The Great Christmas Ball (15 page)

Removing the letter, and asking a woman he had never seen before to translate it should have tipped her the clue he was doing something wrong. And all his calls, his friendliness and flirtation—Burack had hit it on the head. Costain was keeping her in humor to oblige him with another translation done on the sly, should the need arise. She had been used, but she would have her revenge.

With her help, milord Costain and his French mistress would be caught yet. How had she and Gordon been drawn into suspecting Mrs. Leonard? Naturally she would not need Costain, when her own husband had a more important position at the Horse Guards. Costain had set Gordon to watching her to lead them astray. It seemed the beautiful Helena was not his mistress after all. He had directed suspicion on an innocent lady to protect his real mistress. Was there no limit to the man’s treachery?

Then she remembered that he was calling on her that very afternoon. In two hours he would be knocking at her door, and she would have to smile and dissemble, and pretend to be happy to see him. Cathy did not often resort to tears, but she felt she was about to do so then, and fled up to her room in case Rodney should return to his office.

As Cathy sat brooding over her translation that afternoon, it was not the obscurities of Mr. Schiller’s philosophy that absorbed her, but Lord Costain’s perfidy. As four o’clock drew near, her uncle Rodney’s usual time for departure, another trouble was added to her load. Rodney did not leave, but settled in with a pipe to repine once again over Schiller’s being led from the path of philosophy by Goethe, to write what the undiscerning masses called the best plays in the German language. He prosed on for a quarter of an hour.

“A great pity, but there you are. Drama’s gain is philosophy’s loss. A charismatic character like Goethe or our own Lord Byron can do such a deal of mischief in the world. You always want to watch out for anyone who tries to lead you from the path of duty, Cathy. Not that anyone is likely to in your case,” he added when she cast a woebegone look at him.

“Is it not time for your tea, Uncle?” she said.

“You run along. I shall stay behind to give Mr. Culpepper his letter. I shall have a cup of tea brought in here and continue with my work, for it is going uncommonly well today.”

“I believe I smelled Cook’s scones,” she tempted him.

“Is that so? Hot scones, eh? Well, perhaps I can spare half an hour from my work. One must feed the body as well as the mind.”

Cathy was confident he would not return. Like Schiller, he was easily tempted from the path of duty. Mr. Culpepper arrived at four-thirty and read the translation of his letter with no pleasure, until Cathy pointed out that reading and writing were quite an accomplishment in the seventeenth century.

“That is true,” he said, leaping on it like a hound on a hare. “He was obviously of the gentry—no saying he was not an aristocrat.”

He was much inclined to remain behind and discuss it, but eventually she got him out the door. It was ten to five. Cathy spent the interval until Costain’s arrival in trying to calm herself. Burack had stressed that she must behave as naturally as possible, but how could she greet a traitor with friendliness?

At five o’clock Gordon arrived, shivering and claiming that his king and country had best reward him with a medal, for a wicked wind had sprung up from nowhere, and he was suffering worse than the soldiers in Spain.

“At least they do their work under the sun. I am frozen to the marrow. We must design warmer coats for our footmen. It is monstrous for them to have to stand around in the icy weather in these little capes.” He went to the grate to rub his fingers into life.

“They do not usually have to stand around all day in the cold” was all she said before rushing into the tale of Mr. Burack’s call.

“Burack, eh?” Gordon said, narrowing his eyes. “No doubt Cosgrave put him up to it.”

“He did. How did you guess?”

“Guess?” he exclaimed, offended. “It was no guess. I have discovered Mrs. Leonard’s lover. It is none other than Lord Cosgrave himself. He would not want a decent-looking fellow like Costain sniffing around her. He is out to sabotage Costain’s career. Cosgrave called on Mrs. Leonard this afternoon.”

“Lord Cosgrave! You must be mistaken, Gordon.”

“Devil a bit of it. I’d know his porky carcass anywhere, even if he was bundled up to his ears, with his curled beaver tilted over his eye. If he weren’t so fat, I’d say he was your intruder. He fears discovery, you see, and has set on Leo as the scapegoat. This explains why he had to use a hansom cab t’other day at Dutroit’s. His own carriage has a lozenge on the panel.”

“But in case Costain is guilty, Gordon, we must not tell him of Burack’s visit, or Cosgrave’s suspicions.”

