by Juliana Gray
The door closed behind him with a defiant thump.
Sir Edward’s eyes rolled upward. “Pankhurst. I daresay I ought to sack him, but on the other hand he’s frightfully discreet. A drop of something, perhaps?” He rose and went to the demilune table against the far wall, on which a tray of crystal decanters flashed invitingly. “Sherry? Whiskey? I’ve a noble port at the moment, last of the ought-nines my father put down for me on the occasion of my birth, ha-ha.”
“I shouldn’t wish to deprive you,” said Roland, who felt the loss of noble ports keenly, even in his present disturbed spirits.
“Nonsense. If one waits for the right occasion, one never drinks it at all.” Sir Edward picked up a decanter and lifted the stopper. “Ah! There we are, you damned beauty.”
“I say, you’re a good deal more generous than my brother,” Roland said. He watched with narrowed eyes as Sir Edward poured out one glass and then another, filling each one nearly to the rim with thick ruby port. In the silent, book-filled room, the liquid swished against crystal like an Amazonian waterfall. “He never lets me near his vintage.”
“Ah, well. Dukes, you know.” Sir Edward handed him the glass. “To the Queen.”
“The Queen.”
The clink of glasses rang amiably in the air, and Sir Edward, instead of returning to his desk, moved to the window overlooking the rear garden. With one hand he lifted aside the heavy burgundy curtains and peered out into the foggy darkness. He took a drink of port. “I suppose,” he said, “you’re wondering why I’ve called you here tonight.”
“It came as something of a surprise.”
“Ah! Circumspect.” Sir Edward swirled the port in his glass. “You’ve come along damned well these past few years, Penhallow. Damned well. I thought, when they first foisted you on me, you’d be nothing but an aristocratic millstone around my neck, with your flashy looks and your matchless damned pedigree. But I was quite wrong about that, to my considerable pleasure. Quite wrong.” He turned to face Roland, and all the painfully contrived jollity had faded from his expression, leaving its lean angles even more austere than usual.
“I’m grateful to have been of service, sir,” said Roland. “Queen and country and all that. Dashed good fun.” He gripped the narrow bowl of his glass until the facets cut hard and cold against his fingertips.
“Of course you are. I don’t doubt that for an instant.” Sir Edward stared down into the ruby depths of his port.
“Sir?” Roland said, because his dry mouth would not permit anything more fluent. Then he remembered the port, and raised it to his lips for a hearty, seamanlike swallow.
Sir Edward cleared his throat. “Here’s the trouble. As I suspect you’re aware, we’re not the only organization in Her Majesty’s government charged with gathering intelligence.”
“Of course not. Tripping on each other’s toes all the time.” Roland offered a winning smile, his most charismatic younger-brother effort. “Why, just last month I nearly came to a bad end myself. Stumbled directly into a setup by some damned chaps from the Navy office. The bloodiest balls-up you’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, I read your report.” Sir Edward returned to the desk and sat down in his chair. A trace of what might be called a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Rather well written, your reports, except perhaps for an excess of descriptive phrase.”
Roland shrugged modestly. “Reports would be so dull otherwise.”
“In any case, it appears those—er—damned chaps from the Navy office, as you put it, aren’t taking things in quite the same spirit of brotherhood.”
“No? Hardly sporting of them. They were all quite on their feet again within a week or two.” Roland flicked a speck of dust from his jacket sleeve.
“Ah. Still. Despite your tender care, which no doubt met the very highest standards of the service . . .”
“Naturally.”
“. . . there’s talk”—Sir Edward set down his glass and fiddled with the neat rectangle of papers in the center of the leather-trimmed blotter—“that our involvement represented a deliberate attempt to undermine the efforts of a long and prestigious investigation.”
Roland lifted his eyebrows. Despite hours of concerted effort, he’d never yet managed to raise one by itself. “You can’t be serious. Does the Navy office really think I’ve nothing better to do with my time than to plot its downfall? For God’s sake, my source gave me every reason to think . . .”
