Introduction
When Isaac Ollerton and his father, known as the Spymaster, almost come to a dead end with their case, a young and irresistibly beautiful barmaid has an idea they haven't even thought of. It looks preposterous at first but the more they think about it, the better it sounds. Isaac is an ambitious young man, willing to follow his father’s path and become a good spy. He’s attracted to powerful women and knows how to handle them. But will he be able to cope with the charms of this mysterious Lady?
Mary Warwick leads a simple life, working hard as a barmaid at the tavern Mr. Ollerton and his father frequent. She had seen the life of the regents and is still gathering herself from being cast away from the house of one. However, an unprecedented proposal is about to change everything. Is she willing to risk everything and give in to passion?
When love blossoms in the most unlikely situation, it can threaten to sabotage the entire case. What happens when demons from Mary’s past refuse to leave? Is love strong enough to last or do the obstacles manage to destroy every piece of it?
Chapter 1
The rain was coming down in torrents, drenching Isaac within the few minutes it beat him. Isaac had seen the dark clouds gather steam as he rode to the old tavern on Piccadilly Street in the north of Coventry. So he had sped up his steed, riding like a man chased. He was unable to outrun the rains, though, and it came down hard on him when he was still a good distance from the tavern. On another day, he would have led his horse into one of the nearby sheds and stayed there till the rain stopped. A lot of people stood under the sheds and inside stalls by the side of the road. Most held hands close to their bodies inside their coats or covered their heads with hats to deter the water from dropping onto their faces.
“Damn this rain,” Isaac swore.
The day had started as brightly as any in Coventry, blue skies, a few white clouds, and lots of sun. The dark clouds surfaced from nowhere, well not anywhere that Isaac had seen. They were running across the sky very quickly,and Isaac knew once he noticed their speed that they would bring heavy rain.
“Fast grey clouds mean thunderstorms,” his father always said.
“Father is always right,” Isaac muttered as he finally stopped his horse in front of the tavern.
There was no stable boy or warden to receive him and help keep his horse, so Isaac had to dismount and find a dry spot to tie his horse to. He did all of this with a quick resoluteness, eager to get out of the cold and rain into the warm room of the tavern. He supposed that the tavern would have a good number of people by this time. Men gathered there to share stories, laugh, and keep away from the cold outside.
Isaac though, was not there to share stories. He much preferred the solitude of his bedroom in their house close to the town square, where he could lay between thick sheets and slowly sip a cup of warm tea made by the cook. He was here to meet his father to find out more information, if he had gathered any, and to discuss what means they could use to get the damning information they needed. The tavern didn’t serve tea, but they did serve brandy, and that was good enough for him, maybe better.
Isaac walked to the door and pushed it open, embracing the waft of warm air that greeted him. The tavern was raucous and full of people, not what he thought he would meet but exactly how he needed it to be.
Isaac walked in and moved to the hangers by the side of the door. There was a young boy standing by the hanger. The boy was almost hidden under a great coat that reached past his boots and a hat too large for his small head. Isaac walked up to him and touched him on the shoulder. It was only when the boy raised his eyes that Isaac noticed he was shivering.
“Hello lad,” he said, digging up a smile for the frail-looking boy.
“Hello sir,” the boy answered, giving Isaac a toothy grin.
“I want to drop my coat here. Can you help me look after it?” Isaac said.
There were a lot of coats hung on small pins, and there was apparently no one looking after them. Most men just assumed other men would be faithful and pick their own coats. Isaac could also have done that, but he needed something else from the boy.
“Yes, you can. I’m not going anywhere,” the boy said.
Isaac nodded and rubbed the boy on the shoulder.
“Thank you, son. What’s your name, lad?” Isaac asked him.
“Earl,” came his answer.
“All right, Earl, I’m Isaac, Isaac Ollerton.”
“It’s nice to know you, Mr Ollerton.”
Isaac was surprised and impressed by the boy’s courage and manners. He had always liked sharp, young boys.
“It’s nice to know you too, Earl. But I think I might need your help.”
The boy’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened. It was obvious he was eager to provide help to such an older man.
“I need to find my father, Sir Francis Ollerton. He is a slim man of average height and a long moustache, with a great love for black hats. He would have come here wearing a black, thick great coat and would have immediately been asking for a glass of brandy.”
The boy shook his head. He had seen no one of such description enter the establishment. Isaac looked around. There were many men in the room, some sitting in solitude but most gathered in small groups, speaking too loudly and sharing hearty laughs. His father would not be found among them. Isaac observed the three men who were sitting alone, and none of them looked remotely like his father. Mr Francis Ollerton was not yet here.
“I think I might have come too early,” Isaac whispered to himself.
Or father is running rather late.
Isaac rubbed the boy on the shoulder again.
