The Spy's Kiss (32 page)

“Her mother,” continued the earl, “was a Beaufort, and closely connected with the family of the Duke of Somerset.”

That part was true. She hoped that the prince had never heard of the Beaufort women and their infamous tempers.

“
I
,” said Condé, “can offer him the daughter of a count.”

The earl laughed contemptuously. “A French count? London is full of
Monsieur le Comte
and
Madame la Comtesse
these days. Shabby creatures, living off the charity of gullible English folk who believe anyone with a Parisian accent is an exiled aristocrat.”

Julien had bent over; her aunt was speaking very low into his ear. He nodded.

“Come with me,” he said to Serena, grabbing her elbow.

This was certainly rather bold, especially seeing that she had not yet agreed to marry him. She followed him, however, not at all unhappy to leave the two older men to discuss her lineage without her.

He stopped at the door. The earl and prince were still arguing furiously. Julien said loudly, “You will excuse us, I am sure.” At that the two men turned, but he was already bowing to the countess. “Lady Bassington, your most obedient.” And then they were out in the hall and he was nearly running, pulling her along. “Where is the nearest secret passage?” he said, his expression grim.

“They are not secret,” she said automatically. “The servants all—”

He had spotted one of the concealed doors, and yanked it open. “Which way?” he demanded, as they ducked into the corridor.

She was still recovering from the shock of being dragged bodily from her uncle's drawing room. “Where do you want to go?”

“Your bedchamber.” He added hastily as she stiffened, “Only for a moment, and your maid will be there. Everything very proper. You will need her to help you pack, in any case.”

“Pack?” She pulled her hand away. “Where am I going?”

“Not you. We. Both of us. And your maid. We are eloping.”

She stamped her foot. “You haven't even asked me to marry you!”

“Yes, I did,” he reminded her.

“Not properly! I was half asleep! I thought you were an intruder!”

“You want me to grovel? I will grovel.” He sank to his knees on the dusty floor. “Will you do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage?” he said, eyes raised to her face.

She arched one eyebrow. “That is all? No professions of undying devotion?”

“Serena,” he said, still on his knees. “We will have three days in a carriage for me to tell you how I feel about you. Right now we have ten minutes before my grandfather stops shouting at your uncle and realizes that I may have run off with you. He travels with armed retainers. I have spent a great deal of time this past month facing people who were pointing guns at me, and I would prefer to leave Boulton Park before my grandfather adds himself to the list.”

There was very little light in the corridor, but there was enough to see that he was not joking. “You mean it,” she said, incredulous. “You are truly intending to carry me off to Gretna Green.”

“I am not carrying you off. I am asking you to marry me, and if you agree, we will depart immediately for Scotland.”

“Why Scotland?” She was fencing now, avoiding the real question. “Sixteen-year-old heiresses run away to Gretna. Surely we are more respectable than that.”

“It is the obvious solution,” he pointed out. “We avoid the difficulties attendant upon the marriage of a Catholic and a Protestant. We escape the wrath of the Condés. We wait three days to get married instead of a month. Given the amount of time I have spent in your bedchamber lately, that last item alone would make it worth the journey.” He got to his feet, brushing the dirt off his knees as best he could.

“But—there will be a terrible scandal.”

He looked down at her. The grim look had faded; he was almost smiling. “Do you truly suppose anyone will be interested in our marriage when they have the delicious tale of Royce and Mrs. Childe to occupy them?”

“What of my aunt?” she said, clutching at one more pretext to postpone her decision. “She will be mortified. She will never speak to me again.”

“She suggested it,” he said. “My respect for her is growing by the hour.” He held out his hand. “Are you coming?”

She had run out of excuses. And she had known what her answer would be the minute his eyes met hers in the drawing room. “The fastest way to my room is up the back staircase,” she said. “That way.”

He gave a sigh of relief as he took her hand and headed down the corridor. “Good. I was prepared for more groveling, but I can do it in the carriage.”

She was married. It didn't take very long to get married in Gretna Green. A few questions from the “blacksmith,” a signature, and it was done. Even Julien had been surprised at the spare nature of the ceremony.

“Doesn't she promise to honor me?” he had asked. “To obey me?”

Their witness, a wizened old soldier, shrugged. “Och, no. Not in Scotland.”

“Just as well,” Julien had muttered. “No use starting off with a perjured bride.”

