A Husband's Wicked Ways (26 page)

And he could not afford to acknowledge the reason. He drained his sherry glass and went up to his bedchamber.

When Greville strolled into his chief ’s dusty office in the War Ministry early the following morning, Simon Grant looked up from the map spread over his massive desk, a pair of compasses in hand.

“Ah, Greville, just the man I wanted to see.”

“What’s the significance of the map?” Greville came behind the desk without invitation and leaned over the map at his chief’s side. “Ah, I see. The Tagus. You’ve marked the location of the guerrilla groups.”

“Aye, and Wellesley has their coordinates, thanks to you and Farnham. He landed at Lisbon on the twenty-sixth.” Simon glanced at the calendar on the wall. “It’s
May fourth now, but I think we can expect a dispatch in the next two weeks.”

“Pigeons?”

“Aye. Most of the posts are still operative across France. And we have two in the Channel Islands.”

Greville nodded. The pigeon couriers were among the most important participants in this war. Their handlers more often than not were as much at risk as a soldier in the front line. “Any new information on our friend Don Antonio?”

Simon grinned tiredly. “There, at least, an unqualified success.” He went to an armoire across the room and opened a drawer, extracting a sheet of paper. “Our man in Madrid did us proud and a pigeon landed at Dover yesterday evening. Much earlier than I dared hope. Guess who our friend is?”

Greville frowned in thought. “He has to be in the top echelons of their network for a mission this visible and important. And I have the strangest feeling that I’ve seen him somewhere before. But I can’t for the life of me track down the memory.”

Simon nodded rather grimly. “Well, you’re right. You have certainly encountered him before. Do you recall that little fracas just before Junot occupied Lisbon last year? You were trying to get the Portuguese regent out of Portugal on his way to Brazil…”

“And nearly lost him,” Greville said slowly. “Nearly lost him to an assassin’s blade.” He stared inward at the memory. He had caught only a fleeting glimpse of the
assassin as the man had fled over the stone wall of the harbor, with Greville and his men on his heels. “El Demonio. No wonder I thought I’d seen him before.”

“Just so.” Simon nodded. “Antonio Vasquez and El Demonio are one and the same.”

Greville nodded. “Well, well. A worthy opponent, indeed.”

Simon regarded him closely across the desk. “Do you have a plan?”

Greville smiled, and it was not a nice smile. “Only to make sure I get to him before he gets to me.”

“I know I’ve said this before, Greville, but we can’t afford for you to fall into their hands.”

“I don’t believe I could afford it either,” Greville said with a lightness that did not deceive his companion. He held out his hand for the paper that Simon still held. “May I take that?”

“Of course…of course, dear fellow. It concerns you more nearly than anyone else.”

Greville glanced at the document and shook his head. “Do me a favor, Simon, and have two men on duty at my house. Whenever the child leaves with her nursemaid, make sure they’re discreetly escorted by someone well able to protect them.”

Simon nodded gravely. “Of course. And what of her mother?”

“I’ll take responsibility for Aurelia’s safety, but I can’t take the risk of needing to be in two places at once.”

“Understood.”

Greville let himself into his house the following afternoon and stepped into the midst of a maelstrom. A small figure resembling nothing so much as a whirling dervish was dancing and shrieking in the middle of the usually tranquil hall, surrounded by a group of flapping, exclaiming individuals, all talking at once as they seemed to be trying to lay hands on the spinning creature.

Lyra bounded to his side and stood pressed against his legs as if for protection as the racket reached a crescendo.

“Quiet,
” Greville commanded in a voice that barely seemed to rise above its usual pitch. Nevertheless the whirling body came to a stop and the fluttering group ceased flapping. Into the now eerie silence the small figure gave a pathetic hiccup.

“What on earth is this circus?” Greville demanded.

“Make ’erself ill, she will, one of these days, you mark my words,” one of the twins, Greville thought it was Ada, muttered. “Poor little mite to take on so about nothing at all…’tain’t natural, as I’ve said before.”

Greville examined the assembled company with raised eyebrows. His entire household, with the exception of Morecombe, appeared to be gathered there. “Forgive my asking, but do none of you have any work to do this afternoon?” he inquired, striding across to where Franny stood, still hiccuping, her face blotched and tearstained.
The hall emptied rapidly of all but Daisy, who stood wringing her hands nervously.

