“Thank you,” Poppy answered, and managed to shut the door. “Tomorrow morning,” she said grimly, leaning against it, “we’re leaving this place and going back to London to get some peace.”
“I told you once before, village life is as grueling as Town life, if not more.” Aunt Charlotte chuckled.
But Poppy wasn’t amused. She packed her bags and went to bed that night with much to contemplate. The adventures of Clarissa called, however, and she was dying to forget her own troubles. So she opened the novel and read about Clarissa’s until her candle burned low.
CHAPTER 41
Nicholas wasn’t happy. Every night he dreamed about that wretched scene at Lord Derby’s, where Poppy told him she never wanted to see him again. And every morning he’d wake up and hear in his head the cryptic comment Harry had made at their club:
Lucky you.
Was he really lucky?
Or wasn’t he?
He stared at the small oil painting above his desk—a drawing room scene of him and Frank as boys—and came to a decision. He had nothing to lose.
Absolutely nothing.
His properties and title were in a state of decay, his brother was a wastrel, and Poppy rightfully despised him. The sting of her dismissive slap on his jaw had brought home to him the realization that every good thing in his life had slipped away. He wasn’t sure how he’d come to this point, why he’d neglected to respect the age-old adage that nothing worthwhile comes easily.
But looking into Poppy’s scornful eyes the night they’d ended their betrothal, he’d understood as never before that good things came at a price, a price he’d been unwilling to pay—
Until now.
He couldn’t fix everything, but he could do one thing right.
He was going to work on his relationship with Frank. He’d held his sibling at arm’s length all these years because Frank had gone from being a brother to a burden. Yet it certainly hadn’t been Frank’s fault that Nicholas had been charged by familial duty to nurture him to manhood in the absence of his parents.
Nicholas had chosen not to accept the responsibility gracefully. He’d been standoffish, all the while pretending Frank had been the one driving him away with his rude manners.
It wasn’t true, and Nicholas would have to rectify the situation immediately.
He found Frank in the same cheap hotel. His room was tiny and dim, and the wall was lined with stacks of small, empty kegs. There were a few more now than the last time.
He nudged Frank in the arm, and his brother jerked awake, bleary-eyed, roundly cursing Nicholas.
“You didn’t really drink all these, did you?” Nicholas pointed to the kegs.
“None of your business, you rotter. Go away.” Frank’s waistcoat was stained, and he smelled like he belonged in a barn.
Nicholas hauled him up. “Let’s go. We’ve got some talking to do.”
Frank grumbled, of course, but a few minutes later, Nicholas managed to get him outside. “We’re going on a walk,” he said. “And to get something to eat and drink. But not brandy.”
Frank cursed him roundly again, but he stumbled alongside him.
Nicholas took a sideways glance at him. “I’ve been a bad brother,” he said low. “And I’ve come to apologize.”
Frank stopped in his tracks. “Wha’?”
“I’ve neglected you,” Nicholas said simply. “And I’m sorry.”
Frank blinked and looked around. “Am I dreaming?”
“Hey, Frankie!” a rough voice called out from across the street. “Here’s another!”
Nicholas turned and saw a swarthy cooper in his open-air shop, holding aloft a small keg. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” A bright fire burned merrily behind him.
Frank’s face lit up. “She sure is! How much?”
The cooper grinned. “A few more shillings than you have in your pocket, lad. Ask your rich brother for some more money.”
Nicholas squinted at the cooper, then looked back at Frank. Was there something special about that barrel? Why was his brother so excited by it?
And why would he want to own it?
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” he said to Frank. Now that he thought about it, there were no alcohol fumes emanating from the small kegs in Frank’s room.
Frank made an ugly face. “It’s none of your business.”
Nicholas grabbed his arm. “Listen to me, brother. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to understand you.”
“Sure you do. Dummy.”
Nicholas prayed for more patience. “Are you … are you saving barrels for a reason?”
Frank looked down and bit his lip. “I like them, is all,” he muttered. He wouldn’t look Nicholas in the eye.
“You like barrels.” Nicholas made it a statement.
Frank’s forehead was furrowed deeply, but he nodded. Once. Quickly.
This was all very odd, Nicholas thought. But interesting.
“Let’s get a couple of meat pies,” he said. “And we’ll talk about the barrels.”
“Hey, governor!” called the cooper. “What’s your decision about this keg here?”
“I’ll check back with you later,” Nicholas called to him, and made a motion with his chin for Frank to keep up. “I want to hear about barrels first.”
“All right,” Frank said in a surly tone, but at least the pucker in his forehead was gone. And his eyebrows weren’t two slash marks, either.
Progress, thought Nicholas, and for the first time in years, he felt a smidgeon of tenderness for his sibling well up in his heart. Just a smidgeon, though. Nothing more.
But still, it was something.
An hour later in a quiet inn, after the two of them had shared a simple meal of steak-and-kidney pie, ale, and a small pudding, Nicholas felt as if he’d just met a person he’d never known. Frank mumbled on and on about barrels. Their different sizes. The various woods used to make them. The great fire always going at the cooper’s shop.
