Nothing But Deception

by Allegra Gray

  She’d seen the pity in his reply. “I cannot. But I also cannot continue to place my family’s safety and reputation at risk for a cause that grows ever more hopeless.”

  She understood. She couldn’t even fault him. But that didn’t ease the crushing loneliness of having staked her reputation, her faith, and her heart on a chance at real love, only to have everything torn apart, leaving her with even less than she’d had before.

  Aside from the spies’ naming of Philippe, Bea had gleaned one other interesting piece of information from Charity.

  “They were questioning me, and then there was a knock on the door. The man outside hummed something, then the man asking the questions hummed in return and stepped out,” she’d told them. “But I never saw who it was he spoke with.”

  Bea knew the mysterious visitor hadn’t been Philippe. He’d been with her at Montgrave at the time. And without a face, or clear understanding of what had transpired, Charity’s revelation, while interesting, gave her little else to go on.

  Bea dragged her feet, weary as though she’d walked all day, into her home, collapsed into the seat at her writing desk, and put her head down on the desk’s surface.

  Could she have been so very wrong?

  Philippe had said he’d never cared for politics, that such matters had been his stepfather’s forte, and she’d believed him.

  Wait. Could it be? Could the French spies have been referring to a different “Monsieur Durand”? Hope flared in her chest and she raised her head. Could they have meant Philippe’s father? Or, rather, his stepfather?

  But the hope faded as quickly as it had come. Only one Monsieur Durand had frequented London of late, and that was Philippe.

  The operatives who’d been captured had named Philippe specifically. And the Foreign Secretary, with all the resources of the British government at hand, had already investigated and dismissed Philippe’s stepfather as a possibility.

  Bea lifted her head from the desk, then set it back down. Why bother? She had nowhere to go. Society scorned her, and even her friends and family had been sorely strained by this crazy relationship of hers.

  Hah. Who did she think she was fooling? “Relationship” implied the feelings went both ways. But she’d been so starry-eyed, she’d willingly done anything and everything for the charming Frenchman, and the only thing he’d promised in return was a painting.

  Oh, she’d felt the promise of more in his touch, in his gaze, the way when they were together, the whole world fell away. But it was only too clear now that her infatuation had been one-sided.

  She’d placed her faith in Philippe. But why? How could she have been so stupid? She’d been warned, more than once, that the artist was a known charmer, but never once had she thought to guard herself against the effects of those charms.

  He’d made her no promises of love or loyalty. And if, dear God, the accusations were true and Philippe was a spy, he was also the vilest snake to slither through London, for he’d had the gall to act hurt when he accused her of keeping secrets. She already knew, from Lord Owen’s revelation that he was Philippe’s father, that Philippe had kept secrets of his own. What else had he been hiding?

  The inexplicable thing was, Philippe’s rejection of her poem, the one aspect of her he ought to have understood, stung even worse than the mounting evidence that Monsieur Jean Philippe Durand was, indeed, a spy.

  Bea had one strand of hope left to cling to: the fact that Philippe hadn’t disappeared when he’d had the opportunity. Surely someone intelligent enough to direct a ring of French operatives would have recognized his chance to leave. So either he wasn’t their leader, or, if he was, he’d cared enough about her to risk being caught.

  Or—Bea banged her head on the desk—the charming French artist was simply too arrogant to believe he’d be held accountable. During the single awkward visit she’d paid him since the arrest, it had been impossible to say which case held true.

  The next week passed more slowly than Bea would have ever thought possible. More than anything she wished she could escape somewhere far away, where no one knew anything about her, and no one had ever heard of—let alone admired—the work of Jean Philippe Durand. She now understood with perfect clarity why her former companion and spinster cousin, Ernesta, had willingly abandoned her life here for the chance to start anew in America. If Philippe was found guilty, Bea promised herself, that was exactly what she would do. Until then, she consigned herself to an endless stretch of lonely hours spent reading or stitching. Because she just couldn’t leave until she knew for certain there was no hope left.

  “Lady Pullington, I am giving you a second chance.”

  Bea eyed the Foreign Secretary warily, remembering all too well her last meeting with him. His arrival this morning had been, to say the least, unexpected. “Whatever can you mean?”

  “You have a good mind, and a way with words. I’d like your take on something one of the spies said—or, to be more precise, sang—during questioning.”

  He had her attention. “Sang?”

  “Indeed. Until recently, the only piece of information we got out of either Peters or the actress was Monsieur Durand’s name. We are keeping them separated, as is policy. When our interrogators suggested—not untruthfully, I might add—that the ease with which she’d been caught made us suspicious, Miss Rose Kettridge grew very contemplative. A short while later, she began humming, then singing, the following tune:

  Ô Bonaparte! Ô mon roi!

  L’univers t’abandonne;

  Sur la terre il n’est donc que moi

  Qui m’intéresse à ta personne!