“What on earth was all that about, Franny?” he asked, going down on one knee beside the child.

Franny sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I want to take Lyra to the square garden…Mama promised I could this afternoon…but they won’t let me. Daisy’s scared of Lyra.” Her voice rose alarmingly on this accusation.

Daisy said, “Beggin’ your pardon, Sir Greville, but my lady didn’t say nothing to me about taking that dog in the garden.”

“Franny, that’s enough,” Greville said as the little girl’s tears began to flow anew and her mouth opened on an incipient yell of protest. “Daisy knows that the only people who are allowed to take Lyra out are myself or your mother.”

“Mama’s not here,” Franny protested. “An’ she promised. She
promised
and you should never break a promise, she said so.”

“Well, I’m sure she has good reason,” Greville said. “But having a fit of hysterics is not an appropriate response.”

Franny regarded him with wide-open eyes, curiosity now uppermost. “What’s that? Hyst…hyster…?”

“Hysterics. What you were doing just then, screaming and flinging yourself all over the place. It won’t do, my child.”

“She don’t do it so often now, sir,” Daisy ventured.

“Thank the Lord for small mercies.” Greville got to his feet, brushing down the knees of his britches. “Where is Lady Falconer, do you know?”

“She went out after lunch, sir…didn’t say where, leastways not to me.”

Greville nodded and looked down at Franny, who sniffed vigorously but seemed considerably subdued. He took out a handkerchief and wiped her nose. “If you’ll wait quietly for ten minutes, Franny, I’ll take you and Lyra to the garden myself.”

Franny hiccuped and nodded, and when he strode into the library, she trotted at his heels and sat on a low ottoman while he sorted through the post that had been delivered that afternoon.

It was rather distracting, he found, to have the child’s huge eyes fixed upon him, watching his every movement as if in suspended animation until he should say the magic words. Lyra was sitting beside Franny, watching Greville with a similar air of expectation, and after a couple of minutes he gave up.

“Very well, let’s go.”

Franny instantly leaped to her feet and raced ahead of him into the hall, rather as if he’d turned the key to start a run-down clock, he thought, amused. He had no real experience of children and very little really to do with Franny. Aurelia didn’t seem to expect any involvement from him, and nursery matters ran smoothly without
impinging on his activities at all. At least, they had until this afternoon.

He fastened Lyra’s lead and took Franny’s hand firmly as they left the house. Aurelia hadn’t said where she was going, but she would not be on foot or horseback since she’d left Lyra behind. It was unlike her, however, to fail to keep a promise to her daughter.

He glanced casually up and down the street as they walked to Grosvenor Square. A man sweeping leaves out of the gutter scratched his nose as Greville and the child walked by. Greville nodded briefly, acknowledging the man sent from the ministry to keep an eye on the house. Greville could pick up no sense of another, more sinister, observer. He remained on his guard, however, and Lyra, beautifully behaved as always, walked sedately beside him, only her raised head and pricked ears indicating that she was on the alert.

“The gate’s here.” Franny tugged at his hand as they crossed the street to the large railed garden in the middle of the square. Franny pulled her hand free of his and jumped onto the bottom rung of the gate to pull down the latch. “It’s much bigger ’n the one we used to play in…in the old house,” she informed him, swinging on the gate as it opened.

“Cavendish Square isn’t quite so large,” he agreed, waiting patiently until she’d decided she’d swung enough and jumped down. He closed the gate behind them, released Lyra, and followed child and dog as they raced down the
path towards the grassy center of the garden. Franny was leaping and singing with sheer exuberance, the violent storm of half an hour past completely forgotten.

It surprised him that a woman as tranquil and even-tempered as Aurelia should have such a tempestuous child. Frederick, too, had given no indication of a volatile temperament. He had taken things as they came, handled situations as they arose with a calm practicality. What would he have made of his little daughter for whom life was either bathed in tropical sunshine or battered by winter gales?

He stopped at the grass and stood watching as Franny and Lyra chased and tumbled, the massive hound playing as happily as a puppy, and yet always with a degree of delicacy, careful not to knock the child over.

The first warning of a watcher took its usual form. A quick surge of energy in his chest, followed by a deep calm. He smiled fondly as he watched the child and dog at play, then casually glanced around, before bending to pick up a stick and throwing it for Lyra, who leaped after it. He moved towards Franny, his eyes everywhere, noting the man standing on the gravel path just to the side of the lawn.

