A Pretty Deceit

by Anna Lee Huber

  But Mrs. Yarrow left at the end of each day, returning to her own residence, where I’d long suspected she cared for someone else. From the beginning of her service, I’d promised her I would not pry. I valued my own secrets too highly to ever interfere in someone else’s without need. Though I admitted to an intense curiosity about whom she returned to each night, whether it was someone elderly, an invalided soldier, or perhaps even a child.

  Once Nimble had returned with the tea, I prepared a cup for Max before pouring my own. I normally preferred something a bit stronger at this hour, but after all the champagne I’d drunk at the Savoy, I decided it would be better to keep some semblance of my wits about me for whatever that coded letter contained.

  “I take it your discussion with Livia did not go well,” I said as I sank down onto the opposite end of the emeraldine sofa.

  Max lifted his gaze from the spot he’d been staring at in our Aubusson rug for several minutes. “No, she wasn’t pleased.” He almost seemed surprised to find the cup of tea in his hands, but then he lifted it to take a drink.

  My mother believed that tea was the remedy to all ailments, and while I didn’t entirely agree with her, I recognized how soothing a familiar ritual or taste could be to the senses. I’d employed the trick often enough during my time in the occupied territories when my nerves were strung too tight and my fear threatened to overwhelm me. Though then I often had to settle for the poor substitutes the Belgians and French living under occupation had to endure, things like roasted oat chaff and pea shells.

  “I imagine it was a shock,” I coaxed gently, for he was visibly troubled, and I didn’t think it was purely his apprehension over the contents of his father’s letter.

  He nodded. “She didn’t like hearing about the part our father played in the smuggling. Or the suggestion that he might have been poisoned.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “Rang a reverberating peal over my head at the mere suggestion.”

  I offered him a commiserating smile, able to empathize with both of them. After all, not so many weeks earlier I’d dreaded telling Max that we suspected his father might have been murdered, dreaded his reaction. None of it was easy to hear.

  “But then . . . once she’d calmed down . . .” He seemed to struggle with his words. “She . . . she said Father must have known.”

  Sidney turned from where he stood, gazing through the tall Georgian windows down at the square below, smoking one of his specially blended Turkish cigarettes. His gaze met mine as Max continued to speak.

  “She said he’d acted oddly during the weeks preceding his death. That after he died she’d ascribed it to his declining health. His valet had said he’d been complaining of chest pains, and so she’d chosen to believe it was just another symptom.”

  “How was he acting oddly?” I said as he took another fortifying sip of tea.

  “She said he seemed anxious, unsettled. That he started refusing invitations to dinners and events, something our father had always thrived on. He even summoned her to London all the way from the Isle of Wight, partly she now believes to give her the letter she gave me tonight. That he told her no less than three times not to reveal to anyone that he’d given it to her. That it was to be a surprise for my twenty-ninth birthday and he wanted me to have it even if he wasn’t around to give it to me. That he didn’t want it spoiled.”

  “That didn’t seem strange to her earlier?” Sidney questioned, crossing the room to join us.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “We were used to following Father’s directives, no matter how inane they seemed. Livia in particular. He wouldn’t brook disobedience.” His mouth twisted sourly. “He often overlooked and discounted her in favor of me, his heir.”

  Something that wasn’t uncommon among the aristocracy. After all, what good were daughters but to form dynastic alliances and breed the next generation?

  “Your sister seems like a very intelligent, level-headed person,” I remarked, considering everything Max had told us. “You trust her impressions?”

  “I do,” he affirmed.

  “Then I find it rather telling. After all, my impression of the late Earl of Ryde was as a confident, commanding personality. He was not intimidated easily, or pushed around.”

  Max nodded in confirmation.

  “And yet in his last weeks she describes him as anxious and unsettled. That he seemed to closet himself away.” I glanced at Sidney to see if he was following. “Perhaps hoping to restrict access to his person.”

  “To prevent someone from harming or killing him,” Sidney added, finishing my thought.

  We all knew that “someone” was Ardmore, but since he preferred to utilize others to perform his dirty work, it was difficult to tell who had actually posed a threat.

  “So you think he did know?” Max asked.

  “It seems like he at least suspected it. Why else write that letter in code and give it to your sister with such strict instructions,” I pointed out.

  His features seemed to harden as he brooded over this.

  Sidney drummed his fingers against the arm of the chintz bergère chair across from us. “Have you spoken with your father’s valet?”

  Max shook his head. “Not since he was released from my employ a few weeks after Father’s death.”

  “Perhaps you should,” Sidney prompted. “He might know more than he realizes.”

  That is, if he’s still alive, I thought cynically. Ardmore had a ruthless proficiency at tidying up loose ends.

  Max inhaled a tight breath. “You’re right. I should track him down.”

  The door to the drawing room opened, and we all swiveled eagerly in our seats to discover if it was George come to tell us he’d cracked the code. Unfortunately, it was only Nimble asking if we needed another pot of tea or the ice in the bucket on the drinks tray on the sideboard refreshed. Once I declined and thanked him, we settled in to wait.

