Behind the Mask (House of Lords) (35 page)

“What do you mean, it ended poorly?”

He rubbed his temples. His head was pounding. “Not tonight, Eleanor. I promise, I will tell you the story. But not tonight.”

She seemed to accept that. “Very well,” she said, yawning. “I’m too tired to argue with you now.”

“Thank the Lord,” he murmured, trailing his fingers down the bare, smooth skin of her arm. “Does that mean you are too tired for anything else, then?”

She smiled that sultry smile he was coming to love and kissed him, and for a while neither of them thought of spies or assassins, but only of the way their bodies fit together in the moonlight.

TWENTY-ONE

September 4, 1834

Colin woke Eleanor with a kiss before the sun rose the next morning. “I must go and see Colonel Taylor,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“The princess wishes to stroll the grounds this afternoon,” Eleanor mumbled.

He nodded and was gone. Eleanor rolled lazily across the mattress and into the warm indentation he had left. She could get used to being married, she thought, to having someone’s arms to sleep in, to having someone’s smile to awaken to. She wondered idly if they would have separate bedrooms in their own establishment. She hoped not. It had only been a few nights, but already she was growing accustomed to Colin’s comforting presence beside her.

Eleanor could very easily have gone back to sleep inside the warm cocoon made by the coverlet and the sheets, but instead she made herself get up and choose a gown for the morning. One of the few things she usually loved about life in the country was that one did not have to change clothes four times a day as was often necessary in town. Eleanor sometimes thought she might tear her hair out if she had to change clothes again, what with the walking dresses and tea dresses and dinner gowns and ball gowns. But now that they had royal guests it was necessary to endure the endless parade of outfits once more, and so she selected all her gowns for the day as quickly as she could before Lily arrived and added her opinion to the muddle.

When at last she was clothed and coiffed, Eleanor made her way down to the formal dining room, where all their meals would be served for the duration of the princess’s visit. She had heard that Victoria was an early riser, and so she was not surprised to find the girl already seated at the table with her governess, the formidable Baroness Lehzen, who appeared to care little for anything but her young charge.

Still, Eleanor found that it was not difficult to engage the little princess in conversation once one found topics that interested her. Her spaniel Dash, for instance, who was sleeping contentedly at Victoria’s feet, was a favorite topic, and they managed to converse on that subject for several minutes before her mother came in, followed by the Duchess of Kent and Lady Winifred. Then the conversation turned to the planned activities for the day and the beauty of Sidney Park, and Eleanor was able to retreat silently into her thoughts.

Tonight she would see Toby for the first time since her marriage. All the local gentry had been invited to the dinner that was being given in honor of the princess, and though he had not come to the wedding he could hardly refuse a royal invitation. Eleanor wondered what she would feel when she saw him, and what he would feel when he saw her. Would he be angry with her? He certainly had no claim to it, or to her for that matter. All that time he had been gone, and had never sent word, never written even one letter, not even to tell her that he was going to Algeria.

Eleanor jumped in her seat.

Toby had been to Algeria.

He had come home just this spring.

Colin had as much as acknowledged that the Serraray were incapable of achieving their goal on their own, which meant that he suspected someone was helping them.

Eleanor leaped from her seat. When the ladies gaped at her she said, “Excuse me, Your Highness, but I have just remembered something I must tell Mrs. Clarence.” She curtseyed quickly and rushed from the room, hoping that Colin had not gone too far.

She nearly ran headfirst into Mr. Strathmore in the salon. “Pardon me, My Lady,” he said, putting out a hand to steady her. “Is everything all right?”

Eleanor stared at him a moment. He was one of Colin’s confidantes. Surely she could tell him what she suspected? “Come into the library with me,” she said.

When they were safely behind the closed doors she asked, “Colin suspects that there is a traitor providing the assassins with support, doesn’t he?”

Strathmore leaned on the great library table and crossed his arms. “I believe so,” he said carefully.

“And he suspects Toby Hollier.”

A stiff nod, but nothing more.

“I have some information about him.”

“I see,” Strathmore said, his tone still cautious.

Eleanor took a deep breath, “Toby Hollier was in Algeria the last year of his time abroad.” When Strathmore only stared at her, she said, “Don’t you think that’s significant?”

“It may be,” he said, “It just may be. I can take it from here, though, My Lady. You don’t need to trouble yourself with this.”

Feeling rather put out at being relegated once more to the corner, Eleanor still could do nothing but agree with him. She could not possibly insist on having a share in her new husband’s work. She knew that was absurd. So she thanked Strathmore for his time and went downstairs, thinking that she might as well go and speak with Mrs. Clarence since that was the pretext under which she had left the dining room in the first place.

But when she reached the bottom of the servants’ stairs she found the kitchens in uproar. Mrs. Parkinson stood before her great worktable, flour-covered hands on her hips, glaring at Mrs. Clarence.

“What is going on?” Eleanor demanded.

“I’m sorry, Miss—I mean, My Lady,” Mrs. Parkinson cried, “but I won’t be cooking extra meals for a prisoner. He can eat what the rest of us eat.”