  Moi seul dans l’univers,

  Voudrais briser tes fers,

  Et tout le reste t’abandonne!

  The British Foreign Secretary sang in a mild tenor. Not bad, Bea thought, though what a strange tale he unfolded.

  “Since then,” he finished, “Miss Kettridge has said nothing. Whenever she is questioned, or even spoken to, her only response is this song.”

  “It does seem very odd,” Bea said. “Though I’m not quite certain why you have sought me out. What is it you would have me do?”

  “I want you to figure out why she is singing it.”

  Bea raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ve got the Deciphering Branch studying it already. We know the song was a favorite of royalists during the French Revolution, an adaptation from an aria in Gretry’s opera, Richard the Lionheart. I suppose, in a way, the supporters of Napoleon Bonaparte today are also royalists, so the adaptation makes sense. But as far as we can tell, the song contains no mathematical ciphers, no hidden codes, that would indicate any further message.”

  “Hmm.”

  He grimaced. “I think there is more to Miss Kettridge’s singing than political fervor. Her guards believe she is simply beginning to crack—some people do, under intense pressure. But I think there is something she wants us to know.”

  “You think she wants us to know something? Something we might find hidden in her song?”

  “Possibly. Like the hidden message in the description of a garden, which you deciphered weeks ago—leading us, I might add, to the discovery of this plot in the first place. Not a mathematical cipher, such as I used to communicate with you, but a message hidden in the words themselves.”

  Now that he needed her, Lord Castlereagh seemed far more apt to credit her intelligence than he had upon Philippe’s arrest, Bea observed wryly. Then again, this could be her only chance to save him.

  Still, she reasoned, “That garden note was communication from one spy to another, or should have been. The intended recipient of that note would have already known how to read the message. Why would Miss Kettridge try to speak to us in code?”

  “Fear, perhaps. Whoever she’s working for, I doubt she would want him—or her—to know she’d given information to the Brits.”

  “Whoever she’s working for?” Did this mean Lord Castlereagh no longer assumed the spies had been working for Philip
pe? The buzz of excitement, of hope, filled her.

  His expression was impassive as he told her, “Monsieur Durand has not yet been cleared. That said, aside from the maps found in his room, which I presume you already know about, we have uncovered nothing else in his history that confirms his involvement. Either he is very, very good, or very, very unfortunate. But, Lady Pullington,” he cautioned, “in asking your help with this song, I am asking you to help Britain. If what you uncover helps your French friend, all the better. But if it points us back to him, I want your word you will not fail to report back to me.”

  It was a risk she had to take. “You have my word.” A gentlemen’s contract. But then, this was hardly a lady’s business she’d gotten into.

  Bea’s mind already whirred with possibilities. There was something about that song…“Sing the words for me one more time, would you, my lord?”

  This time, she copied them down in translation as he sang:

  O Bonaparte! O my king!

  The Universe abandons you!

  On earth, it is only me

  Who is interested in you!

  Alone in the universe

  I would break the chains

  when everyone else deserted you!

  “Can you think of anything?” the Secretary asked when he’d finished.

  Bea pressed her lips together. “Let me study on it. And there are a few people of whom I need to ask a question or two.” Including, if the song came from where she thought it did, Philippe Durand. Not that she was going to mention that to Lord Castlereagh just yet.

  First on her list was Charity Medford, who was not at all pleased when Bea showed up, uninvited, at the Sutherby’s garden party, and nearly dragged her from the lavishly-decorated white tent. Mingling guests paused mid-sentence to stare as the ton’s reigning darling was none-too-gently grabbed by the ton’s reigning queen of scandal and tugged toward the street.

  “You’re causing a scene,” Charity hissed in protest.

  “Charity Medford, I do not care a fig if I am causing a scene. You are coming with me if I have to pull you by your hair. Now.”

  That got her cooperation. “If you put it that way, fine.” She flounced forward, shaking off Bea’s grip. “Whatever has you in such a high state must make for better gossip than anything at this little soiree. So spill.”

  “Actually, you’re the one who needs to spill.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I must ask you a question. In your report to Lord Castlereagh, you told him you heard the French spies—”

  “This again?” Charity interrupted, heaving a sigh. “I am heartily sick of all things French.”

  Bea grasped the younger woman’s wrist, pulling her to a halt in front of the waiting carriage. What had happened to the cheery spirit she’d always admired in Charity? The new version of her friend seemed brittle, a person who laughed more but with less joy.

  “I will make this fast,” Bea promised. “Charity. The song you heard the French informants hum…did it go like this?” She hummed the opening bars of the aria from Gretry’s Richard the Lionheart.

  “Yes, yes, that’s it exactly.” Charity’s eyes lit up, her rigid stance eased. “I think they used it as a password of some kind. Is it important?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Why? What have you found out?”

  “I’m not sure what it means just yet,” Bea admitted. “One of the spies they detained has been singing the tune repeatedly. Charity, when you heard it used, did anyone else say anything about the song?”

