Palace of Spies (30 page)

How would Olivia think about this?

“There are two houses,” I said slowly to her. Olivia’s mouth opened, and closed. She gave a little jerk of her chin.
Go on
, she was telling me.
Go on
. “There are two houses. The town house, and the palace. Suppose one intrigue for each house. In the town house, there are the plans of this trio of Lady Fran’s. In the palace, there are the plans of the spies. What bridges them? Lady Francesca.” I answered my own question. “Lady Francesca is raised in the Jacobite palace of Saint-Germaine, surrounded by plots and counterplots.” I eyed the door uncertainly. I wondered what Mrs. Abbott was doing at this moment. I didn’t dare think what Sophy Howe was doing.

Matthew noticed my distraction and took up the narrative thread for me. “So, she is a courtier as a girl, with no idea her kind guardian is a spy, or that he is setting her up as a pawn in his game when he plucks her from the Jacobite court to send her to the Hanoverians. There, romantic that she is, she fails to fall in love with any of the wealthy and titled gentlemen who would make her fortune. Instead, she loses her heart to the poor footman who dreams of bringing his king home from across the water. Perhaps he even found out she had been at Saint-Germaine and sought her out—”

“But how would he have done that?” I asked. My head was aching. Something was wrong. Something had been wrong this whole time. Olivia parted her lips again. How could I even be thinking about this? I reached for the damp cloth and patted her lips. But I had to think. It was only at the end of this labyrinth that I’d discover who had meant to poison me and found Olivia instead. “No one knew Francesca had lived at Saint-Germaine. She was supposed to be from Dover. That’s what Mr. Tinderflint told everyone.”

“Robert Ballantyne’s a spy.” Matthew waved my words away. “Spies find out things. It’s their primary occupation. This Robert, a dedicated Jacobite, finds out about Francesca’s other life as an exile in the court of the Pretender and goes to her. They talk. Both are lonely and are filled with the fervor of the cause. Their love burns bright, and he tells her his plans—”

“Except he didn’t,” I reminded him. “He’s been keeping things from her, for her own safety.”

Matthew evidently could not think of any answer to this and lapsed into silence. I sat holding Olivia’s hand and wishing in vain for the other two drawings—the death of Queen Anne, and the floor plan of the unknown house. What did those mean, and what were we missing now? I stared at the drawing in front of us. I thought about Lady Fran—described by her lover and her sister maid as so sweet and selfless—making so many sacrifices for love of her footman and his cause. I touched the self-portrait Francesca had put in place of Her Royal Highness’s visage. I thought about how this sweet girl always knew what to say, and how her troubles folded together so tidily, like a well-made fan.

Then I thought how there was one person in this mystery who had never called her sweet, let alone simple. That was Mr. Peele, the cheat and blackmailer. The man who had come into this room and had thought to search the workbasket. Which was one of the places Francesca had in fact hidden her sketches. I’d gotten the idea from her, because that sweet girl was also very good at hiding things.

These thoughts slid across the floor of my mind, and it was as if a prop had been kicked away. The whole unruly pile of bricks that were the events of my life and Lady Francesca’s toppled. But instead of falling into a heap, they landed in the tidiest pyramid imaginable.

“We’ve been wrong,” I said softly. I lifted my eyes to the twin expressions of confusion that had fallen across Matthew and Olivia’s faces. “Sweet, good Lady Francesca. She fooled us all.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

This is what happened:

Francesca Wallingham grew up in the court of Saint-Germaine, the bastard daughter of an upper servant and some French noble or other. She was quick, and she was clever, and she knew to a nicety who held the reins of power in that palace of exiles. She watched the men come and go, knew all the hiding places and overheard all the whispers. She learned how to laugh and flatter and use her big, dark eyes to best effect. She learned how to appear innocent and sweet. So sweet, in fact, that the conspirators would be convinced she was stupid beyond belief, and either ignore her or try to make use of her.

She watched her mother earn money by passing messages. Maybe she even learned the trade, whether her mother knew she did or not. By the time Mr. Tinderflint came along in his guise as Mr. Taggert, she was very good at this, too. She was greedy and jealous of the ones who would always have more than she. In front of her mother, she sighed and lamented about England, about how well they both would do there. Her mother made a bargain with Mr. Tinderflint, and the two of them escaped across the channel.

