The Spy's Kiss (17 page)

She would
kill
Simon. In all the contriving and prevaricating which had gone into undoing her false headache, it had never, ever occurred to her that Clermont would, in fact, come to this exhibit. That the liar would tell the truth while she, the honest one, left a trail of slimy falsehoods all over London.

“What are you doing here?” she said. It came out as an accusation.

He sat down next to her. “Isn't that my line?”

“Simon forced my hand, if you must know. I had no intention of coming.”

“So I gathered.” He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and held it up between thumb and finger.

It was her note. The “alas” no longer seemed funny. None of it seemed funny. When had she turned into the sort of female who enjoyed humiliating people?

“Would you like this back?” he asked, in an oddly gentle voice. His eyes no longer laughed. They held a mixture of sympathy and regret.

She shook her head. There was a lump in her throat. “Keep it,” she managed to say. “Or better yet, give it to Simon. He can use it for his next round of extortion.”

“Simon doesn't need any more weapons than he already has,” he said, handing her the note. “Where is he, by the way?”

“Last I saw, in the room with the bears.” She started tearing the note into tiny pieces, very neatly and methodically. A delicate rain of square paper flakes descended onto her lap. When she had finished she carefully scooped the fragments into her reticule and then inspected her skirts for stray bits of paper.

Clermont was showing remarkable restraint in his moment of triumph. He sat idly scanning the crowds coming through the doorway opposite, as though young ladies tore letters to shreds next to him every day of the week.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, very quietly, to his profile.

He turned to face her. “No,” he said. “I owe you one.”

Startled, she blurted out, “You do? Why?”

He studied her for a long moment, his face curiously intent. But then his normal, slightly ironic expression returned, and he echoed lightly, “Why? Because it was quite unfair of me to use your aunt to trap you this morning. Come, I'll answer your question.” He rose and offered her his hand.

“What question?” she said, standing and tucking her arm into his.

He smiled down at her. She forgot, she always forgot, how tall he was, until he was right next to her. “What I am doing here.” He led her into the next room, to a case filled with birds. “Look.”

At first she didn't understand. Some of the birds were beautiful, it was true—especially one goose with silver and blue feathering on its neck—but most seemed quite ordinary to her. It wasn't until she had read the labels carefully several times that she noticed what they all had in common:
Specimen donated by L.F.J.B.C.

She reached out and touched the corner of the nearest label. “These are yours?”

He nodded.

“L.F.?”

He grimaced. “Family names. I don't use them.”

“Then you
are
a naturalist,” she said slowly. “My suspicions were unjustified, it appears.”

“Another apology?” He raised his eyebrows. “Don't be too hasty, Miss Allen. To quote the estimable Mr. Sheridan, ‘there is no trusting appearances.'”

For a Frenchman he had certainly read a good deal of English verse.

The conquest of the Bassingtons, Julien reflected, was a delicate balancing act, a house of cards constructed from layer upon layer of social innuendo. The Viscount was his pretext—an easy one; he found Simon rather appealing and could include the boy in genuine interests of his own without much difficulty. The lens grinder, in particular, had been a godsend. Julien had called twice now to confer with Simon about the construction of the telescope, and a further visit would be required to present the finished instrument. The layer above Simon, of course, was Serena Allen—the answer to any skeptics who wondered why a wealthy bachelor would act as an unpaid tutor to an eleven-year-old boy. Miss Allen's reluctance to encourage his attentions was another godsend. Not only could Julien assure his conscience (at least most of the time) that she would be delighted when he eventually disappeared, but her resistance only made her aunt and uncle more eager to welcome him. The countess was constantly inviting him to join her (and her niece) for various engagements and outings. He and Philip were to dine there tonight, in fact, and then escort the countess, Mrs. Childe, and Miss Allen to a concert in Hanover Square.

“More diplomatic maneuvering,” said Philip from behind his newspaper. “Napoleon should have accepted the terms offered him a few weeks ago. Listen to this: ‘We can now confirm that a treaty has been signed at Chaumont, binding the allies to continue their campaign against Bonaparte. The agreement, drafted by Lord Castlereagh, promises to restore sovereignty to Holland and Italy. Spain will be governed by a Bourbon king. It remains only to settle the Austrian and Russian claims to the eastern territories.' ”

Julien looked up from an essay in
Bulletin of the Royal Institution
, which was attempting to persuade him that wolves had a form of language. “Oh, is that all that remains? The merest trifle, to be sure.”

They were at the Alfred, a club Julien strongly preferred to the more fashionable establishments on St. James Street. It was quiet, it had an excellent library, and its membership was more diverse than the dandified precincts of White's and Boodle's. More intelligent, too. An older man sitting nearby looked up at Julien's sarcastic comment and snorted in agreement.

“You are a pessimist,” said Derring.

