Beauty and the Spy (14 page)

Brittle enough to break?

Susannah had been using this sidesaddle for days.

He looked closely at the snapped ends. The break looked almost… too clean.

A chill settled into his gut. He couldn't shake the unreal sense that a knife had assisted the girth in breaking.

The watching man.

The mail coach, the adder…

The twig, the girth…

And this was a sidesaddle. No man was about to get into a sidesaddle.

Only a woman.

He looked up at Susannah, who was still quietly watching him. Behind her he could see the woefully crumpled green plume of her hat on the ground, fluttering in a breeze, and her hair was a little wild from her ride, spilling about her face. He'd never before seen it down, and his gut clutched in response. Lovely hair. So many subtle colors in the strands. Mahogany, and chestnut, and sable, and…

She suddenly seemed so… crushable standing there. Eminently fragile. How easily she could have been gravely injured today. What a near thing, what a very near thing, it had been.

An irrational fury, almost a panic, made his breath come short again.

How do you tell a woman who has just lost everything in her life that he suspected someone was trying to kill her?

You didn't say anything of the sort until you were entirely sure.

Susannah's gelding was nosing about for grass now next to his own mount, who was doing the same thing. Their reins trailed the ground. Susannah's poor gelding looked considerably more sound than Kit felt
Glad I provided a soft place to land
, Kit thought mordantly.

"You're not in the army now. You don't have to endure the pain if you don't want to. There's a little something called laudanum that might help."

Susannah was trying a joke, but it didn't register, as his thoughts were elsewhere entirely. He would begin, he decided, by inspecting the saddles and having a chat with the stable boys.

"Yes." His voice was distant. "Or whiskey."

He wasn't certain whether walking or riding back to the stables would jar his body more, then decided it wouldn't make a difference; it would hurt like the very devil regardless.

"Thank you again for saving my life," she said gravely.

For some reason the tone made him smile. "It's the least I can do for a valuable employee, Miss Makepeace. You're certain you're sound?"

"The horse," she emphasized, "fell on
you
. Not me. You flung me out of the way."

He couldn't smile at that.
But it could have been you
, he thought
It could have been you
.

The thought kept him from speaking.

He gathered the reins of his horse in his hand, and Susannah followed suit. He'd decided to walk, and slowly at that Out of the corner of his eye he saw the hat again, a shade that had never grown in nature. "Willow," he knew it was called; fashionable in London just now, or so he'd heard. No actual willow tree was ever this color, but it did make Susannah's eyes glow that remarkable, mesmerizing shade of green. And for that he would forgive it anything.

"Your hat," he said.

"Oh." Susannah strolled over and plucked it up, gave the irreparably crushed feather a disconsolate stroke. "I did like this hat," she said.

"So did I," he said, unthinkingly.

Her eyebrows arced with astonishment "A
compliment
, my lord?"

"An observation, Miss Makepeace," he corrected hurriedly.

But for some reason his answer made her give him a slow, softly radiant smile, as though he were her prize pupil. And oddly, for a moment, just that moment, nothing hurt at all.

Pettishaw, a relatively new MP, was droning on and on about the need for parliamentary reform. The faces around him were arranged in varying expressions of attention; some were even nodding. In agreement? Morley wondered. Or fighting off sleep? Difficult to know, really. The beauty of the House of Commons, Morley thought, was that someone would ultimately say something hopelessly rude and direct to shut Pettishaw up. A man was given but few opportunities to prove his oratory talents, and if he demonstrated that he had none, he was heartily discouraged from then on from orating at all. They could be an unruly crew, the Commons.

Morley's own voice was deep and pleasant; it carried enough warmth and inflection to keep the listener awake, and he had a knack for eloquently persuading while never veering into floridity or drama. In other words, he'd never been told in rude and uncertain terms to shut up. His political talents, in fact, had been compared to those of Charles Fox, only Morley was better looking and he hadn't Fox's bad, if colorful, habits of gambling and womanizing.

Morley's leg ached; it often did in session, because these rooms seemed to hold the damp and release it just to plague him. He was grateful, in a way, because the ache reminded him of how he'd come to be here. He was grateful, too, for the scars that scored the length of it—great, ugly rippling scars, like calcified flame. Women often mistook the limp and the scars for a war wound, and he never disabused them of the notion. It
was
a war wound, as far as he was concerned. At least of a sort.

