Drew's cheeks reddened at Sir's harsh accusation, yet despite his indignation he could understand the need for the question. Espionage was a dangerous, deadly business, with no margin for error. In the field, one agent's life depended upon the judgment of another. Should that judgment become impaired for any reason whatsoever, then that agent had the right to know. If he was in Sir's place, he would have made the very same demand.
"I find her beautiful and charming, although perhaps a trifle too willful for my tastes," he answered, determined to be as honest with Sir as he could. "If her and her father's loyalty were not in question, then I suppose I might be tempted to pay her court. Although I doubt her father would ever accept me," he added, his voice displaying more bitterness than he realized. "As a younger son without prospects, I doubt I would be made welcome."
"Thank you, Andrew," Sir said, using Drew's Christian name. "I appreciate your honesty. And I apologize for pressing you on the matter, but it was necessary, I promise you. I only pray that for your sake, as well as for Lady Melanie's, you will never have to choose between her and your duty. It can be a difficult choice, lad, and a painful one. Believe me," he added softly, his eyes taking on a somber glow, "I know."
Chapter Four
Lady Charlotte Abbington arrived two days later, her ancient traveling coach, drawn by an equally aged team of blacks, creating quite a sensation when it creaked to a halt in front of Marchfield House. Drew had been warned by Lady Melanie that her grandmother was "a trifle eccentric," but this euphemistic description did little justice to the tiny woman in a faded satin polonaise who glared up at him from the doorstep.
"Who the deuce are you?" Lady Charlotte demanded, the hood of her threadbare redingote falling back to reveal a misshapen wig of powdered horsehair.
"I am Davies, my lady," Drew answered, doing his best not to gape at the absurd creature. "I am His Grace's butler."
"Pshaw," Lady Abbington retorted, stepping into the vestibule. "You wasn't butler last time I was here."
"Grandmother, that was back in seventeen eighty-seven," Melanie chided gently, hurrying forward to rescue Davies from her grandmother's in-opportunities. Despite his carefully blank expression, she could tell he was discomfited by the elderly lady's querulous demands. "You really cannot expect the same staff to be on duty after so many years!"
"Why not? I'm still here, ain't I?" Lady Charlotte shot back, the violet eyes she had bequeathed her granddaughter snapping with indignation. "It seems to me the least these servants can do is to stay alive. But that's the world for you, no loyalty anywhere." Her attention was next claimed by Miss Evingale, who was cowering by the newel post, regarding Lady Charlotte with wide-eyed apprehension.
"And you are the companion, Miss Evingale, I take it?" she asked, tottering forward to study Miss Evingale through a quizzing glass suspended from a frayed velvet ribbon. "Good," she added at the other woman's wordless nod. "You look just as a companion ought to look: plain as a pikestaff. Are you any good with a needle?"
"Y-yes, Lady Abbington," Miss Evingale stammered, clearly awestruck by the tiny marchioness. "My dear father insisted that I be skilled in all the domestic arts."
"Excellent." Lady Charlotte bared her yellowed teeth in a pleased smile. "I have a gown or two that wants mending; you may see to it."
Melanie opened her mouth to protest this usurpation of her companion, but one glance at Miss Evingale's happy smile stilled her protest. Odd as it sounded, the silly creature looked delighted at having been ordered to perform a task that was usually the providence of a lady's maid. Melanie's eyes flicked toward Davies, who was standing at attention behind them, his expression carefully wooden. Their eyes met briefly, and a look of shared laughter flashed between them.
"Would you like to see your rooms now, my lady?" she asked, turning to her with a loving smile. "I'm sure you must be feeling quite fatigued after your journey." She slipped an arm around the marchioness's waist and began guiding her toward the staircase.
"Nonsense." Lady Charlotte dug in her heels with surprising strength. "I ain't so decrepit that I can't endure a coach trip of four days without sticking my fork in the wall! I want my tea, and then I want to see this great barn of a place your papa has rented for the season. I'm sure he must be paying far too much for it."
"Very good, Grandmother," Melanie agreed with alacrity, her only concern to get the elderly woman safely closeted away before she further disgraced herself. "Tea sounds just the thing; see to it, won't you, Davies?"
