The Spy's Kiss
Page 35
He looked down at her. The grim look had faded; he was almost smiling. “Do you truly suppose anyone will be interested in our marriage when they have the delicious tale of Royce and Mrs. Childe to occupy them?”
“What of my aunt?” she said, clutching at one more pretext to postpone her decision. “She will be mortified. She will never speak to me again.”
“She suggested it,” he said. “My respect for her is growing by the hour.” He held out his hand. “Are you coming?”
She had run out of excuses. And she had known what her answer would be the minute his eyes met hers in the drawing room. “The fastest way to my room is up the back staircase,” she said. “That way.”
He gave a sigh of relief as he took her hand and headed down the corridor. “Good. I was prepared for more groveling, but I can do it in the carriage.”
EPILOGUE
She was married. It didn’t take very long to get married in Gretna Green. A few questions from the “blacksmith,” a signature, and it was done. Even Julien had been surprised at the spare nature of the ceremony.
“Doesn’t she promise to honor me?” he had asked. “To obey me?”
Their witness, a wizened old soldier, shrugged. “Och, no. Not in Scotland.”
“Just as well,” Julien had muttered. “No use starting off with a perjured bride.”
The wedding supper had been a hasty meal at an inn at Gretna. Then they had driven on to Canonbie, because, as Julien had said, he would be damned if he would spend his wedding night in a town where every carriage that clattered in, no matter what the hour, was greeted by a crowd of urchins screaming out the names of potential witnesses for a ceremony.
Canonbie was quiet, unless you counted the sleet rattling against the window. Or the gusts of wind. Or Emily’s cheerful singing in her small room next door. She was on the third verse of “Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill.” The first two verses had accompanied the task of clothing her mistress in a lace-trimmed confection that Emily had triumphantly unearthed from the chest where Serena’s bride-clothes had been banished six years earlier.
“I hadn’t realized your maid was so—musical,” Julien said from the doorway. “She always seemed a timid, quiet sort of girl.”
Serena jumped. She hadn’t heard him come in. It was true, eloping had brought out a side of Emily Serena had never seen: the romantic. The resurrected nightgown was only the beginning. Emily enthused over everything: the Condé carriage, which Julien had high-handedly appropriated from the drive at Boulton Park; the knowing looks at the tollgates; the quaint inns along their route; even the ragged boys who had welcomed them to Gretna by shouting “Elliott! Only five guineas!” or “Locksley! Free dram of whiskey, and rings supplied upon request!”
“I could go down the hall and ask her to stop,” she offered.
He shut the door and leaned against it, surveying her slowly, from her unbound hair to her slippered feet and back up again. “You are not exactly dressed to go out in public. Of course, that fact did not seem to restrain your nocturnal wanderings at Boulton Park.”
“I hardly think you are in a position to criticize my behavior,” she shot back. “Not only did you break into my bedchamber—my locked bedchamber—in both London and Oxfordshire, but you also came into my room at every inn on the way here.”
“Only after your maid was asleep,” he said piously. “And I was a perfect gentleman.”
She didn’t think a perfect gentleman would have driven her half-insane with protracted bouts of kissing, but Emily was a very sound sleeper, and even gentlemen sometimes found themselves unable to resist temptation. Ladies, too.
The singing died away at last, and there was a moment of awkward silence. Then Julien pushed himself off the door and walked over to a chair. “I believe there is a wedding present on the bed,” he said in a very casual tone as he took off his jacket.
“Another one?” He had already given her a necklace of gold lilies set with sapphires—his mother’s, apparently—with a note which read: Herewith proof I had no need to steal the Bassington rubies.
“It’s on the pillow. At least, it should be, if Emily carried out my instructions.” He was untying his neckcloth now and tossing it on top of the jacket.
Emily would throw herself under Tempest’s hooves if Julien told her to. Serena wondered if she would be forced to hire only the oldest, ugliest maidservants from now on. Sure enough, there was a parcel up against the headboard.
“Open it,” he said, coming up next to her. “Carefully. It’s delicate.”
She folded back the paper. Inside was her ruined nightgown. She had never had a chance to mend it; it was still torn halfway down the shoulder from that fateful night in London when she had nearly seduced him. “Hardly a very generous gift for your bride,” she said, laughing.
“Greedy girl. It isn’t for you.” He smoothed the torn seam. “It’s for me. I have been dreaming about watching you take off that nightgown again ever since my visit to your room two weeks ago. The next item after that will be my shirt, if memory serves me correctly.”
“Oh.” She felt herself blushing. “But”—she looked down at the cascades of lawn and lace—“I am already wearing a nightgown.”
He gave her a wicked smile, reached out, and untied the ribbon at her neck. “In that case, I can watch you take off two,” he said. “Even better.”
Historical Note
The major political events described in this book are true. Early in 1814, as Napoleon’s defeat began to seem inevitable, the British Foreign Office was indeed playing Russia off against Austria, looking ahead to the delicate dissection of Europe that would be performed at the Congress of Vienna later that same year. The Condé family is real as well—although Julien and his mother, as well as the other main characters, are entirely products of my imagination.
Readers who would like more information about the events in this story or the earlier books in this series are cordially invited to visit my Web site (www.nitaabrams.com) to see photographs of various places which figure in the books. I also provide links to other sites with information about the Napoleonic Wars, Anglo-Jewish history, spying, and, of course, country houses with secret passages. For special help with the last topic I would like to acknowledge the staff of Syon Park, a spectacular Georgian mansion which served as a partial model for the Bassington country home in this book.
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