by Cheryl Bolen
She came to stand beside him, and he took her white-gloved hand. This was the happiest day of his life.
* * *
Throughout the nervous walk down the nave at St. George's, she looked at the dark-haired man she was about to marry. She thought she had never seen a more magnificent sight. He wore his regimentals, presenting a spotless appearance with his well-polished boots, crisp white breeches, and sparkling brass buttons against his red coat.
So many fleeting thoughts collided as she gazed upon him. How his tailor must marvel at cutting the cloth for such a man! Jack had been favored with wide shoulders, long trunk, and narrow waist. How could one as handsome as he have fallen in love with a bespectacled spinster such as she?
Their eyes met. Her heart stampeded as she peered into his flashing black eyes. Coming to stand beside him, she placed her hand in his and discovered hers was shaking.
Later, as Daphne recited her marriage vows, she realized she had never been happier. She could have looked the earth over and never found a man more to her liking. It was not just the perfection of his handsome appearance she had fallen in love with.
She loved his soul. He was the finest, most noble man in the three kingdoms. He was possessed of a quick intelligence and was well read. He was courageous. And he was modest.
Most of all, he loved her. Long before she allowed herself to acknowledge her love for him, she had known that he had fallen in love with her even when he thought an alliance between two from such dissimilar backgrounds impossible.
The very idea of being cherished by this wonderful man made her glow from the inside as they stood there, surrounded by those she loved most. Her hands linked with Jack's as they vowed to love one another until separated by death.
When he produced a simple gold band and slipped it on her finger, she was nearly overcome with the significance of this ceremony, this sacrament. Now she truly belonged to him. Her beloved Jack.
* * *
The Earl of Sidworth had offered them his own coach to transport the bride and groom from the church to the wedding breakfast at Sidworth House. Jack thought it was very good of Daphne's father to arrange for them to have these few minutes alone in the carriage before being accosted with a house full of Chalmers and Percy relations.
He and Daphne waved graciously from the coach window to those standing on the Hanover Square pavement surrounding St. George's. Until they were out of view. Then Jack lowered the velvet curtains, drew his wife into his arms, and began to kiss her rather passionately.
Though she had no vast experience in the art of kissing, Daphne was proving to be an apt pupil. He greatly looked forward to advancing her education in other amorous matters.
While his bride was emitting throaty little noises of appreciation, a great pounding of hooves and shouting bore down on their coach. Wheels skidded to a stop amid shrill whinnying from their horses. What the devil?
Their kiss hastily terminated, he flicked up the curtain to see what had brought their carriage to so sudden a stop. Their coach was surrounded by heavily armed hussars. The Regent's own regiment.
His first thought was that the French had attacked England on her own shores. Every man would be needed. As much as he did not want to leave his bride, he knew his duty was to England.
He threw open the coach door and disembarked. Quickly discerning which of the dozen men surrounding them was the highest ranking, he addressed that man. “Pray, Captain, explain why you stopped our coach on my wedding day.”
“I am to give you this communiqué and escort you to an undisclosed location.” He handed Jack a sealed letter.
It bore the Regent's seal.
Jack broke the seal and scanned the short letter written in what he believed to be the Regent's own hand on the sovereign's crested stationary.
My Dear Captain,
You are needed at once. My soldiers will escort you to your destination. It may be some days before you return to your bride. Tell no one, except Lady Daphne. I am sure your resourceful bride will think of some excuse to explain your absence.
It was signed by the Regent.
“We've taken the liberty of procuring your horse,” the captain told Jack.
Chapter 2
To Daphne's astonishment, they were fifteen minutes into the wedding breakfast before someone commented on the groom's absence. (The one person who would have known her to be lying—his brother—was obligated to return to Sussex immediately after the wedding ceremony.)
“Dearest,” Lady Sidworth finally said, “Where is your husband?”
Daphne set down her fork, drew a deep breath, and lowered her brows to embellish her performance. “My poor Jack was determined to make it through the ceremony, but then the illness he's been fighting claimed him.”
“How dreadful!” Lady Sidworth said as a chorus of other attendees agreed. “Whatever is the matter with him? He looked perfectly well.”
Oh, yes! He most certainly did. “He woke up with mumps. You know what Jack is. He wouldn't dream of exposing all these people, and once he found out that I never had them, he insisted on quarantining himself. He wouldn't even allow himself to kiss me.”
Her very breath thinned at the memory of their passionate kiss in the carriage. Pride swelled within her as she pictured Jack riding off on his mount to serve his country. She issued a forlorn sigh.
“Then your wedding trip to Addersley Priory won't take place, either?”
Daphne could have wept. “It doesn't look like it.” She had so looked forward to rambling with Jack around the Sidworth ancestral country home in the Essex countryside. They were to have had the house all to themselves. They had planned long rides and lazy picnics and romantic evenings beside the fire.
Lady Sidworth spun around to face her husband. “Did you hear that, Sidworth? Captain Dryden has been quarantined with the mumps.”
