by Sarah Zettel
I swallowed and closed my eyes, making a great show of composing myself. “I’m doing my best, Robert.”
“I know it. I do know.” He rushed forward then and wound his arms around me, pulling me into a surprisingly gentle embrace. I tried not to stiffen, but it was so strange, to be held this intimately, yet not be known at all. I could feel his heart hammering under his red coat and hear him swallowing his sobs. He had almost lost his Francesca, and he feared he was about to lose her again, and it hurt him deeply. I hated myself in that moment, and the deception I had taken on, because one way or another, I had to betray the love this man had given that other Francesca.
Slowly, terribly uncertain whether this was the right thing to do, I put my arms around Robert and returned his embrace.
“It won’t be for much longer.” Robert ran his fingers across my brow, seeking to smooth away the creases there. “I promise, I’ll find a way out for us. But you have to see how difficult this has become, Fran. Sophy is insisting I find a way to have the paper’s offices watched to see if anyone comes to ask about the advertisement.”
“Sophy, again.” I did not have to force the bitterness in my voice. “Ordering you about.”
“Yes, ordering me about, and I must obey.” Robert tried to chuck me underneath my chin, but I pulled away. “We have no choice.”
Why not? What hold did she have over him? Over us? I turned away, pulling myself out of the circle of his arms. I did not want him to see the confusion and calculation that tumbled through me just then.
“I’ve let you down, I know,” said Robert behind me. He was taking a step forward, and another. I could hear his shoes on the bare floor. “But things in the North finished so much more quickly than anyone guessed—there was simply no time to get us to our friends. We had to stay in place.”
“Our friends?” The words were out before I could bite my tongue, hard. Our friends in the North? The North, where the Jacobites had rallied in their rebellion last winter.
“Yes, Fran,” murmured Robert. “Our friends.”
Robert was a Jacobite. Robert was not a swooning gallant or a pawn in some game played by bored courtiers. In this dark empty room, I stood next to a traitor spy, one in touch with the rebels in the North. They had plans for him, and Francesca had known. Francesca had known enough, been close enough, that she had been ready to flee with her paramour to join the rebellion.
“I’ve been looking for a way to tell you they’ve been in touch.” Hope and energy returned to Robert’s words. “Our plans aren’t dead, only shifted.”
I took a breath, and another. My ribs strained hard against my stays. I could not show surprise. Francesca had known this. I could not slide into the panic opening at the brink of my thoughts. I had to find a safe question to ask, one that would not give me away.
“But what can we possibly do now?”
Robert moved close again, a tiny smile playing about his mouth. “Fran, you know better.” He closed his hands about my shoulders and shook me gently. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s happening. You’re quite safe, of course, but we can’t be too careful. We mustn’t risk you getting . . . carried away again in the wrong company.” He wasn’t going to tell me what was happening. I had betrayed myself as monumentally indiscreet. I could only hope the fact that I was silently cursing myself as eighteen different kinds of fool did not show in the expression I turned up toward him.
“When we’re done and safely out of here, I’ll tell you everything, I swear it,” Robert said earnestly. “You believe me, don’t you?”
I pulled back, partly because I needed space to breathe and partly because I wanted to see him better. His long face had become drawn and haggard as he looked down at me and saw his Fran.
“I believe you mean every word you say to me,” I told him. This was the absolute truth, and the smile that erased the fear from Robert’s face told me he accepted it. He kissed my brow, and my cheek, and the kiss was warm and tender. I thought I could feel the sorrow and the yearning in it. For the briefest moment, the loneliness in me chimed in a sympathetic vibration, for he was lonely too and in a danger that might, just might, be too deep for him. A treacherous little voice whispered, If I let him kiss me on the mouth, would that be so harmful? If I yielded just a little, to a craving for someone to be close to, what would it hurt?
“Fran.” His mouth glided toward mine.
I lifted my hand and pressed my fingers to his lips. “We mustn’t, Robert. I can’t stay. I’m being watched too closely. It took everything just to get here to you.”
Reluctantly, Robert loosened his embrace and stepped back. “I miss you so much, Fran,” he said. “You have no idea. When I thought . . . when I thought you had died, I was ready to kill myself. I had the knife to my throat, and it was only the thought that I’d be denying myself the chance to be with you in Heaven that stopped me.”
It should have sounded like bad melodrama, but there in the moonlight and shadow, with the warmth from his kiss still on my brow, it was heartbreaking. I was suddenly certain Robert was going to profess love and expect me to do the same. I had to turn this conversation at once. Of all the lies I must tell, I could not tell that one. Robert was not some dress or mask that I could don to play my part and then discard. He was a man of flesh and blood: Whatever his loyalties, he loved his lady, and he deserved better than a counterfeit hope.
“It’s only for a little while.” I laid my hand on his and hated myself for being able to tilt my chin up and gaze steadily into his eyes. When had I acquired such skill at falsehood? One learned so many new things at court. “You promised.”
“Yes. And it is true. I’ll have you safely away before the court moves back to St. James for autumn, even if I have to snatch you right out from under that dragon’s nose.” He jerked his chin toward the door, and I knew he was thinking of Mrs. Abbott. So was I, and of what she would say if I told her all this.
