A Necessary Deception

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  She dropped her face into her hands and rubbed her temples. None of it made sense. A floor below her, a man she suspected was working for the French claimed he was not the enemy, while the Englishmen made no claims for whom they worked. Christien declared he had been with Mr. Lang in Hastings the night Mr. Lang met her in a Portsmouth garden.

  “Lord, I just want to get my sister married off and Honore at least through the Season without trouble. I can’t manage my own life with any success. How can I end up in the middle of a spy network and not get hurt?”

  Hodge meowed at her feet, as comprehensible as any responses she’d ever received from God. As a woman who called herself a Christian, she was supposed to serve God, yet God seemed like one more father wanting to control every aspect of her life, stopping her from the pastimes she enjoyed. She had a talent for painting, but her father disapproved of it so much she had crept around before marriage in order to paint or even draw beyond what was acceptable for a well-educated young lady. In the week she had lived with her husband after marriage, she had tried painting once, had begun the portrait of him. When he’d found her in the garden—

  She slammed the door on that memory of the argument between them, him yelling, her trying not to weep. “You will not—” He sounded like her father, ordering her as he had a right to by social custom, by law, caring nothing of what pleased her in any aspect of their time together.

  She strode into the corridor. She still needed to find a book for Christien. She needed to get outside and draw. She needed to take the next step forward.

  She headed down to the library, muttering, “What next? What next? What next?”

  “Did you say something, my dear?” Mama called out as Lydia passed the sitting room.

  “Just talking to myself.” Lydia moved to stand in the doorway. “Do you know where Honore is?”

  Mama set down her needlework. “She’s out shopping with Lady Trainham and her daughters. Is our patient resting well, the dear man?”

  “Dear man?”

  “But of course, my dear.” Mama gave Lydia her gentle smile. “He saved you from injury and was injured in the doing.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was.”

  Injured on purpose, perhaps.

  A shudder raced through Lydia at the thought. If Christien was right, then they were on the same side. But which side was which?

  How to know the truth?

  “I’m going to the library to find some books for him,” Lydia said. “He’ll have a dull time of it up there otherwise.”

  “Indeed. If only your brother or father were here. But your father doesn’t arrive until Saturday. At least that’s when he plans.”

  “Wonderful. Is Cassandra in the library?”

  Mama pursed her lips. “I can’t recall if she’s there or out shopping with Honore.”

  Lydia laughed. “She’d rather be in the library unless the shopping included a bookshop.”

  Lydia descended the steps and entered the library. The door stood open and no fire burned on the hearth. The room lay in shadow save for light ebbing through the windows that overlooked the mews and a branch of candles set atop the desk. Although Cassandra’s Greek texts lay on the desk, the covers were closed and the stopper protruded from the top of the ink bottle.

  That Cassandra would go shopping without a fuss raised Lydia’s eyebrows, and she thought to hunt for her sister in her bedchamber after she found some books for de Meuse. If Cassandra had been awake late reading the night before, she could be taking a nap before the evening’s outing to . . . Lydia couldn’t remember in the hubbub of the day. She would look at her calendar, work out what to wear.

  She trotted into the chamber and to a section of literature de Meuse might find entertaining. Sir Walter Scott? Tobias Smollett?

  She tugged out a volume crammed into the crowded shelves. Its mates came with it, thudding to the floor.

  Behind Lydia, behind the library door, a gasp sounded. Fabric rustled.

  Lydia whirled, sending the book in her hand flying across the room in one direction and her gaze in the other.

  Cassandra, her face red, her hair disheveled, stood in the circle of Whittaker’s arms.

  “For shame.” It was an exclamation worthy of a matron twice Lydia’s age, but it popped out of her mouth. Her own cheeks burned. An aching void opened inside her, a memory of being in love, a longing to experience the kind of wanting that compelled one to steal kisses from one’s fiancé behind a door.

  Yet this was her younger sister, sweet, bookish Cassandra, with swollen lips and a whisker burn on her chin.

