A Pretty Deceit

by Anna Lee Huber

  The look he gave me then was difficult to read, but apparently he wasn’t done making disconcerting comments. “Then why did you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I snapped, wondering why he was dredging this up now. I flung my hand out toward the bedchamber I shared with Sidney. “And in any case, it no longer matters.”

  But I could see that it did. At least, to Alec. And that, perhaps, surprised me most of all. I had never seen this side to the carefree, roguish charmer, but now I had to wonder if it had been there all along. Whether he was that good at hiding it, or if I simply hadn’t wanted to see it.

  I pulled the collar of my coat higher around my neck, desperate to change the subject. “So you never found out why Ardmore was mentioned in that report?”

  Alec turned to stare out over the garden again, his mask of indifference smoothing back into place. “No, but I was questioned extensively upon my return to London.”

  I’d expected as much. After all, he’d spent six or more years within the German ranks, having been implanted in Germany some years before the conflict began, and so possessed a great deal of information that he might not have been able to convey in his regular debriefing reports written in code and smuggled out of Belgium. However, I could tell there was more he wasn’t saying. “About the Germans’ logistics?”

  “Yes, but I meant about my decision to cut and run.”

  I frowned. “I . . . I didn’t know there was any debate over that. We had intercepted German reports conveying that your identity had been compromised. That’s why I went in after you.”

  “Yes, well, there were some who accused me of losing my nerve. They suggested I could have bluffed my way out of any trouble, as I’d done before.” He glanced sideways at me. “One of them was Ardmore.”

  It was all I could do not to gasp out loud. “That bastard!”

  “Yes, quite,” he bit out. “Fortunately, in the end, there were more voices commending me than maligning me, and my record stood for itself. Your report and those intercepted from the Germans also helped.”

  “Did you tell them about Ardmore’s name being mentioned in that German report?”

  “No, because I could see which way the wind was blowing. It was obvious they would have ascribed it to German Intelligence uncovering Ardmore’s position with Naval Intelligence, and I had nothing to prove that wasn’t the case. I decided it would be better to keep the information under my hat, so to speak. And C agreed when I debriefed him later privately.”

  Which explained some of the chief’s mistrust of Ardmore, though not all. But C had always reveled in secrets. I doubted he would ever reveal all he knew. Not even to his successor.

  “Now, I understand,” I told Alec. He’d suspected Ardmore of treason long before I had, and had already tangled with him, if briefly. Which only made me more concerned that his role in helping us had been exposed. “This Basil Scott fellow. How dangerous is he?” I asked quietly, recalling that he’d mentioned suspicious coincidences and troubling occurrences in his record.

  “Let’s put it this way. If there was a situation, embarrassing or unprovable, in which the powers that be would rather have seen it swept under the rug, Major Scott was their man.”

  Though he didn’t say the word, I could read between the lines. It sent a chill down my spine. “You’re saying he was an assassin?”

  “More or less.”

  And he’d been assigned to follow Max here. To what exact purpose, I couldn’t say, but my imagination was more than ready to fill in the blank.

  I exhaled a taut breath. “Then we all need to be armed tomorrow.” I narrowed my eyes in determination. “And we need some type of diversion.”

  “It will have to be impressive to fool someone like Scott.”

  “Maybe,” I replied, backing away from the balustrade, a plan already forming in my mind. “But maybe not.”

  “You’re not going to tell me,” he protested, a note of teasing entering his tone.

  “Not tonight.”

  He exhaled in an exaggerated manner. “Women. Always leading one on.”

  I laughed softly as I opened the door to my bedchamber and stepped inside, closing it carefully behind me before sliding through the part in the drapes to emit as little light as possible to the outside.

  It was the wrong way to enter, particularly as Sidney sat in a chair near the hearth directly in front of me. It might have been better had I sported a scowl, one to match his brooding stare as he blew out a stream of smoke from his cigarette, watching me slink inside.

