Beauty and the Spymaster

by Moriah Densley

  And not a word about it these many months.

  Desperate not to betray worry and hurt, Helena leaned against the banister and gave them a wink, wondering if they were about to confess their affair, or if she must trick it out of them. They could hardly progress to a normal conversation without addressing the matter. “I remember Wilhelm as a centurion-like, bookish young man, but my, has he grown into a god.”

  Sophia’s eyes went wide, and her cheeks flushed. “Mama, please.”

  “Magnificent. Not as pretty as his brother, but twice as… oh, what is the word? Allechant? Vigoureux? Comme d’etalon, oui.” She’d compared him to a virile stallion, a cheeky attempt to call them out, admittedly.

  To his credit, Lord Devon reacted not a bit, except for a hint of amusement. His direct gaze hid nothing, and in the moment it took to trade glances, Helena could see he was a different man from the boy she’d known before.

  An intense directness she’d only encountered in honest men. Fierce protectiveness. An endearing humility, and so much love burned in his expression, it made Helena’s throat tighten. He loved Sophia, it was plain to see. He lowered his eyes in a slight nod, acknowledging their exchange.

  But did Sophia love him back, or had she attached herself to him for protection? The possibility set off an internal reaction so crushing she feared she would retch right on the marble mosaic. No — she vowed it — Sophia would not make the same mistakes.

  Sophia’s eyes snapped with irritation. “He is standing right here, Mama, and you may be embarrassed to hear his French is quite good.”

  Helena resisted pursing her lips. Goading Sophia had resulted in annoyance, not playfulness. The product of a miserable, trapped woman? “Nonsense. Our dear Wilhelm doesn’t mind, does he? And obviously a romantic, intrepid sort of fellow, if he carries you about like a pirate stealing a wench. What a delightful game.”

  Oh, why wouldn’t Sophia give her a clue? Did she need rescuing?

  “Pardon, Lady Devon?” The butler approached, and Helena blinked, certain her ears had tricked her. No — Martin the butler was clearly addressing Sophia. “Which room shall I…”

  All the air in the room sucked out through the giant hole in her brain. Helena gasped for breath and gripped the banister as her knees went weak. She covered her mouth since she couldn’t shut it. “Lady Devon? Lady Devon!”

  “You cannot…” Sophia furrowed her brows and leaned against Lord Devon’s shoulder. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

  With a stern order to recover herself, she forced a smile and drew a deep breath. “Of course not, darling. I must shock you with the news that I have been mistress of a cellar long enough to have lapsed in my duty. We shall debate, you and I, whether your tale of conquest or my fantastic escape should be told first.”

  There — Sophia did it again. She leaned on her husband’s shoulder, pressing her side against his. Helena saw the little muscles in Lord Devon’s hand ripple as he squeezed Sophia’s hand, and she returned the gesture. And the way she tilted her head, as though force of habit made her want to rest there. While she looked tired, her eyes fairly sparked with energy. She was excited about something.

  Heat bloomed in Helena’s chest, a bubbling happiness she’d never expected. What a lovely gift to have lived long enough to see her daughter in love. And married!

  Acceptance came like a hundred soldiers lowering their shields and spears. The knot under her sternum loosed, and there was a chance her pulse would return to normal.

  Sophia said to the butler, “How about the India room, Martin?” The smile she aimed at Helena was marginally less apprehensive, but Helena had, after all, behaved a bit badly in order to glean the information she needed. Sophia would forgive her soon enough. “Mother, you must be exhausted. We shall catch up after you rest. And welcome to Rougemont.”

  How regally she fit her role of countess. Helena bit back a grin, knowing it would make her look like a bedlamite.

  Lord Devon caught her eye again. “I’m relieved to see you’ve arrived safely.”

  From her new perspective, Helena thought that Lord Devon going to the trouble to locate her and organize her rescue spoke highly of his character. It was precisely what a man in love would do to please his lady. “Yes, thanks to you. He will not be far behind, you know.”

  “I assume so,” he answered, not appearing the least bit concerned that an infuriated, desperate, and half-mad Lord Chauncey would find them and unleash hell. It was only a matter of time.

