by C. J. Chase
“Portsmouth?” Where the Impatience was berthed. Kit reached for the missing glass and encountered only a … Bible. He folded his hands over his knee. “What did you find?”
“Nothing—truly, nothing. It seems the Admiralty has conveniently misplaced a ship.”
Convenient for whom? “It isn’t there?”
“Sailed last week.”
“But Alderston wants that paper found.” Only someone of higher rank than either Julian or Fitzgerald would have the authority to make such a ship disappear.
“Alderston? Is that how you got involved in this?” Julian stared at Kit as if seeing him for the first time. “I ought to have guessed. You’re too adept with languages for our government to waste your talents as a simple clerk.”
“You know I can admit to no such assumptions.” So Julian knew of Alderston. Not surprising, given his long years of service to the crown.
“I remember one time when you impressed Maman by identifying a visiting Frenchman’s home region—simply by the way he spoke the language. Why do I suspect your travels to procure supplies during the war were a facade for other activities?”
“That depends on your definition of supplies.” Kit pondered the drink in Julian’s hand. “I was a foolish lad looking for adventure—and I found Alderston. Does the knowledge of my ungentlemanly activities offend your sensibilities?”
“Only if you were unsuccessful.”
Kit pushed aside the bitter recollections of the past spring. “I won’t be in this instance. I need that paper.”
“What do you know about the orders?”
“Only that we need to get them back.”
“You’ll have to talk to Fitzgerald then.”
“Fitzgerald!” Cold dread swirled through Kit despite the revived fire.
“He claims he’s had them since Fraser stole them in February.”
“The blackmail. You stood in the way of his promotion to captain, and he was blackmailing you in revenge.”
“Fitzgerald was a loose cannon—too self-serving to be entrusted with his own ship, especially when men’s lives, our country even, were at stake.”
“And now that we are at peace, there won’t be another promotion or another captured ship for decades.”
What if the man who claimed to possess the orders didn’t have them? Wouldn’t he fear Mattie’s discovery of them?
Enough to kill her, even.
“I think Fitzgerald’s dead.”
“Dead?” Julian’s hand jerked with such force brandy sloshed over the side of the glass and onto his breeches. “How? When?”
“I don’t know. My informant’s about seven years old. He claims he saw a dead man in Fitzgerald’s house earlier today, although he couldn’t say with certainty if the deceased was indeed Fitzgerald.”
Julian abandoned his drink and surged to his feet. “I think I shall pay a visit to my former lieutenant.”
“I’ll come with you.”
For a moment, Julian’s lips flattened to a condescending older-brother frown. And then he looked at Kit again as if seeing a different man and not the younger brother he knew. Or rather, thought he knew. “Yes, I would appreciate your help. How do we go about this?”
“Dark clothes. Soft-soled shoes. And weapons would be wise.”
Moments later, they met at the back door where Julian passed Kit a pistol.
“How far?” Kit tucked the gun into his waistband.
“Perhaps thirty minutes on foot.”
“You lead.”
Kit followed his brother though Julian’s neglected garden. The rain-soaked grass muffled his steps and drenched his shoes, leaving his stockings uncomfortably sodden. A narrow alley beyond the grounds pointed them to the wet bricks of a wider road. Heavy quiet wrapped around them, scarcely disturbed by the gentle rhythm of their footfalls. The fog misted Kit’s spectacle lenses and the ever-present smoke dulled the gaslights’ glare so that the night cloaked their movements.
Minutes later, Julian gestured to a very dark, very quiet townhouse. No candlelight drizzled through the windows to indicate life within.
“Have you been inside before?” Kit studied the building, trying to determine what room matched the stately windows. A dining room? A drawing room?
“Of course.”
“Good, then let’s enter through the rear, lest a late-returning neighbor find us skulking below the windows.” Kit climbed over the wall into Fitzgerald’s untended garden.
Julian’s feet thudded softly to earth as he followed. “Ouch!”
