The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match (4 page)

“Of course, though I can't promise to answer it.”

“Shouldn't a competent chaperone be marching outside right now, to snatch her charge from the rapacious jaws of Mr. Langley?”

“I am not Miss Morrison's chaperone. I am her companion.”

“You have some responsibility for her virtue, I believe.”

“Her virtue is safe enough. For one thing, it's far too cold out there. For another thing, she's with Mr. Langley, who is, as you so aptly observe, a watery fellow.”

“Not the sort of chap to ravish a young lady out of hand?”

She smiled. “If Miss Morrison decides she wants to be ravished, she'll have a hard time convincing him to bow to her wishes. Mr. Langley is the kind of man who reads Richardson for pleasure.”

There was something about the way she said the word
pleasure
.

Olympia nodded sympathetically. “I see. You'll give them a few more minutes, then?”

“It's the least I can do, after he went to so much effort. One doesn't cross an ocean in cold blood.”

There were, he noticed, a few gray hairs threaded inside that thick braid, which lay so enviably across her chest. The top of her head reached the top of his shoulder, so she had to tilt her neck to address him. She had a long, ornamental neck, and yet somehow sturdy as well, the sort of neck that could hold up a practical head like hers. He examined her eyes, which were a clear and almost colorless blue—he knew this because he had noticed them earlier, during dinner, when the brilliant chandeliers illuminated her—and did not flinch before him. Not even a flicker.

He didn't have a name for it, this sensation. It was more of an instinct, honed over the decades; a marrow-deep recognition of like to like.
This
person.
There
you are. At certain points in his career, he had tried to enact a more scientific study of identification, to recognize certain personal characteristics, certain tendencies, clothes, gestures. But in the end, he discovered, his instinct had always worked best: elegant, simple, efficient. Nearly flawless.

Nearly.

“May I ask you another impertinent question, Mrs. Schuyler?” asked the Duke of Olympia.

“Yes, with the same caveat as before.”

“You are, for obvious reasons, better placed than I am to observe the habits and intimacies of the ladies who sail with us this voyage. You are also, I believe, an unusually perceptive woman. Has any particular member of our little shipboard society behaved in a manner that strikes you as, perhaps—I want a word—
unusual
?”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

Olympia sighed and peered upward, as if this delicate maneuver might better be accomplished hanging upside down in the manner of the orangutans.

“Someone who does not quite fit in among the others. Someone who perhaps keeps to herself, who dresses in such a manner as not to attract attention. Who behaves, in some inexpressible way, not quite like the other passengers.”

Mrs. Schuyler smiled gently. “Like
me
, do you mean?”

“Hmm. Yes. I take your point.”

“Sir, if you can't make yourself more plain, I must beg you to excuse me. Miss Morrison has had her five minutes of happiness, and I really must return her to her duty.”

“One moment, then.” He put his hand under her elbow and drew a step closer. Her eyes widened, but she didn't gasp. She smelled rather delicately of orange blossom, which was not the scent he would have expected, but which seemed, on detecting it, to suit her perfectly. He dropped his voice to a few vibrant decibels. “I have been informed by the authorities”—he left it at that, the wonderfully vague word
authorities
—“that a foreign agent is traveling under guise of a female first-class passenger aboard this vessel, in order to deliver a certain set of sensitive diplomatic papers to a member of the French government. As a trusted confidant of the British side, I am afraid it falls to my duty to discover and prevent this unlawful transfer.”

Her eyelids fell in a slow blink. “My dear sir. I don't understand.”

“The situation is, of course, more complicated than—”

“But—how extraordinary—are you trying to tell me you're a—dear me, what's the word—a
spy
?”

“A spy, madam? Of course not.” He detested the term.

Her right hand moved to her mouth, just in time to smother a peal of laughter.

“My goodness,” she said. “How perfectly—dear me—I never expected—”

“Madam?”

“Ha, ha—
a trusted confidant
—ha, ha—
falls to my duty
—oh, my—”

“You are amused, Mrs. Schuyler?”

She drew in a shuddering little breath and composed herself. “My dear sir. I'm so grateful. You've enlivened a rather tedious evening into a most delightful farce. But I'm afraid I really must see about Ruby, before she convinces poor Mr. Langley to commit some terrible impropriety, for which he will rail himself later. I'm afraid your—ha, ha—I beg your pardon—your
sensitive diplomatic papers
must rest undisturbed for another night.”

She removed her elbow from his grasp and laid a hand on the door latch. Her mouth was pink with amusement, still tilted upward at each end.
Smiling.