“Your source.” Sir Edward lifted the topmost paper from the stack and scanned it. “Johnson, to be precise.”
“Yes, sir. You know the man. Thoroughly reliable, well-placed at the Russian mission.”
“And as of this morning, aboard a steamer to Argentina with a number of small, heavy trunks, inhabiting a first-class starboard cabin.” Sir Edward looked up. “Surprised, are you?”
Roland slumped back in his chair. “Well, I’m dashed!”
“Dashed. Yes.”
“Argentina!”
“Apparently so. Traveling under his real name, of all things.”
“The cheek!”
“My counterpart at the Navy is, of course, beside himself. He’s convinced you paid off Johnson, that it’s all part of some plot on our part to make fools of them, at best. At worst . . .”
Roland shot forward out of the chair and pinned the paper to the blotter with his finger. “Don’t say it, by God.”
“Pax, you young fool. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”
“But someone is.” Roland’s voice was low, deadly, quite unlike its usual self.
Sir Edward tilted his lean face to one side and considered Roland for a long moment. “Someone is.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Sir Edward frowned. “Look, Penhallow. I shall speak as freely as I can, because I consider myself a fair judge of men, and I know no man more disinterestedly devoted to the welfare of the British nation as you.”
Roland’s arrow-straight body relaxed an infinitesimal degree.
“Something’s up, Penhallow. I don’t know what it is. Rumblings, currents. There’s always been rivalry, of course; bitter, at times. One expects that, in this line of work, with no great financial benefit, no hero’s reception at St. Paul’s and whatnot. Power’s the only currency. But the things I hear now, the things I sense, odd instances of this and that . . . I can’t put it into words, exactly. But something’s off.”
Roland eased back into his chair, every sense alert. “What sort of thing?”
Sir Edward tented his fingers together atop the fine white paper, fingertip against fingertip. “If I knew that, Penhallow, I’d have taken action by now.”
“Then how can I help?”
“That, you see, is the trouble.” He drummed his fingertips together; hard, sturdy, peasantlike fingers that matched his hard, sturdy body and made the gentleman-like cut of his superfine jacket seem like racing silks on a destrier. “Tell me, Penhallow,” he said, in an even voice, “have you any enemies? Besides, of course, those damned chaps you put out of action a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, any number. One doesn’t construct a reputation like mine without putting a few noses out of joint.”
“Anyone who might wish to ruin you?”
“There are all sorts of ruin to wish upon a man who’s beaten you at cards, or stolen your mistress.”
“I mean total ruin. Moral, physical. A man, perhaps, who might wish to have you condemned for treason.”
Treason.
The word rang about the room, ricocheted off the books and objects, settling at last between them with an ugly clank.
“None that I can call to mind,” Roland said quietly.
“And yet,” Sir Edward said, just as quietly, “I can say, with near certainty, that such a man exists.”
“Name the man, and he is dead within the hour.”
“I don’t know his name. That, you see, is the mystery.” Sir Edward rose and went to the middle of a row of bookshelves near the window,
where a small globe interrupted the even flow of leather-bound volumes. He placed one hand, spiderlike, over the Atlantic Ocean. “Have you anywhere you can retire for a month or two? Perhaps more? Somewhere discreet?”
“What, hide? Oh, I say . . .”
“Not hide. Not at all. Only retire, as I said, from the limelight for a bit.”
“Damn it all, sir, I won’t turn tail and slink away.”
“Discretion, in this case, is much the better part of valor.” Sir Edward turned and skewered him with a rapier gaze from his dark eyes. “The idea is to tease the fellow out in the open. Find out what he’s really after. Let him think he’s won. An easy triumph breeds overconfidence.”
“And I should meanwhile sit twiddling my thumbs in some country seat . . .”
“Preferably outside of England.”
“Oh, rot. Outside of England? I’ve no tolerance for Paris, and no friends anywhere else that . . .” He stopped. A thought began to writhe its way through the currents of his brain, like a poisonous eel.
“What is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s nothing, really. Only some damned idea of a friend of ours.”
