Smoke & Lies

by Andrea Penrose

  “He does seem to have become genuinely fond of Johannes,” she mused.

  “You think he and the baroness may settle down to a quiet life of marital bliss?” The earl gave a mock shudder. “My mind boggles at the thought.”

  “Odder things have happened.”

  “Not many,” he replied dryly.

  She felt in her pocket for the pasteboard box containing the jeweled talisman. “We shall see if the minister agrees with you.”

  * * *

  “The best-laid plans of mice and men . . .” Grentham shrugged out of his overcoat and draped it over one of the kitchen stools. It was midnight, and a swirl of heavy wool stirred a chill in the kitchen.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you conversant with the poetry of Robert Burns,” murmured Arianna, as she cracked an egg into the mixing bowl and began to stir.

  “I daresay I’m conversant with a great many things you wouldn’t think likely,” replied the minister. He turned, and as the lamplight flickered across his face, she saw fatigue had sharpened the planes of his face. His eyes looked sunken in shadows.

  His was an impossibly difficult job, and this latest mission had given her a greater sympathy for the challenges he faced. The dangers to Britain were like the serpentine Hydra of Greek mythology—slice off one of its heads and several more spouted to take its place.

  “Would you care for some coffee?” she asked. “Or chocolate?”

  “I imagine the minister would prefer brandy.” Saybrook had already poured one for himself. He filled another glass and slid it across the worktable.

  “Slàinte mhòr.” Grentham lifted to his lips and took a prolonged swallow before sitting down.

  Arianna couldn't quite read the look that passed between the two men, but before she could shift for a better angle, the rattle of the tradesmen's delivery door drew her attention. Steps clattered in the stone-tiled corridor, and a moment later Henning and Sophia appeared from the gloom.

  “Well, well, a cozy little gathering of friends,” said Henning with an edge of sarcasm. He resentment of the minister was still sharp from the death of his nephew. “I must say . . .” His gaze fell on Saybrook and Arianna. “The two of you are a sight for sore eyes. I feared that when you returned it would be in a pair of matching coffins.”

  Sophia opened the satchel she was carrying, and as she took a seat at the table opposite Grentham, she pulled out a pistol and wordlessly lay upon the knife-scarred wood. A twitch of her fingers shifted the snout to point directly at the minister.

  Henning, who had chosen a chair in shadows near the pot rack, stifled a chuckle.

  Grentham regarded the gun barrel for a moment and then quaffed another swallow of brandy. “Alas, I hate to disappoint you, Miss Kirtland, but if you wish to put a bullet in my brain, you may be out of luck. There are several high-ranking government officials in line ahead of you, and as they wish to have my head on a platter, there will be nothing left for you.”

  Saybrook raised his brows at Sophia. “I daresay there’s an explanation for your action. An interesting one, no doubt.”

  “The minister gave me his word that he didn’t deliberately send you on a mission that he knew was doomed to failure,” she replied. “I’m simply reminding him of that.”

  “You may put it away,” murmured Arianna. “I've no doubt the minister did his best in what was a diabolically difficult situation. As did we. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.”

  “You ladies are welcome to debate my fate at your leisure, but at the moment I’d rather hear the details of what went awry,” muttered Grentham. “So that while I still have a head on my body, I might use to see if anything can be salvaged from the wreckage of Elba.”

  Sophia’s scowl softened to something unreadable. Perhaps she, too, had noticed the lines of exhaustion and worry fanning out from the corner of Grentham’s gunmetal-grey eyes.

  ‘Speaking of wreckage,” said Saybrook, “any word on Pierson?”

  “No,” replied the minister. “I assume he’s dead.” His voice was flat, his face expressionless, and yet Arianna sensed a note of regret beneath his show of detachment. She wondered how long he and Pierson had worked together.

  “Which begs the question—”

  “Yes, yes, you’ll get some answers on that, Grentham,” replied Saybrook. “But there are a great many pieces of the puzzle to fit together for you, so it’s best if I start at the beginning.”

