Nothing But Deception

by Allegra Gray

  “It does seem odd,” Alex agreed. “But why would the others give his name?”

  “Philippe is a very public figure. Everyone knew of his stay in London. How very convenient—by naming him, they distract us, draw our attention away from the real culprit.”

  “Bea, you are an oddly rational female.”

  Bea cocked her head. “Thank you, I think.” Was she winning him over?

  The duke chuckled. “Indeed, I meant it as a compliment. Many women would resort to emotional pleas, but your reliance on logic is far more convincing. If I help you, it is not merely to soothe an overwrought friend of my wife’s, but because I am utterly convinced it is the right thing to do—and that if I do not act, a dangerous man may slip away undetected.”

  Bea felt a swell of pride. The duke believed her. What’s more, he respected her thoughts.

  “And,” Alex continued, his tone darkening, “if that dangerous man had anything to do with what happened to my sister-in-law, I would be personally remiss if I did not seek out any opportunity to hunt him down and kill him like the vermin he is.”

  “And you’ll be helping an innocent man, a man whose only desire is to make the world more beautiful through art, regain his deserved freedom,” Bea reminded him, lest his thoughts dwell too long on what he’d like to do to those responsible for Charity’s mishap.

  Alex regarded her and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a hint of a smile. “I would not say that is Philippe Durand’s only desire, my lady.”

  Bea’s cheeks grew warm.

  “But on the whole, you have the right of it.”

  Around the room, heads were nodding. Bea closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She wasn’t alone in this. Thank heaven, because the task before them would not be an easy one.

  “Men who engage in intrigue are not often fools,” Lord Owen cautioned. “If someone has set up Philippe to take the blame, it is likely they have also considered the need for evidence.”

  Bea shrank back in her seat, wrapping her arms around her middle as though to literally hold herself together. She’d anticipated difficulty, but she hadn’t thought of that. How elaborate was this scheme? How badly did someone want Philippe in jail? The odds of clearing his name were not yet insurmountable, but they were certainly stacking up.

  “You make a good point,” the duke told Lord Owen. “But I must ask, and hope you forgive my rudeness: what is it that makes you, given your limited acquaintance with Monsieur Durand, believe so strongly in his innocence?”

  The older man paused as though weighing his answer. “I may not have known him long, but I know the heart of Philippe Durand. He is my son.” Lord Owen nodded, acknowledging the shocked expressions around the room, then added, “Though I cannot claim to have been a good father.”

  Bea closed her eyes as a weight seemed to pull her down. Philippe had never told her his “old family friend” was anything more than that. Not that she’d expect him to announce it publicly, but…how well did she know him? Lord Owen’s announcement complicated things.

  But Bea, ever loyal, refused to reel for long. She opened her eyes. If Philippe came to England to learn of his English roots, it was even less likely he’d been working against England.

  “He was raised as the acknowledged son of Richard and Solange Durand,” Lord Owen explained. “Only on her deathbed, it seems, did Solange tell Philippe the truth and encourage him to seek me out.”

  Lady Russell paled. “Are you informing us that Monsieur Durand is illegitimate?”

  “Oh, heavens.” Bea expelled an exasperated breath. “Truly, mother, does that matter at this moment? Philippe, a good man whatever his birth, has been unjustly imprisoned.”

  Lady Russell glanced around the room. When no one acted to confirm her concern, she lowered her gaze. “No, I suppose not.”

  “All right, then,” Alex said, breaking the tension between mother and daughter. “Even if Lord Owen and Beatrice are correct, and another entity is to blame for this quagmire, it will be the devil to prove it. We’ve nothing but a gut feeling to go on.”

  Bea felt as though someone had closed a fist around her heart. She couldn’t sit idly by while Philippe was left to rot in prison, which is where he would surely end up if someone didn’t come to his defense. “Alex, surely you have some resources.”

  The duke gave her a reassuring smile. “Bea, of course, I will do everything in my power to aid you—that is, to aid Monsieur Durand. But I do not wish to make you false promises. At this point, I do not know enough to predict any outcome. Nor would we be wise to forget that, on this point at least, Viscount Castlereagh’s opinion stands in opposition to our own.”

