by Лорен Уиллиг
I looked down and saw a perfectly coiffed blond head, not a hint of telltale roots showing, highlighted to feign a vacation in St. Barth’s, cut in a kicky sweep not unlike my last haircut, the one that had now grown out into straggles. Oh, damn. Unconsciously, I reached for the ends of my hair, too short to put up, too long for style.
Even up half a flight of stairs, Joan Plowden-Plugge still had the power to make me feel like a mugwump.
I tugged at Colin’s sleeve. “Hey. What’s Joan doing here?”
“I didn’t invite her,” he said quickly. I believed him. Not out of consideration for me and my feelings, but because Joan had made no bones about her desire to become mistress of Selwick Hall, or at least of its master. “She’s here for Manderley.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Colin had been quite clear about wanting to keep a lid on publicity, at least as it pertained to Selwick Hall. The movie itself he couldn’t do much about. That was DreamStone’s province.
Colin’s lip twisted. “I’m not okay with any of this.”
Fair point. That wasn’t what I’d meant, though, and he knew it.
He leaned a hand on the other side of the railing next to me, boxing me in. “Look, if I have to have reporters in my home, I’d rather it be Manderley than one of the tabloids.”
I wasn’t sure a periodical that looked down its nose at Town & Country as hopelessly plebeian counted as a substitute for the gossip rags. But if Colin thought doing a piece in Manderley would stave off the tits’n ass crowd, then so be it. I had my doubts. Where Micah Stone went, there went the paparazzi. And nothing would suit Jeremy better than a double-page spread of himself in front of “his” ancestral home, complete with wellies and a gun propped over his shoulder.
Colin looked down at me, his hazel eyes concerned. “I know Joan isn’t your favorite person—”
“I can’t imagine where you get these ideas,” I muttered. Just because she had all but hired a coyote to drop an Acme anvil on my head.
“But I’ve known her since we were children. I trust her not to say anything…” Colin paused, searching for the right phrase.
“Libelous?” I’m not the child of two lawyers for nothing.
Colin pushed away from the railing. “Embarrassing.”
“Right. That, too. Do you think we should go down, or shall we just stay up here and keep staring at people? I’m fine going either way.”
“Was that a hint?” Colin asked.
“It was more of a directive.” I took his arm in a proprietary grasp. Take that, Joan Plowden-Plugge! She might have two names, but I had one Colin, and, by gad, I wasn’t sharing, not for all the cupcakes in kindergarten. “I could use one of those glasses of bubbly.”
“Only one?”
“Do you really want me to get blotto and start singing show tunes?”
Colin’s lips brushed the top of my head. “You’re cute when you’re blotto,” he said.
I noticed he didn’t say anything about my singing ability.
“You’re just hoping I’ll lose it and say horrible things to Jeremy so you won’t have to.” Oops. Did I say that out loud?
Colin didn’t seem too perturbed by the prospect. “That would be a plus, yes.”
I poked Colin in the arm. “There’s Dempster.”
We weren’t the only ones who had spotted him. Joan’s carefully highlighted head turned and, with just the right words of good-bye, she excused herself and maneuvered her way through the crowd, her black dress narrow enough not to make so much as a whisper as she passed. Her heels were a modest inch and a half. Sling-backs. Unlike me, she wasn’t relying on the shoemaker’s art for lengthening and slimming.
Toad.
How did she know Dempster? The Vaughn Collection, I guessed. It made sense that the editor of a fine-arts magazine would be on more than nodding terms with the archivist of London’s answer to the Frick Collection.
But this looked like a hell of a lot more than nodding terms. Holding her champagne glass out to the side, Joan leaned in, not for the traditional air kiss but for a solid peck on the lips. As she leaned back, Dempster’s hand settled in a proprietary way just above her waist.
What?
I looked at Colin, gawping like a child catching Mommy with Santa Claus. If Santa Claus was evil, that is. And if Mommy were the wicked stepmother. “Did you—?” I said.
