CHAPTER 27
The crunching of a horse’s hooves resounded loudly in the still park.
“The slut and her paramour I see.”
“Good God.” Blinking, Agatha drew away from Henry, his frozen chin looming squarely above her. Why had she given in to the devilish voice that had pushed her into reaching up to him?
“Not God. That’s Lord Fashington now, thank you Miss Beauregard.”
Agatha stared blearily at the figure on his horse; no longer a charming dilettante, Charles Fashington was still a good looking man, but now his mouth seemed to pout in vanity rather than strength; his black hair slicked back revealing a strong widow’s peak.
“You wouldn’t have called off our engagement at the time had you known that I would be coming into my inheritance, would you?”
Henry lifted his large hand as if it burnt from where it fit snugly at her waist. “Go to blazes, Charles. You wanted out just as much as she did. You just weren’t man enough at first to break it off yourself.”
Charles jerked at his reins, causing his horse to sidle. “Shut up, Anglethorpe. I have as much influence as you have now. This is between her and me. I’ll talk to her as I wish.”
“So it is you who is putting round all the rumors.” Agatha couldn’t stop herself. It must have been Charles. No one else held so much hatred for her. She drew a breath in and then stopped. Could he really have been the one who had tried to murder her?
Charles laughed, opening his mouth so wide that Agatha could see his teeth. “Rumors? You mean they aren’t true? I was told them by a close, yes very close friend.” Laying his whip across his lap, he caressed the rigid leather and shot Agatha black look through his eyelashes. “No, you silly fool. I didn’t start the rumors. They were already here. But don’t blame me if I don’t get any satisfaction from passing them on. After all, for three years nobody in government would talk to me unless they really had to.”
“I didn’t reveal any details of our encounter to anyone, Fashington.” Henry slapped his hand against the side of the curricle. “Just like I promised. But did you seriously expect me not to drop some other things I had found out about you into key ears that would listen?”
“Goddamn you Anglethorpe. That damaged my reputation and set my career back at least a decade. At least now that I am a lord, all of that is forgotten. Everyone wants to know the latest Lord Fashington. Funny thing, wealth—and power.” Charles turned back to Agatha. “Hah! I’m even engaged to Lord Guthrie’s daughter now.”
Lord Guthrie’s daughter? Agatha could only briefly remember a shy woman standing behind Lord Guthrie before Lady Guthrie had thrown her out of the ball. The daughter would be a great heiress; even though it was known that Lord Guthrie also worked for the government, he was a very rich man in his own right.
“Mmm. Miss Guthrie is so deliciously malleable. She will do anything I ask. You see, she thinks that I’m lovely and charming.” Charles sneered again, his mouth twisting. “I ask you, what man is charming?”
Agatha swallowed.
“Shut up, Fashington,” Henry said quietly. “Lord or not, there are still some things I can influence through what I know.”
Charles growled, yanking at the bit on the horses’ mouths to set them in motion. “Pardon me if I don’t invite you to the wedding,” he threw over his shoulder as the carriage sped away. “It might give you more time to find Monsieur Herr. That is if you haven’t already found them.”
Henry didn’t wait for Charles to disappear. Flicking the reins, he wheeled the curricle in a wide circle and set off back the way they had come.
Agatha clutched at the side of the curricle as it bounced across the cobbles. “Who is Monsieur Herr?”
“No one that you know.” Henry stared straight ahead. He would not meet her gaze.
“Oh. Something to do with your work?” The work that he wanted to keep from his bride, no doubt.
“Yes.”
“You still haven’t told me what you want.”
“Just drop it, Agatha. Enough. Now is not the time.” Henry yanked on the reins as they arrived back at Colchester Mansions and refused to look at her.
She didn’t wait for him to hand her down. Flinging open the curricle door, she put her hand on the wooden floor and swung herself to the pavement. Without looking back, she fled up the steps to Colchester Mansions, and all the way up to her room.
She watched him leave covertly from the upstairs bedroom window. His back, so straight when they had been driving, slumped across the two seats. Agatha bit down on the back of her knuckle as he lay motionless, as if he were never moving again. And then with a thrust of his powerful forearm, he righted himself and set the horses off down the street.
“Have a nice time?”
Backing away from the window, Agatha drew her breath sharply. Victoria stood just inside the doorway, her face an unnatural shade of white.
“I, I’m not sure.” Agatha frowned. “Where’s Arturo?” Usually two dogs followed Victoria around the house, but now only one lay at her feet.
Victoria’s face flamed, chasing away the unnatural pallor. “Earl Harding has him.”
Agatha glanced out of the window again. The curricle had vanished. “How did he manage that?”
“He paid me a call.”
Agatha laid her bonnet on the bed. “What did the earl want?”
Victoria took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “What I am going to tell you should not be told to anyone else, or my brother.” Agatha nodded shortly in agreement. Victoria stepped into the bedroom and sank onto the bed beside her bonnet. “He came to tell me that there is a French spy operating now in London called Monsieur Herr.”
“But—” Victoria held her small hand up to silence Agatha.
“The spy was operating five years ago around the time when your affair with Fashington became known.”
“I would hardly call it an affair.”
