A Husband's Wicked Ways (15 page)

“Aye, ma’am.” Hester hurried away, and Aurelia sipped her sherry as she undressed.

She woke early the next morning and rang for Hester. Within half an hour she was walking briskly through the early-morning chill to Mount Street. As she reached the steps, the front door opened and a wiry man emerged, wrapped in a greatcoat, cap pulled low over his eyes.

“Why, Lady Farnham, what brings you here so early?” He took off his cap politely.

“I’ve been out of town, Lester. I got back last night.” Cornelia always referred to Lester as Harry’s right-hand man, his aide-de-camp. Certainly, Harry did little in
the shadowy side of his life without Lester at his side.

“Oh, aye, come to see the little miss then, I’ll be bound. Right glad she’ll be to see you, too, ma’am.” Lester stepped back, holding the door for her.

“I can’t wait to see her.” Aurelia smiled. “You’re out and about early, too.”

“Oh, aye,” he agreed placidly, replacing his cap. “Good day to you, Lady Farnham.” He loped off down the steps and seemed to vanish into the street as if he’d been swallowed up.

Aurelia shook her head with a smile. Lester always played his cards close to his chest. She thought only Harry ever really knew what he was up to. And since whatever it was would be Harry’s business, that was probably only as it should be.

“Good morning, Lady Farnham, I didn’t hear the knocker, my apologies.” Hector, the butler, hurried across the hall, buttoning his waistcoat. “I wasn’t expecting such an early visitor.”

“I’m shockingly early, I know, but I only returned to town last night and I’m very anxious to see Franny.”

“Breakfast was sent to the nursery ten minutes ago, m’lady. If you’d like to go on up, I’ll send coffee for you.” Hector coughed discreetly. “I don’t believe Lord and Lady Bonham are about yet.”

“No, of course not,” Aurelia said swiftly. “I wouldn’t dream of disturbing them. I’ll just run up to the nursery.”

She suited action to words, knowing that Hector
would somehow find a discreet way of informing his mistress that Lady Farnham was in the house.

Franny was overjoyed to see her mother, snuggling into Aurelia’s lap, prattling nonstop. Aurelia let the stream wash over her as she enjoyed the remembered feel of her daughter’s small body. What would Franny make of Greville? She would by the nature of this enterprise see him much in her mother’s company and, being Franny, would inevitably ask questions that might be hard to answer.

And what of Greville? she wondered. He had seemed perfectly comfortable with Franny on the occasion that he’d met her, but Aurelia had no sense of what he thought about children in general. He’d made it perfectly clear that he had no personal ties, no emotional commitments outside his work. She had learned that his childhood had been lonely. Mistress Masham had made it clear she disapproved of his mother. Did he have siblings? Aurelia guessed not. But it was impossible to be sure of anything. He erected such a wall around himself that even thinking of asking personal questions seemed impossible.

Well, there was no need for him to become close to Franny. This was a three-month mission. The child would forget all about him once he’d departed for whence he came.

Aurelia looked up from her wondering contemplation of the soft and vulnerable back of her daughter’s neck as the door opened. “Ellie, you’re home.” Corne
lia came into the nursery in a swirl of damask dressing gown, her honey-colored hair still tousled from sleep. She bent to kiss Aurelia.

“I didn’t want them to wake you,” Aurelia protested, returning the hug. “But I couldn’t wait until a more civilized hour to see Franny.”

“No, of course you couldn’t.” Cornelia kissed her own children, pausing to wipe a smear of jam from Susannah’s mouth. She poured herself coffee and sat down by the fire next to Aurelia. “So, how’s your aunt?”

“Much better. She decided soon after I arrived that her heart palpitations had probably been a touch of indigestion and proceeded to consume prodigious amounts of turtle soup liberally laced with Madeira. Which quite put her to rights again.” The aunt in question was far from fictitious, and Cornelia knew enough about her eccentricities to find this catalog of falsehoods perfectly believable.

“So it was a wasted journey,” Cornelia said, stretching her slippered feet comfortably to the fire.

“Maybe…maybe not,” Aurelia said with what she hoped was a mysterious smile.

“Oh?” Cornelia looked at her sharply, her eyes inquisitive. “And just what does that mean?”

“What does it mean, Mama…what does it mean?” Franny chimed in, her voice repeating the mantra in ever-rising cadence.

“It only means, darling, that I was able to comfort Great-Aunt Baxter, even if she wasn’t really unwell,”
Aurelia said, shooting Cornelia a warning look designed to increase her friend’s curiosity.