Kit glanced over his shoulder, but the darkness obscured all but the barest outline of Julian’s form. “What happened?”
“Rosebush snared my ankle.” Fabric ripped as Julian freed himself from the thorns.
They inched along the foundation until they reached a pair of floor-to-ceiling windows.
Julian touched Kit’s arm. “Drawing room.”
Kit nodded and set to work on the latches. He cajoled the right one loose. It swung toward him with a single squeak.
His breath caught in his throat. He jerked the pistol from his breeches and wrapped his fingers around the stock while he waited. Tense seconds passed while the blood pounded through his ears. When all yet remained quiet, he slipped over the sill into the drawing room.
Kit pressed his back to the wall while he waited for Julian to climb in, then whispered, “The front door.”
“This way.” Julian tiptoed across the room and pushed the door. Unlike the window, its hinges swung silently.
The faint glow of the gaslights beamed through the transom window above the door, illuminating the foyer floor. The very bare foyer floor.
Nobody. Or rather, no body.
“Not here.” Kit nearly threw down his pistol in disgust.
“No.” Julian crouched down close to the parquet. “But Kit, neither is the rug that was here on my last visit.”
Kit drew a candle stub and flint from his jacket.
“You came prepared.” Was that admiration in Julian’s voice?
“Candles are easy to find. Flint, not always so much.” Kit struck a spark and lit the wick.
The dark wood revealed no secrets to Kit’s critical eyes. He ground his teeth together in frustration at the lack of evidence for Nicky’s allegations. Or was that the answer?
“Give me the candle, Kit.”
He passed the light to Julian and watched while his brother examined the wall.
“Last night, when Mattie … Well, afterward, she tried to clean the wall but couldn’t completely remove the stains. Stains like these.” He held the flame near a faint spray design on the foyer wall.
Kit blew out the candle. “We might as well leave.”
“But the orders—”
“Aren’t likely to be here—if they ever were.”
“You are suggesting the house has already been searched?”
“No ordinary thief would conceal a murder and leave behind the silver candlesticks in the drawing room. This was designed to look as if Fitzgerald left for a short journey.”
“To the bottom of the Thames, it seems. So you believe the body was Fitzgerald’s? But who …?”
“Fitzgerald was blackmailing you.”
“I didn’t kill him, Kit.”
“I meant there could be others. Blackmailers rarely confine their villainy to a single victim.” Except this was too professional to be a frantic victim short on funds and unable to meet his extortionist’s demands. Who else wanted the orders? Alderston? If so, Kit would learn of their discovery on the morrow. “Come, there’s nothing more to gain here tonight.”
The night had begun to ease, transforming the sky from black to dark blue, when Mattie awoke. Outside the window, birds already chirped their merry morning tunes. She lit the bedside candle, only to remember she’d left the Bible in the library.
Once she’d again donned the no-longer-so-new brown dress. She crept through the silent house, candle cupped in her hand to protect t
he flame from drafts. A stair riser squealed underfoot and she winced, but all remained quiet.
Only a few scattered embers remained of the previous night’s fire. Mattie added some kindling and stoked a few cautious flames to life. Then she settled into a chair and opened the Bible to one of the passages Harrison had marked specifically for her. The sky had lightened to soft gray and she’d reached her third reading of Psalm 103 when the same step squeaked again.
Seconds later, Kit paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I saw the light. I didn’t realize anyone else was awake.”
“I woke early.” She lifted the Bible off her lap and offered him a wry smile. “I needed reassurance my life can be redeemed.”
He shuffled into the room and dropped into the other chair. His shoulders drooped, as if crushed beneath a great weight. “Do you really think there is truth there, or are those merely words we latch on to in desperation?”
