Judith Ivory (3 page)

“Well, for all your recommendations”—Christina
threw her cousin a sidelong look—“I can’t stay here. Not if he’s coming home. It would hardly strengthen my position with my father, let alone the rest of respectable society.”

“Don’t be silly. He travels with a horde of people. And he’s said he doesn’t mind. Besides, what would you want with a ‘respectable’ man—by which I assume you mean some boring banker or another would-bebaronet,
ugh!
—when the best of eligibles will be arriving here with Adrien!”

Christina groaned. “Oh, please. I just meant normal people. I couldn’t endure all the boring politeness of courting again. Besides, who wants a wife who can never produce children?”

“I wasn’t thinking strictly of marriage.”

Christina stood up. “Evangeline. You are incorrigible.”

“Richard would be green.” She laughed. “I should see to it he hears you are the guest of the earl.”

“Don’t you dare.” Christina wandered back toward the front window. “I hear the Marshalls’ are looking for a governess.”

“He pinches bottoms.”

Christina looked at her. “Who?”

“Felix Marshall. That’s why they are looking for a governess. Perpetually.”

Christina made a face, then folded her arms and looked out over the front drive and lawn. “My father would take me in, and bless him for it, but, oh”—she shook her head—“he’s just impossible. Which leaves me, I think, living off the dividends from the stock my mother left me.”

“Sell the stock. Start a business.”

“Doing what?” Christina threw a laugh, a little snort, over her shoulder. “I’m only good at dressing six times a day.” She heaved a sigh. “Oh, Evie, what am I to do? I need more than somewhere to stay. I need a place to
belong, a fertile place to take hold again.” Oh, dear God,
fertile
—

“If you would like to live in the nursery until—”

“And crowd you further? No, dear, Charles is right. There isn’t room.”

“I could get you a bit more money perhaps.”

“You have given me too much already.” Christina could feel the heat behind her eyes. She tilted her head to balance the self-pity before it slipped down her cheeks in tears.

“Richard is such a rotter,” said Evangeline from the sofa.

“Fine, Richard is a rotter. But how does saying that help? I still don’t know what I’m going to do. Or where, or how, I’m going to live. I only know I’m being divorced. For something I have no control over, that will make me…strange to people. Different. I don’t know if I can cope with it all.”

“I haven’t a doubt in the world that you can. Admirably.”

“I think I’m going to cry, Evie. Do you want to watch, or do you want to leave?

“Christina—”

“I know, I know.”

“Poor, sweet Christina.”

“Oh, don’t. Please.” Christina had to wait a moment to gain control of her voice. “Badger me. Tell me more of your neighbors or of your wretched earl. But don’t call me ‘poor’ or ‘sweet,’ please.”

Evangeline made a strong case for Christina’s remaining a houseguest of the Earl of Kewischester, the most convincing argument being: He would not only arrive with a number of friends, he would
leave
with them. When Parliament let out—not coincidentally on the day that grouse season opened in August—the English upper class vacated London
en masse.
From there they were notoriously fickle. It was nothing for a lord’s summer to include a bit of shooting on a northern moor, some strolling on a southern seaside, with various entertainments at places everywhere in between. The rich tended in summer to travel from one grand house to another as each other’s house-guests.

Besides, Evangeline argued, even Winchell Bower couldn’t object to company that was regularly the choice of the Prince of Wales.

Perhaps. The true reason Christina stayed, however, was that she had become more than a little fascinated with the earldom itself. The earl, hmm, well, he was a bit of a nuisance, if she remembered correctly, but, oh,
the rest. His home, with its Frenchified furnishings and appointments, was as worthy of exploration as a Paris museum. And, oh, his estate—by the third day of her visit, she was completely in love with his lands.

They were safe: Gamekeepers patrolled them by sectors. A dense forest protected the rear of the property. High iron palisades ran the full perimeter. The earl had an uncommon zeal for privacy. The happy result was, though, that his vast acreage was one of the few stretches of English countryside where a well-to-do woman could stroll by herself, alone, anywhere, for as long as she wished, without fear of highwaymen or worse.

She liked best to walk along the periphery of the woods, in the shade of the trees. By the fourth day of her stay, this scallop of shadow, so clearly delineated by the sun, had become a real goal, near-obsession. Christina would hike toward it, arms swinging. Her nose would catch the first whiff of forest, its floor, its dampness. And something would release inside her. A moment later she would feel a tickle, the coolness that emanated from the trees. Then she would become engulfed by it, and she was
there.
No one. No servants, no cousins. Even the ducks and geese and occasional sheep gone astray didn’t wander near this private place she’d found. It was just hers alone. It was perfect.

She would sit in the cool grass then, legs stretched out, leaning back on her hands, and stare—for hours sometimes—at land so vast and gorgeous, it was beyond imagining. Green. Lush. Peaceful.

