by Evie Dunmore
The door to the antechamber creaked, and Hattie crept into the room. She met Lucie’s evil eye with an apologetic little smile and settled next to Annabelle in a cloud of expensive perfume.
“Good morning, Catriona, Annabelle,” she chirped. “I’m late. What did I miss?”
Annabelle handed her a sheet. “We are going to spy on men of influence.”
“How exciting. Oh, these would make a fabulous handbook on eligible bachelors!”
A snarl sounded from Lucie’s direction. “Eligible bachelors? Have you paid any attention during our meetings?”
Hattie gave a startled huff.
“No man is eligible as long as you become his property the moment you marry him,” Lucie said darkly.
“It’s true, though, that the marriage-minded mamas will have a lot of this information,” Lady Mabel dared to argue from the couch across.
“You may go about it by all means possible,” Lucie allowed. “Just not marriage.”
“And what makes you think the MPs will receive us?” Catriona asked.
“There’s an election in March. Politicians like to look accessible in the months leading up to election day.” Lucie turned to Annabelle, her elfin face expectant. “What do you think of this approach?”
“The idea is excellent,” Annabelle said truthfully.
Lucie gave a satisfied little smile. “You inspired me. Seeing you walk up to Montgomery as if he were a mere mortal made me step back and look at our routine with a fresh eye.”
“Finding information on Montgomery will be difficult,” Hattie said. “He may be divorced, and we all know he wants his ancient castle back. But there’s nothing ever written about him in the gossip sheets, and I read them all.”
Lucie wrinkled her nose. “Because he’s a favorite of the queen, so the press doesn’t dare touch him. No, we need drastic measures where Montgomery is concerned. Catriona, do you not tutor his brother? Lord Devereux?”
Catriona shook her head. “It was last term, in hieroglyphics.”
“Excellent,” Lucie said. “Find an excuse for your paths to cross and then you inveigle yourself . . .”
Catriona recoiled. “Me? Oh no.”
Lucie’s eyes narrowed. “Why ever not? You are already acquainted.”
“I taught him hieroglyphs,” Catriona mumbled, “that’s quite different from . . .”
“. . . inveigling,” Hattie supplied.
“But—”
Catriona made to disappear into her plaid.
“Never mind,” Lucie said brusquely. “Annabelle will do it.”
Annabelle looked up, astonished and a little alarmed. “Me?”
“If you please.”
“I’m afraid I cannot think of any reason to introduce myself to his lordship.”
Lucie began to look strained. “You do not need a reason. You are the most beautiful of all of us. Try looking terribly impressed by whatever he says and a young man is liable to tell you all his secrets before he knows it.”
“I’m not—” Annabelle began, when Hattie cut her off with a cheerful wave.
“But you are,” the girl chirped, “very beautiful, such a lovely profile. I have been thinking how I’d love for you to sit for my Helen of Troy. Would you?”
Annabelle blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Hattie wiggled her fingers at her. “I study fine arts. I paint. Thank goodness for gloves, I have the most pitiful hands in England.”
No, that would be my hands, Annabelle thought. The calluses would not go away in a lifetime. “I’m honored,” she said, “but I couldn’t possibly fit in a sitting for a painting.”
“It’s due next term,” Hattie said, her round eyes growing pleading.
Lucie cleared her throat. “Peregrin Devereux,” she said. “Find a way to get to him.”
The girls exchanged uncertain glances.
“If we want something from Lord Devereux, we need to offer him something in return,” Annabelle said, starting with the obvious.
“We could pay him,” Hattie suggested after a moment.
Annabelle shook her head. “He will hardly want for money.”
“Young men always want for money,” Hattie said, “but you are right, it may not be enough for him to tattle on his brother.”
“Perhaps we have to find a way to get closer to Montgomery himself.”
Hattie frowned. “But how? He’s entirely unsociable.”
A brooding silence fell.
“I think there is something that Lord Devereux might want,” Catriona said quietly.
Hattie leaned in. “You do?”
Catriona studied her hands. “His drinking society wants the key to the wine cellar of St. John’s.”
Hattie gasped. “Of course he would want that.”
Excitement sizzled up Annabelle’s nape. Oxford’s drinking societies were outrageously competitive, to a point that it had reached even the delicate ears of the female students. They said it was worth more than a first-class degree, and was as coveted as winning a tournament against Cambridge, leading the table of drunken debaucheries. Odd priorities, rich people had.
“But how do we get our hands on the key?” she asked.
Catriona looked up. “My father has it.”
Indeed. As a don at St. John’s, Professor Campbell would have all sorts of keys. Annabelle felt a rare grin coming on. Hattie looked like a cat about to raid the canary cage.
“Oh dear,” Catriona said. “We better make this worth it.”