“No, a realist. Austria and Russia are more afraid of each other at this point than they are of Napoleon. If he offers one of them help against the other, Castlereagh's treaty won't be worth the paper it's written on.” Julien went back to his magazine, but a low cough interrupted him again. It was one of the Alfred's waiters, holding a tray with an engraved card face up in the center. Three steps behind the servant, not bothering to wait for a response to the card, an elderly man with a hooked nose and piercing light-blue eyes was leaning on a gold-headed walking stick. He was wearing silk, although it was barely noon. He always wore silk. As the others in the room gradually became aware of his presence, those who knew him rose, and others, taking their cue from their fellows, scrambled out of their chairs and listened, awed, to the whispered name.

Julien, too, had risen.

“Monsieur,” he said, bowing stiffly. He was trying not to look as astounded as he felt. Having used his grandfather as an excuse to leave Boulton Park, Julien had made a point of calling in Gloucester Place on his second day back in London. As usual, he had been denied. And as usual, he had left a note professing himself his grandfather's devoted servant to command. He had not seen his grandfather in a very long time—and the prince, on the few occasions when he was willing to speak to his bastard grandson, normally summoned the aforesaid grandson to him.

“A moment of your time, if you would be so good,” said his grandfather in French.

“Certainly.” Julien signaled to the club's butler, who was gawking in the doorway of the library, and they were shown to a small side chamber furnished with a globe and writing table.

The prince walked over to the globe and rotated it so that France was facing up before turning to Julien. “I overheard your remark to the young man with the newspaper just now. Had you any particular reason to make that remark? Any special knowledge of the current tensions between Austria and Russia?”

“I beg your pardon, monsieur, but I do not understand your question.”

“You are, I have recently been informed, an acquaintance of the Earl of Bassington? You have been a guest at his home?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“And you are courting his niece?”

Julien hesitated. “The countess and Miss Allen have been very amiable,” he said, temporizing. At least, the countess has, he added silently.

“She is not for you.” His grandfather disposed of Serena with a wave of his lace-cuffed wrist. “I have been remiss, however. It is time you were married. When my affairs are not so pressing, I will consider the question.”

“We have discussed this before,
grandpère
. My views have not changed.”

The wrist waved again, dismissing the topic. “Let us return to the man Bassington. It happens that he is of some importance to us—to our family and their prospects after the return to France—in regard to this very question of a treaty with Russia. I came to find you here in the hope that you would agree to contrive a meeting between myself and the earl. As if by accident, you understand, so that no great importance would attach to any discussion we might have. But now it occurs to me that I could not rely completely on anything Bassington might tell me, even at such an informal, chance encounter. Information obtained more discreetly, by someone who was welcome in the household, would be far more useful.” He paused, significantly.

With a detached portion of his brain—the portion that was not stunned by the proposal—Julien noted that the grandson of Louis XIV had just asked his own (admittedly tainted) flesh and blood to spy on an ally while he was a guest in the man's house. He stopped to consider whether that request was in any way more despicable than his own mission and concluded that it was.

“I am desolated, monsieur,” he said. Sometimes he missed speaking French. Only in French could you abase yourself extravagantly and say no at the same time.

“You are an ungrateful, arrogant young man,” snapped the prince, “unworthy of the recognition we have given you.”

Every meeting with his grandfather seemed to end with that phrase. Usually Julien apologized. The man was his grandfather, after all. Had raised him, however grudgingly; had endowed him with a title and lands. Had even wept once in his presence, a mark of trust which Julien considered the closest thing to a gesture of affection the fierce old man had ever made. It was the day that the news of the murder of the Duke of Enghien had reached England.

He didn't apologize today. He didn't bow. On his way out the door, he removed his signet, set it down on the writing table, and walked away without looking back.

It was returned to him by a liveried messenger within the hour. On the Alfred Club's ivory-colored notepaper his grandfather had written:

The Concerts of Ancient Music were governed by a very rigid protocol. The musicians, garbed in frock coats and wigs, were formally introduced. Only the most elevated works, sanctified by the passage of time, were presented. A director who had defied the rules twenty years ago by selecting a then-new work of Haydn had been fined an enormous sum. No conversation or applause was permitted until the end of each piece. Ushers had been known to ask patrons to leave if they spoke—even in whispers—during the performance.

Julien had been grateful for that promise of enforced silence. It could have been the opera, he had told himself, where he would have been trapped for an entire evening in a box visible to hundreds of spectators while he conversed with Miss Allen in front of her aunt—or worse, in front of Mrs. Childe. Ten minutes in the concert rooms at Hanover Square had revealed his mistake. Conversation, in the campaign he was conducting, was a shield. It permitted deflections, sidesteps, counterattacks. It was amusing. It was distracting. And now, sitting next to Serena Allen, there were no distractions.

