Circle of Spies (23 page)

He laughed, quietly enough that he had no trouble hearing the tap on the door. His hands went still.

“Hez, you think?” Cora toyed with her bread.

He eased away. “Hope not. I kinda fancy an evenin' at home with my best girl.”

“Your girl would like that too.”

A few steps took him to the door, but when he opened it and saw Slade Osborne on the other side, he had all he could do to keep his countenance clear.

Osborne, a dim outline in the moonlight, nodded. “Do you have a minute?”

In answer, Walker grabbed his coat from the peg and said, “Be just a second,” to his wife. Then he shut the door quietly behind him and indicated the stairs back down. “You need to arrange for a horse for tomorrow?”

Once back on solid ground, the detective turned on him with hands planted firmly on his hips. “What in blazes are you up to?”

“Pardon?”

Osborne stepped closer and raised a hand with one finger lifted. “You.” Another finger rose. “Thaddeus Lane.” A third. “Hezekiah Arnaud.”

Half a smile wormed its way to the surface. “Figured it out, did ya?”

“Not enough.”

Good. He shrugged. “Just three loyal Americans doing what they can, Mr. Osborne, when opportunity presents itself.”

Spinning away, Osborne muttered something unintelligible before pivoting back to him. “Look, Payne. My gut says we're on the same side, and I've learned to trust it. But I can't have you, some spoiled rich boy, and a doddering old man interfering with my plans. It's too dangerous.”

Walker let out a low, laughing whistle. “Doddering? He could probably outrun you, even at eighty.”

“Really not the point here.”

“And Hez, he ain't no spoiled rich boy. He's a scholar, just like his great-granddad. A chemist.”

Osborne blinked, heavily. “Irrelevant.”

No, but Osborne didn't really need to know about the nice little formulas Hez came up with to aid in their family business. Walker shrugged.

With a shake of his head, the man drew in a long breath. “Let me start again. You know what Hughes is about?”

Walker put his hands in his pockets to fend off the cold night air. “More or less.”

“Even ‘less' ought to be enough. When he goes down, those around him could get hurt.” He leaned a little closer, and moonlight sparked in his eyes. “Tell Lane and his grandson to stop playing at being heroes. Focus on clearing the innocents out of the way—assuming there are any.”

Walker drew in a long, careful breath. “What are you afraid of, Osborne? That she's gonna get hurt, or that she's gonna do the hurting?”

Without another word, the detective strode away, shaking his head. It didn't take long for the night to swallow him up. Walker took just a minute to let it all settle, to look at where he'd been. Then he turned and went back up to the warmth of his kitchen.

Marietta flexed her cramping hand and straightened her spine. Sleep had eluded her these past three hours, so she had put her time to good use. Now, of course, with sunlight streaming in and a stack of pages before her, her eyes felt gritty and heavy.

But at least she had something to show for her exhaustion. Stretching her arms above her head, she took account of the pages she had transcribed. The list of names—again—the other pages she had already sent to Granddad. And then what seemed the most critical of the rest from the drawer. Two copies of each. One for the Culpers.

And one for Slade Osborne. She shuffled his into a stack and stared at them with pursed lips. Getting them into his hands would be a simple matter of slipping them into a theological text in the library.

She could leave said book out for him, or direct him to it on the shelf casually enough. Either way, he would know they came from her. Which would prove she had spent time in the drawer, and he would assume it hours. Would assume she had copied directly from the page. Which she could certainly do more easily than he could, it being her house, but…

Tired, she slumped against her chair and squeezed her eyes shut. He was already suspicious of her. He may be concerned for her safety, he may be grateful for the aid she had given, but he couldn't make it any
clearer that he didn't trust her. Would he even accept these copies as accurate or think she fed him false information?

Well. She could do nothing about his perceptions. All she could do was put the documentation into his hands.

At the jiggle of her doorknob, she folded the stacks of paper and set her Bible on top of them. Cora couldn't read to know what they were, but still. She would secure them in her desk as soon as possible.

“Mornin', Miss Mari. You're up early.”

She turned on her chair with a smile she hoped covered the shadows under her eyes. “One of those nights.”

The woman grunted a laugh and rubbed at her back. “I know all about them.” She looked over. Frowned. “Lawsy, ma'am, you look fit to fall over. Hop back into bed. I'll bring you up a tray.”

So much for covering the shadows. She stood. “Nonsense. I only need a stiff cup of coffee. I can't leave Barbara to fend off Mother Hughes's veiled insults alone.”

Cora folded her arms and held her ground—something she wouldn't have done a fortnight ago. “Miss Barbara can take care of herself.”

“I know. But that doesn't mean she should have to.”

Apparently that point won her a bit of favor. Her maid loosed a hum and strode into her boudoir. “Lavender or gray?”

“Whichever you think.”

That brought Cora to an abrupt halt. “You ain't never left it to me, even mornings you were tired as this after a night o' dancin'.”

Nights of dancing—how far away those seemed. “There are many things I've never done that I should have. Nearly as many as the things I shouldn't have that I did anyway. And I'm sorry for them all.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and resisted the urge to sink down into the feather mattress of her bed. “I am trying, Cora. Trying to change.”

