The Spy's Kiss (22 page)

Clermont bowed, tight-lipped.

“Show Mr. Clermont out. And tell Rowley to instruct the staff that this gentleman is not to be admitted, here or at Boulton Park, under any circumstances.”

“Yes, sir,” said the footman in a voice carefully devoid of expression. It was Hubert, Clermont realized. He avoided Clermont's eye as he escorted him to the front entrance and handed him his coat and hat.

The door closed with a solid thud, and Clermont stood at the top of the stone steps clutching his gloves in one hand, staring blindly at the massive black shapes of the surrounding houses, which rose silently against the cloudy sky. Here and there a lighted window broke up the darkness.

“Christ,” he said for the third time, his voice raw. And then, hurling his gloves against the wall of the nearest house, “You idiot!”

 

 

Late in the afternoon, the countess had finally informed the bride-to-be of Clermont's proposed visit and its purpose. Serena had been warned by Simon that she was not meant to know anything and she managed to feign surprise very creditably. She
was
still surprised, in fact. And annoyed. It was impossible. It was outrageous. After all their joint efforts last night to prevent this, why would he ask her to marry him? And how dared he go to her uncle without speaking first to her? She had been pacing around her room ever since Simon's warning, veering between wonder and fury, with stops along the way for humiliation and bewilderment. From her aunt she did learn that Clermont had requested the appointment hours before the ball had even begun. This did not solve the puzzle; far from it, although at least it reassured her that he had not felt himself compelled to offer because of what had happened on the staircase.

Dinner was served early, and the courses were removed at a speed which astounded her. They were done in just over an hour, and instead of proceeding to the drawing room, the countess took Serena upstairs, where Robbins and the missing Emily were waiting. Her maid, it transpired, had spent the entire day supervising the construction of a suitable garment for the occasion. Serena submitted to being gowned in rose crepe and having her hair dressed. At just after half past eight, there was knock at the dressing-room door. It was Rowley.

“My lady, he is here,” he said, his eyes sparkling with delight in a very unprofessional manner. He gave Serena a warm smile, bowed, and withdrew.

Her aunt turned to her, her voice quivering with emotion. “Dear, dear Serena! Let me be the first to wish you happy. This is beyond anything I could have hoped. A most amiable, learned young man, and from one of the first families of Europe!”

Serena had been clipping loose threads off the hem of the new gown while Emily reattached a ribbon to her sandal. At Rowley's announcement her hand suddenly began shaking, and she put down the scissors so quickly she nearly dropped them.

Her aunt mistook terror for impatience and patted her on the shoulder. “It will not be long now! As soon as your sandal is mended, we shall go down to the drawing room together. I don't imagine your uncle will keep him more than a few minutes.”

Like a mannequin, Serena allowed herself to be fitted into the repaired sandal and led downstairs. She sat obediently on the chair where she was placed, her hands folded in her lap, her heart pounding, her throat tight. What would she say, when he came in and her aunt coyly excused herself? What would she say when the man who had kissed her for ten solid minutes last night—kissed her until she was drunk on him and the moon and her own ragged breathing—asked her to marry him? Would she tell him she had deliberately taken him to the most deserted, lonely spot she could think of in the Barrett house? That she knew of half a dozen anterooms where they could have talked during supper last night—if talk was what either of them had had in mind? That she had felt a curious, hollow hurt when he had honored her request to go back inside? Did he expect her to
agree
when he asked to kiss her? At least after they were locked out he hadn't waited for an answer to his rhetorical question. He had simply reached out and pulled her right up against him, as though it were the easiest thing in the world to draw her out of her sphere and into his.

She had no notion of the passage of time, but she did gradually see that her aunt was fretting, glancing at the clock. She went back to twisting her hands in her lap. Her thoughts went around and around, and never came to any conclusion. Did she want to marry him? She kept hearing Philip's voice, asking her if she was in love, and her own immediate, decisive, reply:
Certainly not!
Not
certainly
, and perhaps not even
not
, she acknowledged. What if he asked her to be his wife, and her mouth opened and said “Certainly not!” without really thinking about it?

The next time she looked up, the countess gave her a nervous attempt at a reassuring smile. “It would be just like George to start talking about politics or investments at a time like this.”