“I know that the people I see most at peace—Harrison, your mother—believe them. My father, he believed in a remote God—a God who existed, but didn’t care. And eventually, my father lost all hope and purpose for his life. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be lost and lonely anymore. I want what your mother and Harrison have.” A memory of her former self, bent on destruction and apathetic about the future, flitted into her mind. “Without these words, the future is bleak.”
Shadows darkened the blue eyes that stared into the flames, as if he saw that same bleakness therein. A brittle stillness lay on the lines of his jaw.
Mattie hesitated, the newness of her faith causing her tongue to feel thick and clumsy. Perhaps she should wait and let him talk to Harrison or his mother. Mattie had so little to offer. And yet, a gentle nudging disturbed her reluctance, reminding her Kit’s stubborn heart had resisted the guidance of those closest to him. With a quick prayer and a deep breath, she approached the subject he’d only alluded to in the past. “Yesterday, you told me you drink to forget. Kit, what is the memory that haunts you?”
His fingers curled around the chair’s arms. His knuckles whitened, and tendons rose along the backs of his hands. Silence swathed the room save for the occasional crackle of the flames. Then, as if conceding some great battle within himself, he shrugged. “The war is over. I suppose there’s no longer any harm in the telling. About a year and a half ago, I was in France.”
“In France? But I thought …”
“That I worked at the Admiralty, procuring supplies for ships? In a manner of speaking.”
A spy. The man behind the spectacles had been a spy. It was almost too fantastic to believe, and yet … “Your facility with languages.”
“Yes. Maman, being French, taught us the language as children, so I speak French like a native—like many natives, in fact. A wine merchant from Bordeaux. A clerk from Paris. A dock worker from Marseille.”
That day he’d met her, he’d pinpointed the state of her birth. And then at the Captain’s Quarters, he’d spoken much like Nicky. “An impressive achievement.”
“Hardly.” The harshness in his tones tore through the quiet like a scab being ripped from an unhealed wound. “It isn’t as if I used my gifts for good.”
“But it was war—”
“Surely, Mattie, you know better than to justify the inexcusable. Were you so understanding when my countrymen burned your city?”
She rested her chin on her fist. “No, you are correct. War takes on a different appearance when you suffer the loss. So what happened last year?”
“We discovered we had a traitor in our midst, someone who was transmitting ship movements to the French.”
“An Englishman?”
“Some people will do anything for a fee—a reality that my country has also used to advantage.”
Against her country also? Unfortunately, she feared too many Americans were only human and would find gold a powerful incentive. “You went after the traitor.”
“We believed he sold the information to a Frenchman in Marseille—an older man who had risen through the ranks of French navy.” Kit’s glance slid her way. “Indeed, he served under Admiral De Grasse.”
“De Grasse!”
“I thought you might recognize the name.”
“Of course. My father was at Yorktown when the French helped General Washington defeat Cornwallis’s army.” Mattie rose and added another log to the fire. The designs cut into the crystal brandy decanter sparkled in the flames’ renewed glow. At least Kit hadn’t already begun to imbibe this morning. She returned to the chair. “So you traveled to Marseille?”
“As a wine merchant looking for assistance in evading the English blockade. But I couldn’t attain the information I needed, so I cultivated a relationship with the French naval officer’s granddaughter, a young woman close to your years.”
A woman. A lump formed in Mattie’s throat. And then another memory flashed to the fore of her mind, her first encounter with Kit DeChambelle. “Laura.”
His eyes blinked behind the spectacles. “Yes.”
Disappointment crowded into her chest, leaving little room for her breath, only the knowledge of something that almost was but couldn’t be. She lowered her gaze to the book on her lap. Hadn’t she just moments ago blithely asserted that her life now had purpose? She offered another prayer that the Lord would use her to reach this broken man and then give her the strength to let him go when the time came. “Did you, ah, catch your traitor?”
“Not at first. I convinced myself that every delay added to the toll of men killed.”
“Not an unfounded assumption.”
