The Shadow of Albion (38 page)

Geoffrey ignored her question, pouring out coffee for both of them and behaving

as if he were any host.

„Can I tempt you to a bit of the ham, Your Grace? The cook has a delicate hand

with pastry, but I daresay you’ll want something more filling than apple tarts after

your long journey. There’s bread from the morning’s baking, and several kinds of

fish, I’m afraid, but what can one do this close to the ocean? Why, Meriel, I do

believe you don’t look at all well….“

„Enough of your roundaboutation,“ Sarah snapped. „Kindly state your business

with us, if you please!“

Mr. Highclere looked somewhat taken aback – American forthrightness, Sarah

realized, did not go down at all well with the English nobility. But he quickly regained

his composure, and smiled at both of them.

„Why, I’ve come to congratulate my little niece on showing some spirit and sense

at last, Your Grace. Dick would take a maggot with his notion of making the Prince

marry into the Old Religion and turn England back into the fold of the True Faith,

but I know Jamie better than he does – our Jamie might marry the girl, but he’d never

mind her. And marriages can be unmade, one way or another.“

„Wh – what do you mean?“ Meriel stammered, regaining enough of her

composure to speak at last. „I could not divorce him!“ Her hand went to the base of

her throat, as if searching for the beads of an absent rosary.

„No,“ Mr. Highclere said with a vulpine smile, „but you could die, my dear. The

King would see to that – he and his hatchet-man Wessex.“

„King Henry would never be so base,“ Sarah scoffed. She picked up the coffee

before her and sipped at it cautiously. The warmth lent her vitality and courage.

„Drink your coffee, Meriel. I’m sure that Mr. Highclere will get around to explaining

his purpose eventually.“

„It is me that he wants,“ Meriel said in a low voice. She cradled her cup in her

hands, looking miserable.

„You’re quite wrong in that,“ her uncle told her genially. „As I said, Dick was

right out in his notion – I went along with it because it would pretty well queer the

Danish treaty, but with the Princess gone missing there’s not much more need of

that. There’s still Wessex to consider, though – a man of truly annoying habits.“

Though she was not herself in charity with Wessex, Sarah did not wish to allow

anyone, else the liberty of criticizing her husband.

„I am certain that no one here has any idea of what you mean,“ she said coldly.

„The Duke of Wessex is a man of irreproachable character.“

„My so-dear Duchess,“ Mr. Highclere said. „You wound me far more than I can

say. Did I reproach him? I merely pointed out that he is a murderer and a spy in the

King’s service. I do apologize for distressing you – -if indeed I have done so – is it

possible that you did not know about your husband’s secret life?“

Wessex an agent of the King! Sarah's mind shied away from the implications of

the information. It explained so much – and nothing.

„That is – “ That is none of your affair, Sarah had meant to say, but somehow

the words tangled on her tongue.

„But you don’t want me anymore? I’m free to go?“ Meriel interrupted, her voice

full of hope. She took a deep swallow of her coffee.

Mr. Highclere’s smile widened still further. „Now sweeting, did I say so? Dick’s

plan may have failed, but there’s still a world of uses for a girl like you….“

Sarah tried to set her cup down, but the table jarred it loose from her numb

fingers and it jounced across the surface, spilling coffee in a dark fan across the

table.

Drugged, She wanted to shout out the word, but no words would come. She

tried to stand, but she no longer had any sense of her body. The world blurred, and

Sarah did not even know when she crossed the border into unconsciousness.

The first of July had seen Illya Koscuisko arrive in Edinburgh, where the young

Dutch artist Jan van Harmenz who had debarked the hired fishing boat vanished, and

a cheerful French emigre named Jean-Marie took his place for just long enough to

claim a safe-house and send a brief report by carrier pigeon to London. Jean-Marie

saw Koscuisko over the border, where the Polish Hussar could at last resume his

own identity and make his way at a less-than-breakneck pace back to London and a

certain house on Bond Street.

He spent the next week being carefully debriefed of everything he had seen and

heard in the last month, and learned that the Danish Princess was still missing, and

that Wessex in far-off Copenhagen was no closer to finding a solution to the

mystery. From more public channels, he learned that the Prince of Wales was

conducting a scandalous and unsuitable flirtation with the Earl of Ripon’s niece and

that Wessex’s Duchess seemed to smile upon the match, since she had accepted an

invitation to Lady Mend’s come-out ball.

Koscuisko wondered what Wessex made of all this. He knew his partner’s

guarded heart well enough to know that Wessex had not intended to marry and

would not have done so if the King had not commanded it, but the little Roxbury

who was the Duke’s choice of bride Koscuisko did not know at all. It did not even

occur to him to wonder if she could make the Duke happy… but he did wonder very

much if she could be trusted.

In the service of his curiosity Koscuisko changed his coat once again, becoming

Davy Vaughn, a young ostler in Baron Misbourne’s service who was looking to find

another post due to a quarrel with His Lordship’s head groom. He was taken on at

Herriard House provisionally, and thus had every excuse to loiter about, the

household and hear the gossip that servants always had about those they served.

It was Davy Vaughn who searched the Duchess’s rooms quite thoroughly while

she was at Lord Ripon’s ball and failed to find even one scrap of sedition, and it

was Davy Vaughn who, loitering in the garden well past midnight, saw the startling

spectacle of a gently-bred young maiden in domino and ballgown scale the trellis to

enter the Duchess’s rooms. All of Davy’s cleverness was not sufficient to gain him

access to what transpired thereafter, but from his privileged position in the stables,

he was aware that the Duchess’s traveling coach was summoned and put to before

the sun had even begun to consider rising. And for a long journey, too – the

coach-footman was provided with musket and shot, and an outrider was given two

charged pistols and enough gold to secure many days’ changes of horses at the

coaching inns of England.