“I’ll be sitting by the counter, Earl. Please, if a man of similar description comes into this place, tell him that Isaac is waiting for him at the counter,” Isaac told the boy.
The boy nodded.
“I’ll do just that, Mr Ollerton,” Earl answered.
Isaac nodded and turned to find a seat. He moved gradually between tables, taking care not to hit any of the men that sat around.
It has to be the rain. This place isn’t normally so full.
It might have also been the rain that delayed his father. Sir Francis Ollerton was not a tardy man. He detested such bad traits. It was such strict rules of character and his appointment as a knight by the King that favoured him in the eye of the High Regent who named him the Spymaster. His father had been largely successful in the role, helping the government solve many formerly unknown crimes. He had employed Isaac as a worker in his office, and they both worked on many cases. Everything was going fine until they decided to look into the reported clandestine activities of Lord Reginald Talbot, the Earl of Coventry.
“Mary,” one bald-headed man shouted with a drunken tang. “Bring us two more pints of that good beer, will you?”
Isaac looked at the woman he summoned. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as he was, Isaac supposed. And she had a slim, slender face with the pinkest of cheeks. She had a white habit on her head and looked really tired. Her dress had a white centre strip flanked by black fabric, and there was a stain streaked across the centre that looked like dried beer. She nodded to the man and turned back to get the drinks from behind the table. One of the shoulder pads of her gown slipped off her shoulder, and Isaac saw flawless white skin that must have been very well taken care of. When she stood up again, she was holding two brewing cups and walked purposefully around the counter to the table across the room. For a room so stuffy and with so much work done and a lot more to do, she showed no falter and dropped the cups with an assurance that intrigued Isaac.
“You’ve had quite a lot,” he heard her say.
“Just keep them coming, Mary,” the man replied and immediately started guzzling the freshly delivered drinks.
The young woman smiled, and deep dimples appeared in both cheeks. She shook her head and started walking back to the table. As she walked past Isaac, she must have felt his eyes on her because she turned to him and asked, “Would you want anythin
g to drink, Mister?”
Isaac was tongue tied and just shook his head solemnly. His response didn’t take away her smile. She only nodded and walked back to her former position. Isaac still couldn’t take his eyes off this lady. It wasn’t until she got back to her seat and saw him staring at her again that he hurriedly looked away. He looked down at his nails and prayed that his neck didn’t turn red with blushing.
This is surely the most beautiful woman in all of England.
They had called her Mary. Isaac was smitten by the poise she managed to show despite working in a rough establishment such as this and as a lowly barmaid. She was incredibly attractive, and Isaac imagined how she would look if she was dressed in fine apparel and given the right make-up.
“She would be astonishing,” Isaac whispered to himself.
He felt warmth blossom in the pit of his belly, and he raised his eyes to look at her once more. She had stood up and was pouring a drink from a bottle into a cup. The habit was slipping off her head, so she pulled it off to release very dark hair. Despite her formerly covering it, her hair seemed to be wet, and so it glistened in the light of the tavern.
“What are you staring so hard at?”
Isaac turned his head. It was his father, standing behind him and looking drenched. Sir Ollerton still had a smile for his son, though, and Isaac stood up to properly shake his father. He stayed on his feet till his father moved to the stool beside him and perched on it. The man took off his wet black hat and dropped it on the counter in front of him.
“Father, you are drenched,” Isaac said.
“The ball took longer than I presumed. And then I stayed a bit more to see if I could gather any information. All these culminated in me riding in the whipping rain.”
His reply was whispered, reminding Isaac of the importance of secrecy in their line of work. Isaac suspected there was no need for whispers though, as the tavern was so noisy, they could shout and others would still not hear them.
“Any new titbits?”
Sir Francis Ollerton shook his head.
“That Lord is as slippery as they come,” Sir Ollerton said almost in anger.
Isaac chuckled.
“But he was present at the ball now, wasn’t he?” Isaac asked.
His father paused before he replied, looking to his side as Mary walked towards them to take two empty cups. She stood in front of them, although behind the counter and bent to do something with the cups that they could not see. She seemed entirely unconcerned with what they were saying. Isaac nudged his father.
“You can speak, Father.”
His father seemed to ponder more on the possibility of the barmaid listening to what they were saying. He nodded as if to say, “All right, she isn’t listening in the least.” To Isaac, Mary was completely oblivious to their discussion and posed no threat to their confidentiality.
“He was. But the man is incredibly secretive now and even more so when characters like me are in the same place with him. I would have had more success getting a duck to bark today.”
Isaac laughed. That was an extreme comparison.
“Well done with the boy at the door,” Sir Ollerton suddenly said.
Isaac turned back to look towards the door. The boy was still there but was seated on a stool now and appeared completely engorged in the activities within the tavern. Isaac noticed that he was still shivering.
