A Husband's Wicked Ways (10 page)

She put on her pelisse and bonnet and set off to Mount Street, hoping to find Nell at home. She caught Nell on the doorstep, just leaving the house.

“Nell, I need to ask you a favor,” she said, hoping she sounded convincingly flustered. She’d decided a sudden emergency would be easier to explain and require little
detail, whereas a carefully thought-out story ahead of time would be much harder to stick to.

“Of course, love, anything.” Cornelia looked concerned. “Come in.”

“This won’t take a minute,” Aurelia said swiftly. “You’re going out, I don’t want to keep you.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere special,” Cornelia declared with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I was going to try on a hat, if you must know. A purely frivolous errand. Come in, we can’t talk on the front steps.” She turned and retraced her steps to the front door, banging the knocker once.

The door opened with enviable speed, Aurelia thought, as she followed her friend inside, acknowledging Hector, the butler, who bowed her in with a murmur of greeting.

She followed Nell into her sitting room at the rear of the hall. “You remember my elderly aunt in Bristol…? Well, I’ve just received a letter from her companion. Apparently Aunt Baxter is seriously ill. Matty seemed to imply that she could be on her deathbed, but she’s something of an alarmist. But just in case I think I need to go for a few days. I
am
her only living relative.”

“Of course you must go, love,” Nell said, pouring two glasses of sherry. “And of course Franny and Daisy shall stay here for as long as necessary.”

Aurelia smiled her relief. She hadn’t even needed to express the request. “I’ll hire a post chaise and leave early tomorrow morning. If it’s really all right, I’ll send Daisy
later this afternoon with Franny’s clothes and the little things she can’t do without. She won’t sleep without that scruffy rag doll.”

Aurelia was talking swiftly, almost breathlessly, and her agitation was not feigned. This tangle of lies tripping off her tongue was making her horribly uncomfortable. Even more so as she saw how readily her friend believed her. She took a restorative sip from her sherry glass. “I’ll pop up to the schoolroom now and explain it to Franny.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Much to Aurelia’s relief, Franny seemed quite unperturbed by the news of her mother’s imminent departure. The prospect of staying with Stevie and Susannah had all three children dancing excitedly around the schoolroom, and Aurelia had to beg for a farewell kiss. She left the schoolroom with Cornelia, saying as they reached the hall, “Thank you again, Nell. I must hurry home and make preparations. Daisy will come around five o’clock.”

“Of course,” Cornelia said, accompanying her friend to the door. “As a matter of interest, have you seen that Colonel Falconer recently?”

“Not since that afternoon, a few days ago,” Aurelia said with a creditable imitation of carelessness. “Why?”

“He seemed very attentive that afternoon.” Nell regarded her friend with a slight smile. “We all noticed it. David said he’d known Frederick.”

“Yes, he’d met him once or twice before Trafalgar,” Aurelia said, aware that her palms were growing moist.
“I don’t think they were friends particularly. I did ask him if he’d met Stephen too, but he said not.”
How she hated lying, but how easily the fabrication tripped off her tongue.

Cornelia gave a casual nod of acceptance and leaned in to kiss her friend good-bye. “Good luck with Aunt Baxter.”

“Thank you.” Aurelia hurried away with a bright wave of farewell, feeling guilty but relieved. And somewhere amidst that guilt and relief lurked a quiver of excitement.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
A
URELIA
slipped out of the house just after dawn and walked briskly towards Wigmore Street in search of a hackney. She carried only a small cloakbag. It was a brisk morning, overcast, a touch of frost on the grass in the square garden, and she drew her fur-trimmed pelisse closer around her and changed hands on her bag so that the other hand could warm up in her fur muff.

No one had been around to see her leave. She had told Morecombe the previous evening that she would be going to the country for a few days on urgent family business, and the old man had shown no curiosity. Aurelia hadn’t expected him to. If he bothered to answer the doorknocker in her absence, he would tell any visitors that Lady Farnham had gone out of town and he had no idea when she would be back.

As luck would have it, a hackney was standing at the
curb as she turned onto Wigmore Street, and when she raised a hand to call him over, the jarvey clicked up his horses and brought the conveyance up beside her.

“Where to, ma’am?” His voice was muffled in the thick folds of his woolen scarf, and the horses’ breath steamed in the cold air as they shifted their hooves on the cobbles.

“The Bell, Woodstreet, Cheapside,” she instructed.

The man peered down at her uncertainly. “The Bell…Cheapside…you sure, ma’am?”

“Positive,” she said briskly, opening the door to the carriage. “As quickly as you can, if you please.”

“Right y’are.” He still sounded doubtful, but once she’d slammed the door on herself, he cracked his whip and the horses moved forward at a brisk pace.

Aurelia settled back on the worn and cracked leather squabs. She sympathized with the jarvey’s surprise. Ladies accustomed to the elegance of Mayfair did not in general frequent Cheapside.