“What sort of idea? What sort of friend?”
“A scientific fellow. Burke’s his name, a very close and trusted friend of mine and my brother’s. He’s got some lunatic scheme in the works, proposes to spend a year in a castle in the Tuscan mountains, fiddling with automobiles and whatnot . . . really most ineligible . . .”
“Good God! It’s perfect!”
“What’s that? Oh, Lord, no. Not at all. Damp, wretched things, castles. And swearing off women and drink and . . . well, everything at all that makes life bearable.”
“Just the thing for you, Penhallow. Marvelous. I shall write the necessary letters at once, open up a line for communication . . .”
“What’s that?”
But Sir Edward was already scribbling himself a memorandum. “Beadle, I think, in the Florence office. He shall set you up with everything you need. Tuscany, eh? The land of unending sunshine, I believe they say. Ha. You’ll have a splendid time. Most indebted to this Mr. Burke of yours.”
Roland watched the motion of Sir Edward’s pen along the paper and began to feel queasy. “I refuse to . . .”
“What’s that? Oh, rubbish, Penhallow. I shall take care of everything on this end and notify you when it’s safe to return. Think of it as a kind of sabbatical. You’ll return to us refreshed, renewed. Full of zest for life and all that.”
Roland, who was never at a loss for words or composure, found himself devoid of both. His jaw swung helplessly below his brain.
Sir Edward folded the paper and looked up. “What’s that? Oh, come, Penhallow. You look as though you’ve been passed a sentence of death. Think of all the advantages: sunshine, wine, decent food. Ripe young women who can’t speak English.”
He rose from his chair, held out the paper, and grinned like a demon.
“What could possibly go wrong?”
ONE
Thirty miles southeast of Florence
March 1890
The boy couldn’t have been more than five years old. He stood square in the doorway of the inn and stared at Lord Roland Penhallow with a peculiar hostile intensity, his brow frowning into his blue eyes and his thumb stuck firmly between his teeth.
“I say, young fellow,” said Roland, with a gentle cough, one foot upon the step, “might I perhaps sidle past?”
The boy removed his thumb. “My father could beat you up.”
Roland felt the rain rattle down from the eaves against the crown of his hat. From there it streamed along the narrow brim and into the collar of his coat, soaking the shirt beneath until it stuck, cold and stiff, against his skin. “I daresay he could, old chap,” he ventured, gathering the ends of his coat collar together with one hand. “But in the meantime, I should like very much to dry myself by that cracking hot fire directly behind you. If you don’t mind, of course.”
“My father,” the boy said, lifting his finger and pointing it at Roland’s nose, “could smash your face and arms and legs and you would cry for ever.” The last word was delivered with particular relish.
Roland blinked. He could glimpse, behind the boy’s small figure, the inn’s common room: its long tables lined with people, with plates of steaming food and bottles of local wine. An enormous fire roared away the dank March air, impossibly inviting. “Of course I should cry,” Roland said. “Bitterly, in fact. No doubt about it, no doubt at all. But about that fire . . .”
“Philip! There you are!”
An exhausted female voice called from somewhere behind Roland, somewhere in the middle of that stinking mud-ridden innyard he’d just crossed. An exhausted voice, yes: strained and dry, with a suggestion of incipient hoarseness, but also perfectly familiar.
Roland’s back stiffened with shock. Not here, surely. He must be mistaken. Not in the yard of a rustic Italian inn, tucked into a remote hillside, miles away from the civilized comfort of Florence and ages away from the London conservatory where he’d heard those dulcet tones last.
No, he must be imagining things.
“Philip, you’re not inconveniencing this poor gentleman, are you?” The woman spoke in agonized tones, nearer now, coming up rapidly to his right shoulder.
Good God. He couldn’t be imagining her now. Could he?
“Sir, I beg your pardon. The boy is dreadfully overtired and . . .”
Roland turned.