Mr. Tinderflint housed them. He coached Francesca as he had coached me, grooming her patiently for her role. He wrote letters as necessary, and when George of Hanover became King George of Great Britain, he had his sweet protégée installed in the palace, intending to use her as a source of news and gossip, just as he had used my mother.

But Mr. Tinderflint had no idea how adept Francesca was at overhearing things, nor how well she was able to keep what she heard to herself. Being from Saint-Germaine, she knew the codes men spoke in and the secret names the Jacobites used to refer to their leaders and their king. She discovered the would-be traitors among the courtiers and the servants. She found the one who could not resist her, and she used him. Oh, poor Robert, how she used him. She made herself into his dream of a girl, a beauteous maiden with a pure soul and lofty spirit. She found out what he guarded. She made her own coded copy of the pertinent information so she could find it herself when she was ready. She paid off Sophy Howe—not to protect Robert, but to protect herself until she had all her plans in place. Then she left the court, feigning nervous exhaustion. Her intent was always to recover this treasure of Robert’s to take it back to Saint-Germaine herself and present it to the Pretender.

That was why none of what I’d unearthed made sense before. That was why the three people I’d been calling “the firm” seemed to have such separate and conflicting motivations. The conspiracy did not belong to Tinderflint, Peele, and Abbott. It belonged wholly and solely to sunny, sweet, pretty, false Lady Francesca. In the end, though, it was not the swiftness with which the uprising was put down that ruined her schemes. It was death.

This was what I explained in a great rush to Matthew. I was so lost in the story, I did not notice for a long time that he had ceased to look at me. He gazed over my shoulder. My back was to the door. When I turned, I saw Mrs. Abbott there.

“Go on,” she said as she walked farther into the room. She deftly flipped the counterpane up from the end of the bed and felt the cloth-wrapped bricks at Olivia’s feet. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Abbott,” I whispered.

She smoothed the coverings back in place. Olivia’s eyes had fallen closed. She still wore a sickly, waxen pallor, but the blue tinge was gone from her lips, and her breathing was much easier. Mrs. Abbott watched her for a long time.

“I think I knew,” she said, finally. “But I did not want to believe. I think I came into this new foolishness because I wanted to prove my own suspicions wrong. I wanted to lay them to rest, to save for myself, at least, the memory of my child.”

It was indecent that we should be here for this. No one should have to make such a confession to strangers.

“But she—Francesca—couldn’t do all this alone,” said Matthew. He was speaking as gently as he could. “A woman can’t travel alone. She can’t make the arrangements and pay out the money on her own. She’d be taken for a . . . well . . . a . . . courtesan.”

“She wasn’t alone. She had help, or she thought she did. Mr. Peele.” I said this to Mrs. Abbott, and as I spoke, the last bits of understanding fell into place.

“Tinderflint used Peele,” said Mrs. Abbott dully. “Bought his information and made use of his less savory contacts. I would have warned Tinderflint against him. If a man will cheat at one thing in life, he will cheat at many. But I did not think it was my place. I did not think I needed to care.”

She did not instantly blame Peele for corrupting her daughter. The time for such protestation was over, even for her. I wished I had comfort to offer.

“Did Peele have a hold over Mr. Tinderflint?” I asked.

“He was a blackmailer. What would keep him from blackmailing the man who was already paying him for information?”

“Mrs. Abbott . . .” I hesitated. “Mrs. Abbott, which side is Mr. Tinderflint on? Is he Hanoverian or Jacobite?”

“When one is building one’s plans around a spy, it is best to know as few of his secrets as possible. He does not tell me. I do not ask.” She added this last in a whisper.

“Still, whatever we are dealing in, it is important enough to cause a professional scoundrel like Peele to turn his coat,” said Matthew.

“Oh, it is even more important than that.” I took the ceiling satire from him, and pointed to the medallions where Francesca had substituted herself for the Princess of Wales and the Pretender for the prince. “Whatever it is, it is so vital to the Jacobite cause that Francesca thought the Pretender would marry her for it.”

