After the Kiss (26 page)

He needed to turn the cipher over to Robert. It was imperative that the Foreign Office know what he had discovered. But not yet. Not until he could protect Margaret.

"D
o not tell me that he’s never spoken of his fish?” Robert Adams asked.

Margaret shook her head, carefully moving her fork to the crystal rest as Smytheton replaced her bowl with a plate.

Surreptitiously she traced her fingers over the ornate silvery cutlery, stared down into the reflection of an almost translucent china plate. As a London shopkeeper’s wife, she’d felt prosperous. Yet her utensils had been of commonplace steel, her bowls and cups and plates crafted of creamware.

An enormous gulf to cross from a tradesman’s wife to countess. Margaret wondered if she would ever become used to it.

She was grateful for the dinner she and Michael had shared the night of the theater. His humor had made the experience less daunting. His effortless in
troduction to all those forks and spoons had made this night a little less difficult to endure. She did, however, watch both men carefully, in case she’d erred in some rudimentary fashion. Twice she had picked up the wrong fork, and she’d not known the purpose of the fingerbowl. But neither man had noticed her errors.

She glanced over at Michael. Robert had done most of the talking tonight. She’d thought, initially, it was because his was a voluble nature. But she suspected, as the evening advanced, that he was simply attempting to fill the void created by Michael’s silence.

“Well,” Robert said, leaning toward her, “he always wanted a dog. But his mother would not have one in the house. So he decided that if he was to have a pet at all, it would be a fish. He and the gardener made a net and caught several fish in the river near Setton, bringing them home in a bucket.

“He named each one of those ugly carp after kings of England. His mother was furious with him. The carp ate everything in the pond and grew to be huge.” He glanced over at Michael. “You swore that they knew you and could do tricks.”

“I was six at the time and allowed to be somewhat silly,” Michael said, smiling slightly.

“His mother relented finally, and let him have a puppy,” Robert said.

“It chased my sister’s cats as I recall,” Michael contributed, before lapsing back into silence.

“I think Smytheton has improved as a cook,” Robert said. “Don’t you agree, Michael?”

He didn’t answer. Only after the second repetition of the question did Michael nod absently.

She turned and looked at him. He appeared preoccupied, stroking the stem of his wine glass with two
fingers as if it held more interest than their conversation.

“Michael?” He looked up at the sound of her voice. He must have realized he was being inattentive, because for the next several minutes he attempted to concentrate on their conversation.

“Did you tell her about your first pony, Michael?”

“I doubt that Margaret truly wishes to be informed of every event in my childhood, Robert,” he said.

Margaret glanced over at Michael, then at their guest. “On the contrary,” she said softly, “I would be very interested to hear.” What sort of little boy had he been? Brave and daring? Or shy?

Robert smiled at her across the table. He was an exceedingly charming man. His brown hair was the exact shade of his eyes. The expression in them had been kind from the moment he and she had been introduced.

He was untitled and not unaware of the state of poverty, she suspected. The fact that he was Michael’s friend was not a surprise. For an earl, Michael seemed to have a surprisingly egalitarian outlook on life. Especially valuable, since he had just married a poor widow.

But his sidelong glances were making her uncomfortable. He had remained in his library the entire afternoon. The only time he had left the room was a few minutes before his friend had arrived. Little time to spare for dressing or conversation. She wondered, now, if the delay had been calculated.

“He spent most of his childhood trying to escape his sisters,” Robert said.

Michael only smiled, but didn’t speak.

She studied her blackened roast beef. She didn’t think she could eat one more mouthful. Nor had Mi
chael touched much of his dinner, even though he had consumed an inordinate amount of wine this evening. Another change. She had thought him temperate in his habits.

“Where do you hail from, Margaret?” Robert asked. “There’s the flavor of London in your speech, but then I hear certain words that have a touch of Wiltshire about them.”

