by Nita Abrams
Philip was still talking. “So LeSueur—a friend of mine, do you know him? Sandy hair, thin as a stick? Military chap? No? He’s assigned to a crusty old martinet named White who runs a special courier service for Wellington. Surveying, messages behind enemy lines, counterintelligence, that sort of thing. He came to find me at my club a few days after I had spoken with Barrett. Apparently Bassington is involved in some critical diplomatic maneuvers and Barrett didn’t care for the idea that a Frenchman was in residence at Boulton Park. Barrett asked White to look into things and LeSueur was detailed to haul me in for an ‘unofficial interview.’ I told him I’d be free the next afternoon and he should send a note round to my lodgings and then I slipped out of the club and went to ground here. I’ve heard of White’s gang, and I didn’t fancy sitting in one of their detention cells while they grilled me about your Bonapartist acquaintances in Bologna.”
Derring rattled on, but Julien didn’t hear him. Events in Oxfordshire were beginning to make much more sense. At the time, Simon’s warning about “real butterfly-men” had merely made him resolve to watch his step around Meyer. Its precise significance was now all too clear. Meyer was some kind of military Bow Street runner. He was the one who had searched Julien’s effects—and engineered the confrontation in the library. Julien’s fists clenched unconsciously around the knife he was holding.
“What is it?” asked Derring, breaking off in mid-sentence.
“Barrett thinks I’m a spy.” He could barely choke out the words. “He believes I would worm my way into a man’s house, look through his papers, and sell what I find to some greasy stooge of Napoleon’s. Damn him!” He sprang out of the chair and began pacing up and down, kicking savagely at the litter on the floor.
“Be reasonable, Julien,” said Derring. “He doesn’t know you; I do. Everyone at Whitehall involved in the negotiations with the allies jumps at the drop of a pin these days. They’re nervous as cats over there; things are going our way at last and they are afraid if they breathe the wrong way it will all collapse.”
“Be reasonable? You’re a fine one to talk! Why didn’t you just go off to Whitehall with your friend LeSueur and answer their questions? Don’t you realize your disappearance suggests you believe me guilty? What did you think they were going to do? Pull your toenails out until you told them I had a mistress in Italy who happened to be Corsican? This is England, for god’s sake!”
Derring looked uncomfortable. “I’ll find LeSueur tomorrow evening,” he muttered. “Catch him at the club.”
“Dammit, no. That’s too late and too chancy. You’re going to find him first thing in the morning. I’ll wake you. I have a few calls of my own to make, it appears.” Julien sat back down and tried to eat a slice of ham. His hands were trembling.
“By the by,” asked Derring, reaching over to snag a pickled onion from the plate, “what were you doing for so long at Boulton Park? I can’t imagine the butterflies were all that engrossing. Are you courting Serena? Have you finally abandoned your nonsensical scruples about marriage?”
It suddenly struck Julien that what he had been doing at Boulton Park was exactly what Barrett had suspected: worming his way into Bassington’s house and looking through his papers. His indignation seemed a bit hypocritical in that light. Was he going to compound his sin by lying to Philip Derring? The answer, apparently, was yes.
“I am not indifferent to Miss Allen,” he said after a long pause. That was, he acknowledged, true. “But there are some impediments to the success of my courtship.” Also true. Amazing how two half-truths added up to an enormous falsehood.
Derring’s face lit. “Good man!” Then he cleared his throat and said, “There was a—a little incident when Serena was younger. You might have heard some rumors. I hope that is not what you meant by impediments.”
“I know about it, yes. Mrs. Digby was kind enough to enlighten me. A ‘little incident’ in Miss Allen’s past can hardly trouble a man who is the result of a very large incident in his mother’s past.”
“Then what is the problem?”
Julien grimaced. “She is not indifferent to me, either. At the moment I would have to say she despises me, but with hard work I may reach the point where she merely dislikes me.” He rose, leaving his food unfinished. “Where have you been sleeping?”
