The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  “You wouldn’t be so regretful if you saw her face.” Caroline bit her lip. “I would’ve wished for better circumstances, yes. But she was perfect. I’ll never regret her.”

  She looked away. She couldn’t bear the hurt she saw in his eye.

  “Did she have a name?” he asked.

  Caroline closed her eyes again. Her throat tightened.

  “Yes,” she said, and shook her head.

  Yes, she had a name. But Caroline hadn’t the strength to speak it. Not tonight.

  They both looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. A woman with a strangely broad chin and the shadow of a moustache came into view. She took one look at Caroline and stopped dead in her tracks; her eyes moved to Henry, whose face hardened with recognition.

  He looked down at Caroline. “I’m sorry—I—”

  “Go.” Caroline stepped back, eyes trained on her hands.

  He hesitated.

  “Go.”

  Henry dipped his head. “This conversation is not over,” he murmured in her ear.

  And then he turned and disappeared into a nearby boxwood.

  He was good at that, the disappearing.

  Twenty

  The next day dawned warm and bright, a poignant contrast to the shadows and secrets of the night before. Standing at the window of her bedchamber, Caroline inhaled a lungful of air, let it out, slowly, through her nose. She would do right by Henry, by her brother, by England.

  She would gladly sacrifice all she held dear—her life included—for everything and everyone she loved. Henry had done it for her; she would return the favor.

  Not that she loved Henry. Heavens, just thinking it made her heart palpitate. She’d left all that in the past, and for good reason.

  Yes, Henry had left twelve years before because he loved her. And that revelation should have brought comfort, satisfaction, closure.

  Instead, it loosened feelings she’d locked away more than a decade ago. Potent feelings. Dangerous feelings. Feelings that had no place in the life she’d worked so hard to rebuild.

  No matter what happened in the days ahead, she and Henry—they would never be together. It was impossible. And these things she felt for him would only hurt her, as they’d hurt her that summer long ago.

  William met her in the drawing room later that morning, and begged her to play the terrible chaperone for he and Violet. He was to take her riding.

  In the enormous family coach, Caroline dutifully followed William as he led his sinister-looking phaeton—lacquered a daring shade of pearlescent black—through Mayfair’s crowded streets. Violet sat on the bench beside him, her color high, lips curled into an irrepressible smile.

  All the while, Caroline’s mind raced. How to convince Henry to trade the diamond to the French? How to outwit Woodstock without putting Henry or William at risk?

  How to do these things, knowing the choice she made would separate her from Henry forever?

  Henry, the handsome man, the honorable man, the man who would rather die than see her hurt or unhappy. The man who had sacrificed everything so that she might live a happy life, a peaceful life.

  Just a few short days ago, Henry had been the enemy, the bully who left her without explanation twelve years before. She’d begged him to leave her be. She’d sworn to stay away from him.

  But now—everything was different. It had all changed in the space of a single night. A confession, a threat, and suddenly her world was turned upside down.

  Warm things, strong things, moved inside her heart. She did not dare give them name.

  But they were there. And they scared her for their forcefulness, their familiarity.

  Thus distracted by her dark thoughts and mutinous heart, Caroline did not see the object of her distress until he swung open the carriage door and soundlessly leapt inside. The vehicle continued to jolt and weave through the street; the coachman hadn’t seen him.

  She started, heart in her throat as she watched Henry land on the seat across from hers.

  “Windows,” she breathed, “are one thing. Moving carriages, Henry, are quite another.”

  Henry’s eye narrowed; Caroline looked away, face burning.

  “This afternoon,” he said. “Have you any plans?”

  Caroline drew back. “Well, I— Aside from the usual, no—”

  “Good.” He leaned forward, suddenly, and took her hand in his. A shiver, not entirely unpleasant, shot up her spine as his thumb stroked the ridge of her knuckles. “I want to see you. We need to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “I do,” Henry said. “Let’s get out of London for the day.”

  He didn’t have to say what they were both thinking. Out of London, out of danger. Away from Woodstock.

  “But he’ll be watching us.”

  “Let him watch. We may be getting out of London, but we’re going in the middle of the day in a marked carriage. We aren’t going very far.”

  She looked at him a long moment. “Your plan to win back the French Blue. It hasn’t worked.”

  Henry cocked a brow. “How do you know that?”

  Caroline blinked. Henry couldn’t know she’d found the diamond. Not yet.

  “You wouldn’t want to get out of London if Woodstock was no longer a threat.”

  Henry looked at her for a long moment. “My plan hasn’t worked yet. It’s only a matter of time. I want to talk to you before things get . . . busy.”

  Before she could protest, he was pressing his lips against her cheek. It was a quick kiss, a chaste one, but her body leapt nonetheless.

  And then, just as quickly as he’d appeared, Henry was gone. Her hand flew to her cheek, the skin burning.

  The coach drew up before her brother’s house on Brook Street. William leapt from his phaeton and stalked toward the coach, yanking open the door.

  “Where is he?” William growled. “I know he was in the carriage with you, Caroline, so where did he go?”