Having chosen a life's work that was thickly greased with the element of surprise, the Duke of Olympia was never shocked to be shocked. He found, however, as he gazed down at Mrs. Schuyler's amused and delicious mouth, that he was more than capable of a touch of—well, what
was
this sensation, crawling around in the cavity of his chest, which had a moment ago been filled so happily with that exhilarating rush of pure oxygen?

Disappointment.
Aggrieved
disappointment.

His training saved him, as it was designed to do. His face remained passive, his eyes never blinked. He straightened his figure—thank God for towering height, at a moment like this, even if it left him in constant danger of braining himself on a threshold—and said: “I see. By all means, let us rescue Mr. Langley.” A brief bow. “Good night, Mrs. Schuyler. I hope we shall meet shortly at breakfast.” Emphasis on
shortly
.

“Indeed, Your Grace. Good night.”

He began to beat a regal retreat, and paused.

“Ah. One small matter. I hope you will relieve my curiosity. How did you know I was approaching, a moment ago? I protest I took the greatest precaution to remain silent.”

The little smile turned into a skeptical knot as she looked him over, as if to say,
Silent? A great shambling giant like you? How you deceive yourself!
But then she found his eyes again, and there were these wonderful little crinkles at the corners of her own, which soothed his rumpled pride in a gentle and unexpected way.

“Were you not smoking a cigar, sir? I believe I caught the wind of it. My late husband used to smoke that very brand.”

***

By the time Penelope returned to her berth, having collected an astonished and unrepentant Ruby, having kindly seen off a mortified and apologetic Mr. Robert Langley, she was too exhausted to reexamine the details of her extraordinary conversation with the Duke of Olympia in the darkened corridor of the promenade deck.

She made sure, however, to run her hand inside the hidden compartment of her trunk before she fell asleep, to reassure herself that the stiff and unassuming portfolio she had placed there that morning remained securely in its place.

Day Two

SS
Majestic

At sea

“But you won't tell Mama, will you?” said Ruby, in her most cajoling voice, as they dressed for breakfast.

“That depends, my dear.”

“On what? Tell me! I'll do anything.” Her eyes were a damp hazel, shaped into worried puppylike ovals.

Penelope reached for her gloves. “You must realize that Mr. Langley has chosen exactly the wrong strategy. Subterfuge is never the best means of winning favor with the family of the lady of one's hopes.”

“But they gave him no choice. He approached Papa—”

“And Papa didn't precisely
refuse
, did he?”

Ruby turned away and pinned her hat in place with a series of ruthless jabs. “Not until Mama said her piece.”

“Then to whom should Mr. Langley be seeking to appeal, in order to ingratiate himself with the family?”

“Mama,” Ruby said reluctantly. Her hands fell to her sides as she contemplated the fair reflection in the mirror. She tilted her head one way, and another, searching vainly for flaws.

“And is Mr. Langley likely to win over Mama by arranging clandestine meetings with her dear and innocent daughter? Particularly when there's a coronet dangling in the other direction?”

“But there isn't. I'll never marry one of those awful chinless aristocrats.”

“The Duke of Olympia has a magnificent chin,” Penelope said sharply.

“It's bare, like a baby's. Robert has such a dishy set of whiskers.”

Penelope marched to the door. “Regardless. If you're determined to marry Mr. Langley, you've got to be more clever about it.”

“How so?”

“My dear girl. As every sportsman knows, you can't win unless you understand your opponent. What he desires most, and more importantly—” She rested her hand on the knob and paused grandly.

“Yes?”

“What he fears above all.”

Ruby's eyebrows narrowed to a dangerous point, and—even more dangerously—she didn't reply: not as they left the cabin and walked toward the first-class saloon for breakfast, not as they found their places at the exact eighth stroke of the clock, just in time to receive coffee gratefully from the hands of a white-coated steward. Not even when Mrs. Morrison bid them both a wordy good morning, though Mrs. Morrison—like most chatterboxes—never noticed.

In fact, Ruby only found her dulcet voice again when the Duke of Olympia approached their party.

“Good morning, ladies,” he began, punctuating the greeting with a polite incline of his noble head, but that was all, because Mrs. Morrison had already jumped out of her skin in delight.

“Good morning, Your Grace!” (She had evidently spent the night in the company of a conduct book detailing the modes of polite address.) “What a very great pleasure to have you join us for breakfast. I do love a good breakfast, especially when I'm near the sea. And you can't get much nearer than an ocean liner, can you? I remember when we sailed to Paris last year—we like to sail to Paris for our clothes, you know, because these French dressmakers are so much more
à la mode
, don't you think? So much more in advance of the ones back home, not that I would ever criticize our own kind, it's just a matter of
taste
, you know—as I said, I remember when we . . . when . . .” Here she was forced to stop and blink, because she had in fact already forgotten what she had just remembered.