Drew waited until they were out of sight before turning to the footman. "You may wipe that smirk off your face, Edward," he rapped out in the forbidding manner of an upperservant correcting an underservant. "Lady Abbington is a guest here, and she will be treated with all due respect. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Mr. Davies!" Edward snapped to attention, the laughter dying from his brown eyes. "But you have to admit the old lady is dashed queer in her upper stories. I'll wager she's an even bigger quiz than the old king himself!"
"With all due respect," Drew repeated, not bothering to answer Edward's rhetorical question. "Don't forget that for all intents and purposes I am butler here, and that means I can have you dismissed from your post."
The threat made Edward pale with fright. "Yes, Mr. Davies," he said, his expression abruptly serious. "As you say, Mr. Davies."
"Good lad." Drew unbent enough to favor the young footman with a warm smile. "Now kindly inform Mrs. Musgrove she is to prepare a tea tray for our guests. I shall see that the marchioness's bags are taken to her rooms."
"Yes, sir!" Edward gave Drew a tenuous smile, then rushed off to carry out his instructions.
After Edward departed, Drew turned to the other footmen, noting from their rigidly held faces that further warnings were unnecessary. He ordered them to carry the bags upstairs, then left to have a word with the marchioness's coachman. Marchfield House did have a small stable around back, but the earl's carriage and team, along with Marchfield's curricle and team of bays, were already stabled there. Accommodations for Lady Charlotte's rig would have to be made elsewhere.
He also decided to do his best to avoid Lady Abbington. He knew of her visit to Marchfield House, of course, but it had never occurred to him that she would remember the staff. The threat she posed to the carefully orchestrated deception was a small one, but it was a threat he felt he could not ignore. As with Lady Melanie, he would give the marchioness a wide berth, and if that did not work, he would have to see what plans Sir might have. With matters coming to a crisis point, he dared not leave anything to chance, not even a dotty old woman.
While Drew was off seeing to his duties, Melanie was kept busy trying to keep her grandmother from redesigning the Duchess's Room.
"Well, I don't see why you're setting up such a hue and cry." Lady Charlotte pouted when Melanie told her somewhat sharply that she could not have the room repainted during her stay. "After all, I am a marchioness, and while I am in residence oughtn't the room to be called the Marchioness's Room? Besides, I detest yellow." She gave the walls an angry glare.
"Perhaps so," Melanie agreed with studied patience, "but the fact remains that this is the Marchfields' home, and I do not think they would thank us if we were to take to repainting the walls after they were kind enough to let us stay here."
"Pooh, people who let out their houses to perfect strangers are made of sterner stuff than that," Lady Charlotte said, lifting up the lid of a Dresden box and peering inside. "Although it's all dashed queer, if you ask me. I've never known a Marchfield to do anything for anybody unless there was a profit in it for them. Or unless it was in the line of duty. The Marchfields have always had a stern sense of duty." She slipped the small box into the reticule dangling from her voluminous skirts.
"Then I am sure that accounts for it." Melanie calmly rescued the small treasure from her grandmother's purse and returned it to the table. "Papa said the duke offered his home only after he had spoken to Lord Castlereagh."
&nbs
p; "I wish we might have met the duke," Miss Evingale volunteered with a loud sigh, her blue eyes glowing with pleasure as she studied the small portrait of the duke and his bride that adorned another table. "I vow he is a most handsome man."
"His grandfather was quite dashing, too," Lady Charlotte said, a smile of remembrance touching her pursed lips. "Black hair, and eyes as cool and clear as diamonds. Ah, well"—she shook off the memory—"no use mooning over the pair of them; one's dead, and the other's married off. What we must do now is concentrate on finding a husband for you, Melanie. Admittedly, you're rather long in the tooth for a deb, but I'll be hanged if I'll let you whither into an old maid." Her eyes flashed toward Miss Evingale, who simpered with delight at the marchioness's scarcely veiled insult.
"You mustn't concern yourself with me, ma'am," Melanie said, all of her incipient resentment at her uncertain position rising to the fore. "I have no wish for a husband, I assure you."