  If only she knew.

  She met William’s gaze; he looked nothing short of murderous. She squared her shoulders. Henry was her secret, and hers alone.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied steadily, holding out her hand. William took it, gave it a good squeeze. A warning.

  Twenty-one

  That Afternoon

  It was just as she feared. Henry’s plan wasn’t working.

  Which meant she had to come up with one of her own.

  Caroline paced the drawing room for hours, racking her brain for a solution, a way to keep the French Blue out of Woodstock’s hands without sacrificing her life, or Henry’s, or the lives of all his men.

  She came up with nothing. The harder and longer she thought, the more frustrated she became. She cried, she cursed, she choked on her helplessness.

  And nothing came of it. Yes, she was a widow, a gardener, and as such lacked experience in things like espionage and blackmail.

  Still. She’d seen enough operas to warrant the invention of at least one murderous plot, hadn’t she? She had the diamond if she needed it. Surely there was no more powerful a bargaining chip than a fifty-carat stone?

  And still nothing. Her lack of creative prowess was depressing.

  Caroline paced until her legs and head hurt, and, collapsing on the sofa, decided a break was in order. Hoping to clear her mind, she picked up the dreaded novel she’d been trying to read for an eternity.

  A half hour later, Caroline glanced up from her book—she was only on the fifth page, and beginning to think she’d lost the ability to read—and nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Henry was leaning through the drawing room’s open window, arms crossed on the wide sill. The afternoon sun outlined the hunch of his enormous shoulders in blinding white; his hair glinted bronze. Strands of it hung loose at his
temples.

  He was looking at her. His eye was soft. So were her insides, suddenly, looking back at him.

  “Good afternoon, Caroline.”

  She closed the book around her finger. She sat a little straighter. “Good afternoon.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going round to the front door. You just looked very pretty reading there on the couch. I had to stop and admire the view. How is it?”

  “It? What?”

  He nodded at the book in her lap. “The book.”

  “Oh.” Her ears burned. “Um. It’s decent. Terrible, actually. Quite bad. Can’t seem to get past the first few pages.”

  Henry grinned. His dimple puckered.

  That goddamn dimple. Really, it wasn’t fair.

  “And your neck. It’s feeling better?”

  “Much, thank you.”

  “Splendid.”

  “So,” she said. “No new developments since I saw you last?”

  He looked at her. Then he pushed away from the sill and stood—the drawing room was on the ground level, and the windows opened directly to the street—and gave his sleeves a little tug.

  “I’ll be at the door in a moment,” he said.

  Caroline rose, heart in her throat as she squared her shoulders.

  She glanced in the mirror on the near wall, and smoothed her hair. There, better.

  A beleaguered Mr. Avery showed Henry into the drawing room.

  Avery nodded his head. “My lady.” It was more question than greeting, as in, my lady, shall I let him in, or shall I deliver a blow to his belly?

  “It’s all right, Avery. Mr. Lake comes in peace.”

  The butler reluctantly ducked out of the room. And then Caroline was alone with Henry. He stood by the door, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Thank you for seeing me.” He had the grace to blush as he said it.

  “I—well. I . . .”

  Frankly she didn’t know how she felt. Or maybe she just didn’t want to admit to the excitement that skittered in her pulse. The relief she felt, knowing she wouldn’t have to slog through another page of that book.

  “Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “I’d, um, I’d like to ask you—to. Er. Bah, this is embarrassing.”

  A beat of uncomfortable silence stretched between them as Henry ran his palm across the back of his neck. His throat flushed with color.

  Oh.

  The realization struck her like a cue ball to the head.

  Henry is nervous.

  It made her smile, his show of nerves. Her smile wasn’t a leer; she wasn’t poking fun.

  She was flattered. And charmed. Utterly charmed.

  His eye flashed up to meet hers. “While we wait, there is no better way to pass the time than to . . . um . . . spend it with each other? I thought you and I might take a turn at the Botanic Gardens. The, um, ones at Kew? With the pagoda? Only if you’d like to, of course; I know how you enjoy your gardens, and I would like to take you, because, um, you like them.”

  Her smile deepened.

  “I do, too!” Henry burst. “I like the gardens. I like—them. You. Kew. Very much?”

  His hand was thrust in his hair now. He closed his eyes and took a breath. “For the love of God, Caroline, put me out of my misery, one way or the other. Please say yes.”

  Ah, that look on his face! The hopeful softness in his eye was shameless, and he knew it.

  “I’d feel better if we left London for a bit, if you were with me . . . please, Caroline, I want to spend today with you.”

  She would never tire of hearing him speak her name. The rumbling rush of his voice, its masculine force softened around the hard C of the first syllable.

  And the Botanic Gardens! It had been years since she’d last visited.

  Henry took yet another step closer. The spice of his cologne filled her head. “Please, Caroline.” His voice was low. “I don’t want you to be alone today. Not after what happened— What we— The things we discussed last night.”

  She met his eye. It was sharply green in the bright afternoon light. Pleading.

  She set the book down, quietly, on the table beside the sofa.

