Palace of Spies (28 page)

I opened my mouth to begin, but was interrupted by a swift knock at the door. Just as swiftly, it opened and Molly Lepell sailed in with a plump, brown-haired maid in tow.

“Now, Fran, here is Jess . . .”

She never finished the sentence. The dogs formed into a shaggy phalanx and charged, barking to break their tiny warrior hearts at these new hems that had suddenly appeared to jeopardize the well-being of their mistress.

“Fran, what on earth!” cried Molly as the dogs converged on her. The maid—Jessop, I presumed—squealed and retreated to the wall, which only set off a fresh round of barking.

“Hello, Molly. Oh, back, you silly things.” I waded in, prodding and shooing to clear a path for Molly to the fireside. She came, but slowly. The dogs had faded from her attention as she took long and careful notice of Mr. Reade, still sitting on the sofa with Olivia, who also received cool and suspicious perusal.

“Lady Hannah Applepuss’s pure white hounds, I presume,” said Molly, flicking a finger vaguely toward the dogs, but not taking her attention from Matthew and Olivia.

“Well, yes.” This was not good. It was dangerous in the extreme that yet more people were seeing Matthew Reade in my room with only the highly dubious chaperonage of an unknown girl in a maid’s costume. Molly was no talking fool, but I knew nothing about this Jessop, who was still pressed back against the wall, as if she feared the fluff flock might assemble itself into one great wolf and devour her messily.

“I thought the dogs weren’t arriving until Friday,” Molly was saying. “I had heard, in fact, that there were great plans for a welcoming party on the bridge.”

“The stage was early. It’s all this good weather we’ve been having,” I replied blandly. We were silent for a minute, listening to the rain drumming against the window.

“This is Templeton. My guardian sent her to take Mrs. Abbott’s place.” I gestured toward Olivia, who belatedly realized she should have been on her feet already. Any working maid would have been. Jessop had gotten over enough of her fright to turn her attention toward Olivia, and it was very close attention indeed. She made clear and special note of everything about my cousin, from her too short, muddy skirt, to her cap with its strings dangling. She was quite obviously not impressed. A fact that Molly Lepell did not miss.

“Well. How very prompt. And Mr. Reade is here to make sure this important moment is memorialized on canvas?” In that moment, Molly sounded distressingly like Sophy Howe.

Matthew, quite sensibly, executed one of his famous bows, murmured some excuse that none of us could hear, and retreated. I envied him.

Molly waved Jessop out of the room as well, and then pushed the door shut. She faced me again with folded arms and a face as sour as old vinegar. I wondered if she had small siblings at home on whom she had practiced that particular frown. “Fran, what are you playing at?”

“Nothing, Molly. Nothing new,” I amended, retrieving the smallest of the small dogs, who had found a bit of loose thread on Molly’s skirt to growl at and looked to be working his way up to a lunge. “I wanted to make sure Sophy wasn’t able to interfere with the dogs’ arrival, so I had them brought by an alternate route. That is all.”

Molly’s cheeks colored, and it was not in amusement, or a maiden’s lively blush. It was anger. “Did it never occur to you that if you lost this silly bet, Sophy might relent a little?”

“No,” I replied honestly, handing the dog over to Olivia. “It’s not in her nature.”

Molly sighed, a sound that was both strangled and resigned. “Well, I expect you’re right.” She looked again at the fluff flock. Worn clean through from subduing the entire room, the majority had collapsed in a panting heap in front of the fire. “They are darling little things, aren’t they?”

“Thank you,” said Olivia, forgetting I’d just introduced her as a maid. Molly stared, affronted. Olivia stared straight back. Then she did duck her head and curtsy, but it was too late.

Molly stalked over to my cousin and pulled on her cap. Olivia snatched it back, but her wealth of gold hair, along with several silver pins, had already tumbled down. Molly grabbed her hand, examining first the perfectly kept nails and then, upon turning it over, the absolute lack of calluses on her palm.

“Who are you?” Molly demanded, but she did not wait for her answer before she rounded on me. “Fran, what are you
doing?
”

“She’s my cousin,” I said. “She’s here to help me.”

“By masquerading as your
maid?
Have you taken leave of your senses?”

