by Brenda Hiatt
“A Spanish widow,” he echoed, shaking his head. “And ’ave you planned what you are going to do?”
“It all depends on what you can tell me and what I learn for myself.” She looked at him pointedly.
He heaved a great sigh and got up from his chair with an effort. “First things first.”
He rescued the kettle and set the tea to steeping, then left the room, leaving Falcon and Maggie to wonder what he was up to. Maggie made use of his absence to more than make up her missing share of the conversation. When he returned she fell silent once again.
The sergeant was carrying a small leather-bound trunk. He said not a word but stood before Falcon, waiting.
Recognition crept slowly into Falcon’s mind, as if it started in her heart and dragged itself painfully to a more useful place. Astonishment came hard on its heels.
“Triss! My father’s books! But how—? Where—?”
He set the trunk on the table. As if she were dreaming, she rose and went over to inspect it. She touched the rough leather, remembering all the trials it had suffered. Rain, wind, bitter cold and burning sun, flooded rivers—the trunk had protected her father’s books through it all. She opened the lid and stared at the books, packed as neatly as if her father had only put them there this morning.
“Oh,” she gasped as twin daggers of grief and joy pierced her heart at once. What had made her think the past could be buried? She closed her eyes against a new threat of tears. This would never do. She was delighted to have the books, was she not?
She turned to question Triss and discovered him just re-entering the room for a second time. She had not even noticed he was gone. This time he carried something she recognized instantly. The peculiarly shaped leather carrying case had been designed for a very particular purpose.
“Oh!” she whispered this time, hardly daring to believe. “Mama’s harp!”
Triss nodded, a huge grin lighting his face.
As precious as her father’s books were, this treasure meant even more to her, almost as if her mother had reached back to her from the grave. She took the case from him and set it down, fumbling eagerly with the latch through a haze of joyful tears. When she finally had it open, she lifted out a small, exquisitely made harp of the old French style, decorated with carvings of roses and an angel along the scrolled top, with garlands of roses painted in gilt on the sound-board. She stroked the strings lightly and did not mind the discordant sound that came from them.
“It needs new strings, of course. And someone who knows how to tune and repair it. But I am certain we can find those in London.” She ran her hands along the smooth polished frame, imagining for a moment that the wood was still warm from her mother’s touch. “Oh, Triss! How did you ever manage to save these?”
He looked at her earnestly, as if measuring how much to divulge. “As ’ee knows, by the time I caught up to the regiment after finding ’ee that dreadful day, you and them ’ad already been reported dead. I knew your father’s equipment would be auctioned off and your family’s valuables shipped back to your relatives ’ere in England, so I salvaged what I could. The little things, like your ’orse, I kept with me ’til I learned where you were and could send them to ’ee, but these I ’ad shipped back ’ere to Mary for safe keeping.”
“I wish I could have met her,” Falcon said soberly. “I owe her so much. And you, too. Thank you.” Moving the harp aside she jumped up and flung her arms around the sergeant impulsively.
Maggie coughed. “Tch, tch. With all this talk of London this and London that, sure ye had better begin to be practicin’ a bit of decorum, young lady. I never saw a Spanish doña who behaved like a hoyden.”
“Oh, Maggie, we are not in London yet! Here, now, are you feeling left out?” Falcon came around the table to give her companion a vigorous hug.
“We had best be gettin’ back,” Maggie reminded her gruffly. “What are ye plannin’ to do with them things? Had ye thought about that, now?”
“I can ’ave them sent down to the inn in the early morning,” Triss offered. “Young Jebediah Stone comes by on ’is way to make the milk delivery.”
Falcon felt a moment’s panic at the thought of ending the visit. “We cannot leave yet! Triss, what about Ensign Sweeney and the other two men I’m seeking? I have come all this way. You wrote that you had information for me. Tell me. Do you know where they are?”
