The Deception (16 page)

I left Paddy with Mrs. Pippen and was passing through the corridor on my way upstairs to change my clothes, when Walters appeared. He was followed by a tired-looking young man in riding clothes, who walked with a noticeable limp. “My lady,” Walters said, “here is a messenger for his lordship from Lord Castlereagh.”

Lord
Castlereagh was the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the present government. “Is it urgent?” I asked the messenger.

“I believe it is, my lady,” the young man replied.

“I do not know where his lordship is at this moment,” Walters confessed. He looked as if he considered this failure to be a cardinal sin.

“He said something about having appointments this afternoon, Walters,” I volunteered.

“Perhaps he is in the estate office, then,” Walters murmured. “I will send a footman to inquire.”

“Do that, Walters. In the meanwhile I will attend to Lord Castlereagh’s messenger.”

Walters said, “He can wait in the antechamber, my lady. There is no need for you to trouble yourself.”

“It is no trouble at all,” I replied, and motioned the limping young man to follow me into the aforementioned antechamber, which functioned as a waiting room for those who were not quite exalted enough to be invited into the drawing room yet were too elevated in rank to be consigned to the kitchen. Lord Castlereagh’s messenger followed me obediently, and when I turned it was to find him staring at his surroundings with a countenance that could only be described as awestruck.

There was reason for his expression. The Greystone anteroom might be smaller than most of the other rooms in the house, but it was no less magnificent. The floor was composed of rich, varicolored marble, and dark green marble columns—the ones that had been rescued from the Tiber— flanked both the door and the fireplace. Gilded statues topped the columns, and the ceiling was gilded as well. I might add that there were no chairs in the room to encourage those waiting to make themselves comfortable.

I rang the bell and a redheaded footman appeared. There was only one redheaded footman on the staff, so I remembered his name. “Charles, will you bring two chairs to the anteroom, please?”

Surprise flickered across the footman’s face when I called him by name. Then he bowed and murmured, “Right away, my lady.”

I motioned to the visitor to join me in front of the fire. “I’d take you to a more comfortable room, but there isn’t any,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”

“Lieutenant John Staple, my lady.”

I looked at his travel-stained, plain blue riding coat. “Are you still with the army, Lieutenant Staple?”

“Yes, my lady. I was injured at Waterloo, and for the last year I have been assigned to messenger duty at the Foreign Office.”

“Cavalry or Foot?” I asked.

His chin went up proudly. “Foot, my lady.”

“My husband was also at Waterloo,” I said.

An attractive smile flitted across the young man’s tired face. He said, “Yes, my lady, I have firsthand cause to know of Lord Greystone’s presence at Waterloo.” I gave him an encouraging look and he added, “I was with Pack’s brigade when Marshal Ney attacked our left center.”

I had done some reading up on the Battle of Waterloo over the winter, so I knew what Lieutenant Staple’s words meant. Pack’s brigade had been part of Wellington’s second line of defense in the left center, and when the Dutch and Belgian troops that composed the first line had fled in the face of a heavy French attack, the English had been badly undermanned to face the strength of the oncoming French.

“There were three thousand of us, and four times that many of them, my lady, but we charged them,” Lieutenant Staple told me with quite justifiable pride. “They were so surprised that they fell back in confusion, but we all knew it was only a matter of minutes until they re-formed and came back at us. That was when Lord Greystone came to our rescue.”

All of England knew the story. Wellington had put Adrian in charge of the heavy cavalry because their regular commander had been killed in action two days before, and once Adrian had seen what was happening on the left center, he had ordered a charge. The cavalry had smashed into the lines of French infantry, sending them staggering back from their powerful hillside position, cutting them down by whole battalions.

The charge had completely wrecked the French columns, and the English cavalry captured two eagles as well as two thousand prisoners. Not content with this coup, Adrian had then led his horsemen even deeper into enemy territory, sabering the artillerymen of Ney’s artillery and severing the traces of the artillery horses. Without horses to pull them, the seventy-four guns had been rendered useless to the French throughout the remainder of the day.

