A Very Selwick Christmas (4 page)

“Yes, on a plate,” retorted his wife. “When they can"t peck back.”

Amy was used to their banter by now. Ignoring them, she looked to her own husband, who was rubbing his head as though he had the headache.

“Are you unwell?” Amy whispered.

Richard shook his head, like a swimmer breaking through the water. “I just need a breath of air. You"ll be all right?”

“Of course,” said Amy.

Ignoring the swirl of conversation around her, she watched as her husband gracefully extricated himself the grouping. Fending off his mother"s concerns about his health, he slipped out of the room, moving with all the speed of a man trying to outpace his own private pack of demons.

Amy just wished it didn"t feel quite so much as though he were running away from her.

I saw three ships come sailing in,

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day,

I saw three ships come sailing in,

On Christmas Day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three?

-- “I Saw Three Ships”

The air was cooler in the hallway, away from the pressing heat of too many people, too many candles, and too much hot food all crammed into the same space. Funny, how even a room the size of a village green could feel crammed with enough people stuffed into it.

That wasn"t it, though, was it? It wasn"t the number of people or the smell of the food or the glare of the candles. It was the expression on Amy"s face when she had made that comment about being stranded in England. Richard couldn"t remember the exact phrasing of it, but the meaning had been clear enough.

It was maddening to know what she wanted and to be incapable of doing anything at all about it.

Only that wasn"t quite honest, was it? He could do something about it. That was the worst of it. In the back of his mind lurked the niggling possibility that if Amy really wanted to go back to France, it could be arranged. The only person who knew of her complicity in his escape was the Assistant to the Minister of Police, and he had since been retired to a private institution on the outskirts of Paris—for a rest, as the official report went. Absolutely barking barmy, was the way Richard"s source had put it. With Delaroche out of the way, Amy"s path would be clear.

Or it would have been, if she hadn"t married him. Marriage to the former Purple Gentian was a sure way to blight the career of a budding spy.

Even so, she might manage it. Her brother was well-liked in Bonaparte"s court, her cousin received without a qualm. There were few people in Paris who would recognize her. She could pose as a cousin, a maid, anything she liked, rather than staying in rural seclusion in Sussex, yoked to a useless former member of His Majesty"s secret service, with nothing better to do than tell over the tales of his aging exploits by the crackle of the winter fire.

Richard"s head thudded painfully.

It took him a moment to realize the noise wasn"t entirely coming from inside his own skull.

Heavy footfalls reverberated along the marble passageway behind him as a very large object propelled itself down the hallway with a vigor that made the statues shake in their niches.

“I say! Hold up a moment!” Richard"s one-time best friend came skidding to a halt beside Richard.

Not one-time. Long-time. He and Miles had been inseparable from Eton on, until Miles had had the temerity to marry Richard"s sister. Yet another upheaval in a year of upheavals.

It had been pointed out to Richard, forcibly and repeatedly, by the various females in his family, that the choice had not been entirely Miles". Henrietta had had a hand in it, too.

But it had still felt like a betrayal. A betrayal of whom, of what, and of why was not something that Richard felt like examining too closely. He had clung stubbornly to the mantra that Miles Should Have Known Better.

“Known better than whom?” his mother had said, with a pointed look at him.

That just made it worse. Just which one of them was her actual offspring? Miles might have been practically part of the family, but he was only so because Richard had brought him home, like a stray dog found begging at the kitchen door. He was supposed to be Richard"s dog—well, friend.

At the moment, he looked more like a kicked dog, gearing up to dodge another blow. As he trotted along beside, Richard could see Miles watching him warily, gearing up for yet another rebuff. He had been administering a lot of those recently, hadn"t he?

“Don"t look like that,” said Richard irritably. He hadn"t meant to say it irritably. It was just that everything seemed to come out that way these days. “I"m not going to bite.”

“A fine way you have of showing it,” Miles said, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated way, but there was too much truth in it for it to be entirely in fun.

