Beauty and the Spy (15 page)

Dear sirs,

I am writing on behalf of my neighbor, who was traveling your coach line en route to visit her aunt in the town of Barnstable when your conveyance apparently "Tipped over" in the yard of the coaching inn, leading to a ride with a randy farmer, irreparable damage to her favorite hat (a very fine green one), and immeasurable overall distress. I am tempted to bring my considerable influence to bear in order to exact retribution and to discourage other passengers from riding your line, but I may settle for a full accounting of the precise cause of the accident and an assurance that it will not happen again. Rest assured, the information you impart will remain confidential. Your hasty reply is appreciated.

"Terrible thing, about the hat, sir." Bullton hiccuped mournfully. They were at the stage in their second bottle of whiskey where everything seemed either beautiful or tragic, or some combination thereof.

"It was, oh, it was, Bullton." Kit's voice sounded a little despairing. "It was a fine hat. Had a plume… Made her eyes
so
green…"

"Very good color—green," Bullton agreed wistfully.

"Particularly for eyes," Kit mused. "But I'm partial to hazel. Hazel is green with blue and bits of gold in it," he explained to Bullton.

"Are you, sir? Are you really partial to hazel?" Bullton solemnly wanted to know.

"Very, very partial," Kit said dreamily.

"I'm an admirer of brown eyes," Bullton confessed.

"Doesn't Mrs. Davies have brown eyes, Bullton?"

"Brown as a spaniel's." It was Bullton's turn to sound wistfully dreamy.

This struck Kit as very funny, and he laughed, which turned out to be a mistake, because the whiskey hadn't entirely vanquished the pain in his ribs. And then he groaned, but groaning also hurt.

"All right, sir, time to rest," Bullton ordered. "No traipsing about in the woods tomorrow."

"You are very strict, Bullton. But you are no doubt correct Get my boots off, will you, good man?"

Bullton tugged and tugged and tugged, men staggered backward and toppled to the floor with a Hessian in his arms as though it had been shot out of a cannon, which struck Kit as very funny again. He laughed, forgetting what happened the last time he laughed, and as a result, was soon groaning again.

"
Christ
. You really must stop being funny, Bullton."

"I will try sir, but there's another boot, yet."

Bullton got the other boot off, and Kit laughed again, then groaned, and then laughed because he was groaning again, which made him groan some more. Finally, the whole business wore him out.

"Thank you, Bullton. Good night. Dream of spaniel eyes," Kit murmured.

"Good night sir. Dream of hazel."

It was Aunt Frances's turn to read this evening, so Susannah settled into her chair near the fire and took up her sketchbook, idly drawing while she listened. Aunt Frances had a habit of licking her finger before she turned a page, which had definitely taken getting used to. But now the little smacking noise measured off their evenings as surely as a ticking clock, and Susannah had begun to find it soothing. They were both deeply involved in the story; Susannah vicariously enjoyed proud Elizabeth Bennett's heartbreaks, the sweet idiocy and hope of love.

Behind her, a fire she had built—she'd stacked the wood and lit it—crackled away. She was bloody proud of that fire.

The viscount had vigorously rebounded from being fallen upon by a gelding, and apart from a sling and a tendency to wince a little when he moved too quickly, showed no signs of permanent damage, either to his wits or his person. She'd trailed him as usual—on foot—for the past few days, adding a new fern and several more trees to her sketchbook, and nothing at all to her storehouse of knowledge about his past. But he
did
talk: about squirrels and birds and ferns and trees and the like, with an enthusiasm and reverence and a sort of abstracted, increasing delight, as though he was discovering something he already knew. It was contagious, this joy; it found its way into her drawings.

"With the Gardiners they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude toward the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them."

Aunt Frances sighed with pleasure. "I always hate to read the last sentence of a wonderful book, don't you?"

Susannah gave a start. She hadn't heard mat last sentence at all, truthfully.

"Everything is wrapped up rather neatly, isn't it?" she said, diplomatically. She would peek at it when Aunt Frances wasn't looking.

Susannah glanced down at her sketchbook and discovered, with some surprise, the reason she hadn't heard the last sentence: the viscount's face, rendered in pencil, now occupied the corner of the page. He looked amused in her drawing, but there was something wistful in the lines around his eyes, and his mouth, that lovely mouth, was somewhat tentative, quirked into a smile at the corner. She ran her thumb lightly across the face, gently traced his lips with the edge of her fingernail.

Then feeling a little abashed, she turned the pages quickly to the safer-looking ferns and trees.

"How goes the traipsing about with the viscount, Susannah?"