He even chuckled when he told the story about how the cooper’s cheeks blew out every time he had to squeeze the metal hoops around the staves.
My God, thought Nicholas. The man wanted to be a cooper. He was probably born to be a cooper!
But who’d ever have considered it a possible future for the son of a duke?
No one.
Frank was a tradesman at heart.
“How would you like to learn the coopering trade?” Nicholas asked him.
Frank drew in his chin. “Me?”
Nicholas nodded.
“But I—I can’t learn to be a cooper.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hard work. I don’t know how to do hard work. I hate hard work.”
“Here’s the secret.” Nicholas leaned forward. “It’s not hard work when you enjoy it. Then it’s called fun. You might work long hours and get tired at the end of the day, but you’ll go to bed happy.”
“Happy?” Frank scowled.
“It can happen to you,” Nicholas said. “You can become happy.”
“Really?” Frank’s eyes cleared, and Nicholas saw something more than a surly wastrel looking out. “But what would Mother and Father think?”
“Why, they’d want you to be happy. And productive. You want it, too.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You’ve just been too angry to see it. I’m going to take you back to that cooper. We’re going to arrange an apprenticeship. If he says no, we’ll find another cooper. We’re not going to give up until you, Frank Staunton, are making barrels. You’ve got the brawn and you’ve got the brains. Someday, everyone will be buying Staunton barrels.”
Frank grimaced.
But then Nicholas realized it was actually a small, real smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one on Frank’s face.
“But you’ll need to stop drinking so much,” Nicholas said, “and stealing spoons from White’s—”
“Oh, I’ll stop. I’ll be busy shaping staves,�
� Frank interrupted him.
“Good.” Nicholas grinned, happy to see Frank had barely touched his ale, he’d been so excited talking about barrels. “I can’t wait to see your progress. I’ll visit every week.”
“Will the princess come, too?”
“No.” Nicholas was firm. “I’m not going to marry her.”
Frank’s face fell. “But you have to. She paid me good money.”
“Where is it now?”
Frank shrugged. “I drank it away. And bought a fine, tall cask.”
“I didn’t see it in your room.”
Frank’s eyes bugged out. “That’s because…”
“What? Spit it out, brother.”
Frank sank low in his chair. “That’s because I bought it for the princess. She told me I’d better get her one to put Lady Poppy in and then send it on a wagon to the sea, where someone was going to place it on a packet to Australia and release her when the boat set sail. I have it in a special place, where no one can find it, in a small shed behind Lord Howell’s residence.”
“You’re joking.”
Frank shook his head.
“You were willing to kidnap Lady Poppy?”
Frank blew out a gusty breath. “No.” He had the grace to look ashamed. “I was going to tell you sometime. But the princess is scary. Like a witch.”
Nicholas knew exactly what he meant. “All right, then. Tell me the rest.”
Frank groaned. “The princess said if I didn’t do what she said, she wouldn’t sleep with me anymore.”
“She’s sleeping with you?”
“Only once, and it wasn’t very good. We were at your apartments—”
“My apartments?”
“Yes. Reading your correspondence. Going through your desk.”
“Bloody hell.” Nicholas stood up. “You got in my apartments?”
“I told the doorman I was your brother, and she said she was a Russian princess, and then she stuck her hand between his legs and twisted until he screamed, and he opened the door.”
“Good God. Why were you there?”
“She wanted to know if you had a new mistress and was looking for signs of one. That, plus she wanted to go through your things and sniff your coats, especially.”
“And you went along with all this?”
Frank shrugged. “She’s pretty. And then she threw me on the floor and told me to get the cask and instructed me what to do with it, and we rolled about a bit, and I think I ravished her.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. Next thing I knew, I woke up and she was gone.”
“So she drugged you, too.”
“I suppose. And then this old man came in and saw me, and I told him almost everything. Not about the cask. Just that I’d heard from the friend of a friend that someone was after ruining your engagement to Lady Poppy and that the princess told me.”
“An old man walked into my apartments?”
“Yeah. Ugly bugger. Long face, beady eyes.”
Groop.
It had to have been.
“Did he explain why he was there?”
“No, just said he’d been following me and the princess and was concerned when she came out all red-faced and crazed-looking, and I didn’t. He said he knew you and I didn’t get along, but then told me we should. We’re brothers, after all, he said, and he picked me up and bought me a hot meal and gave me some money.”
Nicholas wondered why Groop would care about Frank. He wasn’t the type to go about being a Good Samaritan or showing himself at all. He usually left the secret trailing of persons of interest to his underlings.
Odd.
But nice somehow, even though Nicholas was furious all this had taken place in his apartments and he’d never known.
And he was even more enraged to think that the princess intended to put Poppy in a barrel and send her to Australia, using his brother to do her dirty work.
His brother.
He simply had to stop thinking about it, or he’d go to the princess now and put her in the cask and ship her home.
It was the opposite of what the Service wanted him to do.
CHAPTER 42
Much to Poppy’s dismay, when she returned to London, rumors were flying there, too. The newspaper even carried a small article about Sergei’s madcap proposal on the road and referred to her as having been lately engaged to the Duke of Drummond.