Cornelia sipped her coffee and changed the subject. “I really needed you this week, Ellie. The Duchess of Gracechurch insisted on our attendance at a ghastly dinner party, and then Harry backed out at the last minute…urgent summons to the ministry, of course…. I didn’t see him for days. So I had to go to his great-aunt’s alone. If you’d been in town, I could have dragooned you into accompanying me.”

The conversation continued in this vein for half an hour, then Miss Alison, the children’s governess, murmured about beginning the day’s lessons, and Aurelia stood up, setting Franny on her feet. Adroitly Aurelia cut off the rising protestations with a preemptive bid. “Be good for Miss Alison, love, and I’ll come and fetch you myself this afternoon. And we’ll have supper together in front of the fire tonight.”

“In your parlor…not in the nursery,” Franny bargained.

“In Aunt Liv’s parlor,” Aurelia corrected, bending to kiss Franny.

Soon, once these three months were over, she would have her own parlor.
It was a most satisfying prospect even if the route she had to take to achieve it was circuitous to say the least.

“Let’s take breakfast in my sitting room,” Cornelia said as they left the nursery. “Harry’s gone riding with David and Nick. They were up half the night play
ing hazard at White’s, and they’ve gone to clear their heads.”

Aurelia was glad that Harry was not around. She wasn’t sure how confident she would feel about bringing up Greville Falconer and their chance encounter in Bristol, or her surprising reactions to such an encounter, in front of a man who knew at least something about Greville’s work. Harry would, of course, assume that Aurelia knew nothing of the colonel’s involvement with the shadow world of the ministry, and she suspected he would try quite hard to dissuade her, either personally or through his wife, that such a connection was most unwise for such an innocent and unwary friend.

She would deal with the situation when it arose, but the longer she could put off facing Harry Bonham, the better prepared she would be.

Cornelia wasted no time once they were ensconced at a round table in her sitting room in front of the fire. “Maybe…maybe not?” she inquired with raised eyebrows.

Aurelia smile was rather secretive as she poured coffee for them both. “When I was not attending at Aunt Baxter’s bedside with cups of gruel, I was walking those ghastly pugs of hers.”

“So?” Cornelia said impatiently when Aurelia, instead of continuing, began to butter a piece of toast.

“So, I happened to meet someone…someone I had met only briefly before.” Carefully Aurelia sliced her toast into quarters. Her eyes gleamed as she cast a quick
conspiratorial glance at her friend across the table. She popped a quarter into her mouth and watched Cornelia with the same mischievous gleam. “Can you guess, Nell?”

Cornelia abandoned her own toast and sipped her coffee, frowning in thought. She was perfectly happy to play Aurelia’s game. Then her gaze widened. “Not that colonel…the one who’d known Frederick? The one who seemed rather…how shall I put it? Rather interested in you?”

Aurelia nodded and reached for the marmalade. “The very same.”

“What was his name…oh, I know.” Cornelia snapped her fingers. “Something to do with hawks…
Falconer.
Colonel Falconer…crooked mouth, but attractive, a rather striking presence…graying temples…tall, big man…good eyes, very dark gray…astonishing eyelashes. Am I right?”

Aurelia laughed. “Yes, quite right. Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer, to give him his full title. I bumped into him in Bristol while I was walking the aunt’s pugs.”

“Oh…” Cornelia nodded significantly. “I thought you said he was arrogant when you met him here.”

Aurelia shrugged, astonished at how easy this was. “I thought he was. But in Bristol he was a port in a storm. I was so bored, so tired of reading periodicals to Aunt Baxter, so utterly wearied of walking those wretched dogs for my daily exercise, I would have welcomed the devil incarnate.

“Anyway, he came to call once or twice, and then we went to a concert together. Somehow he was always in the park when I arrived with the dogs…” She smiled what she hoped was a mysterious if self-deprecating smile. “I don’t suppose I’ll see him in London, after all we were companions in the Bristol desert, but here, I’m sure he has many friends and many pursuits more exciting than walking pugs.”

“As do you,” Cornelia pointed out shrewdly. “Will you mind if you don’t see him again?”

Now for it.
“Yes.” Aurelia dropped her eyes to the napkin in her lap. “Yes, Nell, I will.” She looked up with a rueful shake of her head. “What am I to make of that?”