  The hours ticked slowly by, each one stretching our already taut nerves further. At two o’clock, I considered offering George the use of our guest bedchamber, but I knew him. He would want the task completed. And if he couldn’t keep his eyes open to do so, he would come tell me so himself.

  So I made myself comfortable in the corner of the sofa, dozing in and out while Sidney and Max smoked and talked near the window they’d cracked open. As the night wore on, the sounds of the traffic below began to thin until at times the shush of the wind and the ticking of the clock were all that accompanied the low rumble of their voices. That they were able to find so much to discuss did not surprise me, but the amount of cigarettes Max burned through did. In the past, Max had seemed an infrequent smoker at best. Sidney was the one some months past I’d chided for smoking too much, and I’d noticed he’d taken my request to heart, halving his previous intake. However, in the space of several hours, Max had puffed through one fag after another, even if otherwise he seemed perfectly calm.

  When George finally appeared in the doorway to the drawing room, it seemed to take all of us a moment to register that fact. I blinked wide my tired eyes and sat upright as Max hurried across the chamber toward him.

  “Did you decode it?” he asked George, his eyes eagerly darting back and forth from his face to the papers in his hand.

  George nodded, passing him what I presumed to be the decrypted text. The look on his face when he turned to look at me was resigned and grim, giving the caramel skin he’d inherited from his Indian grandmother a slightly sallow cast. My muscles tightened with anticipation and dread. Whatever that letter said, it wasn’t meaningless.

  CHAPTER 11

  George dropped into the chair nearest the door, rubbing his forehead with thumb and forefinger, while Sidney sank down beside me on the sofa. I tried not to watch Max’s face as he read, but it was impossible. Not that his expression gave much away. His frantic pacing back and forth, on the other hand, proved distracting.

  When he finished, he halted midstride. His shoulders slumped and he stared ahead of him blankly, strugglin
g to either comprehend or accept the letter’s contents.

  “What does it say?” I asked, unable to contain my concern or curiosity a moment longer.

  He looked up at me and then Sidney for several moments with the same stunned expression before crossing the room to hand me the decrypted text. My husband leaned close, wrapping his arm around my lower back as he read over my shoulder.

  Maximus,

  If you’re reading this and you don’t know what it’s about, then the worst has already happened. My papers have been cleared out and I did not survive long enough to speak to you about it myself. Your sister knows nothing of what I’m about to say, and I prefer it should remain that way. I entrusted this letter to her because it was the only way I could see of ensuring it would reach you in due time. All other avenues were vulnerable, and so I took this precaution.

  Though it pains me to admit, I have done something terrible and, worst of all, foolish. I pride myself on my wisdom, on my keen insight, but in this I have been deceived. I dare not put the specifics down on paper, even in code, lest I incriminate myself and taint our venerated title needlessly, or leave you open to attack. Speak to the men on Wight who I relied upon during the war. You know of who I speak. They will explain the matter to you, at least so far as they know it.

  What they do not know is the other gentlemen involved in the enterprise. Lord Rockham is an imbecile. It’s no use speaking to him for he was duped more thoroughly than I was, and even believed wholeheartedly in the success of our aims. But Lord Ardmore is another matter, and the person from whom you have the most to fear. If I am dead, it is by his hand. He is a Cassius, and no friend to our rule of law.

  I am aware that these sound like the ramblings of a doddering old man, but I dare not speak straightforwardly for fear this should fall into his hands. I tried to draw him out, and in this I was partially successful, but he has grown suspicious of me, and I know it is only a matter of time before he acts. I fear I do not have time to complete what I have started, so I have hid what evidence I possess.

  I am sorry to pass this burden to you, but I do not know who else I can trust. Hopefully with the passage of time, any suspicions he may have about what you know will have faded. You know of my keenest obsession, and I pray you were listening when I lectured about them and not just indulging the whims of your old man. Think back to your tenth birthday. Return to the place I took you. Retrace our steps.

  But above all else, do not reveal this to Ardmore. Do not even let him know you have it. Or else I fear he will stop at nothing to get it.

  I looked up to find Max seated on the sofa across from us, his head sunken over his shoulders as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.

  “Well,” I murmured, uncertain what to say into the tense silence that had fallen. “I suppose this confirms some of our suspicions.” In a vague, dithering way. Almost maddeningly so. “Do you remember where your father took you on your tenth birthday?”

  Max’s gaze shifted forward slightly to stare at my feet as he nodded. “His obsession was . . .” He broke off to eye George.

  “You can trust him,” I told him with confidence. “Not just with the code. With everything.”

  Max seemed to weigh and assess George. Normally I would have expected George to fidget through such an examination, but fatigue seemed to have blunted his social timidity. The look on his face said that he didn’t give a damn whether Max found him trustworthy or not.

  “His obsession was with Roman antiquities,” Max continued, pushing himself upright with a visible effort, as if he’d shouldered a heavy load. “Of which there are a number of sites on the Isle of Wight. But on my tenth birthday he took me to the remains of a villa found at Brading.”

  “Then we must go there,” I declared.

  “It appears so.”