"Of course you don't." Lady Charlotte gave her a sagacious look. "The wretched creatures are usually more bother than they are worth, but still they have their uses. Now, since you are an earl's daughter and an heiress in your own right, I don't think we should settle for anything less than a viscount. But the first order of business will be a trip to the dressmaker. You surely do not expect to go out in society dressed like that."
Melanie glanced down at her round dress of green muslin. It was in the first stare of fashion, or so the modiste she had engaged had told her. And it was a great deal more presentable than the moldering gown adorning her grandmother's back, she thought, struggling to hold on to her temper.
"Your concern is most touching, Grandmother," she began coolly, "but as I have already been to the dressmaker, there is nothing left to be said."
"Is there not?" Lady Charlotte sniffed, eyeing Melanie's gown with obvious disdain. "That rag might do well enough for some chit fresh from the schoolroom, but it makes you look a perfect cake. You're three and twenty, Melanie, and that is far too old to go about dressing like a gel."
So much for sparing her grandmother's tender feelings, Melanie thought, her jaw clenching with anger.
"We'll go to Bond Street," Lady Charlotte decided, ignoring her granddaughter's flashing eyes. "With the season not three weeks away, we've not a moment to lose! Order our carriage, and we shall leave at once!"
Watching her grandmother shop put Melanie in mind of a conquering army on the march; she swept all before her. Having wormed the name of the most sought-after modiste in London from the daughter of an old friend, Lady Charlotte swept into the salon demanding the attention she felt befitted a lady of her rank and advanced years.
"But of course the young lady must have a new wardrobe," the seamstress, a Madame Philippe, gushed, her almost black eyes moving over Melanie with patent eagerness. "And I quite agree with my lady that the insipid fashions of the young girls will not do. We shall design a whole new look for her, quois? I shall give the matter my personal attention."
"Of course you shall," Lady Charlotte said, clearly expecting no other answer. "We shall start first with the dress she will wear for her presentation at Court. It must be white, of course, but I want it to look like something a grown woman would wear." She settled back in her chair while Madame and her assistants rushed about to do her bidding.
Melanie spent the next several hours standing in sullen silence while various swatches of fabrics in a rainbow of colors were held against her for her grandmother's approval. Despite the excesses in her own dress, Lady Charlotte possessed a fine clothing sense, and Melanie had to concede that many of the fabrics and patterns she picked out were the same she would have chosen had she any say in the matter.
"I still don't see why I must be presented," she muttered as she was jabbed with yet another pin. "With the king so ill, it hardly seems the proper thing to do."
"Goose." Lady Charlotte gave a derisive snort. "If the ton won't let that tiresome little Corsican interfere with the season, whyever should they let a trifle like a mad king stop them? Besides, it is to Queen Charlotte and Prinny you will be making your bows. Actually, I think we ought to be grateful it is poor King George who has lost his reason. Only think of the difficulties if it had been the queen? You would be forced to be presented to that loose-living Caroline, and a fine farce that would have been!" She gave a delicate shudder. "We might as lief introduce you to a Covent Garden abbess!"
After hearing that treasonous bit of speech, Melanie kept her lips firmly sealed, not even objecting when her grandmother ordered up a dozen new silk gowns in the most stunning shades. Finally Lady Charlotte had had enough, and ordered Madame to have the gowns delivered by the end of the month.
Once their business with Madame Philippe was complete, the marchioness ordered the coachman to drive them to Ackerman's Repository on Oxford Street. The large emporium, which occupied several buildings, had opened a few years earlier, and Lady Charlotte was eager to explore its many delights. Even Miss Evingale, who usually detested shopping, expressed a desire to visit the famous arcade, an interest which was easily explained when she began speaking of all the titles said to be available.
"What sort of books?" Lady Charlotte demanded, bending a suspicious frown on the other woman. "Not improving books? I can't abide the prosy things. If I want to know what God thinks, I shall ask Him when I see Him."
"Oh, I'm sure they have some of those," Miss Evingale said, her loud sniff letting her opinion of that form of literature be known. "But as it happens, I was referring to real books, my lady—novels."