“Decent of him. I shouldn't like our Daf to get them. Still remember when Penworth came down with them at Eton. The fellow got a fat neck, ran fever, then the next thing we knew, they were carrying his dead body out the door. Frightfully upsetting to a nine-year-old lad.”
“Now, Sidworth, you shouldn't say those things in front of Daphne. She'll worry herself sick over that dear husband of hers.”
“Didn't one of our girls have the mumps?” inquired his lordship as he slathered marmalade onto his toast.
Lady Sidworth nodded. “The two youngest. Rosemary and Di. Remember, we sent the other girls off to your mother's so they wouldn't get them?”
He nodded. “Every one of us had them when we were growing up. Mother said I was by far the sickest. I don't remember it myself.”
“That's because you don't remember anything unless it involves carrying off dead bodies.” Lady Sidworth rolled her eyes and turned to face Daphne. “I suppose Captain Dryden's gone to your house.”
Uh oh. Her mother would think he had gone to their new home, which wasn't new at all. The modest Chelsea house had been in the female branch of the Percy family for generations. Mama had passed it to Daphne upon her marriage, having decided another of her properties would be her dower house, should she ever become widowed. “Not actually,” Daphne responded, trying to come up with a plausible explanation of Jack's whereabouts.
“What a pity. I was so hoping he was so we could have you here at Sidworth House for a few more nights.” Lady Sidworth's gentle gaze fixed on her daughter. “It's very sad to relinquish one's firstborn.”
Whew! Her parents hadn't even inquired about Jack's location! “Then I will be happy to continue on here at Sidworth House until Jack re---” She had started to say returns, but changed it to, “recuperates.” She stabbed at her herring. “I shouldn't like to go to our home without Jack. Especially on our wedding night.”
She was quickly losing her appetite. And her good humor. Why did she have to marry the most important man in British government? Had she married a lesser man, they would be on their way to Addersley Priory this very afternoon.
> “I daresay it would be lonely at your new home all by yourself,” Rosemary said. “I know I would be frightened if I were alone in that house at night. You haven't even procured servants yet, have you?”
A distracted look on her face, Daphne answered. “I have the one chambermaid.”
Lady Sidworth directed her attention on her eldest daughter again. “Really, dearest, you must interview prospective servants.”
“You know I don't like to do something at which I'm inept.”
“Should you like me to assist?” Lady Sidworth asked.
“I should love it, my dearest mother!”
Daphne felt Cornelia's eyes on her. The duchess was at the opposite end of the long table and obviously felt deprived of the information regarding Jack's disappearance. A moment later, she left her half-eaten plate and quickly made it to the head of the table. “Wherever is the captain?”
Lady Sidworth answered. “He's come down with the mumps.”
“Had to be quarantined,” Lord Sidworth added.
Cornelia thrust hands to hips. “Where, pray tell?”
Daphne wished she could stuff her hard-cooked egg down her inquisitive sister's throat. “I daresay he's at his lodgings.”
After the guests left, and after her married sisters returned to their homes with their husbands, and after she climbed into the same solitary bed she'd slept in every night for more than twenty years, Daphne grew melancholy.
This was her wedding night.
And she had no idea where her husband was or when she would see him again.
* * *
He was trying to be a professional about this. After all, Captain Jack Dryden was a professional soldier. Had been since he was seventeen years of age. Duty always came first. England always came first.
But that was before Daphne. He fleetingly wondered if he were given the choice of saving the lives of his comrades in arms or the life of one very slender, bespectacled young woman with remarkably unruly hair, which he would save.
He loved Daphne that much.
Which is what made this blasted assignment—if one could call it such—so deuced difficult. He felt wretched he'd had to leave her on their wedding day. As bad as that was, his hunger to see to her, to take her in his arms, was even worse. Four days it had been since they had married.
The first day was a bloody blur of being forced to depart London for Brighton—without being able to tell Daphne where he was going—and riding hell bent to leather to meet the Prince Regent at the Royal Marine Pavilion in that watering city. Jack's missive from the Prince Regent had hinted that Jack was needed, but alas, once Jack arrived at the sumptuous pavilion where the Prince spent much time, he was informed the Prince's arrival had been delayed.
Three of the most boring, frustrating days in his existence followed. The Prince still had not arrived. It was almost too painful to contemplate that by now he could have made love to his wife. The very thought of lying with her in their marriage bed accelerated his erratic breathing. He had best turn his thoughts to other, less exciting diversions.
The only diversion permissible was at the magnificent domed building known as the Royal Stables. The massive proportions of the two-storied giant rotunda rendered the Regent's own little palace across a smallish square of verdant lawn from it. . . well, little! Ringing the ground floor of the Royal Stables were rooms for sixty horses. Rooms, not stalls. Above them, ostlers and grooms resided.
In the center of the elegant and airy glass-domed building was an octagonal pool where the horses could drink. His Warrior would never want to leave! Jack was permitted to exercise Warrior each day in the adjoining Riding House.
But there, as at the Regent's Marine Pavilion where Jack had been assigned a guest room finer than any chamber in which he had ever spent a night, Jack felt a fish out of water. Whether at the Riding House or at the dinner table at the pavilion, Jack was the only guest not of the nobility. And he did not even have Daphne to show him which fork to use!
