by Лорен Уиллиг
From the row of broken bindings, Geoff drew an elderly copy of Virgil's Aeneid. That particular work had been chosen on the theory that the French, being a simpleminded sort of people, would never expect a code premised on Greek letters to lead to a Latin poem, and would fritter their time fruitlessly away trolling for hidden meanings in obscure fragments of plays by Sophocles. It had worked brilliantly so far; Geoff's Paris informant assured him that agents of the Ministry of Police had commandeered all the available copies of Plato's dialogues, and that there was scarcely a volume of Aristophanes to be found in all of Paris.
No more or less battered than any of the other books on the shelf, the poem's margins were filled with what appeared, to the casual eye, to be nothing more than schoolboy scribbles, scraps of translation jostled against fragments of amateur poetry and scrawled notes to a classroom companion complaining about the schoolmaster and contemplating mischief. Although the ink had been carefully faded to give the impression of age, none of them dated back further than the previous year. Geoff was nothing if not thorough.
Shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, he spread Wickham's note and the paper bearing the key side by side. The first number in Wickham's cipher brought him to "souls drifting like leaves through the underworld."
"Leave," wrote Geoff with one hand, flipping to the next indicated page with the other.
As codes went, it wasn't perfect. Virgil had failed to anticipate the existence of Prinny or of Bonaparte, and words like "canon" and "artillery" translated oddly from their archaic counterparts. But it did have the benefit of having baffled Bonaparte's agents since the League of the Purple Gentian had first put it into practice. Before that, it had worked just as effectively as a means to bedevil their tutors at Eton, men considerably better versed in the classics than Bonaparte. Or, at least, so they claimed when parents came visiting. Geoff had always had his doubts.
Within ten minutes, the tattered volume was back on the shelf, and Geoff held a heavily marked-up page that had reduced itself to the message "Leave for Eire soonest. Situation urgent. See early tomorrow for instructions." It would have been only eight minutes if he hadn't wasted two precious minutes puzzling over the word "air," alternately translating it as "ere" and "e'er" before hitting on Eire. Both "early" and "soonest" were unmistakable. Both had been heavily underscored.
Ireland wasn't the place Geoff would have chosen for his honeymoon—he had cherished romantic images of bearing his bride off for a tour of the Lake District, where they could dally among Norman ruins and read poetry by the waterside—but years of managing the affairs of the League of the Purple Gentian had taught Geoff the importance of flexibility. Plans were all very well and good, but homicidal maniacs brandishing swords generally didn't take it kindly when you informed them that they were supposed to be rushing at you from the other side of the room.
Besides, reflected Geoff with a rakish grin, all one really needed for a honeymoon was a bed and a bride. And he was willing to compromise on the former.
Confining himself to essentials, Geoff jabbed his quill into the inkpot and wrote quickly, "Some difficulties. Explain tomorrow."
Wickham, Geoff thought, neatly transcribing his words into a meaningless mess of numbers and symbols that took up far more space than their content deserved, was not going to be overjoyed with the sudden addition of an extra party. But that was something to be hashed out in person, not crunched into code. Rapidly reducing Wickham's note to ash, Geoff dribbled sealing wax on the folded page, stamped it shut with his ring, and looked triumphantly at the clock. Ha! Only a quarter past the hour.
Geoff pushed away from the desk and made purposefully for the door, threading his way back through the empty rooms that wouldn't be empty once he brought Mary home as his bride. If he rode quickly, he might be able to catch the more cumbersome coach before it even reached the Oxford Arms. His blood—and other parts of his anatomy—quickened at the thought of Mary already tucked away into his coach, speeding through the night to be by his side. He still couldn't believe, even with the preparations made, the coach dispatched, the precious special license crackling in his pocket, and the parson summoned, that she had really chosen him.
