A Necessary Deception

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  She set the cup aside and clasped her hands together in her lap, much as she had done while listening to Christien’s tale of wanting revenge on the country that had killed his father and robbed his family of their heritage. “So, Mr. Barnaby, tell me why I should believe your tale and why you are working with Mr. Lang.”

  “Mr. Lang works for the Home Office.” Barnaby settled back on his chair as though about to smoke a cheroot in perfect ease at a gentlemen’s club. “Helping me be accepted into Society is doing one’s duty by the realm.”

  “Indeed.” Lydia’s lip curled, and she posed the same question she had to Christien. “Since when does the Crown have to resort to blackmail to get its subjects to do their duty?”

  “Blackmail?” Barnaby’s hand jerked. His eyebrows shot up toward a lock of hair now charmingly drooped over his forehead. “I know nothing of blackmail.”

  So clear was his gaze, so direct, he was either telling the truth or a consummate actor.

  Lydia laced her fingers together. “You’re telling me you know of no blackmail?”

  “I know of no blackmail. If someone calling himself Lang blackmailed you into doing something, then it’s the wrong Mr. Lang.”

  Nearly the same thing Christien had said.

  “It’s the only Mr. Lang I’ve met,” she said.

  Unless Christien was correct and Lang was the mysterious man, the one she’d presumed was a smuggler, who had made those two early-morning deliveries to her Tavistock cottage—one with the bracelet and news of Charles’s death in Spain, the other with news of Christien de Meuse née Christophe Arnaud, in Dartmoor and needing her to fulfill her promise to help him, as he had helped her husband.

  “Are you certain?” Barnaby had paled, and no man could make himself pale. “My lady, this is distressing.”

  “Indeed it is. I don’t like my family being in danger.”

  “Oh no, your family isn’t in danger. We would never endanger you or your family. I just need the introductions and will see to the rest of the . . . investigation.”

  Lydia slid even closer to the edge of her chair. She leaned toward Barnaby, her gaze intent upon his. “And what, sir, is that investigation?” She held her breath, waiting to see if he would say the same thing as Christien or something far different.

  “You needn’t know, my lady. It’s best if you don’t.”

  “Then I am free to go to the Home Office and tell them what has happened to me and ask about you? Or perhaps simply go upstairs and tell my father. He’s a member of Parliament and sits in the House of Lords.”

  Barnaby’s hand clamped down on her wrist, and his eyes turned to pure steel. “Don’t do that, my lady. Please. The fate of Great Britain rests on your discretion and assistance and silence.”

  “Why?” Lydia whispered the word through gritted teeth, and she forced herself not to jerk away and smack him across the face for grabbing her.

  “Because we have traitors in the highest echelons of Society, men who are to England what Lafayette proved to be to his class in France—revolutionaries.” Barnaby released her and returned to his relaxed pose. “This I blame on the influence of French émigrés. Not all are here because they object to Napoleon’s reign.”

  14

  Christien accepted his host’s invitation to join him for breakfast in the dining room early, before the ladies rose. Christien regretted his lordship rising earlier than the females. He hadn’t seen Lydia since the previous morning. He hadn’t even heard her voice in the corridor or on the steps. He’d caught a glimpse of her the previous afternoon, striding from the house as though setting out across the moors, a portfolio under her arm and a footman trailing behind, carrying a box. He couldn’t see her face, but every rigid line of her spine and swirl of her muslin skirt pronounced agitation or anger.

  What would she paint in such a temper?

  He possessed some of her drawings. She’d sent them to her husband, sketches that spoke of quiet domestic life more than any number of words—the cat perched on a garden wall with a laden apple tree behind it, Barbara bent over some sewing, Lydia herself kneeling in the dirt of a vegetable garden and pulling up weeds.

  Charles had crumpled that one and tossed it aside. “I told her to go to my family or her own, stubborn, stupid woman.”

  Stubborn, yes. Stupid? Not Lydia. Christien didn’t know why she wouldn’t go to the home of her husband, where she wouldn’t need to toil in a garden for vegetables, but he guessed she had her reasons, and good ones at that.