Derring indicated the couch.
“Come upstairs. Vernon will make up the spare bed for you and attempt to get your clothing presentable by”—he glanced at the clock on the wall—“six hours from now.”
“But that’s eight in the morning!” Derring said, horrified. “No one gets up at eight! The servants are barely up at eight!”
“You need to be at Whitehall by nine,” Julien said, “and I estimate it will take at least an hour to get you shaved and cleaned up.”
Derring ran a hand over his nascent beard and sighed. “Very well. But LeSueur isn’t at Whitehall. His unit is housed in some armory building over at the Tower.”
Julien thought for a minute. “In that case, Vernon will wake you at seven.”
“Seven?”
“How did we ever manage to share rooms in Bologna?” Julien asked, half amused, half disgusted.
“You weren’t such a paragon of virtue then,” was the bitter reply, “as you may perhaps recall.”
“I’m not a paragon of virtue now, either. I’m a bastard. A tidy, punctual bastard.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” muttered Derring as they followed the subaltern through a narrow, twisting corridor. “If you want to call on someone and protest your innocence, call on Barrett.”
“He wasn’t at home.” Julien dodged a dusty packing-case, which was blocking half the passage.
“Well, it was barely light out! I wouldn’t have been at home to you either. Why couldn’t you wait until this afternoon and try again?”
“I want this settled.”
“How do you even know your Mr. Meyer is back in London? He was still in Oxfordshire when you left, was he not?”
“I’ll wager anything you like he followed me as fast as he could.”
“And what if he is, after all, a naturalist, and I have traded on my acquaintance with LeSueur for nothing? You will look like a fool, and so shall I.”
“He’s no naturalist. I am certain of it. A—a reliable source in the household warned me the man had been sent down to inspect me.” Most adults would not consider an eleven-year-old boy a reliable source, but Julien had developed a healthy respect for Simon’s eavesdropping abilities.
Derring looked at Julien’s set, slightly flushed face and gave up. “You know,” he commented as they turned yet another corner, “I may be untidy, but you are stubborn. My vice creates a small nuisance—”
“Hah!” interrupted Julien. “Tell that to what used to be my parlor.”
“A small nuisance,” Derring repeated more firmly, “which well-trained servants can easily remedy. Your vice, on the other hand, has far more serious consequences and I fail to see how you can hire anyone to assist you.”
“Not hire. Marry. A wife. A gentle, loving wife who will advise me and persuade me to mend my ways. You see, all your arguments about the benefits of marriage have at last won me over.”
It was Derring’s turn to say “Hah!”
Julien wasn’t sure whether the exclamation was directed at the picture of a reformed Julien or at the picture of Serena Allen—his presumed bride-to-be—as gentle and loving. Probably both.
The subaltern, who had maintained an even stride and an expressionless face through the entire journey, held open the door of a small room furnished with two plain wooden chairs and a deal table. “If you gentlemen will wait here, I shall inform you when the captain arrives.” He gestured stiffly towards the chairs and then closed the door.
Derring sat down. “Told you this was too early even for the military,” he grumbled.
Julien did not reply. He paced back and forth, hands behind his back, rehearsing every word of the spee
ch he planned to make.
Five minutes went by. Ten. Ten more. At last he heard booted footsteps in the corridor.
“In here?”
“Yes, sir.”
The door opened and a young man who was clearly LeSueur came in. He matched Philip’s description perfectly, although Philip had unaccountably left out the captain’s most distinguishing feature, a deep scar running down one side of his face.
“Hallo, old fellow,” Derring said uneasily.
“Where have you been? You were meant to come see me—at Whitehall, not here, I might add—four days ago,” said LeSueur, looking irritated. “And who is this? Civilians are not normally allowed onto this floor.”
Derring started to introduce him, but Julien forestalled him. “I am a friend of Mr. Derring,” he said coldly. “And I asked him to bring me here. I am looking for a man named Meyer.”