  As the earl launched into his narrative, Arianna finished mixing her confection and put it into the oven. Cooking always helped her focus her thoughts. And Grentham, she knew, would not be satisfied with simple answers. He needed—and deserved—the truth.

  Just not every chapter and verse of it.

  Grentham’s maintained a stoic face throughout the lengthy explanation, interrupting only occasionally to clarify certain details. When at last Saybrook was done, he sat back and steepled his fingers.

  “Your message confirming the traitors within the Foreign Office and Admiralty reached me while you were still en route home. They’ve been removed.”

  Permanently? she wondered. During her first encounter with the minister, the embarrassment of having a high-born conspirator in the government was solved by a convenient hunting accident.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Grentham added, “I understand that offends your scruples, Lady Saybrook. But to maintain the country’s morale, the public must not worry that its government is riddled with corruption.”

  “Hmmph” snorted Henning. “Even if it’s true?”

  “I don't disagree,” she answered after spearing the surgeon to silence. “I do understand that difficult choices must be made and that some of them offer naught but the lesser of two evils.”

  For the first time in the evening, the minister allowed a flicker of emotion to pass over his face.

  Surprise. She imagined that didn’t occur very often.

  “I suppose Merriweather’s family will be informed that he lost his life in the line of duty,” said Saybrook.

  “Yes,” he replied. “The crew of Basilisk has been well rewarded for its loyalty to King and country.” A pause. “And they know the penalty for wagging their tongues about military secrets.”

  “Regarding the crew, might I ask a favor of you, sir?” replied Arianna.

  His eyes narrowed to a wary squint. “Go on.”

  “Make Midshipman Driggs a lieutenant as soon as possible.”

  He blinked.

  “Given what lies ahead,” she said, “the country shall need all the heroes we can give to them.”

  The minister allowed a grunt—though what he meant by it wasn’t clear. He rarely gave a straight answer.

  “Moving from Good to Evil,” intoned Grentham, “let us discuss Mr. Wolff and Lady Plessy-Moritz in greater detail. Your account of their contributions to the mission strikes me as . . . suspiciously thin.”

  “You advised us to concentrate on our mission and leave them to perform theirs, so we don't know as much as you might like,” interjected Saybrook. With a straight face, he added. “As you know, we do try to obey your orders to the letter.”

  Was that a twitch at the corners of Grentham’s mouth?

  “There seems little useful purpose in wasting your time recounting every minute detail,” pointed out Arianna as she moved to the stove to remove her confection from the oven. “We’ve told you what’s important—Wolff saved my life, and help thwart Merriweather’s escape. And by risking his neck to get close to the Frenchmen heading the consortium, he learned about the gold being transported to France.”

  Grentham curled a sardonic smile. “Ah, yes. Wolff has a knack for cozying up to money.”

  “And you should be glad of it,” she shot back.

  Grentham fell to tapping his fingertips together. “If he’s such a saint, why he didn’t he return to London to accept a medal for his service? He does seem rather inordinately fond of shiny baubles.”

  Another snort from Henning.r />
  “Because,” answered Saybrook, “Wolff is pragmatic enough to know that valor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

  That drew an uncharacteristic bark of laughter from Grentham. “I daresay you’ll give me the same line of reasoning with the baroness.”

  “You promised her you would keep Johannes—a seven-year old-child—safe from harm if she did what you asked,” challenged Arianna. “Instead, she was put in an unspeakable difficult dilemma. And still, she was courageous and clever enough to find a way to refuse the order to murder von Regenhilde, leaving you with a very important ally in the Austrian court.”

  “Leave them both alone, Grentham,” interrupted Saybrook. “If anything, the scales are tipped in their favor if you wish to measure the services received for your payments.”

  Sophia, who had remained unnaturally silent throughout the long discussion, let out a low hiss. “How could you renege on a promise to keep a child from harm?”