Which, I realized, I was by no means certain I would.
“My bold knight.” I moved my hand to Robert’s cheek, and he smiled, and kissed my gloved palm.
I glanced quickly toward the door, and he nodded, slipping back to listen again while I reclaimed my unlit candle.
“Remember, you wait, and then slip out. We can’t risk anyone seeing us leave together.”
I nodded, and he left me alone in the moonlight and shadows.
It was a long, slow, uncomfortable walk back to my room. The loiterers had dispersed, and the patches of light that remained were far enough apart that I was at times in complete darkness. I scarcely cared. I was busy giving myself a scolding that would have done credit to Mrs. Abbott at the height of her powers.
“Weak, feeble, fickle,” I berated myself. This was entirely unacceptable. Entirely. A few sympathetic words, a smile, a touch. It meant nothing. Nothing. I did not trust Robert. I could not trust him. I certainly could not be cherishing a tendre for him while I felt one blooming for Matthew, could I?
I’d never exactly been deluged by followers. Was I truly the sort of girl who would tumble for not one but two men at once? And one of them a Jacobite spy?
“Fickle, fickle, fickle, idiot!” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Lord above, why did you choose now to reveal this flaw in my nature? Whatever I have done to deserve it, I am sorry.” It occurred to me then that my recent conduct might have given Our Lord Most High one or two reasons to express His Divine Displeasure, and I winced.
Heaven, however, did not seem inclined to send me a direct answer, at least not immediately. I determined not to worry myself any further about it. It was not as if I could form an attachment to either Matthew or Robert. The one was going to leave for Italy and other points of artistic interest as soon as he was able. The other was a spy who mistook me for a dead woman. A lasting foundation for mutual respect and support, that was not.
Besides, I had more important things to worry about. Robert Ballantyne was a Jacobite. Francesca had loved him, or at least produce
d a highly convincing display of love. They had made plans to run away together during the uprising last winter. That was why Francesca had so suddenly gone home at Christmastide. But the uprising had been finished almost as soon as it had begun, and their elopement never happened. Francesca had hidden her sketches in her guardian’s house. Then she had died.
Robert, for his part, had feared discovery, and feared for both of their lives. His protestation that Francesca was safe was an astoundingly clumsy attempt at reassurance. She had been in danger all the while.
I could no longer believe Francesca had died of fever. It must have been murder.
But for what reason? Did the Jacobites think she might betray them to the king’s men? Did the Hanoverians think she had sold their interests to the Jacobites? Or was some person close to Francesca angry that she would throw away her life at court when his own plans depended on keeping her there?
God in Heaven. How many reasons to be killed could one girl be cursed with?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IN WHICH A NIGHT FULL OF UNWELCOME REVELATION GIVES WAY TO SEVERAL UNWISE RESOLUTIONS.
“Mon Dieu. How is it you are still awake?”
The little silver carriage clock on the mantel had just finished chiming five when Mrs. Abbott returned. I had not, as she so quickly observed, rung for her or anyone else to help me undress. I’d been able to do nothing but sit before the fire and turn the scenes of my deception over in my mind. I wanted to see them all from this certain and terrible angle of Francesca’s murder.
Since I had known from the first that I risked imprisonment, or even hanging, it might be supposed the confirmation of this new danger would not occasion much new discomfort. However, human beings are marvelously adept at reasoning their way out of their most sensible fears. When it came to the legal punishment, I could convince myself that as long as I was clever, I could prevail. But murder was an entirely different matter. There waited somewhere an assassin who either knew me for an impostor or who believed the first blow had missed its mark. Such understanding did not leave one in a hurry to douse the lights.
“Hanover or Stuart?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Abbott, as was her habit, checked the dressing room and the door to her own little closet of a back room to make sure we were alone. Only then did she return to bolt the door to the gallery.
“Who did Mr. Tinderflint pass messages for when he was in France? Was it the house of Hanover or Stuart?”
“I never asked.”
“You never asked?” I trust my readers will pardon me when they learn that those words came out closer to a shriek than was necessary.
“It mattered not to me.” Mrs. Abbott strode across the room to the sherry decanter and poured a healthy measure into a glass. “I wanted to bring my daughter to court and give her the life she deserved. What difference would it make to know the politics of the man who could accomplish this? Here. Drink that and calm yourself. Then tell me all that happened with your Robert.”
“He’s not my Robert. Don’t call him my Robert.” I was lightheaded and a little hysterical from contemplating my probable violent death. “If anything, he was your daughter’s Robert.”
“You will mind your tongue, young woman. I do not need you so much as you may think.”
My exhaustion and the rock-hard certainty in the Abbott’s words silenced me, and I did drink the wine. It burned in my stomach, but it also steadied my nerve. “Where have you been all this time?” I asked her.
“Did you think I would allow you to go to this meeting alone? I have been following . . . the footman to see what he was about.”
I blinked at her, once more taken aback by the reminder that she was practiced in these matters.
“What did you find? Was he meeting someone else?” Visions of Sophy Howe tripped smiling and malicious through my mind.