“Only that we have to ensure that you do meet him again,” Cornelia said, her eyes alight with purpose. “This is excellent, Ellie. We will make Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer our project. I’ll enlist Harry, since he knows him…” Her voice trailed away.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Aurelia said steadily.

“If it’s that he’s quite possibly engaged in Harry’s line of work, yes.”

Aurelia nodded. “Yes, I’ve already thought of that. I can’t really ask him, though.”

“No,” Cornelia agreed drily. “It’s not something they care to talk about.” She frowned at Aurelia. “Would it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t seem to matter to you and Liv.”

“It’s not easy, though.”

Aurelia’s smile had a touch of irony to it. “I think I can manage what you both manage.”

“Of course,” Cornelia said hastily. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t…merely…” She shrugged helplessly. “Merely that it’s hard not knowing where they are, or what danger they might be facing. Most of all, it’s so hard knowing there are huge areas of their lives from which we’re essentially excluded. However much love and commitment there is, nothing changes that one essential fact.”

And you think I don’t know that?
Aurelia half laughed. If anything, she knew it better than either Nell or Liv. She hadn’t known about her husband’s activities until after his death. And he would happily have left her in ignorance her entire life if he could have done so. But she had one advantage over her friends. She knew from the outset what she was getting into with Greville Falconer.

“A
S YOU CAN SEE
, S
IR
G
REVILLE
, everything is in the first style of elegance…all newly refurbished,” the agent said somewhat anxiously. His client had given nothing away in the final tour of the house on South Audley Street. Not so much as a quirk of an eyebrow or a twitch of his mouth. “And I think you’ll find the lease very reasonable.”

“Yes,” said the colonel without expansion. He walked from the drawing room into the dining room. The mahogany table would seat twelve comfortably. He could see no reason why he would wish to entertain more than twelve at his dinner table. The dining room in Cavendish Square would seat more than twenty, and the cavernous room in his aunt’s mausoleum of a house would better that by at least ten. But the more intimate the gathering, the more information could be gleaned.

He strode up the staircase to the upper floor. It was quite a handsome staircase with an elegant sweep and nicely carved banisters. Two corridors ran off a square landing at the head of the stairs, lined with doors on either side. Light poured into the corridors from long windows at the end of each. Double doors off the east corridor opened into the master bedroom, looking out over the front of the house, with a good-size dressing room beyond. A connecting door led to a second suite of rooms, looking out over the small rear garden, with a modest but rather pretty boudoir adjoining. Presumably the apartments designed for the lady of the house.

He returned downstairs, cast a cursory eye over the kitchen regions, the butler’s pantry, the housekeeper’s sitting room. He had absolutely no idea what servants in a London town house expected, never having needed to give the issue any thought before, but Aurelia would know whether they were adequate and what improvements if any should be made.

“It’ll do,” he stated.

The agent looked relieved. “Will you sign the lease then, Sir Greville? It’s for just one year.”

“Yes, but with the option to renew.” Greville took the document from the agent and carried it into the drawing room. He doubted he would be in a position to renew, but the charade demanded an impression of permanent residency. He found pen and ink on a secretaire and signed the lease. He handed the paper back to
the agent. “If you will give me the keys in exchange, our business is concluded, I believe.”

“Yes, Sir Greville. With pleasure, sir.” The agent handed over a heavy bunch of keys. “They’re all there, sir, all marked. Keys to the cellar and the pantries as well…of course, I imagine your butler and housekeeper will take charge of those.”

“I would imagine so,” Greville said, weighing the bunch in his palm, before extending his hand to the agent. “Good day to you, Charteris.”

“Good day, Sir Greville.” The man shook hands with unmistakable relief. “I’ll see myself out.” He hurried into the hall and Greville heard the front door close on his departure. The house settled around him as he stood in the drawing room stroking his chin.

Aurelia could help him with the hiring of staff. It would be considered perfectly appropriate once they were engaged. But in the meantime he was anxious to move in, or rather, anxious to move out of Lady Broughton’s establishment. His aunt had taken to lying in wait for him, ambushing him on his way in or out of the house with some new facet of her preparations for the rout party. Why she thought he was interested in the color of the champagne, the choice of dinner service, or whether it should be partridge or pheasant in the game pies was a mystery to him.

With a dismissive shake of his head he left the house, locking the door behind him. Whistling to himself, he strolled off in the direction of Cavendish Square. He’d
told Aurelia to look for him before noon, and it was almost that now.