A tall, well-dressed, bearded gentleman. Black eyes deep-set in a lean, hawkish, angular countenance. After a moment he walked off.

Greville gave a shrill one-note whistle, and Lyra instantly bounded back, dropping down on guard beside Franny.

“Is it time to go? I don’t want to go yet,” Franny complained as Greville came up with her.

“It’ll be dark soon,” he said, in no mood now to indulge the child. He snapped Lyra’s lead onto her collar. “Come along.” He held out a hand imperatively to Franny, who took it reluctantly, but without further protest.

Franny chattered cheerfully as they crossed the street and made their way home.

Greville had discovered early on that in the absence of a response Franny would continue chattering away, peppering him with questions to which it seemed she had no real interest in answers, leaving him free with his own thoughts.

Vasquez had not been watching Franny by coincidence.

A
URELIA HAD JUST RETURNED
home when Greville came into the house with Franny and Lyra. “Oh, there you are. Daisy said you’d gone to the garden.” Aurelia looked surprised, giving Greville a quizzical smile as she bent to kiss her daughter.

“You said you’d take me to the garden with Lyra,” Franny accused.

Aurelia frowned. “Not today, love. I said I’d take you tomorrow.”

“Well, I wish you’d made it a bit clearer,” Greville commented, unfastening the dog’s lead. “It might have saved quite a scene.”

Aurelia looked up, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Greville said, turning aside to the salon.

“Let’s go upstairs to Daisy.” Aurelia took Franny by the hand. “And you can tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Aurelia came downstairs half an hour later having heard the full story from Daisy. She found Greville in the salon, sipping madeira and reading the
Gazette.
“I’m sorry you were embroiled in one of Franny’s tantrums,” she said, pouring herself a glass of sherry. “She’s growing out of them, I think, but every now and again it happens.”

“I own I was at something of a loss,” he said, laying aside the paper.

“Not according to Daisy. To listen to her, one would think you were a hero who had triumphed over insuperable odds.” Aurelia sat down in the corner of the sofa. “It was good of you to take Franny and Lyra after that scene. Have you had experience with children?”

“None at all, as it happens.”

Aurelia inclined her head in surprise. “Then it must come naturally.” She paused and, when he made no response, said, “You were an only child, of course.”

“Yes,” he agreed without expansion.

She persevered. “I sometimes worry about Franny being an only child. Do you think you would have liked siblings?”

He shrugged. “I’ve no idea, Aurelia. I didn’t have them and I don’t believe I ever gave the matter much thought.”

“Of course Franny has Stevie and Susannah.” Aurelia sipped her sherry. “I don’t know how it will be when Stevie goes away to school. She’ll miss him dreadfully.”

Greville picked up his paper again as if the subject was of no interest to him at all. He always responded to any conversation about family ties in this way, a detached if polite air of boredom. For once, Aurelia found that she wasn’t prepared to leave it at that.

“Tell me about your mother,” she demanded. “You say very little about her.”

“There’s very little to say,” he replied shortly, without looking up from the
Gazette.

Aurelia, however, was convinced he wasn’t reading. “Was she ill?”

“So they said.” His eyes remained fixed on the news-print.

“They? Your father, you mean.”

He put the paper down with an impatience that crumpled the sheets. His face was closed, his eyes cold as he spoke with clear deliberation. “From the age of around two I probably saw my mother five or six times. She inhabited a wing of the house with her own staff and had absolutely no interest in me, and as far as I could gather, even less in my father. He was never at home and I vaguely remember being told of his death, but very much in passing. Does that satisfy your curiosity, Aurelia?”

She flushed. “I was not being inquisitive, Greville. We live together, we were talking about children, it was natural enough to ask you about your childhood. I’m sorry it was such a miserable and lonely one. Perhaps that explains—” She stopped and bit her lip.

“Explains what?” he asked, his voice very soft.

She sighed. “Oh, your detachment, your lack of emotional passion, I suppose. It’s not normal, Greville, for a human being to be able to detach himself so completely from all human ties. I understand that it makes you good at your job. If you’ve never felt the need to trust in anyone, to believe in anyone and have them believe in you, then of course it’s easy enough to exist in an emotionless vacuum. I just find it difficult.”