* * *
The sun had set by the time Annabelle climbed the creaking stairs to her room in Lady Margaret Hall. There were only eight other students in her class, one of whom, namely Hattie, resided in the Randolph, so they were all easily accommodated in a modest brick house at the outskirts of town. Nothing at all like the Randolph. Still, a warm emotion filled her to the brim as she stood in the doorway to her chamber. The low light of the gas lamp cast everything in a golden glow, the narrow bed on the left, the wardrobe on the right, and, straight ahead, the rickety desk before the window. Her desk. Where she could sink into the myths of Greek antiquity and solve Latin puzzles. Her bed. Where she could sleep alone, without being kicked by a sleepy child’s foot or having the blanket stolen by one of Gilbert’s girls. All it took was a note on the outside of the door saying she was engaged, and the world remained outside and left her undisturbed.
She hugged her arms around herself tightly. What a gift this was, a room of her own.
She’d make the very best of it; she’d be the most diligent, appreciative student she could be.
But first . . . she groaned. First she had to help a group of suffragists infiltrate the home of the most powerful duke in England.
Chapter 5
November
Sebastian skewered Peregrin with a stare over the top of the letter that had accompanied his unexpected arrival at Claremont.
“You are failing your classes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have not paid this term’s tuition fee.”
Peregrin raked a nervous hand through his hair, leaving it hopelessly disheveled.
“I have not.”
So his attempt to train a feckless brother in financial responsibility by handing him his own account had failed.
“And this morning, Weatherly climbed up a freshly gilded rain pipe at St. John’s because you were chasing him with a sword?”
“It was a foil,” Peregrin muttered, “and Weatherly deserved it.”
Sebastian lowered the letter onto his desk, which was already covered in neat stacks of paperwork, all of them both urgent and important. He had not time for this. Peregrin was not stupid, and he was not a young boy; there was therefore no reason for him to act like a stupid young boy, but for a year now he had been acting exactly like t
hat, creating problems that should by any logic not even exist.
“Were you drunk?”
Peregrin shifted in his chair. “No. A Scotch, perhaps two.”
If he admitted to two, one could safely double that. Drinking before noon. Well, they did say that blood will out.
“I’m disappointed.” He sounded cold to his own ears.
A flush spread over Peregrin’s nose and cheekbones, making him look oddly boyish. But at nearly nineteen, he was a man. Sebastian had taken over a dukedom at that age. Then again, he probably had never been as young as Peregrin.
His gaze slid past his brother to the wall. Six estate paintings to the right of the door, the one depicting Montgomery Castle still to the left. Sixteen years ago, he had ordered all paintings to be hung on the left side, the daily reminder of what his father had lost, sold, or ruined during his short reign. Granted, the foundation of the dukedom had been crumbling for decades, and his grandfather had broken most of the entails. But his father had had a choice: to fix the spreading financial rot eating away at their estates, or to surrender. He had chosen to surrender and he had done it like a Montgomery did all things—with brutal effectiveness. The recovery process had been distasteful, an endless procession of arms twisted, of favors asked and granted and traditions flouted. Sebastian almost understood why his mother had moved to France; it was easier to ignore there what he had become—a duke with a merchant’s mind. Anything to get the castle back. It wasn’t even that he felt a great attachment to the place. It was dark and drafty and the plumbing was terrible, and having it back would be another deadweight in his purse. But what was his was his. Duty was duty. Come March, Castle Montgomery would finally be on the right side of the door. Yes, it was a bloody inopportune time for his heir apparent to play the village idiot.
He gave Peregrin a hard look. “You spent the tuition on entertaining friends, I presume.”
“Yes, sir.”
He waited.
“And I . . . I played some cards.”
Sebastian’s jaw tensed. “Any women?”
Peregrin’s flush turned splotchy. “You can hardly expect me to own it,” he stammered.
Privately, Sebastian agreed; the doings of his brother behind closed doors were none of his business. But few things could trip up a wealthy, idiotic young lord more than a cunning social climber.
“You know how it is,” he said. “Unless I know her parents, she is out to fleece you.”
“There’s no one,” Peregrin said, petulant enough to indicate that there was someone.
Sebastian made a mental note to have his man comb through the demimonde and have Madam, whoever she was, informed to take her ambitions elsewhere.
He tapped his finger on the letter. “I will take compensation for the rain pipe out of your allowance.”
“Understood.”
“You are not coming to France with me; you will stay here and study.”
A moment’s hesitation, a sullen nod.
“And you will go to Penderyn for the duration of the New Year’s house party.”
Peregrin paled. “But—”
A glance was enough to make his brother choke his protest back down, but the tendons in Peregrin’s neck were straining. Incomprehensibly, Peregrin enjoyed house parties and fireworks; in fact, the more turbulence engulfed him, the more cheerful he seemed to become, and he had been jubilant to hear about the reinstatement of the New Year’s Eve party. Nothing ever happened at the estate in Wales.
“May I take a caning instead, please?” Peregrin asked.
Sebastian frowned. “At your age? No. Besides. You need more time to reflect on your idiocy than a few minutes.”
Peregrin lowered his gaze to the floor.
Still, he had seen it: the flash of emotion in his brother’s eyes. Had he not known better, he would have said it was hatred.
Oddly, it stung.
He leaned back in his chair. Somewhere during the sixteen years he had parented Peregrin, he must have failed him, as he was obviously not growing into the man he was meant to be. Or perhaps . . . Peregrin was growing exactly into what he was. Someone like their father.
