Agent of the Crown (16 page)

The Baron didn’t
call on her again for a week. During that week, Telaine went slowly
crazy with impatience. She ran dozens of plans for investigating
the manor through her mind until they kept her awake at night.

Plans for when it was empty. Plans for when
the Baron and Morgan were there. Plans for when one or the other
was there, which involved subsidiary plans for avoiding Morgan; she
was certain he would hover around her like a wasp at a picnic.

Excuses to get into as many rooms as
possible—searching for a source still seemed her most likely one,
though getting into the Baron’s study might only require him having
a Device in it that needed repair.

Or could she hint around that she might
create a new Device for him? What unusual Devices had she seen in
people’s studies? Was the study even the place to find the evidence
she needed? Should she try to get into the fort? If the shipment
Harroden had diverted to Steepridge contained weapons, mightn’t
they be stored there?

She considered breaking into the manor one
night, sneaking around when everyone had gone to bed, and decided
that was a bad idea. She didn’t know enough about its layout to be
efficient in her searching, and if the Baron caught her, that would
mean the end of her snooping around, possibly permanently. Some
nights she paced the room, trying to tame her thoughts, or went
down to the tavern in the hope that alcohol might solve her
problem. It never did.

She passed the time in between pacing and
worrying in getting to know the people of Longbourne. At first she
kept her distance, not wanting to fall back into the habit of
thinking of them as pieces in her game with the Baron. But as the
days passed, and she began to fear she wouldn’t be leaving for
weeks (she refused to consider it might be months) she realized it
would look strange for Mistress Weaver’s niece to appear
standoffish.

Now that the initial misunderstanding was
past, Telaine found the people of Longbourne to be friendly and
outgoing. Fuller, the general store owner, always threw in a little
extra when she picked up things for Aunt Weaver; Telaine and
Josephine Adderly were on a first-name basis; and of course Garrett
always had a nod and sometimes a flash of a smile for her.

Even Mistress Richardson had come around.
After her first rush of anger had faded, Telaine developed an
agonizing guilt over the horrible things she’d said to the woman.
She couldn’t decide if she should make the first apology—but
she
was the one more wronged—or wait for Mistress Richardson
to take the first step—but was it too self-righteous to demand the
offender speak first?

The decision was taken out of her hands when
Mistress Richardson showed up at Aunt Weaver’s back door—this was
another thing Telaine learned; real visits were conducted via the
back door—with a package and asked to speak to Telaine privately.
In the yard, Mistress Richardson handed her the package and said,
“I did something I’m not proud of. I’d like to make it up to
you.”

Inside the package was a shirt, a much nicer
shirt than the one the laundress had ruined. Telaine felt a rush of
guilt all over again. She said, “I said some things I’m not proud
of. I hope you’ll accept my apology. I’d like us to be friends.” It
was perhaps too city-girl-uppity, but it sounded right.

Mistress Richardson looked at her, her eyes
narrowed, but in thought, not anger. Her red hair was gathered
loosely at the back of her head and little wisps escaped in all
directions. She was still a pretty woman, despite the hardships of
her work and of raising what Telaine now knew to be a brood of
seven children without the help of a husband. “I worry too much
about my boys,” she said, and Telaine interpreted this as
acceptance of her apology.

“I can understand that,” Telaine said. “My
aunt—my other aunt, not Aunt Weaver—has six children, plus me, and
she’s always worrying about her two oldest boys.”

“Your aunt raised you?”

“Since I was a little older than your Hope.
I’d like to say I never gave her any trouble, but I’m sure she
worried some about me too.”

A faint smile touched Mistress Richardson’s
lips. “The way you talk to strangers, I don’t doubt it,” she
said.

Telaine’s eyes went wide, then she laughed.
“Oh, Mistress Richardson, you do have a sense of humor!”

Mistress Richardson laughed, too, and stuck
out her hand. “Eleanor.”

“Lainie.” They shook hands, grinning at one
another in relief.

But all the time Lainie was making friends,
Telaine couldn’t stop thinking about what the real job was, and
went back to making plans, over and over again until she once again
paced her room or went out for a drink.

