Without much interest, Anna sauntered up to the window in time to see a figure just striding out of her view. “I can’t tell from the top of his hat,” she said. “Do you know, I might walk into Blackhaven. Would you care to come?”
“I think I would rather go in the carriage. It’s sure to rain. But we could go and beard Rupert in his studio, if you like. I suspect that’s where he’s gone, and you haven’t seen it yet. We could be not at home to whoever this is.”
“What an excellent idea,” Anna approved, just as the footman entered with a card on a tray, which he presented to Serena.
“Thank you, James…” Her eyes lifted to Anna’s face. “Sir Lytton Lewis. Are we at home?”
The news, which she had given up hoping for, made Anna smile, though at the same time, Serena’s arch look brought embarrassed color to her cheeks.
“What can another half hour matter?” Anna said carelessly. “I shall be at home.”
“Then I shall play chaperone.” Serena said, nodding to the footman who trotted off again. “What a pity Tamar has sloped off. He could have done a little more glaring.”
“Oh, I think he gave that up. They were playing cards together before supper.”
Serena gave an unladylike snort of laughter, just as Sir Lytton was announced, and Louis strolled into the drawing room.
He was perfectly dressed in skin-tight pantaloons and a dark blue coat over a tastefully embroidered waistcoat. His snowy white cravat was simply tied but would not have disgraced the most fashionable in London society. As he bowed over the ladies’ hands and enquired politely after their health, Anna wanted to laugh, because he understood the banal rituals of English society so well.
Serena ordered fresh tea and invited her guest to sit, which he did, though not on the sofa beside Anna. Instead, he sat closer to Serena, directing most of his conversation at her. Perhaps Anna would have been piqued had he not caught her gaze as she brought his cup of tea, and discreetly but definitely winked.
After that, she sat back and watched. Was he playing a part, or was this simply Louis as he would be in his real life? Once he had gauged Serena’s character, he relaxed more, answering her humorous quips with his own, and drawing Anna so subtly into the conversation that she barely noticed he had done it. If their roles had been reversed, if he had been seeking information from her, she suspected she would have succumbed in minutes without realizing what she’d said until too late.
“Did you ride up from town?” Serena inquired.
“No, I walked.”
“Well, Anna and I mean to drive into Blackhaven, so you are welcome to a seat in the carriage.”
It must have taken some effort to walk up to the castle and it seemed to Anna that he was genuinely grateful for the offer. There was a moment, when, during the confusion of fetching cloaks and bonnets, Anna found him alone in the entrance hall, waiting for her and Serena.
“Are you well?” she asked as she approached him. “Is something wrong? Something else!” she corrected herself with a rueful smile.
“No, I am merely obeying your command to call.”
She lowered her voice as she came to a halt beside him. “Have you thought more about how to solve your problem?”
“What problem?” he countered, provokingly. “I am exactly where I wish to be.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
She curled her lips. “And that someone is clearly not me as you claimed at the ball. Behold my devastation.”
He gazed upward and turned, taking in his surroundings. “Ah, if only I thought that was true. I had many plans that did not include you. I chose this one. The castle must be a magnificent place to grow up in.” He glanced at her, perhaps hoping his sudden change of subject had confused her. “Is your home like this, too?”
She laughed. “Lord, no. Well, it probably was once. Tamar Abbey is a great medieval pile in Cornwall, acquired by no doubt nefarious means, by our ancestor from Henry the Eighth. When we were growing up, it was already falling around our ears from neglect and lack of funds to repair it. We had fun there, for a little, but it was more like playing in a huge ruin than living in a grand house.”
A faint smile played around his lips. “I can see you in such a place. Was there just you and Tamar?”
“God, no. We have two other brothers, and my twin sister, Christianne.”
“Twin?” he repeated. “You mean there are two of you?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. Christianne is nothing like me. Well, we may look alike, but there it ends. Christianne is the best of us.”
“But she is not here with you?”
