“It would have been nice to know Quail was the enemy agent we sought before he ran amuck during the wedding. We might have managed to salvage something from an operation that has been in the making for nearly a year. Maybe the wedding cake?” he grated out sarcastically.
“Yes, sir.” Justin could think of other responses, but he didn’t fancy serving a sentence for gross insubordination.
“Hm.” The anger slowly ebbed from Bernard’s heavy features. Curiosity warred with righteous indignation, and curiosity won—as it always would for men like Bernard. It was what made them good at their jobs. “How did you discover Quail was our man, anyway?”
Justin’s own uncharacteristically rigid posture eased a bit. “Lady Evelyn discovered his identity, sir.”
“Oh? How?”
“Quail arrived here sick, having conveniently developed a bout of malaria several days before his arrival. In fact, he had to be helped to his room and since then had stuck to his bed. Or so we thought.
“But yesterday a maid informed Lady Evelyn that each morning when she went to change Quail’s linen she found makeup smears on the pillowcases. She thought it was because he was importing . . . company.
“I had just told Lady Evelyn that I was looking for a man with a bruise on his face, the man who had broken into the house last week and with whom I’d fought in the dark. I knew I’d hit him on the face, but not where.”
Justin smiled. “Lady Evelyn did the math and came up with a few conclusions of her own, the first being that Quail, hearing of the arrival of a crate down here, popped himself in bed in London with a sudden recurrence of malaria—nice touch, that. Surprised I didn’t think of it for myself. Frees a chap up for all sorts of naughtiness. Once ensconced, he could easily slip out of his room and travel the thirty-five miles here and back in one night. I suppose that you leaked the information about the unaddressed crates? Did you peel the labels off yourself?”
“No need to be sarcastic, Powell. As a matter of fact I did not send them. They were completely coincidental. As you well know, they belong to Mrs.—er, Lady Cuthbert. Why would I send them? I wasn’t here to see who was interested in them. No. I had planned, as I told you, to be here by the time the crate I sent as bait had arrived.”
Justin’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “True. Then Quail must have had someone at the house or in town telegramming him about crate arrivals. Probably Silsby, the great greedy oaf. He wouldn’t have realized that what he was doing was treasonous. He would have considered it an easy bit of cash for a harmless bit of information.”
“All right.” Bernard mentally put a check mark next to this fellow Silsby’s name. Though Justin probably had it right, it would still have to be looked into. “I understand how you figured out Quail’s identity, but now what I really want to know, what really piques my curiosity, is this: Why, knowing as you did that we wanted only to identify this man, did you take it upon yourself to expose him, thus rendering him useless to us? Do you know how valuable he would have been had he remained ignorant of our discovery of his identity? The misinformation we could have dispensed?”
“Do you know how valuable Lady Evelyn is to me?” Justin countered at once, his hands finally releasing each other from behind his back. He leaned over the desk, bracing his hands on the edge, and met Bernard’s gaze with glacial consideration. “You left me no choice. The only way to protect Evie, after all you did to suggest to Quail that she was a spy, was to confirm it.”
“Because . . . ?”
Justin pushed himself upright and scoffed. “You know as well as I that once a master spy has been revealed, her usefulness ends. It will be assumed that she’s retired, her career as a spy ended, and thus all interest in her soon evaporates.”
“That’s why you let Quail go. That’s why you let Evelyn ‘discover’ him.”
“Of course,” Justin replied. “Evelyn had to be the one to reveal that his malaria was an act, because in doing so she could confirm in Quail’s suspicious eyes that she was a member of England’s espionage community. All she needed to do was yell to me that ‘Quail is the one!’
“When Quail fled, it was with absolute assurance that he’d discovered England’s premier female spy.”
“And you had to let him go.”
At this Justin laughed. “Yes. Bit of touch-and-go there. He was supposed to run out the front door; instead, he ran into the wedding reception.” His expression grew contemplative. “I have never seen, nor hope to see again, a look of such violent animosity on a person’s face as that worn by Lady Evelyn when Quail threw the champagne fountain into the fishpond.” He shook his head, as though ridding himself of the image, and glanced down at Bernard, his expression growing chill again.
“You ought to be thanking me, Bernard. Certainly, you’ve lost my value as an agent—but that you would have lost anyway, once I realized what was what—and the conduit Quail might have provided is gone, but Lady Evelyn is safe, and that must count for something, even to you, and remember, we managed to keep your master spy’s identity a secret.”
Bernard pursed his lips and regarded Justin closely. An idea was beginning to form in his mind, probably ridiculous but perhaps . . . The truth was that Justin and his lady had done well, and while the ends weren’t what Bernard had wanted, they had identified Quail before he realized how very close he stood to their agent. And that was the most important thing. That would have been disastrous.
One of Justin’s brows rose with insouciant curiosity. “Don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who the real master spy is?” He didn’t really expect Bernard to answer.
But with his idea still fresh in his mind, Bernard did.
Twenty minutes later, Justin left the study and went in search of Evie.
He didn’t find her, but he did find Lady Broughton. The look that lovely creature bent on him made his shirt collar seem suddenly tight.