“When you sailed to Paris last year?” said the Duke of Olympia, who had endured with fortitude her entire speech, wincing only slightly at the flat, long-voweled delivery of the words
à la mode.

“Yes, but . . .
what
?” She tapped her coffee cup.

“Ah. Well. I await eagerly the return of your recollection, Mrs. Morrison.” Olympia turned to the opposite side of the table and fixed Penelope with the kind of amicable blue gaze that might have pulverized a lesser woman and blown her remains away to fertilize the four corners of the earth. “Miss Morrison? Mrs. Schuyler? I trust you passed a peaceful night.”

Ruby set down her cup. “How extremely
kind
of you to inquire, Your Grace. We are both amazingly well, aren't we, Mrs. Schuyler? Just absolutely
grand
this morning.”

“Indeed,” said Penelope. Her skin prickled. She knew that voice of Ruby's, the silken drawl of those consonants, and it meant only one thing: Miss Morrison was up to something. And if Penelope had to guess, she imagined that something involved a change in matrimonial tactics.

The question was: changed to what?

“I think it must be the ocean air, don't you, sir? It's so bracing. It makes one think
anything's
possible.”

To the duke's credit, he turned his gaze toward Ruby with only a mild expression of suspicion. “I quite agree. An hour on deck makes an ancient fellow like oneself feel positively middle-aged.”

On Penelope's other side, Miss Crawley poked her ribs and said loudly, in the manner of the nearly deaf, “WHO'S THE GIANT?”

Poor Miss Crawley. They had met her yesterday afternoon, over tea in the ladies' saloon. She was elderly and lumpen and wheeled about in a magnificent invalid's chair by a grave female attendant, who regarded the world through a pair of bottle-thick spectacles, down a nose the approximate shape and size of Florida. Miss Crawley came from one of those very old and tightfisted New York families, much like the Schuylers, though it seemed she'd actually managed to wrangle an inheritance from them and liked—as she said, in a voice that banged recklessly about the furniture—to TRAVEL THE FAR REACHES OF THE GLOBE. She was also, she announced proudly, A SOCIALIST, and she DIDN'T CARE WHO KNEW IT. At one promising lull in the conversation, Penelope had been tempted to ask why Miss Crawley didn't just give away her money and travel in steerage, according to her avowed principles.

But that would have been rude.

She leaned toward Miss Crawley and said, into the round brass bell of her ear trumpet, “He's the Duke of Olympia.”

“OLYMPIA? THE MORRISON GIRL'S FLIRTING WITH A GREEK?”

“No, he's not Greek. He's English.”

“THEN WHAT—”

But the attendant saved their embarrassment with a timely spoonful of porridge, into which Miss Crawley's question promptly drowned and was forgotten.

The Morrison girl, in the meantime, was not deterred. She leaned forward over her waiting porridge and said ardently, “And it becomes you so well, Your Grace! How I do love the ocean air. I hope to take a turn on deck right after breakfast and just
drink
it in.”

She had his attention now. He regarded her with a kind of gleam, one silver eyebrow expressing his interest. “The weather, happily, has turned favorable for the exercise.”

“Perhaps you'll join us, then?”

“Perhaps I will.”

Ruby motioned to the empty chair before him. “But surely you'll stay for breakfast first, won't you? It's just so dull making talk with all the people we already know.”

The Duke of Olympia spread his enormous hands in sorrow. “I'm afraid I've already broken fast, Miss Morrison, and in the excellent company of your own father, who seems to have adopted the habits of an early riser. I can't imagine why. But I'm certain the day will afford me any number of opportunities to prove myself quite as dull as anyone with whom you are already acquainted.” He took in Penelope from the corner of his eye. “Perhaps even duller. Good morning, Miss Morrison. Mrs. Morrison.” A faint pause.
“Mrs. Schuyler.”

He turned and strolled magnificently away, drawing all the electricity in the room in his wake, far too elastic for a man of seven decades who had slept no more than four hours the night before. Penelope could have sworn the lights darkened a shade or two when his silver head ducked under the lintel. She suppressed the thought, however, and turned to the exquisite young creature sitting beside her.

“Ruby, my dear. What in heaven's name are you plotting?”

Ruby lifted her cup to hide a sly expression. “Do eat your breakfast, Mrs. Schuyler. The porridge is very nice.”

Mrs. Morrison snapped her fingers.

“Breakfast!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was breakfast on the liner to Paris. What a breakfast they served! Everything you could imagine, and the eggs so fresh. Oh, I do wish the dear duke hadn't already left. He wanted so much to hear about it.”

***

“Thank God,” said the Duke of Olympia, sucking gently on a fresh cigar, “I was able to make my exit before that woman could tell me all about the damned liner to Paris.”