When the Baron’s summons finally arrived, it
came, thankfully, not via Morgan but by way of a servant. The Baron
had an ‘interesting project’ and would Miss Bricker care to join
him to discuss it? Telaine packed her tools into a knapsack and
headed out for the manor.

She felt Garrett’s eyes on her as she passed
the forge, and chose not to look at him. There was no way to
explain why she had to go to the manor, why she couldn’t avoid the
Baron. She couldn’t explain why she wasn’t in danger from him—or
why it didn’t matter if she was. It surprised her to find she
valued Garrett’s good opinion. Maybe that made them friends after
all.

She had a pleasant forty minutes’ walk to the
manor, walking along the verge in the soft, untrimmed grass that
had about as much resemblance to the manicured lawns of the palace
as Irv Tanner did to Morgan. A bird flew overhead, calling to its
mate, who responded with the same song. A breeze came up and
ruffled the pine needles, bringing her the scent of pine and,
surprisingly, lilac and mint. She’d have to follow up on that
source sometime. She hoisted her pack higher.

The slouching attendants had been replaced by
ones with more starch. One of them opened the door for her and
closed it behind her. The entry was empty, the Baron nowhere to be
seen. Quietly, hoping not to be heard, she called out, “Is anyone
there?” No response.

She opened the dining room door and peered
inside. Still no one. This wasn’t the best opportunity, but it was
worth taking advantage of. She started off down the right-hand
hallway, the one on the southeast side of the manor, bypassing the
music room and pausing to try each subsequent door.

The first held a billiard table and a few
other gaming accoutrements. The door opposite was some sort of
hunting trophy room, heads of wolves and deer and moose adorning
the walls. It didn’t seem to be a study. But the next room was. An
oversized desk and leather-upholstered chair faced the doorway,
bookshelves lined the walls, and a side table held a decanter of
brandy and some fat-bottomed snifters.

“Miss Bricker,” said the Baron. She gasped
and jumped.

“I’m so relieved to see you!” she said,
turning to face him with a guileless smile. “I’d started to worry I
was the only one here. It’s so quiet.”

“You should have waited in the foyer,” he
said, and took her elbow to steer her back to the gallery. His grip
was hard and painful.

“Oh!” She put on a remorseful expression.
“You won’t send me away, will you? I feel so silly, like I was
snooping in your house.”

“Because you
were
snooping in my
house,” the Baron said in a low, vicious voice. “You are here
because I summoned you.” The grip grew tighter, and she heard
herself whimper like an injured dog. “I will not tolerate
intrusions.” He ground his fingers against the bone.

Telaine gritted her teeth and managed not to
whimper again. “I didn’t mean to,” she said in a pleading voice. “I
won’t do it again.”

“I believe you won’t,” the Baron said,
yanking her along. He pushed open a door—Telaine hadn’t been paying
much attention to where they were going, except it was on the third
floor—and said, pleasantly, “Come in, let me show you
something.”

He released her elbow. In the space of two
breaths he’d gone from vicious to cordial, once more the country
gentleman who’d met her on her last visit. The rapidity with which
he’d changed his demeanor made her uneasy. His smooth urbanity of
their previous encounter had made her forget the truth, that he was
cruel and manipulative and cared only for getting his way. She was
certain he was more dangerous than Morgan, who was at least
predictable in his attentions, and she needed not to forget
that.

The room was the Baron’s bedchamber. She
would have expected, from the man who had so coldly threatened
Harroden, severe furnishings, a thin mattress, a few oil paintings
in somber tones. She did not expect the lush, exotic chamber she
found herself in. The walls were heavily upholstered, to the point
of looking puffy, in jacquard silk in blue and pale yellow stripes.
The ladder that stood beside the bed wasn’t for show, it was
essential for anyone trying to climb in or out of it.

Piled atop the frame were several mattresses,
a number of quilts in colors matching the walls, and a dozen
pillows of varying shapes. Sleeping in the bed would feel like
drowning in a flock of sheep, though probably sheep didn’t smell of
roses as this room did. The tall bedposts supported a canopy of
trailing net that draped and puddled on the floor at each of the
bed’s corners, decorative rather than functional, since it was
unlikely the Baron had an insect problem he’d need to shield his
bed against.