Victoria took a deep breath. “The spy stopped operating when you left London. And has started again now that you are back.”
“He doesn’t think that I—”
“Yes he does. And what is more, he thinks that you are dragging my brother into it on purpose.”
“Your brother?”
“Oh come on, Aggie. You know that he’s a spymaster for the British, don’t you? Nobody that works for the war office is anyone but a spy!”
Agatha shivered, toying with the ties on her bonnet. How did you know I was there, he’d asked her, silently invading the house in Hope Sands with a catlike grace.
She gasped. He hadn’t told her what he wanted from her. It was all so blindingly obvious. “You don’t think that your brother thinks I’m the spy, do you?”
Victoria licked her lips and rubbed at her cheeks with both of her hands. “I’m not sure. He has never said anything to me.”
Agatha had been with Henry only an hour earlier. He’d made Celine, a courtesan, his mistress to further his ‘work’ at the war office. He had calmly told her so himself. Good grief, he always knew where she was. She’s mine, he’d roared at Earl Harding.
“When did he reopen the Berale estate, Victoria?” she said coldly, fear creeping into her heart. “The one near Brambridge?”
“Hmm, nigh on a month after you left. Around the same time he had a meeting with Earl Harding and what sounded to me like a Frenchman who said he had come up from Devon.” Victoria began to look troubled. “The next day he told me he thought it was time to air the old place out. It was quite strange and coincidental. After mama died there he said he would never set foot in the house again.”
Agatha felt an anguish grip her. “We saw Fashington in the park,” she said.
“Odious man. Did you know that he tried to get me to persuade you to break off the engagement yourself?”
“No. He told us in fact that he wasn’t the one passing the rumors around. I don’t know what he would gain by lying.”
Victoria stood slowly. “He wouldn’t gain any
thing by lying, Aggie.”
Agatha sniffed. With shaking fingers, she pushed her hand into her skirts and pulled out her notebook. “It’s not me, Victoria.” Opening a yellowed page, she gazed at the old notebook. Withdrawing the stub of her pencil slowly from the same pocket, she made a heading. ‘Monsieur Herr.’
“Of course.” Victoria stared at the notebook. “Someone is trying to frame you and distract my brother’s attention. Number one,” Victoria began. “You are not the spy.” She held up her hand as if to acknowledge what she said was obvious. “Number two, the activity of the spy coincides with your time in London, both times.”
“I’m sorry, but why would that mean someone was trying to frame me?” Agatha scribbled faster and faster in the notebook.
“Number three, someone is setting up all kinds of false rumors to discredit you, as if they want you to go away again.”
“I still don’t understand how this helps them by framing me.”
“Number four, you are linked romantically.” Victoria rubbed at her eyes. “Or otherwise with my brother Henry who to another spy would be known as a British War Office expert.”
“No. It still doesn’t add together.” Agatha stopped writing. “We’re missing a piece.” She gazed down at the pages; the points Victoria had made connected together, but none of them pointed back to a focal point. The pages blurred in front of her face.
He only wanted her because he thought she was a spy. No wonder he couldn’t tell her. No wonder he couldn’t bring himself to kiss her back. He must have had to talked himself into kissing her each time. You’ve made me do this. Oh hell. Agatha bit back a sob.
“Alright. We need to add in some conjecture.”
Agatha swallowed and coughed. “I prefer evidence.” She’d seen the evidence herself.
Victoria twitched an eyebrow and gazed at Agatha intently for a few seconds. “From what you told me a few years ago, all scientists create hypotheses before they undergo investigations. Surely they are nothing but conjecture.”
Agatha froze. Why did Victoria and Henry continue to needle her? Anyone would have thought that they were positively willing her to engage with the side of her nature she had buried so deep that often it reared its head before she had the ability to kick it back down again. Silently she nodded; she didn’t trust herself to speak, her hands trembling on her pencil as she held down the pages of the little book. That was how it started, with little things, like writing in the book again. If she wasn’t careful, the dam would burst.
Victoria scratched her head. “How about, my brother is a British spy… he comes too close to discovering who the Monsieur Herr is. He needs to be taken off the trail, so they target you. They make him think that you are the spy to lead him off their scent. And once they have him off the scent they’ll try and get rid of you so that he also goes away and they can continue their activities.”
Agatha stopped writing, frozen into place. “So you do think that he believes I am a spy.”
“Yes, no, ah.” Victoria stood and paced to the wardrobe.
“And until we find out who is framing me, the rumors are going to continue, your brother is going to still remain romantically interested in me because he thinks I’m a spy, and I’m going to get thrown out of most of the balls in London.”
“Err, correct. You mean I was right about the romantic interest?”
“If he thinks I’m a spy and he’s doing this just to get to me, then that’s not romantic, is it?”
Victoria rubbed her hand across her face. “Aggie… I’ve seen the way he is with you.”
Standing, Agatha picked up her bonnet. “We met Celine in the park.”
Victoria’s intake of breath was audible. She paused before taking a deep breath. “We need to plan a way out of this. For both of you.”
Agatha looked back down at her book and wiped at a small tear that had inexplicably formed in her right eye. “I suppose the first question to ask would be who could the spy be?”
