This could not be another fruitless search; it simply could not be.
“How are you related to my father?” Mariposa asked.
“I am your aunt,” was the answer. “Richard was my baby brother.”
Her aunt. “I did not remember that he had a sister.”
“Come,” was the gentle instruction. Mrs. Douglas matched word to gesture, indicating Mariposa should join her on the settee.
She reluctantly did so. Although Mrs. Douglas was family, she was also very much a stranger, which made Mariposa wary.
“Where is the rest of your family?” Mrs. Douglas asked gently.
“Mi abuela, my mother’s mother, she is visiting the Dowager Countess.” Mariposa indicated Philip in hopes of conveying the identity of the person to whom she referred. “My mother and brother are not here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Jason’s focus did not waver from her. He alone understood the significance of that statement. Her mother and brother were not here. They, the last remnants of her family, were still missing.
“Did you know that your father’s brother, Robert, his only other sibling, passed away a little more than a year ago?” Mrs. Douglas asked.
“I did not know that.” Mariposa fought to keep her voice steady. She had been so certain her family would be with their English relations, but her father had no other living siblings. There were no other possibilities besides here, no place else she might look.
“He never married, I am afraid,” Mrs. Douglas said. “Thornton Manor in Norfolk and the income attached to it have passed to your brother Marcos. You and your younger brother have inherited sizable portions as well. Our solicitor did not know how to find you. There was no response to the letters sent to your home in Spain.”
“The war drove us out.” Mariposa could not bring herself to say anything else. They should have remained. Should have stayed behind. The letters Mrs. Douglas referred to would have reached them had they remained at home. They might have found safe haven in England after all.
“Give me the direction of your solicitor, and I shall have the Thornton solicitor contact him to relay the details of Marcos’s inheritance.”
A sharp pain radiated through Mariposa’s heart. Marcos was dead. How many years would have to pass before hearing his name did not cause her immediate pain?
She could not think on her brother any longer and, so, forced her thoughts back to Mrs. Douglas’s question. “I do not have a solicitor.”
“I am acting as her legal council,” Jason interjected.
“Ah yes. I believe Lord Lampton indicated you were a man of the law.” Mrs. Douglas nodded her head. “Then I shall be sure to give you our man’s direction.”
Mariposa glanced at Jason. She was forced, however, to look away almost immediately. The fact that he no longer despised her to the point of refusing to help her, combined with the look of compassion in his eyes, very nearly undid her.
“Come. Come,” Mrs. Douglas said decisively. “Let us leave talk of inheritance and legal matters to another time. We have a sumptuous tea awaiting us.”
And they were swept willy-nilly into myriad topics of discourse over multiple cups of tea.
Mariposa only vaguely listened to the conversations swirling around her. Santiago’s voice filled her every thought.
“Everyone will forget me.”
“I will not ever forget,” she had vowed.
Did he think she had? Did he believe himself forgotten?
She knew not where else to look for him. She knew not how to find him. He was not forgotten; he never would be.
But he was so utterly lost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mariposa only just maintained her composure. After returning to the Lampton hunting box, Philip carried Sorrel upstairs to rest, she having begun to look excessively pulled and pale.
“I am so sorry, Mariposa,” Jason said when they were left momentarily alone, except for the distant vigilance of a maid tucked in a corner for propriety’s sake.
“I was so certain,” Mariposa managed to say without the tears she fought spilling over. “I have no other family here, nowhere else they might have gone.”
She shook her head almost compulsively, straining against a growing feeling of helplessness. If Mamá and Santiago had not come to the only remaining members of Papá’s family, Mariposa had no idea where they could be. Unbidden into her mind came the fear she had pushed down for months, that Bélanger had made good on his threats and they were truly gone. She would not allow herself to dwell on the horrifying possibility.
“Perhaps you should consider hiring a Runner to investigate,” Jason suggested.
A flash of panic seized her. “No.” Hiring a professional investigator would only draw attention, the last thing she wished to do if, indeed, the French spy was involved in their disappearance.
“I fear Sorrel cannot endure the splendor of this ensemble a moment longer,” Philip declared, entering the room and tugging at his foppish jacket. “The enjoyment would be too much for one person to experience all in one day.”
Mariposa would, under normal circumstances, have smiled at his overdone dandy façade. She simply continued to wring her hands and endure the twisting in her stomach. What was she to do now? Where could she even begin to search?
“Mariposa, are you quite well?” Philip apparently sensed her distress.
She took several deep breaths. No words formed, no convenient half-truths or dismissive phrases.
“Mar—”
“No están aquí.” She paced, fighting down panic. She had lost her family. “Mi familia no está aquí. No sé dónde están.”
“Señora Douglas es su familia,” Philip answered. “Ella está aquí.”
Mariposa spun on the spot and stared, wide-eyed. “¿Habla español?”
Philip just smiled back as if to remind her that the answer was obvious.
“How is it you speak Spanish?” Mariposa asked. In the months she’d spent in England, she’d not come across a single person conversant in her native tongue, yet she’d met two in as many days.
“I found it a valuable thing to know,” Philip replied rather evasively.
