by Kate Moore
Chapter Two
The chief task of the husband hunter is one of discernment. Among the many gentlemen she meets, she seeks one who is suitable in heart and mind. As she begins her search, she may imagine that the only man who will suit her is one whose tastes and ideas exactly match her own, who shares equally in her likes and dislikes. Indeed, there is a pleasure in discovering shared tastes and preferences that may blind the husband hunter to the true nature of the suitability she seeks. A common taste for Italian opera and the poet Cowper is no basis for marriage compared with shared principles of integrity and kindness.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Lynley returned to the spy club by midafternoon. Under the scaffolding and flapping canvas of supposed renovations was the concealed entrance to a fine old building. He supposed that he’d passed the place often enough without giving it a second thought. And he had never guessed there was an entrance through a fashionable chemist’s shop around the corner.
Nate Wilde, the youth Lynley had abducted while playing highwayman—or rescued, really, from the traitor Radcliffe’s trigger-happy stagecoach guards—was there to greet him and take his hat and coat. Wilde still had his arm in a sling, but cheerfully managed his duties as the club’s major domo with assistance from the beautiful daughter of the spies’ tailor.
“Coffee, sir?”
Lynley nodded. He found the club to his liking. He could stroll into the quiet, well-appointed coffee room at any hour of the day or night and find a degree of comfort and privacy not readily available even in some of the finest houses. He liked the simplicity of the room with its velvet curtains and high white ceiling, and its substantial but plain mantel, nothing ornate, and no paintings of saints or martyrs. A man could think his own thoughts here without interference or rebuke. He sank down on one of the room’s long couches, shed his boots and settled himself, his feet toward the fire. He did his best thinking lying down, and he had some thinking to do about his strategy for approaching Lady Emily Radstock’s father, Lord Candover.
If Lynley had any complaint to make about the club, it was that as yet he had done no spying. But that would change tonight, if the afternoon’s interviews went successfully. His betrothal would provide the cover story his employer demanded.
According to the briefing he’d received from Goldsworthy, the club spymaster, a spy was loose in London society, who had in his or her possession, letters of the most sensitive nature between the Persian shah and his son and chief commander, at the very moment when a misstep in sensitive negotiations taking place in the East could plunge England into a war in defense of Persia.
Lynley was to be the newest weapon in the war the Foreign Office waged at home against those who would betray English secrets to Russian agents. Whoever had acquired the shah’s papers would be eager to get them into Russian hands for a profit, and the old way of doing so through Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe’s stagecoach line had now ended. So the man or woman with the papers must be desperate.
Lynley was impatient to begin the work. He had managed to extract some useful information about Emily Radstock’s family from Phil while they considered the merits of a pair of horses that Mudford wanted to sell. Like most men of fashion, Mudford bought his horses for their showy appearance, and then blamed them for equine vices more likely due to mishandling than to flaws in their temperament. In promoting Phil’s purchase, Lynley would be doing the horses a favor.
Wilde returned with the coffee and stirred the fire to crackling life. Lynley sat up and poured himself a generous cup. One thing Phil had mentioned stuck in his brain. Emily Radstock had written letters to the Times.
“Wilde, do you have any recent issues of the Times?”
“Of course, sir. Shall I collect them for you?”
When Lynley nodded, the youth disappeared to find the club’s copies of the Times, Lynley had no doubt. Lynley wanted to see one of those letters. Phil’s information did not quite explain how a beautiful young woman from a well-connected aristocratic family had reached the age of twenty-eight, almost -nine, without marrying, especially when there was nothing in Emily’s appearance or her father’s bank account to put off potential suitors. Lynley had gathered from the overheard conversation with her sister, that Emily was of an outspoken and independent nature, but he did not detect vanity or petulance, the usual defects of character to which a striking beauty might be prey.
Lynley thought he could persuade her father to agree to the match. Though his title was undistinguished, his fortune was large. His estate at Lyndale Abbey was a decent property. Furthermore, if he read the situation right, Lady Emily’s mother at least believed her daughter had diminished prospects for marriage at her age, and therefore a pair of shrewd parents might not question his sudden suit too closely.
Persuading Emily herself that their betrothal, however sudden and of whatever duration they chose to make it, was to her advantage—that was the challenge. He knew nothing of her experience with men, but he guessed that something a man had done made Emily Radstock resolve to accept the first “imbecile” she met.
Phil seemed to think that there had been an attachment to which the family had objected. In any case, Lynley needed to act. His sense of Emily Radstock told him that she did not like to be vulnerable, and he didn’t want to give her any time to arm herself against him. He had a ring that would serve his purpose, and a card of invitation procured by Goldsworthy to a gathering that could prove a good spy-hunting ground.
If he could get his ring on Emily Radstock’s finger, he could begin tonight.
* * * *
The second time Emily Radstock met Ajax Lynley was no less unsettling than the first. In her mother’s rather passé Egyptian drawing room, his height and ease of manner gave Emily a sense of an adult invading the nursery, towering over the child-sized furnishings, hobbyhorses, and toy houses. The sheer size of him stopped her brain for a moment. Emily never felt small. She was no Cinderella whose tiny foot captured a prince. She had her father’s feet, and fit as comfortably in his shoes as in her own.