That was when they heard the roar. The bookroom was one floor below them, but the sound was unmistakable. Startled, Serena glanced at her aunt. The countess had turned white. Both women sat in complete silence for five more minutes. They heard no more shouting, but they did hear the front door open and close. Finally they heard footsteps—slow footsteps—and a knock. The countess started up.

It was Rowley. “His lordship requests a private word, my lady.” He looked haggard, and he avoided Serena's eye.

She rose. “I'll be in my room, Aunt Clara.” She walked out the door, past the stricken butler, past two gaping footmen, up the stairs, into her bedchamber. Emily was there. She made the briefest motion possible with her hand, and the maid withdrew. Then she sat down to wait for someone to come and explain. Her hands were folded in her lap, just as they had been downstairs. When her uncle came, she did not get up. She listened very carefully and nodded when he asked if she would be all right and shook her head when he asked if she wanted her aunt or Emily. After he left, she did get up. She locked the door. She took off her sandals, and her new dress, tearing the shoulder slightly in the process, brushed her hair, put on her nightgown, and climbed into bed. When her aunt tapped on the door a bit later and called her name softly, she did not answer. She lay curled on her side like a wounded animal, thinking about what her uncle had told her and wondering why someone who had never trusted Julien Clermont should be so heartsick when she turned out to be right.

He reasoned to himself as follows. If the earl was in fact his father, his lies to Julien negated any filial obligation. If the earl was not his father, the obligation had never existed. In either case, then, Julien was not bound to observe Bassington's command to stay away from Serena Allen. This specious excuse for logic made a serviceable screen to conceal a deeper imperative: he would be damned if he was going to leave London without seeing her. He needed to tell her he was sorry. He needed to explain how he had come to be such a thoughtless, selfish fool. This, too, was a screen, but he refused to look at what lay behind it.

Unfortunately, logic and remorse were insufficient for his purpose. He also needed a way into the house. When he returned to Manchester Square six hours after leaving the earl, he was discouraged but not surprised to see a guard stationed in front of Bassington's front door. Simon's adventures last night provided a solution to that problem, at least. He turned around, made his way over to the Barrett house on Harland Place, and went through the passageway by Barrett's study to the kitchen yard. From there it was an easy scramble over a stone wall into the garden facing the rear of the earl's home. He broke in by climbing onto the roof of a porch and forcing open a window on the first floor. Then, again thanks to his visits with Simon, he found his way to the back stair and went up to the third floor. Only now, as he stared down the dark corridor, did he realize he had no idea which room was Serena's.

He crept down the hall, looking for light under the doors, listening for noises. Nothing. He tried to guess the dimensions of the rooms from the spacing between doors, and then estimate which size might be appropriate for an earl's niece. It was hopeless. Time to turn to Simon again. At least he knew where the boy's room was; he had been there twice. He made his way back to the servants' stair, climbed up to the fourth floor, and stole quietly into the bedchamber.

Simon was asleep, a lamp burning low beside him. Given what he knew about the viscount's nocturnal habits, this was something of a miracle. He had been afraid the bed would be empty. Placing his hand gently over the boy's mouth, he leaned down and whispered, “Simon!”

It took a minute. Then the blue eyes opened, widened in surprise, and immediately narrowed again in anger. Behind his hand, Julien felt the boy deliberately spit.

“I need your help. I must see Serena,” he said, speaking very low. Then he took away his hand.

“You pig! You scum! You toad! I'd like to kill you! When I grow up I
will
kill you!” Simon was whispering. Fiercely, and with venom, but he was whispering. That was a hopeful sign.

“In ten years, if you still feel that way, send word, and I will meet you. You have every right to be angry. What I did was contemptible.”

Evidently Simon had expected Julien to defend himself. He was silent. Then he whispered again. “Are you really a spy?”

“Is that what your father said?”

Simon nodded.

“No. I'm not a spy. I had a private quarrel with your father, and chose a very bad method of pursuing it.”

This time Simon didn't whisper, although he did speak quietly. “Is that why you gave me my telescope? So that you could come to our house?”

