The Fashionable Spy (28 page)

The following evening they chanced to meet Lord Leighton at one of Lady Tichbourne’s gatherings.

“I trust your dog is better,” he said to Victoria after greeting the three of them.

Victoria had noticed the way Lord Leighton had darted an amused glance at Elizabeth, who in turn was making an elaborate attempt to appear oblivious of him. “Indeed, sir. I believe you are a magician with animals, for Sable is as good as new. And I feel sure I have your skill to thank.”

“Happy to be of service. No word from Hawks-wood?”

She lowered her voice and replied, “Little, so far.”

“I had hoped to talk with him, but I have received an urgent message to go home. My father is unwell and the doctor deems it important that I travel as soon as possible. I leave at first light.”

Elizabeth gave him an arrested look, a revealing one from Victoria’s point of view. How sad for Lizzie. It appeared Lord Leighton liked nothing more than to tease, and Elizabeth betrayed a deeper interest.

He remained to chat a brief spell with Victoria, assuring her that Hawkswood ought to return shortly, that he was one to get his man.

After Lord Leighton departed, the girls decided to leave as well. Elizabeth looked vexed and Julia looked bored. Victoria had no great desire to remain, and was pleased to head for her bed.

Lord Leighton’s words returned. Would Edward find his man, and soon? She loved the dratted man and missed him dreadfully, not to mention those fiery kisses that reduced her to a heap.

Restless and unable to settle to sleep, Victoria slipped on her robe and went down to the library and her desk. Once the place where her father had worked on his study of linguistics, it now housed all the helps Victoria used in her efforts to decipher the codes written by others. It was a simple matter to put a message into cipher, or code. To solve a coded message sent to someone else was much harder, especially if one did not possess the key to that particular code.

She recalled the gold thread, ran back up to her room to fetch it. Perhaps it would inspire her. She walked along to Julia’s room to ask her a question.

Once inside, she waited while Julia tiptoed to the other room to peek at the girls. On the dressing table was a collection of pretty missives, the top one written on cream paper in blue ink with a familiar hand. Victoria had been staring at that particular writing for some time now, and would have recognized it anywhere. She picked up the short note, looking at the formation of the letters rather than at what was written.

“I did not know you were given to reading another’s mail, Victoria,” Julia said coldly.

“You know that I am not. How came you by this?” The letter was not signed properly, only a scrawl that might mean anything. Victoria studied her sister with narrowed eyes, hoping there was a simple explanation for this.

“Oh, Lucius Padbury requested sometime ago that I go for a drive with him. Actually, I was about to throw it out. Why?”

Victoria shrugged, suddenly uneasy, and unwilling to reveal her suspicion. “May I have it for tonight?”

“Take it. The man is no longer about anyway. I have no use for it.” Julia made a dismissing wave, barely concealing her curiosity. The sisters were not given to prying, however, and she knew that Victoria would tell her what it was all about in due time.

Victoria nodded. Then, her original question long forgotten, she returned to the library and her desk. She placed the two pages side by side. It most definitely was the same hand. Lucius Padbury. Of all people to be a spy, she’d not have picked him.

Yet he had been around all the time, sitting quietly in the background with his drizzling box and fabrics, or whatever. One tended to forget he was there, which was precisely the sort of man who made an admirable spy, if one needed one. And what had been said in his presence? She thought for a few moments, becoming grim as she considered the matter.

How Mr. Padbury had managed the invasion of her bedroom, Victoria did not know, but he had obtained information elsewhere, and it had slipped from his hands into hers. That was what he sought. Had she at one time dropped a remark about keeping papers in her room? It was possible, for she did keep a few there—but not where Lucius Padbury had hunted for them.

She continued to study the two pages, then made a startling discovery. The letter she had taken to be a G was instead a C. It was small wonder that she had not been able to solve the mystery of the cipher! Drat that man’s wretched scrawl. Neither she nor Edward had caught that slight lack of a tail on the G, a serious error indeed.

After lighting several more candles and calling for a pot of strong coffee, Victoria returned to the desk and renewed assault upon the cipher.