The sergeant turned to Falcon with as stern an expression as his jovial face could produce. “I’ve not changed my mind about this, Falcon. I want ’ee to go to the authorities with this business. Tis no matter for a young woman to be taking the law into ’er own ’ands, as you should well know.”
“I must see justice done, Triss. It has been my sustaining thought for these past five years. I cannot and I will not let what happened be forgotten. I know I survived their attack for a reason, and I believe that it is this.”
Triss rubbed his nose and looked down at the floor. “I ’aven’t ’ad much luck locating Sweeney since ’e sold out and more or less disappeared. I wrote you about that. Pumphrey, too, although I kept track of ’im longer. Drank ’imself right out of the army, ’e did. But Timmins is in London. ’E was wounded at Vitoria and got sent ’ome. Someone fixed him up with a job as a barracks porter ’elping out in the Tower.”
Falcon said nothing for a moment, swallowing her disappointment. She had hoped to have more to go on—hoped that Triss would have had more news since she’d last heard from him. Yet at least he had given her a place to start. “Perhaps Timmins knows where the others are,” she said thoughtfully.
“If we can find the blackguards, I suppose tis only right that somethin’ be done,” Maggie said.
Falcon gave the woman another hug. “Well, we have even more business in London, now. Will you come with us, Triss? You are the only soul I know in England.”
“There be plenty o’ men left in the Forty-third that would remember ’ee, missy. But I don’t see that I ’ave any choice, if I want to keep ’ee from doing something foolish. I’ll just need a day or so to sort out my affairs and make arrangements ’ere.”
“We will go on ahead. I promise I won’t do anything until you join us there. I cannot go prancing into a London barracks unescorted, now, can I?”
“Missy, I wouldn’t put it past ’ee to try.”
Chapter Three
At the Plough and Hammer, time was running out. Of course it would be, Jeremy thought, now that he was finally getting somewhere. He needed to go through the letters. He had no right to steal from an innocent citizen, if that should indeed prove the case here, but how else was he to discover the truth?
I have no choice, he thought. I need to read these and I cannot do it now. He tucked the packet inside his waistcoat and quickly repacked the trunk so it looked undisturbed. Perhaps there would be an opportunity to return the letters later.
He knew he should not leave without checking the items on the maid’s bed on his way out. As he turned to go back into the smaller room, however, he noticed in the shadow of the big bed one more piece of luggage that he had not inspected. Damn! With a sense of urgency pulsing through him, he crossed to the big leather-covered box and had it open in an instant.
For a moment his breath caught. A long, curved saber in a black leather scabbard lay nestled on top of layers of folded fabric. It was hardly what he’d expected a lady to be carrying in her luggage—a regimental officer’s sword.
Beneath the sword he found parts of an officer’s uniform—a scarlet pelisse trimmed with gray fur and festooned with silk laces, a corded red sash, and a white leather shoulder belt with the distinctive brass and silver breast plate of the Forty-third Regiment. How had she come to possess them? Could she have been married to an English officer? If so, why would she masquerade as a Spanish doña? Did these belong to the man pictured in the locket?
In a cloth pouch tucked alongside the larger items he found the officer’s silver whistle and chain, along with the pair of captain�
��s wings that should have been buttoned onto the shoulders of his missing jacket. If the man had died in battle, how had she come by these things?
There was also a pouch he recognized as one designed to hold a pistol and ammunition. There was shot and a powder flask in it, but no pistol. What had happened to it? Did she have it with her?
The last item in the box was the most incongruous and mystifying of everything that he had seen. It was a toy horse, no more than a dozen inches long, carved out of wood and covered with calfskin dyed to look like dapple gray. It had a black mane and tail of real horsehair. Why did she have it, and why was it in a box with regimental regalia? Did she have a child? The toy was English, he knew well—he had given his own son one almost exactly like it.