But neither did they head into the unknown on a clandestine adventure at the behest of a man they barely knew, she reflected wryly. But then Mayfair ladies did not in general find they’d been married to a man they barely knew either. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure Frederick’s presence as he’d been when she last saw him. He and Stephen had been filled with the fever of patriotism, the passionate need to serve their country as they’d stood so proudly on the deck of the man-of-war as it steamed out of Portsmouth
harbor down the river to the quiet waters of the Solent. She could hear the drums and pipes of the marine band playing them away and felt again that vicarious thrill that had touched her that afternoon, raising goose prickles on her skin, her eyes glazing over with a mist of emotion.

It was her turn to do her part now.

The hackney swayed sharply as it turned a corner, and the iron wheels bumped unevenly over the cobbles before it came to a halt. Aurelia drew aside the leather flap that served as a curtain and peered out. They were in the courtyard of an inn.

“’Ere y’are, ma’am. The Bell, Woodstreet. Just as ye asked,” the jarvey said a trifle belligerently in case she should accuse him of making a mistake.

“Thank you,” she said, alighting from the carriage. “What do I owe you?”

“Sixpence,” he said, reaching down a mitten-clad hand.

Aurelia gave him sixpence halfpenny and he gave her a gratified tug of his forelock. “You want I should call the landlord from the inn, ma’am?”

“No, thank you. I can manage quite well.” She smiled a dismissal, picked up her cloakbag, and turned resolutely towards the inn.

The back door led directly from the stable courtyard into the taproom. It was crowded, even at this hour, the long benches filled with folk eating breakfast. The sound of a post horn brought instant activity, people leaping up from the benches, cramming last mouth
fuls, draining ale tankards, as they surged to the yard.

It was a staging inn, Aurelia finally realized. The public stages came in here from all over the countryside and left again with full complements. Well, she reflected, it was certainly the ideal place to be anonymous. No one she knew would ever dream of frequenting such a place.
And where was the colonel?

She looked around, searching for his tall, large frame somewhere in the crowd. He would be easy to spot with that commanding presence, the restrained elegance of his dress. Perhaps he wasn’t here yet. Maybe he’d been held up. Maybe he wasn’t coming…the last thought brought a stab of disappointment that surprised her.

The taproom was quieter now as the stagecoach passengers departed. Others were waiting for the next stage to wherever they were going, but the initial chaos had quietened. Aurelia went back to the door and stood looking out into the stable courtyard. He would come in this way. Either by carriage or on horseback he would turn in beneath the archway from the street into the yard.

Then she felt her scalp prickle and a current of excitement ran up her spine. He was here, and of course he wouldn’t look as she was expecting him to look. The man was a spy. He was on a mission. Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer was not going to stroll under the archway into the yard. He would be somebody else.

Slowly she turned back to the taproom and looked around, this time with new eyes. She saw him almost
immediately. He was hunched over an ale mug at a table close to the inglenook. An old cloak trailed on the ground, gnarled hands in fingerless gloves curled around the tankard. A greasy cap was pulled down low on his forehead. But she knew him immediately.

Quietly she crossed the sawdust-littered floor. She didn’t greet him, however, merely took a seat on the bench opposite and surveyed him. Those deep gray eyes were unmistakable, and she wondered if he ever needed to disguise them and, if so, how he did it.

“Well done,” he said softly. “I expected it to take you rather longer.” He reached into the pocket of his stained waistcoat and took out a key. “Go up to the second floor…the second door on the left.” He slid the key across the table. “Dress yourself in the clothes in the armoire. I’ll wait here.”

Aurelia took the key. Part of her wanted to laugh at this cloak-and-dagger game, but the strange flutter of alarm in her gut told her it was definitely not a laughing matter. There was only one explanation. Greville Falconer didn’t want anyone to know where he was. There were people in this world who wanted him dead, Frederick had said as much. It seemed such a dramatic thought, but drama had entered her life with a grand fanfare when she’d learned the truth about Frederick.

Without a word she rose from the table and made for the staircase at the corner of the taproom. It twisted and creaked its way to the second floor, where she found the
door, fitted the key in the lock, and turned it. The door swung open onto a small chamber, lit by a smelly tallow candle on a rickety table under the window. A sullen fire smoldered in the grate, but she was grateful for what little warmth it gave as she surveyed the contents of the armoire and contemplated removing her own warm garments in favor of the worn serge dress and cloak hanging in the cupboard.

Was he testing her again with this disguise? Or was it truly necessary?

If it
was
necessary, she thought with another flutter of alarm, she was getting into deeper waters than she had bargained for. She’d agreed to help ease his social path, not racket around the countryside dressed in rags pretending to be someone she wasn’t. But she found some comfort in the knowledge that in this disguise no one would recognize her. She held up the clothes with a grimace of distaste. They seemed clean enough, for which she was grateful, and she could keep her own underclothes and woolen stockings. She had to change her boots, however, for a pair of down-at-heel and ill-fitting leather clogs with paste buckles.

She made the transformation as rapidly as she could, shivering the while. She thrust her own clothes into her cloakbag, reluctantly relinquishing the pelisse. Clearly, the rest of this journey would be accomplished by public stage, with no hot bricks to alleviate the cold. The awful thought occurred that he might be expecting them to ride as outside passengers on the roof.