“Mr. Powell.”
“Lady Broughton.”
“I would have a word with you, sir. Concerning my daughter.”
“Any words concerning your daughter, ma’am, interest me. But right now, I’m afraid I must beg your pardon while I go and find your missing offspring.” He tried to pass her. She stopped him with her hand on his sleeve.
“Why?”
“Why?” Blast! She was trying to force him to declare his intentions, and that he would not do. Because as certain as he was that the sun would rise in the east, he knew that if Evelyn ever found out that her mother had suggested in any manner, way, or form, by word, look, or inference, that they should marry, she would refuse him.
She was a suspicious owlet, was Evie. She would never accept as true that such an inspiration was his alone and not planted by another. And because she was a proud, mistrustful owlet, she would never marry a man she suspected might not be wholly in love with her.
Now the only trouble was how to convince her that he was.
But Lady Broughton was awaiting his answer so he gave her one that would allow him to slip away uncoerced.
“Because she owes me money,” he said flatly. “And I want to make sure she realizes that simply because another one of her weddings went to hell doesn’t mean she isn’t liable for the agreed-upon sum.”
Lady Broughton gasped at his vulgarity. Her hand dropped. “My daughter would never renege on an agreement!”
“Good,” he said jovially, confident that any thoughts of urging him to make a decent woman of her daughter had flown from Lady Broughton’s head. “But one can’t afford to take anything for granted. You’ll excuse me?”
“I . . .” She looked flummoxed, and her beautiful eyes—though not so beautiful as Evie’s—were wide and confused.
“Thank you.” He didn’t wait for her answer, but bowed and ducked past her.
He had an idea where Evie would be, and sure enough, as soon as he entered the disastrous scene of the wedding feast, he saw her. She was sitting on the edge of the fishpond, her feet in the water, splashing disconso
lately at the gulls wading amongst the litter, gobbling bits of cake and the odd goldfish. On the one side of her head, her hair clung to her cheek and throat in black, oily-looking strands. The other side was still held up by jeweled pins.
Her gown was a horror. The velvet was drenched, clinging in wet folds to her hips, and the bodice sagged perilously close to revealing her small bosom. Worse, the dye had begun running and was staining those tender swells a distinct pea green.
And she’d been crying. The ridiculous black goop women sometimes wore had melted around her eyes, and black streaks blotted her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled and her shoulders, her beautiful, elegantly sparse shoulders, drooped.
And still he found her the most gorgeous, sweetly erotic thing he’d ever seen. He was either mad or in love. Possibly both.
He walked over and stood behind her. “’Allo.”
She looked up over her shoulder at him. Seeing who it was, she gave him a small, defeated smile that nearly broke his heart. She didn’t even have any anger left for him, only weariness. And that, more than anything else, touched him.
“Oh. Hello, Justin,” she said calmly. “Did we save the world, then?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and sat down beside her, facing the opposite direction, keeping his feet nicely dry. “World’s all safe again. The bad’uns have fled, the secret crate remains secret, and my superior is tickled pink.”
She nodded without looking at him. A pink marzipan rose floated by, only to be sucked below by some monstrous big carp with a sweet tooth.
“I spoke to him just a short while ago.”
“Oh.”
“Apparently, our assumptions about the situation were close.”
“I know,” she replied tonelessly. “Lady Cuthbert is England’s master spy.”
He started in surprise. “How did you know that?” he asked. “Quail never did, and he was her secretary. But he was close, close enough to make Bernard nervous and seek a likely alternative candidate.” He looked at her angular little profile. She didn’t appear to be listening. “You.”
“Oh.”
“But again,” he once more asked, “how did you know?”
Finally she looked at him. “I didn’t figure anything out by myself. I just saw things, remembered some things. Like how serendipitous it was that Mrs. Vandervoort should insist her wedding take place here, at North Cross Abbey, which you owned. And how Beverly had once said that your grandfather’s Indian chef only cooked curries, and Mrs. Vandervoort’s grandmother obviously wasn’t Indian. And then there was that last bit.”
“Last bit?”
“When you all came charging out of the hall demanding to know which way Quail had gone.”
“What of it?”
“She pointed in the wrong direction. And she kept trying to get her husband’s dog to let Quail go. The only reason she would want Quail to escape with the erroneous information that I was a spy was because it protected her identity as the real spy. At least, that’s what I reasoned.”
Justin grinned, pleased that between the two of them they’d managed to get most of the truth out and in the open. It was a quite satisfying end to a mission.
But Evie wouldn’t know that, not unless he told her. It might cheer her up to think that she’d accomplished that which even seasoned agents often failed to do.
“There are many chaps out there, working as agents, who never come close to understanding the big picture.”
“Oh, why is that?” she asked more from rote politeness than through any real interest.
Her face truly was a sad little mess. He delved into his pocket for his handkerchief and wet the corner of it. Gently, he took her chin in his hand and began scrubbing the black tracks off her cheeks.