Victoria shook her head. “I’ve no idea. But I think we might have a way of shaking them out of the trees.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds and bunched her hands visibly in her skirts. “I haven’t been to Berale House for seven years, but it is the ideal place for a house party to stir the waters, so to speak.” She opened her eyes and stared at Agatha. “And to chase away some old ghosts.”
CHAPTER 28
Berale House, Brambridge
Henry tracked Agatha’s progress through the room with hawk like intensity. He hated house parties, particularly ones in houses where past memories were so palpable that one could all but reach out and touch them. But he would have traded anything just to be in the same room as Agatha.
He licked his lips as Agatha sat down and started to sip a cup of tea, her plump red lips tickling the edges of the teacup, her large eyes gazing out over the rim of the cup. She did not look his way, not once. There was no doubt, she had been avoiding him for the past few days.
Was she really innocent? Did he care anymore—after all, however he felt, he couldn’t marry her?
Or was it because he was still smarting over having guests in his parents’ house? Victoria had told him he’d turned the place into a mausoleum; that it was time to let the house earn its keep.
He closed his eyes as Agatha took another sip of tea. It was torture. Since that fateful kiss on the terrace at Dowager Lady Lassiter’s ball, it was as if all of his senses had been tuned in to her every move. He could almost feel the velvet tea running over his tongue, especially since he had experienced at first-hand how soft her tongue could be. Oh Aggie. Why did you do it?
“Are you alright, Anglethorpe?” Freddie sat back languidly, taking an amused bite out of a small scone that he had been eating. “See anything that you like?”
Henry took a deep breath and swallowed as Smythe waved a tray of miniature cakes under his nose with a terrified look on his face. He shot Freddie a disgusted look and met the amused gazes of both Freddie and Harry. It was obvious that his ardor was evident to all those who knew him well. He couldn’t understand why they were so amused, however, as they were the ones that had presented Agatha as the best candidate for being Monsieur Herr.
“Yes, haven’t seen you making such a cake of yourself over such a choice of crumpet in a long time.” Freddie smirked as Anthony bent over in silent laughter.
Henry shook his head at Smythe and waved him off with a shake of his hand. Smythe blinked and stood still for a second before walking slowly away.
“Will you two stop it?” Henry folded his arms. “I was just thinking about whether she is Monsieur Herr or not, and making sure I don’t take my eyes off her. I would present to you gentlemen, that your love lives are no better than mine either.”
Freddie’s smirk dropped abruptly from his face. He took a long sip of his tea and elbowed Anthony in the stomach.
Henry looked over at Agatha again. She was discussing something heatedly with his sister, who held one of her dogs tightly to her on her lap.
In frustration he gritted his teeth and searched the room for his butler. Why had he agreed to this awful gathering? Catching the eye of Smythe, who had been watching him from a corner by the door, Henry nodded.
The butler stepped staunchly further into the room. “Ladies and Gentlemen, if you would please follow me, luncheon is served.”
Smythe led them outside to the terrace where a large table had been set out in the sunshine. Pride of place had been given to his sister Victoria as the de facto host of the event. He’d left her to the seating plan. Then came Agatha, and he groaned, himself. It was if the gods had conspired against him.
Her silk dress rustled as she sat down next to him, accepting his hand to steady herself. She did not look him in the face. He bent his back to lower her in the chair and felt faintly bereft when she let go to fold her hands meekly in her lap. He laughed to himself. She was the least meek female that he knew, barring his sister.
“Look, I—”
> “I heard what you said,” she interjected shortly but quietly.
“But—”
“I am not Monsieur Herr,” Agatha continued quietly. “And neither am I a Celine.” Agatha refolded her hands in her lap, yet her back remained straight and her eyes were fixed on the salt cellars.
Henry hunched his shoulders inside his coat and sat quietly.
“So how’s Anglethorpe Towers?”
Henry shook his head and then glanced to his left. Lord James Stanton, the owner of the adjacent estate, Brambridge Manor, regarded him enquiringly, his head cocked on one side and an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“You with us, old chap?”
“Er, yes.” Henry turned to look back at Agatha, to apologize, to say anything. But her head was turned away, and she chatted quietly to Victoria on her other side.
“I’m sorry, I did not realize I was interrupting something.”
He sighed and turned back to Lord Stanton. “Don’t worry. I think she had said everything she wanted to say.”
Stanton gave a rueful grin. “Just like Harriet.” He stopped, the smile disappearing from his face as he glanced down the table to where Harriet sat. “You can take your frustration out in the cricket game after lunch. Perhaps it will give you the edge.”
Henry grunted and picked up his spoon.
Halfway through the soup course one of the footmen tapped him on the shoulder. “Message for you, my lord.”
The message had Renard’s unmistakable seal on it. He thrust it into his pocket. It was the worst time to receive a message, but looking up and down the table, it was noticeable that most guests were more interested in their soup than in his activities. Turning away from Agatha’s direction, he pocketed the scrap of paper. At the end of the meal he stood quickly, bowed and left the table.
Somewhat Scandalous (Brambridge Novel 1) Page 17