Geoff remembered her as he had first seen her two years ago at the start of her first Season. Two years, one month, and three days to be precise, since time as Geoff reckoned it had never been quite the same again. There might have been the proverbial clap of thunder, but Geoff couldn't tell for sure; he couldn't hear anything over the sudden roaring in his ears. She had favored him with a dance. It had been a country dance, of the sprightlier sort, but to Geoff, every skip and hop seemed suspended in the air, every turn about the room a journey of a thousand miles. The music, the feet pounding the floorboards, the voices and laughter, had all receded somewhere behind the garden gate created by Mary's smile, and the periodic press of her hand in his.
And that had been all. The dance had ended and Mary's other admirers had closed back around her with all the finality of brambles around a sleeping princess. The following day, Geoff had returned to France to resume his duties in the League of the Purple Gentian. He had tucked the image of Mary away with his volumes of poetry and his collection of Renaissance etchings as something to be taken out and marveled over, something beautiful and pure in a world gone mad. Something worth fighting for. The hazy memory of Mary's face, lit like a Madonna with a hundred dripping candles, buoyed Geoff through his forays into the grim underworlds of Paris.
It seemed nothing short of a miracle that she should, after two years, still be unwed, and even more of a miracle that out of all the men in London she would look favorably upon him.
It wasn't that Geoff didn't know he was accounted a good catch. As society reckoned such things, he was right up there with the heirs to earldoms and considerably above ambitious second sons. He had a title, a respectable fortune, and all his own hair—although the latter fact was immaterial to most of the matchmaking mamas who thronged London's busy ballrooms. He could have been a knock-kneed dwarf with a hook for an arm and still made it to the upper end of the matrimonial lists. Viscounts, after all, weren't exactly thick on the ground, not even in Mayfair.
But he also knew that his wasn't the sort of face and form to set fans fluttering and females swooning when he swaggered into a ballroom. Geoff didn't swagger; he walked. He had never perfected the pose in the ballroom door, never cultivated the slow stare that stripped a lady down to her chemise in one easy arc of the eyes.
On the contrary, much of Geoff's life had been spent in learning how to deflect attention rather than command it. He had learned stillness in the quiet corridors of Pinchingdale House, and his lean form and aquiline features possessed the benefit of being unobjectionable, unremarkable, and entirely unmemorable. Miles, whose attempts to disguise himself generally resembled those of an elephant sticking a lamp shade on its head, had observed disgruntledly that Geoff didn't even need a disguise to slip about unseen.
"My dear boy," replied Sir Percy Blakeney, with a debonair twirl of the quizzing glass, "sink me if our Geoffrey isn't a very prince of shadows."
And so Geoff had gone on his shadowy way, gathering information, thwarting French plots, and building up an impressive repertoire of contacts in cities across the Continent. Richard might live for the dashing escapade, and Miles might garner genuine glee from bashing French operatives over the head, but Geoff was more than content to mastermind from the shadows. He had his friends, his books, his work—and he believed himself happy.
Until he met Mary Alsworthy.
Handing off his message to the courier, Geoff drew on his riding gloves and bounded down the steps at the front of the house. His groom held his horse for him, saddled and ready, not all that happy to have been dragged from the warm stables, and completely unaware that he was about to carry his master to the most momentous event of his life.
If Geoff had had his way, he would have shown up at Mary's door, hat in hand, and endured the requisi
te interview with her father, the one that began "I assure you, it is my every intention to make your daughter happy," and ended with an announcement in The Times. Then he would have ridden out to Gloucestershire to endure a decidedly less businesslike—even if just as predictable—meeting with his mother, who tended to regard her only surviving child with the same sort of proprietary air that Bonaparte felt for most of Europe. He knew his mother would cut up stiff about his engagement, with a gale of recriminations that would make her tantrums upon being told that Geoff was going to France look like a pleasant afternoon's tea party. It was, reflected Geoff, rather like the challenges tossed before heroes in old storybooks. If he could weather a full week of his mother's vapors, he would have more than earned his princess.