Aurelia was in the drawing room, watching the street from one of the long windows. She’d taken the precaution of telling Morecombe that she was not in to visitors this morning because she was expecting someone in particular and she would answer the door herself when he arrived. Morecombe’s response had been typically laconic. He’d disappeared into the back regions, and apart from the appearance of the occasional maid with beeswax and duster, Aurelia had the front of the house to herself.

She saw Greville approach the house from the garden in the center of the square. He was swinging the slender cane that she now knew concealed a deadly weapon, and the now familiar prickle of excitement ran up her spine as she watched him cross the street.

She liked the restraint of his dress, he seemed to have no interest in the vagaries of fashion, and indeed his powerful frame needed no augmentation. He had no need of fancy stitching or shoulder pads to improve his figure. His coat of charcoal gray wool sat snugly across his large shoulders, the dove gray buckskin britches clung to his powerful thighs, the corded muscles rippling with each long stride. His starched white stock was of only moderate height, but he didn’t need the ex
aggerated height so much in favor among young men to lengthen his neck and strengthen his chin.

Greville Falconer exuded strength and power in every inch. He paused on the pavement outside the house and looked up at the facade. His gaze moved to the windows and he saw her standing in the shadow of the curtains. He raised a hand in greeting, then came up the steps to the front door.

Aurelia hastened across the hall to the front door, pulling it wide. “You came.”

“Did you doubt that I would?” He stepped into the hall, his gray gaze sweeping her countenance, running slowly down her body, almost as if he was checking to make sure everything was still there, she thought. But the appreciative gleam in his eyes, and that sensual smiling curve to his mouth, sent a jolt of arousal through her belly.

“You’ve curled your hair again” was all he said.

For some reason the comment flustered her, and she felt herself blush like an ingenue. “Ringlets are in fashion.” She struggled to sound matter-of-fact, as if her skin wasn’t on fire and her belly churning. She turned away to the drawing room. “One can’t be seen in fashionable London with straight hair.”

“Oh, I think you could,” he declared, following her into the salon. “Your hair is delightful au naturel.” He took up his usual position by the fireplace and stood smiling at her, his eyebrows slightly raised in quizzical inquiry.

Aurelia ignored the compliment as she could think of no response that wouldn’t sound false or facetious. “May I offer you sherry…or Madeira, perhaps?” she asked, moving to the decanters on the sideboard.

“Sherry, thank you.” He watched her move across the room, enjoying the fluid grace of her walk. “So, are you ready to begin our enterprise, Aurelia?”

She turned, decanter in hand. “What, now? Today?”

“I have just this morning signed the lease on the house in South Audley Street. Do you care to see it? I would appreciate your opinion on a few matters.”

Aurelia poured sherry into two glasses. She felt as if time had speeded up somehow. For some reason she had thought there would be a few days of normality, time to settle in again before work started in earnest. But not so, it seemed. “Shouldn’t we spend a few days getting society accustomed to the idea that we seem to enjoy each other’s company?” she suggested tentatively, bringing the glasses over.

“Certainly,” he agreed, taking the glass she offered him. “Looking the house over won’t prevent that.”

“But won’t it cause raised eyebrows if we’re seen together, particularly going into an empty house?”

He shook his head at her in mock reproof. “Come now, have you forgotten all the lessons of last week so quickly? Why should anyone see us going into the house together?”

“Oh…I see what you mean.” She smiled ruefully
and sipped her sherry, taking a seat in the corner of the sofa. “I’ll go in by myself, of course.”

“Having, of course, made certain no one who knows you is around to see you enter.”

“Of course. How will I get in?”

“The usual way. You’ll knock on the door and it will open for you.”

She nodded, already enjoying the sense of challenge, intellectual and physical, that she had so relished during the previous week with each new test. “Shall we go now?”

He raised his glass to his lips. “We’re not in that much of a hurry.” His eyes were laughing and she couldn’t help a chuckle in return. “Did you talk to Lady Bonham about your visit to Bristol?” Greville inquired casually.

“It came up, naturally. When I went to see Franny.”

“Yes, I imagine it would.” He waited, eyebrows quirked.

“I told her what we’d agreed. She didn’t appear to find anything strange in it.”

He nodded. “What else?”

“Nothing really. Nell’s my friend, my interests are her interests. If I happen to like someone, she’ll be prepared to like them, too, unless given a good reason not to.” She frowned down into her glass.

“Go on,” he prompted, well aware that there was more here.