It made Richard want to lower his head in his hands and groan. A fine mess he had made of things, hadn"t he? His wife unhappy, his best friend afraid of him…. Could he take the hands of the clock, turn them back, and do it all over again, starting somewhere back last Christmas?

“I"m sorry,” he said, instead, not meeting his old friend"s eyes as he pushed open the door to one of the smaller book rooms. There were three of them in Uppington Hall, in gradations of grandness. Richard had deliberately chosen the least grand, the one his father tended to use the most.

Richard went unerringly to the cabinet where the port was kept, drawing out a decanter and two glasses. He had been raiding the decanter in this particular study since he had turned twelve. Richard pulled out the stopper, filling each glass half full of ruby liquid, the finest product of Oporto. Funny, how some things stayed the same, while other things turned inside out and upside down.

Sometimes, Richard felt as though the world had chosen 1803 to turn on its head and spin like a top, with nothing to do but to cling to the sides and hope that it eventually would all turn right side up.

Shrugging, he handed Miles a glass. “It"s been a strange year.”

“At least it"s almost over!” Miles said cheerfully, seizing eagerly at the olive branch, pathetic and puny one though it was. He raised his glass in an impromptu toast. “Here"s to 1804!

Mmm, port,” he added happily, smacking his lips. “Nice port, too.”

Richard"s lips twisted, despite himself. He"d missed Miles. He didn"t like to admit it, but he had.

But all he said was, “Let"s hope a good wine makes a good year.”

Miles grinned as he plopped himself down in a Jacobean cane chair. “It can"t hurt.”

“Yes, it can,” said Richard dryly. “The next morning.”

Miles looked at him warily, as though suspecting a dangerous double meaning, but said, easily enough, “Time enough to think about that then.” He waved a hand airily through the air. “Sufficient unto the day, and all that—urgh!”

The hand, unfortunately, had been the one holding his glass.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” said Richard, nodding at the puddle of crimson liquid sinking nicely into the tan buckskin of Miles" breeches, “but port is meant to be ingested through the lips, not the leg. Just something you might want to know.”

“Oh, ha bloody ha.” Removing a handkerchief from his sleeve, Miles scrubbed at the stain, succeeding only in spreading it across a wider area. Richard couldn"t fail to notice that the handkerchief had been unevenly embroidered with Miles" initials. Or, rather, initial. The placement of the single, wobbly “M” suggested that it had initially been planned as part of a larger grouping.

“Henrietta embroider you handkerchiefs, did she?” said Richard, nodding at the scrap of cloth.

Stopping mid-scrub, Miles grinned fondly at the now reddened scrap. “Well, handkerchief, really. The others are still in progress.”

“Ah, yes,” said Richard cynically. “I still have the slipper Henrietta gave me for my birthday last year. When I asked her where the other one was, she told me it would be good for my health to hop.”

Miles beamed proudly. “She does like to get the last word. Jolly long ones, too, most of the time.”

Something about the glow on his old friend"s face suddenly made Richard feel very, very small.

He looked down into his own port, and saw only the wobbly reflection of his own face, darkened and distorted by the effect of light on liquid. If they were happy, who was he to object? Not that he hadn"t had cause, back in June, he told himself, when he had found his best friend and sister together in an extremely compromising position. But if Miles really loved her….

The force of Richard"s exhalation made ripples across the surface of the liquid, wrinkling his reflected face into a dozen identical folds.

“Look,” he said gruffly, by way of preamble.

Miles obediently looked. Henrietta had always said that Miles was excellent with direct commands. The recollection made Richard wince, but he continued doggedly on,

nonetheless. It was Christmas, devil take it, and he was bloody well going to be noble if it killed him.

It did occur to him that there might be something a little self-defeating about framing the sentiment in that way, but he dismissed that as beside the point.

Richard cleared his throat. It was the port, of course. Bloody viscous stuff, port. “Look,” he repeated. “Shall we let bygones be? New year, new leaf?”

Miles grinned at him, an all out grin that all but split his face in half. “I don"t see any bygones here, do you?”

Richard could. They were all around him, like evil sprites. Lost friends, lost opportunities, lost causes. “No,” he said. “Not a one.”