  Five minutes with Lord Bainbridge taught Christien that she also possessed good reasons for living in genteel poverty on the edge of Dartmoor instead of in luxury at Bainbridge Manor near Exeter.

  “I don’t like you French,” Lord Bainbridge greeted Christien, “but I understand you saved my daughter from injury or worse, so hospitality is the least I can offer you.”

  “Thank you.” Christien’s tone was dry as he took the chair a footman drew out for him across from his lordship.

  Whatever else she did not share with her father, Lydia had gained her looks from him. He was tall and finely built, with a figure still lean despite what must be at least fifty years. Gray streaked his black hair, which was abundant and waved back from a noble brow that ended in arched brows over brown eyes. A handsome man with wealth, power, and a wife and three daughters who were an asset he didn’t seem to appreciate any more than Charles Gale had appreciated his wife.

  “I would have preferred to grow up in France,” Christien added, “though England has been kind to us.”

  “Yes, well, how do you know my daughter?” Bainbridge posed the question, then tucked into a beefsteak nearly the size of his plate. The man must have been doing considerable exercise to maintain his youthful physique.

  Christien buttered a bite of bread roll, awkward with one hand. “I was a friend of her husband’s.”

  “Gale. Humph. Fool, going off to the continent like that when he had a wife and home back here. But I hear he was a fine soldier.”

  “Oui, my lord, he was.”

  “And his mother was a harridan, which was probably what dragged him into the Army.”

  “Sir Charles was not overly fond of his mother, I know.”

  Except Charles and Bainbridge thought Lydia should live with the woman, though neither of them liked her. Surely God wanted more for a daughter and wife than a contentious mother-in-law.

  Christien’s wife wouldn’t have to suffer mistreatment. Maman was the kindest lady who existed. She would probably not even scold Lisette for more than an hour or so for running off to play chef in the place of the man who now served the de Meuse family. And pretending to be the man’s daughter.

  Christien crumbled his bread roll. Lisette was fortunate he had the use of only one arm. A young lady of twenty-five years or not, he would be tempted to turn her over his knee for her antics, antics from which he hadn’t yet worked out how to extricate her with grace.

  “And your mother is an American,” Bainbridge said. “Another unruly lot.”

  Christien laughed. “My mother is the most soft-spoken lady I know, lovely and gracious.”

  “And loved by everyone except those who wanted to cut off her head.” Bainbridge’s upper lip curled.

  “Mobs turn the heads of even the most sensible of men and women.” Christien kept his tone even.

  Bainbridge smiled. His features relaxed, giving Christien a glimpse of a kindness beneath the brusque and rude surface. “And we fear mobs in this country doing the same things they did in France. If this were a more Christian nation, instead of one pretending to be, perhaps we’d have fewer fears. But we have little more than an endless pursuit of pleasure—too much like the French court for my liking.”

  Christien bit down on an urge to ask why he’d allowed his daughters to come to London for the Season.

  “I can only hope and pray,” Bainbridge continued, “that my daughters find Christian men with whom to share their lives. Cassandra is all right,
but Honore . . . And Lydia is too young to remain a widow.”

  Too young and lovely and vital.

  Christien sat still while his coffee cooled in its cup and his plate held nothing beyond the crumbled bread roll. The reason for the invitation to the meal seemed about to be revealed.

  “I’ve made enquiries, de Meuse.” Bainbridge leaned forward. “About you and this other man keeping company with my eldest daughter. There’s a little too much secrecy about you and George Barnaby. But right now I’d welcome any suitor for her who is a gentleman and has a modicum of faith, so I can concentrate on keeping Honore on the straight and narrow.”

  A gasp from the doorway echoed Christien’s silent inhalation of outrage. He glanced up to see Lydia standing framed by the dark wood lintel, tall and elegant in pale yellow muslin, save for that playful curl on her cheek. A cheek blazing with color.

  His gut tightened, and he stumbled to his feet. “My lady.”