* * * *

Edward cautiously crept up the stairs in the small Dymchurch inn. A man matching the description he had given of his quarry supposedly reposed behind the second door down the hall.

It had been a tiresome trek, with rain that had soaked him to the skin, wind that had seemed to cut through his bones like a knife. Spring could be lovely in the country. Here it seemed to be harsh and unwelcoming, or was that merely his mood?

The floor creaked, and Edward paused. Then he continued on his way, for the man had shown no indication that he felt himself trailed. His path had been remarkably straight once he left Dover. Could it be that he believed he had thrown off any follower from his track? Edward’s smile was grim. The villain was due for a shock, if that were the case.

Easing along the hall, Edward paused to listen by the second door for a time, before testing the doorknob. It yielded to his touch, and Edward blessed the small inn that could not afford locks that had keys. His man, so confident and assured, had not thrown the bolt on the door.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Lucius Padbury. Fancy meeting you here in Dymchurch, of all places. What a small world it is.” Edward opened the door wide, facing his man with nerves and muscles tensed, ready for anything. His pistol, primed and loaded, covered the genial gentleman who stared at Edward as though a ghost had suddenly appeared.

“I say, old chap, not the thing to point a pistol at a friend,” Padbury blustered.

“No, it isn’t. But then I wonder if you
are
a friend, Padbury. If you were such, what were you doing in Victoria Dancy’s room not long ago? And in the middle of the night, too? I have shadowed you from there to here for nearly two weeks now, hoping to see where you would end up. It has been a most curious path, my good man. I am interested to hear your explanation. My patience is over. I have more necessary things to do. I believe you have a great number of answers to questions I long to ask. Won’t you be seated?” Edward said with a false show of courtesy.

The shorter man, confronted by a steely gaze, not to mention that very lethal-looking pistol, slowly sank onto a plain wooden chair. It had slats that dug into his back, and the rush seat was coming apart. Of this he seemed unaware.

“I insist I do not know of what you speak.”

“I feel it may be a rather long night, in that event.” Sir Edward sighed dramatically. “But rest assured that you shall answer all my questions in the end, my friend.” The sarcastic note in Sir Edward’s voice appeared to frighten Mr. Padbury, for he shrank against the chair, wincing as a slat dug into his spine.

“Now, to begin. First of all ...” Edward waved the gun in Padbury’s direction and commenced his interrogation.

Victoria rubbed her face while she paced her room. Through the windows she could see the first light of day. She had worked all through the night. But it was worth it.

Locked in the small library safe were the deciphered results of her efforts ... the list of names of those who sympathized with Napoleon and worked to further his victory.

The names on that list shocked her. Men in the highest of places: Parliament, the war office, even one in the Horse Guards itself. Since it was at the Horse Guards that the Depot of Military Knowledge was housed, it was no small wonder that this list had been guarded and put into the most difficult cipher Victoria had ever encountered.

She would sleep for a time. No one could make any sense of what she said until she felt more the thing. Later she would go to her superior at the war office, maybe demand to see the secretary at war himself, and present her translation. This was highest treason, and she wondered what would be done. How did one deal with traitors of this level?

Chapter 16

“I do hope you have an explanation for this,” mumbled Victoria, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and glancing at the clock on the mantel with a disgusted look.

“But it is nearly eleven, and you cannot be a slugabed all day,” Elizabeth protested. She drifted across the room to pull open the draperies, then the blinds.

“I want you to know that I have had all of six hours’ sleep, my dear.”

Whirling about, Elizabeth gave her sister a startled and most curious look. “Why?”

“I broke the code last night.”

Elizabeth crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, fixing Victoria with eager eyes. “Tell me how you did it, for I was beginning to think it hopeless.”

“Actually,” Victoria began, easing herself up, then stuffing another pillow behind her, “it was Julia who helped, although she was not aware of it. I found a letter she was about to discard—one from Lucius Padbury.”

“I do not see what that mild man has to do with anything,” Elizabeth inserted.

“Do you wish to hear or not?” At her sister’s silent nod, Victoria continued. “I recognized the handwriting as the very same as on the page I have been trying to decipher. And I also found that a letter I had assumed to be a G was in actuality a C. The wretched man has terrible handwriting. Once I found that mistake, the rest began to fall into place.”