He regarded her closely. “Are you saying you find it too difficult?” he asked quietly.

She looked at him in mingled exasperation, frustration, and dismay. “You haven’t heard what I’ve been saying, Greville. I’m not talking about being unable to partner you in this London charade, I’m talking about who I am, about trying to understand who you are. It matters to me who you are, and why you are as you are.”

She stood up abruptly. “It’s ridiculous to have this conversation. You don’t see the point of it at all. I have to change for dinner.” She swept from the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Aurelia lay in a copper tub before the fire in her bedchamber while Hester poured lemon-scented water over her freshly washed hair. She was feeling so dull and out of sorts that she could summon no enthusiasm even at the prospect of a music party at which Paganini was to be the guest violinist. She would be missed, of course,
and her absence at such an event would bring Cornelia knocking at her door in the morning, but she’d find some excuse.

“I’ll take dinner on a tray in my sitting room, Hester,” she said, wringing out the long strands of pale hair between her hands. “Just pass me a towel and then go for your own supper. I can manage myself now.”

“If you’re sure, mum…sure you’re not goin’ out tonight?”

“I’ve never been surer, Hester. I have a slight headache and I’m going to have an early night.”

“Right y’are then, mum.” Hester passed her a thick towel that was hanging over a rail to warm in front of the fire. “Your dressing gown is on the chest.” She indicated the garment at the foot of the bed.

“Thank you. Run along now.” Hester left and Aurelia slowly stood up in a shower of water.

The adjoining door to Greville’s chamber opened and her husband stood on the threshold. “Venus arising from the waves,” he observed, crossing the room swiftly. “Allow me.” He twitched the towel from her grasp and began to dry her vigorously, an appreciative little smile on his lips.

Ordinarily this would have been the prelude to a little love play, but to her surprise and chagrin Aurelia felt no such urge. “I’m sorry, Greville, but I don’t seem to be in the mood,” she said with a sigh, taking the towel from him and wrapping herself tightly before stepping out of the tub.

He stepped away, regarding her thoughtfully. “I’ve no intention of forcing myself on you, Aurelia.”

“Of course you haven’t.” She took a smaller towel from the rail and wrapped it turbanlike around her wet head. “But for some reason I’m tired and dull and out of sorts this evening, and lovemaking is the last thing I feel like.”

He frowned. “That’s your prerogative, of course. Is there any particular reason?”

She shrugged. “Not that I can think of.”

His frown deepened. “My dear, I don’t think you’re telling the truth. It has something to do with our less than satisfactory discussion earlier on. Am I right?”

“Maybe.” She turned to pick up her dressing gown. She dropped the towel and shrugged hastily into her robe.

Aurelia tied the girdle of her robe around her waist with a final decisive tug and pulled the towel from her head. “Couldn’t we just leave it, Greville?” She sat down and picked up her hairbrush.

“I don’t think so.” He took the brush from her. “Let me do this at least. I promise it’s no prelude to anything else, but I do love to brush your hair.”

She made no demur and he began to pull the brush through the pale cascade of still damp hair. The sensation was pleasant and soothing, and she allowed her eyes to close, her head to fall forward as the sweeping strokes caressed her scalp.

“So,” he resumed after a minute of this tranquil si
lence, “what was it about my responses this afternoon that upset you so much?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him in the mirror. “I was only asking a perfectly ordinary question about your childhood. And you reacted as if I’d pried into the deepest personal secrets. Most people have no difficulty talking about their past lives, or at least something as innocuous as childhood. We live together, Greville. I know it’s only for a short time, and I’m certainly not asking for any emotional declarations, I know that would be outside the parameters of this contract that we have.”

If she had known what such a lack would mean,
truly
mean, in this strange partnership, would she have entered it as willingly?

She shied away from a question that she sensed could only bring painful answers and continued firmly, “Be that as it may, we
do
like each other, and in my book that means that I’m interested in what made you the person I like. Do you really have no interest at all in what made me, me?”

The smooth, rhythmic strokes of the hairbrush continued as Greville gazed down at the silken flow of hair beneath his hand. It was drying quickly in the warm room, and among the pale blond locks he caught little glimmers of a deeper gold, and once or twice in the flicker of lamplight even a hint of auburn.

“Such beautiful hair,” he murmured almost unconsciously.