  “No,” she said in her clear, crisp voice. “I am not and not likely to ever be.”

  Heat blazed in Lydia’s face, in her belly, all the way to her toes. She shook with the surge of energy racing through her veins. Her hands curled, wanting to grip something and rend it so she wouldn’t do something unspeakable like shake her father.

  “So this is why you truly brought me to town?” She fixed her gaze on her father, ignoring Christien, who was still standing. “You intend to marry me off? To whom, the highest bidder?”

  “Lydia, this is inappropriate.” Father pointed a finger past her shoulder. “Leave us now. You and I can discuss this in the library later.”

  “No, we cannot. I have work to do later. Work that has to do with why I’m here in town, not why you want me in town—to get rid of me like—” She stopped before her voice broke on the sob rising in her throat and tears spilled past her lashes.

  Always her father wanted her to be something she wasn’t, wanted her to succeed where she failed in his eyes. Even her marital status, or lack thereof, was onerous to him, though she never asked a thing of him. He’d rather she marry a stranger he knew little about than remain a widow. But he wouldn’t sell one of his horses to a person he knew little about.

  She took a deep breath, seeking for something to say that would take the pity from Christien’s eyes. “After church I’m off to Almack’s to work on the arrangements for Honore’s ball. All three of us will be gone most of the day, and tonight we have a soirée to attend. I may have time to talk to you tomorrow. Do please be seated, Monsieur de Meuse. You are still an invalid.” That delivered, she spun on her heel and swept from the room.

  “I apologize for that outburst.” Father’s voice trailed after Lydia as she raced up the steps to collect her pelisse and sisters.

  This was why she’d married the first man who offered for her. She would have rather been the wife of a soldier than the daughter of a man who wanted her to be—what? He hadn’t been pleased when she married Charles. Father wanted a title for her, a fortune, an estate in the country. He got none of these things and sought them again, apparently.

  How Cassandra must have disappointed him when she engaged herself to a younger son, and how pleased he must have been when Whittaker inherited the earldom so unexpectedly. But Cassandra had scarcely come out of her room in two days. She’d pleaded a headache and stayed home the night before and refused to see Whittaker when he called. Should Lydia warn her how much she would displease Father, that he might make her life unpleasant if she postponed or even canceled her wedding?

  And Honore! Was Father driving her right into the arms of Gerald Frobisher? Lydia knew too little of Honore’s life at home. Whether Frobisher was a good man or bad, Lydia herself wished for her sister to look elsewhere. He was attached to Barnaby, who was attached to Lang, who was . . .

  The bane of Lydia’s existence these days.

  She entered her bedchamber and composed herself in front of the mirror. That one curl had come down again, bouncing in front of her ear like an exuberant caterpillar. She pinned it up again, retrieved her pelisse from the back of a chair, and crossed the hall to knock on her sisters’ door.

  No one answered.

  “Cassandra? Honore?”

  Nothing.

  She opened the door. The room was empty. Cassandra’s books lay strewn across the bed—a collection of Greek texts and a two-year-old copy of the Monthly Magazine, an odd contrast until Lydia flipped it open and found the well-marked pages on aeronauts.

  “Oh, Cassandra, it’s too dangerous.”

  And so was working with—or was it against?—the British government.

  Blushing all over again at the notion her father thought Barnaby and de Meuse were suitors, Lydia left her sisters’ room and descended the steps to find them in their mother’s sitting room.

  “Come along, mes soeurs. We must settle the arrangements for the ball so we can get Honore married off and make Father happy.” Hearing the bitterness in her own voice, Lydia wasn’t surprised at the shock on her sisters’ faces.

  Mama looked sad. “If your father is pressuring you to wed again, Lydia, it’s only to see you better settled than you are now.”

  “I’m quite content where I am right now, thank you.” Lydia gentled her tone for her mother. “I have Barbara’s companionship, my painting, and—but Father doesn’t like my painting.”

  “Not selling it,” Honore exclaimed. “That’s so close to trade.”