She wondered if it was a coincidence that her aunt had transitioned from talk of a happy ending to the viscount.

"Oh, it goes very well. He is all that is… gentlemanly." She tried to keep the regret from her voice.

"On, I sincerely doubt
that
," he aunt said, amused. "I'm certain he is
some
that is gentlemanly. But I also know he wouldn't lay a hand upon you, Susannah, no matter what some of the neighbors might say. His father bred him too well."

Odd, but she found her aunt's firmness of conviction along those lines a little disappointing.

"Is there really a scandal in his past, Aunt Frances?" she asked it tentatively. She wasn't positive she wanted to know, since the wondering about it had been both such a pleasure and a torment.

"Well… there
was
a little something, when he was a boy. His father packed him off into the army rather abruptly one day, as I recall. Or perhaps it was the military academy. Just a lad at the time, he was. One day he was here�the next, or very near it—poof! Gone! There was something about a girl, too, I believe, but I can't recall her name."

Caw
, Susannah almost supplied. She was surprised when she stopped herself. Odd, but somehow, it would have seemed almost like… like a betrayal of him.

"It's too long ago, and it scarcely matters now, does it?" her aunt continued. "He's served his country, which in my book redeems him, more or less, no matter what he's done. But you know how rumors are… people
will
cling to one, and tend it until it grows like a great weed in all directions. He was a good lad for the most part, even if he was full of oats. He's a good man, too, I warrant. I know, because it's in the eyes," her aunt said sagely, pointing with two fingers to her own brown ones. "And he's in Barnstable so seldom, but he never fails to cal upon me when he is. And as far as I'm concerned, that is the mark of a gentleman."

Susannah rather thought so, too, and it warmed her hear to think of Kit sitting in the parlor with Aunt Frances gripping a cup of tea, having a chat about—

About what? Horrid novels?

"The viscount thinks I'm very talented at drawing." Susannah offered this almost shyly. She'd never discussed her "Talent" with anyone else before.

"Well, how about that?" Aunt Frances looked pleased. "Talented, are you? Not just a young lady who draws like any other young lady?"

"That's what he says. Do you suppose I got my talent from my father?" She remembered Kit suggesting this question; it had seemed important to him.

"Well, you might very well have at that, Susannah. Lord knows no one in the Makepeace family has a whit of artistic talent."

Susannah frowned a little. That sentence hadn't made a whit of sense.

"But… you
do
think I might very well have gotten my talent from my father?" She said it almost gingerly, in case this was the first sign that Aunt Frances was actually losing her mind, and she would have to begin making plans to live somewhere else.

"Well… yes, dear." Her aunt, for her part, looked a little troubled now, too. "That is what I said."

They stared at each with wary politeness.

Aunt Frances's knitting needles slowed.

An uneasy silence slunk by.

And it had started out as such a
benign
discussion.

"James," Susannah tried carefully, "my
father
. I might have gotten my talent from
hint
? Is that what you meant?"

Her aunt's needles froze completely. "Oh—oh my. Oh my
goodness
."

Aunt Frances sat straight up and pushed her spectacles up on her nose. Susannah paused in her lunging, sat back in her chair again. She didn't look ill; on the contrary, she looked alarmingly lucid.

"Aunt Frances? Are you—"

"Good heavens. Susannah—surely you know?"

Susannah almost closed her eyes.
No more revelations, please
. But she had to ask.

"Know
what
, Aunt Frances?"

"That James wasn't your father, dear."

It was Susannah's turn to go perfectly, perfectly still. "I beg your pardon?" She said it so faintly they were barely words.

"I said, James wasn't your—"

"I heard you," Susannah said abruptly. "I'm sorry. That is to say…" She shook her head roughly. "I
beg
your pardon?"

"Oh, my dear. My poor dear." Aunt Frances sounded truly distressed; she had her hands fisted against her cheeks now. "I'm so sorry to startle you. I had no idea you didn't know."

Susannah couldn't move, or think properly.
James wasn't your father
. Those four words had become the entire contents of her mind.

"But surely… surely that's the sort of thing a solicitor would at least mention, Susannah? As he read the will to you?" Aunt Frances peered with frowning concern into Susannah's face. "I suppose not," she concluded after a moment, from Susannah's dumbstruck expression.

"But
how
... why… I mean,
what…
?" But no question seemed quite adequate or appropriate at the moment, so Susannah stopped trying to ask one.

Fortunately, Aunt Frances was able to collect herself enough to launch into a coherent tale. "My dear, I will tell you all I know, which I heard from another member of the family, so it's third hand, my dear. Almost twenty years ago now James went to a town called Gorringe. And apparently he returned with a little girl, who
may
have come from Gorringe, but no one knows, really."