“No. She is in London with her husband.”
“Another great nobleman?”
“No, a lowly gentleman who actually works for his living. A civil servant.” She stepped closer. “But he may know someone who could help you.”
His eyes locked to hers, searching, yet giving nothing away. Even so, she somehow had the impression of thoughts flitting furiously through his mind. Not all good thoughts. Had she blundered?
Since Serena came hurrying downstairs at this point, Anna merely turned and walked toward the door.
A quarter of an hour later, they alighted from the carriage in Blackhaven’s High Street in front of a milliner’s shop. Louis handed the ladies down and Serena said carelessly. “Come with us, if you like. We’re going to interrupt Tamar in his studio, where he may be hard at work or holding an impromptu party.”
Serena, it seemed, had few illusions about her husband.
“In either case,” Louis pointed out, “I can’t imagine he would be pleased to see us.”
“On the contrary, he’s always pleased to see people. People he likes, at any rate.”
Rupert was indeed discovered in his studio, entertaining a couple of disreputable looking friends and painting at the same time. The friends looked somewhat alarmed at their arrival, though Rupert himself appeared delighted.
He worked amongst the same kind of clutter Anna remembered, but amiably shoved and kicked things aside to make way for them and offered “Lewis” a glass of brandy.
Anna took in the huge number of paintings leaning in piles against the walls as well as hanging on every available space. “I never dreamed you were quite so industrious.”
“Oh, a lot of them are mere dross, pieces that didn’t work or were too dull to finish,” Rupert said modestly.
“But you may still find a few hidden gems,” Serena told her.
“What are you working on now?” Louis asked, approaching him to look.
With his paintbrush, Tamar pointed commandingly away from his easel. “I’ll show you if it works.”
Louis bowed ironically and examined the paintings on the wall instead.
Anna wandered the one-room cottage which was her brother’s studio, examining paintings at random. Crouching down in the far corner, she flicked through the unframed canvasses stacked there, until, near the back, she came upon a caricature of a stout, self-important little man, his eyes all but popping out of his head as he grasped greedily at money falling from various different hands scattered around the edges. His expression was avaricious and unpleasant, but that wasn’t what drove Anna backward so quickly that she clattered into the paintings piled under a little window. She recognized him.
“Anna?” came Serena’s concerned voice.
But Louis was already there, crouched in front of her. “What is it?” he asked urgently. Only then could Anna wrench her gaze away from the caricature. Louis was looking from her to the picture and back.
Anna tried to laugh. “Nothing. It is just an ugly picture.”
Rupert strode over and swept it up, breaking it over his knee and throwing the bits into the corner. “Christ, I’m sorry, Anna, I forgot it was there. I thought I’d burned it with the other rubbish.”
Anna swallowed. “Where is he?”
“Gone. Defeated. Powerless.”
She looked u
p at her brother over Louis’s head. “Your doing? Again?”
“Partly. Mostly Serena’s.”
Anna’s gaze flickered to her sister-in-law. How much did Serena know? God, how much was she giving away at this moment? She drew in a breath, trying to gather her wits, her hard shell, her knowledge that no one would hurt her ever again.
To her surprise, she found that Louis was holding both her hands, helping her to rise to her feet. And she was clinging to his fingers as if they were her only salvation.
Appalled by her weakness, she pulled her hands free. She couldn’t look at him. Instead, she hurried across to Tamar’s drinking friends, to make some witty observation on the picture above their heads, as if it had just caught her attention. They laughed and she sat beside them, strangers she could wrap around her finger and enslave for practice, just until the trembling had stopped.
“Serena, what about this hat shop of yours?” she called, jumping to her feet. “Are we too late, or may we go now?”
Chapter Seven
She was a chameleon, ever-changing. Her sudden collapse had been shocking, the way in which she’d clung to Louis both alarming and gratifying.