And he'd seduced more than a few of them based on that alone.

For some reason, however, he'd told Caroline the truth of it.

It had become useful, another tool. Morley was accustomed to thinking of everything in terms of how it served him.

like Bob. Who was hopefully serving him by spending the day in Barnstable finishing the job he'd been assigned, so Morley could continue to sit in the Commons, taking for granted voluble politicians and the faultless reputation he'd earned.

His father had been a farmer. More truthfully, a peasant His family had been large, and they'd eked out a living on a patch of land scarcely the size of four handkerchiefs sewn together, or so it seemed now from a perspective of years. But then industry had moved in, and the spinners and button-makers and poor farmers like his father had lost their livelihoods to machines that did the work faster if not better, and to landowners who built factories on all of the handkerchief-sized patches of land. His father had taken his family—his mother and brothers and sisters�into London to look for work.

Unfortunately,
everyone
who had lost their livelihoods�and they were legion—had migrated to London from the country, looking for work. Or to other factory towns. Consequently, no work was to be had. The Morley family then set out to slowly starve in St. Giles, which is where Thaddeus had made so many interesting and ultimately useful friends.

And then came the fire.

It killed everyone in the Morley family's lodging house—his entire family, in fact—except for himself, for some reason known only to the fates. He'd been gravely injured, his leg blackened and blistered, but the wealthy building owner, stricken with conscience, perhaps—the building had been a disaster, after all—or perhaps wishing to buy his way into heaven, paid for Thaddeus's care, and then, discovering he was a bright boy, paid for him to go to Eton.

And then he'd grown bored of the largesse, and completely forgot about Thaddeus Morley. Leaving Morley floundering.

But only briefly.

Because he had wit, intelligence, charm, a handsome face, a sympathy-eliciting limp, and a great, helpful, deeply buried seam of rage that ran like lava through his soul and fueled his enormous ambition. He wasn't overly burdened with scruples; living in St. Giles taught one the frivolousness of scruples. He used them selectively. A connection with a few old friends involved him briefly in the distribution of smuggled goods, and he invested his earnings wisely, and earned his way into Oxford.

And after Oxford, nothing would satisfy him other than a parliamentary seat. Where he would set out to attempt justice for people like his family.

And… well, perhaps exact just a little revenge, as well.

But getting there had been like climbing the face of a cliff with bare hands. To be elected to the House of Commons, he desperately needed money to campaign. And he'd thought he'd found the support he needed when the Earl of Westphall invited him to a party over the winter holidays. The earl had, for reasons of his own, regretfully declined to contribute any funds to Morley's election. However, the Westphall party
had
yielded Caroline Allston. And so, in retrospect, Morley did have the Earl of Westphall to thank for his entire political career.

He remembered his first sight of Caroline Allston�he'd been astounded to find such a creature in a town like Barnstable—and knew instantly she was another person who would need to scale the faces of rock cliffs with her bare hands. Her beauty was wasted in the country town; Morley knew how to make
excellent
use of it.

He remembered those blue eyes of the earl son's, Kit Whitelaw, Viscount Grantham, burning into him that evening. Even at seventeen, the boy had possessed an unnerving intensity. The hurt and longing in them as he'd watched Morley and Caroline. Clever boy. He'd known.

His leg twitched violently, suddenly. Morley covered it with his hand, soothing it like a restless pet, willing the pain to subside. He remembered a time when Caroline could tell from a glance at his face when the pain in his leg became unbearable. Without saying a word, she would knead the pain away, and chatter to him about something else as she did it.

Pettishaw was still droning on. Morley glanced about the room; Groves, an MP who hailed from Leeds, intercepted the glance and rolled his eyes. Morley gave him a faint, commiserating smile.

His arrangement with Caroline had at first been simple: She warmed his bed in endlessly original ways, he paid for her keep. She was grateful and young and excited by him; they born recognized the value of their alliance.

But Morley saw everyone and everything as useful or not useful; sentiment (for people, anyhow, cats were another story) had been burned out of him in the fire.

So when Morley saw Caroline's effect on other men, his busy mind went to work. At a private dinner he'd strategically introduced her to a naval captain he'd met socially, who, as it turned out, became garrulous after he'd made love, as most men did. Garrulous, and particularly careless after too much wine, and hence, helpful beyond words.