  “No more so than writing a book, and many ladies write books.” Lydia stepped back from the doorway. “We need to be on our way.”

  “Cassandra isn’t going,” Mama said. “Whittaker wrote to say he’s calling.”

  “I’m going with my sisters.” Cassandra glided past Lydia and onto the steps. “Are we taking a carriage or a hackney?”

  “A carriage. It’s waiting for us in the square. Come along, Honore.” Lydia gestured to her youngest sister.

  Honore paused long enough to kiss Mama on the cheek before skipping to the steps. “Do you think it’s all right for a lady to write novels?”

  “Of course.” Lydia slipped her arm through Honore’s and propelled her a bit faster to the carriage. “Do you plan to write one?”

  “I do. Something set on Dartmoor, with smugglers and secret goings-on at night.”

  Like men in gardens calling themselves someone who should not have been there.

  Lydia bustled the girls into the carriage, and they set out for Almack’s Assembly Rooms on King Street. Any day they expected to receive the vouchers that would allow them to purchase tickets for the Wednesday night balls that only the best people were allowed to attend, but for now they would enter the hallowed halls through renting them out for Honore’s coming-out ball, as their own townhouse didn’t boast a ballroom. Their grandfather, who had purchased the Cavendish Square house, decided to use the space for bedchambers and drawing rooms used daily, rather than a ballroom used perhaps twice a year. Lydia appreciated the fact that having to rent a ballroom meant they wouldn’t have strangers, or near strangers, traipsing through their house, going up to her bedchamber, and leaving cryptic messages.

  No, the message wasn’t cryptic. It clearly told her to trust no one.

  Across the rough cobblestones of the city, Honore chattered about her novel. “It’ll be far more intriguing than The Mysteries of Udolpho, which I found rather dull.”

  Lydia smiled at the girl’s enthusiasm until she glanced at Cassandra, who had brought a copy of a magazine with her and sat reading in her corner of the carriage.

  “What is it?” Lydia asked.

  “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Cassandra’s voice sounded muffled behind the pages of the periodical. “An article on aeronauts.”

  “Not more balloons.” Honore made a face.

  Lydia frowned. “Why are you pursuing this interest when you know it distresses Whittaker?”

  “Why does Whittaker pursue me, when he knows it distresses me?”

  “You won’t distract me that wa
y, Cass. We’ll talk about this. Why would you wish to distress Whittaker?” Lydia pressed.

  Cassandra shrugged. “Machiavelli says to begin as you intend to go on. If I want Whittaker to let me read what I like, discuss what I like—within reason of the profane or vulgar, of course—then he will allow it. If he won’t, then we share nothing.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard.” Honore giggled.

  “You’ve heard too much,” Cassandra shot back. “It’s not like—it’s not like you think.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lydia admitted.

  Both siblings turned to stare at her.

  She laughed. “I’ve been a wee bit preoccupied.”

  “Who’d have thought you’d have so many suitors at your age?” Honore said.

  “Yes, I’m so ancient, I had to pluck gray hairs from my head for an hour this morning.” Lydia scowled at her youngest sister. “And I’ll pluck all the blonde hairs from your head if you keep implying I’m old.” She made a grab for Honore’s hat.

  Honore squealed and slid across the seat. They arrived laughing at the assembly rooms, where they spent a pleasant hour wandering around the ballroom and working out what decorations would best suit. Cassandra vanished after the first hour of planning, and Lydia found her examining the door between the ladies’ and gentlemen’s retiring rooms.

  “Why do you suppose there’s a door here?” she mused. “There isn’t one between the ballroom and card room.”

  “I’ve always wondered about that. No one seems to know.” Lydia approached her sister and laid a hand on her arm. “Cassie, now that I’ve got you cornered, tell me what’s wrong. Why won’t you see Whittaker?”

  “Because—because—oh, Lydia, I’m so ashamed of myself, I can’t look him in the eye.” Cassandra burst into tears and buried her head against Lydia’s shoulder. “I know we’re misbehaving, and I didn’t tell him no.”