The first signs that the little Eden she’d found had a worm or two in it came on the eighth day of her stay. A letter arrived from a solicitor in London. The divorce was real. It would be final in five weeks’ time. But the end of the letter was what upset Christina. She was to be given “a reasonable monthly allowance from the Bower-Pinn Securities Account.”

There was no Bower-Pinn securities account.

Did Richard plan on forming one? Did he intend to supplement her income? That would be very good of him, but was not likely. Richard would inherit a title, but he and his family had little income. It was through Christina that money had been expected to flow eventually into the baronetcy. Richard was sensitive to the issue. He didn’t like that his wife came from more money than he did—he even came to resent the little account her mother had left her.

Oh, dear. Was that the “securities account” the lawyer mentioned? Christina indeed often split her monthly windfall with her husband, though stocks’ dividends were usually small—rarely more than four or five pounds total. Oh, my stars and garters, she thought. What a fiendishly petty man. Richard didn’t want her, but couldn’t give up the extra pound or two a month she’d meant to him.

She grew so angry that eventually she sat down and wrote a letter to her father.
Mother intended the stock to provide me a little income, to be a small freedom from a husband’s parsimony, not the object of it.
…

It was the second letter Christina had written to Winchell Bower. In the first, a week ago, she had explained as best she could what had happened, where she was, and why. Thus far, her father hadn’t acknowledged her letter, her divorce, or her existence outside her marriage. She was not optimistic he’d communicate over this new matter.

Then another misery. After a fretful morning of correspondence, Christina was eager to go out for her walk. She all but flew from the house—and within a hundred yards of the back terrace twisted her ankle in a rabbit hole. She railed at herself as she hobbled back to the house. Stupid, clumsy, preoccupied…But no amount of self-rebuke would cure the problem. The sore ankle kept her inside for the rest of the day.

The next day, the house was frantic with activity. A
barrage of new faces, servants, and deliveries descended upon the place. Floors were wet from washing. Heat and clamorous noises emanated from the kitchen, boisterous calls and chops. Smells wafted to the rafters, marriages of roasting juices and cleaning compounds. Roast duck. Vapors of lye. Beeswax and lemon oil mingling with the aroma of honey tarts. And all this with servants as intent on their business as if they were making the wax and honey themselves. The king bee would buzz in by that evening or next. With “guests,” as Evangeline had predicted. Christina gleaned from the servants that her host was traveling in the company of eighty-seven “friends.”

Depressed at the prospect of further invasion, Christina tried to retreat to her apartment. But, even here, the commotion was intolerable. She couldn’t keep boxes from stacking up in her own rooms!

Out the window she spied her deliverance. Horses. A line of horses, heads high, coats glistening, pranced toward the earl’s carriage house.

Adrien Hunt bit down on the end of his cigar, squinting one eye against the drifting smoke.

“Shall we leave?” asked Thomas Lillings.

“Half an hour more,” he said.

“Fine,” Thomas said. Several others murmured grunts of agreement.

Adrien stood with five men at the edge of his Hampshire woods, in the shadows of the first trees. “If she doesn’t show by then—” He shrugged.

If she didn’t show by then, they’d either have to stop their trips to France or continue, knowing someone was wise to their identities and questionable activities.

“Then,” he continued, “I say, we continue as planned, but watch our backs carefully.”

More nods and murmurs.
Yes.

Adrien scanned the open grassland, then looked
down, flicking ash off the dark cigar. It looked fat and black against his long fingers. It also looked chewed on: The day had not been a good one.

“Who spoke to her last?” he asked.

A square-set man, Sam, said, “No one ever spoke to her. The last note came yesterday: It asked for today’s rendezvous.” He snorted. “‘With hope of the Englishman’s help for a brother in peril.’ It was signed, ‘Mlle D’Amley,’ and there is a D’Amley, a former duke, in La Force.”

“How did the note get to you?”

“It was in your hat the day my horse bit that fellow and you held the animal while I went back for our nets.”

“Right.” Adrien glanced down. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound annoyed with you—it’s myself I’m angry with.”

They waited for a woman not one of them had seen—though all of them uniformly felt the tension from their contact with her.

Two weeks ago an unknown woman had begun making pleas to friends of theirs, haphazard messages intended “to reach the right man.” She’d claimed to be a French aristocrat, who, like so many other French émigrés in England, was trying to get one or more family members out of France. Over the last two years, it had become a very dangerous place for “former” French aristocrats. All French titles and privileges had been declared null. Any nobleman who didn’t bow to the new equality of the land was subject to imprisonment often followed by death. Political opposition to the reigning powers was silenced in the most efficient way possible: It was cut off at the neck by a guillotine.

The woman in question had pleaded just that: She could not get her brother out of France. He was, she claimed, a prisoner in La Force, a prison on the outskirts
of Paris. An “enemy of the revolution,” he was on the list for the guillotine. Having firsthand experience with the violence across the channel, Adrien had been very sympathetic.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the woman, her whole story, was a ruse. There was no brother, though there most certainly was such a prison. The administrators of that prison had sent the woman. She worked for them. Imprisoned French aristocrats had been disappearing from La Force for over a year. All escapes, remarkably successful, had the earmarks of a single mind and left a trail to England. The woman had been sent to find the source.