Mariposa glanced at Jason only to find a look of surprised confusion on his face. He hadn’t known that aspect of his brother’s education, obviously.
“How do you find my accent, Señorita Thornton?” Philip asked with a grin.
“Atrocious.” Mariposa actually smiled a little herself.
“Ah, but my accent on paper is far better.”
She laughed at that. “Just as I can understand Portuguese quite well, written or spoken, but when I attempt to speak, it is only too obvious that I am not a native speaker. Unlike my abuela, who speaks with hardly a hint of an accent. Her French is also far superior to mine, but she cannot begin to compete with my English.”
She had thought her remark innocuous enough, but Philip’s face grew stern. “Your grandmother speaks Portuguese and French?” he asked rather pointedly.
Mariposa nodded, sudden butterflies in her stomach. She ought not to have said that. Their linguistic capabilities had been a boon to Wellington’s aides but were unique enough to make it possible to identify them as members of that network. How lax she had grown in the company of these Jonquil men.
“And I understand from Mater that you lived outside Orthez,” Philip pressed.
She pulled in a tense breath. There was no point in denying it, though knowing where she’d lived was another rather crucial piece of the puzzle.
Philip dismissed the maid. The moment the door closed behind her, his attention turned back to Mariposa.
“Your name means ‘butterfly,’ does it not?”
Mariposa backed up a step, her heart suddenly racing. The Butterfly was what Wellington’s aides-de-camp had call
ed her in order to disguise her identity. She had been referred to as The Butterfly in all written correspondence involved with her work for the British. Instinctively she knew Philip had realized it. But how did he know about her role in the war?
“You need not fear me, Mariposa.”
Despite his reassurances, she glanced at the door before returning her wary gaze to him. “How do you know all of this?”
“Know all of what?” Jason asked, jumping into a conversation he, no doubt, did not even remotely understand.
“You were invaluable, you realize,” Philip said. “I know personally that your efforts saved lives.”
She shook her head, unnerved. “No one is supposed to know any of this.”
“Further, you more than once provided information to an individual known only as The Daffodil.”
Mariposa nodded, wide-eyed. The Daffodil had been involved in discovering and uncovering traitors among the British, most especially among the upper class. The Daffodil’s reports had always been considered of utmost importance by those in the field. She’d translated and passed along scores of communications from the unknown source.
“Well met.” Philip offered an ironic smile and a minuscule bow.
“You?” she mouthed silently.
“I fear inventiveness is not a characteristic of those involved in providing pseudonyms for those of us in need of cover,” Philip said with a light chuckle. “A jonquil is a flower, you understand, more commonly known as a daffodil.”
Mariposa stood dumbstruck. Could it be true? Had she truly been unknowingly sending information to one of her beloved Jonquil brothers? Stanley could not possibly have known.
“Philip, what are the two of you speaking of?” Jason demanded.
Mariposa looked between the brothers, wondering what came next. She did not feel it her place to divulge information that so closely involved Philip.
“This is as much your secret as mine,” Philip said, leaving the decision in her hands. “Do you trust him?”
Mariposa knew her answer in an instant. She had come to trust Jason more than any person she had ever known.
“I trust him,” she said. “And he deserves to know the truth.”
o
I trust him. Jason stood in shocked confusion. That one sentence, that sincere declaration of trust wiped away weeks of difficulty between him and this whirlwind who’d entered his life. She trusted him, and he knew how hard that was for her.
He waited for Philip to undertake some kind of explanation for the odd conversation he’d had with Mariposa.
“For years, I have worked for the foreign office,” Philip said quite as if he were relating some little bit of inconsequential Society gossip. “They needed someone in the ton to keep an ear out for carelessly mentioned information. You would be amazed the sort of sensitive secrets Society matrons are unknowingly in possession of. Being young and relatively unknown, not to mention anxious to do my part in bringing to an end the war that threatened the life of one of my brothers, I seemed the perfect candidate. All that was needed was a persona that invited confidences and indicated a lack of intelligence significant enough to appease any unease about dropping information.”
“And that is the reason for—” Jason indicated Philip’s ridiculous attire.
Philip offered a nod. “Enduring ridicule seemed a small price to pay for King and country, not to mention a much-loved brother. Ending the war meant Stanley’s safe return. The guise worked well. I learned a great deal. I even apprehended more than a few dangerous spies, both foreign and domestic. I’d like to think I’ve made a difference.”
“Do you still spy?” Jason asked.
Philip tsked, the consummate dandy once more. “Spy is such a horrid word, my man. I gather information. Far different.”
“Does Sorrel know?” Jason asked, still unable to reconcile what he was hearing. The mindless dandy was an informant for England? It seemed all but impossible.
“She helped with my last mission,” Philip informed him with an appreciative grin. “And it was my last. The foreign office relieved me of all duties after that very successful endeavor.”
“But you continue the masquerade.” Jason felt an overwhelming need to sit down, which he did.