  “No…as soon as the visitor outside hummed it, and the one questioning me hummed in return, the others grew silent. They all seemed to recognize its importance, but no one spoke until their leader returned—and even then they did not speak of anything that had transpired outside the room, only of the need to depart immediately.”

  “All right. Thank you, Charity. Even your confirmation that it’s the same song may prove useful.” Bea turned toward her carriage.

  “That’s it?” Charity plunked her hands on her hips, and Bea turned back. “You’re letting me go? What do you expect me to tell everyone else about why I was dragged from their midst and have suddenly returned?”

  “I didn’t care about causing a scene when I interrupted your little party, and I care even less about what you tell them when you return. The good news is, you will not lack for attention, for everyone is sure to ask.”

  “I never lack for attention,” Charity huffed with a hint of her old self.

  Bea laughed. “Then you’d best tell them I accosted you against your will, and you returned because you gave me the cut direct. I am a pariah to most of them after all.”

  “I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “Then at least pretend. My efforts to clear Philippe’s name are as good as a public declaration that we are lovers.”

  Charity perked up, eyes wide. “Are you lovers?”

  Bea rolled her eyes. “As if I’m going to answer that. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been judged and found guilty. You could tell your friends I’ve discovered I’m carrying the child of my illicit spy-lover, and most of them would sniff and say it’s what I deserved.”

  “Are you carrying his child?” Now Charity was grinning.

  “I was only making a point! You are incorrigible. And no, I am not. Now, be off with you.”

  She’d learned what she needed to know. The Gretry aria served as a password of sorts, indicating to one spy the arrival of another. Gut instinct told her whoever had arrived during that mysterious visit was the man she sought. Someone who’d been very careful not to be seen. She just needed one more piece of information to confirm her suspicions. She prayed Philippe would be able to provide it.

  Chapter 21

  This time, Bea came alone. That is, except for the ever-present guards.

  Philippe’s chest constricted at the sight of her. She stood tall, shoulders squared, but there were shadows beneath her eyes. Between updates from Lord Owen and reading the gossip sheets, Philippe knew the once-respectable widow was in a living hell.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he told her, though he desperately wanted her to stay. His voice turned hoarse as he continued, “You should denounce me, as publicly as possible. Then you can have your life back.”

  She stepped closer and he saw that, in spite of the shadows beneath them, there was fire burning in her eyes. “I’m not here to denounce you,” she said. “I’m here to save you.”

  While Philippe digested that incredible proclamation, Bea picked her way across the cluttered studio, coming to a halt in front of the canvas bearing the beginnings of her portrait. The canvas which now faced the wall.

  He could tell by the way her lips pressed together she didn’t like its new position. “Je m’explique: It bothered me to stare at it every day,” he tried to explain, “unable to continue.”

  She gave a shrug as though it didn’t matter, but the gesture didn’t hide the hurt in her eyes when she turned to face him fully. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “I am ever at your service, ma belle. Though,” he gestured toward the walls he now knew too well, “in a somewhat limited capacity these days.” As much as he longed to simply pull her into his arms and kiss her until she forgot the capricious world outside, the strain was too great.

  “Your imprisonment will not matter for what I have in mind.” To Philippe’s utter amazement, she burst into song.

  Ô Bonaparte! Ô mon roi!

  L’univers t’abandonne…

  He recognized the tune immediately. An odd choice, but her French was flawless, her voice clear as she finished the verse.

  “Très bien, ma biche.” He applauded. “But you have altered the words. It should begin ‘Ô Richard!’ rather than ‘Ô Bonaparte!’”

  Finally he noticed the odd gleam in her eye as she observed his reaction.

  “Philippe,” she asked carefully, “how did you come to know this song?”

  He answere
d truthfully. “It is a favorite of my father’s. He has ever been enchanted by the plight of one who follows an admired leader faithfully, even when that leader has fallen from favor with the rest of the world. It is a sentiment Frenchmen have had many opportunities to practice in my lifetime…if the faithful follower is willing to accept the same fate as the deposed ruler. Understandably, very few are.”

  Her expression cleared. But then she frowned again.

  “I presume you did not come here simply to perform for me,” Philippe said. “What is it about that tune that troubles you?”

  “What troubles me,” she answered slowly, “is that the ring of French spies that you are accused of directing, the ring that kidnapped Charity, uses this very song to identify its members. Charity heard them hum it as a password of sorts, and now one of the imprisoned spies sings it repeatedly, as though it holds great meaning.”

  “Ah.” He closed his eyes, used his thumb and middle finger to pinch the bridge of his nose, but the pressure building there did not ease. “You think that because I knew the song so easily, it confirms my involvement.”

  “No. I think as I always have—that someone set you up. I do not make accusations lightly, but Philippe, I think that person may be closer to home than either of us would like.”