“It is my feeling that Costain is as innocent as a babe. I must report to him that Cosgrave was with Mrs. Leonard. This is a major development. The villainy goes straight to the top. Can you doubt the fine hand of the Duke of York is in this somewhere? Remember the Mrs. Clarke affair? We all know what
he
is, letting his
chère amie
sell commissions in the army.”

“What has that to do with Lord Cosgrave?” she asked.

“Money, my girl. There is money in selling state secrets as well as commissions. Cosgrave and York are as thick as thieves.”

“Well, but we need not tell Costain the rest about Burack’s visit,” Cathy said after a hasty consideration of this new twist in affairs.

“Leave it up to me,” Gordon said, swelling up his chest and looking important, just as his father used to do.

While Cathy was still struggling to assimilate the situation, the knocker sounded, and Lord Costain entered. In confusion, she remembered Uncle Rodney’s warning of charismatic men, and Mr. Burack’s order to behave naturally.
Can this man be guilty of treason?
she asked herself. She knew at least that he could sway her from the path of duty.

It was Costain’s carefree manner that firmed her resolve to behave naturally. If he could enter smiling and complimenting her on her gown, she could act her part, too.

“Any interesting callers today?” he asked, wondering why she stared at him as if he were a scarecrow. Why was she acting so unnaturally? The sherry sat on the table. He wondered that she did not offer it.

She rattled on nervously about Mr. Culpepper’s letter, hoping that Gordon would not mention her other caller. Gordon’s clenched face alerted her that he was scheming deeply.

“Anything new at the Horse Guards?” Gordon asked, his eyes narrowed to slits in an effort to behave naturally.

“Business as usual. Lord Cosgrave left early, but no interesting missiles arrived after his departure.”

“P’raps you would like to know where Cosgrave went,” Gordon said. Excitement gleamed from the slits of his eyes.

“You spotted him?” Costain inquired with no excess of interest.

“Hard to miss him when he went right to Mrs. Leonard’s front door, carrying a folder with him, and left half an hour later, empty-handed. She did not leave the house all day, and had very few callers. Only Lord Cosgrave, early in the afternoon, and shortly after he left, Mademoiselle Dutroit arrived, carrying a hat box. She stayed close to an hour. Clear to the meanest intelligence she carried away a copy of the papers Cosgrave gave Mrs. Leonard in that same box.”

Costain’s brows arched in mild interest. “Mr. Leonard was home sick today. A touch of gout. I expect Cosgrave took him some work to do.”

“When he was sick?” Gordon asked, disbelieving.

“He was not bedridden. Sore toes prevent a man’s walking; he can still read and write.” He gazed into the grate awhile, then said musingly, “Mr. Leonard is quite often home sick. If Cosgrave is in the habit of taking, or sending, work to him, then it would be possible for a clever wife to get a glimpse of it, I daresay.”

“There you are, then,” Gordon said, happy to have Miss Stanfield’s cousin free of taint without slandering Lord Cosgrave. They were both innocent, and it was Mrs. Leonard alone who was the culprit. “Told you it was a bag of moonshine, Cathy.”

She cast a damping frown on her brother, who emitted a high-pitched laugh and said, “Pay no heed to my sister’s scowls, Costain. I never suspected you for a moment.”

Costain’s dark eyes turned slowly to Cathy. “Suspected me of what, pray?” She felt as if his eyes were boring a hole through her brain.

“Nothing,” she said, but the pink flush creeping up her neck belied the word.

“Come now, a lady does not blush so prettily at nothing. You and Gordon had decided I was Mrs. Leonard’s mentor?”

“Certainly not,” Cathy said, her flush deepening.

“We only thought you were her dupe,” Gordon assured him. “And you need not look daggers at us, Costain, for it was Burack put the notion in Cathy’s head with his visit.”

“He did not!” Cathy objected. But it was too late to hide that Burack had indeed called. “He was sure Mrs. Leonard had nothing to do with it,” she added.

“You never told
me
that,” Gordon pointed out.

“We had only a minute to discuss it before Lord Costain arrived. Mr. Burack was nonplussed at the very idea.”

“How did he pick up on Mrs. Leonard—that is what I should like to know,” Gordon said.

“I may have mentioned her,” Cathy said vaguely.

“Why would you do an addlepated thing like that?”