  For a moment, I felt a prick of shame, as if I’d wronged him all over again. But then it was overridden by a surge of anger that he should make me feel that way. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I replied as lightly as I could manage. “You know I was merely getting the full report from him on Ardmore and his men.”

  “Quite the cozy debriefing,” he sneered.

  “We could hardly stand ten feet apart if we didn’t wish to be overheard,” I replied as I unfastened the belt and then began to undo the buttons down the center of my coat.

  “Perhaps, but I don’t believe he needed to hold your hand while he did so.”

  I faltered. Of course, Sidney would peer out at us at the one moment that could be construed as intimate. “He was trying to soften the blow of something shocking he told me,” I retorted, resuming my disrobing. “And as you’ll have noticed, I pulled away quickly enough.”

  “Seems like it could have been quicker.”

  I turned to glare at him, planting my hands on my hips. “Why are you questioning me? I thought we’d moved past this.”

  He exhaled another stream of smoke. “It’s difficult to move past anything when you stumble across the man who slept with your wife holding her hand.”

  “Let’s not forget the part where you allowed her to believe you were dead for fifteen months,” I countered. “That’s an important distinction.”

  “I’m aware,” he practically growled, as he pushed to his feet, pitching his cigarette butt in the fireplace.

  “Were you or were you not perfectly aware that I was going to be speaking to Alec privately when I retired from the parlor?”

  “I had a hunch.”

  “Of course, you did,” I said, refusing to let him play coy. “Because I expected you to know. Expected you to know and trust me doing so.” I searched his face for any sign of yielding. “Was I wrong? Do you not trust me?”

  He halted a foot in front of me, his eyes scouring my features. “You’re not wrong, Ver. I do trust you.” His brow crinkled. “It’s Xavier I don’t trust.”

  I sighed. “There’s nothing between us, you know.”

  He lifted his hand to touch my face, murmuring almost resignedly. “Ah, but there is, Ver.”

  I stiffened.

  “Not like there is between us,” he amended. “But it’s there all the same.” His gaze when he lifted it from where he had been watching his fingers trace the skin of my cheek wasn’t accusing, but rather melancholy.

  It caused an answering ache in my chest, for I was beginning to understand what he meant. Just as I’d had to accept that there were things I could never understand about Sidney’s service in the trenches, things that Max and Sidney could apprehend without saying a word, the same could be said of me and Alec. My time as a Secret Service agent, the cumulative months spent living among the enemy in the German-occupied territories had irrevocably changed me. And while Alec’s clandestine role had been decidedly different, it still gave him insight into me that Sidney would never have, and vice versa.

  I pressed my hand over top of his where it cradled my cheek and stepped into his embrace, laying my head against his shoulder. He’d removed his coat and tie, and I could feel the heat of him radiating through his shirt and smell the musk of his cologne. Somehow it seemed that for every step we took toward each other, for every secret we shared, every complication we laid to rest another rose to replace it, forcing us to continually pivot and shift,
and sometimes hurdle the impediments that lay between us to reach each other.

  “I already know your answer, but I have to ask it anyway.” His hand tipped my head back so he could look down into my eyes as I waited for him to speak. “Will you remain here tomorrow?”

  “No,” I replied simply, already seeing in his eyes that he was reconciled to my involvement, though I could understand his protective instinct.

  “Then, I want you to carry the spare pistol I asked to borrow from Ryde.”

  I couldn’t halt the gentle smile curling my lips.

  “What’s so amusing?”

  I shook my head. “The three of you. The fact that none of you are balking at my carrying a weapon when most gentlemen would be shocked and appalled at merely the suggestion.”

  “Well, you did tell me you know how to fire one.”

  “I do,” I confirmed, smothering the ache that arose from the memory of my brother Rob teaching me to do so. His last brotherly act before he died.

  “Then it seems more practical to give you one than not.”

  I laughed at his furrowed brow. “I’m not criticizing,” I told him, pressing my thumb into the shallow cleft in his chin. “I’m grateful.”