Mrs. Abbott swayed, just once, then she gripped the foot of the bed. “She is blinded by this plot of hers. She bribes Mr. Peele with the promise of wealth and reward when it succeeds. She gains the trust of this footman, or he gains hers. They are discovered, at least in some measure, by the Howe and attempt to purchase her silence.” She stopped, and I saw her knuckles turn white where they clutched the footboard. On the mantel, the clock’s bell chimed four. “And now Robert Ballantyne has fled.”

Matthew and I both stared at her.

“Fled!” I shouted.

Matthew was more practical. “Why? Where?”

Mrs. Abbott shook her head, slowly. “No one knows. This is what I came back to tell you. All below stairs is in an uproar. He was here this morning, but sometime since noon, he left off his livery and took his bundle and vanished. There is a horse missing from the stables as well.”

“But . . . but . . . he wouldn’t have just left. Not without these!” I snatched the packet of papers he had given me off my writing desk. “These are the papers he got from the chapel.”

Mrs. Abbott took that packet from me. Without hesitation, she broke the seal and ripped it open. She stared grimly at what she found and then passed it to me.

It was a stack of five pages. Every one of them was blank.

The worst of it was, we could not even say for sure what had happened. Was this packet the original Robert had left with me? If so, he had come to the room suspicious of his dear, sweet Fran and this was meant as a distraction, or a test, which I failed. Infuriated, he had left the poison.

Or had someone else delivered the poison and then substituted the packet of blank papers for the original? It could have been anybody, in almost any disguise. Olivia had meant to retreat to Mrs. Abbott’s closet if anyone came in, but even if she had faced a visitor, how would she know the false courtier or servant from the genuine? She was a stranger here.

But it almost did not matter who had brought the poison, or when, or how. There was only one course left to us, and we must follow it at once.

“We have to go to Kensington,” I said. “We have to find whatever is hidden there before Robert does.”

“No,” said Matthew.

“Ridiculous,” said Mrs. Abbott.

“Then what?” I demanded. “What are we to do?”

Matthew leveled his most serious gaze on me. “Go to Her Royal Highness. Tell her everything. Show her—”

“Show her
what?
” I was shaking. I had cause. Olivia was nothing like out of danger. Sophy was at the very least going to be wondering what Mrs. Abbott was up to. She might even now be calling down the palace guard because she’d heard God-alone-knew-what from Robert about me. That was if she wasn’t busy designing a new dress for my funeral because she was the one who’d poisoned my wine. To top off the matter, I had a flock of increasingly restless dogs in my room. “I am to go to the princess with a tale of murder and spies, and she’s going to believe me because of a blurred sketch and some blank paper?”

“But if you explain . . .” began Matthew

“
I
explain? Who am I? I’m an impostor! I’ve already defrauded the court with the intent, you’ll remember, of robbing the Crown. I’ve seduced an apprentice and corrupted a servant.” I did not look at Mrs. Abbott as I said this. “It’s well known I’m conducting an affair with Robert Ballantyne. I might be a jilted lover trying to smear his name. I might be
anything
. I cannot go to Her Royal Highness with tales of a Jacobite conspiracy and no proof.”

“What about this proof?” Matthew pointed to Olivia. She’d fallen asleep again and stirred only faintly as we raised our voices. “There’s proof enough of poison for any with eyes to see.”

“But no proof as to which hand put it here,” said Mrs. Abbott slowly. “It could have been done by any of a hundred people. The whole of the court was at the concert. Anyone could have roamed the halls unseen. Until the cousin is well enough to speak, we will not have the least conception of who might have done this. By then, Ballantyne will have claimed his prize and be on his way to the borderlands, or even to France.”

“It doesn’t even have to be a member of the court or its servants.” Fear and fury strangled my words. “Anyone who wears the right clothes and the proper attitude can walk in here as easy as ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’” I could state this with confidence. After all, I had done almost exactly that.

“Which may be true, but won’t be any help to us at Kensington,” said Matthew. “Mr. Thornhill said it’s shut up until spring.” Mrs. Abbott and I stared at him, and Matthew shrugged. “The king is talking about redecorating Kensington as well, and Thornhill’s doing some sketches for the ceiling in the cupola room.”