Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 04]

by Seducing the Spy

  Alicia shivered. “Now that I can quite believe.” Two minutes left. “Thank you, Garrett. Continue to look into their stories, if you please.” She took a breath. “Now, I must go face the lionesses.”

  17

  Once in Lady Dryden’s room, seated in a circle about the warming fire, with a tray of tea and cakes at the ready, Alicia found it wasn’t as bad as she had dreaded.

  It was much, much worse.

  “So Lady Alicia,” Julia began without preamble. “You’re ruined, I hear. Are the stories true?”

  Alicia put her teacup down carefully. “Oh, there is no mistake, my lady. My own parents discovered me in bed with the stable boy. At a house party, of course, so it was all very public, very . . . irrefutable.”

  Julia’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “And yet you tried very hard to refute it, didn’t you?”

  Alicia narrowed her own eyes right back. “Well, one must always try, mustn’t one?”

  Lady Greenleigh leaned forward, breaking into the staring contest. “How did you and Wyndham meet?”

  Alicia blinked, hesitating. “We—there’s little to tell. Our meeting wasn’t terribly romantic, I’m afraid. It was . . . highly irregular and I’m sure not something you wish to hear about.”

  Olivia laughed. “I doubt it was more irregular than the ways we met our husbands.”

  “No, really . . .”

  Lady Reardon dimpled. “More irregular than shooting his horse out from beneath him with a slingshot and then spending the night beside his unconscious body?”

  Alicia’s eyes widened. “Er—”

  Lady Greenleigh laughed aloud. “More irregular than being thrown off a bridge and having him leap in after me, only to require me to rescue him?”

  Alicia considered that. “I suppose that’s rather romantic.”

  Olivia made a face. “It was the Thames.”

  “Oh right.” Alicia shuddered. “Ew. Perhaps not, then.”

  Lady Julia was watching her. “More irregular than having him read my diary and use all my secret fancies to seduce me?”

  Alicia’s jaw dropped. And all I did was overhear a plot against the Crown and then become his mistress to help find the traitor.

  She became aware that the other three ladies were staring at her with eyebrows raised and teacups poised in mid-sip.

  She swallowed. “Ah . . . did I just say that out loud?”

  Julia put her cup and saucer down quickly. “Yes, and you must be very careful not to do that again.”

  The other two were nodding sagely. Alicia looked from one to the next. She saw concern and interest, but that was all.

  “You aren’t surprised,” she said slowly. “Why are you not shocked, or appalled, or even a little bit taken aback—by the conspiracy if not the immorality?”

  Willa flapped a hand. “Oh, we know all about the conspiracy—”

  Julia looked at her sharply. “Willa.”

  Willa made a face. “Oh, Julia, leave off. Alicia isn’t anything like you thought she would be, admit it.”

  Olivia nodded. “Alicia’s one of us, Julia.”

  Julia looked frustrated. “You cannot operate solely on your feelings, Willa—”

  “Oh, pooh.” Willa turned her brilliant smile on Alicia. “Alicia’s a peregrine.”

  “Oh!” Olivia turned a delighted gaze on Alicia. “A falcon lady for the Falcon lord! How perfectly wonderful!”

  Julia dropped her face into her hands. “Olivia,” she muttered in muffled agony. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  Olivia picked up her tea. “Dane says that all the time.”

  Alicia was looking from one beautiful, surprising, exalted lady to another. “You knew about the conspiracy. You knew about me. You ought not to even be speaking to someone like me, yet you are.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “It’s some sort of club, isn’t it? Your husbands and Wyndham . . . they likely even have some sort of silly male name for themselves, like the Four Horsemen or something—”

  Olivia laughed into her tea and choked. Julia passed her a linen napkin without taking her gaze from Alicia.

  “You’re half right,” she said slowly.

  “You mean three-quarters,” Willa said with a grin.

  “Hush, Willa.” Julia leaned forward, pinning Alicia with her gaze.

  Alicia leaned back. “You’re rather alarming, Lady Dryden. I’ll wager your servants are terrified of you.”

  Willa snickered. “They pat her on the head and call her Jilly.”