She offered tea, which Lynley declined. He did not look any less sure of himself, but she would give him a way out in case he’d done some thinking over the intervening hours. She had read three chapters of the little book since their last meeting, but when he’d been announced, she’d had only a few minutes to apply its principles in reverse.
“I trust you’ve thought the better of your...idea since this morning.”
“Not at all,” he said with grating good cheer.
She wished he would sit. He was not perfectly handsome. If one looked closely, one saw a flaw in his mouth, a quirk in his upper lip on the left side, so his lips did not close completely. A thin thread of a white scar slanted across the place.
“What could you possibly mean by accepting me? You are not, I presume, an imbecile?”
He shook his head. “No one has ever accused me of lacking intelligence. I will follow your lead in setting a date for our nuptials. But we need a story to tell the world—how we met and wooed, fell in love and plighted our troth.”
“We could say that you eavesdropped on a private conversation and took advantage of an unguarded remark.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “If you are an advocate for truthfulness, we can say that we met through your sister and Phil. Your visits to support your sister as she prepares for the birth of her child, and my visits to consult with Phil about the purchase of a new pair of horses, inevitably threw us together. And love”—he made a brief circle in the air with one lean, strong hand—“ensued.”
“Ensued?” Emily fell back against the couch cushions, lifting a hand to her brow. “Oh, the romance of it all! I don’t know whether to take up my fan or my smelling salts.”
He leaned one elbow on the low mantel. It wasn’t low at all except to him. “Ah, it is, I fear, all too common a story, is it not? L
overs meeting in the midst of their families, left alone because no one imagines such a meeting has the power to stir the soul?”
“You don’t write fiction, do you?” Emily asked, straightening back up.
“No.” He sat down opposite her. “You would prefer a more romantic story? I could figure as a dashing hero who swept in to rescue you from some peril—coaching accident on an icy road? Footpads outside the theater? Wild bull in a field?—and within moments of our meeting we discovered how ardently we both admire the same poets.”
“I beg to differ with you. You do write fiction.”
He regarded her narrowly. “You’ve done something to yourself since this morning.”
She could not repress a smile. “I’ve been reading my husband-hunting guide.” She batted her lashes at him. It was more difficult than she had imagined.
He stood and crossed the room, reaching down and taking her chin in one hand and producing a handkerchief in the other hand. “Do you have something in your eye?” he asked.
Emily snatched the handkerchief and pressed it to the side of her face. Did he not understand the most basic weapon in the arsenal of the flirt? Against her skin the square of linen was crisp and clean and smelled of sage and cardamom and him. She handed it back. “Thank you.”
“It’s your hair,” he said, frowning. “I thought our betrothal saved you from enslaving yourself to that book.”
Emily sighed. “You cannot blame me for being uncertain as to the genuineness of your intentions or for wanting to do all in my power to secure...happiness in marriage.”
He reached in a pocket of his waistcoat and produced a ring.
Emily stared. Lying in his palm was a large, square amethyst set in gold surrounded by tiny diamonds—well, not so tiny. Each was the size of a respectable grain of sand. Such a ring was not a joke. Her throat felt too dry for speech.
“It’s not customary,” he said, “but I think it will suit you, you know.”
Emily looked up at him. She had been sure not two minutes earlier that he was teasing her and treating his proposal as a joke. Now she did not know how to read him. Reason said he was not a man in love, but he was plainly in earnest about their engagement.
She could take the ring. She could let it flash and dazzle on her finger as she made her way through the Season her mother wanted her to have, but she had to remember that no matter the beauty of the gem, his rash suit could not be motivated by love. He could not want her. She had to hold on to that idea as firmly and resolutely as she had ever held on to her understanding of gravity. Failing to grasp that one could not walk on air could be fatal.
She extended her left hand. He took it, letting it rest in his larger hand a moment. Then he slid the ring down her finger, and she lifted her hand from his. She caught a look of relief in his eyes at her acceptance.
“Tonight, then?” he said.
“Tonight?” She looked up at him.
“A supper and dancing at Lady Ravenhurst’s.”
“My father’s cousin?”
“I hear she gives a good supper.”
She nodded. Whatever else the Season now held, it was her chance to figure out what he really was up to.
* * * *
Emily sat down to review her strategy. She kicked off her shoes and swung her feet up onto a nile-green striped sofa from Mama’s early Egyptian phase and stretched out her hand. The diamonds on her finger winked up at her with all the deep concern of distant stars for the doings of men. Her first attempt to put off Ajax Lynley had only landed her deeper in the briars.
She tried not to think about the conversation happening in her father’s library between her betrothed and her about-to-be-quite-surprised father. Papa liked order and sameness, not surprises.
If she examined her feelings at the moment, she had to admit that the low spirits she usually felt at the prospect of an evening among the fashionable elite of London had evaporated.