Poppy didn’t go out. Instead, she kept reading Clarissa. She was extremely grateful to the author Samuel Richardson for giving her an idea …
A dangerous, outrageous idea. Clarissa had been caught up in unseemly events—some of which took place in a brothel—and remained virtuous despite it all, hadn’t she?
Poppy’s virtue, on the other hand, was hanging on by a thread—she’d thoroughly enjoyed being almost ravished by Drummond—but like Clarissa, she wasn’t going to sit and watch the world go by. She was going to put herself on the line.
She was going to do something.
Something that even the wicked Duke of Drummond of Cook’s tales might do. Something that the real Duke of Drummond thought he was going to do (but wasn’t because she was).
She was going to retrieve the painting for her family.
All by herself.
Hiding out in the open. Isn’t that what Lady Derby had done by commissioning that portrait and by being in the Service in the first place?
Poppy was going to hide out in the open, too. She’d be brazen like her mother and Clarissa and hope for the best. She’d retrieve the portrait, and if she got caught, she’d show the world her mother’s receipt signed by Revnik and dare anyone to deny its veracity.
It was a gamble. But she was sure the Service wouldn’t step forward and make a claim. Hadn’t Nicholas told her that the clandestine agency would no more acknowledge its role in anything than a small child would admit to stealing a sweet from his nurse’s apron?
And what need would the Service have of the painting, anyway—after they’d seen it and uncovered their precious mole? Which she’d let them do while she was holding on to it—and only in the sanctuary of her own home.
But she needed the Spinsters to help her.
She called on Eleanor and Beatrice at one of their favorite emergency meeting places, the Ribbon Emporium, where no one would ever guess they were talking about anything more substantial than ribbons.
They all shared one big hug.
“We’re so glad you’re back in Town,” said Eleanor.
“And so sorry about Drummond,” Beatrice murmured.
“I don’t believe the princess’s story,” said Eleanor.
“Neither do I.” Beatrice’s eyes were lit with speculation. “She’s after Drummond, and she’ll get him any way she can.”
Poppy gripped both their hands. “The irony is, these last few weeks I’ve been tasked to keep her happy.”
Beatrice drew in her chin. “By whom?”
Poppy bit her lip. “I can’t say. But it’s possibly a matter of”—she looked around to make sure no one was listening—“national security,” she whispered.
Eleanor gave a nervous giggle. “You sound as if you’re working for the government on a secret mission.”
Poppy let her eyes go very wide and said nothing.
Beatrice let out a little squeak. “You are, aren’t you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Pick a pink ribbon if yes, and a green ribbon if no,” Eleanor urged her.
Poppy picked up a pink ribbon.
“I can’t believe it,” cried Beatrice.
“This is amazing!” Eleanor clapped her hands.
“I’ve been dying to tell you about this latest … pink ribbon,” Poppy said with a grin, “but you really didn’t have a need to know. That’s some kind of rule the duke must abide by, the need-to-know principle.”
“Drummond?” Eleanor hastily picked up a yellow ribbon and pretended to examine it. “Is he working on this with you?”
“Oh, dear,” said Poppy, totally flustered. “I really can’t say, but—”
She held up a pink ribbon.
“He’s in on it, too!” Beatrice crowed.
Eleanor’s brows flew up. “Goodness, Poppy, what’s going on?”
She flushed. “All I can tell you, girls, is that—much as I was dying to tell you before and couldn’t—you do need to know what I’m up to now. Because this is much more than a simple matter of national security. This has become a Spinsters problem—and we must solve it together.”
All three of them exchanged grave looks.
“Tell us what we have to do,” Eleanor said.
Beatrice had a noble look in her eye. “We’re up to the task.”
So Poppy told them about the painting and her plans for it. It would mean Nicholas wouldn’t get his M.R. But he was a duke and an intelligent man, she reminded herself, and there were always opportunities for other M.R.’s in the Service.
He’d land on his feet, she had no doubt.
“I have no solid proof Mama commissioned it,” she said, “except the receipt Nicholas and I managed to get our hands on—which he says may be fake.”
“Why would it be fake?” Eleanor asked.
Poppy drew in a deep breath. “Because my mother…” She held up another pink ribbon. “Can you guess?”
Beatrice put her hand to her throat. “Your mother worked for the government? This is getting to be a bit overwhelming.”
“Isn’t it shocking?” Poppy agreed. “But I know Mama, and I trust my own intuition. She and Revnik both might have colluded to put a message in the painting, but if she’s the mother I know, she got that idea after she’d already asked Revnik to paint the portrait as a gift for Papa.”
“We believe you,” Eleanor said.
“And we’re going to help you get it back,” said Beatrice.
Poppy was so pleased. “Here’s the other part of what I wanted to tell you. I found the man who seems perfect for me.”
Eleanor’s mouth split into a wide grin. “You have?”
“Who?” Beatrice’s eyes widened.
Poppy tried to say who it was, but his name got stuck in her throat. She was angry. And hurt. She felt the veriest stooge.
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