The piece de resistance had come out after the battle, when Wellington learned that Adrian had been wounded by a musket ball in the fighting on June sixteenth and had fought the entire engagement at Waterloo with two broken ribs! He had concealed the injury so as not to be put out of action in the bigger battle he knew was coming.

At this moment, Charles came into the room carrying a chair. He was followed by another footman bearing a second chair. They set them in front of the fire. I sat in one and motioned for Lieutenant Staple to take the other. I noticed how one leg stretched out in front of him awkwardly as he lowered himself, his hands braced on the chair’s arms. His eyes closed briefly with relief as the weight came off his leg.

I thought that the people at the Foreign Office ought not to have asked him to make so long a ride, but I had enough tact not to share that thought with him. I understood very well how annoying it can be when people tell you that you have undertaken a task that is too much for you.

I encouraged him to tell me all about the gallant defense of the left center and Adrian’s heroics. He was still chatting away when Walters appeared in the anteroom doorway. “Lord Greystone is indeed in the estate office, my lady,” he announced. Then, turning to Lieutenant Staple, he said, “If you will follow me, sir, I will take you to his lordship.”

* * * *

I was in my room about to change into my blue taffeta evening dress when the connecting door to Adrian’s room opened and he came in. My heart gave such a jolt when I saw him that I thought he was certain to have heard it. I reached out a hand to the bedpost to steady myself.

He looked at the dress laid out on the bed and said, “I came to ask you not to get dressed for dinner, Kate. I’ve asked Staple to dine with us, and he will have to sit down in his riding clothes.”

“I can wear the dress I had on this morning,” I said. “Will that be all right?”

“A morning dress will be fine.” He spoke absently, as if he had something else on his mind.

“I hope Lieutenant Staple did not bring bad news?” I asked hesitantly. I did not want to pry but, frankly, I was dying of curiosity.

He sighed, came farther into the room, leaned his shoulders against the wall beside the fireplace, and regarded me broodingly. “Castlereagh writes that the unrest in the country is growing worse. The government is talking about suspending habeas corpus and instituting ‘gag’ laws against seditious meetings and literature.”

I frowned. The problem of social unrest in England had been growing ever since the booming wartime economy had collapsed after Waterloo. One of the biggest causes of dissent was the Corn Law, which had been passed the previous year. The purpose of this law was to protect British landowners by halting the import of cheap foreign corn into the country. The result had been a half-starved, underemployed population, so outraged by its poverty and suffering that in January the Regent had been stoned on his way to open Parliament.

“Suspending habeas corpus will not solve anything,” I said angrily. “The problem is that people are hungry and there aren’t enough jobs.”

“I know,” he agreed. “Things have come to such a pass that four thousand petitioners have met on St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, and are planning to march on London. The government is terrified. Castlereagh wants me to come to London immediately.”

I blush to confess that my first reaction to this news had nothing at all to do with the poor starving souls in Manchester. “You’re leaving?”

His eyes lifted to mine. “Yes.”

“What, for heaven’s sake, does Castlereagh expect you to do?” I glared at him. “Lead a cavalry charge against those poor men?”

He looked at me for a moment in silence, then he said, “I hope you have not been listening to Staple with too credulous an ear.”

“Why not? He was very flattering about you, my lord.”

Adrian shook his head. “I happened to be the man in command, that’s all. The English cavalry has always been famous for its charges. They go tearing into battle with exactly the same fervor with which they go tearing after a fox.” A gleam of amusement shone in his eyes, as if he was inviting me to share a joke. “The fact is, they couldn’t stop their horses even if they wanted to.”

I did not agree. “You managed to stop them long enough to capture two of Napoleon’s eagles,” I pointed out.

The amusement died. “Stupidest thing I ever did,” he replied shortly.

It had been the capture of the eagles, of course, that had caused him to be written up in Wellington’s dispatches. That, along with his previous injuries, had been sufficient to make a hero out of Adrian.