Tables matching the bed’s height supported
lamp Devices, both currently unlit because sunlight streamed in
through long windows on either side of the bed. Smaller doors faced
one another across the room, barely visible in the upholstery. The
floor was entirely carpeted with a rug so plush the pile nearly
covered the tops of Telaine’s boots.

“Miss Bricker, I seem to have a problem with
my bed,” the Baron said. Telaine looked at Morgan, who wasn’t
smirking any more than usual, so it wasn’t innuendo. The Baron
knelt beside the bedframe and dragged the corner of something from
between the top two mattresses. It was a heating Device of the type
she’d described to Garrett. “I turned it off for the summer, but it
started running again of its own volition. Could you perhaps take a
look?”

Telaine knelt beside him, stripping off her
knapsack. “This is a complex Device,” she said. “But I’ve seen this
sort of problem before. Milord, the top mattress will have to come
off.”

The Baron looked at Morgan, who sighed and
left the room. It was a sigh that came dangerously close to
insubordination, but when Telaine glanced at the Baron, he didn’t
seem bothered by it. She might understand Morgan, but she didn’t
understand his relationship with the Baron. He obeyed orders, but
he didn’t act like the Baron’s subordinate in any other way; they
didn’t act like friends, either.
Finish the job,
she told
herself,
and it won’t matter
.

Morgan returned with a couple of tall,
healthy-looking young men dressed in the Baron’s livery who moved
the mattress, bedding and all, to one side. The Device thus
revealed was a flexible mat made of flat strips and wires of metal
woven irregularly together. It had crumpled on one side, and
Telaine straightened it to lie flat. “That’s half the problem right
there,” she said. “The other half is the complicated part. If you
wouldn’t mind stepping back, milord?”

The problem was obvious once the mattress was
removed. Telaine reached across to the center of the Device and
unkinked a couple of wires. She took a tiny pair of flat-nosed
pliers from her kit and ran them over the crooked wires, crimping
them straight so they didn’t touch any of the others near them.

She had to stop occasionally and blow on her
fingers, heated to an uncomfortable degree by the still-running
Device. Once the wires were as straight as she could make them, she
closed her eyes and ran her fingertips along the mesh, feeling for
other defects. It still wasn’t cooling off, so something else had
to be wrong—and there it was, a redundant strip of copper the width
of her thumb that had started to twist into a helix.

She took out another tool, this one a
miniature set of tin snips, and cut the copper piece at both ends.
She wiggled it out, crimped the cut ends tight along the rigid
brass frame, and the heat immediately drained from the thing. “Let
me test that it’s working properly,” she said, and knelt, feeling
along the twisted wire cord covered with white cotton down to the
switch.

It was nearly beneath the bed; she ducked her
head under the frame and froze for a moment, stunned, then
repulsed, then amused by what she saw. She captured the switch and
stood swiftly, acting as though nothing were wrong.

She handed the switch to the Baron and placed
her palm flat against the Device. “Some Devisers put extra strips
of copper into these things,” she explained. “They’re supposed to
be a redundant heat control system, but I’ve found they mostly just
cause trouble. Do you mind if I keep this, milord?” She picked up
the copper strip. The Baron waved his hand, giving permission.

The Device was cool to the touch. “Milord, if
you wouldn’t mind switching it on now?” The Baron tapped the
switch, and the mesh began to heat again, reaching an uncomfortable
level in minutes. Under the mattress, that uncomfortable heat would
translate into a nice warmth.

“It’s working fine now, milord,” she said,
and the Baron tapped the switch again.

“My thanks again,” he said. “You are truly
remarkable.”

Telaine made herself blush and ducked her
head. “Not to contradict milord, but I’m only average. But I thank
you for the compliment.” Was it he who used the…contraption…under
the bed? Or Morgan? Their relationship was even stranger than she’d
imagined.

“Pay the Deviser, Morgan,” the Baron said.
Morgan dipped into a belt pouch, but instead of holding out coins
for Telaine to take, he gripped her wrist with one hand, turned her
hand over, and with a little pressure caused her fingers to extend.
He laid the coins in her open hand with what was almost a
caress.