Twelfth Night Secrets (6 page)

“How long ago was that?” She leaned back in her chair, her senses alert even as her voice remained casual, as if the conversation were only mildly interesting.

He frowned, stretching his long legs to the fire. “About two years ago, I think.”

“Strange he never mentioned your name,” she mused. “If you were that close. We never had secrets from each other.”
Except, of course, that he never mentioned his clandestine work until he’d taken that last mission . . . the mission that had ended with his death.

A slight, chilly smile touched his mouth. “Perhaps I thought the relationship more important than he did.”

“Or perhaps Nick considered it too important to share, even with me.” She couldn’t help the retort, although she instantly wished it unsaid.

“Well, we’ll never know,” Julius said, his tone once again light and easy. “Even those we know well can behave in mysterious ways.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” She set her cup down, preparing to get up.

“The family resemblance is quite remarkable, you know.”

The comment kept her in her seat. “In what way?”

He laughed. “My dear, the hair color, the green eyes, the shape of the nose . . . all four of you. A man would have to be blind not to know you as siblings. You all take after your grandfather.”

“Maybe so. The portraits in the Long Gallery might prove your point.” She rose from her seat. “If
you’ll excuse me, sir, it’s been a long and tiring day.”

“Of course.” He rose with alacrity. “If you have time in the morning, perhaps we could take a stroll in the Long Gallery and look at some of the family portraits. I own I would be very interested to trace the resemblance.”

“If I have time, of course,” she responded. “But the guests arrive tomorrow, and I daresay I shall be very busy. However, please feel free to take a look yourself.”

“But I would not enjoy it nearly so much without your company.” He accompanied her into the hall and to the foot of the stairs. He lit a carrying candle from the thick wax taper beside the night-lights and gave it to her, his fingers brushing lightly against hers. His eyes seemed to see right into her, and again she felt that sense of being caught in their own universe.

“Good night, Lady Harriet.” His hand fell from hers, but his eyes remained upon hers as he made a slight bow.

“Good night, Lord Marbury.” She sketched a curtsy and swept away up the stairs, her free hand resting on the banister.

Julius watched her go, a little smile playing over his mouth. She was all and more than he had expected from Nick’s glowing descriptions. But something was not quite right. Unless he was much mistaken, she seemed suspicious of him for some reason. But why? He was simply a Christmas guest, a friend of her brother’s, invited by her grandfather. It felt as if she had taken an instant dislike to him, but as far as he knew, he had done nothing to warrant it.

And just why had she been hovering outside his bedchamber door? For a moment, she had looked as guilty as sin when he’d accosted her, but why? Maybe he
had
been a little sarcastic, but then, he didn’t like being surprised.

He shrugged and returned to the library. If his manner had caused her to take offense, he would do what he could on the morrow to remedy it. He would go about his own business in the afternoon, when his absence would not be remarked amidst the flurry of arrivals.

Harriet entered her bedchamber with the sense of achieving sanctuary. Every minute in the Earl’s company that evening had put her on edge. She had to be on her guard. He mustn’t suspect her of taking any unusual interest in him, but foolishly, she hadn’t expected to find such constant vigilance so exhausting. However, she didn’t think she’d slipped up so far.

“Shall I help you to bed, m’lady?” Agnes jumped up from an ottoman in front of the fire, where she’d been waiting for her ladyship.

“Just help me into my night robe and brush my hair, and then you may fetch me up a glass of warm milk with a little brandy and go to your own bed,
Agnes.” She began to unpin her hair, running her fingers through it to loosen the tight knots.

Agnes unbuttoned and unlaced her gown and helped her into the muslin nightgown and warm velvet robe before taking up the ivory-backed brush and beginning to draw it through Harriet’s wheat-colored hair, which now hung in a shining curtain to below her shoulders. It was a little darker than the twins’, Harriet thought, watching the candlelight catch the reddish tint amidst the fair strands. But their heads would darken as they grew older, just as hers and Nick’s had.

A sense of loss washed through her as she thought of her brother, saw in her mind’s eye the lively sparkle in his green eyes, the little hazel glints in the background. She heard his voice as clearly as if he were in the room with her, sitting as he so often did astride a chair, his arms resting along its back, chatting with her as she got ready for the evening.

Had Julius Forsythe been instrumental in Nick’s murder? If Harriet could find one piece of incontrovertible evidence during these twelve days when she and the Earl were under the same roof, it would be over. The whole wretched mystery, the twists and
turns . . . over. And she could grieve for her brother’s death without any of the questions and ambiguities that made simple grief so difficult to embrace.

“Is everything all right, ma’am? Do you feel quite well?” Agnes’s concerned voice interrupted her reverie.

She managed a smile. “Yes . . . yes, of course. I am quite well. I was just thinking about something.” She must learn to school her countenance, she thought guiltily. How could she expect to fool as skillful and experienced a spy as Julius Forsythe if her expression revealed her thoughts to an innocent child like Agnes?

“You seemed sad, ma’am.”

“A little, perhaps. That will be all for now. You should seek your bed.”

“I’ll fetch up your milk, then, my lady.” Agnes set down the brush on the dresser and hurried to the door.