Aurelia sighed. “Well, Nell is no fool, and well aware that anyone she meets through her husband could be involved in War Ministry business. She asked me if I thought it likely.”

“And what did you say?” He was watching her closely now.

“I said it had occurred to me. She’d think it very odd if it hadn’t. I’m not generally considered a fool either.”

“With good reason.” His white smile flashed. “This is something of a hurdle, I admit. Bonham knows full well that he and I obey the same master, although he has no idea what I do. It’s company etiquette to avoid discussion of company business outside the ministry itself, so he won’t probe too obviously. But you should be prepared for some covert opposition.”

“I am prepared. Harry doesn’t know about Frederick?”

“Good God, no. Only three people know about Frederick. You, myself, and my master. And even he does not know the connection between Bonham’s wife and my late partner. It will stay that way.”

She nodded in silent acceptance. “Nell and Harry won’t stand in my way,” she said after a minute. “They might, in fact probably will, try to dissuade me from this marriage, but in the end they’ll stand behind me, if I’m resolute.”

It was her turn to look at him closely now. “Harry knows nothing to your detriment…nothing that would make him think, apart from your involvement in
his own world, that you would make me an unsatisfactory and dangerous husband?”

“No more unsatisfactory and dangerous as he is himself.”

“Then I’m confident that’s a hurdle I can jump without too much difficulty.” She set down her glass and stood up energetically. “Shall we go and see the house now?”

“I’ll leave first.” He rose in more leisurely fashion, draining his glass as he did so. “When you reach number Twelve South Audley Street, what will you do?”

“Walk past it twice, then if I’m satisfied, knock on the door.”

“Good.” He glanced at his fob watch hanging from his waistcoat. “Can you be there in half an hour?”

South Audley Street was close to Grosvenor Square. If she took a hackney to the square, then walked to the house, she could make it. “Barring traffic, or anything unexpected.”

“I’ll be waiting…no need to see me out.” He strode into the hall and Aurelia ran upstairs to fetch her pelisse, hat, and gloves.

She let herself out and hailed a passing hackney. “Grosvenor Square, please.”

“Any particular address, mum?”

“No, just in the middle somewhere.”

The driver gave her an odd look but cracked his whip, and the conveyance trundled forward. Halfway around the square, he drew rein. “This do you, mum?”

“Perfectly.” Aurelia descended, paid the man, then walked off to the south side of the square. She walked up South Audley Street casually, glancing up at the houses. They were for the most part stately, double-fronted mansions, but every few houses there would be a pair of smaller, narrower, attached single-fronted houses. She guessed someone had divided a mansion into two at some point, maybe to accommodate a second branch of a family.

Number 12 was one of these houses. A narrow flight of honed steps led up to an oak front door with a glowing brass knocker and handle. The iron railings were freshly black-leaded, and the windows to the left of the door winked in the sunlight. A pretty fanlight had been installed over the door, together with a brass lantern. Two stone flowerpots, at present empty, flanked the door. The house’s adjoining twin was as well kept.

Aurelia walked past the house. Several houses down, she stopped to adjust her boot. A few people were around, mostly tradesmen as far as she could see. A nursemaid with two small children in tow hurried by towards the square. One child was playing with a top that threatened to spin into the street at any moment. The nursemaid needed to take charge of the top until they reached the square garden, but Aurelia closed her eyes and fought the urge to intervene. She couldn’t draw attention to herself under any circumstances, or at least,
she amended, not unless the child was about to spin itself under the wheels of a carriage.

After a hundred yards or so she crossed the road and sauntered casually on the opposite side past the house. She saw no one she knew, even vaguely, and as casually as before, she strolled over the road and up the steps to the house, banging the knocker once, resisting the compulsion to look over her shoulder to see if anyone familiar had appeared on the street.

The door opened and she stepped swiftly inside, the door closing instantly at her back. “No one saw you?” Greville stood with one hand leaning against the door he had just closed, his gaze searching her face.

“No, I’m certain.”

“I’m certain, too, you did a good job.” He laughed softly. “But I own I thought for a minute you were going to start berating that nursemaid.”

“How could you tell?” She stared at him, astonished as always by his powers of observation.

“I’m getting to know you, my dear,” he said with a mock bow. “I could read you very clearly at that moment, and I applauded your restraint.”

Aurelia was delighted by the compliment but tried not to show how much. She looked around the hall. The house faced south and the pale sunlight shone bravely onto the oak floor through the one long window beside the door and the fanlight above it.