Agent of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  The bright moonlight filtering through the branches guided her steps, and the smell of pine and the soft rolling feel of needles under her feet brought back memories she hadn’t thought of in years. Let your feet find the way, her father said in memory, trust them when your eyes let you down. How young had she been? Five? And she’d walked right up to a doe and laid her small hand on its warm flank, saw it look at her with liquid brown eyes and then dart away, quick as summer lightning. How different her life would have been if her father had lived.

  Telaine came to the edge of the forest and stopped before walking out onto the downs. Aunt Weaver was already a good way across the field. Telaine knew only two things about Barony Steepridge: it was completely isolated during the winter, and it was famous for the quality of its wool. This had to be one of the sheep farms. The fields were wide open, with nowhere to hide, and even Aunt Weaver, as preoccupied as she was, might turn around and see her. She’d have to return to the house.

  Grumbling to herself, she retraced her steps with only slight hesitations. It seemed she hadn’t forgotten her father’s training entirely.

  Back in her room, she undressed, then lay atop the blanket on the thin mattress. Whatever Aunt Weaver was concealing was none of her business, but Telaine North Hunter hadn’t lasted eight years as an agent by keeping her nose out of other people’s affairs. Now that she’d made it past the Baron’s door, she’d probably finish her assignment quickly, but if not, discovering Aunt Weaver’s secret would make for an interesting way to pass the time.

  Chapter Ten

  The Baron didn’t call on her again for a week. During that week, Telaine went slowly crazy with impatience. She ran dozens of plans for investigating the manor through her mind until they kept her awake at night.

  Plans for when it was empty. Plans for when the Baron and Morgan were there. Plans for when one or the other was there, which involved subsidiary plans for avoiding Morgan; she was certain he would hover around her like a wasp at a picnic.

  Excuses to get into as many rooms as possible—searching for a source still seemed her most likely one, though getting into the Baron’s study might only require him having a Device in it that needed repair.

  Or could she hint around that she might create a new Device for him? What unusual Devices had she seen in people’s studies? Was the study even the place to find the evidence she needed? Should she try to get into the fort? If the shipment Harroden had diverted to Steepridge contained weapons, mightn’t they be stored there?

  She considered breaking into the manor one night, sneaking around when everyone had gone to bed, and decided that was a bad idea. She didn’t know enough about its layout to be efficient in her searching, and if the Baron caught her, that would mean the end of her snooping around, possibly permanently. Some nights she paced the room, trying to tame her thoughts, or went down to the tavern in the hope that alcohol might solve her problem. It never did.

  She passed the time in between pacing and worrying in getting to know the people of Longbourne. At first she kept her distance, not wanting to fall back into the habit of thinking of them as pieces in her game with the Baron. But as the days passed, and she began to fear she wouldn’t be leaving for weeks (she refused to consider it might be months) she realized it would look strange for Mistress Weaver’s niece to appear standoffish.

  Now that the initial misunderstanding was past, Telaine found the people of Longbourne to be friendly and outgoing. Fuller, the general store owner, always threw in a little extra when she picked up things for Aunt Weaver; Telaine and Josephine Adderly were on a first-name basis; and of course Garrett always had a nod and sometimes a flash of a smile for her.

  Even Mistress Richardson had come around. After her first rush of anger had faded, Telaine developed an agonizing guilt over the horrible things she’d said to the woman. She couldn’t decide if she should make the first apology—but she was the one more wronged—or wait for Mistress Richardson to take the first step—but was it too self-righteous to demand the offender speak first?

  The decision was taken out of her hands when Mistress Richardson showed up at Aunt Weaver’s back door—this was another thing Telaine learned; real visits were conducted via the back door—with a package and asked to speak to Telaine privately. In the yard, Mistress Richardson handed her the package and said, “I did something I’m not proud of. I’d like to make it up to you.”