But on Friday, just as Geoff's valet had been loading his trunks into his curricle in preparation for a weekend house party in Sussex, Mary had sent him a note with "urgent" underscored four times. Fearing the worst, Geoff told the groom to unhitch the horses, ordered the trunks placed back in his dressing room, and rushed off to meet Mary in the appointed place in the park.
With her well-bribed maid standing a circumspect three trees away, Mary had tearfully informed him that All Was Lost.
"Sweetheart, don't fret," said Geoff, who had never learned to think in capital letters. "Surely it can't be as bad as all that."
Mary hastily averted her eyes, her entire form drooping like a wilted tulip. "No—it's worse!"
After a great deal of coaxing, Geoff had succeeded in persuading Mary to remove her hands from her face and tell him, as Mary put it, the Terrible Truth. Her parents, she explained, wished to marry her off forthwith.
"That is rather the point of the marriage market," commented Geoff with a hint of amusement. "And if that's your parents' goal, I'm sure we can satisfy them on that score."
"You wish to marry me?"
"Surely you can't be under any doubt," said Geoff fondly, thinking of how lovely she was, and what a miracle it was that she should be so unaware of her own powers.
Mary's dark lashes veiled her eyes. "But what about your mother? I have no family, no fortune…. What if she objects?"
There was no "if" about it. Snobbery vied with hypochondria for preeminence as his mother's favorite pastime. She would take noisily to her bed, threatening imminent demise. When that failed, she would set a cry that would be heard all the way from Gloucestershire to London, and probably as far north as Edinburgh. His mother, when she forgot her delicate condition and failing nerves (or was it her failing condition and delicate nerves? Geoff had never been quite clear on that point), revealed the possession of a set of lungs that would be the envy of any Master of the Hounds.
"She can object," replied Geoff practically, "but there's not much else she can do about it."
"Oh, if only we could be married at once!" Mary wrung her gloved hands. "You say you love me now, but there will be talk…and your mother…How can I be sure that you won't forsake me?"
With a crooked smile, Geoff lightly touched her hand. "Trust me. There's not much danger of that."
Mary paced two rapid steps away from him and came to an abrupt stop, her finely boned back quivering with emotion through the film of blue muslin. "I couldn't bear it! Not after…" Her voice failed her.
Geoff's smile faded. Bounding after her, he possessed himself of both her hands, asking earnestly, "What proof of my devotion can I offer? How can I convince you how highly I honor and esteem you?"
Her only answer was a muffled sob and an emphatic shake of her bonneted head. One perfect tear trickled down the sculpted loveliness of her cheek.
Geoff did what any sensible man would do when confronted with a weeping woman. He began promising things. Anything. Just so long as she would smile again. A phoenix feather from the farthest end of the earth, John the Baptist's head on a platter, jewels, furs, rotten boroughs, just so long as she would consent to stop crying.
And so it was that Geoff found himself staggering back to Pinchingdale House through the twilight, having promised a beaming Mary that he would present himself at her door—or, at least, somewhere beneath her bedroom window—in two nights' time, with a speedy traveling coach, a special license, and a set of matched rings. In that same bemused daze, he had canceled his trip to Sussex, postponed all his engagements for the next two weeks, and rousted out a tame parson who was more than willing to conduct a midnight wedding ceremony so Geoff and Mary could set off into the sunrise as man and wife.
He might not like the idea of an elopement, but if the end result meant that his goddess was going to be his wife, Geoff wasn't going to tempt fate by being too persnickety about the means.
As he clattered down Kingsway toward Holborn, passing shuttered shops and the odd drunken dandy straggling away from the pleasures of Covent Garden, Geoff spotted a familiar vehicle lumbering away up ahead. The family coach might not have much to recommend it in the way of speed, but it was outdated enough as to have become easily recognizable. Geoff would have spurred his horse on, but the cobbles were slick with a recent rain and the effluvia from dozens of windows, so he was forced, instead, to keep to a responsible trot as he gradually closed the distance.