  Bea nodded. “I understand, and thank you.” She could only pray that whatever they came up with, it would be enough.

  His studio had become a prison. The well-appointed suite in Lord Owen’s house, a cell. Just when he’d begun to embrace the heritage that made him half British, the country had turned against him. More than ever, he felt like an outsider.

  The men who came and went from his father’s home treated him with suspicion. For years he’d relied on his easy, congenial ways to win people over, but these men were impervious.

  He suspected it was only Lord Owen’s influence that kept them from hauling him off to a true prison and torturing him for information he could not provide.

  Before Philippe’s arrest, Lord Owen and he had agreed not to announce the familiar nature of their relationship to the rest of London. Dieu merci. Were it known, Owen’s support would be discounted as biased, and the buffer between Philippe and the wrath of the British government would vanish.

  Anger and indignation battled against despair. Alone in this house, he had no avenue to defend himself. As a Frenchman he was no stranger to injustice, but for the first time in his adult life, his choice to eschew politics in favor of focusing solely on art seemed ill-fated. If he could somehow get a note to his father—not Lord Owen, but the man under whose roof he’d been raised—perhaps he could be of help. But as yet, Philippe was not allowed to send anything written through the post. He could only hope news of his arrest reached Paris, and Richard Durand was not too embroiled in his own interests to come to his aid. They might not see eye to eye, might not have spoken in months, but surely he’d take some action—though what sway, if any, he would have with the British, Philippe could not guess.

  To make matters worse, the barely-begun painting of Beatrice stood on its easel and mocked him. The curve of an arm, a wash of dark where her hair was meant to be. A leaf, the tip still curled.

  In theory, there was nothing to prevent him from working on it. He had more time on his hands than ever before. He just couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t pour his heart and soul into the work as he usually did. Not under these conditions.

  And not without Bea.

  She’d visited once, accompanied by her friends, the Duke of Beaufort and his wife. Sharp-eyed guards monitored the little meeting, always looking and listening for anything they might use against him. The conversation had been stilted at best. Hardly a time to sort out the misunderstandings between he and his English rose. She had, at least, assured him she believed him innocent and hoped to see his name cleared. But she hadn’t visited since.

  Finally, he turned the painting to face the wall. Free of its mocking stare, he turned his mind to prayer. For every one prayer that he did not meet his end in a dark British prison, paying for a crime he hadn’t committed, Philippe said three asking that Beatrice Pullington did not get herself killed in some foolhardy scheme to find the person who had committed that crime.

  Days ticked by. Bea read the news more avidly than ever before. The armies of the coalition were closing in on Bonaparte’s troops. Britain was confident of victory. Monsieur Jean Philippe Durand was still under arrest. And, if the gossip sheets were to be believed, Bea’s previously immaculate reputation had, all along, been a mere cover for secret communication with the Frenchman.

  Speculation ra
n rampant. The ton, never known to let a good tale go unembellished, scrutinized Bea everywhere she went, hoping for even the scrappiest morsel on which to hang a new tale. The fact that, wherever Bea did go, she was followed by an unmarked carriage or suited men who stood at a respectful distance did not help.

  “Well, it makes more sense now,” one hawk-nosed matron opined to a friend as they stood drinking lemonade after a musicale. Bea had attended in desperate hope of taking her mind off her troubles, and she knew the other woman was aware of her presence as she said, “I admit, I was baffled at first. Why would such a talented artiste choose to paint her? She’s pretty enough, but, well, you know what I mean. Of course, none of us knew they’d known each other all along. They certainly had us fooled.”

  Disgusted, Bea stopped attending such events. Alex and Elizabeth did, too. Only Charity continued going, her social schedule increasing to a relentless pace as though she were trying to compensate for the others’ absence.