  Chapter Eleven

  Helena had always joked that Armageddon would arrive and she’d have a cup of tea, but she hadn’t meant to be prophetic. She sat in the drawing room with Lord Devon’s three French nieces — Elise, Mary, and Madeline — laughing and teasing, hoping the girls didn’t notice the war going on around them.

  The past few years she’d begun to wonder if Chauncey was insane, and now she had no doubt he’d gone infirm in the brain. Earlier that morning, Sir Julian reported Chauncey’s mob of henchmen were circling the property gates. Lord Devon had responded by calling in mercenaries to guard the perimeter, and a skirmish had broken out. Sir Julian had already lost two men from his ranks, and by telling her so, had unwittingly disclosed that Lord Devon was also an agent in their paragovernment organization. She’d ceased to be surprised.

  They’d staged some sort of private war, and Sir Julian predicted it would combust today. Which was why Helena entertained Wilhelm’s nieces, making certain they stayed indoors and hopefully aloof of the conflict. If the men started firing guns, however, there would be no way to hide it. A bunch of old soldiers having at it the only way they knew how… what was wrong with good old-fashioned pistols at dawn?

  And oh, the shame of being at the heart of it. Helena had failed in the beginning, setting off a chain of events that had drawn in so many innocent people — yet she saw no way to stop it.

  Helena steered the conversation toward the Season’s new fashions, asking the girls what they thought of the bold stripe patterns coming from Worth’s these days. That set them off, giving her time to think about what had etched lines of worry on Lord Devon’s face, and why Sophia had a frail look about her.

  She was expecting a baby and not faring well. Helena could’ve predicted it, having passed the adenomyosis on to her daughter; the illness of the womb that for Helena had made carrying a baby difficult, the delivery dangerous, and bearing more children impossible.

  Helena remembered the inexplicable pains and fainting spells, the debilitating exhaustion, then hemorrhaging. She’d lost two babies before carrying Anne-Sophia, and bringing her into the world had been nothing short of a miracle. And now it seemed Helena needed to ask one more of the cosmos.

  Saints above, what would Chauncey do if he knew the heir he wanted so badly for breaking the Eastleigh entailment, the key to accessing the funds, was imminent… yet out of reach?

  Movement beyond the window caught her eye. She squinted, seeing a figure in the foliage a ways from the house, and recognized Julian. He gestured again, lowering his palm in the universal signal to duck down. She’d already been uneasy, but a chilled feeling raked over her nerves, and a rush of urgency spurred her to action. She dropped to the floor, pulling on Elise’s hand. Then crawling to reach for the other two girls, she tugged on Mary’s elbow, and Madeline was small enough that one yank on the hem of her skirts slid her down to the floor. “Get down!” she shouted. “Everyone beneath the tab—”

  A series of blasts shook the walls. The windows shattered, the girls screamed, and glass shards sprayed as Helena tucked Madeline’s head into her lap. A buzzing whistle, then another, and another, all ended with a crack. Wood splinters littered the table and chairs. Why where they being shot at?

  “What’s happening?” Mary cried.

  Elise and Madeline clutched Helena’s skirts, weeping in fright.

  “Nothing your Uncle Wil can’t handle, I’m certain,” Helena said, ducking lower as a bullet whistled overhead then struc
k the candelabra, judging by the metallic clatter. Madeline pulled her limbs under her tightly, making her appear as a ball of muslin on the floor.

  Silence held for a full minute, and it was tempting to peer out from under the table to see what was happening outside. With the windows shot out, she heard a struggle not far from the house. Someone was very angry, another man kept grunting and connecting with fists, by the sound of it.

  The girls screamed again as one of the men roared and charged the window; they heard his boots on the windowsill and his cursing. Helena gathered them closer and scooted everyone farther away, using the center column of the table to hide behind as best they could. With the fight right at the window, Helena recognized one of the men grunting in struggle and heaving for breath as Julian — the gruff war cry she heard next had definitely come from him.