Very probably, but I could not say that to her. In point of fact, I needed to end this conversation now, before she could be driven to ask any more questions, however valid they might be. “I have my reasons, Molly. Please, please, don’t say anything. That’s all I ask.”

Molly looked at me, and the dogs, and Olivia. I read anger deepening in her, and regret. I read the death of a friendship under the weight of one deception too many. “I came to make sure you’d be ready in time for Mr. Handel’s concert tonight,” she said coolly. “But as I see you have made your own arrangements, I leave you to complete them.” She curtsied to me in a most formal manner. Then without another word, she walked out the door and let it shut behind her.

I’m afraid my ladylike and well-bred response to this was to curse, at length, using a number of phrases and variations I had overheard from my uncle’s grooms. I liked Molly. She had been nothing but kind to me and my predecessor. She had been both friend and ally, and I had not guarded that friendship sufficiently.

But just as bad was the understanding that even if Molly kept her mouth closed, the maid Jessop surely would not. The news of Matthew being in my room would spread all through the court. As would the news that the dogs had arrived early. There might even be mention of Olivia.

Olivia, however, was not attuned to these nuances of my—our—position. Her attention was elsewhere. “Good heavens, Peg, that was Molly Lepell, wasn’t it? She’s a maid of honor! One of the Shining Three! She called you
Fran
. You haven’t been . . . you’re not . . .”

For the first time in my life, I saw my cousin at an absolute loss. She plumped back down onto the sofa and stared wide-eyed up at me. “How did you even get here, Peggy?”

I sat beside her and took her hand. It had gone cold, and I looked into my cousin’s genuinely worried eyes. I couldn’t blame her for that worry. There was certainly enough cause for it. There’d be even more once she knew my long, immensely convoluted story.

Which I had no time to tell her. The silvery bell of the mantel clock was striking seven, and I was expected to be in attendance on Her Royal Highness very soon. If I was not, there would be yet more questions I could not answer.

“Olivia, please tell me my aunt thinks you are visiting a friend for the night,” I said.

“Do you think I’m simple? Charlotte Maidstone has suffered a severe disappointment, and I am there to hold her hand and make sure she has plenty of violet water and strong tea.”

I squeezed my cousin’s hand tight. Of course she had thought of that. It was just like her. “Then I promise I will be able to tell you everything, but later. Right now I need your help.”

“Anything, Peggy, you know that.”

“I need to get ready to wait on the Princess of Wales.”

It is perhaps an odd thing, but even when one spends much of one’s life being dressed by others, one does not often stop to think of the range of skills and the amount of patience required on the part of the dresser. Olivia and I had, of course, laced each other’s stays and straightened ruffles and even painted faces. But that was for more ordinary occasions, and with clothes that had been sufficiently cared for and carefully laid out. The complexities of court dress, with its extra pinnings and lacings, the yards of additional ribbon, the weight and type of paint, and the bewildering variety of brushes and sponges was foreign to us. As were the exacting requirements involved in securing the exasperating puzzle pieces of the wig into place over hair that was lumpish and uncertain under its own mass of pins and netting. I was delighted to have my cousin with me, exerting all her energies to help me in this hour of my greatest need. But at the same time, I regretted Jessop. I missed my little dark-haired Libby. When I looked in the glass and saw my crooked cheeks and my misplaced patch and felt the awkward shifting of my wig on my scalp, I positively mourned Mrs. Abbott.

“It will be fine,” I said, in an attempt to reassure Olivia, and myself. “It’s one of Mr. Handel’s concerts tonight. No one will be paying me the least attention.”

Except, of course, everyone was. When I entered the princess’s apartments, where the select several dozen had gathered to refresh themselves and enjoy one another’s company prior to the music, every eye turned toward me. They all knew something had happened, and they looked to see its effects. What they saw was me, turned out clumsily, moving with caution so as not to dislodge my wig, and missing my fan. Especially Sophy saw, as clearly as I saw Molly standing beside her. Mary, who was engaged in some evidently highly witty conversation with Mr. Danforth, looked at me and shook her head in open pity.