“And one that let me justify a wealth of evil. I disguised my conceit as patriotism, determined not to let the villain get away with his deeds—and to earn the glory of capturing one last traitor. I abducted the old man and transported him to an English ship blockading the harbor, so they could question him. He maintained his innocence the entire time. And then …” The blue disappeared from Kit’s eyes, leaving only pain-clouded black. “The old man didn’t survive the interrogation.”
Mattie gripped the chair as waves of anguish radiated from Kit and washed over her. “But with his contact gone, surely you at least stopped the traitor.”
“He wasn’t the traitor’s contact. Laura was.”
The room darkened. Or had her eyes fallen shut? Mattie swallowed but the lump in her throat continued to swell as if feeding on the emotion swirling around them.
“We realized our mistake soon afterward when Napoleon escaped back to France. I insisted on returning to Marseille. Pride is the deadliest sin because it leads to so many others. I was discovered, of course, and nearly killed.” He yanked off his spectacles and rubbed a finger along the scar that streaked his face. “An innocent young woman—scarcely more than a girl, really—was caught in the crossfire. She didn’t survive, either. Days later Paris fell to our army, and I was left to wonder—were my actions worth the needless deaths of two innocent people? An old man who should have died in his bed? A young woman at the beginning of her life?”
Heavy silence again closed around Mattie as if waiting in anticipation for her to utter the wrong words. Kit’s elegant blue morning coat and precisely tied cravat created the ideal image of English aristocracy—cold, distant, aloof. So at odds with the hot regret that glittered in his eyes and throbbed along his jaw. “Did you like her, this Laura?” Love her? Did his feelings for her perhaps explain why he had been blind to her activities? And why his guilt so haunted him now, to the point he would surrender his future to escape the past?
“Like her? Miss Fraser, I used her.”
The sudden reversion back to formal address grated a warning in her ears. “The one does not preclude the other.” Not when misguided notions of justice consumed one’s soul—as she of all people could testify. Had she not employed Nicky—despite her fondness for the boy—to further her ends of vengeance?
“No, you have the right of that.” The hollowness in his words matched the despair in his gaz
e. “The past few years, I wasn’t even certain any longer who I was. So many lies—sometimes I’m still not convinced I know what is true. I had been in and out of France for nearly ten years—”
“Ten years? You must have begun that dangerous game very young.”
“Eighteen.” His lips twisted into a sardonic semblance of a smile. “I didn’t feel so young then. I felt invincible.”
“And you were never caught until that last time?”
“A near thing several times. But along the way, I made compromises—compromises I rationalized by convincing myself that my actions would ultimately save more lives than they cost.”
“That may be true.”
“But I don’t know for certain.” He stared into the flames that danced on the hearth. “I only know that every action took me down a path further from my integrity until it was too late to find my way back.”
Mattie slipped out of her chair. The brown skirt pooled against the carpet as she knelt before him. “Hence the drinking to forget. But Kit, it will lead you to further ruin.”
He lifted his other hand, his fingertips but a whisper from her cheek. And then he yanked away, his eyes closing to hide the emptiness she glimpsed within. “And that matters why? I don’t want to remember the man I’ve become.”
She tapped her fingers against the back of his hand and rose. Retrieving the Bible from the table, she flipped it open and settled the book on his lap. “But don’t you see? You don’t have to continue as that person. The promise is forgiveness for the past and redemption for the future—a life with meaning and purpose.”
“It’s too late for me, Mattie. Whereas you find comfort in those verses, I find only condemnation.”
Coldness settled around her heart as the warmth—the hope—left her. Until Kit accepted God’s forgiveness, he would continue to cling to his guilt, his bitterness.
There was nothing for her here but pain.
Few people strolled Mayfair’s streets so early in the morning, and those who did would never be so gauche as to pay a call at such an unacceptable hour. Kit marched to the front door of an elegant brick townhouse and knocked.
“Mr. Alderston is not home.” At least his butler was accustomed to Alderston’s odd assortment of callers and even stranger hours.