Palace of Spies (21 page)

“Thank you.” I gave her a theatrically gracious nod. “I also have managed a fresh assignation with Robert.”

I expected this news would be less well received, so her stony silence did not disappoint. I steeled my nerve, ready for the quiver in her lip that signaled a storm to be unleashed. I tried to prepare myself to argue, or to, unthinkably, issue orders.

Then, against what I would have believed to be all the laws of nature, Mrs. Abbott nodded.

“Yes. Now. It will serve.” She added something too soft for me to make out, but my relief at not having to take on yet another battle royale was such that I wouldn’t have cared if she’d begun talking to the furniture.

“When is this assignation?” she asked me.

“At once.”

“Then it must look natural. You will wait here.”

She left by the door to the gallery. I sprang to my workbasket, unearthed Francesca’s sketch of the ceiling in the princess’s new apartments, and stuffed it into my sleeve.

Wherever Mrs. Abbott had gone, it was not far. I barely had time to kick my basket back under the chair before the door opened again.

She’d brought a teacup. Ignoring my glance of surprise, Mrs. Abbott poured a measure of sherry from the decanter on the side table into the cup. She handed it to me, along with a candle.

“If anyone asks, you will say you take this to one of your sister maids. That Molly the Treasure perhaps. She has a low stomach, and this is a special tisane for her.”

“Thank you.” I looked at Mrs. Abbott with new respect. These small details brought home to me that this was not her first intrigue. She might even be very good at this business of spying. Could we, I wondered, eventually become something of friends? Could she teach me to do as she did?

I saw nothing to that end in her dark eyes. But hope is a persistent creature, and I carried it with me as I stepped into the gallery.

It was the small hours of the morning, but almost no one was abed. Palace residents and guests clustered together in the various chambers to talk or drink, or both. Some passed me in the galleries on the way to assorted apartments, whether their own or someone else’s. Servants also traveled to and fro, bringing wine, basins, or whatever else their masters might need. Even though I was still in my court dress with its bulky train, I was in no way especially remarked upon. If I was saluted, it was with a jest about the promised puppy and what I might do with any money I won.

The gallery that led to the apartments being improved for Her Royal Highness was blessedly empty. As I drew the door shut, I was engulfed in silence. Robert had not yet arrived. The light of the full moon streamed through the diamond-paned windows. I set the teacup on a worktable beside the door and moved carefully to the center of the room, taking my candle with me. Its circle of light felt pitifully small in that great, silent moonlit chamber. Under the influence of the silver beams, the tables, buckets, ladders, and easels turned into a dreamlike wilderness. The scaffolding and drop cloths sprouted strange shadows. It was cold as well, and I shivered.

I pulled out Francesca’s sketch and shook it open. The angle of the moonlight left much of the ceiling’s mural in shadow, but the central tableau remained fairly clear, though its colors were dim and difficult to discern. I did not dare light any of the lanterns I saw on the tables around me. I might need to return to darkness in a hurry.

My plan was that I could at least put this bit of my mystery to rest and then turn my attention to Robert and to trying to find out more about this business between him and Francesca. I was ready to see sloppy workmanship on Francesca’s sketch, and to be once and for all able to dismiss these drawings from consideration. I told myself I carried nothing but a failed attempt at copying a master’s work.

But sloppy workmanship was not what I found. Overhead, Thornhill’s painting showed a complex scene: there was the god Apollo, his chariot, and its horses. There was the winged woman, Leucothoe, hanging on to his arm. There below on a rocky landscape were a man and woman, lying side by side, plainly asleep.

In the drawing in my hand, that pair had their limbs clumsily sprawled and their heads thrown back. Francesca had drawn them not in sleep, but in death. The face on the central figure that took Apollo’s place was too young and too long to be the god of the painting overhead. It was handsome still, but its nose was prominent and curving, and its eyes heavily lidded. Neither was this penciled Apollo amused, like the painted one above. He was determined, almost martial in his aspect.

There was something wrong with winged Leucothoe as well. But as I craned my neck in a futile attempt to peer more closely at her, I heard the soft sound of the doorknob turning. I blew out the candle and ducked behind the nearest canvas draped ladder, hastily tucking my sketch back into my sleeve.