Colin shook his head, looking just as befuddled as I felt. “No. I—No.” He looked down at them, a man at sea. “They are colleagues.…”
“His hand is still on her ass,” I pointed out. “That’s not collegial behavior.” A little lightbulb went on in my brain. “Do you know what this means? Serena didn’t invite Dempster. Joan did.”
Colin seemed insufficiently excited by this revelation.
I tugged on his sleeve. “Don’t you get it? Serena isn’t back together with Dempster!”
Not to mention that now Joan was safely off the market, so maybe she’d stay out of our hair for five minutes. And by ours, I meant mine. It would be nice to go to the pub without Joan throwing darts at me instead of the board.
“I got that,” said Colin slowly. I followed his gaze and saw what had caught his attention. Oh, damn. There was another corollary to Serena not being back together with Dempster, one I hadn’t quite thought through.
Serena stood in the shadow of the front door, looking like someone had just run a knife straight through her heart.
Dempster had been using Serena, and the odds were that he was probably using Joan, too. He had even made a play for me. I didn’t think the man was capable of decent, disinterested affection. But I doubted that would make much of a difference to Serena right now. All that mattered was that the man who had broken her heart was in her home in the company of another woman.
I had spent months privately griping about Colin cosseting Serena, about our relationship being crowded with three when it ought to have been cozy with two. And let’s just say I hadn’t been too happy with her when she had sided with Jeremy, flinging Colin to the wolves. But now…
“Go to her.” I gave Colin a little push. “She needs you.”
Colin did his best imitation of an Easter Island statue, nothing but the finest granite.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go.”
I started down, slipping and skidding in my inappropriate heels, only to find myself checked four steps up by Dempster.
“Eloise!” he said volubly, for all the world as though he were the host. I could see Serena over his shoulder, looking shadowed and fragile. It wasn’t lost on me that even though she had grown up in this house, it was Serena who was coming in from outside. Some people, it seemed, were doomed to be perpetual outsiders, like a moth at the far side of a lighted patio, always hovering just out of reach of the light.
I was too generally pissed off to bother with the amenities. “I see you’ve found another way of getting into Selwick Hall.”
Dempster’s chest expanded. “I’m the historical consultant for the film,” he said.
From what I’d seen, calling it a film seemed like a stretch. “I wasn’t talking about the movie. Excuse me.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Dempster said suavely, ignoring my attempt to get around him.
“Why? So you can steal my notes?”
I had to give him this much. He put on a good show of confusion.
“What’s this?” Colin had come down behind me. We might be having our own tiff, but it was a solid front when it came to barbarians at the gate. Colin’s fingers fumbled for mine.
I slid my hand gratefully into his.
“Ask Dempster,” I said, nodding at the other man. “Ask him just what he’s looking for at Selwick Hall.”
Chapter 21
What use is compass, map or chart,
Or any of the mariner’s art?
My mast is broke, my rudder gone,
Darkling I drift, and all alone.
—Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanu
s: A Masque in Three Parts
He couldn’t shake the image of her face.
Augustus slipped away around the side of the house, moving with a stealth that had been ingrained by time and brutal training. He had good cause to be grateful for that training. It was all that was keeping him from barreling headfirst over the nearest shrub. He felt entirely disoriented, adrift, at sea. Gravel crunched beneath his feet, the only sign he was still on a path. The curtains had been drawn in the house, but enough light leached through them to provide a vague illumination, a strange echo of light, worse than no light at all.
What in the hell had just happened in there?
To his left lay Bonaparte’s dollhouse of a theatre, smug on its own patch of ground. Dark now, all dark, entirely dark, no Emma inside playing with props or rocking back on her heels to look up at him with her hair all any which way and a smudge on her face.
He could still feel the texture of her hair beneath his fingers, thicker than he would have thought, thick and sleek and straight, blunt at the ends where it had been cut short, frizzled in bits where her maid must have experimented with the curling iron and failed. He could feel the silk of her hair and the delicate shape of the scalp beneath. She had a mole behind one ear, just a little bump in the skin, but his fingers remembered it, mapping it onto the landscape of her body, familiar terrain made unfamiliar, discovered and rediscovered.