He was achingly aware of her, of the tension in her shoulders and her fierce grip on the program in her lap. She was pretending to read it, and beneath her swept-up hair the back of her neck curved downwards, delicate and vulnerable. Even when he forced himself to look straight ahead he could see the pale, graceful arc out of the corner of his eye. Looking at his own program was no better; then he saw her gloved hand curling around the paper. He could not stop thinking about the last time he had sat next to her, on the bench in Somerset House, watching her shred another piece of paper into unimaginably tiny squares. The music was no help. There was a certain wistful quality to Corelli which echoed through his head like an accusation:
coward, coward, you have delayed too long.

He could excuse his own thoughtlessness, at least in part. It was understandable that someone who had grown up alone, with no family, no plans for marriage, would fail to see that most people were not like him. They were not alien, drifting hollows. They had parents, brothers, sisters, wives—people who were bound to them, who would bleed with them, hurt with them. Nor would the damage be confined to the earl's family. Mrs. Digby, Bates, even the bumbling Royce were all entangled in his deception. It struck him suddenly that the only member of Bassington's household who would not suffer was the enigmatic Mrs. Childe. Because she was like him: solitary and coldhearted. It was not a pleasant thought.

Another few days, he thought. He only needed another few days. His appointment at the bank was on Friday. He would enlist Derry, drop some hints about what was coming, to soften the blow. Derry would never forgive him, of course. Neither would the boy. Or the countess, who was sitting across the aisle right now glancing over at her niece every two minutes or so. She caught his eye and smiled. He felt sick.

It was a cold, wet night. In spite of the weather, the hall was very crowded, and he had no chance to speak with Derring during the interval. It was as much as he could do to bring back his share of the refreshments to the women without being trampled. He managed to sit next to Derring during the second half of the concert, but his two attempts to whisper brought frowns from both Serena and the usher. There was chaos afterwards, as well. All the coaches were crowding into the square, gentlemen were darting out into the rain to find vehicles for their party, and the entryway was mobbed with patrons collecting their coats and hats. It was not until he had handed the three women into the carriage that he was finally able to grab Derring and haul him under the shelter of a porte cochère on the other side of Prince's Street.

“Derry, listen,” he said. He had to nearly shout to be heard over the rain and the noise of the coaches. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Name it, dear fellow.” Derring was in a very good mood, Julien saw. “Or better yet, come back to my rooms; have a glass or two of port, and
then
name it.”

He shook his head. The fewer questions Derry could ask, the better. “I would be grateful if you could—” How was he going to put this? He paused, stymied, and started over. “Something has happened which may require me to leave the country very shortly.”

His friend's easy grin disappeared. “Your grandfather?”

“In part.” That unsettling encounter at the Alfred this afternoon could prove useful, he realized. “I cannot say anything more at the moment. Here is my dilemma: Miss Allen and the countess have been very kind, and I am not sure how to tell them of my departure without seeming presumptuous.”

Derring was quiet for a moment. A coach rattled by, splashing both of them with cold water. “So you want me to find out whether any expectations have been raised?”

“Yes, that's it exactly,” Julien said, relieved.

“I know Serena quite well.” There was an edge in his voice. “Perhaps I should approach her, caution her that your very public, very determined pursuit of her will abruptly cease? That she will once again be humiliated, the center of a delicious scandal? Can I give her a date? The fifteenth?”

“Oh, God.” Julien slumped against the stones of the archway. “Is it that bad? I didn't suppose anyone would take our—our flirtation very seriously. She's given me very little encouragement.”

Derring glared at him. “You told me your courtship had been unsuccessful. You told me she detested you.”

“I thought she did,” he said, almost plaintively. Had he really believed that? He remembered her mouth, warm and breathless, in the greenhouse. He remembered her eyes, glittering with unshed tears, lifting to his as they sat on the marble bench.

“You idiot! You numskull! Are you blind? Do you think Serena Allen normally sits through an entire evening staring at her lap? I could feel her willing herself not to look at you from two seats away! I could feel
you
not looking at her from three seats away! Do you know how long it has been since she came to London? Since she appeared in public at concerts? Accepted invitations to dances, like the one Lady Barrett is hosting two days from now?”

Mutely, Julien shook his head.

“Five years. She has been hiding down at Boulton Park, scaring off every suitor her aunt manages to get down there on one pretext or another, for
five years
. Ever since that damned count abandoned her a month before their wedding. No one in that household has any doubts at all about why she suddenly decided to rejoin the world. There are probably wagers among the footmen about when the engagement will be announced. And now you want me to give her a gentle warning that you, too, are about to disappear?” He pointed a shaking finger at Julien's chest. “Don't you dare walk away and leave her unprotected. I don't care what your grandfather told you. I don't care if the royalists have promised you the bloody throne of France. I don't care if White's couriers are about to assassinate you. If you go without offering her a respectable excuse for rejecting your suit, I'll kill you.”