A shadow darted inside, and as the moonlight flashed on loops of braid, I recognized Robert. I moved into the nearest moonbeam. He saw me at once, but held up his hand, leaning back to listen at the door he’d just closed. When he was satisfied with the level of silence, he rushed forward and clasped both my hands. I braced myself to be kissed, but Robert was not in such a mood this time.

“Fran, what on earth are you up to?” he whispered harshly.

I drew myself up and frowned in my confusion. “What am I up to? What about you? Where were you this morning?” I had made up my mind to act as if I still believed the note leading me to the Wilderness had come from Robert. In part, this was to draw him out, but I admit I had another aim as well: to see how he would react when I spoke Sophy’s name. She had chosen him to deliver my advertisement to the
Gazetteer
. There had to be a reason for that.

Robert’s first reaction was simple confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I went into the Wilderness to meet you, as your note said. If you had been there, I wouldn’t be in this mess!”

The moonlight made it difficult to fully judge an expression, but the confusion in Robert’s voice lifted to pure incredulity. “You found a note in your
rooms?
And you followed it?”

“Of course I did. What—”

“It’s the oldest trick in the world!” he snapped. “I would never leave a note just lying about where anyone could get a look at it! You should have burnt it and stayed away.”

I turned away in a pretense of shame. “It was Sophy, wasn’t it? Making trouble?”

“Of course it was Sophy! Who else would it be? And you had to go make this stupid bet with her!” Robert paced across the room, moving deeper into the shadows. I could just see the gleam of his eyes now as they shifted restlessly, glancing from the uncurtained windows to the door. He was worried. No, he was frightened.

“I didn’t plan this, Robert,” I answered honestly, and I told him how I happened across little Princess Anne in the Wilderness and promised her access to a puppy I didn’t possess. “And then Her Royal Highness brought it up, and Sophy was so spiteful, I got carried away, I suppose.” Which was true, as far as it went.

It did nothing, however, to soften Robert’s anger. His hands repeatedly clenched the empty air, and I had the sudden idea he’d put distance between us so he would not be tempted to grab hold of me. “God in Heaven, Fran, we can’t afford for you to get carried away! You know that. Why must you court trouble?”

“And what would you have done? Let yourself be scolded and mocked for lying to the princess’s daughter?”

“Of course! It’s not as if any of this”—here he flung his arms wide to encompass the palace and the court—“matters to me.”

“It matters to me.” This was also the truth, and perhaps I should have been more chastened by it than I was. I knew my situation to be mad and precarious, but I enjoyed mingling as an equal with peers of the realm. I liked receiving attention from the men and being included in the company of the women and girls. More than that, I liked that I had gained some measure of respect from the Princess of Wales. I very much wanted to keep it.

“Will the advertisement be delivered?” I asked him.

“How can you be worried about that?” Robert forced the words through clenched teeth. “If you can’t stop acting like a silly little girl, you are going to get us killed!”

Despite the fact that we both spoke in whispers, that last word rang through the empty room.
Killed
. He was in fear for his life. Our lives. Slowly I shrank back. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I pressed my hand to my stays. It was true, then. The reassurance I’d taken from Mrs. Abbott’s tale of Francesca’s last days had been fool’s gold. Lady Francesca had been murdered. And I now stood in her place.

But I was not the only one distressed by the outburst. “Oh, Fran. I’m sorry.” Robert choked on the words, and for a moment I thought he’d cry. “I’m so, so, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Yes, it will be delivered. Sophy tried to argue me out of it, but I pointed out that everyone in court will be reading the
Gazetteer
to make sure it’s there. I will deliver it. On my honor, I will. Please don’t look at me like that.”

I swallowed and closed my eyes, making a great show of composing myself. “I’m doing my best, Robert.”

“I know it. I do know.” He rushed forward then and wound his arms around me, pulling me into a surprisingly gentle embrace. I tried not to stiffen, but it was so strange, to be held this intimately, yet not be known at all. I could feel his heart hammering under his red coat and hear him swallowing his sobs. He had almost lost his Francesca, and he feared he was about to lose her again, and it hurt him deeply. I hated myself in that moment, and the deception I had taken on, because one way or another, I had to betray the love this man had given that other Francesca.