  His expression softened. “Well, I know you’re dashed capable, darling. Just do me one favor.”

  I arched my eyebrows in query.

  “Stay close by my side.”

  I decided that was a reasonable request, so I began to nod, only to bite my lip in hesitation. “First, let me tell you my plan for a diversion.”

  * * *

  The following morning, promptly at nine o’clock, Max and I hurried out onto the drive, waving at Sidney and Alec standing in the entryway behind us. We climbed into Max’s pale yellow Rolls-Royce, which had already been stuffed with blankets and a hamper filled with food, and set off bowling up the lane. With the men wearing Norfolk jackets in varying tweeds and I a coordinating Donegal tweed suit, we were the picture of the upper class off for a bit of autumn sport and leisure.

  However, about two miles down the road, in the direction of St. Helens, Max looked over his shoulder to the space between the two seats where his chauffeur-mechanic hunched down. “Get ready,” he told him, allowing the man just enough time to climb into the rear seat behind him before he turned the next corner and then screeched to a halt. We all scrambled from the motorcar, Max and I darted behind a shed near the verge of the road, while the chauffeur climbed behind the driving wheel and set off again at a spanking pace.

  Max and I held our breath, waiting to see if Ardmore’s men had taken the bait. Several minutes seemed to tick by, though it was likely less than thirty seconds, and then a Vauxhall roared by.

  Max and I shared a triumphant grin. We’d suspected Ardmore’s instructions to his men had been to follow Max, with perhaps the added caveat that I was to be monitored. So we’d gambled that most, if not all, of Ardmore’s men would follow us—believing the picnic supplies our sole attempt at a distraction—rather than Sidney and Alec when they departed Nettlestone Hall in the Pierce-Arrow ten minutes later. On the chance Ardmore’s men had two motorcars at their disposal, we’d also concocted another foil. But first Max and I had a short distance to cover.

  Once the Vauxhall had disappeared from sight, Max lifted the motorbike from its position leaned against the shed and started the motor, before throwing his leg over the side.

  “You do know how to drive one of these, don’t you?” I shouted into his ear, perhaps a bit belatedly as he helped me to clamber up behind him.

  “Of course.”

  Once my arms were firmly wrapped around his waist, he pressed down on the throttle, sending us shooting forward and calling into question his assertion. However, once he pulled out onto the road, my confidence in his abilities increased. We drove a couple hundred yards in the direction the motorcars had gone before turning off on a narrower track that led through the woods. This lane was far bumpier than the road, and I pressed tighter to his back, lest I be thrown off. The wind whipped past us, threatening to dislodge my Torin-style side cap, but the extra hairpins I’d used held fast.

  When finally we reached another road, we zipped onward to the north, before pulling into the space between a barn and a house. Secreting ourselves and the bike behind the far end, we didn’t have long to wait before Sidney’s Pierce-Arrow came flying down the road. Breaking hard, he pulled into the gap, concealing the motorcar from the road. Max and I waited once again, peering around the corner at Sidney and Alec seated in the front seat of the roadster. Alec’s face was split by a wide grin, and I could tell from the quirk of Sidney’s lips that he was also enjoying himself.

  Time ticked by, and I was about to suggest that Ardmore’s men must not have had the use of another car, when a scrappy-looking Rover suddenly puttered by, its engine gears grinding. Whether it was one of Ardmore’s men behind the wheel or simply a resident of the Isle of Wight, we couldn’t tell, but I felt another surge of victory as it disappeared down the road. Max and I scrambled into the rear seat of the Pierce-Arrow, and Sidney reversed out of the gap before roaring back down the road in the direction they’d come and then making a sharp right. Max assured us that this lane would connect to a road that ran south and directly through the village of Brading.

  The forests and fields of golden crops we barreled by, ripe for harvesting, would have been a peaceful sight if not for the anxiety and anticipation churning inside me. The others seemed to be similarly affected, particularly Max, for they all fell silent as we slowed to pass through Brading. Max had already explained that the remains of the Roman villa lay near the southern edge of the small village.