She avoided looking at Costain when she replied. “He mentioned Costain’s weakness was ladies.”

Costain listened with an air of derision, his eyes turning from one to the other as the argument proceeded, as if he were watching a badly played game of battledore and shuttlecock.

Cathy became aware of his searching gaze, and sat up, primly tidying her gown. “He especially asked us not to say anything to Lord Costain,” she reminded Gordon.

Costain cleared his throat, preparatory to speaking. “What else had my colleague to say of me?” he asked.

“Nothing! That’s all,” Cathy said, and shut her lips firmly.

“He just dropped in to say that he suspected me of treason, and gave no reason?”

“He asked me the other evening at Lady Martin’s if he might call,” Cathy said.

“But surely he meant call on you in your mama’s saloon,” Costain pointed out.

“The reason he came here was the letter you brought for Cathy to translate,” Gordon replied.

“And pray how did Mr. Burack know that if you did not tell him, Miss Lyman?”

“I didn’t tell him!”

“Then he already knew. He discovered I had taken that letter, and guessed that I had darted to the closest translator—you. And you were kind enough to confirm his suspicions.”

“I didn’t, at first ... I told him you would not do such a thing. That is when he told me of your weakness for—er, ladies,” she said, gazing out the window into the denuded branches of an elm tree.

“I wonder where Mr. Burack gets his misinformation. We do not travel in the same social circles,” Costain said haughtily.

“There is no point cutting up stiff with Cathy,” Gordon said. “She is only a lady. We never should have dragged her into it in the first place. The way it looks to me, Burack is picking up a certain aroma. Why was he so swift to defend Mrs. Leonard when it is plain as day she is in it up to her eyebrows, whatever about anyone else?”

“A good question, Sir Gordon,” Costain said. “Why indeed, unless to limit your suspicions to myself?”

“That was precisely my meaning. He is using you as a red herring over the trail. I begin to think it is Burack I ought to be keeping my peepers on. Did you happen to notice his thumbs, Cathy?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You may just be right about Burack,” Costain said quietly.

Remembering her date with him that evening, Cathy stared in consternation.

Gordon nodded his agreement. “And of course Mrs. Leonard is in it. I mean to say—all that fishy business at Amiens.”

“Amiens?” Costain asked. His arched brows nearly disappeared into his hairline.

“Didn’t we tell you? She has been a spy forever, reaching back to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, or whenever the deuce it was signed. Naturally I kept following her when I learned that.”

“Certain people suspect that Mr. Fotherington was spying, but even that is only a rumor,” Cathy pointed out.

“No smoke without fire,” Gordon insisted. “Why did he aim that pistol at his tonsils? Tell me that!”

“Perhaps one of you will be good enough to tell me this tale from the beginning, starting with this Mr. Fotherington,” Costain said, and eventually he had the gist of it from their bickering.

He turned to Cathy. “I assume you did not inform your friend Burack of this, Miss Lyman?”

“The matter did not come up, except that when I mentioned Mrs. Leonard as a possible suspect, he wouldn’t hear of it. He felt, you see, that your lady friend must be French.”

This began to strike her as highly suspicious behavior on Burack’s part, almost as if he knew Mrs. Leonard was guilty and was protecting her.

“If Helena was in France during the peace of Amiens, then one assumes she has some French friends,” Costain said musingly.

“She has nothing
but
French friends, if you want my opinion,” Gordon declared. “There is Dutroit, and Mrs. Marchand, the modiste, and I am not sure by a long shot that Whitfield hasn’t a French look about him.”

Costain said, “Mrs. Leonard and Burack, perhaps ...”

“Cathy said Burack’s pockets are to let,” Gordon informed him. “He can scarcely manage to make buckle and tongue meet. He is in it for the blunt, like Mrs. Leonard, and trying to shift the crime onto you.”

Cathy listened, an image of Burack at the back of her mind. She did not think Burack had lied to her. He had seemed very sober and sincere, with his demand for secrecy, and his warning that the welfare of England was in her hands. That struck her as the proper behavior, and not this carefree carrying-on of Costain’s.

“What should I do tomorrow, Leo?” Gordon asked eagerly. “Burack will be at work all day. There is no point loitering in front of the Horse Guards. Shall I keep watch on Mrs. Leonard again?”