Palace of Spies (2 page)

“Isn’t the weather fine today?” Aunt Pierpont’s hands fussed with her lacy little square, as if about to pull it to bits. “Olivia, I think a stroll in the garden will be just the thing after breakfast.”

This was too much for even Olivia’s composure. A flicker of consternation crossed her face. “Yes . . . certainly. We’d be glad to, wouldn’t we, Peggy?”

“Erm, no, my dear. I thought just you and I. Surely, Peggy won’t mind.”

“No, of course not.” My mind was racing. What could Aunt have to say to Olivia that I couldn’t hear? Had Olivia received a marriage offer? Her looks and her father’s money meant she had cartloads of youths chasing after her. Worry knotted in my stomach. What would I do in this house without Olivia? Uncle Pierpont often grumbled about sending me off to Norwich to “make myself useful” to his aging mother, thus saving himself the cost of my keeping.

“Well.” Olivia delicately blotted her mouth with her napkin. “Shall I fetch my bonnet, then?”

“Yes, yes, do.”

Olivia scurried from the room, the canine flock trailing behind. Left alone with my aunt and my now thoroughly queasy stomach, I found it difficult to fit words to my tongue.

“Peggy, you know we are all very fond of you.” Aunt Pierpont squeezed the much-abused handkerchief in her fist.

“Yes, Aunt.” I stared at that strangled bit of lace and fancied it might soon yield some milk, or a plea for help.

“And we’ve always had your welfare at heart.”

This is it. I am bound for Norwich and a damp cottage and a deaf old woman who can pinch a sixpence until it screams
. I’d been there once before, one interminable, gray winter, to nurse the dowager Pierpont through a cold. She’d made up her mind that if she was to have nothing but gruel and weak tea, no one else need have anything better. I must have written a thousand murder plans in my diary in those months. Had her serving girl been able to read, I would have been hanged straightaway.

“I was very fond of your mother,” my aunt added suddenly. “You have grown to be very like her. Did you know that?”

“No.” In fact, she never spoke of my deceased mother. No one did.

Aunt Pierpont gave the handkerchief a fresh twist. “Well, you have. Just as pretty, and just as willful. You must . . .” She bit her lip, and another ripple of fear surged through me. But before she managed to continue, the door opened to admit Dolcy, the parlormaid.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am.” Dolcy bobbed her curtsy to us. “But Master says Miss Fitzroy is to join him in his book room.”

So, the end had come. I rose to my feet. My aunt smiled encouragingly at me and gave my hand a limp pat.
Norwich
. Empty. Gray. Flat. With a vicar whose sermons lasted a full two hours every Sunday and Thursday. My stays squeezed my breath, making me unpleasantly lightheaded as I walked to the door. No books in the cottage, no hearth in my bedroom . . .

Olivia stood in the dim hallway, bonnet dangling in her fingers.

“I heard everything.” She seized my hand at once. “What have you done? Tell me quickly.”

“Nothing, I swear.” We were due to attend Lady Clarenda Newbank’s birthday party that evening. I didn’t care for Lady Clarenda, nor she for me, but the party would provide a welcome change of scene. Because of this, I had been treading very gently around my uncle so he should not be tempted to forbid my going.

“Hmmm.” Olivia frowned. “Well, then, it’s probably something trifling. About expenses, perhaps.”

Neither one of us believed this, especially with her mother waiting to have some urgent, private conversation in the gardens. I walked the narrow, dark corridors to my uncle’s book room and found myself wondering if this was what it felt like to walk toward a trap one knew was coming. Unfortunately, unlike Olivia’s imaginary hero, I had no way to fight back.

The dominant feature of my uncle Pierpont’s book room was his desk. I had never once been in this room when the great ledger was not open on that gleaming surface, accompanied by bulwarks and battlements of letters and documents sealed with all colors of ribbon and wax.

Uncle Pierpont himself was a skinny man. He had skinny legs beneath his well-cut breeches and silk stockings. His arms had knobby elbows that always looked ready to poke through the cloth of his coat. The clever fingers of his hands seemed made for counting and writing sums. Slitted eyes graced his long face on either side of a nose at least as sharp as his pen. When I walked in, he was bent so close over his ledger, you might have thought he was using his nose rather than the goose quill to write out his accounts. His short-queue wig, a bundle of powdered curls, clung to the top of his head at a most dangerous angle.

