The Counterfeit Mistress (22 page)

“That was a rescue mission,” Southwaite said firmly. “Penthurst knows that. Hell, Pitt knows that. We were just accused of something quite different.”

“As was Kendale here. Oh, yes, the warning was for you too.”

Kendale just listened. He could think of nothing to add to the conversation.

“Absurd, of course,” Southwaite said after a curse. “Bizarre! What possible motive would we have to invade France? Where would we find the army to do it? Hell, if I collected every man I could trust with such a thing it would not fill a pleasure yacht. And once there, what would we do? March ourselves twenty strong to Paris and liberate the city from the revolutionaries? I find it hard to believe anyone is taking this seriously.”

“Strange,” Kendale muttered. “Bizarre, as you say.”

“Yet someone is,” Ambury said. “Penthurst spoke as a friend, he said, but it was clear that he has been told more than theories. Someone has decided they have some kind of evidence on which to base these suspicions.”

“Perhaps something happened on the coast of which we are not aware,” Southwaite said. “You and I have not been there in months. Kendale here has always made the journey.”

An odd quiet fell on the circle within the boxwood. Southwaite and Ambury looked at each other through the night, their expressions visible due to a party lamp hanging from a nearby tree. The whites of their eyes appeared to grow larger.

“He wouldn't,” Ambury said.

“Wouldn't he?” Southwaite said.

“If Kendale were going to do such a thing, it is unlikely the ministers would find out.”

“He cannot act alone. Others can be careless in ways he would never be.”

Ambury frowned over that. “All those rides to the coast. We forced it on him, of course. But while there he could have put such a plan in place.”

“And after last year, when we all went over, he would know quite a lot about how to do it. I daresay if this is afoot, it began then.”

“Could he pull it off? Is he that good?”

“Damn, yes, he is that good. As to pulling it off, he had better or we will be on another rescue mission.”

“I am standing right here,” Kendale said.

“So you are,” Southwaite said. “Standing there and saying not a damned word.”

“I am not sure you would want to hear what I have to say.”

“If it is that you are planning a visit to France, you are right about that.” Southwaite looked to the sky and uttered a curse in a tone of astonishment and resignation.

“Our government will not stand for it, Kendale. Hell, what if you are caught? Can you imagine the implications? It will be assumed by the French that you are a spy. They will execute you for sure, and make the most of the show. It will demoralize our own people, and delay any possible diplomacy between the two countries,” Ambury said.

His scold sat there in the air, waiting for a response that Kendale had no intention of giving.

Exasperated, Southwaite kicked one of the stone benches. “Hell and damnation, he is not denying it, Ambury. Whatever you are plotting you had best call off, Kendale. If Penthurst suspects, others do too. An army may be waiting for you when you make your move. Maybe ours. Maybe theirs. It is not worth it, whatever the scheme might be.”

“That is an odd advice and judgment coming from you, of all men, Southwaite,” he said. “You do not know what the scheme might be, if there is one, but you are sure it is not worth it. Not worth as much as the last time, I assume you mean. Not worth as much as rescuing the ne'er-do-well relative of your lover. Did I refuse to join you on that foolhardy mission, or harp on the price to our necks and England's diplomacy if it failed?”

Southwaite's posture lost its rigidity. He gazed at the ground between them for a long pause, then spoke with calm thoughtfulness. “No, you did not. Nor would we have succeeded without your leading us. My worry for you obscured my memory of that debt. I must seem an inconstant friend compared to your loyalty. Instead of expressing annoyance, I should be asking instead if you need my help now in return.” He looked up. “Do you?”

Not long ago he might have invited their help. Not now. Both of them had too much to lose now, and he doubted they would be effective comrades on any such adventure as a result. Besides, he needed soldiers, not gentlemen who debated honor at every turn.

“If I now planned another foolhardy mission, I would be sure to call the debt. Since I do not, your help is not needed. As for Penthurst, he is too interested in me these days. Perhaps he resents that I have not held out the olive branch as quickly as the two of you, and conjures up reasons to blame me for that instead of himself. Now, we are neglecting the ladies. Yours will not mind, since she has many friends in that ballroom. Mine, however, might need my attendance.”

He stepped out of the grass circle and turned to the house.

“This is about Toulon, isn't it?” Ambury said. “You have cooked up some scheme of revenge, haven't you?”

He did not answer, and walked away.

