The Shadow of Albion (9 page)

„Well as might any whose soul still wanders Between the Worlds,“ Gardner said,

the Scots burr of her girlhood still evident in her soft voice. „I pray me that the Luck

is with us, and we may lead her back to us again.“

„It wants more than luck,“ Dame Alecto said, as if to herself. Strong magic had.

opened the Veil Between the Worlds, allowing one Sarah to pass away through it

and another to arrive. The woman who had been bom in this house and this bed was

dead in a world now sealed to them, but her world-double was here, and in their

power.

Dame Alecto regarded the figure in the bed with a gaze more critical than any the

false Roxbury’s servants had employed. If one knew what one was looking for, it

was easy to tell this was not the trueborn Marchioness. The weathered skin, the

work-roughened hands, small scars from wounds that Sarah Conyngham, Lady

Roxbury, had never suffered… the differences were patent, if subtle. Even Dr.

Falconer, her ladyship’s personal physician, when called to her side in haste for the

second time in one day, had only taken Sarah for the Marchioness in the heat of the

moment – and in the heat of his fury at finding her breathing strong, the raging

consumption vanished. Falconer had ascribed the Marchioness’s improvement in

health to some other device than the one that Dame Alecto had employed….

„I might have expected this of you,“ he said in a jury to the baffled Sarah.

„Doesn’t Tour Ladyship know that such bargains only come to HI ends?“

Dame Alecto smiled her small cat-smile at the memory of the moment opened to

her in the scrying glass. Let young Falconer think that Roxbury had forged a

forbidden bargain with the Oldest People – it was better he suspect that than guess

me truth. And Dame Alecto would take care to keep him from returning to the chit’s

side until there was nothing about his patient to distinguish her from the woman he

had known from her cradle. The marks of work and weather would fade with time

and soothing lotions, scars could be covered with paint and patch and long satin

skirts.

There was only one difference that the Lotion of the Ladies of Denmark could not

erase, and that was an inward one. This Sarah knew nothing of her double’s life and

obligations, and they dared not count upon her assuming them willingly. To shape

this new Sarah to their plans would require an even more cunning trick than any

Dame Alecto had yet worked, and a ruthless one at that, and Dame Alecto was more

than willing to supply it.

„Do you go on reading to Her ladyship, Gardner,“ Dame Alecto said. „And I will

prepare her cordial.“

(Gardner’s voice took up her reading once more. „‘April 14th, 1798: Mama’s

funeral was held today, a most extraordinary fine turn out. The death-coach was

drawn by six black horses, all in plumes, and King Henry himself sent his warmest

condolences; all the County was there, and I do not know how many Pairs of

Gloves Buckland distributed to them all. Now Mooncoign is mine, and I am the

Marchioness! How strange it all seems: they tell me I must make my bow to Society

this Season instead of waiting until next year, even though of course since I am in

Mourning for Mama everything must be Very Quiet. And there is to be a Court

Presentation as well and I must have a Whole Wardrobe in the First Stare of Fashion

– although it must all be Black; how dull! But perhaps I shall set a new mode, for I

am Roxbuty new, after all – ’ “

Gardner’s quiet voice droned on in the background, reading aloud from Lady

Roxbury’s diary, as Dame Alecto set the small ebony box down on the table beside

the bed. Opening the casket, Dame Alecto lifted out the small crystal flask of Cordial

of Lethe, The liquid gleamed a baleful violet in the dim light of the bedside candle.

A full draught of the cordial – crafted from La Montespan’s own recipe, faithfully

handed down through the centuries – would destroy all memory, leaving its victim as

mindless and unknowing as a newborn babe. But that was not what they wanted for

this new Sarah. This hard-won substitute must take up Lady Roxbury’s place in

Society. She must do their work in Mooncoign’s name against the oppression of the

Corsican tyrant who so ravaged the Continent, and take the place of her world-twin

whose life had been cut so untimely short by her own recklessness and folly.

Carefully Dame Alecto measured a few drops of thick liquid into a silver spoon.

After tipping the cordial into a brilliant cut crystal wineglass, Alecto poured in

enough wine to cover the bowl of the spoon, then stirred until the two liquids were

well mixed.

„Come, Your Ladyship,“ she said to the drowsy girl. „It is time to take your

medicine.“ .

For the past week Wessex had been on the road, the warning he carried too

sensitive to trust even to the heliograph that could communicate between men ashore

and the English ships that patrolled the Channel. It had taken three precious days to

get himself and deMorrissey from Paris to Calais, and another endless day waiting

until a longboat could safely beach to take them off Once they reached Dover their

ways would part, Wessex to London a-horseback, leaving deMorrissey to follow a

little more sedately in what ever transport he could commandeer or hire.

All during the turbulent day-long Channel crossing Wessex had paced and fretted,

drinking only of delivering deMorrisey’s information and saving Saint-Lazarre.

Saint-Lazarre was at Mooncoign. Wessex cudgelled his brains. He had to admit

he did not know Roxbury at all well, even though his grandmama had stood her

godmother and Wessex himself had been formally betrothed to her when she was

sixteen and he was twenty-four. His work for King and Country meant he had not

seen much of the girl in the intervening years – it was, however, impossible not to

have heard of her: the dashing parties, her autocratic behavior, her outrageous

friendships. These scandals had been among the hottest on-dits of the Ton since the

Marchioness had made her bow to Society – but her betrothed had taken little notice

of them. A man playing the Shadow Game possessed little time for the

claustrophobic world of the Upper Ten Thousand. And in fact, no matter how

hideous Roxbury’s behavior, his own was worse.