“She has lived for the past two years in a place called Silbury Village, Robert,” Michael said. He held up his wine glass. Smytheton instantly refilled it, but his face was a mask of stiff disapproval. “One could almost believe that there were fairies in the land, for the charm of the place.”

His voice was mocking, and the precise, deliberate nature of his speech led Margaret to wonder if he was becoming affected by the wine. She felt a flush of embarrassment for him.

“I was born in London,” she said quietly to Robert.

“Margaret’s childhood is an infinitely more interesting topic of conversation than my own,” Michael said, and took another sip of his wine.

Robert looked as if he wished to say something, but before he could comment, Michael suddenly stood. He threw his napkin down on his chair and stepped away from the table. At the doorway, he stopped, his back to the room.

“Unfortunately, I am not very good company this evening. Please, continue with your meal and your tales.” With that he disappeared.

As the moments passed, it was all too evident that he was not going to return.

“Shall I regale you with tales of Michael as a boy?” Robert asked, without seeming to notice Michael’s ab
sence. “Or shall we be quit of him as a topic of conversation altogether?”

“What was he like as a little boy?” she asked. Robert smiled at her as if he knew what the effort had cost her.

“Not appreciably different,” Robert said, settling back in his chair. “A smaller version of the Michael we know. Just as autocratic. I remember when Elizabeth was about to be born. He came to my home, disgusted. The process was taking entirely too long, he said. I think he believed that God was taunting him with the hope of a brother.”

“What did he say when he discovered that he had another sister?” She propped her hand on her chin, imagining Michael as a child.

Robert laughed, the sound of it echoing through the room. “He refused to talk to his mother for weeks. When he did, he demanded to know where he took this new sister to exchange her for a worthwhile boy.” He smiled, evidently recalling that moment. “As it is, Elizabeth is his favorite sister. I have always found that a bit of irony.”

She looked down at her place setting. Smytheton bent low on her left side. “Would you like me to remove your plate, my lady?” His tone was, for Smytheton, almost friendly. She glanced up at him, surprised, only to be greeted with a slight smile. She nodded, bemused, and he did so, retreating into the kitchen.

She tiptoed around the subject, hoping that Robert would understand the question she dared not asked. “The Countess is a formidable woman,” she said.

“You realize, of course, that you outrank her now. She is no longer the Countess of Montraine. You are.

She has been relegated to being Dowager.”

She looked at him, horrified. It was something she had never considered.

“If you do not mind me saying so, Margaret, you have the most fascinating look on your face at the moment. As if I have said something altogether horrible.”

Politeness prevented her from divulging her thoughts. Her former mother-in-law had been a rather demure woman of middle years. It had been difficult for Margaret to equate the retiring woman with a girl who had attracted a duke. Even her death, three years after Margaret had married Jerome, had been quietly done, almost apologetically.

This mother-in-law, however, was proving to be quite a personage, even in Margaret’s thoughts.

“I myself,” Robert said, “have avoided her at all possible costs. She terrified me as a child. She does so equally as an adult.”

That information was not at all reassuring.

Robert took his leave finally, a rather self-conscious departure. He glanced more than once at the closed door of Michael’s library, but he expressed no desire to see his friend again.

After Robert had left, Margaret stood in the foyer, uncertain. To her left was the curving staircase. Ahead, the library.

“Would you like a bit of spiced wine in your chamber, my lady?”

She glanced at Smytheton. “Is he often like this?”

The barrier between a newly made countess and a majordomo was not quite as solid as that of a woman born to the nobility. The question she asked breached that wall but, to her surprise, Smytheton answered her.

“Only when he is involved in a cipher. Then, he is impatient with interruptions.” She understood the meaning well enough. It would not be wise to go into that room.

“Are you certain you would not care for the spiced wine, my lady?” The barrier was back in place.

Margaret shook her head. But instead of mounting the steps, she headed for the library. The man she had come to love so deeply had altered in the course of only a few hours. In his place was a man he had always claimed to be. Restrained, reserved, a man of logic and sensibilities.

Cold.