“If I suddenly dropped the act, brother, people would grow suspicious. And anyone with nefarious ideas would begin to think too much on the change and those things they had let slip over the years. In time, Society will look back on my transformation and be convinced that Sorrel simply had a very good influence on me.”
“All these years.” Jason shook his head. A few of his own less-than-kind comments came back to him in that moment. “I accused you of being irresponsible, of neglecting your duties.”
“A mistake I doubt you will repeat,” Philip said rather more seriously than before.
“And what, Mariposa, is your story?” Jason turned to her, feeling almost too shocked for comprehension. “Are you an informant as well?”
With a nervous sigh, she began. “Shortly before the British troops arrived at Orthez, I overheard a conversation between French soldiers during my weekly trip into the city, information giving their future plans and the fortifications they were reinforcing. I passed this tidbit on to the British regimental leadership in the area. It proved invaluable. After that, I acted as a relay point between aides-de-camp, passing on information in whichever language I was instructed to. Abuela helped when necessary.”
She was a spy. A spy! How absurdly convoluted could this become? He’d thought for the past few hours that he’d finally learned all there was to know about her past. What else was she not telling him?
“After Napoleon abdicated, we thought the danger had passed.” Mariposa wrapped her determination around herself like a protective blanket. Philip listened intently as well. “I received a letter in December from a man I knew to have been one of Napoleon’s informers. He was infamous, known for his cruelty. He is responsible for the death of more than one person involved in the exact activities I undertook. He knew what I had been doing and wrote in no uncertain terms of the retribution he intended to enact upon me and my family.”
“And that is why you came to England?” Jason guessed.
Mariposa shook her head. “Not exactly. My mother and brother disappeared only three weeks after that letter arrived, too close for me to be at all certain that it was merely a coincidence.”
Jason took a sharp breath. This was the part she hadn’t told him, the reason for her anxiety. Her mother and brother weren’t merely missing. They were quite possibly in danger, perhaps even dead.
“The threat had mentioned my family members specifically,” she said. “Part of me fears he has taken them. I know Bélanger well enough to be certain that if he is the reason for their disappearance, they likely are . . . They are not—”
She shook off the words, but Jason understood. Not alive.
“Bélanger threatened you?” Philip asked.
“You know of him?”
Philip raised an eyebrow and gave her a pointed look. She nodded her acceptance of the gesture. Apparently his knowing of Bélanger should have been assumed.
“When did you receive this threat?” Philip asked.
“December the twenty-fifth.”
“Christmas Day?” Jason blurted. “Of all the—”
“And when did your family disappear?” Philip asked.
“January the thirteenth.”
“Miss Thornton.” Philip crossed the room and took Mariposa’s hands in his. “I can assure you that Bélanger did not abduct your family members.”
She watched him, her gaze unwavering and anxious.
“Bélanger was apprehended on British soil the twenty-ninth of December of last year. If you require proof, I have a scar from the ball he put in my shoulder that night.” He tapped his shoulder signific
antly.
“You said that was poachers,” Jason jumped in. He vividly remembered the nasty wound, having been at the estate where the incident had occurred, though he was not present for the actual accident. Except, apparently, it wasn’t an accident. Good heavens, what else had occurred at the holiday house party that he’d not been aware of?
“Poachers seemed the safest explanation,” Philip said. “The lie was necessary.”
The lie was necessary. He didn’t often think of untruths in that light. Philip’s façade. Mariposa’s deception. They were . . . necessary lies.
“Bélanger couldn’t have escaped?” Mariposa asked, not straying from the topic. “You are certain of this?”
“Bélanger is dead.” Philips spoke bluntly. “He was hung for his various crimes. I assure you he could not have harmed your family.”
Mariposa sat silently, her pale face looking particularly drawn, her eyes glossed over and unfocused.
“Ought I to fetch the smelling salts?” Jason offered.
“I never faint,” she insisted, though her tone wasn’t reassuring.
“You look as though you might.”
She shook her head. “I am simply overwhelmed. I have lived in utter terror of this man these past months. And now . . . now he is suddenly no longer a threat.” She rubbed at her mouth and chin, her eyes focused firmly on the floor. Her brows pulled down at a sharp angle. “I do not know what to think or feel or—I cannot comprehend it.”
“You are certain you won’t faint?” Jason truly worried she might.
Philip chuckled. “I suspect she is far too similar in temperament to my Sorrel, who is more likely to take me to task than have a fit of the vapors.”
Mariposa’s smile of acknowledgment was fleeting and obligatory. She was quickly lost in her thoughts once more.
Philip was as well, though his thoughts seemed less heavy than Mariposa’s.
“How is Sorrel faring?” Jason asked.
“She looked quite done in when I escorted her up to rest just now,” Philips said. “But I’m not overly worried. She had fortitude enough to tell me in firm tones that I was to stop being a ‘cosseting old nursemaid’ and make arrangements to take her to Lampton Park.” Assuming an unnaturally high voice, he added, obviously giving an imitation of his wife’s directions, “‘When one is ailing, Philip, one wishes to be home.’” Philip shook his head. “A characteristically astute observation. Home can be a comfort when nothing else is.”
A Fine Gentleman Page 16