The Counterfeit Gentleman (21 page)

Bethia could not believe what she was hearing—indeed, it was too wonderful to be true. How could Digory, in only
a day and a half, have effected such a change in her aunt’s attitude toward him?

But the evidence was right before her eyes. Aunt Eu
phemia was smiling and looking as pleased as if she herself
had arranged the match.

“You will, of course, not wish to keep him waiting, but I
do think he will not mind if you delay long enough to
change your gown. Perhaps your new pomona green morning dress might be appropriate. Or do you prefer the jonquil
silk with the gold embroidery?”

But Bethia was already hurrying out of the room and
down the stairs. Digory had come back—he was here!

She paused in the doorway of the library, feeling unac
countably shy, but then he turned toward her and smiled,
and she ran forward and threw herself into his arms.

“Oh, you cannot know how much I have missed you,”
she said, hugging him as tightly as she could and laughing
out of sheer joy.

Holding her in his arms, feeling her warmth through the
thin layers of clothing that separated them, Digory had a
grim foretaste of the hell he was letting himself in for.

How had he ever thought that he could marry her and
then not be a proper husband to her? Her curves fit against
him as if God himself had created the two of them specifi
cally for each other.

Before he could set her aside—and his arms blatantly
disobeyed his command to release her—she pulled his head
down and kissed him full on his lips.

This is not supposed to be happening, he thought before
all logic fled his brain, to be replaced by passion.

“I love you,” she murmured finally, giving a contented
little sigh. “Indeed, I feel as if I have loved you forever, and
I know I shall love you with all my heart for the rest of my
life.”

Her words were like a cold bucket of water thrown into
his face, bringing him back to the reality he could not ig
nore, no matter how desperately he might wish to do so. But even knowing their embrace could not—must not—
continue, he did not find within himself the resolution
needed to release her.

“However did you manage to persuade my aunt to agree
to this marriage?” Bethia asked, leaning back in his arms
only enough that she could look into his eyes. “No, do not
tell me. It is enough that you have achieved this miracle.
Oh, I cannot believe that we will be married a week from
now.”

Her eyes were filled with delight and trust and inno
cence, but his own heart was heavy with guilt. “Tomor
row,” he finally managed to say.

“Tomorrow?”

“Your aunt has agreed that we shall be married tomor
row at Lady Letitia’s house,” he said.

“Can it really be? Do I have to suffer through only one
more night alone before we are together?” Even while she was smiling up at him, her eyes filled with tears. “Do you
know,” she said, her lower lip quivering, “you have given
me so much more than I could ever have hoped for, and yet
I am still not satisfied. I wish we could be married this
evening, this hour, this very minute.”

What had he ever done in his life that was wicked
enough to deserve such punishment? Digory wondered.
The fires of hell would seem a relief compared to the tor
ture he was now enduring.

“Yoo-hoo,” a voice called out. Looking up, Digory saw
Lady Clovyle standing in the doorway, smiling coyly at
him. “It would appear your suit has prospered, Mr. Rendel.
I vow, I have never seen my niece looking quite so happy.”

“Oh, Aunt Euphemia,” Bethia said, running to throw her
arms around her aunt’s neck. “Oh, thank you, thank you,
thank you. You have made me the happiest person in Lon
don.”

“No, no, my dear, it is quite clear to all but the blindest
eye that it is Mr. Rendel who has made you this happy. I
am only thankful that I was able to do my small part in
helping Cupid aim his little arrows.”

Lady Clovyle smiled at Digory as if he were the catch of
the Season, and he could but marvel at her talent for self-deception.

“If you will excuse me, I must see about making arrange
ments for tomorrow’s ceremony,” he said. Only by avoid
ing looking into Bethia’s eyes was he able to take his leave.

* * * *

Late that night, Lord Edington hosted a bachelor party
for Digory, although a stranger entering the library would have deemed it a very odd sort of affair. For one thing, al
though the butler had produced a truly mellow port, no one was imbibing deeply.

The four men Edington had invited had been espionage
agents, and during the war with France their lives had de
pended upon being able to think more clearly than their op
ponents. Even though the hostilities were over, they had not
yet entirely cast off their habits of caution and moderation.

But it was not so much the lack of drunken revelry that
made this evening unique, Digory realized, rather it was the lack of ribald banter and raillery that set this gathering apart
from the usual such parties. Instead of needling him about
the pleasures of the bachelor life he was about to give up, Digory’s companions were discussing how best to bamboo
zle the
haut ton
into thinking he was and always had been
one of their own.

“It is obvious that Rendel cannot have spent his entire
life in England without anyone becoming acquainted with
him except the five of us,” Roger Nyesmith said. His voice was mild, but he was peeling an apple with a knife that had never been designed for kitchen use.

“But then we must perforce have met him abroad, and
the problem with that is we cannot claim to have encoun
tered him in India or Macao or Russia if we have never
been to any of those places ourselves,” Edward Townsley
said, wandering around the room as if possessed of too much energy to sit down. “I cannot speak for the rest of
you, but the only time I have traveled outside of England
was when I went to France, and that is not common knowledge, nor would the War Office be at all happy if it were to
become widely known. So if I were to claim I had met Ren
del on the Continent, it would raise more questions about
my past than it would answer about his.”

