by Jane Feather
For an hour she moved among the guests, exchanging pleasantries, accustoming her ear to their occasionally thickly accented English. She knew that she must absorb as much of the conversations as she could, listening for anything that might hint at an unusual activity or interest. Don Antonio’s absence did not mean that the evening was wasted. One or two of these generally solemn and preoccupied gentlemen were more than possibly agents of Napoléon, and she might pick up something useful.
Greville kept to his own circuit, glancing only occasionally in Aurelia’s direction to satisfy himself that she was holding her own in comfort. When Don Antonio Vasquez was announced in ringing tones by the butler, Greville didn’t turn his head towards the door, merely continued softly with his conversation with an elderly matron, who was lamenting the loss of her treasures, which she’d been obliged to abandon when her son had taken his entire family into exile just ahead of the usurper.
The fine hairs on Aurelia’s nape lifted at the sound of the name, but she didn’t turn immediately, not until Doña Bernardina billowed over to them, the newcomer in tow. “Ladies…gentlemen, some of you know Don Antonio, I’m sure.”
There were murmurs of agreement, hands shaken, bows exchanged, before it was Aurelia’s turn to be introduced. She extended her hand to the tall, slender man with the spade beard and coal black eyes. His hair was longer than prevailing fashion dictated, curling a little on his broad forehead. Apart from his white shirt, he was dressed entirely in black, and it suited him, she thought, absorbing his appearance with an almost clinical detachment. His countenance was arresting, almost aggressively handsome, but his mouth was cruel, and his long nose resembled a hawk’s beak.
Aurelia decided she would not care to meet Don Antonio Vasquez alone in a dark street. There was something predatory about him, and something intrinsically dangerous in his lithe, fluid grace. As the introductions were made, she sensed instantly that he had an interest of some kind in her. His hand as he held hers was cool and dry, the fingers long and white, a huge emerald set in gold on his right-hand ring finger. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it with a courtly flourish and a bow that was now so old-fashioned as to be almost archaic in London society.
“Lady Falconer, how delightful.” His voice was soft and almost mellifluous, the accent faint and charming, and his mouth smiled, but his eyes did not.
“Don Antonio, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” she returned with a warm smile. “How long have you been in London?”
“A mere three weeks,” he said, taking a glass of champagne from the footman’s tray. “Not long enough to feel at home as yet.” He sipped his champagne. “And you, Lady Falconer, you are, of course, quite at home in London?”
“I have lived here for some time. But my family home is in the country. In the New Forest. Have you visited there? It’s a most interesting and ancient part of England.”
“No, alas, I have seen only the town of Dover, where I landed, and the area around my lodgings. Grosvenor Square…a pretty garden, but with none of the magnificence of our Madrid parks.”
“Perhaps not, sir. I own I have long wished to visit Madrid.” Aurelia tapped her closed fan against her mouth as if in thought. Greville would understand that while battle had been joined, she needed no assistance at this point. “But you say you have lodgings on Grosvenor Square?”
“Close by. Adam’s Row, I believe it to be called.”
“Yes, indeed. We are neighbors, it seems, Don Antonio. South Audley Street is but a step away, too close to warrant the use of a carriage.”
“What a delightful coincidence, and so convenient since I do not maintain a carriage. Such an unnecessary expense when hackney carriages are so easy to obtain. Perhaps I may call upon you, my lady.”
This was not a gentleman accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of a frowsty hackney carriage, Aurelia reflected. It was almost impossible to imagine that elegant frame reposing itself on the cracked and stained leather squabs of a hired vehicle.
She smiled an invitation. “I should be happy to receive you, sir. Are you acquainted with my husband, Sir Greville Falconer?”
“I don’t believe so,” he replied smoothly, turning his head to follow her gesturing hand. He turned his cold smile upon her. “Is your husband the tall gentleman talking to our host?”
She nodded. “He is.”