Aurelia raised her eyebrows in a gesture of theatrical frustration. “I’m flattered by the compliment, Greville, but it’s hardly an adequate contribution to a discussion that, may I remind you, was at your initiative.”

He nodded. “So it was…so it was. Well, my dear girl, I am very interested in what made you into the woman I like, and respect. It’s vitally important to me to understand you in order to work with you. I need to know as far as it’s possible how you will act and react in certain situations.”

“And that’s all?” She stared at him, her incredulous eyes meeting his in the mirror.

For a moment he couldn’t move, transfixed by her velvet gaze.
Of course it wasn’t all. But he couldn’t admit that. Not without jeopardizing the detachment that had kept him safe all these years and made him such a superb operator. A detachment that would keep Aurelia and her daughter safe.

“Is that all, Greville?” she repeated, reading the smoky whirls of confusion in the usually clear gray eyes.

He thought of Don Antonio watching Franny at play, that close-eyed, predatory stare. The Spaniard had been wondering how best to use a nugget of information, a potential weakness. Greville knew that he dared not allow such potential weaknesses in his life. He had seen what happened to men when they fell victim to the blandishments of affection. “It has to be,” he said finally.

Aurelia stood up, whirling to face him, grasping his
upper arms in a hard grip. “No, Greville, it does not.”

“Yes, Aurelia, it does.” He took her hands from his arms and placed them firmly at her side. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish it could be otherwise. But you must accept that I know best how to do my job, and it’s a job that does not permit any of the softer emotions. It’s the job I have chosen, just as Frederick chose it.”

“And you’re trying to tell me that Frederick had put aside all warm and loving thoughts about us…about Franny and me?” she demanded, standing very still, her gaze locked upon his as if she would see behind those impenetrable gray eyes.

“He had no choice,” Greville said simply.

“So you’re saying that if he had not died, if he could have come home safely at some point, he would not have done so, because he had renounced all personal ties. He was no longer a husband or a father?”

She shook her head and took an agitated step towards the fire. “I don’t believe it. Frederick could never have believed such a thing…never have forgotten his life, his friends and family, like that. He didn’t enter a monastery.” She turned to face Greville again, her hands cupping her elbows, her shimmering hair flowing over her shoulders, her brown eyes pools of angry distress.

“He might as well have done,” Greville said quietly. “He knew that he had to be dead to you, to everyone in his past, if he was to be a successful agent. He made a decision that would make it impossible for him ever to
resume his old life. Frederick Farnham died at Trafalgar. It was not Frederick Farnham who died in the streets of Corunna, Aurelia.”

“And as far as your family are concerned, you are dead, too?”

His smile was ironic. “I was as good as dead to my family from the moment of my birth. I nearly killed my mother, for which my father never forgave me. Or at least he never forgave me for the consequences of that birth. My mother retreated into a world of her own and apparently forgot my existence…or ignored it. The effect was the same. And she forgot or ignored my father’s existence in precisely the same manner.”

He drummed his knuckles on the dresser. “There, Aurelia, you asked for it, and now you have it in all the words it takes…my entire youthful history.”

Aurelia could think of nothing to say. He was angry, presumably because she had forced him to reveal the pain he had managed to bury so deep all these years. Or was he simply angry with himself because he had broken his own rules, weakened and succumbed to her, yielded to her need to break through his defensive shell?

“I’m sorry,” she said simply, coming towards him. She put her arms around him in a fierce hug. “I’m sorry that you had such a miserable childhood, but I’m not sorry that you told me.”

She let her hands fall when she felt no response from the rigid figure and stepped back. “I won’t press you any
further, it clearly makes you uncomfortable. Don’t let me keep you any longer.”

He seemed to hesitate. Then he ran a hand through his close-cropped hair in a gesture of frustration and said, “Are you coming down for dinner?”

“No, I told Hester to bring me a tray in my sitting room.” She turned back to the dresser and picked up her brush, scooping her hair into a knot on the nape of her neck.

“I thought you were going to the Paganini recital.”

“I don’t feel well tonight.”

“Oh.” He turned halfway to the door, adding almost as an afterthought, “I had thought to accompany you.”

He sounded so diffident, she thought. Extraordinarily so for such a man. As if he were completely at a loss, a feeling and experience with which he was totally unfamiliar.