I was determined to remain calm and resolute, but that room and the Desk had some magical power to them. By the time I crossed the long acre of carpet to stand in front of Uncle Pierpont, I was once again eight years old, alone, poor, terrified, and trying desperately not to fidget.

The great clock in the corner ticked, and ticked. My uncle continued his laborious writing without once glancing up. I valiantly battled against fidgets, against fear, and against wondering what Uncle would do when his wig slipped off his shiny forehead, which it surely must at any moment.

Finally, Uncle Pierpont finished his column and lifted his nose from the page. “Ah, there you are at last.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied meekly. The quickest way through these interviews was to agree with whatever was said.

“I have some good news for you, Peggy.” Uncle Pierpont plucked a sheaf of documents bedecked with ribbons and red wax seals off one of his paper battlements.

“Good news? Sir?”

“Yes.” Uncle Pierpont pushed the documents across the desk toward me. “You are betrothed.”

CHAPTER TWO

“Betrothed?” I pressed my hand against my stomach and stared at the close-written papers. How was this possible? I had no suitors. I had nothing about myself to tempt any warm-blooded swain. I was going to grow old being Olivia’s companion and nurse to her children. Or go to Norwich and die of the rising damps. “I . . . but . . . but . . .
who?
”

“It seems Lord Sandford, Baron of L——, wants you for his second son. Sebastian’s his name. I think. In any case, he wants the boy married before he sends him back to the family’s sugar plantations in Barbados. Thinks it will keep him out of trouble, or at least give him some legitimate offspring for a cover.”

Barbados? I was betrothed to someone my uncle
thought
was named Sebastian, and who was expected in Barbados? It wasn’t possible he could do this. Except, of course, it was. I was an orphan. I was a girl. As my legal guardian, Uncle Pierpont could dispose of me as he pleased.

“Almighty Heaven, look at her,” said my uncle to his ledger, as if he expected it to sit up like one of Olivia’s dogs. “Gawping like a codfish. What sort of thanks is that? You’re coming off quite well, especially considering you’ve no dowry or family. The settlement’s exceeding generous.” He nudged the papers a little closer.

“But . . . but I don’t want to be betrothed.” Not to someone who would have me on my uncle’s word. Not to someone I’d never before laid eyes on.

“And who d’ye think’s asking what you want, you fool girl? It’s not as if you’re overrun with suitors.”

“I’m only sixteen.” That plea sounded weak even to me. But my wits had deserted me and taken my strength with them. The only things holding me upright were my corset stays. Those and the fear that if I fainted now, I might be shut up in the great desk drawers until it was time to be carried to church.

“You’ll be seventeen by the wedding. That’s plenty old enough.” My uncle wiped his pen on the blotter and dipped it once again into the ink.

That, unmistakably, was the end of the conversation. My knees bent of their own volition to make the curtsy my uncle would not raise his eyes to see, and I left that room. The door closed behind me. I stood in the shadowed hallway, unable to think which way to go next.

“Peggy!” Olivia sailed up the corridor like a lost but very enthusiastic sunbeam and gave me an enormous hug. “Mother told me! How wonderful!” She grabbed my arm and drew me down the hall away from my uncle, and the Desk, and the betrothal contract I’d left behind in my shock. “You shall have your own house, and I’ll come to visit every day. We’ll have heaps of time all to ourselves, and you’ll be able to take me anywhere we want, because you’ll be a married woman! And . . . what on earth is the matter? Did you think I’d be angry because you’re getting married first?”

“I’ve never met him,” I whispered. “I’ve never even seen him.”

“Is that all?” Olivia steered us into the breakfast room and shut the door. The sunlight of a clear May morning streamed through the windows, and her dogs flopped in their lacy baskets. The table had been cleared, and every other thing was in its place, as if nothing at all were wrong.

“All?” Disbelief melted the ice of my shock. “He could be a thousand years old and covered in shingles and swollen with gout and a drunkard and—”

“Actually, he’s very handsome.” Olivia settled herself in a round-backed chair next to her dogs and straightened her skirts.

I stared at her as if she’d just turned blue.

“With excellent legs,” Olivia continued. “Very much the horseman, by all accounts.”