  Grentham turned slowly to face her accusation. “I know you think me a monster, Miss Kirtland. But I don't make war on children. As it happens, I sent agents to take the boy into safekeeping well before Lord and Lady Saybrook, along with the baroness and Wolff, left London. However, they were delayed by a snowstorm and reached Zurich an hour too late to keep him out of Ballencourt’s hands. I regret it, but luck—good or bad—can throw the best-intentioned plans awry.”

  Before Sophia could respond, the minister continued, “Be that as it may, I promise that I won’t pursue the matter.” A very un-Grentham-like spark lit in his eyes. “I trust you accept that my word is my bond and won’t ask me for a written affidavit signed in blood.”

  But oddly enough, noted Arianna, his challenging stare was directed not at her or Saybrook, but at her friend.

  Sophia flinched, and her expression turned . . . peculiar.

  There was really no other word for it.

  “I—I never said . . . I never thought . . .”

  “It’s my fault if Miss Kirtland appears to have a harsh opinion of you, sir,” interjected Arianna. “She was quick to defend your integrity on the morning someone took a shot at me. However, having nearly had my head blown to flinders, I wasn’t in an overly charitable mood, and in the heat of the moment, I was quick to think the worst. I told her she was being naïve.”

  Sofia lifted her chin, which didn’t quite hide the flush ridging her cheekbones. “You had kept your word during the Staughton affair, Lord Grentham. But this whole Elba mission seemed tangled in lies and intrigue from the very beginning. I didn’t like seeing my friends put in such an untenable position.

  Grentham made a face. “Would that I had God-like powers to discern all the dangers before a mission begins. In this particular case, my knowledge was limited, and the clock was ticking.”

  “And I imagine your superiors were frothing at the mouth to have you do something,” murmured Arianna.

  The minister said nothing, but Sophia shifted awkwardly. “If I misjudged the situation, I—I am sorry.”

  For a moment, both of them appeared as uncomfortable as cats trying to cross a hot griddle. They broke off eye contact . . .

  “Do try a piece of the chocolate pastry while it’s still warm,” offered Arianna.

  Sophia gratefully accepted the plate and helped herself to one of the neatly cut squares.

  Grentham looked about to refuse when the pastries were pushed across the table to him. But after chuffing a snort through his nose, he gingerly plucked up a piece.

  Arianna ducked her head to hide a smile. Did he realize that breaking bread together was a primordial ritual, one that bonded strangers into friends? If so, the chocolate might stick in his craw.

  The minister, however, took a tentative bite without choking.

  Saybrook refilled Grentham’s brandy glass, along with his own. “Now, perhaps you would be so kind as to answer our questions. Pierson clarified how some of the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but there are still some things I wish to understand. He was sent as a shepherd of sorts—to make sure we didn’t stray from our assigned tasks—”

  “In part,” cut in Grentham. “Though as I’ve tried to make clear, this mission was more like the blind trying to lead the blind. I knew trouble was imminent, but it was impossible to know which spark was going to ignite the explosion. I had to make an educated guess, and deploy my limited resources to deal with what I deemed to be the most logical threats.”

  He took a swallow of brandy. “I knew I could trust you to uncover whatever plotting was going on in Elba among Napoleon’s coterie. Wolff and the baroness were less certain allies, but any information on the machinations of other European countries would prove helpful to me.”

  “What of the consortium of merchants?” asked the earl.

  “I had vague suspicions, but no time to organize operatives to investigate,” answered Grentham. “I thought there was a chance Wolff would have ties to them.”

  “And you struck gold,” quipped Arianna.

  “A stroke of luck,” replied the minister. “Would that there had been more of it.”

  “We did have some triumphs,” said Saybrook. “We rooted out the conspiracy in the Foreign Office and Admiralty for you. And exposed Holden and Merriweather.”

  “But we didn’t find Eduardo,” said Arianna.

  “Ah, yes. Eduardo de la Vega.” Grentham frowned. “We’ll get to that in a moment. For now—”

  A rattle and thump from the tradesmen’s door interrupted his words.

  “At last,” he murmured.

  Saybrook turned on his stool.

  Steps echoed in the darkened corridor . . . and then suddenly he was on his feet as a figure materialized from the gloom.