A
ngus was waiting outside the duke's house when she and Kendale emerged. He stood next to her carriage as if he were a footman, but his expression revealed he had come for some other purpose.

He waited until she had been handed in before whispering to Kendale. Whatever he had to say did not take more than a few words. Kendale did not react at all. He merely said, “A horse.” Then he climbed up and joined her in the carriage cabin.

“Did you enjoy the ball?” he asked.

“It was different from what I had imagined. Busier. Crowded. The music was heavenly, as was the dancing.” She stretched to give him a kiss. “Thank you for that. For dancing with me.”

“It was my pleasure, as is so much where you are concerned, Marielle.” He moved beside her, so he could embrace her with one arm. The streets grew silent as they rode through town.

She had packed a valise to take to the cottage, and his boot rested against it. He seemed very aware of that boot and what it touched. Several times she found him looking down at it.

André pulled up at the cottage in Hampstead. While André helped her out and carried the valise into the cottage, Kendale untied a horse from the back of the carriage and led it around to the back of the building. André built up the fire in the hearth in order to banish the spring's damp and the stone's cold. He was gone by the time Kendale entered the cottage himself, carrying his frock coat. There was a small stable beyond the garden and she assumed he had dealt with the horse despite his formal attire.

“Do you intend to ride back in the morning?” she asked. “In hose and pumps?”

He took her hand and bid her rise, then swung her around to the hearth. “Just stand here near the light so I can look at you. I barely had the chance in that crush and had to be satisfied with glimpses.”

He sat down and she struck a series of poses in front of him. First she tried to appear demure. Then sophisticated. Then naughty. Finally she pretended to be one of the ladies who always appeared very critical of all she saw, and never in good ways.

Her game amused him. He reached out and pulled her onto his lap. “I like this one the best. Just Marielle, being Marielle.”

The night had given her such joy that she could hardly contain it. It spilled out in the way she held him and the smiles that formed under his kisses. She slid off his lap and took his hand. “Come to bed with me.”

She made love to him that night, in a way she never had before. She bid him lie there and accept the pleasure she gave him. She did everything she could think of to make him crazed, using her hands and mouth to delight him.

“Y
our coachman will return in an hour,” he said. “I must ride off soon, and I did not want you to remain here alone so I told him to come back.”

“Are you going to Ravenswood? Have you been called there?”

“I will be going there eventually. First I must go somewhere else.” He turned on his side. “That journey beckons a little sooner than I had expected. I will lose two days from my fortnight, I fear. Can I claim them when I return, or will you hold me to the letter of the agreement?”

Her voice caught in her throat. She wished she knew when this return would be. It would be unkind, and ungrateful, to tell him he could have those days if she would not be here to give them. “If you still want them when you see me again, they are yours.”

Did she imagine that he noticed the way she phrased that? More likely the heaviness in her heart had her sensing what did not exist.

“We must buy you a wardrobe then,” he said. “Ask Emma and Cassandra which dressmakers to use. I do not want you in faded cloth and tattered lace again. If you favor those long shawls, you must have new ones.”

“I will be as fashionable as Madame Peltier,” she teased. “Perhaps one or two dresses would be enough. Not a whole wardrobe.” She was not even sure what a whole wardrobe consisted of in his mind. For a woman of style, it meant many ensembles. It would be like him never to have noticed how often women of fashion changed their clothes.

“You must be more fashionable than Madame Peltier, if you want.” His thoughts seemed to drift away. He fell silent. He did not sleep, however. She felt his alertness to her, the chamber, the time.

“I want you to stay at your house while I am gone, Marielle. Do not come here. Do not venture far on your own. I still worry for your safety. I have told Jacob and Pratt to follow you if you go out into the City. Do not be offended and do not argue. I need to know you are safe.”

It touched her that he worried, and tried to ensure her safety. She would lose his men's surveillance when she had to, of course, especially now that she knew to look for it.

She did not sleep at all. She heard the carriage arrive. André did not enter the cottage but waited in the night.

The arm embracing her tightened. She looked over her shoulder, right into Kendale's eyes. He said nothing, but kissed her neck below her ear, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

Then he was gone, up from the bed, pulling on his garments. She sat with the bedclothes pulled around her and watched him dress. When he was done he looked down at her.

“Wrap yourself in the blanket and see me off after I saddle the horse, Marielle.”