  By the agitated sounds and accelerated tempo of the thuds and cracks, one of the men was losing the fight. Abruptly Julian shouted in triumph. He called to someone, who approached, and they exchanged quick words in hushed voices. Then nothing happened for at least a half minute.

  She finally dared to crawl out and peek, and through the broken window panes saw Julian binding the hands of a man on the ground, one knee pinning his back. Julian raised his other arm high and flashed a series of complicated hand gestures then let out a long breath as he wiped his forehead.

  That made her notice his brow swollen and split open, his bloodied nose, then his torn collar and grass-stained trousers. He stood, keeping one boot on the back of his prisoner’s neck, watching down the field with narrowed eyes. He froze, holding his breath.

  All remained quiet so long and teetered on a tense, fragile thread, she wanted to pull out her hair and scream.

  Madeline whimpered and complained, “What is it? Can we get—”

  Helena hushed her and watched Julian, though she had no idea why silence mattered. It probably didn’t.

  Another gunshot cracked, echoing off the hills. That one had come from farther away. Julian made a helpless sound and an instinctive lurch as though he badly wanted to dash away, but duty held him in place.

  What had happened?

  Who had been felled with that last gunshot?

  She didn’t like Julian’s expression, the unforgiving way he held his jaw, and the steely look that made his eyes appear to have razor edges. Finally he heaved for breath and closed his eyes, raising his face to the sun in a gesture of disbelief.

  “Helena,” he said flatly, and without looking at her. “You’d better come here.”

  Her innards seemed to have been stuffed in a tiny vise that tightened with each passing second. The nerves down her back tingled, and not in a pleasant way. Gingerly she made her way around the pockmarked table and chairs, glass and wood splinters crunching underfoot.

  Something was terribly wrong, and she almost didn’t want to know what. Not if Julian’s grim expression was any guide.

  Sir Gideon jogged over the lawn and paused at Julian’s side to rest his hands on his knees. “Grey, you got LeRoy? Brilliant!” He turned and shouted, “Hey!” and sent a message to someone downfield with the same style of complicated hand gestures Julian had used a moment ago. Triumphant and beaming, he seemed oblivious that Julian was ignoring him, still watching, stoic.

  Too impatient to go through the house and cross through the gardens, Helena gripped the shutter, rucked her skirts to the knee, and hefted herself across the windowsill. Julian saw her, and leaving Gideon to monitor the prisoner, stepped to the window and lifted her out. Still gripping the sides of her waist, his thumbs rubbed up and down. He seemed to come up short for words. He finally looked her in the eye, and the sympathy and desolation in his expression buckled her knees.

  Oh, no.

  She pushed her way out of his arms, grabbed her skirts out of the way, and ran. She had no idea what for, but the crowd of people standing in a half-circle, gesturing and looking at the ground—

  The urge to retch nearly won out, and her ribs straining against the corset made her suck breath like a fish. She came close enough to see Lord Devon’s honey-colored hair, and a small bloom of relief made her feet slow until realizing she couldn’t see Sophia.

  Who lay on the ground?

  A sob broke, then another, and Helena grasped her sides to keep from collapsing.

  Then Wilhelm turned to speak to one of the men, revealing Sophia tucked against his side. Her complexion looked peaked, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. The blood spotting her clothes was alarming at first, then Helena recognized it had come from Wilhelm, who appeared to have been injured more than once. Yet he stood on his feet, appearing unconcerned.

  Helena gave a breathless laugh then another sob for no good reason. She wiped under her eyes and smoothed her hair. Straightening her back so she wouldn’t look a wreck when the others noticed her, she approached the group. Sophia clutched her husband’s arm, watching the action with a frustrated expression.

  Lord Devon turned at the sound of Helena’s approach and held out a hand to guide her through the crowd.

  A scream stuck in her throat — it was Lord Chauncey, lying on his back with his eyes glazed and staring into space. One perfect dark circle between his brows leaked a stream of blood too dark and viscous to look real. His chest didn’t move up and down, and one of his arms bent the wrong way at the elbow. A sewage-like smell wafted from his body.

  Dead.

  Couldn’t be.