“There’s a notion amongst the intelligence community—I know, I know, from what you’ve witnessed that must seem a strident oxymoron—anyway there’s this notion that the less any one man knows of a situation, the less likely he is to affect it. But you—canny, bright,” he searched around for a word that would please her, “competent Evie Whyte—have seen through the murk to the real issues, the real stakes.”
“You did, too.”
“And I’m jolly well congratulating myself on that matter, don’t you disbelieve it. Circles within circles, darkness within shadows, enough intrigue to last a fellow a lifetime.”
At this, she shot him an odd, unreadable look.
“But what I want to know, Evie, is why you aren’t pleased? You take pride in your intellectual accomplishments—and well you should—but this doesn’t seem to mean anything to you,” he mused. He’d finished cleaning her cheeks but somehow neglected to stop stroking her cheek. Not that she appeared to notice.
“I’m sure to feel most self-satisfied in a while, but right now . . .” She sighed heavily and turned her head away. “Have you ever seen such a mess?”
He looked about at the collapsed tables, ruined cake, shattered china and crystal, and mired fishpond. “No.”
She smiled at his honesty. At least she appreciated that. “No one will ever hire me to do their wedding now. Not anyone.”
“I should think not.”
At this her eyes grew brilliant under a renewed assault of unshed tears. She lifted her small chin and bit at her lower lip but remained silent.
“Why should it matter so much?” he asked. “It’s not as if you’ve cherished the idea of becoming a wedding planner from the cradle.”
“I know.” She sniffed. “It’s just that . . . I tried so hard, Justin!” She turned, and suddenly she was in his arms, her face smashed against his white shirt, as he pressed his lips fervently to the crown of her head, the one spot on her person still silky and clean and sweetly fragrant.
“But, Justin . . . it wasn’t my fault! I did everything right. It would have been a perfect wedding. Perfect and lovely and beautiful if it hadn’t been for that horrible, wretched Quail!” She spat the last syllable.
He took a deep breath, and sent out a fervent prayer that he was about to say the right thing. “It wouldn’t have been that perfect.”
He felt her go absolutely still.
“What?” her muffled voice asked after a moment.
“It was all very pretty and everything but, Evie, it wasn’t perfect.”
She pushed away from him, her hands resting on his chest. “Exactly where did my wedding celebration fail to meet your expectations?” she asked stiffly.
“Oh, just, well, all these papier-mâché boulders, they seem a mite contrived, eh?”
One brow arched in an elegant inquisition so like her mother’s it was startling.
“And the cake—so many flowers and so many different colors.”
“It was meant to look festive.”
“And in the right milieu doubtless it would have.” If that milieu happened to be a circus.
“Did anything else fail to meet with your approval?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he hastened to reassure her. “The candles above, the mirrored ceiling, the floating candles, the rest was lovely. Though perhaps that big rock dripping champagne might have been replaced—”
At that she burst into tears. He tried to hold her, but she would have none of it. She twisted away from him and threw herself down on the fake bank of the fishpond, sobbing as if her heart would break.
And he would have none of that. Forcefully—if gently—he gathered her into his arms, scooping her up and settling her on his lap. She came with little resistance, finally flinging her arms about his neck and soaking his shirt with her tears. He let her cry for a few minutes. He doubted his Evie spent much time in tears.
“Evie, you’re just not meant to be a wedding planner. For whatever reasons, circumstances seem to conspire against your every effort. So what?” He felt the hitch in her crying and pressed his point. “Why do you need to be a good wedding planner on top of everything else?”
“Because. Because Aunt Agatha is depending on me and I have failed her!”
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br /> “So?” he said reasonably.
She lifted her wet, tragic face and searched his eyes before burrowing her head back against his shirt. “Easy for you to say. You who look like you do.”
And how was he supposed to take that?
“But for people like me, it is important,” she went on in a muffled voice. “Because if you fail people they don’t want you around. What benefit is a useless spinster? None. They are entirely superfluous.”
Ah. There it was, then. He’d suspected. Now he knew. And he knew he had to be careful in the next few minutes, as careful as he’d ever been with any explosive, any sensitive document, or anyone’s life. Because this was his life. She was his life, and the next few minutes would determine his future.
“Evie, my sweet Evie. Your aunt Agatha never asked you to take over her business. You told me so yourself; she eloped without leaving one word as to how the business should be conducted,” he said. “My dear, she was not thinking about her business or her profits or her family or even you. She’ll not blame you for not making a success of her enterprise, because she doesn’t care. She’s not concerned with anything but being in love.”
“How can you know that?” she demanded, pushing back, her fists on his chest.
“Because I’m in love with you, Evie, and I have just had an object lesson in being in love and how it strips away all other considerations.”
Her amazing eyes went round at his statement. Her mouth formed an O of amazement but then snapped shut.
“You are just saying that because of last night, because you feel obligated.”
He could have shaken her, but that would mean removing her and he wanted her touching him. He’d waited a lifetime for such intimacy. He wouldn’t set it aside, not even to shake some sense into her.
“Well, yes. I do. I should. We slept together,” he reminded her gently. “Of course that makes me obligated. But it makes you obligated, too.”
“Aha!” she crowed in a voice whose triumph broke into a wretched sob.
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