"
I
was that little girl?"

"Perhaps. There was speculation in the family that perhaps James had a mistress who died, and this was her child, which in truth cheered his mother no end. Because, you see, James wasn't one to take much notice of women… he rather liked vases and art, I hear."

"Yes," Susannah said softly, remembering all of the vases and carpets and art coming in, and then going out, of the door. "He did. But… why? I just don't understand."

"I'm sorry, dear, but I've told you all I know. And I honestly don't know anyone who can tell you anything further, either. James was always the family's enigma. He seemed to prefer it that way. He kept
everyone
at a distance."

"But… what about my mother? I've a miniature of her, and I look just like her, I
do!
They weren't… weren't they… were they married? Wasn't he
ever
married?"

"Married? Good heavens, I don't think so dear. Well, I suppose anything's possible, really, but no one knew of a marriage, if he in fact was. But perhaps your mother was married to someone
else
," she added, hating to shock Susannah any further, perhaps, with the suggestion her mother had been a fallen woman.

"Someone who would have been my father."

"Well, undoubtedly, dear," Aunt Frances said hurriedly, reassuringly. "Perhaps you were orphaned, and James took you in."

"Then…" Susannah felt the world slipping out from beneath her yet again, as another realization took hold. "You… you… aren't really my aunt, then, are you?"

She dropped her eyes to her lap.

There was a silence.

"Oh!" Aunt Frances said softly. There was a moment of quiet, and men Susannah heard Aunt Frances pat the settee. "Come here, my dear."

She lifted her eyes, struggling to maintain a stoic expression. She raised up and went to the settee, curling her feet up underneath her.

And men Aunt Frances gestured coaxingly to her own plump shoulder with a tilt of her head and a lift of her brows. Hesitating an instant, Susannah gingerly laid her head down upon on the curve of it She was a woman grown, but this was the sort of solace she'd never before known, this leaning her cheek against another woman's shoulder. It was so curiously comforting she felt again the tears pushing against the back of her eyes.

Aunt Frances stroked her brow soothingly, with a cool, rough hand. "There now. I am sorry to shock you after such a pleasant evening, my dear. But isn't it better that you know, somehow?"

"I suppose it is. It explains a good deal, Aunt Frances. There were never any pictures of my mother about the house. I (bought perhaps… perhaps her death wounded him too grievously to think of her. A romantic notion, I know."

Aunt Frances nodded, approving of the romantic notion.

"And he…" Susannah swallowed over a knot in her throat "Well, he never really seemed to care for me. Oh, he was kind enough," she said swiftly. "But… not fatherly. He was so seldom home, and didn't seem to have need of my company."

I
sound pathetic
, she thought, and despised the sound of it. She'd never before indulged in being pathetic. It involved relinquishing one's pride for a moment, and admitting to herself that she liked the stroking hand on her brow.
Just this once
, she thought.
And then I shall buck up
.

"Oh, I'm certain he cared for you," Aunt Frances said stoutly.

"Do you really think so?"

"He did keep you very well all of these years, Susannah, did he not? And made certain you were raised not wanting for anything."

Except a mother and a father
, Susannah thought, traitorously. "He did." She couldn't deny it But the sense of unreality was profound. She'd thought she'd lost everything but her sense of self: she'd at least known, despite the defection of the rest of her life, that she was Susannah Makepeace, daughter of James.

And as it turned out, she'd lost that, too.

"I wonder why James never told you," her aunt mused.

"Perhaps he never thought it… important" It seemed inconceivable to her that someone wouldn't think family was important. It was the only thing she'd ever really lacked, and, as it turned out the only thing she'd ever really wanted. Perhaps he'd meant to tell her, some day.
No one really intends to get one's throat cut
, she thought "Perhaps he thought keeping it a secret would ensure my good marriage."

"Or perhaps he was hiding something," her aunt added with acerbic practicality.

Susannah thought about this, about the gentle cipher who had been her father.

And then she thought of the adder hiding in the benign-looking picnic basket. What did one ever really know about anyone?

But then… something twitched inside her… it felt like hope again. And little by little, whatever it was began to blossom.

She'd always thought she'd had no family, no mother or brothers or sisters or cousins.

But now… her family could be anyone at all; she could be related to dozens of people, or none. Her life, her future, which had just a few minutes ago seemed as limited as this little house, now seemed as large as all the possibility in the world. She didn't know at all where to begin investigating it, but her imagination had already gone to work on it She might be the bastard daughter of a prince. She might be… a peasant She might be—