Treachery at Lancaster Gate (11 page)

Lady Parsons's smile widened, then suddenly froze as she recognized the implication of her considerable seniority. She was perhaps ten or twelve years older than Emily, not the twenty Emily suggested.

Emily continued to smile expectantly.

Lady Parsons did not flinch. “We are on opposite sides in the affair of this contract,” she said quite calmly. “But I think I shall like you. You are a great deal deeper than you look, and quicker, I think?” The amusement was back in her eyes, now quite openly. It was an offer of friendship with a barb inside.

“It doesn't do to appear too clever,” Emily replied. “People keep up their guard.”

“I am tempted to say that you are in no danger,” Lady Parsons said sharply, “but I think that is unnecessary. It rather betrays a need to win, don't you think? Those who must always have the last word become rather tedious.”

“I agree,” Emily said. “To be tedious is the ultimate flaw in a woman's character.”

Lady Parsons laughed quite openly. “Oh, my dear! Did Oscar Wilde say that?”

“Not that I am aware of,” Emily replied, raising her eyebrows in surprise. “I have discerned it for myself in endless political parties.”

“A pity you are too wellborn for the stage,” Lady Parsons observed. “You might do well.”

“I could never remember other people's lines,” Emily replied.

“Come. I shall introduce you to some of the people I know.” Lady Parsons had a very gentle but insistent hand on Emily's arm. “I shall enjoy the experience of seeing what they make of you.”

It was pointless to argue, and Emily thought it might be profitable for her to see the wives of the “opposition” to the contract. She would tell Jack about it later.

She was walking beside Lady Parsons, acknowledging various acquaintances, when she caught a glimpse of Godfrey Duncannon about twenty feet away. He was standing talking to a woman who was at once beautiful and delicate. She looked over forty, but with an innocence of someone younger. She was paying intense attention to him as if she dare not miss a word he said. He in turn was bending very slightly to listen to her, his attention also total. And yet his posture was not in the least romantic; it appeared more to be a recognition of her fragility and her dependence upon his care.

The light shone for a moment on the diamonds at her slender throat, and gleamed on the warm apricot silk of her gown. Then she lowered her gaze, and he smiled and moved away.

Emily realized that she had made a mistake, seeing only the profile view of the man. It was not Godfrey Duncannon at all, just someone who had a certain resemblance to him in build, and the bone structure of his head. He did not even have the same color of hair. Indeed, this man was at least a couple of decades younger.

She gave herself a mental shake. She should be careful she did not address somebody by the wrong name! Or even worse than that, assume she knew someone she really did not!

She accompanied Lady Parsons for a further twenty minutes or so, meeting a few more people of interest, then parted from her with a promise to meet again soon. Apart from its usefulness, it was a friendship she would enjoy. Difference of view had always been more interesting to Emily than incessant agreement, sincere or not.

She set about moving toward Cecily Duncannon with determination. They had met several times already and the liking between them was quite natural. Cecily was about ten years older than Emily, and still a handsome woman. In fact, middle age became her more than youth had done. Her dark hair was streaked with dramatic silver and where she had been a trifle bony in youth, now her broad shoulders were less obvious, and she had learned to carry herself with unusual grace.

She saw Emily and smiled with unaffected pleasure. Cecily excused herself from the two ladies of uncertain age with whom she had been making conversation and walked toward her.

“I saw you were engaged with Mrs. Forbush and her sister earlier,” Cecily said with a smile. “Some parties seem to last for days!”

Emily knew exactly what she meant. So many conversations felt as if they ended up almost exactly where they had begun.

“I suppose time doesn't really stand still?” Emily replied, not intending it as a question to be answered.

“I used to be so nervous at events like this,” Cecily confided with a rueful little gesture. “Godfrey was always at ease.” She glanced to her left, where Godfrey Duncannon stood talking to several men of middle years, wide of girth and decorated with orders of one sort or another. They were talking, frequently two at a time, and all nodding in agreement. Godfrey, iron-gray-haired and immaculately dressed, was either completely at ease or else a superb actor. The resemblance to the other man, earlier, was an illusion. Someone was telling a story, smiling as he did so and waving his hands around.