Mr. Simmons braced his earnest hands on the railing. “I am very sorry, sir, that you should find yourself so inconvenienced on board the
Majestic
.”

“No matter, no matter.” Olympia waved the cigar. “I have been more painfully detained before, and I suppose I shall be again, whenever duty returns me to American shores. Though, between the two of us, I should almost wish myself returned to a certain dungeon on the Continent, hanging in chains from the wall, subjecting my solar plexus to regular assault from a pair of unwashed sausage-eating jailers, than to stand in conversation with Mrs. Morrison more than once in a single day.”

“I am grieved, sir,
grieved
—”

“Tut, tut.” Olympia leaned his elbows next to the pristine white gloves of the first officer, bringing their heads to the same level. “Have you anything interesting for me?”

“Not very much, I'm afraid. Mr. Langley purchased a second-class berth on the larboard bow two days ago, coming aboard shortly before departure with very little luggage. He has kept to himself, according to the stewards, and maintains a somewhat untidy cabin. A jar of hair pomade was left open on the drawer chest during breakfast.” Mr. Simmons suppressed a shudder.

“The young are in too much haste to be tidy, Mr. Simmons. I once failed to set my boots outside the door, one rather unsteady night when I was seventeen, and in consequence my valet forced me to wear them out in public the next day, in their unpolished state. A salutary lesson. I never made the mistake again.”

“Sir,” Mr. Simmons said painfully.

“Indeed.” There was a respectful pause. The engines ground softly, the air streamed along his cheeks. Before them, the ocean spread out in a perfect plumb line against the paler blue of a cloudless sky. A cold March sun ascended slowly to the right. Olympia examined his cigar. “Do you know, I hardly ever smoke except when shipboard. Isn't that curious? The ocean air, I suppose, mingles agreeably with the scent of tobacco. It becomes almost a craving.”

“I wouldn't know, sir.”

“No, of course not. You are quite free of vice altogether, aren't you, Mr. Simmons? Not a covetous thought in your brain, not an impure instinct.”

“Sir?”

Olympia sighed and lifted himself up. “Never mind. I find I am a trifle melancholy this morning, for no conceivable reason. You'll keep an eye on this Langley chap for me, won't you, Mr. Simmons? One can never be too vigilant.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Good man.”

“If I may ask, sir—” Mr. Simmons hesitated.

“Yes, Mr. Simmons?”

“Your business in America. It's none of my concern, of course, and I am reluctant to inquire—”

The duke sighed. “But you will, nonetheless.”

“Only as it relates to the matter at hand, sir. Whether they are connected.”

“They are not, Mr. Simmons.” He brought the cigar to his mouth and considered the first officer's immaculate cap. “But I believe I will tell you anyway, in confidence, because it occurs to me that you are an observant and diligent man, and might be of use in the matter. I had traveled to America—a thing I deplore, to be perfectly honest—in order to track down a certain person whose whereabouts had gone abruptly unknown.”

“A dangerous man, sir?” Mr. Simmons rolled onto his toes.

“Even worse. A dangerous
woman
, Mr. Simmons. A committed anarchist, who once nearly succeeded in revolution. She fled to the United States, where she has been under constant surveillance by that country's operatives, until recently. Her disappearance is of grave concern to our American friends, to the British Empire, and to me personally.”

“Can you describe her, sir?”

“No point in that, I'm afraid. She's a master of disguise. But her name, should you hear it whispered in any quarter, is Dingleby. And now I believe”—grinding out the cigar, replacing the remaining half carefully in the case—“our hour of ease has come to an end.”

“Sir—?”

But the delicate debutante laugh of Miss Ruby Morrison was already floating among the lifeboats on their divots, impossible to ignore. Olympia straightened his cuffs and strode forth, in the manner of an officer girding himself to lead an especially perilous charge. Except that he had no regiment behind him. Only himself, the Duke of Olympia, who was really too old to be engaging in battle with beautiful young American heiresses.

But that was the trouble with Americans, wasn't it? That unscalable ambition, that relentless optimistic striving for the very best of everything: frocks from Paris, grand hotels, bathrooms en suite. When it came to English aristocrats, only a duke would do.

“Miss Morrison,” he said, bowing at just the right angle. “Mrs. Morrison. Mrs. Schuyler. I owe you my most grateful thanks.”

“Why so, sir?” asked Miss Morrison, lowering her eyelashes and looking up at him in the simultaneous maneuver of a born flirt. If she had a fan, he thought, she would flutter it.

He flung out a gallant hand to the motionless blue sky. “Why, because you have called up that rarest of jewels, a mild March morning on the North Atlantic. Not a ripple to be seen on that vast and fickle ocean, and such favors are certainly not granted by God for the sake of an ancient mariner like myself.”