  “The turn should be just after this crossroads,” he instructed Sidney. The pole at the corner was covered in more than half a dozen directional signs. To the right lay Knighton and Alverstone, to the left Culver Down and RAF Bembridge, to the south Sandown and the villa.

  Sidney located the turn easily enough, and we began bumping down a rough lane. If we had to make a quick getaway, it would be rather difficult. But then our pursuers would be experiencing the same struggle, and I had reservations that the Rover would even hold together over such ruts.

  At the end of the lane stood a wooden structure somewhat crudely enclosed with a sloped roof. In many ways it resembled a barn more than anything.

  “Most of the remains of the villa are kept under the cover of that building. The mosaics are easily damaged by weathering, particularly in Britain’s climate,” Max explained as we climbed from the motorcar. He stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the site, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.

  “Do you have any idea where your father would have hidden. . . whatever he’s hidden?” I asked.

  “I don’t. But . . . he said to retrace my steps. So I’ll try to remember them as best I can.”

  Considering the fact his tenth birthday had been nineteen years before, that would be no small feat.

  He offered me his arm, which I took before glancing over my shoulder to see that Sidney and Alec followed. We entered the covered structure first, strolling through the floor-plan of the villa and over the impressive tiled mosaics fitted into the floor. I admit to becoming distracted at a number of places, awed by the Romans’ craftsmanship and designs. Animals, geometric patterns, ancient myths, and even a strange cockerel-headed man leapt to life among the dust and dirt of time.

  As I stood gazing down at the fragments of surviving mosaics, a memory stirred at the back of my brain. One of me, my brothers, and my cousins playing in the west garden at Littlemote as children. Thomas had wanted to play explorers, and the aim of our expedition was to locate some sort of Roman remains. There had been an argument between the boys over exactly what type. Some of them wanted it to be a coliseum where gladiators had fought, while others wanted it to be a circus for chariot races. However, Thomas had been adamant it had to be a villa.

  I couldn’t recall now why, only his obstinate face as he went toe to to
e with my oldest brother, Freddy, over the matter. It had dissolved into a fight, as my brothers, cousins, and their friends were all wont to do at that age. So I’m not certain we even played at explorers at all. Though I did remember Thomas had given Freddy a cracking black eye.

  Of course, Thomas was as temperamental as all the boys, and as the oldest and heir to his baronet father, determined to get his way in all things, but I had to wonder if there was something more to his insistence that the ruins we discovered be a villa. Was he merely being obstinate for obstinacy’s sake, or had he known something the rest of us hadn’t? It might explain the number of Roman coins found in the grounds nearby. Perhaps even the Anglo-Saxon ones as well, if they had known of and utilized any Roman remains they’d discovered there. Maybe Reg would know. I resolved to telephone him later and turned to focus my attention on the structure covering the site, scouring our surroundings for any worthy hiding places.

  Meanwhile, the men examined the stone walls, searching for cracks and breaks in the mortar where the late earl might have concealed something. All while trying to avoid drawing the interest of the handful of other tourists. However, it became all too apparent that Max’s father would not have chosen to hide his evidence within such a heavily trafficked area. Not without being certain that someone else would not have stumbled across it unwittingly. So we abandoned the covered shelter in favor of pacing the outer features of the villa. Here luck was with us.

  As we stepped out onto the lawn, pausing to gain our bearings as the wind swept across the fields surrounding us already stripped of their harvest, an older man came striding toward us. “I say, Lord Ryde, is that you?”

  “Mr. Oglander,” Max replied, offering the white-haired gentleman his hand. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you as well, my good man. It’s been some time since I’ve seen you round this part of the island.” His face creased into a good-natured smile. “But I see you have guests. Brought them to see the villa, have you? Well, I would be happy to give you a personal tour.” By this, I took it to mean Mr. Oglander was perhaps a curator of sorts, or maybe he simply owned the land on which the villa rested.