Jeremy abruptly replaced everything and closed the box. What in God’s name was he doing here? At any moment he was likely to be discovered and hauled before the authorities—that is, if the “Spanish” lady did not run him through with that sword first or shoot him with the missing pistol. How had he been so lucky as to be saddled with this confounded assignment just when he was finally to go home? The sight of the toy horse had unleashed an overpowering craving to see his son. He didn’t, at this moment, give a damn if the “Spanish” lady was an agent planning to murder the Prince Regent himself. He wanted to be relieved of this assignment. Unfortunately for him, the surest way to achieve that was to finish it.
His instincts were seldom wrong and at the moment they were fairly screaming that it was time to go. He took a cursory peek at the items on the maid’s bed in the other room, but found nothing of further interest there. The packet of letters would have to be the key to this puzzle. If he solved it by the morning it would not be soon enough for him! Feeling the letters secure inside his waistcoat, he cautiously opened the door to the passage, only to close it again quickly.
The sound of voices engaged in a quick exchange of Spanish warned him that his subject’s servants were coming up the stairs from the kitchen. Damn! He knew he had stayed too long. Which door would they come in? He would only have seconds to make his exit out of the one they did not use.
Wait, he told himself as he stood in the connecting doorway between the two rooms, ready to move. Moving too soon would be as much of a mistake as moving too late. He would be in trouble anyway if the manservant did not come in.
The servants moved to the door that opened into the maid’s room and the sound of their excited Spanish told him the exact moment when they discovered that the door was unlocked. As they came inside, Jeremy disappeared silently out the door of the adjoining room. By the time they discovered that that door was also unlocked, Jeremy would be up the service stairs to the next floor. He doubted they would discover anything missing.
Safe in his room, Jeremy pulled out the packet of letters and tossed them onto the bed. He had half expected to find Nicholson waiting for him, but the room was empty. It was not a problem. Nicholson had his own methods of prowling about stables and kitchens, where he learned a great deal. Undoubtedly the man had been a cat in some other lifetime.
Jeremy stripped off his coat and hung it neatly on the only chair before starting to work. He untied the packet and spread the letters out on the bed.
They were all addressed to Señorita Sofia Feliciana Alvez Bonastre. He suspected that Doña Alomar de Montero and the señorita might be the same person, although—or perhaps because—there were no letters at all addressed to the doña. He began to sort them by the senders and to arrange them in chronological order.
They covered a period of almost five years. Most were in Spanish, addressed to two convents in Andalusia, one of which was near Seville. A few of the earlier letters in English were addressed to places farther north. Apparently the señorita had seen a good deal of Spain, despite the war. All of the English letters were from the Cornishman she had gone to see, Sergeant Triss, of the Forty-third Regiment. Were the regimental items in the lady’s luggage his? They had belonged to a captain, not a sergeant. But if somehow that were indeed the case, then why had she not taken them along?
There seemed to be only a few other regular correspondents. Once he had established several neat piles, he chose the sergeant’s stack and took it over to the chair to begin his reading.
Some time later, Jeremy was startled when Nicholson approached him.
“Have you eaten?”
“Eaten? What time is it?” Jeremy fished for his watch and quickly consulted it. He could not believe he had become so engrossed in the letters that he had not heard the other man enter the room. He had lost all track of time.
He looked at his assistant sharply. “I take it the ladies have returned? How long ago?”
“Not long. They’ve sent down for their meal to be taken in their parlor.”
“No more expeditions for the moment. Very good.” He paused to consider what he should do next. “Would you be kind enough to go down and order some dinner for me? Whatever seems the most edible, given the choices. I shall be along, but not too directly. I think I shall take a small detour on my way down.”
Nicholson nodded and departed as silently as he had come. Jeremy was always amazed that a man of Nicholson’s size could move so quietly. It was a helpful skill in their business. The fellow was built like an ox, but he was quick and agile as well as powerful, unexpected gifts that had more than once proven extremely useful to both of them. I hope we’ll have no need for those talents this time, Jeremy thought.
