by Sarah Zettel
I swallowed. I knotted my fingers together. I prayed to God Most High. And I told the truth.
“I think, madame, you are a very intelligent woman who watches over her husband and loves her daughters, and I would not have your place for all the gold in Spain.”
She was silent for a long time.
“You may sit down, Margaret Fitzroy.” She gestured, and one of the waiting men brought a chair forward.
I did sit. Actually, I plumped. Because all the strength in my knees gave way at once.
“You knew,” I breathed. “Your Highness,” I added quickly. “This whole time. You knew I wasn’t Francesca.”
She did not answer, not directly. “I was not happy to come to England, you know. The idea of my husband being heir to a disputed throne in a country that saw us as outsiders, if not actual invaders . . .” She shook her head. “It did not calculate to please. But now that we are here, it is my work to make that throne secure and to see that it passes smoothly from my father-in-law, to my husband, to our heirs. That is the whole of my business, you understand this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It is good. It is known, of course, there are Jacobite spies at court. They have many reasons to justify their treason. Loyalty and religion, these might be laudable, but they can also be very dangerous because they are hard to change. Greed or caprice or revenge, these are dangerous because they may arise in an instant, but those who hold them may also be more easily persuaded to change sides.
“I have been watching you carefully since you came to us. I believe you to be an intelligent young woman and one who understands the ways of the world, far beyond the immediate rewards of the card table and the gossip’s feast. I put it to you now, Margaret Fitzroy, that it is best for all concerned that we find who this Robert Ballantyne worked for and with, in order that these persons be brought before the bar of His Majesty’s justice to pay the full price for what they have done.”
“Yes, madame.” It occurred to me I was not to die. It occurred to me that I might, in fact, be allowed to live.
“I put it to you that you are uniquely situated to aid in this endeavor.”
“Madame?”
There has never in my life occurred anything so wholly unexpected as that moment when Her Royal Highness looked at me, Peggy Fitzroy, and smiled.
“Will you aid me in this, Miss Margaret Fitzroy? Will you be my eyes and ears among the courtiers and find who leads this plot within my own house?”
It was a royal command. A commission for king and country of the sort given only to great heroines. As a loyal subject of the Crown, I answered in the only way I could.
“I . . . but . . . but . . .”
My mistress rolled her eyes. “But what?”
I bit my lip. In flagrant violation of courtesy, decorum, and good sense, I met the gaze royal. “But I will require the help of my friend, and my cousin.”
Mr. Tinderflint was waiting in the antechamber when I emerged from my audience. He leaped to his feet from the velvet cushioned bench and bustled forward, lace and ribbons fluttering madly.
“Well? Well?”
“I am to be maid of honor,” I told him. “Maid Margaret Fitzroy at a salary of two hundred a year. She will speak to Mr. Thornhill about Matthew’s place. She . . . I . . .” I swallowed against the joyous riot of confusion and remembered I still had business with this man. But it was not only that. When I looked at him now, I remembered that sharp, clear snapping sound I had heard as Mr. Tinderflint, Lord Tierney, bent over Mr. Peele. And now Mr. Peele’s hold over him was finished. I’d thought this ugly act over very carefully during the past couple of days.
He must have seen something of this in my eyes, because he kept his distance. “I think, perhaps, we should talk.”
Mr. Tinderflint had clearly anticipated the conflict between my desire to speak with him and my reluctance to do so. He walked us down to the riverbank, where we came upon two conveniently placed chairs but also a cluster of soldiers and a pair of maids stationed a discreet distance away. This was obviously for my benefit. He wanted me to trust him. He was always so very good at getting me to trust him.
“Now, Peggy.” He sat and folded his hands over his ribboned walking stick. “I may call you Peggy, mayn’t I? Ask your questions.” He spoke quietly and in Latin—I presume to keep the witnesses from comprehending our conversation.
“My lord—”
“Tush, Peggy.” He smiled. “You may call me Tinderflint. I’ve grown rather accustomed to the name and find I like it.”
