by Sarah Zettel
“Johnny Leroy,” I said. Father bowed his head in acknowledgment. His hair had been combed and pulled back into a respectable queue. His beard was also trimmed, and he now wore it in a neat point that made him look worldly, French, or devilish. Possibly all three. I turned my eyes away.
“Your mother stayed behind, of course,” Mr. Tinderflint went on. “To look after you and to do what she could for our cause in the drawing rooms of London. It was a great shock to us all when she died.”
“I thought I’d die myself when I got the news,” Father said softly.
“Die, but not come back,” I reminded him.
“I couldn’t, Peggy.” His eyes pleaded with me to understand. Unfortunately for him, I felt my sympathies had been much overtaxed of late.
“Are you going to blame duty or loyalty?”
To my surprise, a small smile formed on my father’s face. “Actually, I’m going to blame old Louis XIV. He had me in the Bastille at the time.”
“Which was where I had initially sought him,” said Mr. Tinderflint. “I was somewhat surprised to find my information rather dated.”
“Not by as much as I would have liked. I was five years getting out,” Father said. “And no, Peg, the process is not something I care to share with you. But by the time I made my way back to the Royal Embassy in Paris, there was a new crisis, and a serious one. Some of the lords in the southeast of England were making a determined play to get money to the Scots rebels. Someone had to go in and find out how this was being done. I received my orders, and I went.
“My only defense, Peggy, is that I thought you were safe. I never, ever thought for a moment that your uncle would risk his neck and his family by getting involved with the Jacobites again.”
“Maybe he couldn’t make his fortune any other way,” said Matthew. “Who would deal with a ruined man but other men risking ruin?”
Mr. Tinderflint looked startled. “That might be true, Mr. Reade. It very well might.”
“So Uncle Pierpont really was funneling money to the Jacobites?” Olivia would be pleased. Olivia would be shattered.
“And taking a healthy percentage of every exchange for himself,” said my father. “It worked well, until the Sandfords and the baron came into it. Lord Lynnfield, it seemed, had his own ideas about how things should be run and was ruthless enough to enforce them.”
I did not want to think about Lord Lynnfield. I did not want to hear the scream and the splash of his dying. I did not want to think there might be two ghosts coming around the next time I closed my eyes. Three, for there was Mr. Pym as well.
“Was it money that Uncle Pierpont and Mother quarreled about all those years ago?” I asked.
“No,” said Mr. Tinderflint. “They quarreled because she tried to warn him that he was suspected of moving moneys about for the conspirators in the earlier uprising. One of the earlier uprisings, I suppose I should say. For his part, Sir Oliver thought a sister should shield her brother, no matter what, and blamed her for setting the interests of the Crown over those of family.” Mr. Tinderflint leaned forward. “Peggy, I did not know where your father was when I came to you. I did not even know for certain if he still lived. I sought you out because I had a great need and I hoped to find your mother’s spark and talent in you.”
“And that you surely did, sir,” said Father.
“Oh, yes. I did indeed.”
I took my aching head in both hands and pushed my hair back from my face. What was I to say? What was I to think? I looked at the two men, the lean and the plump, the plain and the glittering. I wanted to hate them. I wanted to love them. I wanted to trust them, and I wanted to throw them out of my room and never see either of them again. In truth, I wanted too many things to be encompassed by my poor wounded heart.
“Why did the Sandfords insist on my being married into their family?” I asked.
“That is not yet entirely clear. My best guess is that they wanted a hostage.” Mr. Tinderflint said this with remarkable calm. “Unlike my poor self, they seem to have known that Fitzroy was active and in pursuit of their confederates. If you, Peggy, were in their house, they would have a final ace to play should he turn up.” Mr. Tinderflint paused. “Speaking of cards and turning up aces, I heard about your little game with Mr. Julius Sandford. Remarkable. Wholly and entirely remarkable.”
Against all judgment and good sense, his praise sent a flicker of warmth through me.