Not while I live.
Peregrin still had his head bowed. The tops of his ears looked hot.
“You may leave me now,” Sebastian said. “In fact, I do not want to see you here again until term break.”
* * *
Peregrin Devereux was not what Annabelle had expected. With his twinkling hazel eyes and dirt-blond hair, he looked boyish, approachable . . . even likable. Everything his brother was not.
She, Hattie, and Catriona found him leaning against one of the pillars of St. John’s with a half-smoked cigarette, which he politely extinguished as they approached.
He eyed their little group with faint bemusement. “Ladies, color me an optimist,” he said, “but this key would put us ahead of every drinking society in Oxford, so I shudder to imagine the price. What is it going to be? A golden fleece? A head on a platter? My soul?”
He spoke with the same affected lilt as the young lordlings Annabelle knew from the dinner parties at the manor house back in the day, men who loved the sound of their own banter. It took a good ear to hear the undercurrent of alertness in Lord Devereux’s voice. He was no fool, this one.
She gave him a look she hoped was coy. “Your soul is safe from us, Lord Devereux. All we ask is an invitation to your next house party at Claremont.”
He blinked. “A house party,” he repeated. “Just a regular house party?”
“Yes.” She wondered what the irregular kind would be like.
“Now, why would you choose that, when you could have chosen anything else?” He looked genuinely taken aback.
Luckily, she had come prepared. She gave a wistful sigh. “Look at us.” She gestured down the front of her old coat. “We are bluestockings. We have a reputation of being terribly unfashionable; you, however, lead the most fashionable set in Oxfordshire.”
And wasn’t that the truth. She couldn’t afford fashion; Catriona seemed wholly uninterested; and Hattie, well, she had her very own ideas about la mode. Today, she had added a gargantuan turquoise plume to her hat, and it lifted the small headpiece every time the breeze picked up.
It was this bobbing feather that Lord Devereux’s eyes now fixed upon. “Well,” he said. “I see.” His own attire spoke of money and good taste: a rakishly tilted top hat, a fine gray coat and loosely slung scarf, speckless black oxford shoes, all worn with carefully calculated carelessness to suggest that he paid fashion no mind at all.
He dragged his gaze back to Annabelle. “So you wish to become fashionable by association.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He nodded. “Perfectly sensible.”
Still he hesitated.
She pulled the key from her coat pocket. A heavy, medieval-looking thing, it twirled around her finger once, twice, with great effect. Peregrin Devereux was no longer slouching. He focused on the key like his predatory namesake, the falcon.
“As it is,” he said slowly, “there is indeed a house party planned for the week before Christmas. But it will be a more intimate, informal affair, just about a dozen gentlemen. And the duke will not be in residence.” He gave an apologetic shrug.
A tension she hadn’t known she’d held resolved in her chest. If the duke was not home, it might make this harebrained mission considerably easier on her friends.
“His Grace will be away?” she repeated.
Peregrin was still staring at the key. “He will be visiting Mother in France.”
She turned to Hattie and Catriona, pretending to consider. “What do you think? Would this still count as a house party?”
“I believe so,” Hattie squeaked. Catriona managed a hasty nod.
Heavens, both girls looked flushed and nervous. Hopefully, Lord D
evereux would attribute that to the overly excitable nature of wallflowers.
“In that case, we will fulfill our end of the bargain,” she said, presenting the key to the nobleman on her palm. “You have two hours to have it replicated.”
“Wait,” Hattie said, stilling Annabelle’s hand. “Your word as a gentleman,” she demanded from Lord Devereux.
A lopsided grin tilted his lips. He placed his right fist over his heart as he sketched a bow. “On my honor, Miss Greenfield. Claremont Palace awaits you.”
Chapter 6
December
They had barely left the train station in Marlborough when Annabelle admitted defeat—translating Thucydides in a rumbling carriage was impossible. She lowered the book.
“There she is,” Hattie cheered from the bench opposite.
Annabelle grimaced. Her stomach was roiling. Next to her, Catriona calmly kept reading while she was bounced around on her seat, and Hattie’s chaperoning great-aunt seemed equally unaffected, already snoring openmouthed in the corner across.
“You look a touch pale, greenish, even,” Hattie observed with her keen artistic eye. “Are you sure it is wise to read in a moving vehicle?”
“I have an essay due.”
“You are on a break now,” Hattie said gently.
Annabelle gave her a grave stare. “That was hardly my choice.”
She was still struggling with the fact that she was en route to a ducal house party. How naïve of her to believe that securing an invitation for the ladies would suffice. Lucie had been adamant that Annabelle, too, go to the party—three wooden horses behind enemy lines were better than two—and since Lucie held the purse strings, here she was, on her way into the lion’s den. She had tried a number of wholly reasonable excuses, the most reasonable being that she had nothing to wear for the occasion. Her trunk, tightly packed with Lady Mabel’s walking dresses and evening gowns from seasons past, was currently thudding about on the carriage roof. Lucie herself had stayed back—she was a known radical, and the duke didn’t suffer radicalism gladly.