The wedding supper had been a hasty meal at an inn at Gretna. Then they had driven on to Canonbie, because, as Julien had said, he would be damned if he would spend his wedding night in a town where every carriage that clattered in, no matter what the hour, was greeted by a crowd of urchins screaming out the names of potential witnesses for a ceremony.

Canonbie was quiet, unless you counted the sleet rattling against the window. Or the gusts of wind. Or Emily's cheerful singing in her small room next door. She was on the third verse of “Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill.” The first two verses had accompanied the task of clothing her mistress in a lace-trimmed confection that Emily had triumphantly unearthed from the chest where Serena's bride-clothes had been banished six years earlier.

“I hadn't realized your maid was so—musical,” Julien said from the doorway. “She always seemed a timid, quiet sort of girl.”

Serena jumped. She hadn't heard him come in. It was true, eloping had brought out a side of Emily Serena had never seen: the romantic. The resurrected nightgown was only the beginning. Emily enthused over everything: the Condé carriage, which Julien had high-handedly appropriated from the drive at Boulton Park; the knowing looks at the tollgates; the quaint inns along their route; even the ragged boys who had welcomed them to Gretna by shouting “Elliott! Only five guineas!” or “Locksley! Free dram of whiskey, and rings supplied upon request!”

“I could go down the hall and ask her to stop,” she offered.

He shut the door and leaned against it, surveying her slowly, from her unbound hair to her slippered feet and back up again. “You are not exactly dressed to go out in public. Of course, that fact did not seem to restrain your nocturnal wanderings at Boulton Park.”

“I hardly think you are in a position to criticize my behavior,” she shot back. “Not only did you break into my bedchamber—my
locked
bedchamber—in both London and Oxfordshire, but you also came into my room at every inn on the way here.”

“Only after your maid was asleep,” he said piously. “And I was a perfect gentleman.”

She didn't think a perfect gentleman would have driven her half-insane with protracted bouts of kissing, but Emily was a very sound sleeper, and even gentlemen sometimes found themselves unable to resist temptation. Ladies, too.

The singing died away at last, and there was a moment of awkward silence. Then Julien pushed himself off the door and walked over to a chair. “I believe there is a wedding present on the bed,” he said in a very casual tone as he took off his jacket.

“Another one?” He had already given her a necklace of gold lilies set with sapphires—his mother's, apparently—with a note which read:
Herewith proof I had no need to steal the Bassington rubies.

“It's on the pillow. At least, it should be, if Emily carried out my instructions.” He was untying his neckcloth now and tossing it on top of the jacket.

Emily would throw herself under Tempest's hooves if Julien told her to. Serena wondered if she would be forced to hire only the oldest, ugliest maidservants from now on. Sure enough, there was a parcel up against the headboard.

“Open it,” he said, coming up next to her. “Carefully. It's delicate.”

She folded back the paper. Inside was her ruined nightgown. She had never had a chance to mend it; it was still torn halfway down the shoulder from that fateful night in London when she had nearly seduced him. “Hardly a very generous gift for your bride,” she said, laughing.

“Greedy girl. It isn't for you.” He smoothed the torn seam. “It's for me. I have been dreaming about watching you take off that nightgown again ever since my visit to your room two weeks ago. The next item after that will be my shirt, if memory serves me correctly.”

“Oh.” She felt herself blushing. “But”—she looked down at the cascades of lawn and lace—“I am already wearing a nightgown.”

He gave her a wicked smile, reached out, and untied the ribbon at her neck. “In that case, I can watch you take off two,” he said. “Even better.”

The major political events described in this book are true. Early in 1814, as Napoleon's defeat began to seem inevitable, the British Foreign Office was indeed playing Russia off against Austria, looking ahead to the delicate dissection of Europe that would be performed at the Congress of Vienna later that same year. The Condé family is real as well—although Julien and his mother, as well as the other main characters, are entirely products of my imagination.

Readers who would like more information about the events in this story or the earlier books in this series are cordially invited to visit my Web site (
www.nitaabrams.com
) to see photographs of various places which figure in the books. I also provide links to other sites with information about the Napoleonic Wars, Anglo-Jewish history, spying, and, of course, country houses with secret passages. For special help with the last topic I would like to acknowledge the staff of Syon Park, a spectacular Georgian mansion which served as a partial model for the Bassington country home in this book.

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