  “Don’t go all missish on us, Lyd.” Cassandra slipped from Whittaker’s embrace and glided forward, her hands extended. “You know you did your share of kissing Charles before you were wed.”

  “Yes, but I—”

  “Was a year younger than I am.” Cassandra smiled.

  “That doesn’t mean it was right of me.” Lydia glared at Whittaker.

  He met the look with bold brown eyes. “I take complete responsibility, Lady Gale. I was annoyed with Cassandra over being late this morning. We exchanged some harsh words and . . .” He faltered, though when his gaze strayed to Cassandra, his expression softened to adoration. “We were expressing our regret.”

  “Express it in a more decorous fashion.” Lydia spoke more harshly than she intended. “It’s unseemly. It’s indelicate. It’s—”

  “Don’t say disgraceful,” Cassandra interrupted, sounding bored. “Kissing is not wrong, and we . . . I . . .” Her face flamed. “Oh, you know what I’m saying.”

  “No,” Lydia said, “I don’t.”

  “I would never dishonor her,” Whittaker said.

  “I should think not. But have a care.” Lydia gentled her demeanor. “Others don’t think being alone is proper, let alone any touching. So mind your manners. The wedding is in less than three months.”

  “And it’s been postponed for a year.” Cassandra’s pretty mouth drooped.

  “And that gives you reason to misbehave?” Lydia asked. “Truly, Cassie, with the way you try to avoid sessions at the dressmaker’s, I’d think another year wouldn’t be enough.”

  Whittaker’s eyes twinkled down at Cassandra. “Be kind to your sister and go to the appointments. I expect she spends enough time with you in bookstalls.”

  “No, but perhaps we can work out a deal?” Cassandra grinned at Lydia.

  “If you can be on time for every appointment for a week, I’ll take you to every bookshop or stall in London.” Lydia retrieved the book she’d inadvertently thrown across the room. “Now go keep Mama company. I don’t want you two alone any longer. No, wait, Cassandra, you go make yourself presentable. Mama wasn’t born yesterday.”

  Singing some nonsense ditty about shopping for books, Cassandra darted out of the library and headed up the steps.

  “I’ll pay a visit to Lady Bainbridge, if you’ll excuse me.” Not waiting for Lydia to do so, Whittaker followed his fiancée out of the room.

  Smoothing out the pages of the Smollett book, Lydia wondered if she’d been too harsh on the couple. Cassandra and Whittaker were responsible young persons, faithful to morality and the Lord. They wouldn’t take things too far, would they?

  Honore, on the other hand, needed a constant chaperone to keep her out of mischief, especially mischief involving that upstart Mr. Frobisher.

  Another one of Lang’s “friends.”

  Mr. Lang enjoyed far too many friends, or one powerful enemy. If they were all men he sent, likely they were supposed to look out for one another to remain true to the cause. If they came from separate sources, then Lang’s secret was out and someone was using his tactics to find the enemy.

  But whose enemy?

  Lydia slammed the book onto the library table and gathered up the other two volumes that had fallen. She needed fresh air. She needed her pencils and sunshine and the smell of grass to remind herself she was nothing more than a widow who had gotten herself into a muddle by bei
ng kind.

  Books in her arms, she climbed the two flights to Christien’s room without stopping to find Barbara as a chaperone. No one responded to her light tap on the door. Good. He must be sleeping. She would return later, probably with Barbara in tow for the sake of her own reputation.

  Sometimes propriety was such a burden, especially when she knew her actions were above reproach.

  Most of them.

  She climbed the flight to her own room and set the books on her desk, then located her sketching materials. She should have an hour or two left of good light in the square.

  Barbara grumbled about accompanying Lydia out to the circular patch of grass in the middle of Cavendish Square. Lydia ignored her companion and commenced producing sketches she later intended to turn into paintings—a street urchin grinning as he caught a coin tossed by a passerby, a group of boys bowling a hoop back and forth across the grass, an old man gazing into the window of the cabinetmaker near the corner. With a few deft strokes, she caught the essence of each moment. She could fill in the details later.

