Bridal Favors (33 page)

And with the bride and groom more than willing to accept the patina of heroism that quickly was settling over the whole rather sordid affair, it was ultimately Francesca Whyte, Lady Broughton, who gaily suggested that since the party had transformed into a hunt ball of sorts, might it not be too, too whimsical if they were all to adjourn to the local pub? They could even take the orchestra with them. Besides, traditional manor weddings invariably ended up in the town square.

So, their collective spirits having been bolstered by the knowledge that they had faced down evil and emerged, if not precisely victorious, in no way bested, they drove off.

Quail himself, after his flight across East Sussex, hightailed it to Dover, where he caught a packet ship bound for the Netherlands; from there he made his way to secret places. When he finally made his appearance before those men who employed him, he was able to assuage their disappointment about his unmasking by offering them invaluable information.

He had incontrovertible proof not only that Justin Powell was a spy but that Evelyn Cummings Whyte was the mysterious and troublesome agent they’d suspected had been placed amongst the aristocracy. At their expressions of disbelief, he recounted all the pieces of evidence that pointed to her, ending with a dramatic narrative of his final hours at North Cross Abbey, her terrible aspect as she had realized she’d been unmasked, the maniacal single-mindedness with which she had pursued him in hopes of keeping his information from reaching her enemy’s ears, the madness in her eyes when he’d last seen her.

No, he had no doubt at all that he had unearthed as dangerous and diabolical an agent as England had ever produced. And if he himself had to be exposed in the process, it was well worth the cost.

But that was days hence. Later on the day of the wedding, back at North Cross Abbey, while Quail was still hotfooting it over the countryside, Justin had just begun a brief but telling interview with Bernard.

“You always were a maverick, Powell,” Bernard pronounced with heavy dissatisfaction. He looked up from behind the desk, where he was penning an encoded report about the affair. “Do you wonder now why we didn’t advise you of our plans? As soon as you understood them, you changed them to suit your own purpose. Added to which you certainly didn’t tell me what you and this . . . this chit were planning.”

“No, sir,” Justin said evenly. He stood at attention, his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his eyes forward. He was still too angry at the danger Evie had been put in to look at his superior without wanting to strike him.

“It would have been nice to know Quail was the enemy agent we sought
before
he ran amuck during the wedding. We might have managed to salvage something from an operation that has been in the making for nearly a year. Maybe the wedding cake?” he grated out sarcastically.

“Yes, sir.” Justin could think of other responses, but he didn’t fancy serving a sentence for gross insubordination.

“Hm.” The anger slowly ebbed from Bernard’s heavy features. Curiosity warred with righteous indignation, and curiosity won—as it always would for men like Bernard. It was what made them good at their jobs. “How did you discover Quail was our man, anyway?”

Justin’s own uncharacteristically rigid posture eased a bit. “Lady Evelyn discovered his identity, sir.”

“Oh? How?”

“Quail arrived here sick, having conveniently developed a bout of malaria several days before his arrival. In fact, he had to be helped to his room and since then had stuck to his bed. Or so we thought.

“But yesterday a maid informed Lady Evelyn that each morning when she went to change Quail’s linen she found makeup smears on the pillowcases. She thought it was because he was importing . . . company.

“I had just told Lady Evelyn that I was looking for a man with a bruise on his face, the man who had broken into the house last week and with whom I’d fought in the dark. I knew I’d hit him on the face, but not where.”

Justin smiled. “Lady Evelyn did the math and came up with a few conclusions of her own, the first being that Quail, hearing of the arrival of a crate down here, popped himself in bed in London with a sudden recurrence of malaria—nice touch, that. Surprised I didn’t think of it for myself. Frees a chap up for all sorts of naughtiness. Once ensconced, he could easily slip out of his room and travel the thirty-five miles here and back in one night. I suppose that you leaked the information about the unaddressed crates? Did you peel the labels off yourself?”

“No need to be sarcastic, Powell. As a matter of fact I did
not
send them. They were completely coincidental. As you well know, they belong to Mrs.—er, Lady Cuthbert. Why would I send them? I wasn’t here to see who was interested in them. No. I had planned, as I told you, to be here by the time the crate I sent as bait had arrived.”