  In fact, Charity was the very purpose behind Bea’s visit to Alex and Elizabeth this morning. A week had passed since Philippe’s arrest, and in spite of Alex’s efforts to help, they’d made little progress. Viscount Castlereagh had made it clear that, while he respected the duke and Lady Pullington’s loyalty to their friend, the British government wanted no interference that could hamper the investigation.

  Thus, Bea was grasping at straws. Both Alex and Philippe had been maddeningly tight-lipped when it came to discussing their rescue of Elizabeth’s sister. All they would say was that they’d found her in sound condition, which Bea took to mean she hadn’t been sexually violated. Thank God for small things. As for Charity, she too had said little. Not that she’d been around much to chat. Her social schedule ensured that she was putting the incident far behind her as fast as possible.

  Bea still worried about her—though at the moment, more of her worries centered on Philippe, who had lost his freedom not long after helping Charity gain hers.

  If she were going to come to his aid, she needed Alex Bainbridge on her side. She knew if she could just make the duke see reason, he would put the full weight of his position behind her—unless he knew something she didn’t.

  Bea entered the Bainbridges’ salon to find Alex sitting on the sofa beside Elizabeth, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Her chest constricted at the obvious love and concern between them. She’d thought she’d found that with Philippe, but clearly she’d been wrong. Even now she couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

  “Please, sit,” the duke invited when Bea hesitated to interrupt them. “Elizabeth has been lonely of late, and she will scold me incessantly if I deprive her of your company,” Alex declared, earning himself a poke in the ribs, along with a mischievous grin, from Elizabeth.

  Bea took a seat, but remained at its edge, nervous. It was her fault Elizabeth was lonely. “Your Grace, I know how trying this has been for your family, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your continued friendship.”

  “Oh, don’t take Alex seriously, Bea. I am not lonely. And, of course, our friendship remains true. You stood by me through worse. And in your case, you’ve done nothing but try to help our rulers keep Britain safe for the very people who turn their backs on you now. Try not to let it upset you so.”

  “I was trying to help Britain,” Bea acknowledged, “but it is Philippe I most want to help now.”

  The duke frowned. “As to that, I’m afraid I have only bad news.”

  Bea’s gaze flew to him and she clenched her fists in her skirts. “How bad?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Bad enough.”

  “Alex, I think both Bea and I are of sound enough mind and strong enough constitution that you may speak freely to us,” Elizabeth said.

  “They found maps in his room. At the hotel where he’d been staying before moving over to Lord Owen’s home. Terrain maps of the sort the military might use, complete with arrows marking what could only be troop movements. They were wedged behind an armoire.”

  Bea slowly shook her head side to side, but the fog seeping into her mind would not clear. “I don’t understand.”

  “When questioned, Philippe claimed they weren’t his. Said he had no idea where they’d come from.”

  Could it be? But, no. Bea forced the disloyal thought from her mind. She mustn’t waiver in her faith, for if she were wrong about Philippe, how could she ever trust her own judgment again?

  “It could be as Lord Owen thought,” Bea suggested, “and someone planted the maps in his room, knowing it would be searched. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If they were his, why would he leave them there?”

  “It could be,” the duke replied. “But until we have a way of proving that is the case, things look grim for your artiste friend.”

  The pressure to come up with something, anything—anything valid, that is—was suddenly even greater than before. Bea took a steadying breath. “Alex, I need to know what happened when you and Philippe went into that warehouse—when you rescued Charity,” she said.

  “No, you don’t.” His tone wasn’t mean, but it was firm enough to imply the topic was not open for negotiation.

  Bea persisted anyway. “Yes, I do. Or at least Philippe’s part of it. When you two went in there, no one confronted you, did they? No one was killed? No one to negotiate with?”

  He gave a shrug of assent, indicating she was correct so far.

  “Was there anything Philippe did—anything at all—that made you think he already knew where to find Charity? Or that perhaps the reason the place was emptied out was because he’d tipped them off?”

  Alex paused long enough to consider her question. “No, nothing.”