He strode off to do that chore. She pulled the blanket off the bed and swaddled herself in it, much as she had that first time she spoke to him in his chambers.

She waited in the sitting room. She could not sit. The ache inside her would not permit it. This parting made her want to cry for what had been and hadn't, and for what probably never would be again. She tried to take solace in knowing she only intended to do her duty to her father and her family, but it did not dim the pain much at all.

The first vague light of dawn was leaking onto the horizon when he returned to the cottage. He would indeed be riding in his ballroom clothes, but she guessed Angus was not far away with boots and more practical garments.

He ran his fingertips around the edge of the blanket near her neck. “I should only be gone a week. When I return, I will come to see you right away. There are things I need to say to you. Perhaps while I am gone I will find the words.”

She already knew the words
she
wanted to say. It would be cruel and selfish to do so, however. She might find contentment that she had spoken, but a woman scheming and deceiving should not indulge herself by speaking her heart's thoughts.

“Be safe,” she said. It was a common farewell but today, perhaps, it meant more than usual.

“I will be safe. This is not a dangerous journey.” He kissed her again, then left.

She listened for his horse's gallop until its sound disappeared. She went into the bedchamber, found the valise, and donned one of her old dresses. She carefully folded up the ball gown fit for a comte's niece. Numb with sadness, she made the bed. On impulse she lifted the pillow where his head had lain and inhaled deeply. It reminded her how he had done that while he held her, as if he too wanted to remember the mere scent of her.

After packing the rest of the ball ensemble into her valise, she picked up the gown and went out to André. “Take me home,” she said. “Then get some sleep, and return this afternoon. I need to explain how I will need your services in the days ahead.”

“T
here be no mistaking it, Lord Kendale. The soldiers claim to be here for training the local militia as is their way sometimes, but there are too many of them and they ride out a lot. They are looking for something. Or someone.”

The report came to Kendale informally while he sat in a library north of Dover, drinking the fine port his host had poured. Mr. Percy Ryan was one of the watchers in the network on the coast that he, Ambury, and Southwaite had set up in order to reinforce what had been a very loose net two years ago. Mr. Ryan, a hearty, thick man of middle years, had warmed to the duty and employed a variety of devices to monitor the movements of nonlocals in the five miles north and south of his handsome manor. Since the soldiers were not local, he had kept an eye on them.

Kendale always made it a point to call on Mr. Ryan because Mr. Ryan liked to talk. A wealthy gentry squire, he especially liked to talk to the peers who had invited him into their circle. He often proved a font of useful information. If Ryan suspected the extra soldiers in Dover had ulterior interests besides the abilities of the local citizen militias, Kendale was inclined to give that opinion weight.

“How long have they been here?”

“Some for a week. More came two days ago. There may be others who have been here longer, but I did not notice them. A few extra red coats do not stand out. Thirty extra do, especially when they file their horses along that road down there.”

“Has anything happened to create concerns that would draw them here? Something I do not know about, that perhaps did not seem significant enough to report?”

Mr. Ryan flushed to his fair hairline. “We report everything, sir. At least I do. I cannot speak for my counterparts up coast or down.” He sipped his port, then set it aside. “I was thinking you knew what was up. The officer with these soldiers, Colonel Horace Watson, indicated he knows you.”

“He does. We met during our early years in uniform. Did he ask after me in some way? Or did you ask if he knew me?”

“He mentioned he knew you. He seemed to assume I did too.”

Kendale looked around the library while he thought. Almost every book had the same brown binding. He wondered if Mr. Ryan ever read any of these books, or only owned them so they could line the shelves in their expensive, unblemished leather.

“Between the soldiers and Colonel Watson—a colonel, mind you, but with only about twenty men—I wondered if someone is coming over, Lord Kendale. Someone important. Or maybe someone is coming back, as it were.” He glanced over with a sly, inviting smile.

“I have heard of no notable person intending to come over. As for coming back—what do you mean?”

Ryan chortled. “Nothing, nothing. However, between the two of us—we watch here for Frenchmen sneaking onto our coast to gather information, don't we? So it is normal to wonder if some of our people don't sneak onto theirs. If our army sent a few of its men to do that, it might want to welcome them back in a manner that ensures no one interferes or learns of it.”

“By no one interfering, you mean us.”

“Could be awkward, no? For such as us to be counting French noses as they get off a boat, only to realize they are actually all English noses. Hard to keep secrets that way.”

