shuffle papers in the War Department. There is an immense amount of paper generated when there’s no war to fight, and it all requires shuffling.”

She smiled at that. Who said the Blue Raven could not have a sense of humor?

Even if he was blithely sidestepping her question’s intent. Such it was for the remaining four courses. Phillippa would attempt a seemingly innocuous and yet slightly probing question, Lady Worth would interject in a ham-fisted manner, and Mr. Worth would barely answer her query.

Never had Phillippa been so relieved to have the ladies remove to the parlor. It signaled a quickly shifting end to the party; another half hour, and she and Totty could make their escape back to the mad whirl of a
real
Ton party. One with people she, if not liked, then at least knew, and saw all the time, and danced with regularly, who were all interested in the same things. And eventually, someone would do something scandalous—sometimes her—to enliven the festivities, and . . .

Then again, after tonight, she would likely not be afforded the opportunity to uncover information about Marcus Worth with impunity. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to spend more time here.

“And then Jimmy—he was the fourteenth orphan the school gave a scholarship to—he told me how it was the first pair of socks he’d ever had that didn’t have holes,” Lady Worth declared from across the room, in sharp, carrying tones.

Worthwhile to spend more time here, yes. In the same room as Lady Worth? Perhaps not.

Gently leaning over, Phillippa whispered in her companion’s ear. Mrs. Tottendale seemed to have frozen herself superbly in a gesture of self-defense, as if the charity-minded ladies wouldn’t see her if she remained still.

“Totty, see if you can’t tear your hem.”

“Hm? Wha—?” Totty replied, coming out of a glassy-eyed reverie.

“Tear your hem,” Phillippa reiterated while keeping a placid smile on her face.

Totty looked down. “No I haven’t. Phillippa, what on earth are you talking about? And where is my wine? I can’t fault the cellar in this place, certainly . . .”

Rolling her eyes, Phillippa shifted casually, pinned a bit of Totty’s hem with her heel, and—
riiiiip
!

“Oh, Totty! Your hem, look!”

“I understand the need for a break from insipidity. But why did you have to ruin my dress?”

Having successfully excused themselves in search of a place to repair the torn hem, Phillippa and Totty left the parlor and easily found a retiring room, where Totty whipped out her miniature dress repair kit (God help Phillippa if she ever left home without it) and quickly went to work on the seam.

“Because it was your dress or mine, and I certainly wasn’t going to tear
my
dress, Totty. Don’t be silly. Will you be all right here?”

“Of course,” Totty replied intent upon her sewing. Then she looked up, just when Phillippa’s hand was upon the door latch. “Phillippa . . .”

“Yes, Totty?” she replied, all innocence.

“Where are you going? Back to the parlor already?”

Phillippa paused a moment before pasting on her sweetest smile.

“Yes, Totty.”

And she slipped through the door.

She had no idea where she was going. This wasn’t even Marcus Worth’s home; it was his brother’s London house. Marcus maintained bachelor quarters in town. But he must have spent time here as a child; there must be something from his youth that would indicate a future interest in subterfuge. Perhaps a book on spying techniques, or a diary with an entry entitled, “Dear Diary, I have recently taken a surprising interest in subterfuge . . .”

Although that might be too much to hope for.

But she had to know. She had to. Something about him—that is, about the idea of him being the Blue Raven—picked at her brain like a woodpecker on a tree. It annoyed the tree, certainly, but what if a beetle was hiding under that bark?

Shaking off any doubts (and bad metaphors), Phillippa opened the first door she came to.

Well, her hasty search had to begin somewhere, and the library seemed as a good a place as any.

Unlike the last library she stole away to during a party, this one actually contained books.

Tons of books. Yards of books.
Miles
of books. Shelves stretched to the double-story ceiling, ladders on rollers allowed access to the highest. A desk by the large bay windows was in a state of efficient disorder. Obviously someone knew where everything was on that mahogany surface—and that someone certainly wasn’t her.

But it was the least dusty section of the room, and given the amount of square footage to cover, the least dusty place, and therefore most recently used, seemed the place to begin.

Carefully, carefully, she began to leaf through the papers and books on the desk. She learned very little, except that Lord Worth seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with crop rotation. What a man in London was doing thinking about cabbage growth was beyond her, but she didn’t have time to care. Nor did she care about his investment portfolio, which seemed marginal and not particularly exciting, nor his notes to his secretary and valet, requiring new dress shirts, a possible acquisition of a painting for his wife’s birthday, and a detailed list of grouse recently shot to be mounted.

Frustrated, she reordered the desk into its original appearance. It certainly didn’t help that she had no real idea of what to look for: something incriminating, something worthy of note; a letter from the war department; a medal of commendation, a—

“Oh, I’m going about this all wrong!” Phillippa whispered into the pale blue light of the empty room. After all, she was blindly looking, hoping to find something, anything, when what was wanted—nay, what was needed—was to think like
him
.

“Now, if I were the Blue Raven, where would I hide incriminating evidence in my brother’s library?”

It felt a little silly to say out loud, she thought as she allowed her eyes to scan the shelves. Especially that name. “Blue Raven?” she said again, testing the sound of it against reality. Honestly, she thought, if I were a spy, I would pick a better name. Something menacing. The Destroyer. The Snake.

Was there even such a bird as a blue raven?

Her eyes flitted automatically to the farthest wall, where a section of the library was dedicated to the natural world. Then it hit her.

“Of course!” she cried. Grabbing one of the ladders, she wheeled it along the shelves to that side of the room. What better place to hide evidence of the Blue Raven than in a book about birds?

She slid the ladder as far as the rails would allow, entrenching herself in titles such as
Zoology: A Catalogue of Animals
and
Wild Beasts of the West Indies.
Whether blue ravens were wild beasts found in the West Indies she did not know, but she guessed not; if they existed at all, it was likely closer to home and somewhere in the
B
for
Birds
area of the shelves.

So up she went. Higher up the ladder, past
Elephants: A Remembered History
, past
Small Dogs
and
Large Cats
(Bitsy would surely be featured in one and scared to pieces of the other) until she found, far to her left, several volumes labeled
Birds
, volume A, volume B, and so on. They were merely marginally dusty, bespeaking use in the past year or so. And Lord Worth’s passion for shooting grouse notwithstanding, she doubted the gentleman himself had much true interest in starting an aviary.

She reached over and pulled the second volume,
Birds
, volume B, off the shelf. It was a slim, brown leather book that had been published approximately twenty years previous. Unfortunately, it contained no reference to Blue Ravens. She replaced it carefully, and leaned over even farther, reaching for
Birds
, volume R. Reaching, reaching . . . almost there . . . her finger was
just
on the spine—

“Why is it I always find you skulking about other people’s libraries?”

Phillippa nearly jumped out of her skin and turned. Unfortunately, being so precariously balanced on a ladder while out-of-skin jumping has the most predictable of Newtonian effects.

She fell.

Right into the waiting arms of Marcus Worth.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Just me.”

Cradled in his embrace, staring into his eyes, Phillippa knew one thing.

It was going to be the challenge of her life to talk her way out of this one.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, something at the corner of her vision caught her attention.

She had not been the only thing to fall from the shelves.
Birds
, volume R, lay on the floor, splayed open. It contained no reference to ravens. Nor did it contain any references to rheas, rock pigeons, or red-throated loons. Indeed, it contained no pages at all. The book had been hollowed out, and in the place of information, there was only a handful of feathers.