The source, very uneasy now, was smoking a cigar and rearranging, with the toe of his boot, a bit of moss and leaves on the ground.

“Crazy,” Adrien murmured. He had caught himself half hoping the woman wouldn’t show up. But, no, if she didn’t come, it meant she had already decided whom she would be meeting. And in that event, not only would French authorities be making life unpleasant, but now so would an English authority. The English Minister of Foreign Affairs, from whom Adrien had inadvertently gotten the information about the spy, had made it clear he didn’t like anyone messing about in intrigues with France, a purview he considered strictly his own.

Adrien slowly raised his head to stare along the line of trees. He was idly playing with his cigar when he felt his heart stop. He grew still. Staring at a pinpoint in the distance, he narrowed his eyes.

A rider was coming. She—for an abundance of skirt rode to the side—had not been immediately visible because she’d not come across the grass as they’d expected. No, she held to the cool ambuscade of shade, much as they had been doing.

“Thomas! Sam! There she is! Get to your horses and
circle behind her. You four, cover the front, then Charles and Phillip take the side. Herd her back into the clearing. The less we startle her, the easier this will be.”

Christina had not been riding ten minutes when she noticed shapes moving ahead in the shade of her woods, other human beings.

She slowed on her horse, mesmerized by their sudden appearance and movement. They were a very busy group, one minute restlessly milling about, the next, bounding onto horses. Then, quite surprisingly, their mad rush came together and headed toward her.

The horses they rode had coats that glistened. The men were well dressed. Bright splashes of lace pounded to the rhythm of a gallop as they closed in—

They were pressing down on her! She reined her horse in a half circle. More men came out of the woods just behind her. They, too, veered in her direction. She reined her animal around. Then back again. The horse reared in protest. But it was true. My God, she seemed to be somehow a target for these men.

The sound of galloping began to pound like thunder. Then a cracking. The glint and posture of a raised pistol. Someone was firing over her head. She needed no more encouragement. She bolted for cover. Into the woods.

The mare was a marvel, surging into a gallop. Miraculously, it knew the way. Into the thick of trees and vegetation they both plunged, at a speed that sent Christina’s heart straight into her throat. She could hear, by the sounds of her pursuers, that she had surprised them. She actually gained ground ahead of them.

Voices came into the forest after her. Cursing, calling to one another. “This way!” “Cut her off there!” They were having difficulty overtaking her. Again, she blessed the animal beneath her. The mare was a miracle.
It knew the woods. It leaped a fallen trunk, then jagged around a low branch that would have unseated her. She was going to get away.

Then a sharp explosion rang out.

It seemed so distant, the shot. But its effect was immediate. The ground beneath her gave way. As if everything was caving to the center of the Earth. Christina was suddenly aware of blood. Lots of it. Wet and sticky at her knee. The mare’s blood. The horse was going down.

Christina had to scuttle to keep from falling and sliding beneath the horse. It was screaming, screeching, deafening her eardrums. But there were other sounds. The men came after her. There was time for no more than a brief look as Christina leaped. A ghoulish sight, the animal flailed, its underbelly bleeding. Christina ran in mortal fear.

Mindlessly, she tugged and scrambled through any opening that materialized among the trunks and leaves. Her clothes caught, rent. Twigs and limbs scratched her face and arms and palms as she pushed ahead. A collision with an ungiving branch stunned her for a moment. But the calls of her pursuers—crisscrossing in front of her, behind her, from all sides now—added fuel to a kind of hysteria that drove her to more desperate impacts as the forest resisted her flight.

The woods were alive with crunching movement. Tears began to run and blind Christina’s vision. Her breath came hard and fierce, dotted with tiny sobs of frustration. Her movements, she could hear, were followed now with agonizing efficiency.

“Arrêtez! Ne bougez plus!”

She didn’t understand. Futility began to weigh on her. She began to lag. Her lungs burned. Her side had developed a knifelike stitch. But it was her ankle that finally brought her down. The sore ankle got a jolt going over a gnarled root, and there was no recovery.

A mouthful of dirt. Her teeth snapped violently. A dull bounce of forehead. Cut tongue…momentary spots…dizziness…. The earth pounded like a roar in her ears. Feet running, tearing through the brush. Men. Shouting. Stomping. The distant shrill of an animal’s moan piercing all of this, over and over.

Then the metallic-warm taste of blood in her mouth, as someone rolled her over. Blue sky through treetops…a smatter of white clouds…a strangling headache tightened at her temples. Her whole face washed cold. Only bubbles of consciousness…. Faces overhead, blotting, blackening out everything…. A hot hand patting her cold cheek…. Someone speaking in fragments, unintelligible phrases…. Then, nothing.