He frowned as he returned the letters he’d been reading to their appropriate spot on the bed. Correspondence was always an intriguing puzzle, like a conversation missing half of its dialogue. The letters revealed more about their senders than the recipient, but even so, he had pieced together something of the señorita’s story and her character. She seemed to be a warm, impulsive, headstrong person who had been through some extraordinary experiences and who engendered strong feelings in those who knew her. Just reading the letters had inspired him to feel admiration for her. But, was the señorita of the letters the same as his mysterious lady from Spain? He was no longer certain. The letters seemed to suggest that the señorita was quite young. If the two were not the same, why were these letters in his subject’s baggage? What was their connection with the British Forty-third? He had even more questions now than before.
He had decided that if he went down to her rooms right now, he might just pick up some conversation that was complete, and possibly even useful. He locked his door carefully and headed along the crooked passageway towards the service stairs.
On the floor below, all things were quiet. No one was in the passage to notice him lurking or applying his ear to the door of the Spanish lady’s private parlor.
He listened first for indications that their meal had been delivered, for the last thing he needed was to be caught there. He heard a reassuring rattle of china. He pressed his ear closer, trying to pick up voices. Just as he did, however, the door opened, nearly pitching him headfirst into the room.
Instinctively he sprang backwards, but it was not far enough. The Spanish maid, hurrying out with a loaded tray, was looking back over her shoulder to catch her mistress’s last remark.
The crash that followed was quite spectacular.
“Madre de Dios!”
“Saints preserve us!”
The opened door blocked Falcon’s view of precisely what happened, but she heard the tremendous noise and jumped to her feet even before she heard Benita and Maggie’s exclamations. She came around the door just as the little Spanish maid, kneeling amid a hideous mess of broken crockery in the doorway, burst into tears and put her hands over her face. Beyond stood the lanky form of a brown-haired gentleman surveying his coat and tightly fitted pantaloons, which undoubtedly had been spotless moments earlier. A colorful assortment of stains and crumbs—mustard, honey, bits of ham—adorned his person now.
He made a half-gesture as if to brush away the damage, then shrugged and looked up. Falcon’s breath caught as she recogn
ized him as the handsome man from the crowd in the parlor that afternoon. She noticed his eyes—slate gray, deep set under thick, dark brows, above a very straight nose. At this moment his lips were set in an unreadable straight line.
Surely he is not about to heap abuse on poor Benita, she thought. What wretched luck that he must have been passing by the door at just that moment!
“Good sir,” she said, moving forward to claim his attention and remembering to exaggerate her accent for his benefit, “What terrible misfortune! Perdóneme por favor. You are not hurt? Please accept my apologies. My maid, of course, had no idea that anyone was passing by. I am entirely to blame, for I distracted her just as she started to go out.”
His eyes locked with hers, and the intensity of his gaze surprised her. Undoubtedly the glance lasted no more than a second, but it felt longer, as if he were studying her.
“Rest assured that I am perfectly fine, madam,” he said, “although I admit my attire may appear somewhat less than presentable at this moment.” His voice was pleasantly deep and resonant.
“You must allow me to pay for the damage to your—uh, your coat,” Falcon murmured, realizing suddenly that she must have been the one staring. Stained or not, his pantaloons fit his muscled legs exquisitely. She shifted her gaze to the wreckage on the floor.
“I have other, uh, coats,” he said. “Nor need you be overly concerned with replacing our host’s fine China-ware, in my opinion.”
She looked up. “Fine…?” She realized belatedly that he was speaking in jest, probably in an effort to reassure her. The inn’s dishes were hardly of the best quality. She smiled, and the answering smile he bestowed upon her was so dazzling it nearly took her breath away.
Benita’s weeping had meanwhile subsided to sniffles. As she began to pick up the broken pieces of crockery, the gentleman turned his attention back to her. Astonishingly—and quite contrary to Falcon’s expectation—he sketched a slight bow to the maid and extended his hand to assist her up.