“So all that business with the sugar plantations being lost, what was that?” asked Matthew. “A distraction?”
“Yes, to cover the whole family’s return to England and their entrenchment in their home county,” said Father.
Mr. Tinderflint favored Matthew with his most careful look of appraisal. I found I did not like this at all. I did not want Matthew to come to Mr. Tinderflint’s attention. Those of us who did tended to fare rather badly.
“The Swedish ambassador, Gyllenborg, had been reaching out to the Jacobites. King Charles XII of that nation is in need of money to fund his own wars, and, incidentally, to keep Hanover and Hanover’s allies in check. King Charles knew the Jacobites would pay for arms.”
“So it was silver to the Swedes, arms to the Scots, death to George, and long live King James III,” my father finished for him.
“What will happen to Uncle Pierpont?” I asked.
My father was silent for a moment. “It’s already happened, I’m afraid. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” I echoed. The word made no sense. How could Uncle Pierpont be dead?
“There was a fire,” said my father gravely. “It began, they think, in his book room.”
A fire. In the book room, with all that paper. All that incriminating paper, which could, I now knew, prove him to be a traitor. Fragile, flammable paper that could send him to the tower and his widow and orphan daughter to the streets. I pictured him in the darkened room with a single candle in his hand, making up his mind. Hadn’t I stood in that room myself and thought of burning? No one was going to say the words, I knew that. They didn’t have to. I could see him carefully and methodically locking the door and then setting the candle’s flame against one pile of paper after another.
A tear trickled cold and slow down my cheek. “And Olivia?”
“With her mother at Leicester House,” said Mr. Tinderflint. “They are in the very capable hands of Molly Lepell and Mrs. Howard until you can return to them. There will be scandal, and grieving, but that is all.”
Because my cold, unerringly practical, hardhearted uncle had done the last service he could for his only surviving child and destroyed the evidence. All of it.
“What of the Sandfords?” asked Matthew. I suspected he did this so I would not have to.
Mr. Tinderflint gave a gusty sigh. “Mr. Julius Sandford is now, technically and possibly temporarily, Baron of Lynnfield. He is at this moment speaking with certain ministers and other important personages about this scheme of silver, arms, and oatmeal. In some ways, he is most fortunate indeed.”
“In what ways?”
My patron’s expression was a wry one. “His father is dead and so may easily be blamed for a great many things. And since this whole enterprise looks to have been the king of Sweden making a deliberate move against the king of Greater Britain, the new Lord Lynnfield becomes a very small fish indeed. If he tells enough truths, and swears to enough ignorance, he himself may be let off with his title and lands intact.”
“He knew all of it, from beginning to end,” I said. “I would swear on the Bible to that.”
“As would I,” replied my father. “Unfortunately, I cannot prove it, and Mr. Julius—the new Lord Lynnfield, I suppose we must say—is making a great show of surprise and sincerity. He was, after all, in Barbados while the foundations of the scheme were being laid.”
“And he’s a peer of the realm,” added Matthew. “The rules are different for them.”
“But surely they’ll listen to what you say about the brothers,” I protested to
Mr. Tinderflint. “You’re Earl Tierney, after all.”
My patron bowed. “Unfortunately, I am Earl Tierney who is not at all trusted.” He smiled modestly at my expression. “No, Peggy, it is not just you. I have made myself the object of suspicion in a great many circles.”
“You sound almost proud of that,” I said. “What of Sebastian?”
My father shook his head. “Unless he is willing to bear tales against his elder brother, no one particularly cares what becomes of the younger Mr. Sandford.”
“I’d be surprised if Sophy Howe wasn’t trying to talk him into doing just that,” I muttered. “She’d like a collaborator with a title and some money.”
“Ah! That reminds me. It reminds me.” Mr. Tinderflint patted his coat pockets. “A note for you, Peggy.”
He handed the letter across to me. For a single alarmed moment, I thought it must be from Sophy. But then I saw the seal and realized it was much worse. It was from Her Royal Highness.