  Inside the package was a shirt, a much nicer shirt than the one the laundress had ruined. Telaine felt a rush of guilt all over again. She said, “I said some things I’m not proud of. I hope you’ll accept my apology. I’d like us to be friends.” It was perhaps too city-girl-uppity, but it sounded right.

  Mistress Richardson looked at her, her eyes narrowed, but in thought, not anger. Her red hair was gathered loosely at the back of her head and little wisps escaped in all directions. She was still a pretty woman, despite the hardships of her work and of raising what Telaine now knew to be a brood of seven children without the help of a husband. “I worry too much about my boys,” she said, and Telaine interpreted this as acceptance of her apology.

  “I can understand that,” Telaine said. “My aunt—my other aunt, not Aunt Weaver—has six children, plus me, and she’s always worrying about her two oldest boys.”

  “Your aunt raised you?”

  “Since I was a little older than your Hope. I’d like to say I never gave her any trouble, but I’m sure she worried some about me too.”

  A faint smile touched Mistress Richardson’s lips. “The way you talk to strangers, I don’t doubt it,” she said.

  Telaine’s eyes went wide, then she laughed. “Oh, Mistress Richardson, you do have a sense of humor!”

  Mistress Richardson laughed, too, and stuck out her hand. “Eleanor.”

  “Lainie.” They shook hands, grinning at one another in relief.

  But all the time Lainie was making friends, Telaine couldn’t stop thinking about what the real job was, and went back to making plans, over and over again until she once again paced her room or went out for a drink.

  When the Baron’s summons finally arrived, it came, thankfully, not via Morgan but by way of a servant. The Baron had an ‘interesting project’ and would Miss Bricker care to join him to discuss it? Telaine packed her tools into a knapsack and headed out for the manor.

  She felt Garrett’s eyes on her as she passed the forge, and chose not to look at him. There was no way to explain why she had to go to the manor, why she couldn’t avoid the Baron. She couldn’t explain why she wasn’t in danger from him—or why it didn’t matter if she was. It surprised her to find she valued Garrett’s good opinion. Maybe that made them friends after all.

  She had a pleasant forty minutes’ walk to the manor, walking along the verge in the soft, untrimmed grass that had about as much resemblance to the manicured lawns of the palace as Irv Tanner did to Morgan. A bird flew overhead, calling to its mate, who responded with the same song. A breeze came up and ruffled the pine needles, bringing her the scent of pine and, surprisingly, lilac and mint. She’d have to follow up on that source sometime. She hoisted her pack higher.

  The slouching attendants had been replaced by ones with more starch. One of them opened the door for her and closed it behind her. The entry was empty, the Baron nowhere to be seen. Quietly, hoping not to be heard, she called out, “Is anyone there?” No response.

  She opened the dining room door and peered inside. Still no one. This wasn’t the best opportunity, but it was worth taking advantage of. She started off down the right-hand hallway, the one on the southeast side of the manor, bypassing the music room and pausing to try each subsequent door.

  The first held a billiard table and a few other gaming accoutrements. The door opposite was some sort of hunting trophy room, heads of wolves and deer and moose adorning the walls. It didn’t seem to be a study. But the next room was. An oversized desk and leather-upholstered chair faced the doorway, bookshelves lined the walls, and a
side table held a decanter of brandy and some fat-bottomed snifters.

  “Miss Bricker,” said the Baron. She gasped and jumped.

  “I’m so relieved to see you!” she said, turning to face him with a guileless smile. “I’d started to worry I was the only one here. It’s so quiet.”

  “You should have waited in the foyer,” he said, and took her elbow to steer her back to the gallery. His grip was hard and painful.

  “Oh!” She put on a remorseful expression. “You won’t send me away, will you? I feel so silly, like I was snooping in your house.”

  “Because you were snooping in my house,” the Baron said in a low, vicious voice. “You are here because I summoned you.” The grip grew tighter, and she heard herself whimper like an injured dog. “I will not tolerate intrusions.” He ground his fingers against the bone.