He winced. If it felt like he was being kicked in the stomach when the boy asked that question, what was it going to feel like when Serena asked him why he had flirted with her? “It isn't, not completely at any rate, but I don't see why you should believe me.”

“I don't.” But he looked a little less angry. “Why do you want to see Serena?” he said, after a minute.

“To apologize. To try to take away at least some of the hurt I've caused.” He could see the boy was weakening. “I need to know which room is hers. Otherwise I'll go downstairs and knock on the first door I see.”

“That would be Mrs. Childe's.”

“The second door, then.”

Simon stuck his lower lip out, then said grudgingly, “Fourth door. On the left. It's probably locked. She shuts herself in when she's upset.” He dove suddenly down the side of his bed, startling Julien considerably. He could hear the boy groping for something on the floor. After a few seconds he pulled himself back up, red-faced. He was holding a wooden puzzle box, which he cracked apart in four expert twists. Inside was a roll of felt wadding, and folded into the roll were at least a dozen keys. Simon held them up to the light one by one. “This one,” he said at last, handing it to Julien.

Julien blinked. “You know,” he said, “your talents are wasted here. You should be at school.”

Simon grinned, a boy-grin, a real one. “I'm going next term. To Winchester.”

“I shall remember the worthy masters of Winchester in my prayers.” Julien stood up.

“She'll want to kill you, too,” warned Simon. “And she's already past her twenty-first birthday.”

“That had occurred to me.” He held up the key. “Thank you for this. I don't deserve it, but thank you anyway.” Then he took a deep breath and marched off to face his doom.

 

 

Serena had not been able to sleep. For that matter, she hadn't been able to cry. She suspected one might be a prerequisite to the other, but as she had no particular desire to do either at the moment she eventually got out of bed, wrapped herself in a shawl, and sat down by the window. The curtains had been drawn; she tugged them open enough to look out at the moonlit facades of the houses on the opposite sides of the square.

Then she steeled herself and began to prod the various mental bruises inflicted during the evening. First: Clermont had lied to her about the butterflies. Well, what of that? She had been convinced from the first he was no naturalist. Second: he had misled her, had raised expectations of marriage. But had she ever thought, before Simon's announcement this morning, that his interest in her was anything more than an amusing diversion? No; her aunt's misperception of the purpose of his visit tonight was at fault here, not Clermont. Third: he had deceived her aunt and uncle. This, the heaviest charge, and the one she could not answer in any way, ought to have perturbed her the most. She loved her aunt and uncle—especially her aunt, in spite of or perhaps because of the countess's misguided attempts to make Serena happy. In her current confused, unbalanced state, however, the thought of their distress seemed remote.

If she was being honest, she had to admit to herself that the aching sense of loss she felt was not the result of anything Julien Clermont had done, tonight or last night or last week. It was the result of her own stupidity. A few kisses, a few stares from those grave, dark eyes, and she had lowered her shield and thrown down her weapons. She was almost sorry she would never see him again; she would have liked to explain to him, very patiently, that she was not angry with him, however justified that anger might seem, but rather with herself.

That was when she heard the key turn in the lock.
Simon
, she thought as she turned around. He often came down late at night. The door opened and closed with the room still in darkness. There was no sound, no movement for a moment. She knew suddenly that it wasn't her cousin. Then the intruder took four slow steps until he came within the small block of moonlight near the window.

“You're not asleep,” he said.

“You're not dead,” she retorted. “If I were a man, you would be.”

“Simon said the same thing.” He knelt by her chair. She wasn't sure if this was an act of contrition or a prudent attempt to keep their conversation quiet. Then she saw what he was holding out to her. It was his pistol. “It's loaded,” he said.

Her vision of herself calmly telling Clermont that she was not angry at him died a quick and painless death. She took the pistol, held it firmly in both hands, and pointed it straight between the level black brows.

He didn't move.

“I suppose you think I won't shoot,” she said scathingly.

“No. I think if you are angry enough to shoot, I deserve it. I've wronged you more than anyone, and that I did so partly in ignorance only makes it worse.”

“You've wronged me more than anyone? Do you mean what happened tonight?”

He sighed. “I suppose it won't do any good to apologize? To tell you that I was so engrossed in my own affairs that it never, never occurred to me what everyone would think—what you would think—of my request to see your uncle?”