Justin’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “True. Then Quail must have had someone at the house or in town telegramming him about crate arrivals. Probably Silsby, the great greedy oaf. He wouldn’t have realized that what he was doing was treasonous. He would have considered it an easy bit of cash for a harmless bit of information.”

“All right.” Bernard mentally put a check mark next to this fellow Silsby’s name. Though Justin probably had it right, it would still have to be looked into. “I understand how you figured out Quail’s identity, but now what I really want to know, what really piques my curiosity, is this: Why, knowing as you did that we wanted only to identify this man, did you take it upon yourself to expose him, thus rendering him useless to us? Do you know how
valuable
he would have been had he remained ignorant of our discovery of his identity? The misinformation we could have dispensed?”

“Do you know how
valuable
Lady Evelyn is to me?” Justin countered at once, his hands finally releasing each other from behind his back. He leaned over the desk, bracing his hands on the edge, and met Bernard’s gaze with glacial consideration. “You left me no choice. The only way to protect Evie, after all you did to suggest to Quail that she was a spy, was to confirm it.”

“Because . . . ?”

Justin pushed himself upright and scoffed. “You know as well as I that once a master spy has been revealed, her usefulness ends. It will be assumed that she’s retired, her career as a spy ended, and thus all interest in her soon evaporates.”

“That’s why you let Quail go. That’s why you let Evelyn ‘discover’ him.”

“Of course,” Justin replied. “Evelyn
had
to be the one to reveal that his malaria was an act, because in doing so she could confirm in Quail’s suspicious eyes that she was a member of England’s espionage community. All she needed to do was yell to me that ‘Quail is the one!’

“When Quail fled, it was with absolute assurance that he’d discovered England’s premier female spy.”

“And you had to let him go.”

At this Justin laughed. “Yes. Bit of touch-and-go there. He was supposed to run out the front door; instead, he ran into the wedding reception.” His expression grew contemplative. “I have never seen, nor hope to see again, a look of such violent animosity on a person’s face as that worn by Lady Evelyn when Quail threw the champagne fountain into the fishpond.” He shook his head, as though ridding himself of the image, and glanced down at Bernard, his expression growing chill again.

“You ought to be thanking me, Bernard. Certainly, you’ve lost my value as an agent—but that you would have lost anyway, once I realized what was what—and the conduit Quail might have provided is gone, but Lady Evelyn is safe, and that must count for something, even to you, and remember, we managed to keep your master spy’s identity a secret.”

Bernard pursed his lips and regarded Justin closely. An idea was beginning to form in his mind, probably ridiculous but perhaps . . . The truth was that Justin and his lady had done well, and while the ends weren’t what Bernard had wanted, they had identified Quail before he realized how very close he stood to their agent. And that was the most important thing. That would have been disastrous.

One of Justin’s brows rose with insouciant curiosity. “Don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who the real master spy is?” He didn’t really expect Bernard to answer.

But with his idea still fresh in his mind, Bernard did.

Twenty minutes later, Justin left the study and went in search of Evie.

He didn’t find her, but he did find Lady Broughton. The look that lovely creature bent on him made his shirt collar seem suddenly tight.

“Mr. Powell.”

“Lady Broughton.”

“I would have a word with you, sir. Concerning my daughter.”

“Any words concerning your daughter, ma’am, interest me. But right now, I’m afraid I must beg your pardon while I go and find your missing offspring.” He tried to pass her. She stopped him with her hand on his sleeve.

“Why?”

“Why?” Blast! She was trying to force him to declare his intentions, and that he would not do. Because as certain as he was that the sun would rise in the east, he knew that if Evelyn ever found out that her mother had suggested in any manner, way, or form, by word, look, or inference, that they should marry, she would refuse him.

She was a suspicious owlet, was Evie. She would never accept as true that such an inspiration was his alone and not planted by another. And because she was a proud, mistrustful owlet, she would never marry a man she suspected might not be wholly in love with her.

Now the only trouble was how to convince her that he was.

