Evelyn laughingly shook his head. “My dear Mary, none of that will matter a jot to Shrewsbury, and it certainly doesn’t matter to me—”
“Oh, but you are used to living hand-to-mouth, and in the most appalling of foreign places, but here, this is still my home. Mama would be horrified to think I was entertaining Lord Shrewsbury in such straightened circumstances. And I cannot invite our neighbors to dine because it is not within our means to do so, though I am sure his lordship will expect a dressed dinner every night and good company to sit down with him at table—”
“Ma chérie! Mary! Listen,” Evelyn demanded gently and scrambled up the bed to sit beside her. He tenderly brushed a long loose curl from her flushed cheek, and looked into her eyes. “Set your mind at ease. Shrewsbury comes here for a private visit. There is no need for your neighbors to know. In fact, the less said about it the better. He may even use an alias, as I have done in the past, so as not to draw attention to himself. If certain persons were to discover he was here, or had been here, it would signal to our enemies that perhaps England’s Spymaster General is not in complete control of the situation with France, with whom, I am afraid to say, we will be at war very soon. Though that piece of news is between us and no other—”
Mary stared at him, astounded. “You think any person here, in this out of the way place, has any notion of whom we are at war with now, least of all whom we are about to go to war with—”
“It may surprise you,” Evelyn interjected patiently, “but your little corner of England is a veritable hotbed of intrigue, and that is one of the reasons for Shrewsbury’s visit.”
“Well, I know nothing of spies and spying, or about wars for that matter. Nobody tells me anything!” Mary grumbled. “But what I do know is that Lord Shrewsbury will expect a good dinner, regardless if it is in a private capacity, using an alias, or announcing his arrival with trumpets bellowing! And men cannot be agreeable, or discuss matters of importance, if they do not have a good dinner.” She blushed and smiled when Evelyn laughed out loud. “Perhaps if the French and English sat down to dine matters would resolve themselves.”
“Oh, my dear Mary! And I suppose the war in the American Colonies boils down to a good cup of tea—or the lack of one?” He kissed the back of her hand and said more sensibly, “There may be something in what you say… You always were the most levelheaded of us cousins.”
Mary smiled. “By sensible you mean unimaginative—no! I won’t allow you to think me anything else. It’s true. I am sensible. Someone has to be. So I cannot deny I am relieved that his lordship is visiting in a private capacity. My resources are limited, and every penny is accounted for.” She colored painfully, when admitting, “You need to understand that Sir Gerald left his estate burdened with unpaid accounts. Though Teddy and I still live under this roof, we do so with the good grace of the steward for the estate.”
“I know that, ma chérie. Your brother told me. You will not be surprised when I tell you that I, like the rest of the family, believed Sir Gerald unworthy of you, in every respect. Why your mother promoted such a deplorable match—”
“He-he was a Cavendish, and Deborah his sister.” Mary countered in a small voice.
“Yes. And she is the best of that lot! No doubt she takes after her mother. Their father Sir George was, by all accounts, a muckworm who littered the countryside with his by-blows.”
Mary’s brow wrinkled. “How—How do you know that, Eve? Sir George spent most of his time away from Abbeywood, in London. Sir Gerald said his father rarely came here.”
“Indeed?” Evelyn shrugged and threw up a hand in dismissal. “Something I heard a long time ago… Let’s consign it to gossip. But what I will say without hesitation is that the only worthy decision Sir Gerald ever made in his life was marrying you!”
“And he gave me Teddy.”
“Ah yes! Your daughter.” When Mary nodded, sudden tears in her eyes, he squeezed her fingers gently. “Let’s have no more talk of debt and the dead. I may provide for my cousin and her daughter with whatever largesse I care to distribute. I am not beholden to a shabby steward. I’m surprised Roxton allows it.”
“Under the terms of Sir Gerald’s will, there is little he can do about it.”
“That must be a thorn in his finger indeed for the illustrious Duke,” Evelyn muttered dryly. He patted Mary’s hand and said more audibly, “But I am here, and I will. This steward won’t refuse me. I’ll set him straight—”
Mary let out in involuntary giggle. “In that nightgown, I suppose?”