“Such a homebody you are,” Roger Nyesmith said. “I, on the other hand, have traveled extensively in Canada and the
United States. Went over in the spring of ‘04 and didn’t
come home until the fall of ‘06. We could say we
met... where?”

“Never having been to America,” Digory answered, “I would be undone the first time anyone asked me the simplest question about that country.”

“That is the other side of the problem,” Patrick Fitzhugh said. “To avoid exposing our little sham, we must limit ourselves to where Rendel himself has actually been.”

The others all looked at Digory expectantly. “I have been
to the Low Countries, and France, Portugal, and Spain, and to most of the countries around the Mediterranean,” he ad
mitted. “But I have always stayed close to the coastline and
never ventured far inland.”

“More than likely I have been to all the Mediterranean
and Channel ports that you have visited,” Oliver Lord
Cavenaugh said, idly swinging his quizzing glass back and forth. “Yet I must decline to tell anyone that I made your
acquaintance in Cairo or Barcelona or even in Naples.”

Lord Edington immediately took umbrage. “If you do
not wish to play the game,” he said, anger sharpening his voice, “then you are free to ignore us all. But you betray
Rendel at your own peril.” Lame he might now be, but the
reputation Edington had acquired while spying on the
French was sufficient to make the others eye him with ap
prehension.

Only Cavenaugh appeared not the least bit dismayed.
Raising his quizzing glass, he stared at Edington while the
murmurs of the others died down and the room became
quiet enough that the ticking of the mantel clock could be
heard.

How much they knew about Cavenaugh, Digory could not say. But what he himself knew made him sure that
Cavenaugh was in truth the most dangerous and most ruthless man in the room. He was likewise the only one whose
thoughts had ever been one step ahead of Digory’s.

Slender of build and not above average height, Cave
naugh was decked out tonight like the veriest coxcomb. But
his present appearance to the contrary, he had for years suc
cessfully played the role of wharf rat, ready to do any job, no matter how loathsome, for the price of a bottle of gin or
a flagon of brandy.

Speaking an almost incomprehensible mixture of gutter Arabic, the most vulgar Italian, and French patois, he had
slunk into and out of French, Italian, and Spanish ports with
the greatest of ease, and without anyone ever suspecting
that he was English, much less that he was a spy. The infor
mation he had obtained had been invaluable, his methods never fully disclosed.

But it would seem that Cavenaugh’s conscience, which
had been most accommodatingly flexible during wartime, would not allow him to participate in any peacetime decep
tion.

“I cannot fault you for not wanting to have any part of
this,” Digory said, but Cavenaugh paid him no attention.

“You know I must always be more than happy to meet
you at dawn with a sword or pistol in my hand, Matthew,”
he said, “but before you arrange for your seconds, permit
me to say that I have nothing against fooling the ton. Why,
I would even be willing to persuade half of London that
Rendel here is the long lost Dauphin if such were his wish.
But what you have overlooked in your childish plotting is
that Englishmen, when they are away from these hallowed shores, cling to one another in veritable clumps, as it were,
and they will only wonder that Rendel was conspicuously absent from their fellowship.”

“Then what you are saying, in essence,” Fitzhugh said,
“is that we have set ourselves an impossible task.”

“Not at all,” Cavenaugh said, a bit of a smile creeping
into his voice. “But you are all approaching this problem
from the wrong direction. You think we must come up with
answers to every possible question we might be asked, but the fact of the matter is, for every question we answer, we will surely be asked a dozen more.”

“So what would you have us do?” Nyesmith asked. “Are you suggesting that we admit defeat before we have even begun?”

“
Au contraire, mon ami
,” Cavenaugh said smoothly,
flicking an invisible bit of lint off his sleeve. “We have
only to act the way we would naturally act if someone were to begin quizzing us about our personal affairs, namely we
shall become highly indignant. For if I call a man friend, then who has a right to question where I have met him or
how long I have known him? Observe the only proper re
sponse to an impertinent question.” He raised his quizzing glass and regarded Nyesmith with a look of frosty disdain
that would have chilled the Beau himself.

Townsley was the first to laugh, and even Edington
began to smile.

“Since it appears we have nothing more to do here ex
cept to wish Rendel a long and happy married life,”
Fitzhugh said, “I suggest we take our leave.”

“There is one more item on the agenda,” Edington said,
and he glanced over to Cavenaugh, who nodded his head as
if he already knew what the viscount was going to say. “There remains the matter of the wicked cousin. I cannot
feel easy so long as we remain in ignorance of his identity.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the other men,
and Digory swore to himself, then spoke up quickly, in
hopes that he might yet divert them all from this line of reasoning. “I have no desire for revenge. Being deprived of the
fortune he sought to inherit will be punishment enough for
Miss Pepperell’s cousin.”

Five pairs of eyes looked at him impassively. Although they were experienced at hiding their thoughts, in this case
their very silence revealed clearly what they were thinking:
Miss Pepperell had nearly been drowned. The three men
who had attempted to kill her had acted deliberately and
with malice aforethought. One of them had died acciden
tally while engaged in that wicked piece of work. The sec
ond was dead at the hands of the third. It followed therefore that the third man—the one who had instigated the plot—likewise deserved to die.