But Lady Broughton was awaiting his answer so he gave her one that would allow him to slip away uncoerced.

“Because she owes me money,” he said flatly. “And I want to make sure she realizes that simply because another one of her weddings went to hell doesn’t mean she isn’t liable for the agreed-upon sum.”

Lady Broughton gasped at his vulgarity. Her hand dropped. “My daughter would never renege on an agreement!”

“Good,” he said jovially, confident that any thoughts of urging him to make a decent woman of her daughter had flown from Lady Broughton’s head. “But one can’t afford to take anything for granted. You’ll excuse me?”

“I . . .” She looked flummoxed, and her beautiful eyes—though not so beautiful as Evie’s—were wide and confused.

“Thank you.” He didn’t wait for her answer, but bowed and ducked past her.

He had an idea where Evie would be, and sure enough, as soon as he entered the disastrous scene of the wedding feast, he saw her. She was sitting on the edge of the fishpond, her feet in the water, splashing disconsolately at the gulls wading amongst the litter, gobbling bits of cake and the odd goldfish. On the one side of her head, her hair clung to her cheek and throat in black, oily-looking strands. The other side was still held up by jeweled pins.

Her gown was a horror. The velvet was drenched, clinging in wet folds to her hips, and the bodice sagged perilously close to revealing her small bosom. Worse, the dye had begun running and was staining those tender swells a distinct pea green.

And she’d been crying. The ridiculous black goop women sometimes wore had melted around her eyes, and black streaks blotted her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled and her shoulders, her beautiful, elegantly sparse shoulders, drooped.

And still he found her the most gorgeous, sweetly erotic thing he’d ever seen. He was either mad or in love. Possibly both.

He walked over and stood behind her. “’Allo.”

She looked up over her shoulder at him. Seeing who it was, she gave him a small, defeated smile that nearly broke his heart. She didn’t even have any anger left for him, only weariness. And that, more than anything else, touched him.

“Oh. Hello, Justin,” she said calmly. “Did we save the world, then?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and sat down beside her, facing the opposite direction, keeping his feet nicely dry. “World’s all safe again. The bad’uns have fled, the secret crate remains secret, and my superior is tickled pink.”

She nodded without looking at him. A pink marzipan rose floated by, only to be sucked below by some monstrous big carp with a sweet tooth.

“I spoke to him just a short while ago.”

“Oh.”

“Apparently, our assumptions about the situation were close.”

“I know,” she replied tonelessly. “Lady Cuthbert is England’s master spy.”

He started in surprise. “How did you know that?” he asked. “Quail never did, and he was her secretary. But he was close, close enough to make Bernard nervous and seek a likely alternative candidate.” He looked at her angular little profile. She didn’t appear to be listening. “You.”

“Oh.”

“But again,” he once more asked, “how did you know?”

Finally she looked at him. “I didn’t figure anything out by myself. I just saw things, remembered some things. Like how serendipitous it was that Mrs. Vandervoort should insist her wedding take place here, at North Cross Abbey, which
you
owned. And how Beverly had once said that your grandfather’s Indian chef only cooked curries, and Mrs. Vandervoort’s grandmother obviously wasn’t Indian. And then there was that last bit.”

“Last bit?”

“When you all came charging out of the hall demanding to know which way Quail had gone.”

“What of it?”

“She pointed in the wrong direction. And she kept trying to get her husband’s dog to let Quail go. The only reason she would want Quail to escape with the erroneous information that I was a spy was because it protected her identity as the real spy. At least, that’s what I reasoned.”

Justin grinned, pleased that between the two of them they’d managed to get most of the truth out and in the open. It was a quite satisfying end to a mission.

But Evie wouldn’t know that, not unless he told her. It might cheer her up to think that she’d accomplished that which even seasoned agents often failed to do.

“There are many chaps out there, working as agents, who never come close to understanding the big picture.”

“Oh, why is that?” she asked more from rote politeness than through any real interest.

Her face truly was a sad little mess. He delved into his pocket for his handkerchief and wet the corner of it. Gently, he took her chin in his hand and began scrubbing the black tracks off her cheeks.