“I think I may have seen him in Grosvenor Square gardens. He was with a small girl and a very large dog. They made a most charming spectacle.”
“My daughter.” Aurelia felt a shiver down her spine as if she was standing in an icy draft.
“A pretty child, ma’am. I congratulate you.”
Keep away from my daughter. She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from shouting the words.
She managed a laugh, however, although it sounded rather hollow to her own ears. “I hardly think I can take credit, Don Antonio.”
“Ah, but she takes after her mother, clearly,” he responded with a gallant bow.
Play the part, she told herself. Think of it as a game of charades.
She batted her eyelashes and flipped open her fan, half covering her face as she offered a flirtatious smile and murmured, “You flatter me, sir.”
Greville, aware of every movement of her fan from across the room, understood the message. She was telling him everything was going smoothly.
“Perhaps I could show you some of London, Don Antonio?”
“I would be honored, Lady Falconer.” His eyes slid away from her across to her husband. “If your husband would have no objections.”
Again her laugh sounded artificial to her ears, but she hoped a stranger wouldn’t notice. “In London, sir, ladies do not live in their husband’s pockets.”
He bowed solemnly. “We live in a rather more rigid society in Madrid, Lady Falconer. Rather old-fashioned, I daresay, by London standards.”
She twinkled at him over her fan. “Do you disapprove of our free and easy London ways, sir?”
“Not at all, ma’am,” he said, his eyes hooded. “Just a matter of becoming accustomed, and with so many lovely and accommodating ladies, I don’t believe it will take me long to become accustomed.”
And once more, out of the blue, Aurelia felt an eerie breath of cold and thought suddenly that Don Antonio Vasquez was playing with her. She had thought she was doing the playing, but now she was not so sure. She was no longer sure she was in control. She moved her fan with a twist of her wrist to her right shoulder, wafting it leisurely towards her face.
Greville was at her side more quickly than she would have believed possible. “My dear, I don’t believe I have made the acquaintance of your companion.”
To her astonishment, she thought his voice sounded faintly slurred, and when she cast him a covert glance, she thought his eyes looked a little glazed. She performed the introduction, saying lightly, “It seems that Don Antonio is a neighbor of ours, Greville. He has lodgings on Adam’s Row.”
“I believe I may have seen you in Grosvenor Square the other afternoon,” the Spaniard said. “You were accompanying a delightful child and her dog.”
Greville peered at him over the rim of his glass, blinking as if unsure if he was seeing him aright. “Can’t say I noticed you.” He shook his head. “No offense, I hope.”
“Not at all,” Don Antonio said. “The dog drew my attention. One doesn’t see an Irish wolfhound very often.” His lips moved in the semblance of a smile.
Greville gave a bluff laugh and his hand shook, spilling a little of his champagne onto the carpet. “No, indeed not.”
Aurelia was awestruck. She would swear on her parents’ grave that Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer had never been the worse for drink in his life, but he was giving the most superb imitation. But why? He had, of course, succeeded in turning the Spaniard’s attention completely away from her, and she had now regained the composure she had momentarily been afraid of losing.
She turned her full attention to Don Antonio, giving him a dazzling
smile. “I do hope you will call in South Audley Street, Don Antonio. I am anxious to fulfill my promise to show you some of the sights of our city. I have my own barouche, so there’s no need for you to concern yourself with a conveyance. I would be delighted to take you up.” That should have given Greville one specific piece of information he’d asked for.
The Spaniard bowed. “I will be in your debt, my lady, and the envy of all.”
She tapped his arm reprovingly with her fan, her eyes sparkling, something approaching a simper on her lips. “I do protest, sir. Such shameless flattery.”
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, exclaiming, “It is for me to protest, my lady. You must absolve me. I am utterly sincere.”
“Then I look forward to your call, Don Antonio. I am at home most mornings at eleven o’clock.”
He bowed again to her, then offered a nodding bow to Greville, and with a word of excuse moved away.
Greville spoke into the air above her ear, in that whisper that only she could hear. “Leave now.”