Slowly, terribly uncertain whether this was the right thing to do, I put my arms around Robert and returned his embrace.

“It won’t be for much longer.” Robert ran his fingers across my brow, seeking to smooth away the creases there. “I promise, I’ll find a way out for us. But you have to see how difficult this has become, Fran. Sophy is insisting I find a way to have the paper’s offices watched to see if anyone comes to ask about the advertisement.”

“Sophy, again.” I did not have to force the bitterness in my voice. “Ordering you about.”

“Yes, ordering me about, and I must obey.” Robert tried to chuck me underneath my chin, but I pulled away. “We have no choice.”

Why not? What hold did she have over him? Over us? I turned away, pulling myself out of the circle of his arms. I did not want him to see the confusion and calculation that tumbled through me just then.

“I’ve let you down, I know,” said Robert behind me. He was taking a step forward, and another. I could hear his shoes on the bare floor. “But things in the North finished so much more quickly than anyone guessed—there was simply no time to get us to our friends. We had to stay in place.”

“Our friends?” The words were out before I could bite my tongue, hard.
Our friends in the North?
The North, where the Jacobites had rallied in their rebellion last winter.

“Yes, Fran,” murmured Robert. “
Our
friends.”

Robert was a Jacobite. Robert was not a swooning gallant or a pawn in some game played by bored courtiers. In this dark empty room, I stood next to a traitor spy, one in touch with the rebels in the North. They had plans for him, and Francesca had known. Francesca had known enough, been close enough, that she had been ready to flee with her paramour to join the rebellion.

“I’ve been looking for a way to tell you they’ve been in touch.” Hope and energy returned to Robert’s words. “Our plans aren’t dead, only shifted.”

I took a breath, and another. My ribs strained hard against my stays. I could not show surprise. Francesca had known this. I could not slide into the panic opening at the brink of my thoughts. I had to find a safe question to ask, one that would not give me away.

“But what can we possibly do now?”

Robert moved close again, a tiny smile playing about his mouth. “Fran, you know better.” He closed his hands about my shoulders and shook me gently. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s happening. You’re quite safe, of course, but we can’t be too careful. We mustn’t risk you getting . . . carried away again in the wrong company.” He wasn’t going to tell me what was happening. I had betrayed myself as monumentally indiscreet. I could only hope the fact that I was silently cursing myself as eighteen different kinds of fool did not show in the expression I turned up toward him.

“When we’re done and safely out of here, I’ll tell you everything, I swear it,” Robert said earnestly. “You believe me, don’t you?”

I pulled back, partly because I needed space to breathe and partly because I wanted to see him better. His long face had become drawn and haggard as he looked down at me and saw his Fran.

“I believe you mean every word you say to me,” I told him. This was the absolute truth, and the smile that erased the fear from Robert’s face told me he accepted it. He kissed my brow, and my cheek, and the kiss was warm and tender. I thought I could feel the sorrow and the yearning in it. For the briefest moment, the loneliness in me chimed in a sympathetic vibration, for he was lonely too and in a danger that might, just might, be too deep for him. A treacherous little voice whispered, If I let him kiss me on the mouth, would that be so harmful? If I yielded just a little, to a craving for someone to be close to, what would it hurt?

“Fran.” His mouth glided toward mine.

I lifted my hand and pressed my fingers to his lips. “We mustn’t, Robert. I can’t stay. I’m being watched too closely. It took everything just to get here to you.”

Reluctantly, Robert loosened his embrace and stepped back. “I miss you so much, Fran,” he said. “You have no idea. When I thought . . . when I thought you had died, I was ready to kill myself. I had the knife to my throat, and it was only the thought that I’d be denying myself the chance to be with you in Heaven that stopped me.”

It should have sounded like bad melodrama, but there in the moonlight and shadow, with the warmth from his kiss still on my brow, it was heartbreaking. I was suddenly certain Robert was going to profess love and expect me to do the same. I had to turn this conversation at once. Of all the lies I must tell, I could not tell that one. Robert was not some dress or mask that I could don to play my part and then discard. He was a man of flesh and blood: Whatever his loyalties, he loved his lady, and he deserved better than a counterfeit hope.