  * * *

  The Botanic Gardens were a maze of pathways and grottoes and hidden alcoves; Caroline navigated them with ease, the pounding of her heart slowing as the familiar, loamy scents of dark earth, and green leaves, loosened the stranglehold of her nerves. She was acutely, painfully aware of Henry’s presence beside her.

  People stared as he and Caroline passed. She bit back a smile; she’d forgotten what it was like to walk about in public on Henry’s arm. He was enormous, for one thing, twice as tall as most men and just as wide, and enormously handsome, more mysterious now with the patch and the limp.

  A limp that, curiously, seemed to come and go. Then again, Caroline didn’t exactly trust her senses when in his presence; they were at once heightened and severely—tragically—muddled.

  The afternoon sun had disappeared behind a thick layer of cloud. A rumble of thunder broke out over their heads. They kept walking.

  They’d met in her parents’ garden, Caroline and Henry, more than a decade ago. Being surrounded by this riot of green, the familiar smells, made Caroline think of the first time she’d seen him.

  She remembered it as if it were a moment ago: a cold rush of heat had pulsed through her as her heart had labored to break free of its moorings in her chest. The world had gone still; she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe; she had been dizzy, lost in the depthless, darkening pools of his eyes. He’d been breathing hard, nostrils flaring; his forehead was slick with sweat. For a beat she’d been overcome by curiosity. What did he feel like, there? She had wanted to run the pad of her thumb across his brow, wipe the moisture on her skirts.

  “Caroline,” Henry was saying, “look.”

  She blinked, the image of him at eighteen dissolving into the face she saw now. Henry at thirty, marred, different. But the eyes—the eye—it was the same; a few more wrinkles at its edge, but the darkening interest, the heat was still there.

  “Look!” he said.

  “What? Where— Oh. Oh,” she breathed, her gaze following his outstretched arm. There, spread out before them in a misty copse, was a field of bluebells in egregious bloom. Again thunder rumbled; the sky was darkening, and in the copse the light was low and gray. The air was potently still. She could smell the approaching rain.

  Blue-violet blooms dusted the copse like snow, silent. Caroline was aware, suddenly, that she and Henry were very much alone.

  “It’s lovely,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “How lucky we are, to catch them while they are in bloom.”

  They were whispering, as if their voices might cause the blooms to shrivel, the breathless quiet to shatter.

  She untangled her arm from his and walked into the copse; the bluebells brushed her skirts as she trailed her palms over their bent heads. Their freshly sweet scent filled the air.

  Henry followed her out into the copse, his footfalls soft on the wet ground. She felt his eyes on her back; the skin on the nape of her neck grew warm.

  “Robert Dudley lived at Kew,” she said. “Queen Elizabeth’s Robert. She gave him a palace here.”

  “Perhaps Good Queen Bess and her paramour visited this very wood together. I wonder what they talked about.”

  Caroline grinned down at the bluebells. “Or if they talked at all.”

  “Feisty one, wasn’t she, Gloriana?”

  “I’d like to think so.” She drew to a stop in the middle of the field, hands on her hips as she surveyed the trees about them. “The palace she gave him is gone now, but I imagine it was a lovely place, full of intrigue and art and all these beautiful people. The two of them, Robert and Elizabeth, at the center of it all.”

  �
��But she would never have him for a husband,” Henry said.

  “She couldn’t have him,” Caroline replied. Her throat felt inexplicably tight. She watched as Henry tickled the bell of a nearby bloom. His fingers were enormous, and strong, but he handled the flower carefully, his touch soft as he coaxed the bell between his thumb and forefinger. He could rip it to shreds, the flower. But he didn’t.

  “There’s an old rumor,” she said, “that Dudley and Elizabeth’s secret name for one another was ‘Eyes.’ His must’ve been irresistible.”

  Henry smiled. “Dark.”

  Caroline smiled back. “Dangerous.”

  “Deadly. Didn’t he plot against her? Betray her by marrying someone else?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said. “But heavens, she was Queen of England! She knew better.”

  “Maybe she knew better,” Henry said, his gaze intent, “but it couldn’t be helped.”

  “She should’ve known a man with eyes like that was trouble.”

  Henry’s voice was quiet. “And him. He should’ve handled her heart with more care.”

  Caroline looked away. To hear him talking like that made her heart clench. She knew—God, she knew—how Elizabeth felt for Dudley.

  And no, it couldn’t be helped.

  A beat of silence stretched between Henry and Caroline.

  “You come here often? To Kew?” he said at last.

  “Not as often as I’d like,” she replied. “I’ve missed it. Quite a lot, actually. Osbourne preferred to keep to his house in Oxfordshire. London was a bit much for him, I think.”

  Henry looked down at his boots. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t know about . . . everything. What had happened. He was always a good friend, Osbourne. Better even than I knew, I suppose.”

  “He was good to both of us.”

  “He was.” A pause. They drew to a slow halt. Henry was looking at her now, his one eye clouded as it searched her face. The pause lengthened, and became something else altogether. An entreaty. A well of feeling.