  Alicia slid her gaze from Julia’s intense scrutiny to the way the other two watched them calmly, albeit with great interest.

  “Three-quarters . . .” She looked back at Julia. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said ‘Horse men.’”

  Julia didn’t avert her gaze. “Hmm.”

  Having recovered from a losing round with her tea, Olivia leaned into the path of Julia’s gaze to capture her friend’s attention. “Julia, she’s not going to leap up and tell the French. If Willa says she’s a peregrine, then she will be as fierce and loyal as the small beautiful falcon herself. Willa knows these things, you understand. Besides . . .”

  She turned her head to gaze at Alicia with mischief in her eyes. “I’m perishing to know what Wyndham’s really like!”

  Willa leaned forward. “Oh, yes! Tell, tell!”

  Even Julia seemed willing to be distracted by the topic of Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham. “I’ve known him for years, but only through correspondence,” she said slowly, watching Alicia. “I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the . . . inner man.”

  Olivia performed a mock swoon, nearly landing in Willa’s lap. “The inner man! Be still, my heart!”

  Willa pushed her away with a laugh. “Oh, shut it, Livvie. You have your own personal Viking! You’re not pining after Wyndham!”

  Olivia sat up with a grin. “No, but I am bloody curious about him.”

  Alicia felt cornered once more when the three of them turned questioning gazes her way. “I . . . I fear I don’t know very much about Wyndham,” she said slowly, realizing the depth of her ignorance even as she spoke. “I think I’ve learned more about him in the last five minutes than I knew before.”

  Willa nodded. “Inscrutable.”

  Olivia sighed. “His cousin Jane told me that when he rescued her and her mother from poverty, he carried her ill, mindless mother in his own arms.”

  Of course he did. The fact that she didn’t doubt that act for a moment made Alicia feel a bit better. Wyndham might yet be a mystery, but she knew enough to believe that he would always behave in the best of character.

  “He aided me when I did not expect him to,” added Julia, although she seemed reluctant to give information when she obviously thought she ought to be receiving it.

  Alicia studied her three interrogators. Friendly or no, she was under no illusions that this was a friendly conversation.

  “Wyndham has never been less than chivalrous and—” Well, “pleasant” might be stretching the truth a bit. “He is an honorable man,” she finished weakly. “Although a bit stiffnecked and entirely too suspicious and I don’t think he has any clue the effect his eyes have on a woman, or he wouldn’t gaze so intensely . . .”

  She became aware of three pairs of riveted eyes. “Ah.” She held up one hand, palm out. “Do not take me ill, for I have no issue with the man. He has been very good to me.”

  “Why, I wonder?” Olivia laced her hands over one knee and screwed up her expression pensively. “I mean, of course he wishes to find the Ch—ow!—the conspirator,” she finished, surreptitiously rubbing her ribs. Beside her, Willa hadn’t moved, Alicia would have sworn it.

  Now, of course, she pined to know who the “Ch—” was. She frowned. “I find all these mysteries terribly frustrating, you realize. I cannot be held responsible for the results of that frustration.”

  Willa grinned impishly. “I know precisely what you mean. I tend to accidentally injure people.”
>
  “Men,” Olivia corrected her. “You tend to accidentally injure men. I, on the other hand, tend to injure myself.”

  Even Julia smiled at that. “I myself dislike frustration.”

  Alicia tilted her head. “And whom do you injure?”

  Julia’s smile went a bit chilly. “Whosoever is frustrating me, of course.”

  Some say she killed a man.

  “Did you?” Alicia couldn’t believe she was challenging the intimidating Julia, but the words wouldn’t stay inside. “Did you kill a man?”

  Julia didn’t so much as blink. “I tried. He escaped, but somewhat the worse for wear, I assure you.”

  “She tore him to bits,” Willa said with satisfaction. “Slashed his face beyond recognition.”

  “Bastard.” Olivia resembled the Valkyrie once more. “I wish I’d been there.”

  Abruptly, Alicia found herself back in Cheapside, crouching behind the privy of the White Sow. “The scarred man,” she said slowly. She raised her gaze to meet Julia’s. “That’s who they spoke of, the conspirators. You did that.”