“Mr. Tinderflint.” He enjoined me to ask my questions, this man who had planned an enterprise that had nearly gotten me, and my cousin, killed. He had tracked me down, ruthlessly placed me in danger, and killed a murderous, blackmailing traitor with his bare, fat, many-ringed hands.
Where on earth could I possibly begin?
“How did you find me?”
“I’d a missive from Her Royal Highness summoning me back to court.” He smiled at my surprise. “Yes, yes, my dear, I am also employed by the Crown. But it was Mrs. Abbott who told me where you’d gone. I made shift to follow as quickly as I could. I’m only sorry I was not faster.” I could have sworn he meant it, too.
“You must have seen the letter of succession,” I said. “You must have taken it. Was it genuine? Did Queen Anne write it?”
Mr. Tinderflint lifted his brows and dipped his chin. It was a surprisingly owlish look. “What would you do if I said yes? Turn on your mistress? Abandon your new post?”
“I don’t know what I would do,” I said to the river at his back. “But I want to know, all the same.”
The smile he gave me then was a gentle one and filled with understanding. “You have a good heart, Peggy Fitzroy, and a clear head. I don’t know why I should be surprised to find how good and how clear. So I will tell you the truth.” He took a deep breath. “No. The letter was not genuine. It was a very good forgery that the Jacobites were originally planning to ‘discover’ as soon as they’d received certain promises of men and arms from France and Spain.”
“But . . . wasn’t that the northern uprising? They failed.”
“I can only assume they mean to try again, and to keep on trying until they have their way, and damn the consequences to their nation or her people.” He colored a bit under his face paint. “I should beg your pardon for my language.”
I had heard and used much worse, but now was not the time for digressions. “That’s what Her Highness thinks.”
“Her Highness is a very intelligent woman,” he replied. “But then, you know that.”
“Why did you send Francesca to court in the first place?”
“Poor Francesca.” This was another moment when I was sure I glimpsed the man beneath the ribbons and posturing, and that man was filled with regret. “Another sin for which I will surely have to answer when all is said and done. Her story was much as Mrs. Abbott related to you. I did take her as my ward after one of my visits to Saint-Germaine.”
“Mrs. Abbott said she was Francesca’s mother.”
“And so she is. It is the common tale. Pretty words and a turned head, and a man who took what he wanted and left it to his lady fair to pay the price. She’s gone home, by the way,” he said. “Back to Paris. She thought it best to leave before too many questions could be asked.”
I nodded. It made perfect sense, but I was sorry not to have a chance to say farewell. She had done her best in so many ways. I owed her a great deal.
“It was truly my intent to give Francesca some security and a place in society, where the circumstances of her birth might be conveniently buried under fashion and fortune,” Mr. Tinderflint was saying. “That it might one day become useful for me to have a pair of eyes and ears among the ladies was something I considered by the way, and did not even mention to her.” He shook his head until his chin wagged. “Now, Peggy, I must interrupt your questions for one of my own. What happened to her? To Francesca? Exactly what had
she become involved in?”
I told him, both what I had learned and what I guessed, of Francesca’s plotting, of her intent to use Robert and Peele to return in triumph to Saint-Germaine, to present the proof of kingship to the Pretender, and from there to work her wiles upon him.
Mr. Tinderflint listened in absolute silence. When I finished, he looked into the distance for a long time. His eyes were brighter than they had been. I held my peace and gave him time to find his voice again.
“When she turned up on the doorstep, I thought little of it,” he murmured. “I thought perhaps she had been disappointed in a love affair or had simply wearied of the rigors and confinement of court life. It wasn’t until Peele came to me with his proof that Fran had been a courier for the Jacobite faction that I even suspected she had been murdered.” His voice grew bitter, and he wiped at his eyes. “At least I was able to pay Peele back for that much.”
I swallowed and looked at my hands. I did not know what to think of this revelation. I wished I did not have to think of it at all.