Weeks they had spent together, bent over a desk, passing at a party, sending notes back and forth with a speed that made the messengers drag their feet and ask with palpable reluctance, “Is there a reply?” in a way that suggested they knew the answer would be yes but hoped for no.
No, no reply. Augustus had nothing to say. He was muddled, befuddled, baffled, perplexed, kerflummoxed. Confusion robbed him of the facile phrases that rose so easily to his lips, left him only with a cacophony of image and emotion, none of it reducible to the simple parameters of prose or even the lying truths of poetry.
No matter, she had told him, or something to that effect. She understood. Augustus was bloody glad someone did. Perhaps Emma might deign to explain it to him.
This was Emma. Emma! Emma of the too-low dresses and too-shiny jewels and too-bright smile and too-late parties. Emma who flitted and frolicked and sent him tea cakes and made sure he wore his cloak. Emma, who had somehow wiggled her way into his life, tucked securely next to his heart like a talisman in his coat pocket, a comfortable presence only to be noticed in its absence. One didn’t take it out and play with it or consider the purpose of its existence; it was simply there.
He couldn’t fancy Emma. She was just…Emma. Always there, always in motion, always running half an hour late. He admired the statuesque, the stately, the serene, Grecian goddesses made flesh, alabaster without the pedestal.
Then why couldn’t he stop thinking about Emma? And why in hell wouldn’t she stop to talk? She had certainly been eager enough to talk when it involved his emotions.
Augustus stubbed his toe on a bit of loose gravel and cursed. It did little to relieve his feelings.
The graveled circle in front of the house was crowded with carriages in various stages of unloading. Servants swarmed over them, disentangling the luggage that had been roped to the roofs, handing down boxes and trunks, while the aristocracy of the serving world—ladies’ maids and manservants—hovered to ensure the correct dispositions of their masters’ belongings, complaining loudly about clumsiness and protesting as trunks came tumbling down. Farther along, empty conveyances were being led down the trail to the carriage house, the horses to be unhitched and taken to the stable for grooming and feeding. It was a scene a world removed from the genteel gathering in the gallery, nosy, boisterous, busy.
Augustus paused in the lee of a miniature potted plant, watching, as from a world away, the bustle in front of him.
What if, just what if, the reason she hadn’t wanted to talk about it was because she had meant exactly what she said?
Two unpleasant facts impressed themselves upon his consciousness.
Item the first: He had kissed her. They could quibble about accidents and chance encounters and primal instincts and so forth, but when it came down to it, his lips had been the ones to seek hers.
Item the second: She was the one who had called halt. He hadn’t been thinking terribly clearly at that point. Blame it on fatigue, blame it on emotional exhaustion, blame it on the rain in Spain; whatever the cause, he would have been happy to go on kissing Emma indefinitely. And by kissing, he meant…well.
Until she had kindly but firmly put him back in his place.
Friend.
“Aaarrghh!” Augustus let out a strangled cry as a vise slammed down on his throat.
His soles scuffed against gravel as he was yanked backwards, ineffectually scrabbling for purchase against the sliding surface. His fingers fumbled at the bar hampering his breathing. He stamped down with one foot, but missed his target. Instead, his heel caught fabric.
There was a tearing sound, and the weight abruptly lifted from his throat.
“Really!” said Miss Gwen. “Was that entirely necessary?”
Augustus clutched his aching throat and turned to glare at the older woman, who was regarding her torn hem with a frown of displeasure. The instrument of torture, her parasol, dangled from one hand.
“Was that necessary?” he choked out. He was going to have bruises for a week.
Miss Gwen examined her skirt and dismissed the damage with a sniff.
Sod her skirt, what about his vocal cords? He had never so deeply regretted that his costume didn’t allow for a cravat. At least it would have provided a little extra padding.