"Can't say as I've ever read a novel," Lady Charlotte confessed, relaxing against the soft velvet squabs of the coach and readjusting her wig. "But so long as they ain't dull as ditchwater, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to buy a dozen or so of the things."
Ackerman's was filled with customers in search of bargains, and while her grandmother and companion perused the ceiling-to-floor bookshelves, Melanie drifted over to a counter to inspect some fine Indian silks newly arrived from Calcutta. She was about to ask the clerk for the price of a particularly lovely paisley shawl when she was accidentally jostled from behind. She turned around, the apology she had been about to utter dying on her lips as she recognized the other woman.
"Mrs. Mason, what a delight to see you!" she cried, extending a gloved hand in welcome. "I trust you and your family are well?"
But rather than returning Melanie's warm greeting, the older woman drew back, her dark eyes snapping with dislike as she glared at her. "Well!" she exclaimed, her round face purpling in anger. " 'Tis a fine thing when decent people are accosted in public by the likes of you! I quite wonder that you should have the brass to even show your face!"
Melanie's cheeks flamed at such rude treatment. She had met the Masons in Washington, where the older woman's husband had been employed by the Foreign Office, and the two families had shared the same ship on the return to England. She had never cared for the woman and her encroaching manners, but she had always treated her with cordial respect, a courtesy Mrs. Mason was obviously not willing to accord to her.
Aware that the woman's strident voice was attracting an unwelcome amount of attention, Melanie decided to stage a strategic retreat. "I am sure I have no notion what you mean, Mrs. Mason," she said, her small chin coming up proudly. "I was but offering you a civil good day; my apologies if I have intruded." And she turned and walked away, her lips tightening at the buzzing whispers that followed her.
She found her grandmother and companion still poring over titles, and tersely informed them she had a headache and wished to leave. Miss Evingale was instantly solicitous, slipping a comforting arm about Melanie's shoulders and guiding her out the door. Even her grandmother seemed concerned, her violet eyes thoughtful as they took in Melanie's glittering eyes and slightly flushed cheeks.
"You are looking a bit feverish," she declared once they were safely settled in the carriage. "I shall have Cook prepare you a purgative once we are home."
Melanie was s
ilent on the brief journey to Mayfair, her initial anger slowly giving way to confusion. Whatever did Mrs. Mason mean by her preposterous accusations, she brooded, her expression faintly troubled as she studied the flow of carriages and horses moving past their window. It was obvious that she had meant every word she had spoken, for the animosity emanating from her had been quite genuine. But why should she hate her so? What had she or, indeed, any member of her family done to deserve such rancor? That was the question for which there seemed to be no answer.
Over the next two weeks Melanie was kept too busy to brood over Mrs. Mason's cryptic remarks. At first she'd considered telling her father of the incident, but in the end she decided against it. Papa was highly protective of her, and she didn't want him taking out his anger on the malicious woman's poor husband. Besides, no one of importance had witnessed the incident, and she thought it best to let the matter drop.
Another reason she hesitated confiding in her father was that he seemed so distracted of late. His appointment from Castlereagh had finally come through, but rather than being assigned a new post abroad, he had been given a position as a liaison between the Foreign Office and the Cabinet. He had an impressive title, he told Melanie with a sad smile, but that was all that could be said of the appointment.
Lady Charlotte had settled into the household, and she and Miss Evingale had grown as close as two inkleweavers. They spent hours closeted away in the marchioness's rooms reading the latest offering from the Minervian Press, and Melanie discovered she now had two determined romantics plaguing her.
"I think Edwina has the right of it," Lady Charlotte declared one afternoon as they were sitting down to tea. "That Davies is as handsome as any of our other heroes. Can't imagine why he insists upon posing as a butler."
"Perhaps because he is a butler," Melanie replied resignedly, thinking she really had to do something to control Miss Evingale's vivid imagination. This wasn't the first time she had taken such a fanciful notion into her head. In Washington she had developed the notion that Mr. Barrymore was really the long-lost son of a nobleman, and she'd spent several weeks mooning over the embarrassed assistant until Melanie was forced to speak sharply to her.
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