Rupert St. Ives Dyer, Duke of Wessex, was the third of that noble line – although

his grandfather, before being so exalted, had been heir to the Earldom of Scathach, a

dignity that had been old when William the Conqueror first beached his boats on

Saxon shores. The Dukedom of Wessex, like so many English peerages, was the

whimsical creation of a Stuart King – in this particular case, of King Charles the

Fourth, upon the memorable occasion of Wessex’s grandfather’s birth. As might be

expected from the nature of the creation of the tide, the mark of Stuart kinship was

writ plainly upon Wessex’s long-jawed countenance. Though the pale wheat-gold

hair worn Continentally long marked the Plantagenet strain in the line, the hot black

eyes were purely Stuart, and Wessex was as stubborn and inflexible of purpose, as

feared an enemy and as loyal a friend as were all the descendants of that kingly

lineage.

Though in the eyes of the world, Wessex was merely Captain His Grace the Duke

of Wessex of the Eleventh Hussars - the Cherubims – a regiment currently with

General Wellesley doing what they might to render Napoleon’s possession of

Europe a matter of doubt – his captaincy was almost a formality; a liveried carte

blanche that provided him the congé to some of the circles in which he must move.

Wessex’s war was fought, not on battlefields, but in shadows and in country

houses, in foreign courts and behind enemy lines.

For the organization for which Wessex truly worked was not even remotely

military in nature. Half a club of the most exclusive, half an order of chivalry sprung

full-flowered from a most unlikely century, it was the Order of the White Tower.

The White Tower was named for the earliest stronghold of English Kings. It had

been founded by Charles the Third, and was the descendant of the espionage

network that Lord Walsingham had run in Gloriana’s time. Its badge was gules, a

tower argent, and a brooch with such a device resided somewhere in the back of a

drawer in Wessex’s Albany rooms, unearthed only on those occasions when full

Court dress was required of him.

The White Tower was the English Crown’s official covert organization, and

membership was an honor conferred by the King alone – quietly, without public

display. The White Tower acted under conditions of strictest secrecy, its true

function known only to King Henry and a handful of his most trusted ministers. Ever

since its founding, the White Tower had served to defend the interests of the British

Crown in any corner of the earth where those interests were threatened… and to

gather the information to keep England free of Continental entanglements. For over a

dozen years now, the eyes of the White Tower had been turned to France, and

France’s regicidal and imperial ambitions.

Wessex had been formally granted the Order of the White Tower at a levee held

on his twenty-first birthday, just after he had come down from Oxford. The White

Tower’s members met once a year for a dinner held in the White Tower itself, and

so far as the world knew, that was all there was to the White Tower and its

membership. It would never do to let the truth become common knowledge. In an

age which venerated the Miles Gloriosus and thought of the Exploring Officer and

his even more shadowy kindred as jackals and cowards, the news that the King

himself employed such creatures might be enough to trigger a second English Civil

War. It would surely topple the government.

From the moment his loyalty had been given, Wessex had dreaded the thought of

his family discovering just how he served the Crown. The knowledge that her adored

grandson was a wretched sneaking spy would, Wessex was certain, quite kill his

grandmother – or if it did not, public knowledge of his shameful trade would force

her complete sequestration from Society, a fate nearly as dire. It was out of shame

as much as for any other reason that Wessex had shrunk from taking his fitting place

in Society, but now he regretted his indifference to the traditional amusements of his

class. Was it there chance that Saint-Lazarre had gone to Roxbury’s house in

anticipation of the Season, and that it was to Mooncoign that a French assassin sped

even now? Did Roxbury play a double game, just as he did?

For a moment the very thought made Wessex close his eyes in utter weariness.

Englishwoman or no, betrothed or no, if Roxbury served the enemy, Wessex would

show her no mercy. His masters had set him on; let the hunt fulfill itself without

mercy or weakness.

Less than an hour after the ship had reached Dover, Wessex had claimed the

horse he had left stabled there and was galloping along the post road to London.

The Frisian asked only to run; as soon as his master was in the saddle, Hirondel laid

back his ears and lunged across the stableyard cobbles, clearing the gate at a flat

gallop.

A coach-and-six took nearly a full day to drive from Dover to London; a

specially-built racing phaeton with a pair of twelve-mile-an-hour tits between me

poles could go the distance in six hours. Wessex and Hirondel did the journey in

four. It had still been dark when they’d left Dover; it was ‘ broad day now – the

morning of April 19th – and Hirondel was covered in foam and staggering by the

time the spires of London were in view. Wessex slowed to a walk to spare the

exhausted animal as much as he could, but he could not afford to pause long enough

to leave Hirondel in his home stable under a groom’s expert care. The intelligence

Wessex carried was too urgent to brook even that little delay.

But no one who saw the dark-eyed man as he rode up Bond Street and tossed

Hirondel’s reins to the one-legged man in tattered regimentals who lingered outside

the select tailor’s shop for just that purpose would have thought that Wessex was on

an errand any more urgent than deciding upon the fabric for a new coat Nothing in

his carriage or demeanor gave any hint that it had been many days since Wessex had

seen a bed of any sort His mud-spattered boots and dusty coat hinted at a night of

hard riding, but the Bloods of the Ton were noted for amusements that were nearly

as dangerous as war.

„Walk him,“ Wessex said, tossing a yellow-boy to the veteran. „I will be some

time.“

He crossed the pavement that separated him from his destination, pushed the

door open, and entered.

„My Lord Wessex.“

The man called Flowers – though Wessex had no notion whether Flowers was his