  None of the men seemed very keen on the prospect. “I recognize it’s the middle of the night, and I fully empathize with the shock this must be to Max, but why are you all looking so glum? Not five hours ago, we had no way of moving forward in our investigation of Ardmore, and this has just fallen into our laps.”

  “Yes, and Ardmore knows it,” Sidney snapped. “Not the exact contents perhaps, but he can deduce them. Especially after that ploy you made with the envelope.”

  I scowled. “That ploy with the envelope is all that kept Ardmore’s man from following George and attempting to steal the letter from him rather than me.”

  George stiffened in his seat, not having heard me explain to Max how my handbag had been snatched outside the Savoy.

  Sidney’s eyes flashed. “The point is Ardmore knows we have something now. And he’s going to be tracking us, trying to get it back.”

  “He was already surveilling us. The fact that one of his men was at the Savoy watching us proves that. So this changes almost nothing. Max’s father never anticipated our involvement.” I gestured between me and Sidney. “Or that, together with his son, we’d already figured out much of what he was alluding to.”

  “Just as he didn’t anticipate Rockham being dead. His murder manipulated by Ardmore, as well.”

  “Kent, Verity, please,” Max interjected. “Can we just pause for a moment?” His gray eyes pleaded with us as he scraped a hand back through his dark blond hair. “My father has all but confirmed that he was probably murdered. I know we suspected it. That we’ve been hypothesizing about it for weeks. But . . . to hear him say he anticipated it . . .” He broke off, turning to stare into the fire crackling in the hearth. “It’s a lot to absorb.”

  My cheeks stung, chastened for my callousness. “I’m sorry, Max,” I said softly.

  He waved my apology aside, but did not turn away from the flames.

  I sank back into the sofa, prepared to hold my tongue until he was ready. Sidney draped his arm around my shoulders, and while I turned to meet his glower with one of my own, I was content to let him leave his arm there.

  I scrutinized the decryption of the late earl’s letter still clutched in my hand, wondering at his choice of words. He spoke of being fooled, and derided Rockham as an imbecile. It seemed he would have us believe he didn’t know what was actually going on, or that he didn’t believe in the scheme, only that he was supporting it to draw Ardmore out, but was this true? Had he really held altruistic motives, or was he merely trying to save face in the aftermath? The letter was written to his son, after all.

  I studied Max’s furrowed brow and the tight line of his mouth, curious whether he also wrestled with this question. I supposed time would tell.

  “Why did he have to be so bloody vague?” he grumbled, revealing both his grief and irritation over the contents of the letter. He gestured toward the paper in my lap. “Why this runaround? Why not just tell us what he knows, what he’s hidden?”

  “He was obviously panicked,” I replied. “If he thought Ardmore might have him killed at any moment, he couldn’t have been in a calm frame of mind.”

  “Yes, but this was no hastily dashed-off missive. He translated the bloody thing into code, for heaven’s sake.”

  I had to concede he was right. It did appear to be a stark contradiction.

  “Was your father normally this . . .” Sidney seemed to fumble for the right word, one that wouldn’t be insulting.

  Max scoffed. “Melodramatic? Theatrical?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  He exhaled a heavy sigh in acknowledgment, raking his hand back through his hair again. “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, hoping for clarification.

  “Yes, he could be somewhat of a showman, but not usually in such an overblown way.”

  “Do you think your father wrote it?” George piped up to say. “Was it his handwriting?”

  Max appeared to contemplate the matter for the briefest of moments before nodding. “Yes, it’s his handwriting. His way of wording things, as well. And he physically handed it to my sister. I don’t see how it could have been written by anyone else but
him.”

  I folded the decrypted text inside the original letter. “Then I suppose we won’t be able to understand why he chose to be so secretive until we discover what he’s hidden. He must have felt it was important. Otherwise, why go to such trouble? And why fear for his life?”

  We all fell silent, ruminating on this somberly. I couldn’t help but feel this was about a great deal more than smuggled opium. That whatever the late Earl of Ryde had uncovered was far more serious, and far more dangerous.

  “Do you have somewhere you can hide this?” I asked Max, holding up the pages. “Somewhere you’re certain it won’t be stolen or destroyed. Or do you want me to keep it?”

  His gaze dipped to the letter, eyeing it almost as he would a snake. “You hide it.”

  I nodded. “When do you want to leave for the Isle of Wight?”

  Max named a time near midday.

  “Then we’ll meet you at the station.” I half expected Sidney to object, but he said nothing.

  “Do you wish me to come?” George’s expression plainly communicated that he did not want to.

  “Not if you can explain which code the earl used.” I gambled that, if whatever Max’s father had hidden was also encrypted, it would use either the same code or something similar.

  George and I conferred, and then he and Max departed, agreeing to share a cab, lest someone under Ardmore’s sway be waiting to ambush them. Sidney closed and locked the door as I retreated to our bedchamber. Once I was certain the drapes were drawn tight, I tipped my vanity bench over and began to pry loose one of the legs. I heard my husband enter the room and pause to watch over my shoulder as I rolled the letter and decryption into a tight tube and then slid it into the thin bored hole in the wood. Then I affixed the leg back in place, using the sole of my shoe to hammer it back into its slot.