“Don’t you like being a hero?” I asked curiously. Most men would have adored it.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” he said bitterly. He turned to stare into the fire, affording me an excellent view of his back. “The real heroes of Waterloo are all dead, Kate.” He kicked at a log and sparks shot up in a cascading spray of red-gold. “There were fifteen thousand English casualties at Waterloo, and seven thousand of our Prussian allies were killed as well. God knows how many of the French were slaughtered. To talk about someone still living as being a hero is nothing short of sacrilege.” He gave the logs another kick.

I gazed at him in silence. He had leaned his hands on the mantelpiece and was still staring into the fire. His back looked rigid. “Is that what you said to Lieutenant Staple?” I asked.

He shook his head wearily. “The whole experience was such a nightmare that men need something to help them romanticize it so they won’t have to remember the reality. I just happened to be one of the unlucky fellows they chose to lionize. Believe me, I didn’t do any more than thousands of other soldiers on that field.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

He turned away from the fire and looked at me. “Because I don’t want you having any false ideas about my being a hero,” he said. The candle in the wall sconce shone behind his head like a halo. “I’m not.”

I smiled and did not reply.

* * * *

Dinner was a pleasantly informal affair that evening. From somewhere in the house Mrs. Pippen had unearthed a small table, and Adrian had caused it to be installed in the dining room. It was made of old-fashioned oak, would sit ten people at the very most, did not suit the room at all, but it was much more conducive to conversation than the splendid table that it superseded.

“I’ll order a small mahogany table when I’m in London,” Adrian said when Harry commented on the new addition. “Kate’s right; the other table is much too large for family dining.”

“Where did you put the other table?” I asked.

“I have no idea. Mrs. Pippen tucked it away somewhere. We can drag it out if ever we have a dinner party.”

I smiled at Lieutenant Staple, who was sitting on my right, and told him a comical story about trying to dine with someone who is seated half a mile distant from one. He had looked a little overwhelmed when we first sat down, but my story made him laugh. I embroidered my theme a little, and he was much more relaxed when the first round of footmen entered the room bearing food. I glanced at Adrian and found him watching me with approval in his eyes.

To my horror, I immediately thought about bed.

I turned to Harry, gave him a brilliant smile, and said something utterly inane. He laughed. The first course, a pleasant-tasting soup made with chicken,, was served, and we all tucked in.

Adrian was leaving with Lieutenant Staple the following morning. “I don’t want Staple riding all the way back to London,” he had told me before we came down to dinner. “I’ll drive the curricle and he can accompany me.”

I had agreed that the obviously weary lieutenant should not make such a ride again. Then I had asked Adrian if he knew how long he would be staying in London and he had said he didn’t, but that he would let me know when he did. He had said nothing at all about tonight.

I drank lemonade instead of wine, ate my dinner, and listened to the men talk about the problems in the country, contributing a comment here and there when someone looked my way. The candles glimmered in the great overhead chandelier, which was almost as large as the oak table. The fire crackled in the fireplace. The footmen’s feet made scarcely a sound on the thick rug. There was the muffled sound of rain pattering against the glass of the long windows.

“It’s raining,” I said.

The men stopped talking to listen.

“If it’s still raining tomorrow, we’ll take the chaise,” Adrian said to Lieutenant Staple.

The fire cracked again, drowning out for a moment the sound of the rain. When I heard it again it was drumming harder than before.

I refused dessert and said to Adrian, “I’m going to go and say good night to Paddy.”

He nodded, and the three men got to their feet as I left the room.

I found Paddy tucked up in the housekeeper’s room with Mrs. Pippen and Walters. They were all drinking tea.

“I just came to say good night to Paddy,” I told them. “Please, sit down.”

The old groom came across the room to give me a good hard hug. “You are not to be fretting yourself, girl,” he ordered.

“I’m not.”

“Hmm.” He gave me a shrewd look. “I’ll be seeing you in the morning before I leave.”

Everyone would be leaving me in the morning, I thought dismally. I managed a smile. “Sleep well.” I turned to Paddy’s companions. “Good night, Mrs. Pippen. Good night, Walters.”