She was going to find out why.

Michael was standing by the wall of windows when she entered the room. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it as if needing a bulwark.

“What is it, Michael? What’s wrong?” she asked.

His reflection in the window was of a stern faced man with watchful eyes.

“I do not like feeling powerless,” he said finally.

She frowned at him. “Do you?”

“With you I do,” he admitted. “Perhaps I should be like my father and shoot out a window whenever I lose control.”

“Yet tonight you were too restrained.”

“A ruse,” he said dryly.

“One that served its purpose,” she said, coming closer. “I was convinced of it. And your rudeness,” she added.

“I apologize for that,” he said, turning to face her. “I was distracted by my thoughts.” He seemed to study her face in the faint light. “I’ve solved the code,” he said finally.

He walked to his desk, picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to her. “It was only an accident that I was able to solve most of the code with two of the books. But then, my knowledge of the Cyrillic cipher helped, too.”

She read the translated code once, then again, attempting to find some meaning in it.

“What does it mean?” she asked, glancing up at him.

“There is an island not far from the southern coast of France. And the date would be correct.”

“What island?”

“Elba.”

She stared down at the paper in her hand. “But wasn’t it on Elba that Napoleon was imprisoned?”

“More correctly, he was awarded sovereignty over Elba when he went into exile. But someone helped him back to France. Someone with wealth and influence.”

“Is this why you’ve been so distant tonight?”

“No,” he said. “It was because I was trying to think of a way to protect you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because both Babby and Robert know you have the
Journals
and at the moment you’re the only person associated with them. Grounds enough for charges of treason.”

She looked up at him, stunned.

“Treason?” She stared down at the paper in her
hand. “Do you believe I had anything to do with this?”

“No, I don’t,” he said firmly. “But my word wouldn’t be enough to save you. Nor the fact that you were shot.”

“You think someone shot at me because of the
Journals
?”

He nodded. “It’s a possibility.”

“But why?”

“Perhaps to silence you, even to obtain the
Journals
.”

“Or to prevent you from learning this secret?” She felt a frisson of fear as she realized it made sense.

His slight smile acknowledged the truth of her words.

She sat on the edge of his desk, suddenly feeling light headed. Normally Fate hangs on the swing of a pendulum. But never so clearly. She had never before been able to say—this is where it happened. This is where I erred. I should have turned left, or said no, or gone to the market, or chosen blue. Yet Margaret saw the moment Fate swung in her direction in perfect and unremitting clarity. The moment she’d thrown the strongbox out the window minutes before the bookshop was engulfed in flames.

Because of those stupid books, she had brought danger to Michael and to her unborn child.

“Penelope always said they were cursed,” she said dully, “and now I’m beginning to believe her correct.”

“I think we’re dealing with something or someone more tangible than a curse.” He closed both books and returned them to the safe. “I can’t even ask for help from the Foreign Office, Margaret, until I am certain you will not be charged.”

“Would they truly think I’m a traitor?’

“Not if I can prevent it,” he said somberly. “Who else knew you had the
Journals
?”

She thought back. “There was a list of men tucked into one of the volumes. I wrote to three of them,” she said, repeating their names.

“Was your note like the one you sent Babby? Without giving many particulars?” he explained.

She nodded. “I didn’t want to hurt my reputation,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I thought that if I sent the letters through Samuel no one would know it was me.”

“I wonder if he’s had another visitor,” he said. “Someone who convinced him to divulge your identity?”

“As you did?” she asked wryly. “I doubt it. Samuel is a very careful man. He must have trusted you to do so.”

“Less trust,” he admitted, “then the fact that I purchased three bolts of cloth from him.”

“A bribe?” she asked, smiling silently.

He only nodded absently in response. She knew that look well. He was concentrating upon the problem, sorting out the solution in his mind.

“It would have taken a massive effort to get Napoleon off Elba,” he said. “Jailers were bribed and a ship arranged, acts that required both power and money. Perhaps one of those men is involved.”