“Ha! I’ll have you know my man and my clothes are only a day’s ride behind me. But I was so very keen to see you I couldn’t wait, so came on ahead. Ah! Your milk and my tea have arrived,” he interrupted, when Betsy put the tray with the tea things and Mary’s mug of hot milk on the bedside table and bobbed a clumsy curtsy for good measure.
“Oh! Tea! Yes!” Mary said a little breathlessly and quickly gathered the banyan about her and slid off the bed. She dismissed Betsy, saying she would not be needed until morning, and without a word spoken about her visitor.
Betsy curtsied again but did not depart immediately. After what the Squire had mentioned in the kitchen, curiosity had the better of her. She glanced at her ladyship’s cousin and was shocked into immobility. It was not the gentleman’s wild gray mane, or his beard, or even his gaunt appearance that most caused alarm, but the fact he was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her mistress’s bed in a nightshirt as if he had a right to be there. For a simple country girl who had never been to a village larger than Bisley, and who was more than a little in awe of her mistress as the daughter of an earl, to see a stranger who was not her ladyship’s husband making himself comfortable amongst the pillows shocked her mute and motionless.
It said much about Mary’s preoccupation, and the fact she expected Betsy to do as she was bid no questions asked, that she went about making Evelyn a cup of tea oblivious to her maid’s mules being fixed to the floorboards.
It was left to Christopher, who had remained by the fireplace, to remind Betsy of her duty with a quiet word at her back. This merely underscored the fact he, too, lingered in the bedchamber when he should’ve departed as soon as the fire was well alight. Betsy made a hurried curtsy and scurried away to fetch the extra bed linen and coverlet for the chaise longue in Sir Gerald’s sitting room. As for Christopher, he was going nowhere while Evelyn remained in Mary’s bedchamber. He would see to it the connecting door was closed and the bolt slid fast before he took himself off to the steward’s sparse bedchamber at the far end of the house.
CHRISTOPHER’S EXPRESSION provided a glaring window to his thoughts, Evelyn remarking casually yet provokingly, as he lifted the tea cup off its saucer, “Should I introduce myself, or will you do the honors with your candelabra-wielding knight errant, chérie?”
It was only then that Mary realized Christopher was in the room. She had disregarded his presence, thinking it one of the servants seeing to the fire. Realizing it was Christopher upset her composure. This joyful reunion with Evelyn had allowed her to conveniently push to the back of her mind her earlier uncharacteristically impetuous behavior in sharing a passionate kiss with the Squire. What had she been thinking? What had led her to forget her upbringing and drop her defenses to fall into his arms like an over-eager, moonstruck schoolroom miss? She would never have done the unthinkable while married, so why as a respectable widow had she cast caution to the four winds? But that kiss… She had never experienced anything like it. The feelings and sensations aroused in her were so overwhelming she was overcome with acute embarrassment. She was flustered and unable to put together a coherent sentence. And for the first time in her life she ignored protocol and what was right, put her head down and bustled off to her dressing room mumbling,
“You need clothes to wear, Eve… I need my chatelaine… There is a key to a clothes press… “
Christopher turned to follow her but Evelyn stopped him with one hard sentence.
>
“You’re not going anywhere, Silvanus. We need to talk.”
TEN
‘I AM, SIR,” Christopher enunciated through his teeth as he turned to face the visitor, “Squire Bryce of Brycecomb Hall. And you are…?”
“Is that so?” Evelyn said with a casual insolence that grated on Christopher’s ear. He ignored the question and sipped at his tea, unperturbed, and continued in the same light arrogant tone that carried an undercurrent of menace. “You may very well be Squire Bryce of Backwater Hall, but I am confident that in the service of your country you masquerade as the Roman god of forests and flocks… Silvanus is particularly apt, given your agricultural pursuits. By all means, if I am wrong, correct me.”