“Just a moment. Let us have a complete confession, so long as I have the pistol. You cheated your way into my uncle's house.”

“Yes.”

“You read through his private papers.”

“Yes.”

“You contrived the accident on Clark's Hill.”

“Yes.”

“You imbecile,” she said in disgust. “You nearly killed yourself.” Then she returned to her list. “You cultivated Simon, and me, as an excuse to maintain contact with the household here in London.”

“Yes. No. Yes, at least at first.”

“Then why would you ask me to forgive you for one embarrassing misunderstanding when you have just confessed to four much more serious crimes?”

“Because those crimes, at least, had some justification, inadequate though it might be. The humiliation you suffered tonight was the result of my self-absorbed carelessness.”

Nettled, she said, “Humiliation? You are assuming I was going to say yes to this phantom proposal of marriage.” She still held the pistol pointed right at him.

He gave a wry smile. “No, I'm not that fanciful. When I left here earlier, full of remorse, I pictured you sitting in your
chambre de fille
, blushing and eager, waiting for the summons to appear in the drawing room. Dreaming of the moment when our eyes would meet, and you would drift across the room to my embrace. Then I decided it was far more likely that you had been stamping up and down, fuming about my audacity in seeking out your uncle without first consulting you.”

This was so nearly an exact description of her behavior that afternoon that she bit her lip.

“Even if you meant to refuse me, Serena, tonight's debacle must have been a blow. Looking back, I cannot believe my folly. I called on you or Simon every day. I met you at concerts, at exhibitions. I danced with you. Philip warned me you would suffer when I disappeared, and I ignored him. I wanted to believe that my task here would not harm you. I deceived myself, and in so doing I wronged you, I wronged Simon—I compounded fraud upon fraud, mischief upon mischief. You have every right to pull that trigger.”

“If I were a man, I would pull it.” She waited for nearly a minute before lowering the gun. “I'm not a man,” she said.

“I know.” He took a long breath. “God, I certainly know that.”

Somehow it seemed wrong to be in the chair when he was on the floor. She slid down next to him, her nightgown spreading out like a soft white nest around her on the floor. The gun dropped into her lap. It didn't make any noise, but it startled her. She had forgotten its existence. Her hand reached out, touched his hip, moved up to his chest, his shoulder, the side of his neck. Her fingers skated over the soft, bright hair. He had closed his eyes.

“Shooting me would be faster,” he said in a harsh whisper.

She kissed him, softly and quickly, and pulled his jacket off.

His hand groped, found the gun, set it carefully aside. He still hadn't opened his eyes. He was moving his lips in some soundless incantation, pulling her closer and closer until she was pinned up against his chest and he was looming over her in the colorless band of light beneath the window.

Then he opened his eyes, and she knew there could never be any shield, any protection, any hope at all, once that dark gaze had found her out. It was his turn to run his hand slowly up her body, to lift her hair, turn it in the moonlight. It was his turn to kiss her—not softly, and not quickly. They sank to the floor tangled together, sliding down the wall beneath the window until she was lying nearly on top of him. He was pushing her nightgown up the backs of her legs, stroking her calves and thighs, layering kisses down her neck and tearing impatiently at her collar until the buttons came away in his hand and the kisses went lower still. They said nothing; in the silent house their breathing rasped loudly and the soft touch of lip on skin seemed to leave an echo behind. He was fierce and urgent beneath her; her own body was a stranger to her, wild and purposeful in a way that made a mockery of what she had felt with André.

If only, she would tell herself later. If only you had let well enough alone. But she didn't. Her skin felt smothered in flannel; she wanted his hands on her breasts, on her back; she wanted to move without being caught in folds of cloth. She stood up suddenly, looked down at the beautiful, intent face of the man who was about to be her lover, and pulled her nightgown off over her head.

“Serena,” he whispered, “do you have any idea how exquisite you are?”

She sank back down beside him, her hair falling onto his chest. She reached for his neckcloth, tugged at it—and stopped.

He had seized her hand. “Serena,” he said, this time in a very different voice, “we cannot do this. I cannot do this. I will not ruin you.”

She laughed bitterly. “I'm already ruined. Or didn't you know?”