And so it was that as the Duchess of Wessex’s coach rolled away from her front

door, Davy Vaughn slipped out of her life forever, having discovered that the

Duchess’s midnight visitor was none other than Lady Meriel Highclere, Prince

Jamie’s dangerous inamorata.

An hour later Illya Koscuisko claimed his stubborn, heavy-boned grey from the

stables in Bond Street, and was away down the Holborn road in pursuit of Wessex’s

Duchess before the sun had cleared the church spires.

A traveling-coach is not the world’s fastest form of transportation, and Illya

Koscuisko, on horseback, could easily have caught up with and even overtaken the

vehicle early on, had he so wished. He was, however, much more interested in where

the Duchess and Lady Meriel were going – and why – so once he was certain that he

was on their trail he hung back, sparing Spangle as much as possible. As the sun

climbed higher, the coach left Holborne Road for the Dover Road, and Koscuisko

began to believe that a journey of some length was contemplated. But there was only

one likely destination when one embarked for Dover….

He followed the coach throughout the day, staying out of sight and riding across

fields to avoid coming to their attention. So certain was Koscuisko that Dover was

their destination that he nearly lost them when they turned west, away from the

bustling port city. By now night had fallen and a soaking drizzle had begun, so

Koscuisko was willing to follow the coach more closely, but he was relieved to find

tile coach stopped in Talitho. When he was sure of their destination, he rode back

up the road a ways and coaxed his tired mount to perform its favorite trick, and

made his formal entrance into the lives of the landlord and his goodwife as a wet and

irritable traveler leading a very lame horse.

The stableboy led the grey – who, with the soul of a thespian, was nearly bowing

now with each step – back toward the stables, promising poultices that would have

the animal ready to run in the morning. Koscuisko turned his attentions to the inn.

„I will of course require a private parlor,“ Koscuisko said haughtily. The persona

he would use on this occasion was one that had served him well many times

previously, that of private secretary to a gloriously-nonexistent Duke.

„Of course, sir,“ the innkeeper said, and escorted his esteemed (and

open-handed, for Koscuisko had tossed him a yellow-boy along with the demand)

guest to the private parlor at the back of the inn.

As Koscuisko passed through the common room he glanced about surreptitiously

for men in the Duchess’s livery, but saw no likely prospects.

The landlord rolled back the sliding door. A fire was already burning and the

room was warm. Koscuisko touched the surface of the table and found it slightly

damp, as if fresh-wiped. There’d been another occupant of this room, he’d be

willing to bet – and that recently.

„Is this your only private room?“ he demanded. „Have you nothing better?“

The innkeeper stuttered and stammered his way through a speech extolling the

parlor’s virtues; Koscuisko cut him off with another sovereign.

„Bah! I am going to the stables to see what those lunatics you doubtless employ

have done to my horse—-I shall expect dinner to be ready for me when, I return.“

Koscuisko strode from the common room of the inn. The inn had no other

parlors, and the town had no other Inns. He had seen the carriage stop here, and it

and its occupants hadn’t been out of his sight more than half an hour.

So where were they?

His spirits lifted momentarily when he entered the stableyard and saw the muddy

yellow-paneled coach with the Roxbury crest on its doors standing empty, but it was

only the small elation of being proved right. He still had to locate the Duchess and

her subversive ladyship. And as much as he needed to do that, he must find out

what time the tide ran tonight, and who was sailing on it.

Entering the barn, he found Spangle much recovered, a hot bran mash in his

nosebag and a groom working over him. When he saw his master, the grey picked

up his right fore and began pecking at the ground with it, as though the hoof was too

sore to put down. Koscuisko smiled. It had taken months to teach the animal that

trick, but it had been worm the effort. There were times when it was worth real

money to have a horse that could „go lame“ on command.

The grey was crosstied between two beams, because every other stall in the barn

was full. Six of the inhabitants were match bays, the excellent and high-mettled

horseflesh of the Duchess’s equipage. One was me outrider’s chestnut, and the

other three stalls were filled with local animals.

„See here, my good man,“ Koscuisko barked. „What d’ye think you’re about,

leaving the animal to stand in the draft like that?“

„I’m sorry, me lord,“ the ostler said, obviously willing to err on me side of the

conservatism in the matter of Koscuisko’s rank. „But h’it’s only for ah hour or so.

‘E’ll have a warm bed for the night.“

„An hour?“ Koscuisko affected outrage. „Turn one of those nags out and put my

horse in.“ He started toward the stall that held the outrider’s chestnut.

„Begging your pardon, me lord.“ The osder’s voice was anguished. „But those

‘orses belongs ter the Duchess of Wessex.“

Koscuisko stopped, as if struck by the force of the argument „The Duchess of

Wessex is here?“ he said. „And her servants?“

„I dessay young Simon might be about,“ the ostler offered. „The others is all

inside, a-having of their dinners. Hi! Jemmy! Go on up to the loft and fetch down

Her Grace’s Simon.“

The ostler’s apprentice, so addressed, came away from the horse he had been

grooming and began climbing the ladder to the loft.

„Are you mad?“ Koscuisko demanded in tones of outrage. „Do you think I came

out here to chatter with the servants? Just go on about your business and see that

he’s hale to travel in the morning.“ With a swirl of his greatcape, Koscuisko stalked

from the stable.

But he did not go back into the inn. Instead, he stood on Talitho’s High Street,