Harriet remained at the dresser, examining her reflection critically. Her green eyes, flecked like Nick’s with hazel, were large and luminous, something she had always valued, but now she thought it a grave disadvantage. They were far too expressive for a spy. And her creamy pallor was far too quick to flush up with anger or embarrassment. A positive curse in the
present business. How did one control these natural responses?

She got up restlessly and walked to the window, moving the heavy velvet curtain aside. The glass panes were freezing, needles of cold air creeping around the window frame. Shielding her eyes, she pressed her forehead against the glass. A few faint specks of white were drifting against the darkness. The twins would be ecstatic if it really snowed, but it would play havoc for their guests in the morning, making already tedious journeys utterly miserable.

“ ’Tis snowing, m’lady.” Agnes’s voice, sounding almost jubilant, came from the room behind her, and Harriet backed out, letting the curtain fall again.

“Yes, so I see.”

“Oh, I do ’ope we ’as a white Christmas, my lady. My brothers and me, we love to ’ave snowball fights.”

Harriet laughed. “Yes, we used to as well. And the twins will be over the moon if it settles.”
But maybe it won’t,
she thought to herself. It was a shame to be so grown up that one wished away snow over Christmas, but that was the reality. And the Duke would be mad as fire if snow prevented the Boxing Day hunt.

Agnes set down the silver tray with a glass of hot
milk and a plate of mince pies on a low table by the fireside chair. “Will that be all, then, ma’am?”

“Yes, thank you. Go to your bed now, and wake me at eight in the morning, if you please.”

Agnes bobbed a curtsy and disappeared with a murmured good night. Harriet sat down by the fire, taking up her drink with a smile of pleasure. These quiet moments before bed were her favorite time of the day, when she could reflect on the day’s happenings and contemplate the morrow. It would be a busy day, and somehow, in all the bustle, she must manage to field the twins while keeping a close but covert eye on the Earl of Marbury.

For some reason, she found the prospect of the latter task rather appealing, for all the anxiety it caused her. She seemed to take a perverse pleasure in his company, even as the strain of watching her every move and expression grew stronger. It was most inconvenient—so much simpler to find him distasteful, unpleasantly arrogant or secretive, or just plain unattractive. And yet he was none of those things, at least not on the surface. He actually seemed to enjoy the children’s company, which in itself was sufficiently unusual to be interesting. In Harriet’s experience, bachelors of the Earl’s means
and stature barely noticed children, let alone bothered to gain their confidence.

Had Nick really liked him? Had he trusted him? She sipped her milk and frowned into the fire. She no longer found it surprising that Nick had never mentioned Julius to her. They were engaged together in the same clandestine work, and Nick had been involved in the covert world for at least a year before he had told Harriet about it.

Just before he had gone on his last mission, just after Spain had declared war on England . . . she remembered she had been picking grapes in the hot house at Charlbury to send to London as a present for her old governess, when Nick had come into the damp, overheated conservatory. He was on leave before shipping out, and she was already steeling herself for the moment of good-bye. She had looked up at him, brushing a damp tendril of hair from her eyes, smiling at him through the misty atmosphere. But his expression had been oddly somber, she remembered, and when he had spoken, his voice had been barely above a whisper.

He had told her he was leaving Charlbury that night, heading for Dover, where he would take a fishing boat to France. Apart from his masters, only she
was to know that he was not leaving with his regiment.

Harriet had listened at first in disbelief, thinking he was playing some strange joke upon her, but Nick was not one for practical jokes. Slowly, she understood exactly what he was telling her. Her brother was a spy. It was expected that France, under the military leadership of Bonaparte, would soon begin planning an invasion of Britain, and Nick was to go to France to join up with an intelligence network along the Brittany coast, from where they would pass information back to their country. He needed a safe address outside the usual intelligence channels to send his coded information, and he wanted his sister to act as his poste restante. She would not be involved in any danger; the coded information would be included within the ordinary letters he sent her as a matter of course. The letters would travel on the packet boats with the routine mail just as always, and they should attract no particular attention from anyone watching the mails for suspicious activity. She would be contacted in the London house in order to pass on the correspondence.

Harriet would never refuse her brother anything, and it hadn’t occurred to her to refuse him then, however astonishing the request and what it revealed
about her best friend. It was a simple enough part to play, after all.

It seemed oddly naïve now, how easily she had agreed, Harriet thought. But then, she had been infected by Nick’s enthusiasm for his role, by the power of a patriotism that could actually manifest itself in some concrete fashion. They had been full of excitement, thrilled at the prospect of working together for their country.

She had seen her brother ride off in the dark hour before dawn . . . and she had never seen him again.

Oh, the letters had come as he had said they would, and George Howard, an unremarkable dapper gentleman looking like a man of business, had paid regular visits to Devere House in London to receive them.

Then the letters had ceased.

She had waited in an agony of anxiety until Howard had come to tell her that Nicholas had been killed in the siege of Elba, and the next morning, his name had appeared among the war dead in the
London Gazette
. And until that morning in November when Howard and Bedford had visited her in London and told her the truth, she had been left alone with her grief, concentrating on the children, who needed every moment of her time. They had adored Nick,
and their own uncomprehending grief had expressed itself in alternating outbursts of rage and long periods of sullen and uncooperative silence. The war in Europe had continued, with shifting alliances, treaties made and broken, and all the while, the threat of the French invasion grew more powerful.