When Christopher remained mute, Evelyn smiled his satisfaction and over the rim of his cup openly appraised the Squire. And had he measured Christopher by his provincial clothing alone he would’ve dismissed him as beneath his notice. But there were nuances to the man that caught Evelyn’s attention. For when Christopher had scooped Mary up from her faint and then spoken to her while she recovered on her bed, Evelyn had been at leisure to observe them both, Christopher in particular. There was something arresting about the handsome face that made it memorable. Perhaps it was the man’s eyes. They were intelligent and caring, and held a certain sad reticence. And then there was way the squire moved with a grace and ease usually exhibited on the polished parquetry of a society ballroom, not the muck of a country midden. As for his long fingers, they belonged at the keys of a pianoforte, or the strings of a viola, as Evelyn’s once had, before his had been mutilated for double-crossing the Empress of all the Russias. But it was when he spoke that Evelyn was convinced he’d had the good fortune to stumble upon the very man he needed to seek out. For not only did the squire have a pleasingly mellow voice, the cadence was of one who had spent more time away from his roots than amongst them.
It helped enormously that Evelyn had the upper hand in this meeting, for he knew the name by which Shrewsbury’s agent operated in this quarter of the country, and he knew enough about his background that when questioned, Christopher could only infer that he had received such information from Shrewsbury himself. It cost him nothing to use the operative’s code name, and gained him everything when Christopher, by not denying the allegation, inadvertently identified himself.
“I say again: And you, sir, are…?” Christopher asked with an upward arrogant tilt of his square chin.
Evelyn put aside his teacup and hopped off the bed. He made a grand gesture of stretching out his arms left and right as he came towards him, and boomed in a baritone, “I am Apollo, God of the sun and music, thy worthy Silvanus!”
This announcement was accompanied by a high-pitched laugh which brought Christopher within one angry stride of Evelyn’s chest. He wanted to think the man a fool, but one look into the piercing blue eyes and he knew the opposite was true. It cut through his irritation and he said with controlled anger, lowering his voice because he did not want Lady Mary to overhear them from her dressing room,
“Understand this: I am not one of Shrewsbury’s automata, and I won’t be yours, whoever you are—Lady Mary’s long lost cousin, spy, or Shrewsbury’s Machiavellian marionette!”
“So you were listening from your post by the fireplace, and thus are fluent in the French tongue? But of course you must be. And possibly speak it like a native, too. What an unusually accomplished Squire Backwater you are to be sure!”
“Well enough to know that you most unwisely, and unnecessarily, identified yourself and Lord Fitzstuart as spies to the Lady Mary.”
“So my dear cousin has no idea that you, too, are a spy?”
Christopher gave a huff, but his response was delayed when Mary bustled through from her dressing room, holding aloft her chatelaine in one hand and a little brass key in the other. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and there was a sparkle in her violet eyes that softened Christopher’s mouth. Both men took a step away from each other, and tried to appear as if they had not been in conversation. But they need not have worried, because she was preoccupied, and did her best not to look Christopher’s way, saying to Evelyn,
“I was certain I had kept the key to Sir Gerald’s dressing table in the enamel container attached here,” rattling the chatelaine before dropping her hand, the chatelaine’s gold chain, which was normally pinned to her bodice, wound securely round her wrist. “If you would give me but a moment, I will have the drawer opened and find the set of keys that open the trunks that have—” She stopped on a sudden thought and abruptly turned to Christopher and said without looking him directly in the eye, “Mr. Bryce, I presume you have no objection if I open the trunk storing Sir Gerald’s wedding clothes, for I am very sure there are some garments packed away that would do for my cousin until his bags and his man arrive?”
“No objection, my lady. If I can be of assistance—”
“No! I need none. Thank-you,” she stated, and without another word or look at either man, went through to Sir Gerald’s dressing room where there was light and warmth for the first time in two years.
Christopher watched her go with her back very straight and chin up. It was the fact her cheeks were apple red and she could not meet his gaze that told him about her state of mind. She was thinking about their kiss, and thinking about it had made her uncomfortable in his presence. He wished her long-lost cousin a thousand miles away so he could follow her, explain to her his feelings, that they were heartfelt, and to kiss her again. Instead he turned to Evelyn and found him regarding him with a half-smile that set his teeth on edge.