LeSueur gaped. “You are?”
“There is someone who goes by that name associated with your—enterprise, is there not?”
The captain frowned, clearly uncertain about the proper response to this question. He shot a helpless glance back into the hall, but it was empty.
“He has insulted me grossly,” Julien clarified.
Oddly, that phrase seemed to work some sort of magic. LeSueur’s face cleared. He looked resigned, perhaps even amused. He stepped back into the hall.
“James!” he shouted. “Someone to see you. Affair of honor.” He turned back to Julien. “What did you say your name was?”
“Clermont.”
“A Mr. Clermont,” he called loudly out the door. Then he stiffened and whirled around. “Out! Out!” he shouted, turning red. The scar, oddly, stayed white. “Norris!” The subaltern reappeared. “Escort this gentleman out at once. Down the front staircase.”
“Not without seeing Mr. Meyer,” said Julien, folding his arms.
Another officer had arrived, a dark-haired young man. His uniform and insignia marked him as a captain of rifles. The small room was getting very crowded. “Who wants me?” he asked LeSueur, glancing with no sign of recognition from Philip to Julien and back.
“Nothing. My apologies. False alarm,” said LeSueur hastily. “This gentleman was just leaving.” He jerked his chin at the subaltern, who stepped forward and laid a tentative hand on Julien’s arm. “Not you,” LeSueur said to Derring, who had stepped forward. “You have a few questions to answer, remember? In fact, you now have more than a few.”
“I’m afraid you’ll need to come with me, sir,” the subaltern said. He no longer looked impassive. He looked nervous.
“You can’t pretend Meyer isn’t here,” said Julien to LeSueur, furious. “I heard you call to him. I want to see him. I demand it. Doesn’t British law say that a man is entitled to confront his accuser?”
The new captain pushed the other two officers aside. He was frowning. “What have I accused you of? Who are you?”
“Who are you?” Julien shot back. “And why are you protecting this Meyer fellow? What harm can it do to let me ask him a few questions?”
“I am Meyer,” the officer said. “James Roth Meyer. Although in this uniform, I go by James Nathanson.”
Julien stared.
LeSueur cleared his throat. “This is the, er, person in question,” he said in a low voice. “The Russian affair. And he therefore needs to be escorted out. At once. Before any interesting visitors arrive.”
“This is Mr. Clermont?”
“Yes, sir.”
Julien found himself being scanned from head to toe. He raised his eyebrows and did his own inspection. The aquiline face was vaguely familiar.
“I’ll take him down.” A faint smile was beginning to appear on the officer’s face. “I believe he must be looking for my father.” He turned to Julien.
“Older man? Looks a bit like me? Very polite, and next thing you know it feels as though a steel trap has sprung around you?”
Still stunned, Julien nodded slowly.
“Are you planning to call him out? If so, I insist on being present.” The officer held open a door on the other side of the waiting room and gestured Julien through to the landing of an open stairwell. “I’ve been waiting years for this moment. He has been very tiresome on the subject of my own early morning engagements.”
“I couldn’t possibly meet him,” said Julien, shocked. “He’s old enough to be my grandfather.” Something made him pause, in the middle of the staircase, and look at his escort. “Isn’t he?”
“He is forty-four.”
“He—seemed older.”
“Mmm,” agreed the younger Meyer. And that was all he would say, nor did he respond in any way to Julien’s indirect queries about his father’s credentials as a scientist. At the Tower gate, however, he walked with Julien for a few yards until they were beyond earshot of the guards and said abruptly, “I’m going to give you some advice.”
Surprised, Julien stopped.
“I don’t like giving advice,” Meyer—or Nathanson—said. “And I detest receiving it. I suspect you do as well. But for some reason I cannot help myself.”
“What is it?”
“Stay away from the Earl of Bassington. At least for the next few weeks.”
Julien felt himself stiffening. “Can you give me a reason?”
“No.”