Godfrey laughed as if delighted by it. Everyone looked satisfied.

“Women are allowed to gossip, indeed expected to,” Emily said a little ruefully. “But we are not supposed to tell any jokes! Or even listen to them!”

“A pity,” Cecily answered. “The invented jokes allow you to laugh, which is wonderful. It's the real absurdities and the ridiculousness of life that hurt. And you cannot help seeing them.”

Emily caught a note of sadness in her voice, perhaps even fear. She glanced at the other woman's face momentarily. If it were really sadness or fear Emily had detected, she did not want Cecily to know that she had seen it.

Deliberately she started on a new subject. It was chatter, a means of expressing that they were friends, without saying anything so overt and clumsy.

“I just met Lady Parsons,” she said lightly. “In other circumstances I think I could like her. She is not at all as bland as she appears.”

“I expect not many of us are as we appear,” Cecily said, staring across the room. “I would hate to think I was readable at a glance. It would be like one's nightmare of having accidentally gone out into the street in one's undergarments!”

Emily laughed deliberately, as if she thought Cecily had been at least half joking. “Especially in this weather,” she added. “I wonder if we shall have snow for Christmas.”

“Do you go to the country for Christmas?” Cecily asked. “It's such a family thing, it's rather nice. The city gets so grubby when all the snow turns to slush.”

Emily looked at Cecily's face, the strong bones, the ivory skin, the black sweep of eyebrow. There were faint shadows around the dark eyes that powder could not hide. Was it concern over the contract her husband was negotiating, and which seemed to matter so much? Or something far more personal?

“I'm afraid with so many feet, and so many wheels, that always happens in the city,” she replied. “I love Ashworth Hall in the middle of winter, with all the fires burning and the country outside mantled in snow. But I'm afraid that this year we will almost certainly have to stay home. The contract…international trade doesn't wait for holidays.”

Cecily was still looking across the room at her husband. “No,” she agreed. “We cannot afford to assume we will win. It matters intensely to Godfrey…as I imagine it does to all of us.” She included everyone, but Emily knew she meant Jack. Did Godfrey's career really rest on it anything like as much as Jack's did? Godfrey Duncannon had made a fortune. Everything he touched had prospered. She had heard that it was Cecily's money, inherited from her father, that had been the foundation of their wealth, but Godfrey had multiplied it many times over and risen to a pinnacle of respect he might not have dreamed of as a young man. Could any of this possibly matter to him as much as it mattered to Jack, who was still so very much making his way?

She refused to think of what could happen to his career if in the next election he did not hold his seat! The thought was always just beyond the edge of her mind, but it cost some effort to keep it in check. It was not a matter of money, but of self-belief. She had seen the doubt in him, the loathing of being dependent on her.

“Yes,” she murmured in agreement. She wanted to know more, but there were questions one did not ask.

She remained a little longer in pleasant, light conversation. After they were joined by several others, she excused herself and gradually worked her way over toward the most beautiful woman in the room, her great-aunt Vespasia. She had been Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, a courtesy title inherited because her father had been an earl. Now she was Lady Narraway, because recently she had married Victor Narraway, who had been head of Special Branch immediately preceding Pitt. A scandal had robbed him of that position. Pitt had redeemed Narraway's reputation, but too late to reinstate him in office. He had been sidelined to the House of Lords. However, he had realized his deep love for Vespasia and at last found the courage to ask her to marry him. It was not that he had doubted his feelings; he had been afraid to lose a friendship he valued above all others by telling her its nature and making the old ease between them impossible.

Now Emily and Vespasia stood close to each other, momentarily out of conversation with passersby, and Emily seized her chance. Vespasia was not her aunt by blood, but by Emily's first marriage to Lord George Ashworth. However, their ever-deepening friendship over the years, their sharing of triumph and disaster, had created a bond deeper than that of mere kinship. Emily knew that Vespasia felt an even closer bond with Charlotte and Thomas, but she had long ago ceased to mind about that.