  Julia nodded serenely. “I did.”

  There was more to the story, but Alicia knew she wasn’t going to hear it. She was not one of them. The sensation of being examined had not left.

  She stood. “This has been lovely . . . well, not actually, but it has been interesting. That is considerably more than an afternoon spent in the parlor would have been.” She curtsied to the three of them. “But, all courtesies aside, I don’t especially feel like exposing any more of myself for your edification today.”

  She turned to leave the room.

  “Lady Alicia.” Julia’s tone did not allow her to walk out entirely. Alicia turned with very ill grace.

  “What is it? Do you wish to know what I had for breakfast? Eggs and ham. How about my sleeping arrangements with Wyndham? He takes the chair, I take the bed. My lady’s maid is Garrett, my companion is Millie. I have three freckles on my left shoulder that make a perfect triangle.” She crossed her arms and scowled. “Will that do?”

  Lady Dryden was standing by now, flanked by her friends. “I was only going to add,” she said mildly, “that you should take great care not to walk off on your own again. There are dangerous criminals afoot here.”

  Still frowning, Alicia let out a breath. “Thank you. I’ll make note of that.” She turned to leave, then turned back. “If you want to talk to me again . . . well, don’t. I’m annoyed with you all.”

  Julia nodded. “Thank you. I’ll make note of that,” she said calmly, apparently not at all offended by Alicia’s brusqueness.

  Unflappable. Alicia couldn’t bear unflappable people. Especially when she herself was rather . . . flappable. She turned her back on them and left the room, fuming anew.

  What upset you more, that you were interrogated, or that you were not included?

  “Both,” she muttered to herself. “And to hell with the contradiction!”

  At the top of the stairs leading down to the front hall, she paused. She didn’t want to go back down to the parlor—God forbid! She didn’t particularly want to hole up in her—and Wyndham’s!—bedchamber for the rest of the day. And despite her dismissal of the Sirens, she did believe them about the dangers of walking about on her own.

  Abruptly she sat on the top stair and dangled her hands off her knees. She likely looked the child, but she needed a moment to think about her current state of indecision.

  She was never indecisive. She always knew precisely what she wanted—and who, if one were to be completely honest—and had spent her life figuring out how to get around the obstacles to her desires. There were only two rules that she felt compelled to follow.

  Don’t hurt anyone.

  Don’t get caught.

  The pain in her sisters’ eyes came back to mock her first rule. The disapproval in Wyndham’s mocked the second.

  Without those constants, without the restrictions of convention or the constraints of poverty, without someone to please or to rebel against—well, she simply felt lost, that was all.

  She had wealth aplenty now, due to Wyndham’s reward. She had lost the taste for vengeance this morning. She wanted to help Wyndham, but it was his quest, not hers. Without the rudder of necessity and the fantasy of revenge, she felt entirely and absolutely . . .

  Lost.

  She took a deep breath and dropped her chin atop her knees. Lady Alicia Lawrence was never at a loss! She hated this feeling and refused to leave this stair until she’d resolved herself.

  Below, the front door opened to admit yet another guest. Goodness, no wonder she and Wyndham had been forced to double up. Apparently no one wanted to miss Lord Cross’s Saturnalia.

  A stream of piled luggage with liveried legs staggered through the door, followed by a very stylish bonnet. One assumed there was an equally stylish lady beneath it. Several footmen rushed forward with fawning expressions to take said bonnet, so one might also assume that said lady was very attractive.

  “My lady, we have reserved the garden suite for you,” the butler said to the newcomer with an actual smidgen of warmth in his voice.

  Absolutely twitching with curiosity now, Alicia leaned precariously to one side—she couldn’t stand, for she hadn’t yet resolved herself, of course—to see beneath the brim of the aforementioned bonnet.

  “Blasted peacock plumes,” she muttered. She pressed as close to the stair spindles as she could without impressing them into her face—for she hadn’t lost all sense of decorum—but she could not see the new lady. Was it the Prince Regent’s famous mistress, Lady Halswick?