He needs a warm meal.
“Yes, I supposed it would make it easier for you to find me,” Isaac responded.
“You were surprised that you didn’t meet me, weren’t you?”
“Unpleasantly surprised; I had left the garden party in a rush because of the rain. I suppose we could have just met at home if we had known it would rain so much,” Isaac answered.
His father nodded and looked back to the boy at the door.
“Hello,” he called to Mary, the barmaid.
She looked up immediately and came closer.
“Do you serve anything like hot soup?”
“Yes, we do.”
Her voice was strong and sonorous, and she met Isaac’s father’s piercing gaze with cool confidence.
“Can you provide a steaming bowl for that boy by the door? He’s been of great help to us,” Sir Ollerton said.
“Earl?” she asked, raising her gaze to look at the shivering boy.
“Yes, Earl,” Isaac quickly interjected, knowing his father would not know the boy’s name.
Mary smiled, and Isaac saw the dimples appear once again.
“Thank you, Misters,” she said and walked around into a door that was by the side.
“You know his name?” Sir Ollerton asked Isaac.
“Yes, he made it known to me when I was describing you to him,” Isaac replied.
His father nodded, just as Mary came out of the room. It had to be the kitchen because she was carrying a steaming bowl now and was walking past them. Her eyes met Isaac’s, and she nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Is that her son?” Sir Ollerton asked.
Isaac shook his head. He did not know of that but registered the slight disappointment that gripped him when his father said that. Isaac realised he would much prefer that Mary wasn’t Earl’s mother. He wondered why that was. He watched her hand the bowl over to the boy whose eyes widened greedily. The boy smiled and took the bowl, continuously repeating thanks to her. Isaac couldn’t hear from across the room, but it was easy to note that this was what he was saying. He saw her point to them, and the boy’s eyes soon met theirs. The boy took off his hat and gave a rather ungraceful and exaggerated bow. It was funny to Isaac, and he soon saw a wide smile on his father’s face too. Mary was soon across the room and almost back with them.
“Thank you, misters. That boy has not had a good meal for quite some time,” she said.
“Is he your son?” Sir Ollerton asked.
Isaac was not surprised that his father did that. The man had shocking confidence and rarely played around. Instead, he preferred to strike right at the heart of the matter, going straight to the point.
“No, no, not at all,” Mary answered, almost blushing. “But he’s here a lot is all.”
Isaac almost gave a sigh of relief. His eyes met hers, and she smiled before curtseying and walking into the kitchen.
“Well, he really is hungry. That much is obvious,” Sir Ollerton said.
He had been looking back at the boy while Isaac had been focusing on Mary’s now absent figure. Isaac quickly turned too, lest his father noticed his liking for a barmaid. The boy was guzzling down the soup with enviable gusto. The spoon dipped rapidly into the bowl and straight into his mouth. He ate so quickly a lot spilled.
Isaac shook his head. The boy was hungry, probably so most of the time. Isaac didn’t much like this realisation and was eager to change the subject of conversation.
“Since you didn’t make many findings …”
“Any findings,” his father corrected.
“Any findings, then there wasn’t much need for us to be here in the first place,” Isaac completed.
His father nodded. They had only agreed to meet in a tavern because they had been sure Sir Ollerton or any of his spies would be able to glean some information or incriminating evidence at the ball which the Earl was also attending. They suspected that if the Earl were desperate to retrieve anything stolen from him, he wouldn’t think to seek the Spymaster at a lowly tavern such as this. So here, Sir Ollerton could pass the document or whatever indicting entity they had gotten to his son who would take it home or any other place, for safe keeping. But as his father had buttressed on, they had found nothing.
“The problem lies in the fact that the Lord has been aware of all our spies. His ability to see through pretence is rather uncanny,” Sir Ollerton said.
“Maybe we have to find better men,” Isaac suggested.
The door to the kitchen slid open, and Mary came out. She was carrying a tray and walked slowly past them. Sir Ollerton, who had been about to
speak beforehand, kept quiet till she was at the other end of the table.
“She’s not listening to us, Father,” Isaac said.
“It would appear so,” Sir Ollerton replied. “My wariness comes from years of secrecy.”
Mary came back towards them and didn’t return to the kitchen. She dropped the empty tray at the end of the counter and bent her head low, almost hiding it entirely behind the wooden surface. Isaac couldn’t see, but it looked like she was scribbling something.
She can write? I’m shocked.
He turned to look at his father, who had also been observing her. His father’s eyes showed the same admiration that Isaac was feeling, but the man made no comment. Isaac felt a small tug on the sleeve of his shirt that made him turn. It was Earl, looking ruddy-cheeked and far happier.
Under the Seductive Lady's Charm: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 29