“How clever of you,” Elizabeth said with enthusiasm and no trace of envy in the least. “Who would have suspected that Mr. Padbury had anything to do with spying?”

“I cannot say as to that, for this was merely a list of men.” It had been more than that, but Victoria felt the fewer who knew the whole of the matter, the better. She pushed back her covers, then rose from her bed. “I feel able to contend with the day after some sleep. I found that once I began work, I simply could not stop.”

Elizabeth gave her a dubious look. It was difficult for anyone who was not fascinated with codes and ciphers, and solving such puzzles, to understand what compelled another to spend long hours over them.

“What now?”

Victoria walked to the wardrobe to choose a special gown to wear for this important occasion. It was not every day she solved such a challenging cipher.

“I shall dress, eat something, then pay a visit to the secretary. I can only hope that by solving this, I shall redeem our part. For you know it is possible that Mr. Padbury shamelessly eavesdropped, and construed much from our conversations.”

“He seemed like such a harmless little man. And to think that Julia might have accepted him!” Elizabeth exclaimed in horror.

“That is a blessing, although I believe she could have handed him the mitten under the circumstances.”

“Cried off? Regardless, that does not have a pleasant sound to it.” Elizabeth considered the possible results.

“No, it does not. Now, shoo, so I may wash and dress in peace. You may inform Julia of the wonderful help she unknowingly gave me.”

After the door closed behind her younger sister, Victoria paused to look out of the window at the delicate clouds, tinted pinks and grays. Somewhere south of London, unless she missed her guess, Edward was chasing Lucius Padbury. What happened if Mr. Padbury shot Edward, rather than the other way around? She shut her eyes against the painful image, willing it to go away.

Well, she mused as she washed herself from the Dresden bowl that was all that remained of her pretty set after the fracas that had torn her room apart, that would be one solution to her dilemma, although appalling. It would be difficult to have a wedding without a groom.

Her cream jaconet gown, trimmed with knots of willow-green ribands and tiny gold silk flowers, hung in graceful folds down to where the tips of her new willow-green leather slippers peeked from under the hem. An enormous piece of luck had brought a pretty paisley shawl to her attention when she had strolled through Harding and Howell’s. It precisely matched the gown. With her willow-green gloves and a rather nice bonnet trimmed in the same shade, she felt ready to face anything she might find . . . even Lucius Padbury, if necessary.

As to the man she was supposed to marry, she wondered if she would ever see him again. The mere notion tore at her heart. Then, dismissing all melancholy thoughts from her mind, she resolutely marched down the stairs to the dining room.

“Victoria,” Julia said, rising from her chair at the table, where she nibbled at her noon meal, “I found two other missives from Mr. Padbury. Foolish woman that I am, I had kept these for the pretty sentiments. Would they help you to prove beyond a doubt that he is the man involved?”

Suspecting that it cost Julia a great deal to hand over something slightly intimate, never mind that such pretty words were written every day, Victoria nodded gratefully.

“The more evidence I have in hand, the better. Not that I anticipate trouble, mind you.”

“Do you wish company?” Elizabeth said from the far end of the table where she picked at a salad.

“Not in the least. Sam will drive me.” Victoria placed her gloves down, and prepared to eat a small meal before taking her leave. Sable, who had padded in behind his mistress, gazed at her with reproachful eyes, sensing he was to be left at home.

“Lizzie, I am sorry Lord Leighton has gone to the country,” Julia said hesitantly.

“Fine,” Elizabeth declared, looking at them rather ruefully. “When I consider what the gossips said about that man, it is the outside of enough. ‘Tis a good thing he merely taunts me, nothing more.”

Julia and Victoria exchanged dismayed looks.

“Do you mean to tell me that you based your opinion of Lord Leighton on what the
gossips
are saying? Did it never occur to you, my precious widgeon, that they might be jealous of anyone he bestowed his attentions upon? He is handsome, well-to-grass, and heir to an earldom that has been efficiently managed. In short, he is not only very plump in the pocket—no small matter when it comes to choosing a husband—but also highly eligible in every way. In addition, he is a very nice person.”