There was nothing to do except brazen it out. I lifted my chin and pulled all my borrowed airs about myself as I crossed the vast expanse of that chamber to where Her Royal Highness sat. There, I curtsied, carefully.

“You’re late, Lady Francesca,” said the princess coolly. “I was about to send someone to make sure that you had not fallen ill.”

“My apologies, Your Highness,” I said. “I found myself at the last moment in receipt of an unexpected message.”

“Did you?” The frost in my mistress’s clear blue gaze didnot thaw in the least. “It must have been very important.”

“From Stemhempfordshire, madame. I believe Princess Anne will find it most welcome. If I may have permission to speak with her about it, tomorrow . . . ?”

I kept my voice low. Only Her Royal Highness and the nearest three ladies of the bedchamber would hear. And Lord Blakeney, of course, who had already arched his brows and put on a grin of such width as to say he’d just won a sizable wager. Word would spread in a murmur about the rest of the gathering. The grand finale of the Maids’ Puppy Wager had commenced. Speculation would attribute any lapse in my appearance or deportment to that fact, or so I most fervently hoped.

“I see,” said the princess. “You will have to take up the matter with Lady Portland, but I am certain you will be able to persuade her that Anne should pay you a call tomorrow.”

I murmured my heartfelt thanks and was waved away so Her Royal Highness could return to her conversation with the Lords Stanhope and Edgemonte. I retreated, carefully. As word of the wager’s conclusion rippled out through the splendid crowd, I was saluted with raised glasses and sly winks. It would be too bad to spoil this moment by losing my hair.

“Well, well,” said Mary Bellenden brightly as I joined her by the window where she sat with Molly and Sophy. The night had cleared outside, and the moon was just beginning to rise above the distant trees. “It looks as though our Fran has won after all.”

Molly said nothing. She did not even look at me. She contemplated the rising moon. There was a ring around it, a sign a storm was surely coming.

“Has she won indeed?” murmured Sophy. She stood behind Molly’s chair, her gloved hands curled around the carved and painted wood. “Because I must say, for someone who has achieved victory, Fran, you look awful.”

I bit my lip and fixed on a polite smile, but I also said nothing. At that moment, seeing Molly’s turned head and Sophy’s knowing smile, I was not at all sure of my success. I consoled myself by contemplating the fact that Olivia was safe and snug in my room upstairs. We were together again. There was nothing even Sophy Howe could dream up that Olivia and I could not face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I expect the concert was lovely. Court musicians are in general highly praised, usually because no one wishes to be seen faulting the taste of the royal patron. But Mr. Handel’s music was in truth excellent. Tonight, however, all I wanted was to fly back to my room, where I could sit with Olivia and tell her everything. Sophy’s repeated remarks from behind her fan about how truly ill I was looking did not help the time pass any more swiftly; not during the concert, nor during the reprise the Prince of Wales unexpectedly ordered, nor during the dinner that followed the music, nor the drinking and card playing after that.

I was all but shaking with impatience by the time Her Royal Highness announced her intent to retire. Molly had not spoken one word to me all night, and more people than Mary were noticing. If Sophy had been preening any more openly, I could have hired her out as one of the parkland peacocks. Her insouciance at the whispered news that the puppies had arrived had me wondering what hidden card she thought she carried. This only worsened my impatience. Something was going wrong. I was sure of it. Sophy knew what it was, and I couldn’t even guess at it.

Through what I can only describe as sheer force of will, I lingered in the lower gallery to say a protracted good night to Mr. Danforth. Poor man, I think I gave him the impression I cherished a
tendre
for him, but in truth, I just wanted to let my sister maids go ahead of me so I would not have to endure yet more remarks from Sophy regarding how sickly I looked. At last, I submitted to a kiss on the cheek and made my escape alone up the stairs and down the gallery.

I had almost reached my door when movement caught my eye. I jumped near out of my skin. I recovered in time, though, to see the door to the tapestry room ease back just enough to show a sliver of candlelight, and Matthew Reade.

I put my fingers over my mouth to smother my exclamations and looked sharply left and right. But we were alone, and all the doors nearby were closed. I beckoned Matthew forward. He came swiftly, and close. We smiled at each other like guilty children, and I grabbed up my hems to hurry toward my chamber.