“We searched her rooms for hints as to what she’d been up to at court,” said Mr. Tinderflint in a more conversational tone. “We uncovered nothing. Where did you find that extraordinary drawing?”
“Sewn into the curtain.”
“Very clever, very clever. Ah, me. Perhaps I am too old a dog for these tricks.” He shook his head once more.
“But who are you?” I asked him. “What is your part in this, Mr. Tinderflint?”
He sighed and looked at the grass at our feet, at the palace, at the willow branches overhead, and finally at me. “My full name is Hugh Thurlow Flintcross Gainsford, Earl Tierney. I am the heir of an aristocratic estate and a heritage that goes back in a line so straight it shows up the meandering heritage of the English Crown for the mess it is. Tierneys have had their sticky fingers in every disputed succession since the first prudent scion of our house met with a representative of William the Conqueror one dark night in 1065 to discuss remuneration for assisting with a landing at Hastings.”
“But whom do you serve?”
“My king. Ah.” His eyes twinkled with a mirth I in no way felt inclined to share. “I see you are about to ask who my king is. Well, now, Peggy Fitzroy, I will tell you. I will. I have been to France. I have met James the Second, before he died, obviously. I have met his son the Pretender since then. I have no love of our Hanoverian Georges, and I see trouble ahead with that family. The prince is already growing impatient for the chances the king denies him . . . but they are at least better men than the ones my father helped depose. And it is my belief that it is better for this nation that things should remain as they are now. Yet another war can do us no good at all.”
That was it, then. I twisted my hands together and asked the important question. “And my mother? What of her?”
“Your mother was an agent for Her Majesty Queen Anne, Peggy, as was your father. She was as trusted as she was secret. We were able to help each other from time to time.” He smiled at some distant memory. “She did not trust me much, I’m sorry to say.”
My mother. My beautiful, wonderful mother was a trusted agent of the Crown. Not a secret Jacobite. Not a secret courtesan. My mother was loyal and true and clever, and . . . and . . . a royal spy. So was my vanished father.
Oh, just wait till I tell Olivia! She’ll expire from envy. I pressed both hands to my mouth. I knew I was being ridiculous, but it was the thought that came to me in that sunlit summer moment.
“There, now. That’s better,” said Mr. Tinderflint. “You should not be pale, Peggy, my dear. It does not suit. No, it does not.”
I set aside this bit of fine news. I had other questions, which might yield less pleasant answers, but I was determined to ask them, nonetheless.
“Do you know where my father is?”
The question seemed to take him aback. “I am sorry to say I do not. There are others who might, but I do not think they will be glad to have even his daughter know the truth.”
He looked at me. I looked at Mr. Tinderflint. “You owe me a debt, Mr. Tinderflint,” I said.
Mr. Tinderflint, who was Hugh Templeton Flintcross Gainsford, Earl Tierney, nodded. “I would be a petty man not to acknowledge there is a debt, and it is a deep one. Very well,” he said. “I will find out what I can regarding Jonathan Fitzroy. This may take some little time.”
“You will always find me at home,” I told him solemnly.
At this, Mr. Tinderflint laughed out loud. “Oh, very good! Very good! And in return, my dear Peggy, whenever you find yourself in need of a friend, you have but to call on your Mr. Tinderflint.” He stood and took my hand and bowed deeply over it. “May I escort you somewhere?”
“No. If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go alone.”
“I understand. I do.” He took up his cane and bowed once more. “Fare you well, Peggy Fitzroy. You’re a fine young lady. However sorry I might be as to the circumstances, I am very glad to have met you.”
He took his leave of me and strolled down the gravel pathway toward the palace. I watched him for a long moment before I turned away.
For a time, I did nothing more than walk slowly on the riverbank, grateful that whatever instructions had been given to the soldiers and the maids, they did not include shadowing me, at least not so I could see them. My thoughts meandered here and there, dazzled by the turn of my fortune as much as by sun and summer warmth. I mourned Lady Francesca then, for the greed that ruined her chance at a good life. I mourned Robert Ballantyne and the trust and love he’d so badly misplaced.