“Then I am unlikely to follow your recommendation.” He bowed. “Good day, Captain.”
James Meyer watched the tall figure walk away towards Lower Thames Street. Something about the set of the shoulders told him that Clermont now considered himself to have been insulted by both Meyers. He thought of the conversation he had had with his father last night. Nathan Meyer wasn’t often wrong. But it did happen, occasionally.
16
A lady wishing to avoid a social obligation may always plead indisposition; however, she is then well advised to avoid appearing in public on that day.
—Miss Cowell’s Moral Reflections for Young Ladies
Rowley, the London butler, was not as fond of his dignity as Pritchett. He had given Serena an enormous smile when the earl’s party had arrived the evening before and had even whispered, “Welcome back, miss!” At breakfast this morning he had informed her that she was looking “prime”—a word which would never have crossed Pritchett’s lips. And a few minutes ago, when he had carried in a tray with two cards on it, Serena had seen at once from the flying eyebrow he pointed at her that the callers were, in his opinion, for her, although he took the tray quite properly over to her aunt. Mrs. Digby had no doubt filled Rowley in on every detail of the latest events at Boulton Park, and the slanting eyebrow boded ill.
Her fears were confirmed by her aunt’s expression once she had glanced at the cards, an expression which could only be described as smug.
“Show them up, Rowley,” she said. He bowed and withdrew, but not without another eyebrow wiggle in her direction.
“Let me guess.” Serena was feeling cross and tired. She had hoped her aunt would not receive callers on their first morning here, but she should have known better. Aunt Clara was never too weary for social intrigue. “It is Mr. Clermont.”
“And Philip.”
Well, that was something, at least. She hadn’t seen Philip in nearly a year.
“I think you have made a conquest at last, my dear Serena,” Mrs. Childe said archly from her seat by the fire. “Our first morning here! He wastes no time, I see.”
Serena had trained herself long ago to ignore the widow’s remarks. Mrs. Childe’s cloying sympathy after André Moreau’s escape had been almost unendurable until she had woken up one morning to the blinding realization that it was completely false and designed to stir up her grief and distress rather than assuage it. Now she bent her head down lower over her embroidery. She had taken up embroidery two years ago. It was dull, it was ladylike, and it was very, very useful when you lived with Mrs. Childe. Simon now had a matched set of seat covers depicting various large insects, which her aunt had so far refused t
o allow on any of the chairs, even the ones in the nursery.
“Mr. Clermont. Mr. Derring,” announced Rowley, trilling the r’s in Derring.
There was Philip, looking somewhat haggard, although the quick smile he shot her was the same as ever. And Clermont was the same as ever, too: revoltingly elegant. His bright hair seemed to glow at the corner of her vision as he greeted her aunt and inquired about their journey up to town.
Serena heard a rustle of skirts behind her. Mrs. Childe had risen and was sinking into a dramatic curtsey, just as she had on the night of the dinner party. Philip, who had been politely listening as her aunt described muddy roads and overcrowded inns, blinked in astonishment. Clermont’s reaction was immediate. He leveled the coldest stare Serena had ever seen at the half-descended widow. It was only for a fraction of a second, but she halted in midplunge, wobbled, tripped slightly over her front foot, then collapsed awkwardly back into her chair, looking flustered. Serena was tempted to pass over her embroidery frame so that the older woman would have an excuse to keep her eyes lowered.
Derring was crossing the room. He murmured a greeting to her cousin, who gave the barest nod in return, and then came over to Serena.
“Philip,” she said. On impulse, she stood up and kissed him on the cheek, which made him blush furiously. “How are you?”
“Very well. And you? I was delighted to hear you had come up to town with your uncle.”
“Any news of Maria?”
He shook his head.
“First babies are always late,” said her aunt, overhearing. “You mustn’t worry, Philip, I’m sure we shall have comfortable tidings any day. Do sit down, both of you. I’ll ring for refreshments.”