“To answer your question: No, she does not know, because I am not a spy,” he stated. “I agreed to do one task for the Spymaster General, and one task only: To discover if Sir Gerald was a traitor. The man was not. A conceited fool, yes. But not a traitor.”
“Is that so?” Evelyn replied as if he did not believe him. “But surely the fact he passed on information to another, information the French were most interested in receiving for the American Patriots’ cause, is an act of treason, and therefore he is a traitor?”
“Not if he believed he was helping the English cause in doing so. No.”
“Helping the English cause in doing so?” Evelyn repeated with an affected start worthy of any stage actor. He put a hand to his chest. “I do not understand your meaning, Mr. Bryce of Backwater Hall—”
“It’s Brycecomb,” Christopher enunciated. “And you, sir, have a most irritating way of hiding your intelligence!”
Evelyn let out another of his piercing laughs. “Mon Dieu! You have the silver tongue of a lawyer, to be sure!” he exclaimed in French, before adding in English, and in an altogether different voice, as he stepped up to Christopher so as not to be overheard, “This is not the time or place for further discussion. Be assured, Shrewsbury will be here tomorrow, or the day after, and he—we—will expect your full assistance—”
“You can be certain of it. For that will be the end of my involvement in these cloak-and-dagger affairs, for I do not have the stomach for subterfuge.”
Evelyn cocked his head, unperturbed by the squire’s angry annoyance, and mused, “Do you not indeed? And yet I would’ve thought, given your history and your previous line of—er—employment, artifice would be second nature to a man of your—Steady on!” he snorted when Christopher snatched up a handful of his nightshirt, screwed it tightly in his fist, and jerked Evelyn to him.
“For-why doth thee be an expert in t’art, wouldn’t thou, laiking butty,” Christopher growled in a low Cotswolds burr that stripped him of thirty years and hurled him back to his origins. He let go of Evelyn with a contemptuous push.
A tense silence descended on the bedchamber, punctuated by the crackle of the burning logs, and the scrape and knock of drawers being opened and closed in the next room. And then Evelyn came to life, pulling at the front of his nightshirt, to shake out the twisted crease of Christopher’s fingers in the linen, saying more to himself, but so he could
be overheard,
“Tish! Tish! Gerry must’ve put on a bit of weight over the years! I mean he was pasty and paunchy to begin with, but this is—frightful.”
Christopher frowned, breathing more steadily after his uncharacteristic outburst which left him angry with himself.
“The man over-ate like he over-spent: As if tomorrow would take care of his mounting debts, and his health; the consequences could go hang. Had he not accidentally shot himself, time would have seen his heart give out before his natural time.”
“Poor Mary.” Evelyn sighed mournfully. “She was wasted on such an oaf. The family never did like him.” He looked at Christopher from under his lashes. “So shooting himself must’ve come as a relief to you…?”
“What?”
“Well. Let’s face facts. Unless you force-fed him to death to speed up his demise, it could’ve taken another couple of years before his heart gave out. How long were you prepared to wait? Or are you as doggedly loyal and determined as your manly chin suggests?”
“I have no idea what you’re—”
“Oh! I think you do, Silvanus!” Evelyn said as a teacher to a naughty school boy, waggling a finger at him. He tugged at the front of the nightshirt so it billowed out, and backed towards the bed as he did so, saying with the splutter of a laugh, “Good God! The man was grossly fat, corpulent, obese, however you want to phrase it, and you must have wondered when he would have a heart attack and put you out of your misery.”
“I say again, sir. I have no idea what you’re talking about, or where you are taking this absurd conversation. But if you think I ever thought—”
“Oh! I do! I do!” Evelyn announced, coming to a standstill up against the bed. He jerked his head over his shoulder at the mattress and put his tongue in his cheek before saying with a lewd, lopsided grin, “Gerry must’ve been a sweaty mess of lard, whichever side you care to butter it. I shudder at the thought of such a delicate beauty bedded by an uncouth mountain of corpulent fle—”
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