And what of Peggy Fitzroy? What had I gotten myself into? Sophy Howe would be waiting for me when I returned to the palace. I was still not at all sure I’d plumbed the depths of her malice. And there was the mess I’d made of my friendship with Molly Lepell. Last but not least, there was the fact that I had been charged with ferreting out any remaining Jacobites in the court. How on earth was I to do that?
Olivia would try to talk me out of this. As would Matthew. But they would fail. Whatever else happened, I had truly made a life of my own, and I would live it.
I took a deep breath and turned in the direction of the cottage where Olivia and Matthew Reade waited for word of what was to become of me. Of all of us.
And I began to run.
CHAPTER ONE
London, October, 1716
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE IN THE LATEST FASHION AND RECEIVES AN UNWELCOME BLOW.
I begin this newest account of my memoirs with a frank warning. Soon or late, there comes to the life of every confidential agent and maid of honor an order she wishes with all her heart to refuse.
In my particular case, it involved dinner.
For those as yet unfamiliar with these memoirs, my name is Margaret Preston Fitzroy, though I am more commonly known as Peggy. Until quite recently, I was an orphan girl, living in a state of dependency with my banker uncle, his kind but silly wife, and my dear, dramatic cousin, Olivia. This evening, I sat in my dressing closet at St. James Palace, trussed up tightly in my corsets and silk mantua, and trying to remember if I’d ordered everything necessary to entertain those same relations in royal style.
“You’re certain the kitchen agreed to the partridges?” I asked my maid, Nell Libby.
“Yes, miss,” Libby answered through clenched teeth. This was not because I had asked her this same question three or four times in the past hour. At least, not entirely. Rather, it was because she had a mouth full of silver pins and was endeavoring to fix my hair in the latest style.
“What about the jugged hares?” I demanded. My own voice was somewhat muffled from my efforts to keep my teeth from chattering. It had begun to rain outside. Even in the windowless dressing closet of my equally windowless bedchamber, I could hear the steady pounding over the roofs. Each drop carried winter’s brutal promise and dragged another icy draft across the wooden floor. My fire was roaring and I was being positively profligate with the candles,
but my rooms remained cold enough that my fingertips had achieved a truly arresting shade of blue. “And the chianti? It’s my uncle’s favorite wine. Ormand did say he’d have an extra bottle laid by for us?”
I don’t believe I had put in as much effort preparing for any court function as I did for this meal. I had spent the better part of the last two weeks arranging for room, food, and drink, all the while assuring the clerks of the household (mostly truthfully) that I could pay for it all, and that, upon my sacred honor, my little entertainment would not add extra expense to the royal housekeeping.
Had it been up to me, I would have never laid eyes upon my uncle again. He might have taken me in after my mother died, but we had never warmed to each other. Matters rather came to a head this past spring when he betrothed me to a young man with whom I later shared a mutual misunderstanding. That is to say, I attacked him. To be perfectly fair, though, he did attack me first. This wholly rational argument, however, failed to carry any weight with my uncle, and his response was to throw me out into the street. That the entire unhappy affair ended with my taking up residence in the royal court came as something of a surprise to all concerned. As did the interlude in which I masqueraded as one Lady Francesca, who, it was discovered, had been murdered.
I hasten to add that none of this was actually my own doing or idea. Well, almost none. That is to say, very little.
This admittedly extraordinary run of events had an appropriately extraordinary ending. I now enjoyed a certain amount of royal favor and a post at court. It had not, however, served to mend the rift between myself and my uncle. For my part, I had rather hoped to let that particular matter lie. Unfortunately, my new mistress, Her Royal Highness Princess Caroline, had other ideas.
“Sir Oliver Pierpont is your uncle and legal guardian, Miss Fitzroy,” she reminded me, with a hard tap of the royal index finger against the back of my hand. “Whether or not you relish the relationship. You will make peace with him, or trouble will come of it.”