Vespasia's face lit with pleasure when she saw Emily. In her youth, Vespasia had been celebrated throughout Europe for her exquisite features and the strength and delicacy of her bones, her flawless skin. Now it was the wit and the passion in her face, the courage and grace of her carriage, that arrested the attention.

“I was hoping you would find a few moments from your duties,” Vespasia said warmly. “How are you, my dear?” She held out her slender hand, which blazed with a single emerald ring.

“Enjoying myself,” Emily replied, accepting her hand momentarily with an answering smile. “At least some of the time.”

“I should hate to suspect you of dishonesty,” Vespasia said drily. “The conversation is deadly, but perhaps some of what is not said is interesting, don't you think? I noticed you in conversation with Lady Parsons.”

Emily laughed. “I hear what you are not saying,” she observed. “She is far more perceptive than I had thought. Her husband is the chief opponent of this contract you know?”

Narraway moved closer to them and it was he who answered. He was a slender man, not so very much taller than Vespasia, lean and wiry, his eyes so dark as to look almost black. His thick hair was shot through with silver, and time had improved and refined his features rather than dulling them.

“We do know,” he agreed. “But, I think, not all of his reasons. That would be very interesting to find out, and possibly useful.”

“Jack wants me to learn what I can about Godfrey Duncannon,” Emily responded. She wanted to ask Narraway if he could tell her anything, but even though she had known him for some years, she did not dare to presume on the acquaintance to ask. He was a man who had been privy to many of the secrets of the great and powerful. It had been his job, just as it now was Pitt's. But Pitt appeared so much more open, approachable. Would he become like Narraway, eventually? Would he see the private darkness within all kinds of people, and smile and hide his discernment…until it became useful to him?

Involuntarily she shivered.

It was Vespasia who answered. “Then you had better continue to enjoy your friendship with Cecily Duncannon,” she advised. “But I think it will not be easy for you.”

Narraway looked at her with surprise, his dark eyebrows raised.

Emily understood. Vespasia did not mean that Cecily would not continue to like Emily. On the contrary, the warmth would remain, and increase. What she meant was that learning the source of someone's pain, understanding their secrets because they trusted you, silently if not openly, faced you with dilemmas to which there was no happy solution.

“I know,” Emily said gently. It was an admission she had avoided making to herself. It was so much less challenging not to know, to sail through life, through relationships of any sort, seeing only what you wished to, never the layers below the surface.

“Has Cecily Duncannon such painful secrets?” Narraway asked quietly, although the fact that he phrased it so exactly made it clear that he knew the answer.

“Of course,” Vespasia replied.

“To do with Godfrey?” he persisted.

“That I don't know. It's possible.”

“His future is secure,” Emily put in. “And, as far as I know, his reputation is above criticism. Jack has looked into it most carefully. He can't afford to have his own reputation tied to another disaster.” She regretted the harshness of the words the moment she had said them. Of course both Vespasia and Narraway knew about the past disasters. Narraway probably knew more than Emily did herself. It still sounded like something of a betrayal to remind them.

Vespasia understood. “I was thinking of her personal life,” she said. “I do not think Godfrey is always an easy man.”

“A mistress?” Narraway said with a smile that seemed like genuine amusement. “I think not. He is far too careful for that. Unexpected passion can catch most people, but I would stake a lot that he is not one of them.”

“A lot?” Emily asked immediately. “Such as a contract that apparently matters intensely to the fortunes of many?”

“Yes,” he replied almost without hesitation. “Godfrey has never allowed any kind of emotion to cloud his honor, or his ambition.”

Vespasia gave a wince so slight only Emily caught it and read it correctly. She had watched Cecily's face and seen the shadows in it. Maybe they had less in common than Emily had thought. She had loved Jack from the beginning, at least in part because he had always been a friend. They had talked about all kinds of things in the earliest days of their acquaintance, because then he had had no aspirations to marry her, not even any thought that it was possible. There had been none of the awkwardness of a courtship, the forced propriety, the tensions. They had laughed together, given confidences and been open about thoughts, ideas, and even feelings. That had never changed.