  Telaine gritted her teeth and managed not to whimper again. “I didn’t mean to,” she said in a pleading voice. “I won’t do it again.”

  “I believe you won’t,” the Baron said, yanking her along. He pushed open a door—Telaine hadn’t been paying much attention to where they were going, except it was on the third floor—and said, pleasantly, “Come in, let me show you something.”

  He released her elbow. In the space of two breaths he’d gone from vicious to cordial, once more the country gentleman who’d met her on her last visit. The rapidity with which he’d changed his demeanor made her uneasy. His smooth urbanity of their previous encounter had made her forget the truth, that he was cruel and manipulative and cared only for getting his way. She was certain he was more dangerous than Morgan, who was at least predictable in his attentions, and she needed not to forget that.

  The room was the Baron’s bedchamber. She would have expected, from the man who had so coldly threatened Harroden, severe furnishings, a thin mattress, a few oil paintings in somber tones. She did not expect the lush, exotic chamber she found herself in. The walls were heavily upholstered, to the point of looking puffy, in jacquard silk in blue and pale yellow stripes. The ladder that stood beside the bed wasn’t for show, it was essential for anyone trying to climb in or out of it.

  Piled atop the frame were several mattresses, a number of quilts in colors matching the walls, and a dozen pillows of varying shapes. Sleeping in the bed would feel like drowning in a flock of sheep, though probably sheep didn’t smell of roses as this room did. The tall bedposts supported a canopy of trailing net that draped and puddled on the floor at each of the bed’s corners, decorative rather than functional, since it was unlikely the Baron had an insect problem he’d need to shield his bed against.

  Tables matching the bed’s height supported lamp Devices, both currently unlit because sunlight streamed in through long windows on either side of the bed. Smaller doors faced one another across the room, barely visible in the upholstery. The floor was entirely carpeted with a rug so plush the pile nearly covered the tops of Telaine’s boots.

  “Miss Bricker, I seem to have a problem with my bed,” the Baron said. Telaine looked at Morgan, who wasn’t smirking any more than usual, so it wasn’t innuendo. The Baron knelt beside the bedframe and dragged the corner of something from between the top two mattresses. It was a heating Device of the type she’d described to Garrett. “I turned it off for the summer, but it started running again of its own volition. Could you perhaps take a look?”

  Telaine knelt beside him, stripping off her knapsack. “This is a complex Device,” she said. “But I’ve seen this sort of problem before. Milord, the top mattress will have to come off.”

  The Baron looked at Morgan, who sighed and left the room. It was a sigh that came dangerously close to insubordination, but when Telaine glanced at the Baron, he didn’t seem bothered by it. She might understand Morgan, but she didn’t understand his relationship with the Baron. He obeyed orders, but he didn’t act like the Baron’s subordinate in any other way; they didn’t act like friends, either. Finish the job, she told herself, and it won’t matter.

  Morgan returned with a couple of tall, healthy-looking young men dressed in the Baron’s livery who moved the mattress, bedding and all, to one side. The Device thus revealed was a flexible mat made of flat strips and wires of metal woven irregularly together. It had crumpled on one side, and Telaine straightened it to lie flat. “That’s half the problem right there,” she said. “The other half is the complicated part. If you wouldn’t mind stepping back, milord?”

  The problem was obvious once the mattress was removed. Telaine reached across to the center of the Device and unkinked a couple of wires. She took a tiny pair of flat-nosed pliers from her kit and ran them over the crooked wires, crimping them straight so they didn’t touch any of the others near them.

  She had to stop occasionally and blow on her fingers, heated to an uncomfortable degree by the still-running Device. Once the wires were as straight as she could make them, she closed her eyes and ran her fingertips along the mesh, feeling for other defects. It still wasn’t cooling off, so something else had to be wrong—and there it was, a redundant strip of copper the width of her thumb that had started to twist into a helix.