  When the sun began to slip behind the houses, she rose, a little stiff from sitting in one position for so long, and returned to the house.

  “Everyone was staring at you,” Barbara complained.

  Lydia merely laughed and entered the house. She needed to ready herself for the night’s entertainment—a ball, the opera? Without her invitations, she didn’t know.

  “Is the opera tonight?” she asked.

  “No, tonight is a soirée. The opera is in three days. But you know it’s not truly an opera.” Barbara looked smug. “The opera house burned down four years ago, and they haven’t performed opera there since.”

  “Well of course they couldn’t if it’s burned down.” Lydia couldn’t help teasing a bit.

  Barbara frowned. “I mean they haven’t performed opera in the new one. It’s a pantomime.”

  “Hmm.” Lydia glanced at Christien’s closed door. She must take him the books. The night would be long and tedious for him stranded there.

  Stranded because someone wanted him out of the way, temporarily or permanently?

  She really couldn’t think of that. She needed to get ready, ensure Cassandra dragged herself from her books and Honore wasn’t making more plans to ride off with Mr. Frobisher.

  Christien smiled at her entrance with the books—a smile for the tomes, not her, of course. Still, it lit his eyes and twisted something inside her like a spill used to start a fire.

  “You are kindness itself, my lady. But not kind enough to stay and talk?”

  For a moment, she considered doing so, then shook her head and backed to the door. The less she knew of him, the better. “I have to go out tonight and tomorrow and—”

  “In other words, you give me hospitality but will not give me company.”

  “I . . . cannot.” As she hastened from his chamber, a tightness inside her gave fair warning that “I will not” might have been a better response. She would not spend time with him.

  Avoiding him during the three days the doctor requested de Meuse remain immobile proved rather easy. Lydia kept herself and her sisters running from shops to social gatherings to long walks in the park. By the end of the third day, she wanted to do nothing but sleep. But they had a box at the Royal Opera House, and she had to chaperone the girls. Mama had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches and an alarming wheeze to her breathing.

  “I’ll call in the doctor,” she told Mama. He could examine Monsieur de Meuse and send him home too.

  The physician arrived while Lydia dressed for the evening. Caught up in his report on Mama’s health and monsieur’s healing injury, she completely forgot that one of the destroyed missives had come from Mr. Barnaby, promising he would accompany her to the opera house. He and Gerald Frobisher.

  9

  Seven of them slipped into the Whittaker family box at the Royal Opera House moments before the performance began. Candles blazed from the stage and chandeliers, reflecting in the jewels dripping from the ladies in the tiers and the paste gemstones on the females in the pit. The cheap perfume of those women rose on the heated air to mingle with the more expensive scents of the occupants of the boxes, and Lydia wrinkled her nose. She had to endure not only a form of entertainment she didn’t care for but also the overwhelming odor of unwashed bodies masked with scent, the noise of people who never ceased talking, and the companionship of Messrs. Barnaby and Frobisher.

  Gerald Frobisher lounged in one of the box’s front-row chairs beside Honore. The young lady glowed in her white muslin gown trimmed in blue ribbons and embroidery that matched her satin evening cloak. More than half a dozen opera glasses flashed as they turned in Honore’s direction. At the interval, the box would be crowded with young men—and older ones too, no doubt—wanting to make or further an acquaintance with Miss Honore Bainbridge. That was good. Frobisher would have less time to turn his charm on her.

  With Barbara seated in the front also, between Honore and Cassandra, Lydia seated herself in the back of the box. She intended to talk under cover of the chattering audience and actors onstage.

  At least this wouldn’t be an opera. Caterwauling, as Charles had always referred to it.

  “I should have given my cloak to an attendant.” Lydia plucked at the gold frog closure at the neck of her own blue satin wrap. “It’s quite stifling in here.”

  Barnaby sat upright on his gilt chair, his gaze turned toward the drawn curtain. “You mustn’t risk a chill, Lady Gale.”

  Lydia fanned herself. “If I never caught a chill living next to Dartmoor, I won’t catch one here. Have you ever been to Tavistock, sir?”