Why? But she didn’t ask the question, instead stepped away from him and threaded her way through the room to where her hostess was holding court by the piano.
“Ah, Lady Falconer, come and join us.” Doña Bernardina greeted her with an outflung hand. “Give us your opinion on Lope de Vega. We find so few English know any of our writers except for Cervantes.”
“And much as they say they love the book, they cannot pronounce Don Quixote correctly,” an effete young man stated with a laugh that bordered on a sneer.
“You must forgive us our ignorance,” Aurelia said with a chilly smile. “The English are not known for their linguistic skill, I have to admit. I daresay it is because our language is spoken everywhere and we have grown quite lazy as a result.”
“But you, Lady Falconer, you speak a little Spanish, no?”
Having done her patriotic duty in defending her countrymen’s lamentably arrogant lack of interest in foreign languages, Aurelia was prepared to yield the ground. “Not really. Only French, and a little Italian.”
It was a while before she could politely excuse herself from the conversation and make her farewells to her hostess. She could hear Greville’s voice from the far side of the room, pitched a little too loud to be appropriate, and while he couldn’t be accused of actually slurring his words, a thickness indicated a lack of control, and his tall frame seemed to waft a little as if he were a tree in a high wind.
Aurelia would have laughed at such a brilliant display, except she assumed that what lay behind it was probably not funny at all.
Chapter Nineteen
THE CARRIAGE WAS WAITING by the door in the same place it had dropped them off, Jemmy standing by the horses. But Aurelia noticed for the first time that there was an unfamiliar coachman on the box. Usually Jemmy managed the carriage with just the help of Greville’s groom. Greville must have hired the new man without telling her. Not that he had any obligation to do so. Jemmy ran to open the door.
“I didn’t realize we had a new coachman,” she said as she climbed into the carriage.
“Just this morning, m’lady,” Jemmy informed her in a tone that rang with disapproval. “Sir Greville said as ’ow there ’ad to be the two of us to drive you, even though I’ve been doin’ it quite satisfactory for years.”
It was presumably part of the protective net Greville had thrown over her, Aurelia thought. She smiled rather wearily at Jemmy. “I’m sure Sir Greville was not casting aspersions on your skill, Jemmy. He probably felt two coachmen were necessary for his wife. Husbands often think like that. It adds to their consequence.”
“Mebbe,” Jemmy said doubtfully. “The new bloke don’t say much, that’s fer sure.” He closed the door and went around to jump up on the back step, clinging to the strap as the coachman started the horses and the carriage moved off at a fast clip.
Aurelia was astounded at how suddenly exhausted she felt, as if she’d been walking a high wire for hours. She leaned back in a corner and closed her eyes, wondering why Greville was staying on, and why he was putting on such an act.
She was almost asleep when the carriage drew up outside the house. Jemmy let down the footstep and opened the door, peering into the dark interior of the vehicle. “We’re ’ome, mum.”
“Oh, goodness, are we, Jemmy. I was almost asleep.” She gathered herself together and stepped out into the street. The night air had a breath of warmth, a real intimation of spring at last, and the faint scent of early-May blossoms drifted from the trees in Grosvenor Square.
She let herself into the quiet, lamplit house and went into the library, determined to wait for Greville’s return. The soiree would not go on for much longer by the unexciting nature of the entertainment offered, but Greville might go on somewhere if it suited his plan. But Aurelia decided to take her chance for an hour. She kicked off her satin slippers and curled up in a corner of the sofa with a small glass of cognac, thinking over the events of the evening, and particularly Don Antonio Vasquez.
He frightened her, she realized after a minute’s careful thought. He was like a large cat with his eyes on unwitting prey. Was she a match for him?
• • •
Greville let himself into the house quietly an hour later. The lamps were still lit, and he saw that the library door was open. He trod quietly to the door and looked in. Aurelia was fast asleep in a corner of the sofa, her paisley shawl draped over her. The fire was almost out, the candles on the mantel guttering, the lamps burning low. He went over to the sofa and gently shook her shoulder.