  She took out another tool, this one a miniature set of tin snips, and cut the copper piece at both ends. She wiggled it out, crimped the cut ends tight along the rigid brass frame, and the heat immediately drained from the thing. “Let me test that it’s working properly,” she said, and knelt, feeling along the twisted wire cord covered with white cotton down to the switch.

  It was nearly beneath the bed; she ducked her head under the frame and froze for a moment, stunned, then repulsed, then amused by what she saw. She captured the switch and stood swiftly, acting as though nothing were wrong.

  She handed the switch to the Baron and placed her palm flat against the Device. “Some Devisers put extra strips of copper into these things,” she explained. “They’re supposed to be a redundant heat control system, but I’ve found they mostly just cause trouble. Do you mind if I keep this, milord?” She picked up the copper strip. The Baron waved his hand, giving permission.

  The Device was cool to the touch. “Milord, if you wouldn’t mind switching it on now?” The Baron tapped the switch, and the mesh began to heat again, reaching an uncomfortable level in minutes. Under the mattress, that uncomfortable heat would translate into a nice warmth.

  “It’s working fine now, milord,” she said, and the Baron tapped the switch again.

  “My thanks again,” he said. “You are truly remarkable.”

  Telaine made herself blush and ducked her head. “Not to contradict milord, but I’m only average. But I thank you for the compliment.” Was it he who used the…contraption…under the bed? Or Morgan? Their relationship was even stranger than she’d imagined.

  “Pay the Deviser, Morgan,” the Baron said. Morgan dipped into a belt pouch, but instead of holding out coins for Telaine to take, he gripped her wrist with one hand, turned her hand over, and with a little pressure caused her fingers to extend. He laid the coins in her open hand with what was almost a caress.

  She controlled a shudder and kept her eyes downcast, hoping she looked demure and not repulsed. Much as she was reluctant to try to manipulate the man, it might be useful to let him believe his bizarre “courtship,” or whatever he thought he was doing, was successful. Though after her discovery, she really wondered at his sexual preferences.

  The Baron escorted her down the stairs, chatting pleasantly as she tried hard not to picture him bound, spread-eagled, with the iron manacles she’d seen under his bed. If that’s how he liked his…ew, those red lips glistening, stop thinking about it before you go blind. It was none of her business what he did in private. Surely he wouldn’t trust a servant to pleasure him, but Morgan? She hadn’t gotten the sense that the darkly handsome man was oriented that way, especially since he was paying so much attention to her. Maybe she couldn’t read him as well as she’d thought. She managed to say her obsequious goodbyes and get all the way down the drive to the main road bef
ore laughing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Summer turned to autumn. Across the valley, the few deciduous trees turned the hills butter yellow, fire red, dotting the evergreens like bits of colored paper strewn across a giant’s lawn. To the south, geese honked their distant cries as they arrowed across the brilliant blue sky.

  Telaine was drawn into the excitement surrounding the upcoming marriage of Trey Richardson and Blythe Bradford, to be celebrated with something called a shivaree. Sarah Anderson, Aunt Weaver’s younger apprentice, explained this was a party and dance and concert all in one. It was all anyone in Longbourne wanted to talk about, but to Telaine it was simply a distraction from the task she felt was failing at.

  She made the trip down mountain to Ellismere every three weeks, reporting on the progress she wasn’t making. She still hadn’t gotten into the Baron’s study; she still hadn’t explored the fort. On her second visit to Ellismere, she received an immediate response to her message reminding her that her time was short, that the mountain passes would be snowed in shortly before Wintersmeet and she would be unable to communicate anything she did find. There wasn’t a rebuke hidden in the hidden message, but Telaine felt it all the same.

  She was called up to the manor at least twice a week, and her one great pleasure was being able to work on the Baron’s curio collection, despite her impatience at not being able to explore. But eight weeks after arriving in Longbourne, she got her chance.

  The Baron welcomed her at the door, as was his custom after that second visit, but he was distracted. “Morgan and I are needed at the fort,” he said. “Some ridiculous supply problem. You can manage on your own, Miss Bricker?”