“Shoddy, Whittlesby, shoddy,” she said smugly, tapping with her parasol against the ground for emphasis. Augustus prudently took a step back. “If I were an assassin, you would be dead by now.”
Augustus tilted back his chin. “Here’s my throat. Care to finish me off?”
Miss Gwen emitted one of her infamous “hmph” noises. “There’s no need for melodrama, Mr. Whittlesby. Just see that I don’t catch you daydreaming on the job.”
“I wasn’t—”
Oh, hell, what was the point? Just as there was no point to reminding Miss Gwen that, in point of fact, she was more likely to work for him than he for her. Augustus had his appointment directly from the War Office. Miss Gwen was a country spinster turned spy, a hobbyist who had got lucky. She had a bit of nerve lecturing him.
It didn’t help that she was right.
“Was that the sole purpose of this exercise,” Augustus asked coolly, “or did you have something you wished to say to me?”
“Hmph. Not everyone pants after a ruffled shirt, young man.” A fact for which Augustus could only be grateful. “While you were wandering about in poetic reverie, I was doing what you were meant to be doing.”
“Which is?”
“Listening!” Augustus jumped as the parasol landed dangerously near his left foot. “In case you haven’t noticed, we have a number of new arrivals, including”—Miss Gwen’s steely eyes glinted in the torchlight—“Mr. Fulton.”
“We knew he was expected,” said Augustus. “How is that news?”
“A day early?” countered Miss Gwen. She played her trump card. “He was asking after a crate.”
“Emma’s wave machine,” Augustus said shortly.
“Emma, is it?” Miss Gwen’s eyes narrowed speculatively, but she forbore to comment. For the moment. “As it happens, Mr. Whittlesby, you are wrong. Quite, quite wrong. Mr. Fulton was most specific about it. There is a second crate.”
“A second crate,” Augustus repeated. From far away, a very long time ago, he remembered the deliveryman mumbling something about the ruts. No, the rest. If he hadn’t been so busy being lovelorn, he would have noticed. He should have noticed. “Another device?”
“That would be the logical conclusion,” said Miss Gwen crisply. “Another device. One he doesn’t want anyone to see. But someone knows about i
t.”
“The Emperor, presumably.” And most of the naval higher-ups. Assuming this was the device they sought. Assuming such a device existed.
“Livingston,” said Miss Gwen, with relish. “The younger one. He came out asking after it.”
“What did he say?”
Miss Gwen looked mildly miffed. “I couldn’t hear,” she admitted. “There was too much noise. It’s over to you now.”
“To me?”
“Where is your brain, young man? Have you been playing the idiot for too long? Think!” Thump. “Who would know what Fulton and Livingston have been planning? Who has access to both?” With withering sarcasm, she added, “I assume this is why you’ve been frittering away your time dallying with the Delagardie chit.”
“I wasn’t—” Augustus broke off. “You, of all people, should know how important it is to win a contact’s confidence.”
Miss Gwen looked skeptical. She generally preferred more direct methods. Her interrogation techniques were of the Torquemada variety. Had Torquemada been in possession of a large collection of parasols.
She poked him with the point of her parasol, herding him beneath the striped awning at the entrance and into the house. “You’ve done with winning. From what I’ve seen, you’ve won it. Now use it.”
Not use it. Use her. Augustus had never scrupled to use any means at his disposal to get information. He had dallied, he had flirted, he had even feigned passion when the situation required it. But Miss Gwen’s blunt directive left a nasty taste in his mouth.
“What makes you think she knows?” he hedged.
“I’m not the only one,” said Miss Gwen portentously.
Her heels echoed against the black-and-white tiles of the front hall. Even with the candles lit, the room looked gloomy, the light reflecting dully off the porphyry columns, like a muddy lake by moonlight. The classical statues on either side of the glass doors onto the garden looked down their marble noses at them as they entered.
Miss Gwen looked superciliously down her nose at him, and said, in the hectoring tones of a governess, “If you don’t get the information out of her, someone else will.”