Matthew squeezed my shoulder again as I broke the seal.
Miss Fitzroy (I read): I look forward to your returning safe and resuming your position. At that point, I shall expect a full account of your most recent adventures.
All the breath rushed out of me, pushed by the force of my relief. But on the heels of this came the question. Did I wish to return? To return would be to plunge myself right back into those same intrigues that had come so close to killing me, not once but twice.
I looked up mutely at Matthew. He read the question in me, and I watched a wish pass behind his eyes. He wished I would refuse, that I would answer this note by tendering my resignation and retiring to some country spot.
“It’s up to you,” he said. “I am with you, no matter what.”
I thought of the princess. I thought of Olivia. I thought of barrels of silver and oatmeal and yet another scheme to bring down a war upon us. Did I care whether Stuart or Hanover held the throne? I liked my mistress, and her daughters, and even the puppies. I suspected I was a fair way to being charmed by the prince. Did they hold the throne by right, though? How was I to tell?
What I could tell was that I did not want war. I did not want to play into the hands of men—like the Sandfords, like my uncle—who would use rebellion to line their own pockets and increase their own power. And it happened I was in a position to do something about this.
That notion, I found I liked very much.
“I’ll go back,” I announced. “After all, I have family to care for now. Olivia and Aunt Pierpont need me.”
I said this directly to my father. I waited for him to bluster and insist he would and could care for us all. He did neither of these things. Instead, he just turned to Mr. Tinderflint and Matthew. “May I have a moment with my daughter?”
Both these worthies looked to me, and I nodded, although seeing Mr. Tinderflint patting Matthew on the back as they left the room awoke fresh qualms in me.
The door closed, and I was once more alone with my father. I might be rather cleaner and more comfortable this time, but I was only a little less confused.
“The next months will be difficult, Peggy,” he told me. “I cannot say for certain what will happen or how it will end. I ask only one question of you.” He paused, and I think we both were waiting to see what he decided to say. “Do you think you might be able to forgive me?”
I looked at him, my hated, beloved, long-absent father. This was the man I had blamed for ruining my life, and who had so recently returned to save it. I thought on all I had been through, and all that was yet to come that I could not see. There would be Olivia’s troubles added to mine now. And mine already included small details, like the fact that Sophy and Sebastian were still at St. James’s Palace and that Julius Sandford might very well escape punishment. All of this had been set in motion by the choices this man had made—he and my mother together.
“I don’t know if I can forgive,” I said. Then I reached out and took his hard, stained hand. “But I know . . . I would like to try.”
CHAPTER ONE
London, 1716
IN WHICH A DRAMATIC READING COMMENCES, AND OUR HEROINE RECEIVES AN UNEXPECTED SUMMONS.
I must begin with a frank confession. I became Lady Francesca Wallingham only after I met the man calling himself Tinderflint. This was after my betrothal, but before my uncle threw me into the street and barred the door.
Before these events, I was simply Margaret Preston Fitzroy, known mostly as Peggy, and I began that morning as I did most others—at breakfast with Cousin Olivia, reading the newspapers we had bribed the housemaid to smuggle out of Uncle’s book room.
“Is there any agony this morning?” asked my cousin as she spread her napkin over her flowered muslin skirt.
I scanned the tidy columns of type in front of me. Uncle Pierpont favored the Morning Gazetteer for its tables of shipping information, but there were other advertisements there as well. These were the “agony columns,” cries from the heart that some people thought best to print directly in the paper, where the object of their desire, and everybody else, would be sure to get a look at them.
“‘To Miss X from Mr. C,’” I read. “‘The letter is burnt. I beg you may return without delay.’”
“A Jacobite spy for certain,” said Olivia. “What else?”
“How’s this? ‘Should any young gentleman, sound of limb, in search of employment present himself at the warehouse of Lewis & Bowery in Sherwood Street, he will meet a situation providing excellent remuneration.’”
“Oh, fie, Peggy. How dull.” My cousin twitched the paper out of my hands and smoothed it over her portion of the table.