  At last the bonnet came off, to reveal a head of shimmering white-blond hair twisted into a flawless construction that even the extremely stylish bonnet had not managed to disarrange.

  Alicia leaned a bit farther, but all she could see was a smooth ivory brow and the tip of an unobjectionable nose. The woman must be stunning, however, for the butler and footmen stood in a circle of adoration, their faces lifted as if to the sun.

  “Thank you,” came a melodious voice from beneath the pile of shimmering hair. “Tell me . . . has Lord Wyndham yet arrived?”

  Wyndham?

  My Wyndham? But he wasn’t, not really, was he? Alicia felt her stomach flip uncomfortably, reminded once again how very little she knew about Wyndham.

  “Yes, my lady. He arrived yesterday.” The butler bowed excessively low. Alicia hated the lady already. “Shall I inform him you have arrived?”

  “Ah . . . no. I believe I shall let it be a surprise.”

  Alicia felt her fists clench. The bright beauty below her would be surprised, indeed, if Alicia flung her woods-soiled shoe into that perfect coif!

  The butler seemed to recover himself enough to realize that the footmen were ogling rather than working. He clapped his hands sharply. “Come now! Carry these things to the garden suite! Lady Wyndham hasn’t all day!”

  Alicia slowly leaned back from the railing. Her breath had left in startled exhale and didn’t seem to want to come back.

  Lady Wyndham.

  Was that what the Sirens had been trying to find out—if Alicia knew that Wyndham was married?

  Married. Wyndham. Bloody hell.

  Like a ball from a cannon, Alicia was up off the stair and in pursuit, for she had just remembered what she wanted out of life.

  Wyndham, of course.

  Sans beautiful wife, if she could manage it.

  Wyndham strode through the great house, tugging on his riding gloves as he went. Lady Dryden had proposed that he, Greenleigh, Reardon, and Lord Dryden take a gentlemen’s excursion—meaning riding out to confer in privacy out-of-doors—with Marcus acting as his wife’s second for the purposes of discretion. The usual division of the sexes during a house party was playing hell with any sort of strategizing, or it would if Marcus and Julia weren’t such superior partners.

  Julia was the first woman in the history of the Four, and as the Falcon, the watchful eye above them al
l, Stanton was glad to find that she was also the most effective Fox in generations.

  Considering it was the Fox’s role to chart the fates of nations, he personally considered them all very fortunate that Julia, Lady Dryden, was indeed on their side.

  “Darling!”

  That all too familiar intonation stopped him in his tracks.

  No. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now.

  Yet, this was a decadent party for the fast set, where the wildly wealthy played with the madly inappropriate. And those who were both came to wallow as deeply as they dared.

  For a certain classic beauty, who cared not for convention or for censure, nor apparently for Stanton’s good opinion, a party such as this would be a playground indeed.

  He raised his gaze to the tall, lovely woman standing silhouetted against the diffused light from the front windows. There she was, the only woman he had ever loved, albeit desperately and uselessly. He sighed, giving in to the cruel humor of Fate, and he smiled.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  She smiled and stepped forward, her hands outstretched. “I had meant to surprise you, darling. Instead I’ve likely frightened you, looking a sight from traveling as I do.” She patted at her sleeve with a frown. “I’m an absolute mess.”

  Stanton took his cue. “Of course you aren’t. You look lovely, as usual.”

  She smiled, satisfied for the time being. Later, he’d have to make up for the brevity of his praise. Catherine, the Marchioness of Wyndham, required the most diligent of attention from every male within the range of her costly jasmine perfume. Most men seemed not to mind.

  “I’ll just pop on up to my little room then and change. I assume you will be my escort for the ball tonight? We have so much to catch up on.”

  Hmm. Stanton felt his color rise. He’d never faced this rather sticky situation before. How to explain Alicia? “I . . . I fear I will not. I am . . . that is to say—I must—”

  “You are here with someone.” Her eyes had narrowed. “You’re having an affair.”

  Stanton opened his mouth to deny it. He wasn’t, of course. Or was he? The house grew far too warm. Must Herbert always tie his cravat so tight?