It would be very hard to keep such secrets. That was why those English noses never landed on the coast in boats when they returned. The naval service picked them up at sea and saw to their safe return instead. Which meant the army had no reason to move a unit here for that purpose. Unless the goal was not to welcome a returning party, but to prevent a departing one.

Damnation. Penthurst had indicated that suspicions were in the air that someone was planning some independent action. Someone wanted to stop that badly enough to create a little show of force.

He rode back to the farmhouse fifteen miles inland, where he had left Angus and six other men, including Harry Travis, who had been waiting for them here when they rode in yesterday. Travis had indeed made it back two days ago, and immediately sent word that he had seen the colonel in Brest.

Mr. Pottsward had come along, and stood by the fireplace stirring a pot while the other men lounged on chairs, bored and impatient.

“Did you learn anything, sir?” Angus asked as soon as Kendale entered the simple cottage.

He threw his hat and gloves down, and shed his frock coat. He stuck his nose to the pot and its fragrant lamb stew, then straddled a chair. “The army sent someone to stop us. They think they know the what of it and may have even guessed the why of it. Whitehall does not want the trouble.”

“Fuck them,” Travis snarled.

“It may be best to wait.”

“You can wait if you want. I didn't stay there risking my neck to make sure of his location only to lose the chance to finish this now.”

The other men said nothing. If he announced they would not move, not a one would complain. Travis was different. Kendale could not totally control him because this was personal for him. He had been at Toulon, and he too had barely made it out alive.

Their gazes locked not so much in a challenge as in a mutual acknowledgment of that experience, and the long wait to rectify it. “If I decide it is too rash to move, we will not.”

Travis's eyes narrowed. “It is always rash to move. Nothing new there. Hell, it was rash to go over two months ago and rash to stay when the others came back. I'll follow where you lead, as long as it is not in retreat.”

“I did not speak of retreat.”

“You suggested we wait. Same thing. I've waited long enough. I thought you had too.”

The rest of the men watched silently.

The impulse to be rational that had begun this conversation fell away as Travis's words ripped at him. They
had
waited a long time, seething under the humiliation of the worst kind of retreat, swallowing the rage of watching comrades cut down left and right. The French had been ordered to kill, to obliterate, and not merely to capture and stop. He had fought like a madman even after the sword sliced his back because he had known if he fell, he would be finished.

Now the bastard who had arranged that betrayal and that trap and that slaughter had a name, and was within reach. Three months hence he could be in Paris instead, or even halfway across the Continent.

The hunger for revenge swelled in him, the way it did at night sometimes. This plan had hatched out of that craving. He would fulfill his promise to Feversham, but he would also even a bloody score the only way he knew how.

He gazed around at the others. Then he looked down on Travis's hot determination. “These others did not agree to walk into a trap. If I think there is danger of that, I will delay our plans or even end them. If I do, you will obey me.”

“Or what? If I'd done what you said last time, we would not know what we know.”

“If you had done what I said, the coast would not now be crawling with soldiers.”

“It is a big coast. A few more soldiers don't scare me.” He grinned, and picked up his cup to down some ale.

The challenge was unmistakable. Every man in the farmhouse knew it had been made. If allowed to stand, this mission would descend into chaos and the unit into rabble.

He gazed at the man who had crawled across France with him not so long ago. In the army, there were ways to deal with this insubordination. Severe ways that ensured such challenges rarely occurred.

They no longer were in the army, however. Not an official one, at least.

He rose abruptly, overturning the table as he did. It crashed against Travis and slammed to the floor, its sound breaking the tense silence. He grabbed Travis by the front of his coat and swung him toward the door. He strode over, opened the door, threw Travis out, and followed.

Chickens scurried away. Travis collected himself. No longer smug, he looked across the dirt yard warily.

Kendale removed his coat and threw it aside. “I can't flog you and I can't have you shot, but I'll be damned before I let you endanger the others. Turn and run and be out of this for good, or defend yourself as best you can if you want to stay.”

“I've more right to it than they have. You know that better than anyone.”

“It is why I gave you a choice. But
you
know better than anyone that I cannot allow you to challenge my command and go unpunished.”

Travis hesitated, then shed his own coats. Jaw hard and eyes burning, he paced back and forth like an animal preparing to charge.