“You
know
him?”

“No. But I know his sister Rosamond. Sebastian’s nineteen years old, he’s been in Barbados, but he was sent to Cambridge to finish his education, and he’s got every girl in London sighing after him.
Including
Lady Clarenda Newbank. I can’t wait to see the look on her face. Promise you’ll let me tell her, Peggy, do!”

“I . . .” I sat down quickly. I detested girls who slumped into faints at the drop of a fan, but now I felt I might be about to join their ranks. “But . . . your father said he’s to be sent out to Barbados after he’s married. And I’m to go with him.”

“Nonsense, Peggy. No one would dream of sending an English girl to the tropics. You’d be sick in an instant, not to mention brown as an Indian.” Pale skin was regarded as one of the many signs of rank and virtue, and therefore must be strictly cherished. We good English girls were constantly warned that ruination accompanied turning the least bit brown. “Don’t you see? It’s perfect! You’ll be installed in his London house and free to do whatever you like. And if anyone does entertain the idea of Barbados, you’ll simply become ill.
Far
too ill to travel to such a harsh climate.” Olivia tipped me a broad wink.

She meant a baby. I was barely able to comprehend that I’d been betrothed to this young man, and she saw me having his child. A strange, sick sensation bubbled through my mind. “This can’t be happening. I’m not ready. I can’t do this, Olivia. I can’t—”

“Oh, Peggy, I’m sorry.” Olivia folded me in her sisterly embrace. “It’s been a shock, hasn’t it? Do you want to lie down?”

I grasped at this. “Yes, yes, I think perhaps I should.”

My room was right next to Olivia’s. My uncle grumbled at this, but Olivia had always insisted. It was furnished in the modern style, that is to say, hardly at all. I had a bed with a lace canopy, a wardrobe, a dressing table, a chair, a round table for a candle, and another chair for sitting beside the hearth and sewing. The floor was bare, but it was clean, and the maids liked me, so I always had plenty of coal for my fire and stout quilts in winter.

I had no window, nor any pictures for my walls, nor a desk where I could write in private. I was not allowed to keep more than one book at a time up here. None of this mattered at that moment. What mattered was the door I could shut against the rest of the house. Even against Olivia. I needed to be alone. I needed to think.

“You’ll come to me at once if you need me?” asked Olivia anxiously. “Truly, you’ve turned a very odd color.”

“I will. It’s just the shock.” Dutifully, I settled onto my coverlet. “See? I’m having a lie-down. I’ll be right as rain in an hour or so.” I made myself smile.

Olivia snorted at my exaggerated, wooden expression. “You’ll like Sebastian when you see him, Peggy. I’m sure of it,” she said kindly.

With this happy idea, she did leave me alone. The door shut firmly behind her, and I lay on my back as stiff as Flossie, the porcelain doll Olivia had given me so long ago, and who still shared my pillow. I blinked up at my faded lace canopy. I was cold. What warmth May had to offer did not seem to have penetrated this deeply into the house.

I was betrothed. My opinion was not wanted or needed, because I was poor. Because I was orphaned.

According to our best novelists and playwrights, daughters loved their fathers unfailingly, be they present or absent. But I never had. From my youngest days, I had hated mine. My father’s abandonment had been the source of all my troubles. I could remember quite clearly the morning I’d come into the parlor and seen Mother with her lovely face turned all red and blotchy.

“He’s left us, Peggy.” Mother held out her arms, and I ran into them at once. She hugged me too tight, her hot tears falling against my brow. “He’s left us, and we must fend for ourselves now.”

We must fend for ourselves now
. I’d never forgotten those words, but I’d never truly considered them either. All I knew was that my father, in leaving, had taken my mother with him. Until then, Mother had come up to the nursery every night to play with me and read to me. We took breakfast together, and there had been excursions about the town. After Father left, Mama became a much-loved and beautiful ghost glimpsed on the stairs. If she came to me at all, it was for a fleeting kiss once I was tucked in.

Mama had died in her bed three years after my father’s disappearance. I hadn’t been allowed to see her until afterward. Mama was delirious, the doctor had said, and I mustn’t be exposed to her rantings.

When I finally was let in, I looked on her corpse and I cried, because that lifeless stock was not my warm, beautiful mama. She was gone, gone farther even than my father.