“Aurelia, wake up, my love. It’s late and you need to be abed.” He touched the curve of her cheek with a fingertip and her eyelids fluttered, then her eyes opened and she looked up at him in bleary confusion.
“Greville?”
“Yes, it’s me, as ever was.” He bent and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Come, let me help you to bed.” He slid an arm around her shoulders and half lifted her off the sofa. “Shall I carry you?”
“No,” she said with a semblance of indignation. “Of course not. I’m quite capable of walking on my two feet…which, I might say, you did not seem to be earlier this evening.”
He chuckled. “You noticed.”
“Hard to miss.” She gathered her shawl around her, decided to ignore her discarded shoes, and set off resolutely on stockinged feet to the door.
“Ah, and there I thought I was giving a good imitation of a drunk acting sober.”
Aurelia laughed. “You probably fooled everyone but me.”
“I hope so.” He took her arm and led her to the stairs.
“Why did you want Don Antonio to think you were drunk?” she asked over her shoulder as he urged her upward.
He laughed a little. “A man who can’t hold his drink is quickly dismissed. It never does any harm to encourage people to discount one, particularly those in whom one might have some interest oneself.”
“Oh…smoke and mirrors.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I didn’t like him,” she said, turning towards her room at the head of the stairs. And that was the understatement of the year.
“With good reason.” Greville followed her down the passage. “I believe him to be a very dangerous man.”
“I wish he hadn’t seen Franny.” She gave voice to the amorphous apprehension that had gripped her earlier.
“My dear, I was with her and so was Lyra. You need have no fear for Franny, I swear that she is in no danger, and never will be.”
Her feelings for this man were confused and often conflicted, but despite the fact that he had drilled into her the mantra that she must trust no one, she trusted his word in this instance. “The new coachman is in some measure a bodyguard?”
“Yes. He’ll drive you everywhere if you’re not with me. And there will be someone to escort Franny wherever she goes, unless she’s with me.”
It was sufficient reassurance and Aurelia willingly accepted it, yielding
now to her fatigue. “Why am I so tired?”
“You had a hard evening,” he said, propelling her to the bed and pushing her down with a hand on her elbow. “Harder than you realized at the time. Deception is not an easy business.”
“Is that why you sent me away?”
“I judged you’d had enough. As I keep saying, you’re still new to the business.”
He bent over her as she sprawled on the coverlet and began to undress her with a deft efficiency that she thought through the tendrils of fatigue had less of the lover and more of the nursemaid about it. He helped her into her nightgown, offered her toothbrush and tooth powder, and while she brushed her teeth, he unpinned her hair and pulled a brush through it to loosen the curls.
Aurelia crawled under the coverlet, still astounded at how utterly exhausted she was. But when he bent over her to kiss her, she looked into his dark eyes that glowed with a strange warmth and she thought, You called me “my love.” Never before had that word in any context passed Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer’s lips in her hearing. Did he know he’d said it? Would he remember?
The words accompanied her into sleep, and when he slid in beside her, she turned into his embrace, burrowing into the hollow of his shoulder, falling into a sleep that she knew was safe and protected.
When she awoke in the morning to his soft, whispering touches beneath the coverlet, she smiled to herself in the dim light of the curtain-hung bed, thinking again of those words he had spoken. He had called her “his love.”
Perhaps he hadn’t been playing the drunkard after all, perhaps there’d been some truth to the charade. But, no, he had not been drunk when he’d helped her to bed, not one iota. And he had not been drunk when those words had passed his lips.
Of course, he didn’t know she’d heard them. She’d been dead to the world as far as he knew. But he’d still spoken them.
She stretched languidly and parted her thighs to give his tongue and fingers access to her core, and her smile deepened as she curled her fingers in his hair and caressed his ears, lifting her hips to the rhythmic waves of delight.