As I know readers must be naturally curious about the particulars of the heroine in any adventure, I will here set mine down. I was at this time sixteen years of age, and in what is most quaintly called “an orphaned state.” In my case, this meant my mother was dead and no one knew where my father might be found. I possessed dark hair too coarse for fashion, pale skin too prone to freckle in the sun, and dark eyes too easily regarded as “sly,” all coupled with a manner of speaking that was too loud and too frank. These fine qualities and others like them resulted in my being informed on a daily basis that I was both a nuisance and a disappointment.
Because I was also a girl without a farthing to call my own, I had to endure these bulletins. As a result, I was kept at Uncle Pierpont’s house like a bad-tempered horse is kept in a good stable. That is, grudgingly on my uncle’s part and with a strong urge to kick on mine.
“Perhaps it’s a trap.” I poured coffee into Olivia’s cup and helped myself to another slice of toast from the rack. I will say, the food was a point in favor of my uncle’s house. He was very much of the opinion that a true gentleman kept a good board. That morning we had porridge with cream, toast with rough-cut marmalade, kippered herrings, and enough bacon to feed a regiment. Which was good, because that regiment, in the form of all six of Olivia’s plump and over-groomed dogs, milled about our ankles making sounds as if they were about to drop dead of starvation. “Perhaps the young man who answers the advertisement will be tied in a sack and handed to the press gangs.”
“There’s a thought. They might be slavers and mean to sell him to the Turks. The Turks are said to favor strong young English men.”
It is a tribute to Olivia’s steadfast friendship that my urge to kick never extended to her. My cousin was one of nature’s golden girls, somehow managing to be both slim and curved, even before she put on her stays. She possessed hair of an entirely acceptable shade of gold and translucent skin that flushed pink only at appropriate points. As if these were not blessings enough, she had her father’s fortune to dower her and a pair of large blue eyes designed solely to drive gallant youths out of their wits.
Those same gallants, however, might have been surprised to see Olivia leap to her feet and brandish an invisible sword.
“Back, you parcel of Turkish rogues!” she cried, which caused the entire dog flock to yip and run about
her hems, looking for something very small they could savage for their mistress’s sake. “I am a stout son of England! You will never take me living!”
“Hurray!” I applauded.
Olivia bowed. “Of course, Our Hero kills the nearest ruffian to make his escape, the rest of the gang pursues him, and he is forced to flee London for the countryside—”
“Where he is found dying of fever in a ditch by the fair daughter of Lord . . . Lord . . .”
“Lord Applepuss, Duke of Stemhempfordshire.” Olivia scooped up the stoutest of her dogs and turned him over in her arm so she could smooth his fluff back from his face and gaze adoringly down at him. “Lady Hannah Applepuss falls instantly in love and hides Our Hero in a disused hunting lodge to nurse him back to health. But Lord Applepuss is a secret supporter of the Pretender, and he means to marry his daughter off to a vile Spanish noble in return for money for another uprising—”
“And as she is forced onto a ship to sail for Spain, he steals aboard for a daring rescue?” One of the dogs decided to test out its savaging skills on my slipper. I gave it a firm hint that this was a bad idea with the toe of that selfsame slipper. It yipped and retreated. “Can there be pirates?”
“Of course there are pirates.” Olivia nipped some bacon off her plate with her fingers. “What do you take me for?” She turned to the dogs and held the bacon up high so that they all stood neatly on their hind legs, and all whined in an amazing display of puppy harmony.
“You really should write a play, Olivia,” I said, addressing myself once more to my toast, coffee, and kippers. “You’re better at drama than half the actors in Drury Lane.”
“Oh, yes, and wouldn’t my parents love that? Mother already harangues me for overmuch reading. ‘A book won’t teach you how to produce good sons, Olivia.’”
“That just shows she hasn’t read the right books.”
Olivia clapped her hand over her laugh. “You outrageous thing! Well, perhaps I shall write a play. Then—”