“Oh.” She stopped at once, two or three steps away. Her face was nearly hidden by the brim of her hat, but the lips and chin beneath curved exactly as they did in his dreams. Her plaid scarf wrapped around a neck that he knew would be long and sinuous, would melt into the delicate flesh of her chest and shoulders, covered presently and sensibly by a dark wool coat.
“Roland,” she said, in a whisper.
Of course he was dreaming. She couldn’t possibly be real. A mere figment of his weary imagination; the strain of the journey, taking its toll on his wits.
“Lady Somerton,” he said, making a little bow, so the rain dropped from his hat in a single sheet. Since it was a dream, he might as well play his part. “What a charming surprise. I have just been making myself acquainted with your son.”
Son. The word echoed in his head.
“Lord Roland,” she said, dipping her head. She folded her gloved hands before her. “Indeed, a very great surprise. I should not have . . . Oh, Philip, really!”
Roland wheeled around, just in time to watch the tip of the boy’s tongue disappear into his cherubic mouth.
“I’m so terribly sorry.” She swept past him to take Philip’s hand. “He’s normally such a good boy. It’s the journey, and his nursemaid was taken ill in Milan, and . . . oh, Philip, do be good and apologize to his lordship.”
“You told me to wait where it was dry,” Philip said, looking up earnestly at his mother’s face.
“So I did,” she said, bending next to him, “but I never told you to accost unsuspecting gentlemen in the doorway. Say you’re sorry, Philip, and let his lordship pass. He’s dreadfully wet.”
“Sorry,” Philip said.
“Philip, really.”
The boy sighed and turned his face to Roland. “I’m most awfully sorry, your lordship. I shall never do it again.”
Roland bowed solemnly. “Quite all right, old chap. Quite all right. The heat of the moment. I’ve done far worse myself.”
“That’s very good, Philip. Very good,” Lady Somerton said. “Now let his lordship pass.”
Philip moved grudgingly aside.
“Thank you, sir,” Roland said, still solemn, and climbed the steps. He turned in the doorway and removed his hat. “Have you just arrived, madam? I understand they’re quite occupied tonight.”
“Yes, just now,” she said, glancing upward, so the full force of her blue eyes struck him like a most un-dreamlike blow to the noggin. “But I’m sure we shall find a room. Lady Morley is s
peaking to the landlord this instant, and . . . well, you know Lady Morley.”
“Lady Morley, by Gad!” He smiled. “Are the two of you taking a tour? Dashed beastly time of year for it.”
She straightened, her hand still clutching Philip’s. She didn’t return his smile. “I suppose you could call it that. And you, Lord Roland? Are you on your way to Florence, perhaps?”
“No, no. Just left it, in fact. I’m here with my brother and . . . and another fellow. We’re . . .” We’re off to spend a year in a drafty Italian castle, devoting ourselves like monks to algebra and Plato and God knows what else. Smashing time.
Her eyebrows lifted expectantly.
Roland gathered himself. “Well, never mind that. I do hope . . . That is, if I can be of any service . . .”
“No, no.” Her eyes dropped. “We’re quite all right.”
“Are you going in just now?”
“No, I’m . . . I’m waiting for someone.”
He peered into the darkness behind her. “Can’t you wait inside? It’s frightfully wet.”
“She’ll only be a minute.” Her voice was quiet and resolute, just as he remembered it. Rather irritating, that: If he were taking the trouble to dream about her, mightn’t she do something more dramatic? More fantastical? Tear off her dress, perhaps, and leap into his arms, and engage him in sexual congress against the wall of the inn, with the rain streaming down her body?
Oh yes. That would be a worthwhile dream indeed.
“Very well, then.” He made a little bow. “I expect I shall see you shortly.”
“Yes, I expect so.” As if the prospect were about as appealing as an appointment with the tooth-drawer.
From the innyard a voice shrieked, “Lilibet, you’ll never guess what I’ve found in the stables!” and little Philip shouted back, “Cousin Abigail, come look, the strangest fellow!”
The dream was taking a most unwanted turn.
Roland walked swiftly through the doorway and into the busy warmth of the common room, leaving Lady Elizabeth Somerton and her son under the portico.