He rushed forward, fists at the ready. Kendale parried his blow with one arm and landed a solid punch in his stomach with the other.

The sounds of fisticuffs brought the others outside. They formed a circle that left little option except a close fight. Within that circle, under the eyes of their comrades, they settled the question of leadership in the most primitive way known to man or beast.

“W
hat am I to do if he writes to you?”

Marielle folded a dress and pressed it into the valise. “I do not think he will write. It is not his way.”

“What if he comes here, looking for you?” Dominique sat on the bed, her round face creased with worry, while she watched the preparations.

“He will not come until I am well gone.”
If he comes at all.
At some point Kendale would step back from the passion and assess this affair from the viewpoint of his position and birth. He knew enough about her history now to conclude that their liaison was most irregular for an English lord, in several crucial ways. It was only a matter of how long it would be before the expectations of his world would dim his ardor. This journey he had taken would give him plenty of time for that to happen.

She allowed herself a few moments of nostalgia and sorrow. The loss would be inevitable, of course. She deprived herself of little by executing this plan. She could not allow her own happiness in that affair to interfere anyway, but knowing that at worst she gave up only a little more time with him made it easier to do what she had to do.

Reaching into a drawer in her dressing table, she sought the little sack that held her money. She had removed it from the hidden cupboard last night and counted it out. Now she did so again, to reassure herself that she probably had enough.

Memories of Kendale kept intruding into her head no matter how hard she tried to block them. She finally resorted to other images in an effort to concentrate on the tasks at hand. She pictured her father, as she had last seen him, ordering her to run and take her chances in the town while he diverted Lamberte and his men. He had known he would be captured. He had sacrificed himself so that she would get away.

How intently he had looked at her while he explained his plan and stuffed that little account book in her pocket. How firmly he had embraced her before pushing her away. She saw it and felt it with a raw reality, as if it had just happened. No, not captured. He expected to be killed just as her mother had been killed—so no one would remain alive who had witnessed Lamberte murder his own half brother.

“Dominique, if I do not come back—”

“Do not say that!” Dominique crossed herself three times. “To even think it is—”

“If I do not come back, you are to give Lord Kendale that little book that is hidden in the cupboard downstairs.”

“What should I say to him when I do?”

“I do not know.” Kendale could do nothing with that little book. No one in England could. She had to give it to someone, however. It could not sit in that cupboard forever. And if she failed, it could be dangerous for Dominique and Madame LaTour to have it.

“Say it was Lamberte's, taken from him to prove how he stole. Say it was why I made those prints that accused him of that. It was why he sent men to that alley that day. He wondered if whoever made those prints might have the proof of it.” At least Kendale would have some answers then. The interrogation that he had planned that day would finally yield something.

“Take the plates for yourself. The views are still good for printing and you can make some money that way. The others can be sold for the copper at least. You and Madame LaTour can continue the work here, of course. The lease is paid for until Michaelmas.”

Dominique frowned at these instructions. The softness left her. “Are you finished?”

Was she? She checked the valise. She forced a calm on herself while she examined her mind to be sure she had given all the messages and instructions that the last sleepless nights had presented to her. “Oh, if you can, tell Emma and Cassandra who I really am. Or ask Lord Kendale to do so. There are few with whom my deception felt wrong, but with them it did. You can tell Madame LaTour too, although she is unlikely to appreciate knowing the truth.”

“Are you finished
now
?” Dominique stood and came over to her. “If so, you will listen to
me
.” She poked through the valise. “As I thought. Money for bribes, but nothing for protection. Do you think to procure it the same way as before?” She fished in her deep pocket and withdrew her knife. “You will take this. You keep it on you, as I do. And if you need to, Marielle, you will use it.”

She looked down at the knife. Not a dagger as such, its thin blade still had little purpose besides stabbing at things.

Dominique grasped her shoulders and looked at her directly. “He will be much changed. He will not be the man you remember, just as you will not be the girl he last saw. Do not expect it to be like before.”

“I will not.”

“Do nothing to draw attention to yourself. You must shed the airs behind which you hid here. You must speak the local way.”

“I will, although I will not mingle with people much. I am going in the way my prints did, and will get help from the bookseller who took them. I will know the château better than the servants who live there now, since I played in it as a child. Do not worry for me too much, Dominique. No one is loyal to a man like Lamberte, and if he is not there my bribes will open the doors I need to pass through.”