  Bea moistened her lips. “Then the discovery of the maps is nothing more than we expected. The problem is, the one person who knows the most, has seen and heard the most, has been left out of our efforts.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth, but Bea didn’t let her get a word in. “Alex, E., I know the doctor recommended we do our best to help Charity forget, and I know she’s been made to recount the experience by Lord Castlereagh already, but I cannot let this matter drop. If there is anything she heard, anything she saw that could exonerate Philippe…” Her throat grew thick.

  The married couple hesitated, but finally Alex answered, “All right. But be as quick and gentle as you can. E., darling, go ahead and summon your sister.”

  Charity flounced into the room moments later, questioning, “Will this take long? Really, all of you, I am happy to oblige, but we’ve been through this already—and I was just on my way to a lovely picnic to which Baron Callow invited me.”

  Indeed, she was dressed to the height of fashion, her gown appropriately pale for a debutante, but cut daringly low for the same, and…Bea narrowed her eyes. Had Charity actually darkened her lashes with kohl? That would certainly flout decorum. Bea flicked a glance at Elizabeth, and her friend’s cocked head made her think she was not the only one wondering. But perhaps it was just the shadows around Charity’s eyes. Elizabeth had quietly confided, earlier that week, that her younger sister had had difficulty sleeping since what everyone was now referring to as “the incident.”

  Bea forced herself to focus on the most pressing problem. “I promise not to take too long, Charity. But there are a few things I must ask, and I beg of you to strain your mind…even the tiniest detail which seemed insignificant could help now.”

  “Help with Philippe, you mean?”

  “Yes. If we could learn the identities of the ones who were not captured, or an idea of who they were working for…”

  Charity took a seat on the same couch as Elizabeth and Alex, who then moved closer as though to protect her. The younger woman fiddled with her gloves. “I do not really see where I can be of help. Just look at the mess I made the last time I thought I was ‘helping.’”

  “Please try,” Bea urged. “You saw, and heard, more than any of us.”

  Charity bent her head. Without meeting Bea’s
eye, she answered, “And that is why I cannot help.”

  Bea waited, trying to breathe normally in spite of the sudden constriction in her chest. She couldn’t even blame the tight feeling on her corset, as she wasn’t wearing one.

  “It could mean nothing,” Charity muttered.

  “What could mean nothing?” her sister gently prompted.

  Charity sighed. “I thought, when he helped to rescue me, maybe I had been mistaken…I don’t understand, still, why he would…” She trailed off, then started again, struggling slowly through the words. “When those men took me, I was in a corner. They thought I was asleep—they’d made me drink something, but then I awoke and began listening to their conversation. One of them spoke his name. Monsieur Durand.”

  The invisible bands around Bea’s chest tightened until she could no longer breathe. A long, uncomfortable silence permeated the room.

  “What did they say about him?” the duke finally asked.

  Charity shook her head. “Nothing. I gasped, and they realized I was awake.”

  Alex and Elizabeth shared a glance, but Bea couldn’t tell what her friends were thinking. “Well, then what were they talking about before his name was spoken?”

  “I told you before, my French is poor, fit only for discussing trivial matters, weather and fashion and such. They were speaking so rapidly…something about the time, and they were waiting on someone, or someone was coming, I’m not sure which, and they mentioned papers—the plans, perhaps—and then I fell behind, I couldn’t translate fast enough. And then one said ‘Monsieur Durand.’”

  The gazes of Alex and Elizabeth turned toward Bea, and this time, Bea read pity in them.

  “I’m sorry, Bea,” Charity whispered miserably. “They weren’t talking about attending an art salon.”

  Chapter 20

  Bea slunk from Alex and Elizabeth’s home feeling smaller, friendless, and more lost than ever.

  “But Charity doesn’t know why they mentioned him,” Bea had argued fiercely after the younger woman had departed the room. “They could have been discussing their plan to set him up. How perfect. Everyone will be so fascinated by the news their favorite artiste is actually a spy, they’ll never think to question such a sensational story, let alone hunt for the real culprits. Alex, Charity admitted her French is miserable. Surely you cannot base a judgment of guilt on a mere mention of Philippe’s name.”