“Excellent.” Miles rubbed his hands together, flinging himself back across his chair with an unaffected exuberance that seriously taxed the capabilities of the two hundred year old frame.

“There"s something I"ve been wanting to run by you, something that came across my desk at the War Office….”

Stretching his legs out in front of him, Richard permitted himself a groan. The port must be mellowing him. “I miss the War Office.”

“They miss you, too,” said Miles sympathetically, before getting down to business. “Do you know a Captain Wright?”

“With an arr or a double-u?”

Miles did some quick mental spelling. No one watching him would ever have been able to guess that he had been top of their class at Eton for classical Greek.

Triumphantly shaking back the hair from his brow, Miles announced, “Both.”

“Has a boat, hasn"t he?” recalled Richard.

Miles was generous enough not to point out that the word “captain” generally implied the possession of some form of nautical conveyance.

It was beginning to come back. “Captain John Wright? He"s a naval man. He carried the odd packet back to England for me, when I couldn"t get hold of another means of convoy.”

Miles nodded. “He"s carrying more than correspondence these days. There"s a rumor than he"s been smuggling émigrés back into France.”

“What kind of émigrés?”

Miles flopped back in his chair. “That"s the devil of it. We don"t know. They might just be simple souls yearning for home and hearth. Or….”

That “or” carried a multitude of possibilities, most of them dangerous. All of Richard"s old instincts twanged discordantly. If Captain Wright was smuggling across French émigrés intent on fomenting revolution against the revolution, their amateur bumblings might do more harm to the royalist cause than—well, than any number of Bonaparte"s canons. The last thing they needed was another failed Royalist coup to give Bonaparte an excuse to tighten security and call public sympathy to his side.

If that was the case, something would have to be done immediately to neutralize the amateur plotters. They would have to—

Richard caught himself up short. They. Not he. He had nothing to do with it anymore. He had been retired. Rusticated. It was Jane Wooliston"s business now. The Purple Gentian had left the garden.

Richard took a long swig of his port before speaking. “Why tell me? I"m out of commission these days.” He could feel himself wallowing. Surely, a little wallow was permissible, on an occasion such as this.

“Only in France,” said Miles helpfully.

“If you"ll forgive me pointing out the obvious,” Richard said sarcastically, leaning over to splash a second round of port into Miles" glass before topping up his own, “France just happens to be where the enemy is.”

“That doesn"t mean there isn"t work to be done here. Some of us never got to go romp around France in a black mask in the first place.”

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?” Richard tossed back, setting the stopper firmly in the decanter.

“No.” Something in Miles" voice made Richard"s hand still on the stopper. It was perfectly cheerful, but…. Richard looked up from the decanter and met his old friend"s guileless brown eyes. “No more than I do for you.”

“Hmph,” said Richard.

Miles played the buffoon so well, it was easy to forget that he was generally brighter than he let on. He was bright enough not to spoil his advantage by pressing it home. Instead, he said cheerfully, “You still have connections among the émigré community in London, haven"t you? And on the coast?”

Not entirely recent ones, but…. “Yes,” he said guardedly.

“Excellent! Once Christmas is over—”

He broke off as Richard abruptly held up a hand. What was that? Old instincts died hard. He had acted before he had even fully identified the noise. There had been a creaking sound, like a floorboard, or a door hinge.

“Is anyone there?” he called out sharply.

His instincts were rewarded. The door swung slowly inward, revealing the figure of a woman, her hair drawn into curls at the sides, held up by violet flowers that matched the color of her half-mourning.

“I"m so sorry,” said Deirdre. No, not Deirdre, Richard reminded himself. Lady Jerard. “I do hope I"m not interrupting.”

Both gentlemen rose hastily to their feet.

“Not at all,” said Richard smoothly.

Miles made a grunting noise that just barely passed for assent, but the expression on his face couldn"t be mistaken for anything other than hostility, iced over with a fragile veneer of good manners. He nodded generally in Deirdre"s direction, without ever looking directly at her.