That would be too much, Aurelia decided, setting off downstairs again. She had enough money of her own to insist on an inside seat, and if it upset the colonel, or whatever he was in his present guise, then so be it. Heartened by this somewhat militant frame of mind, she reentered the taproom. He was still sitting where she’d left him, tankard and a plate of bacon in front of him.

She took a seat opposite again. “I think it’s your turn to provide breakfast, sir.”

For answer he turned and growled in the general direction of a potboy who was scurrying between the tables. “Bread an’ bacon do ye?” the colonel demanded of the wench sitting opposite him.

“Aye, if ’n you please, sir,” she returned with a faint country accent to match his own. Rather convincing she thought. If she could manage to see her part as a game, in a competition of some kind, it would provide distance and maybe she would stop envisaging dangers where there were none.

He waved at his plate when the lad dodged across to them. “Same again fer the wife.”

The boy went off and Greville looked at Aurelia, one eyebrow slightly lifted. “Quite the actress you are.”

For some reason the compliment pleased her, but she did her best to hide it. “Does it surprise you?”

“A certain amount. I wasn’t sure how good you’d be, but I see I need have no fears.”

“And if I was terrible, what would you have done?” She regarded him closely.

He took a deep draft of his ale and set the tankard down. “If you had not managed to work out who I was, or if you had in any way balked at the costume, or the part you must play, I would have sent you back to Cavendish Square,” he stated flatly. “I have no intention of endangering you in any way, or of making you uncomfortable. Not everyone is suited to this work.”

“I see.” She drummed her fingers on the stained table. He was telling her that she could still back out, even now. But if she didn’t, then Aurelia knew there would be no turning back, because she would not allow herself to do so. Did she have sufficient courage to see this through?

She drew in a sharp breath. “So, who are we?”

If he felt relief, he gave so sign, merely answered, “A poor tenant farmer and his wife coming back from London. You’ve been staying with your sister, helping her with her children during her confinement, and I came to fetch you back because the chickens and the kitchen garden are going to rack and ruin in your absence, and I’ve enough on my plate with my own farmwork and the hours I have to put in on the landlord’s fields.” His voice was his own, but so soft as to be almost impossible to hear outside the immediate area around their table. “Clear enough?”

“Clear enough. But, poor or not, we’d better not be traveling as outside passengers.”

At that he grinned, a quick flash of white teeth and
a laughing glint in his eyes. “No, ma’am, that won’t be necessary. We may be humble folk, but I’ve coin enough for an inside seat.”

She nodded, but said nothing as the lad came up with a hunk of barley bread on a plate piled high with fried bacon, and a tankard of ale, and set both in front of her.

“I suppose coffee is out of the question,” she murmured when the boy had gone off.

“Remember your part,” he admonished, taking another swig of ale.

Aurelia shrugged, broke off a piece of bread, piled it with bacon, and took a large mouthful. It was surprisingly good, and so was the ale. The bacon was salty, the ale thirst-quenching. “Where is our farm situated?” she inquired, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand in the absence of any napkinlike refinements.

“Barnet…it’s only a day’s coach journey.”

“I’m relieved.” She took another sip of ale. “And our exact destination? Or am I to be kept in the dark about that?”

“I see no reason why you should be,” he said mildly. “We are going to a farm…you will not, however, be expected to assume the duties of a farmer’s wife any more than I will be bringing in the cows from the corn.”

He pushed back from the table as the clock in the yard struck the half hour. “The stage will be here in five minutes. It might be wise to find the outhouse. I believe it’s at the end of the kitchen garden.”

He swung a leg over the bench and stood up. “I’ll settle up here.”

Aurelia nodded and rose to her feet. The outhouse of a coaching station was not an appealing proposition, but it was probably a wise precaution. The public stage kept to a schedule and wouldn’t stop to order. Or so she assumed.

The experience was every bit as unpleasant as she’d expected, and she couldn’t help a flash of envy when she saw Greville emerge from behind one of the stable buildings in the innyard. He had had no need to wrestle with skirt and petticoats over a stinking hole in a crusted wooden plank.

The coach was in the yard, passengers piling in as the coachman and ostlers fastened baggage to the roof. “Quick,” Greville said in an urgent whisper. In the same breath he lifted Aurelia up into the carriage with a deft maneuver that left a stout dame with a birdcage muttering imprecations.

Aurelia saw the point immediately. There was a single corner seat left by the window on the far side. She took it, refusing to consider for a second whether someone else had a prior claim. Greville had stood back with a courteous hand to help the stout woman and her birdcage into the coach. She huffed, but took the seat next to Aurelia, settling her skirts and her birdcage.

“Pretty bird…is it a parrot?” Aurelia inquired, trying to remember the slight rustic twang.

“Bless you, no, m’dear. ’Tis a parakeet,” the woman
declared, suddenly all smiles. “Belongs to my Jake…he’s on a ship, an’ he brought ’im back from Jamaica.” She pushed her fingers through the bars of the cage. “Eh, birdie…birdie…say good mornin’ to the lady.”

“Does he really talk?” Aurelia was fascinated despite the disconcerting sense of living in a dream. In her wildest fantasies she would never have seen herself on a public coach chatting amiably with a peasant woman about a caged bird.