  * * *

  “Before you rake me over the coals,” said Grentham as the earl pulled his cousin into a fierce hug, “I didn’t know why de la Vega had disappeared when I dispatched you from London. It turns out he was on our side, and as luck would have it, my other operatives were able to rescue him.”

  “I’m very happy for you, laddies,” piped up Henning. The surgeon speared Grentham with a scowl. “It’s good to see that, for once, one of the minister’s devious machinations has a happy ending.”

  Through her own elation, Arianna felt a pinch of sorrow for Henning. He had taken the death of his nephew very hard. And while Grentham had failed to save the young man, he had at least tried.

  “Happy endings are the stuff of fairie tales,” retorted Grentham with a snap of his fingers.

  Henning let out a grunt. “Aye, when you wave your warlock’s wand, it’s all fire and brimstone, not sweetness and sunlight.”

  “Baz,” murmured Arianna, “that’s not entirely fair. The minister—” She stopped on seeing Henning’s eyes suddenly widen in shock.

  Spinning around she saw another young man was framed in the doorway. He was fair-haired, with a Celtic gleam of red tingeing the flaxen strands.

  “Angus!” croaked Henning.

  “Halloo, Uncle Basil,” answered his supposedly dead nephew. “I know I owe you—and Mother—an explanation. It’s . . .” A crooked smile. “Well, it’s a rather long story.”

  “I should cut out your eyeballs with a rusty scalpel, Lord Grentham,” exclaimed Henning, but the smile wreathing his unshaven face robbed the words of any edge. Indeed, as he pushed past the minister, he paused ever so briefly to clap him on the shoulder.

  Which for Henning, thought Arianna, was a prodigious show of emotion.

  “As for you, you bacon-brained jackanapes,” he said to his nephew, “your story had better be a damnably good one.”

  Arianna saw that Sophia’s eyes were glistening with tears as Henning enveloped Angus in a heartfelt embrace.

  She looked to Grentham, unashamed of the salty wetness streaming down her own cheeks, and gave a tiny nod of thanks.

  He tried to appear impassive, but the corners of his mouth betrayed a tiny twitch.

  “Auch, allow me te speak, Uncle,
and I’ll attempt to explain.” protested Angus as Henning showed no sign of allowing him to escape from the bear hug.

  “As will I,” added Eduardo. “For our tales intertwine.”

  “Let Grentham do the talking,” counseled Saybrook. “We know he will be quick about it.”

  The minister acknowledged the remark with a mocking shrug. “Brevity suits me as well. Touching as all these heartfelt celebrations are, I do have other duties to which I must attend.”

  “Do you never stop to smell the roses, milord?” asked Sophia in a small voice.

  “Do roses have a scent, Miss Kirtland?”

  The quip didn’t draw a smile. Looking pensive, Sophia shifted her gaze to the branch of candles at the end of the worktable and stared in silence at the flickering flames.

  “The story, Lord Grentham,” urged Henning. “We’re waiting with bated breath.”

  The minister resumed his seat on the stool. “As you know, your nephew was a leader of the student revolutionaries in Scotland who were being encouraged by French operatives, who wished to cause trouble in Britain.”

  “In hopes of distracting us from Elba?” asked Saybrook.

  “Yes,” came the reply. “However, I had learned that Angus had experienced a change of heart and arranged to have spirited him out of prison. But the commander, as you know, had a personal reason for wishing him dead.”

  Arianna nodded.

  “Angus was shot and fell from the cliff. But luckily, my man was a Highlander and climbed down to find he was still alive.”

  “You should have told me he wasn’t dead,” growled Henning.

  “Perhaps. But that might have threatened a very important mission that I was planning, and I couldn’t take the risk,” replied the minister. “Your nephew had the trust of the French, which would allow me entrée into their network in the south of France. It wasn’t certain he would recover, but when he did, he agreed to infiltrate the group and report back on their plans.”

  “I know I caused you and Mother pain, Uncle Basil,” said Angus. “But it was necessary.”