Cora merely disappeared into the room full of gowns and hoops and petticoats, reemerging a moment later with a day dress of lavender. She glanced at Marietta only once while she laid it all out. “Elsie told me ‘good morning' today using the signs. And she's been using ‘Mama.' When we realized, I thought I'd never hear her say ‘Mama.' Feels like she has now.”

Marietta smiled and shrugged out of her dressing gown and then into her corset. “I'm so glad, Cora. She's a darling child.” She hooked the corset before slipping the cover into place.

Hand outstretched to help her step into the circle in the middle of the skirts, resignation settled on Cora's face before she moved to the rear to hoist up the fabric. “Walker said he told you. About who…”

A knot formed in her throat. Somehow she hadn't thought Cora would ever speak to her about it. Marietta needed a moment, a nod, to be able to speak. “He did. And I am so, so very sorry.”

“Ain't your doin'. But if there's one thing I've learned in this house, it's that sin has consequences. Just a funny thing that sometimes them consequences be borne by someone other than the sinner.”

Sin has consequences
. She splayed a hand over her abdomen under the guise of smoothing the layers. Was it wrong of her to pray, pray with every fiber of her being, that her particular sin would not result in the same consequences Cora had suffered?

Fear gnawed. She had done wrong. Had betrayed her morals, her late husband, the God she had too long ignored by indulging in a moment of weakness that night. She had sold herself short, seizing one stolen moment rather than waiting for forever. And she would pay for it.

Perhaps the Lord had forgiven, washed her scarlet sins white. But her own words, an echo of so many she had heard from behind the pulpit over the years, clanged in her head.

Forgiveness does not negate consequences.

She squeezed her eyes shut.
Please, Lord. Please have mercy on me. If I am with child, I see no escape from him. I will
have
to marry him. I would have no other option, not unless I wanted to resign my offspring to life as an outcast
.

Compared to the other women in her family, she had never felt particularly maternal. She had experienced only occasional pangs at having never conceived, not the agony Hez's wife, Paulina, had gone through before little Ezra came along. But the thought of finally having a babe and ruining his life before he was even born…nausea roiled.

“If you are too tired for the lesson this afternoon, Miss Mari—”

“We'll be there.” If she were tired enough to require a midday rest, she could take it before or after the signing lessons. And heaven knew
Barbara never seemed to tire, though she insisted on continuing her volunteering at the hospital three days a week and came with Marietta to the carriage house when she was at home.

Her maid said no more as she buttoned the back of the dress and then coiled Marietta's hair at the base of her neck and secured it with a lacy snood. Though she felt as though she should follow up this thawing between them, Marietta couldn't think what to do other than smile and thank her. She added a silent prayer for Cora and her babe, for Elsie and Walker, but she wasn't Barbara. She didn't yet feel comfortable talking about faith at every turn.

Once she was alone again, she fastened Grandmama's necklace around her neck and scooted her Bible off the stacks of papers. Taking them in hand, she headed down to the second floor. A minute later she stashed them with the invisible ink in her drawing room.

Her hand hovered over the drawer. Or rather, over that white square of fabric she had looped around the vials. The
S.O.
initials peeked up from the handkerchief's corner. She should have it washed. Return it. Something. Something other than leaving it there, encircling her secrets.

She closed the drawer, turned the lock, and hurried into the breakfast room. Barbara and Mother Hughes were both inside already, and both greeted her with a smile. Funny, though, how the sincerity in her sister-in-law's made the pretense in her mother-in-law's all the more apparent.

“Good morning.” Marietta filled a plate, poured herself a cup of coffee sans sugar or cream, and took her usual seat.

Mother Hughes touched her napkin to the corner of her mouth. “How good of you to decide to join us, Mari dear.”

“You look tired.” Barbara, seated at her side, touched her wrist. Her warm eyes glowed with concern. “Are you well?”

“Fine, thank you.” She took a sip of the strong brew and felt marginally better. “I awoke a little after four and couldn't get back to sleep. My mind would not stop spinning.”

Barbara's laugh sounded like sunshine. “How well I understand.”

Marietta smiled and took another drink. And wished, prayed, that the spinning of her mind were like everyone else's. The pictures sometimes raced by so fast she couldn't grasp hold of one, none of the details
that vied for attention had any rhyme or reason. Most of the time she could pull forward what information she needed, but sometimes it was more cacophony than symphony. More thunder than lightning. More a dizzying circle than a line she could follow.

Mother Hughes merely sniffed and took a bite of egg. Her appetite had improved, for which Marietta was thankful, and her cheeks had color again.

Though she could do without the return of the disapproving glint to her eyes.

A glint that shifted into pure adoration when heavy, quick footfalls sounded and Dev strode into the room as if he owned it.

Marietta put down her cup. If he had his way, he would own it soon enough, and her with it. How could a thought that made her blood race in expectation a month earlier now make
her
want to race from the room?

“Devereaux darling.” His mother held out a hand and tilted up her face to receive his kiss upon her cheek.

“Good morning, Mother.” He smiled, no doubt cataloging her continued improvement just as Marietta had. Then he turned to her.

It wasn't right, the way it all got tangled up inside her. New truths and old, repulsion and attraction, the memory of love and the need to escape him before he devoured her whole. Too tired to wade through the mess, she merely dug up a halfhearted smile and muttered, “Dev.”