“That is what I thought at first. He took a very long route to little purpose, but in the end, he arrived at the Queen’s Chapel.” Mrs. Abbott’s eyes narrowed and she was plainly choosing her words with care. “I crept inside to look down on him from the gallery. But he did not meet anyone. Instead, he went to the altar, where he opened a small panel in the wall. A panel that was in no way easy to see, I may tell you. There, he knelt to pray.”
“He was a long time about it,” I muttered.
“A most devout young man. But much more to the purpose, he removed a packet of papers from the space behind that panel. He read one and placed the others in his coat pocket.”
Of course he did. It was an entirely . . . spylike thing to do. To assure his paramour she was safe, then go to retrieve secret letters. I pressed my hand to my mouth to cover the laugh that threatened to escape. Mrs. Abbott was already eyeing me harshly and would surely disapprove of hysterics. Furthermore, any such display would delay her telling me the remainder of the story.
“When at last the footman left his prayers, I also found this panel and opened it. There inside was a crucifix and rosary. I had heard of this. The space was made for James II’s Catholic wife, so she could follow her faith in private and not offend the Protestant sensibilities of the country her husband ruled.”
So Robert was, along with everything else, a secret Catholic. That was no shock. Were we not told that the attempts to return the Stuarts to the throne were all part of an insidious Catholic plot? They meant to rob us good Protestants of our freedom, our possessions, and our lives, all for the greater glory of their pope. Probably daughters would be ravished as well. The experts were divided on that point.
But setting aside the opinions of so many learned divines, I realized that the fact of Robert’s religion had implications for the currents around me. Whatever he did for his friends in the North, he probably did for genuine love of the cause rather than for pay or mischief. This made nothing easier. I already had ample proof that Robert Ballantyne was a man of strong feeling, a true gallant. I tried not to dwell on the declarations of regard that he had so recently made. What was important here was that we now knew the means by which he accomplished his communication with “our friends in the North.” No wonder he was so very careful about leaving notes around. I thought again of Francesca’s sketches and how many times I wished for a clearly written diary. Perhaps she had learned one or two things from her intriguing paramour.
“What did Ballantyne say to you?” Mrs. Abbott asked. “Did you learn anything useful?”
I did not answer at once. I rubbed my face, smearing my glove with talc and rouge. How much should I trust Mrs. Abbott? Francesca had hidden the sketches from her as well as from the Messrs. Tinderflint and Peele. In fact, I thought uneasily, Francesca had hidden both the sketches and Robert. Why had she done that?
“He made professions of love, mostly,” I said to the fire. “He was angry about the wager I made with Sophy Howe.”
“Was there nothing else?” Mrs. Abbot looked down her long Gallic nose at me, and her eyes glittered with all the things she was not saying. “No mention of plans he had made with my lady?”
I shook my head. “I will have to try again.”
“I expect you will, yes. I expect nothing will induce you to stop trying.” Hard calculations passed behind her eyes, but I could not read what a single one might be. “With this wager having created so much amusement from your fellow courtiers, you are going to be even more the center of attention. You must be ready to sparkle and entertain, or risk the wrong sort of scrutiny, which none of us can afford. You must get your rest.”
She made excellent sense, and I was very tired. The mention of new scrutiny brought on by my wager with Sophy raised the by now familiar and still unwelcome fear of courtly misstep. Sleep would be relief and escape for a time.
“But I haven’t written my letter for Mr. Peele yet . . .” I shook my head before Mrs. Abbott could answer. “I wouldn’t make any sense now if I did. I will do it in the morning.” Later in the morning. I rubbed my aching forehead again.
“
That will be in plenty of time.” Her lips trembled for a moment before bending themselves into what I am sure was meant to be a reassuring smile.
I did not remark upon it. For the moment, Mrs. Abbott was being helpful. I let myself be undressed, unwigged, and put to bed. I was assured that I would be woken in plenty of time to attend Her Royal Highness. I let exhaustion and assurance cover me and was asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow. Almost. In the last fleeting moment before my thoughts swam entirely away, I was aware of doors opening and closing. Too many doors and too many times. I should have roused myself. I should have opened my eyes to see what this meant.
But I did not. I slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IN WHICH A RATHER TAWDRY DISCOVERY IS MADE AND A TRUNK HOLDS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS.
It was not Mrs. Abbott who woke me. It was one of the palace maids, a tiny, dark girl called Nell Libby. She said she had been instructed to feed me breakfast and otherwise get me ready for my duties of the day. I was so grateful for the cup of chocolate and warm roll that she brought with her that I did not ask any questions, but stood docile as a lamb while she laced me into a light muslin morning dress decorated with green ruffles and rather outsized pink and blue flowers.
That day proved Mrs. Abbott correct in a number of ways. I was very much the center of attention as I moved about in the princess’s wake. There was no escaping speculation on the nature and breed of the dog that would appear, or the exact location of Stemhempfordshire. Some enterprising soul even brought forth a map of England for us all to pore over after nuncheon. Fortunately, I was restored enough to myself by then that I was able to turn the absence of any such shire into a guessing game, which pleased Lady Montague at least, as she won ten shillings from our fellows with her knowledge of the names of obscure villages.