Until that moment, Louis had doubted she needed anyone’s protection, that she ever lost her formidable self-control. For an instant, all he wanted was to shield her from harm. And then, before he’d properly grasped what was happening, she’d pulled free, ignoring him to become the society beauty, deigning to charm the less respectable fringes of her brother’s acquaintance. And then she was gone. To look at hats.
Tamar clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, my friend. She affects most people like that.”
“What just happened?” Louis asked, lowering his voice so their arguing companions could not hear.
Tamar shrugged. “Bad memory.”
“Who was in the picture?” Louis asked, holding his gaze.
Tamar grinned. “Just a bailiff. He used to frighten us as children. Here, have another brandy. And then I’m going to throw you all out and go home for dinner.”
Tamar didn’t fool him. The young marquis was far more easily read than his sister, and he was covering something up. Something he would not tell a stranger. Or perhaps anyone.
Everyone had a past. He’d suspected Anna’s of being more interesting than most, considering the fascinating woman she had become. But somehow, he had never expected it to terrify her. He wasn’t remotely offended by her rejection. He understood it was necessary to her recovery. But he found, as he walked thoughtfully back to the hotel in the gathering dusk, that he had a new ambition—to be the one she leaned on, to be the one to whom she revealed her secret. He wasn’t even thinking now of secrets he could use.
Louis, you poor fool, she is defeating you…
It was fortunate that he had trained himself so well. Otherwise, his distraction might have caused him to miss the man who crossed his path just as he emerged into High Street. But even when deep in thoughts and plans, Louis automatically observed who came anywhere near him. Passers-by, watchers at windows, or at coffee houses. And the man hurrying up the high street in the growing dark almost brushed against him.
His heart leaping against his ribs, Louis merely swerved and walked in the other direction. Stopping at the jeweler’s window, he pretended to examine the wares on display while he gazed after the man who hadn’t even noticed him. Gosselin. The man he had drawn here by his escape. The man he meant to kill before he left Blackhaven.
*
Anna rarely attended church. In fact, she had deliberately avoided clerics ever since one of the local vicars in the vicinity of Tamar Abbey had sought to improve his social standing by marrying one of the marquis’s sisters. He hadn’t seemed fussy as to whether Anna or Christianne should have the honor of becoming his wife. In fact, it was doubtful he could tell them apart. In the end, Anna had got rid of him with a few graphic threats and a glimpse of the stiletto she carried everywhere with her. He’d given them both a very wide berth after that. A week later, they had accompanied Rupert on a trip to London where he wished to consult a solicitor. There, at a rare visit to the theatre, they had met Henry Harcourt, who had married Christianne two months later.
Vicars had remained low on Anna’s list of people to tolerate. Tristram Grant, vicar of St. Andrew’s Church in Blackhaven, had quickly become the exception to her rule. Neither sanctimonious nor self-righteous nor venal, so far as Anna could gather, he appeared to combine fun and wit with good works. Prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, Anna accompanied Rupert, Serena, her sisters, and their governess to church. Since it was a dry day, if cold and blustery, they all walked down to the town together.
The picturesque church was packed. Many servants, towns people, and country folk had to stand at the back. Serena and Tamar, however, led the way to the front of the church, nodding and murmuring greetings to people as they went. The young ladies did the same, waving enthusiastically to Rosa and the Benedict ladies seated toward the front.
Inevitably, the Braithwaites had a family pew, separating them from the riffraff. This enabled Anna to observe the rest of the congregation. She recognized the Winslows and several other people including Mr. Banion. But of Louis, there was no sign.
I expect he’s a Roman Catholic, she thought morosely. If he has any religion at all. But it was annoying not to have a chance to meet. Partly, of course, she wished to recover her loss of position when she’d fallen apart on seeing Rupert’s drawing of John Rivers. And partly, she found she just wanted to see him. To assure herself of his wellbeing. To talk to him further about changing sides, or at least into giving her the information she needed.
Mr. Grant preached a wonderful sermon, simple, articulate, humorous, and curiously uplifting. Even for Anna, who had believed herself immune to such “nonsense”.