“He will starve, then, My Lady,” Mrs. Clarence said, looking pleadingly at Eleanor, who was surprised by the housekeeper’s pity. “He refuses to eat the things we’ve brought him. He keeps muttering some strange word.”

“Halal,” Eleanor said. She had read every book she could find on the religions and customs of India and its neighbors when Toby had first departed, and she imagined that many of the customs of the Muslims in that part of the world were the same for the prisoner and his people. “It means the things which are permissible under their religion. What are you trying to feed him?”

Mrs. Parkinson cast a disparaging glance at the plate on the worktable. “Rashers and eggs,” she said indignantly.

“But, Mrs. Parkinson, he cannot eat those things. He cannot eat anything containing pork.”

“Why I should care I don’t know,” the cook grumbled.

“He hasn’t eaten in days!” Mrs. Clarence cried.

Eleanor took a deep breath. “Mrs. Parkinson, do you think you might prepare him some toast with a clean toasting fork, and perhaps some fruit?”

The cook looked as though she would rather swallow her own bonnet, but she could hardly disobey Eleanor, so she nodded glumly.

“Thank you, Mrs. Parkinson, you’re a treasure. I’ll go and speak with him now and explain.”

Mrs. Clarence opened her mouth to protest, but Eleanor held up a hand to silence her and went back into the corridor. When the guard outside the dressing room saw her approaching he snapped to attention.

“I’d like a moment with him,” Eleanor said.

“I have orders, My Lady,” the guard said apologetically, “I’m not to let anyone but Lord Pierce or his aides in.”

“I just want to explain about the food,” Eleanor argued. “I’ll only be a moment, and you can stand in the doorway.”

The man looked up and down the hall, and then with a sigh removed a key from around his neck and opened the door for her. Eleanor allowed him to go in first, and when he gave her a nod she followed. The prisoner was sitting on his haunches in one corner of the room, facing the east wall, but he turned to look back at her as she came in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He frowned. “I...what is word...I pray.”

“Ah,” Eleanor said, remembering that people of his faith said their prayers facing their holy city. “Mecca is actually that way,” she said, pointing to the southwest corner of the room.

The prisoner looked away. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Then he rose, slowly, favoring his injured foot. “What can I do?”

Eleanor started to tell him why she had come, but then she paused. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Meddur Udad, lady,” he said.

“It’s ‘My Lady’,” the guard corrected.

Udad bowed his head. “Sorry, My Lady.”

Eleanor made a dismissive gesture. “I am Lady Eleanor Pierce,” she said, only stumbling a little over her new moniker.

“You are his wife, the man with the...” Udad paused and held one finger over his upper lip.

“The moustache, yes,” Eleanor said, smiling at little at the gesture. “Anyway, Mr. Udad, I came to tell you that the cook will be preparing you a halal meal from now on. I am sorry for the confusion.”

The man blinked at her for a moment. “Why you do this?” he asked at last. “You...” he searched for the word, “you poison me?”

“No!” Eleanor cried. Why was the man so afraid of being poisoned? “No, of course not. But you have not eaten in days. You must have something, and if you cannot eat the food Mrs. Parkinson prepares then she must make something else.”

Udad looked away again. “
She
poison me,” he muttered.

Eleanor laughed outright at that. “I will make sure she doesn’t,” she said. “Don’t worry. I must be going, but I will come again later to make sure you have eaten.”

As she turned back towards the door, however, Udad said, “Why you help me?”

She looked back and said, “I do not think you wanted to harm me, Mr. Udad. I do not think you want to harm anyone. No one who grieves so sincerely for a lost friend could wish to deprive a mother of her only daughter, no matter the cause. I am a human being, and so are you, and you deserve to be treated fairly, no matter what you’ve been accused of.”

He bowed his head, “I thank you, My Lady.”

“Don’t mention it,” Eleanor said, and she meant it. As she went back up the stairs she imagined what Colin would say if he knew she had been to see Udad, if he knew that she had spoken to him. So far he seemed to understand that she was able to take care of herself, but she had still seen his protective instincts get the better of him. She had to remember that, though he was her husband now, she had barely known him a week, and there were a great many things about him that she still did not know.

Upstairs the hustle and bustle of a country house entertaining visitors greeted her, almost as though there were no prisoner belowstairs or assassins lurking somewhere in the Park. Maids and footmen flitted about, clearing the dining room and cleaning the floors. Eleanor passed Mr. Crawley in the hall, on his way out to meet Colin in the makeshift barracks.

“Will you remind him that we are touring the grounds at one?” Eleanor asked. Crawley nodded and disappeared without another word.

The day had dawned bright and clear, and already the air was warm, but Eleanor found most of their guests gathered on the terrace to the south of the house and in the gardens beyond, lounging on benches or walking idly beneath the trees. Eleanor saw Mr. Gascoyne walking with Sir John in the shade and Lady Winifred looking over Maris’s shoulder at the sketchbook on her lap. It was an idyllic scene of country harmony that belied the chaos going on behind the scenes. Eleanor cast a nervous glance towards the west side of the house and the stableyard, praying that she had planned the placement of the little collection of tents well enough that they could not be seen from the gardens. Fortunately the stable buildings and the trees hid the tents from view, and all that was visible were the rose bushes basking in the midday sun.