He was profoundly grateful on the morning of the fifth day when he was summoned to meet with the Prince Regent. If one could call noon morning. Jack was learning that noon was morning to an aristocrat.
Dressed in his formal Hussars uniform, Jack followed a liveried footman to the Prince Regent's private rooms. In the somewhat modest-looking library, the Prince Regent was wheeling around the chamber in a mechanical chair. Had the poor fellow gotten so fat he could no longer walk? It made sense that the human knees had not been constructed to support so heavy a load. Jack's gaze fell on the Regent's enormous stomach, which spread out so much it hid his thighs. The serving monarch was possessed of a fine face and a head of thick, reddish brown hair. “Good of you to come, Captain Dryden. I beg you forgive my tardiness, but my progress here was delayed.”
Bowing before his monarch, Jack was, as he had been each time in the Regent's presence, inordinately flattered when the Prince Regent actually remembered his name. “How good it is to see you again, Your Royal Highness.”
The Prince turned to a distinguished-looking man seated near him. This man with lightly grayed hair appeared to be perhaps a decade younger than the Prince Regent, which would make him about a decade older than Jack. “Have you met the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh?”
Jack's eyes widened. This prospective assignment must be very important. Lord Castlereagh was one of the most important men in all of England and certainly a man who worked closely with Jack's former commander in chief, the Duke of Wellington.
“I have not had that pleasure,” Jack said, bowing now to the Foreign Secretary and hoping like hell he'd followed the proper procedure with his previous bow to the Prince.
The Prince eyed Jack. “I beg that you take a seat, my good man.” He indicated a wood-framed camel chair beside the Foreign Secretary, and Jack did as bid.
“Before we begin,” said the Prince, turning to Lord Castlereagh, “I must explain to you for further reference that Captain Dryden has just married Lord Sidworth's charming daughter, Lady Daphne, who everyone knows is the personification of discretion. Anything we tell this exemplary officer can be shared with Lady Daphne.”
“With a woman?” a surprised Lord Castlereagh asked.
The Regent looked down his nose upon one of his highest ranking subjects. “Lady Daphne is not just a woman.”
“Then I defer to your Royal Highness's judgment.”
The chamber's very color scheme of brown, orange-reds, and greens and the solid masculinity of its furnishings invited a masculine gathering, Jack thought. With its restrained grandeur, the somber library seemed an appropriate place to discuss the crown's important work.
The Prince cleared his throat and began. “I received a communication from the newly created Field Marshall Wellington begging me to release you long enough to undertake one assignment for him. Since the duke assures me it's vital to the best interest of our country, I have agreed.”
Jack's first thoughts were of Daphne. How long would it be before he once again beheld her, or once again held her?
Lord Castlereagh spoke next. “The Duke of Wellington and I have been in extensive communication on this grave issue we pray you can help resolve.”
“I am completely at your service,” Jack said.
The Foreign Secretary did not speak for a moment. “We're not altogether sure it is a situation you—or anyone—can resolve. It's actually very difficult to articulate, we know so little.” He paused. “Did you perchance ever know a Captain Heffington?”
“Indeed,” Jack said. “I worked with him on reconnaissance before Ciudad Rodrigo.” His head lowered respectfully. “I heard that he died.”
Lord Castlereagh nodded. “At the Siege of Sorauren a few weeks ago. He was supposed to be hurrying back to England with important information, but he just could not resist a good fight against the bloody French.”
“A great pity,” the Regent said, nodding.
Jack was inordinately curious to know what information poor
old Heff had, but he would wait for his lordship to reveal it. “You are sure he possessed the information before the fateful battle?”
Lord Castlereagh nodded. “Yes. His batman was making arrangements for him to return to England when the battle interfered.”
Jack was still wondering what information Heffington possessed that was so valuable.
The Foreign Secretary faced Jack. “You knew that Captain Heffington spoke French like a native?”
Jack nodded. “His mother, I believe, was French.”
“That was the chief reason I recommended him for so important a mission.”
What important mission?
“For some time I've been suspicious there was a leak somewhere in my office,” Lord Castlereagh began.
“A leak?” Jack asked.
His lordship nodded. “I had cause to believe the enemy has breached the channels of communication between my office and our peninsular forces.”
A most serious problem, to be sure, Jack thought. “You suspect someone on your staff?”
“It's not only possible, but probable. First, I suspected that some of my communiqués with Wellington may have been seen by someone who might be in the employ of the duc d'Arblier.”
The very mention of the duc made Jack's blood boil. The Frenchman was as great a menace to England as that so-called French emperor he served. To Jack, he was a personal nemesis, and Jack would never feel either his country or his loved ones safe as long as the duc d'Arblier drew breath. How Jack would enjoy being the one to deprive him of that function!
“Acting completely alone in France,” the Foreign Secretary continued, “Captain Heffington was able to learn the names of half a dozen high-ranking English officials who have been paid by the duc d'Arblier to betray their homeland. Since I could not risk such information getting into the wrong hands, I had requested that Captain Heffington impart that information in person to no one but me.”