Outside, while Serena spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Grant, Anna explored the little churchyard, with the girls following her to show her their favorite gravestones, some of which were hundreds of years old. Eventually, they spilled out of the side gate and walked all round the outside of the yard, past the vicarage, and round toward the front gate once more.
Anna’s heart jolted because there in front of her stood Louis, wearing much the same dress as yesterday, in conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Winslow, their daughter and a group of town worthies.
Somehow, she was sure Louis had already seen her, but he remained attentive to the thin, middle-aged lady who was chattering away to him. Instead, Anna caught Mr. Winslow’s eye and smiled.
“Good morning, Mr. Winslow,” she said, and of course, his eyes lit up on seeing her and he moved at once to intercept her.
“Lady Anna!” exclaimed his wife. “Do allow me to introduce everyone to you. They have been so looking forward to meeting Lord Tamar’s sister! First, will you let me present Sir Lytton Lewis?”
Anna smiled. “But there is no need, ma’am. Sir Lytton is a friend of my brother’s. How do you do, sir?” In a moment of recklessness, she offered her hand. Which gave him a false respectability in Blackhaven, but also served to remind Anna that not all touches were disgusting.
“Ah, then you know all about his adventures with a dangerous highwayman?” Mrs. Winslow was clearly disappointed.
“I do,” Anna admitted.
“Alas, I am seen in a most unheroic light,” Louis sighed, releasing her hand and leaving it cold while Anna acknowledged the other introductions.
“You were held up by a highwayman?” Lady Alice said in awe to Louis. “How wonderful!”
“Did he command you to stand and deliver?” Lady Helen demanded.
“I believe he did,” Louis replied.
“He clearly had no imagination,” Anna interjected.
“I am sure he was just a traditionalist,” Louis said firmly.
“These are my youngest sisters-in-law,” Anna said, swallowing down the surge of laughter. “If you have not yet been formally introduced. Lady Maria, Lady Alice, and Lady Helen Conway.”
The children curtseyed in a faultless manner that must at least have mollified their governess, advancing from the churchyard to gather up her charges. Not far behind Mrs. Elphinstone came Serena and Rupert.
“I suppose you also know Lewis’s history?” Mr. Winslow greeted them before Anna could hustle everyone away.
“What history?” Tamar asked without much interest.
“Why that he was the highwayman’s victim!”
Serena frowned. Tamar blinked, then let out a bark of laughter. “Kept that quiet, didn’t you?” he threw at Louis.
Louis sighed and hung his head. “Ladies are so much more understanding of such humiliation.”
Tamar slapped him on the wounded shoulder. “Come up and tell us all this afternoon. Have dinner, if you like. Ladies, Mr. Winslow, your servant!”
To his credit, Louis never flinched at the friendly blow, though it must have hurt. He merely smiled and raised his hat to everyone before walking on and leaving the Braithwaite party to climb into their carriages.
*
Louis was an alarmingly good liar. The tale he told that afternoon to Tamar, Serena, and the girls, was highly entertaining and did not spare his dignity. Anna was prepared to believe it did not even contradict the story he had already given Mr. Winslow.
“How can I ever believe a word you say?” she murmured under cover of the general laughter. She sat beside him on one of the drawing room sofas.
“By using your skill and judgement,” he replied at once. “Would you care to take a walk while the sun is out?”
It was exactly what she needed to do, spend time with him, make him comfortable, make him tell his secrets. And she would not refuse. But for an instant, the hint of danger that had always surrounded him, even when he could barely stand, showed in his eyes. He didn’t trust her.
It was a blow at this stage. Still, she was sure she could recover from it. She just couldn’t understand why it should hurt.
She stood. “I’m going to show Sir Lytton your gardens,” she told Serena.
“Take my sisters as chaperones,” Serena said at once, her eyes gleaming. “As once they were mine.”
The Wicked Spy Page 8