  “No, never. I’ve never been west of Lime Regis.” A faint smile curved his lips, making him rather attractive. “For some reason, I think of Devonshire and Cornwall as being rather uncivilized.”

  “Then how do you know Elias Lang?”

  Barnaby shrugged. “Lime Regis, I believe.”

  “Not Falmouth?”

  “Falmouth, my lady, is in Cornwall.”

  Lydia glared at him. “I am quite aware of that, sir, but it’s where Mr. Lang collected some information about a certain enemy of England, or so he claims.”

  “He is better traveled than I.”

  No comment on the enemy of England.

  “All the way to Paris, perhaps?” Lydia pressed.

  “My lady.” Barnaby’s hand clamped on her forearm. “Have a care.”

  “Why?” Lydia gave him a wide-eyed glance. “If you’re the sp—”

  “Shh.” Barnaby’s hiss to be quiet joined that of other theatergoers. Whether he intended to quiet her for the sake of the performance or the words she spoke, she couldn’t be sure.

  On the stage, the curtain rose to a two-dimensional woodland. The character of Queen Mab, played by a middle-aged beauty, sailed across the stage, intoning the speech that announced the beginning of the pantomime. What the words actually were, Lydia couldn’t hear above the shouts and cheers from the audience. Fortunately, pantomime relied on the antics of Harlequin, his consort and supporting cast, and the charm of the dancers to entertain the crowd. Words to speeches or lyrics to songs would have been impossible to hear over the audience. The air heated as the candles blazed and the audience clapped, stamped, and cheered, or paid no heed at all to the stage.

  “I need some air,” Lydia exclaimed.

  Mr. Barnaby ignored her. He perched on the edge of his chair, his fingers moving as though he conducted a miniature orchestra, and a look of such beatific joy washed over his face he appeared ten years younger than his perhaps forty years.

  The performance held all of his attention.

  A little wobbly inside, Lydia slid back in her chair and focused her attention on the stage. Harlequin danced with Columbine. The actors appeared young, aglow with delight at their art, graceful in their antics. A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Lydia’s mouth and pulled a chord deep inside her. A chord of memory, of sitting at pa
ntomime for the first time, wanting to enjoy it, to have something intelligent to say to the military officer beside her, another guest of—whom? She couldn’t recall. She only remembered the handsome man in his regimentals, his profile a perfect etching of manliness, along with his broad shoulders and upright stance.

  At the end of the first act, he’d turned to her, his upper lip curled. “Men dodging shells on a battlefield dance more gracefully than that. But it’s better than the screeching of the opera.”

  She’d agreed. Of course she had. She’d been taught to never openly disagree with a man. But she lied. She found the entertainment lighthearted and delightful and wanted to clap and cheer with the uninhibited bucks in the pit.

  She never attended a pantomime or an opera again. Charles had begun to court her that night and for the rest of the Season. He was on leave—the second son, but the family’s best hope for a marriage and heirs because the eldest son seemed to produce only daughters. Charles had kept her from Covent Garden. He liked dancing. He liked riding. He liked boating on the river. He told her what she should like and so she convinced herself of it.

  That behavior for a girl of nineteen, who had a father who told her what she could and could not do—including her art, which she believed was a gift from God—was understandable. Now, a woman of six and twenty, of poor but adequate means, should have more independence, more of an ability to choose her path like others who had gone before her. Women like Mary Wortley Montagu, who had lived there in Cavendish Square, or Lady Mary Cowper. Mary Wollstonecraft?

  Not Mary Wollstonecraft. She’d been independent, but she’d lived an immoral life and tried to kill herself. And the other two were married to influential men, who surely smoothed their paths to social acceptance and appearance of independent thought.

  But that wasn’t proper for the widow of a knight of the realm or the daughter of a baron.

  Lydia’s hands hurt. She glanced down to find her fists clenched inside the white silk gloves. If she’d made too many mistakes in her life, compromising her reputation was not one of them. Yet being a model of propriety had gotten her nowhere but genteel poverty because she wouldn’t live at home and let her father dictate her days.