He caught the coach up just as it pulled into the forecourt of the Oxford Arms. Flinging his reins to a sleepy ostler, Geoff vaulted off his horse, and, without waiting for the postboy to unfold the steps, or even for MacTavish to bring the carriage to a full stop, he wrenched open the door, every nerve fired by clear, pure joy—stronger than brandy in his blood. Every inch of his skin, every bone in his body, felt intensely alive, thrumming with an imperative that went straight back to the Garden of Eden.
When the door of the coach racketed open beneath his hand and he saw the vague outline of a cloaked figure for him within, Geoff acted on pure instinct.
He grasped her by the shoulders and scooped her eagerly into his embrace.
Chapter Three
The moment was everything Geoff had known it would be.
After an initial startled gasp, his intended bride dissolved into his arms, returning his kiss with more fervor than she had ever shown before. They were on the verge of being married, after all. Amazing what a difference imminent vows could make.
Her hands, originally poised against his chest as though to push him back, slid slowly up to his shoulders and stayed there, as her head tilted back, her lips matched to his. Warm and soft beneath the voluminous folds of her cloak, she fit perfectly into his arms. The dark interior of the carriage closed around them like the velvet lining of a jewel box, blotting out the inn behind them, the unfortunate scents of the courtyard, and the very passage of time.
It was quite some time before it began to dawn on Geoff that she might be just a bit too soft. The arms encircling his neck were a little rounder than he remembered them, and her shoulder blades seemed to have receded. Geoff's hand made another tentative pass up and down her back, without breaking the kiss. Yes, definitely smoother. It might just be the added padding of the cloak, but other discordant details were beginning to intrude upon Geoff's clouded senses. Her fragrance was all wrong, not Mary's treasured French perfume, but something fainter, lighter, that made him think without quite knowing why of the park at Sibley Court in summer. It was a perfectly pleasant scent, but it wasn't Mary's.
He was kissing the wrong woman.
In the sudden rush of clarity, Geoff arrived at another painful realization. The roaring noise he had been hearing, which he had cheerfully ascribed to the pounding of his blood in the heat of the moment, wasn't coming from within at all. Someone was actually roaring, and not far away. The roar had a decidedly jeering quality to it, and it was coming from right behind him. Whoever it might be was clearly having a rousing, roistering good time—at Geoff's expense.
Stiff with horror, Geoff pulled away, breaking the kiss with an audible pop. He could hear the woman in his arms, the woman who wasn't Mary, draw in a ragged breath, as if she were just as shocked as he.
D
evil take it, whom had he been kissing?
"Nice work, Pinchingdale!" called a voice behind him, and Geoff swung around, still poised on the brink of the carriage, to see Martin Frobisher saluting him in a gesture of exaggerated approbation. "I give that at least three minutes without coming up for air, don't you, Ponsonby?"
As inebriated as his companion and slower on the uptake under any circumstances, Percy Ponsonby stumbled into the small circle of light cast by the carriage lamps and peered owlishly at the woman behind Geoff. "I say, Pinchingdale, what's all this?"
All this was very clearly not Mary Alsworthy.
The woman so recently entangled with Geoff yanked back with enough force that her hood slipped back, revealing a confusion of ginger-colored hair that glinted like a fuzzy halo where the light struck the individual strands. It could not have been farther from Mary's sleek fall of black hair, which ran silver and blue in the candlelight like a midnight stream. Mary's eyes were delicately tilted at the corners; this woman's were perfect rounds of shock, primrose to Mary's sapphire. The only similarity lay in the lips, full and generous—though some more generous than others. Mary had never responded like that.
"Well, well, well," said Martin Frobisher, rolling the word over his tongue like a fine port. "Well, well, well."
Once he found a syllable he liked, he stuck with it till the bitter end. At least, Geoff was feeling bitter, not to mention decidedly unwell.
He had just been kissing his future sister-in-law. With considerable relish. That undoubtedly counted as incest under an obscure ecclesiastical law dating to the early years of the Reformation, complete with a punishment involving a sack, a beehive, and a large pot of honey.