The prospect of a Season as an engaged woman intrigued her. The bold ring on her finger wiped away past Seasons of failure. She would not be an object of pitying looks. No one would shun her lest the awkwardness of her situation prove catching. People would wonder, of course, how she, of all wallflowers, could have managed to snare such an eligible man.
How to enjoy confounding the doubters while working to free herself from the baronet was the dilemma. Her first effort of overcomplicating her hair with ringlets and braids had hardly slowed him down at all. He had noticed the change and gone ahead with his plan to announce their engagement, just as if she had not resembled Medusa on a bad day. Apparently, he did not require beauty in a wife.
She had got so far in her thinking when the drawing room door burst open and her papa strode in. He had a handsome, affable face warmed by a full head of golden brown hair and smile lines around his eyes, but he could frown, and when he did, what one noticed were his stiff bearing and slashing dark brows. Emily swung her feet to the floor and stood up.
“Girl, what have you done?”
“Why, got engaged, Papa. Nothing remarkable in that.”
“After five years of resisting and avoiding suitors, you chose today to give in?”
“Mama encouraged me to go forward.” Emily resisted the desire to curl her bare toes into the carpet.
Her father’s passion was building projects, and his guiding principle in life was to keep her mother happy. If that meant Egyptian furnishings in the drawing room or charitable contributions to various ladies’ organizations, he provided. He rarely took note of his children’s doings, except when his wife’s happiness might be disturbed, or when one of Emily’s letters reached the Times.
“When?” Papa looked skeptical.
“This morning.”
“He’s a better choice than your first attempt at it, I’ll give you that.”
She had to agree. Her first love had flattered her and flirted shamelessly while secretly pursuing a different heiress. She had been completely taken in. “You gave him your consent then?”
“I did. You’ll not get out of it that way.”
“I just got in, Papa.” Emily held out her ring for him to admire.
He glanced at it. “You waited for your mother to be away.”
Emily shrugged. “I could hardly help Grandmother’s being ill.”
“Well, this Lynley fellow appears to know his mind. He’s off to put an announcement in the papers.”
“I’ll send an express to Mama directly.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“Did he not tell you? At Roz’s house. He likes horses, you know.”
“Whatever you’ve done to your hair, your mother would not like it.” The parent who rarely paid attention to her appeared uncomfortably penetrating at the moment.
“Yes, Papa.”
“I suppose your mother will want to give a party.” He was losing interest, turning another domestic matter over to the women in his life.
“Time enough to worry about parties when Mama returns.”
* * * *
On his return to the club, Lynley received an order, transmitted by Wilde, to report to the spies’ tailor, Kirby. He supposed that at some future time he would dislike orders, but for now he was enjoying the workings of the spy club.
Wilde handed him the stack of newspapers he’d requested, and tucking the papers under his arm, Lynley made his way out through the kitchen and across the little yard separating the club from the chemist’s shop that housed the tailor’s fitting room. Spying and tailoring both depended for their success on attention to detail, and Kirby, whose shop dealt in soaps, lotions, and powders as a cover, was a master at the trade.
In between measurings and fittings for suitable black evening wear, Lynley lounged on a rug-padded bench and worked his way through the pile of newspapers, looking for letters from his betrothed. He h
ad just found a letter signed E. Radstock when he became aware of a shadow cast over the page. He glanced up to find Goldsworthy looming over him.
“Well, lad, have you got your cover settled? Are you ready to make a start?”
With a greatcoat over his massive bulk, Goldsworthy blocked the light from the back room’s high window. Lynley folded the page of the Times, and endeavoring to maintain an offhand air, jammed it into a pocket. He looked up at his new commander. “I’ll be taking Lady Emily to the Ravenhursts’ tonight. Anything more I should know?”
Goldsworthy gave him little space, but Lynley managed to stand. He had stood for every scold of his life, never permitting either his diminutive aunt or his willowy uncle to stand over him. He liked meeting an opponent eye to eye, and Goldsworthy was an opponent of sorts, always testing one’s mettle.
“Lord Candover’s daughter has agreed to the match?”
“She has.”
“Excellent. There’s no better cover than playing the besotted swain to some chit for the Season. Had Blackstone do it. Worked a charm. Now then...” Goldsworthy turned to the cutting table and slapped down a rolled-up paper. “The sooner you can smoke this fellow out, the better.”
Kirby gave a polite cough. “If we could finish Sir Ajax’s coat first, Mr. G.”
“Of course, of course.” The big man waved a hand for Kirby to continue, and Kirby motioned Lynley to try on a black evening coat with long tails.
By fellow, Goldsworthy meant the person who was holding on to a group of letters between the ruler of Persia and his son Prince Mirza, translated into English by Willock, the English chargé d’affaires who kept his own extensive network of spies in the Persian court. In Russian hands those letters could ensnare England in a foreign war.
It had been some time since Lynley had thought of Russia as his enemy. That thinking belonged to a foolish boy unable to distinguish between the one man who had injured him, and a whole nation. Still, the case revived the old enmity he’d felt against his mother’s lover.