  She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the same scene lay before her. The people gathered around fell silent one by one, likely waiting for her reaction. She wasn’t sure what her reaction was.

  Not pain… and she felt no grief. And she couldn’t even claim to be shocked.

  Years of fear and anger, and now the source of everything ugly in her life simply neutralized in the time it took to pull a trigger? So often she’d imagined herself free, wondered what it would feel like. Well, it was strange. Clearly she was in shock.

  And one of the men there had fired the shot. Standing nearby was Lord Devon, Philip Cavendish his nephew, and a grizzled man with the most fantastic auburn beard she’d ever seen. She didn’t want to know who had done it. It didn’t matter.

  “Deepest condolences, my lady,” Lord Devon said, his voice subdued and his head bowed in respect.

  The sympathy made something inside her break. There would be no solemn memorial service with all the pageantry a mourning warehouse could buy, no sentimental orations on the virtues of the deceased, and Helena wouldn’t bet a farthing on being able to shed a tear in public in the name of playing the grieving widow.

  The truth?

  Since she’d borne her daughter not long after her seventeenth birthday, Helena had spent every waking moment protecting Sophia from a man she could describe as no other way but evil.

  It was over. Done. Never again would she dance circles around his temper, absorb his poisonous words when his anger boiled over, and if another man ever used a fist on her, she would do as Mrs. Grey had advised and hit him back, hard. And most of all, she would take the gift that had just been handed to her, and she would live happily.

  Helena squared her shoulders, and when she was sure she could speak to Lord Devon with a blank expression, she finally answered, “You will find me the merriest of widows.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Julian rested in a ridiculously lavish bedchamber, lying on the tallest mattress he’d ever seen, probably bleeding on it. Marble, velvet, and carved wood were everywhere. Even the ceiling was painted with fat naked people, so the only place to escape the overstimulation was to close his eyes. But doing that eliminated the distraction from pain, focusing his consciousness on the throbbing and stinging until he imagined the entire world covered in it. Difficult to say which discomfort was worse.

  At first, he’d hoped Helena would come through the door. His imagination couldn’t invent dialog that didn’t sound trite, but he knew how she should look at him. She would rush into his arms
… and then he didn’t know what. Because he couldn’t have predicted the chaos that had landed on Rougemont.

  What had been posturing toward a parley or perhaps another skirmish between Chauncey’s and Devon’s men had nearly turned into a tragedy when Lady Devon had escaped her guard and gone outside, only to be cornered by Chauncey. It was a testament to their impeccable training that Devon’s men had reacted in time: Gideon, Cavendish, and O’Grady had gotten to Lady Devon before Chauncey harmed her, and the guards on the perimeters mustered to defensive points around the house with a precision like clockwork.

  Julian had spied LeRoy — the infamous bounty hunter who had been stalking Lady Devon — scoping out a sniper shot on Helena and the girls through the window.

  Knowing he couldn’t run the distance in time to stop LeRoy, Julian had knelt and aimed his front sight at the stock of LeRoy’s rifle. Could’ve been a lucky shot or thanks to the experience gained from being raised on a farm, but his bullet had struck LeRoy’s gun and broken the stock. Someone else from Chauncey’s force had taken shots at the women — with poor aim, thank God — and shattered the windows.

  When LeRoy made a dash for the house, Julian understood the bounty hunter must’ve thought Lady Devon was inside with the other women. Julian’s entire being revolted at the thought of LeRoy anywhere near Helena; he’d never covered ground so fast. When he tackled LeRoy, they skidded on the grass from the impact. LeRoy rolled to his feet and drew a dagger, and probably because rage had made him half-stupid, Julian charged him.

  Fortunately Julian managed to subdue LeRoy while taking only a minor stab wound to the ribs. Perhaps it was poetic justice that he’d turned LeRoy’s dagger on him, dealing the blow that drained his life, Julian’s boot pinning LeRoy’s neck to the ground as he bled out. Julian could probably make himself a rich man, collecting rewards for LeRoy’s head in all eighty-two counties, but since he couldn’t explain the circumstances, it was no use.