Soon after that, Caroline had gleefully gifted Morley with the most marvelous information. Numbers and types and names of ships, and the numbers and types of guns they carried. Where and how they would be deployed. The officers who commanded them, and the names of other officers aboard. Snippets of information, mostly, and a document here, and a document there, things Caroline purloined when the captain was sleeping. But useful and very
valuable
—to the right people.

French
people.

And the sale of this information was how he'd financed his campaign. And how he'd been elected. And how he'd built his wealth. And why he still sat here today, with a reputation for calmly crusading for the rights of children and workers, for tasteful dress and a moderate lifestyle. He'd been faultless ever since.

Almost
faultless.

He glanced around the chambers now, and thought:
Surely these men are plagued by more ghosts than I? Surely they have more blood on their hands, having aimed rifles and cannons at flesh-and-blood men during war, with the goal of taking as many lives as they possibly could
?

And his own hands might even have remained entirely clean, if bloody nosey fellow MP Richard Lockwood hadn't happened to meet that particular naval captain socially, too. Or if the naval captain hadn't innocently, and with great enthusiasm, told Lockwood all about his encounters with a beautiful woman introduced to him by Thaddeus Morley. The topic had been mistresses, apparently, and the naval captain had been eager to brag, since Lockwood had such a splendid mistress of his own in Anna Holt, who had just been installed in her own home in the town of Gorringe and now needed a household staff.

"Asked a lot of questions about you and the girl, Lockwood did," the naval captain had told Morley cheerily. "Perhaps he's casting about for a new mistress. What became of her, by the way?" he asked hopefully.

"Found a wealthier protector," Morley had lied mournfully. Caroline hadn't yet left him at the time; her departure with the handsome American merchant was still two years away. But he'd tucked her back into her quiver, to be used again when the time came, and made certain she wasn't seen publicly.

Perhaps Lockwood hadn't reckoned on the strength of Morley's sense for things dark, for self-preservation.

It had almost been child's play to discover what Lockwood had been about, and to put a stop to it. It wasn't a pleasant business; he hadn't taken pleasure in it, but it had needed to be done, and he'd undertaken it like a job, planned it and executed it. And he'd thought it
had
been done… certainly, he'd begun to ease into complacency in the ensuing years.

And then Makepeace's letter had arrived.

Well, if his political career was to be bookended by murders, perhaps it couldn't be helped. He'd been seeing more of Bob lately than he preferred, but he was looking forward to their next visit more anxiously than he preferred.

By the time he saw Susannah home and returned to the house, Kit felt… well, exactly as though a horse had fallen upon him. Pain sang a nasty chorus all up and down his nerve endings. He could scarcely tell where it began and ended.

Bullton stopped in his tracks when he saw him enter the house.

"Sir?" Bullion's face was eloquent with the question.

"A horse fell on me, Bullton."

"Ah. Whiskey, sir?"

Good man
. "If you can spare yours, Bullton."

"And a doctor?"

"I don't
think
so. But I'll let you know. If you'd help me with the stairs?"

"Of course, sir."

"And I need a pen and foolscap, if you will."

"You'll be writing your will, sir?"

"I do appreciate the attempt at wit, Bullton, and rest assured I am laughing on the inside. Laughing on the
outside
rather jars everything at the moment. No, I'll be writing… some important correspondence." He knew just how to word it, too, to avoid arousing the suspicions of anyone who might want to intercept it—particularly his father.

"Very good, sir. Foolscap and a pen it is."

The two of them, Kit and Bullton, got Kit's aching body up the stairs, and then they got him out of his shirt and into a sling. The arm felt better when the muscles and tendons were relieved of the need to move at all. Some bolted whiskey, helped with the rest of the pain; Bullton imbibed, too, as Kit hated to drink alone. Kit gingerly prodded his ribs, took in a few deep testing breaths. They weren't broken, he warranted. He knew from experience that broken ribs were excruciating and unmistakable. If he could move without stifling screams, no doubt he was only severely bruised.

"How is your penmanship, Bullton?"

"Fair, sir."

"Fair as in 'maiden fair,' or fair as in, 'only passable' ?" Kit was feeling a little drunk now, and it wasn't unpleasant.

"The former, sir. If you don't mind my saying so."

"Not at all, Bullton, not at all. I admire a man who isn't afraid to admit to his talents. Take a letter for me, if you would then, and let's have a little more of that whiskey while we write it, shall we?"

A bottle of whiskey later, the letter read: