Charmed and Dangerous (7 page)

“Yes? Come in.”

Catherine Pryor did so. “Are you ready to go? The carriage is waiting.”

“Oh. Yes. Yes, I am.” Laura looked around for her gloves, feeling as if she had been wakened from a dream.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I was just thinking.” Spotting the gloves, she picked them up and walked with Catherine downstairs. “It looks cold,” she commented, glancing out the window on the landing at the gray November sky.

Catherine merely nodded. They put on warm cloaks in the front hall and went out into a sharp wind to climb into the carriage.

“Do you know anything more about Gavin Graham's history?” Laura asked.

“Why?”

“It is interesting. And I thought it might be helpful—something to talk with him about. He and I have not…” She thought of the way he had treated her, the kiss in the garden, and flushed. “I am not having much success in diverting him. I know that the general…”

“It was a ridiculous plan! I told Matthew that from the beginning.”

Laura sat back a bit at the vehemence in her voice.

“We should forget the entire scheme,” Catherine added forcefully. “It never had a hope of working.”

Stung at this judgment of her powers and slightly hurt, Laura said, “You wish me to go back to England?” Only when she said the words was she fully aware of how little she wanted to return to her previous existence. She imagined looking for another post, visiting the agencies, writing letters. The prospect was unutterably dreary.

“Of course not,” replied Catherine.

“But…if you…” Relief and confusion made Laura tongue-tied.

“I am enjoying your companionship far too much,” declared Catherine. “You must stay with me until the congress ends.”

“The general…”

“I'll manage Matthew,” she said with a wave of her hand.

“But I would like to fulfill my part of the bargain,” added Laura, conscious of a lingering disappointment.

“Gavin Graham is not a suitable acquaintance for you.”

Laura stared at her.

“I should have seen it from the first. I blame myself. I am a fool.”

“I don't understand.”

“You mustn't associate with him any further. He is far too…dangerous.”

Laura thought at once of the stabbing, wondering how Catherine had discovered it.

“He is…not a libertine precisely. But he has a very doubtful reputation.” Catherine folded her hands. “You will say I should have thought of this before bringing you here, and I should have. I don't know what possessed me. Matthew was set on his plan, and I…”

Not the stabbing, then, Laura was thinking. “I am aware of his…tendencies,” she ventured. “I do not see what they have to do with…”

“If you fall in love with him, it will destroy you,” Catherine blurted out.

“Love?” Laura shook her head in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

Catherine gazed directly at her for the first time in this conversation. “He is an extremely attractive man,” she said, watching Laura's face. “And he can be very…charming.”

“So I have heard,” answered Laura a bit dryly. “But you need not fear that I…”

“You know nothing about men like him! You have been living a sheltered existence, hardly seeing anyone. You have no idea of the…the wiles such a man possesses.”

Laura started to tell her about the reading she had done in the earl's library, then hesitated. Somehow, she didn't think Catherine would approve. “He is…an interesting character. I find the things that he has done quite fascinating.”

Catherine groaned.

“But as for the man,” Laura continued, “he is arrogant, rude, and dismissive. I quite dislike him.”

The older woman scrutinized her carefully once again.

“And he has shown no signs of trying any wiles on me,” she added.

“He is very irritated at Matthew's actions,” acknowledged her companion with a sigh.

“I have noticed that,” said Laura ironically.

“What a tangle,” lamented Catherine.

“Perhaps not.”

Catherine looked at her questioningly.

“I will not divert him, er, romantically,” she continued. “But he seems very involved in the political matters of the congress. If I can speak to him seriously about those things, I might engage his attention.” This was perfect, she thought. It gave her the chance to find out more about the plot she knew he was embroiled in, and freed her from the tedious obligation of flirting.

“I don't know.”

“I have no other interest in Gavin Graham,” Laura assured her.

“Well…” Catherine appeared to struggle with herself. “I suppose…” She stared into Laura's eyes.

Laura smiled reassuringly at her.

Still looking uncertain, Catherine made a throw-away gesture. “I don't know a great deal about his assignment here. Matthew doesn't speak of such things.”

“The general spoke of Persia.” The very word had conjured up visions, Laura thought—the shah, the towers of Isfahan.

Catherine shook her head. “I know nothing of that either. Although…”

“What?”

“There is someone who might—an old friend of Matthew's.”

“He is here?”

The general's wife nodded. “They asked him to come and observe, offer his advice. He has retired from active service.”

“Perfect! You must introduce me.”

Catherine looked a little surprised at her eagerness, but she agreed. “And I do have some knowledge of Mr. Graham's family,” she added.

“That could be very helpful as well,” Laura assured her. She felt as if she were already becoming expert in the art of intrigue.

“You remember his father.”

She had met him once or twice years ago, Laura thought. She had a vague recollection of a tall, forbidding man who had looked at her with cold calculation.

“He is dead now, but his chief aim in life was to raise the family's position through his children's marriages. He was terribly proud.”

That was one word for it, Laura thought.

“The two daughters made very good matches. They are both older than Gavin by several years. His mother died when he was born, you know.”

“I didn't.”

“She was older. They had been so eager to have a son, and there were…difficulties.”

Laura could imagine them very well, though she knew Catherine would never explain such things to a supposedly ignorant unmarried woman.

“Gavin was a wild young man.”

“That, I remember,” said Laura.

“He and his father didn't get on. They looked very much alike, however.”

No doubt they were alike, Laura decided—proud, ruthless, selfish.

“He more or less forced Gavin into the political service when he wouldn't marry satisfactorily. I've heard he saw it as a kind of exile, a punishment.”

“He sounds delightful,” replied Laura dryly.

“He was an unpleasant man,” Catherine agreed. “Fortunately, Gavin grew to enjoy the work, I believe.”

“Where has he traveled, do you know?” Laura thought with envy of the places she had heard mentioned already—Siam, Persia.

The general's wife shook her head. “No. George will.”

“George?”

“The man I spoke of—George Tompkins. He can tell you anything you wish to know—if he will speak to you.”

“You think he won't?” asked Laura, disappointed.

Catherine shrugged. “He's…rather eccentric.”

“Ah.” That didn't daunt her, Laura thought. She was beginning to understand that she was rather eccentric herself.

Gavin surveyed the nondescript individual standing before him with an experienced eye. He might have been a minor clerk in a countinghouse or the keeper of a small shop. Nothing betrayed the fact that he was a lurker on the fringes of society, ready to perform a variety of useful tasks for a price. “Good,” said Gavin. “No one should pick you out of a crowd. You understand what I wish?”

“You want to know where this countess goes and who she sees,” replied his visitor.

Gavin nodded. “I expect a complete record. And I expect secrecy.”

“That's what you pay me for.”

“It is. And if someone else offers to pay you more…”

The man seemed unintimidated by his threatening stare. “Not how I conduct my business,” he said laconically.

Gavin continued to examine him. “So I have been told. If I find I was misinformed, you will not like the consequences.”

“That's what I hear.”

The fellow was almost eerily emotionless, Gavin thought. He seemed to fade into the wallpaper. No doubt this was helpful in his profession. “Very well,” Gavin said, dismissing him with a nod.

When he was gone, Gavin toyed with a quill pen lying on the table in front of him. He had begun to establish contacts in some of the seedier quarters of Vienna, to set up a network that would alert him to any unusual activities. But that sort of thing took time, and with the city full of foreign diplomats and the agents, observers, and hangers-on who trailed after them, it was far more difficult. He didn't have time, he thought. And he didn't have his customary authority and scope. There would be constant interference and a confusing overabundance of information to sift through.

There was only one way to get rapid results, he thought. He had to persuade his adversaries to move. He had to make them uneasy by acting as if he knew their secrets, while putting himself in situations that tempted them to make a misstep. It would be simpler if he knew what they were after, but he had every confidence in his ability to flush them out. They would try something, and he would be ready for them. With a satisfied nod, he rose and went to dress for yet another dinner party.

* * *

“Friend of the Pryors, are you?” said George Tompkins.

Laura nodded, though they both knew he was simply stating the obvious, since Catherine had brought her here and introduced her.

He took his time looking her over, and she followed his lead, examining her host and his surroundings with lively curiosity.

Mr. Tompkins was a figure from a bygone century. He wore knee breeches and buckled pumps, with a full-skirted coat made of blue satin. His white hair required no powder to give it the look of a previous era. He wore it long and tied back with a narrow blue ribbon. Several rings graced his long white hands, which lay at ease on the arms of a brocade chair.

But it was his face that held the eye, Laura thought. Oval, pale, marked by the signs of age, it had the look of fine sculpture. Those dark eyes seemed to hold the wisdom of centuries, Laura thought. They also seemed to be reserving judgment. It was clear she hadn't been approved just yet.

“You are interested in history,” he said, as if it were a mere hypothesis he was testing even though Catherine had told him this.

She was not going to be able to fool him, Laura saw. She had the sudden conviction that no one had deceived this man for a long, long time. “General Pryor invited me to Vienna to divert Gavin Graham. He wanted to keep him away from Countess Krelov.”

Tompkins raised his shaggy white brows slightly.

“I thought it was a silly idea myself,” she added. “But I couldn't resist the chance to come here and observe the congress, to see the things I had read about really happening. I have always wished…” She faltered a bit under his skeptical gaze.

“I do what I promise,” she continued firmly after a moment. “I cannot match Sophie Krelov on…on her own ground. But I thought if I could talk with Mr. Graham about the political situation, I might…catch his interest.”

“You are in love with him?”

“Not in the least! I am only trying to do as the general asked.”

Tompkins's brown eyes seemed to bore into her. After a while, he shook his head. “I'm not interested in your romantic intrigues,” he said, dismissing her with a gesture.

“This is not—!”

“You haven't told me the whole of it,” he interrupted.

Laura hesitated. She hadn't told anyone about the attack in the garden. Gavin had asked her not to—she wrinkled her nose—he had not asked, he had commanded. But she hadn't promised. Perhaps someone in authority should know. She looked at her host. Now that she had met him, she understood Catherine's assurance that George Tompkins had vast, if unofficial, authority. He was not in the government, but he was listened to by everyone who was or would be. Instinctively, she knew that he was the right person to tell. “Something happened,” she began, and she gave him the whole story.

There was a long silence when she finished. Tompkins was no longer looking at her. He gazed into the distance with cool calculation. Finally, when Laura was nearly ready to burst, he said, “You imagine yourself as a spy?”

She flushed. “Of course not.”

“This…incident. This is why you are here—not to further some plot of Matthew Pryor's.”

Her flush deepened. Did this old man read minds? Laura wondered.

For the first time, he smiled at her. It warmed his brown eyes with golden highlights and softened the pale austerity of his features. “If you were a young subaltern, I would send you north of the Hindu Kush to fill in the empty spaces on our maps.”

The thrill that went through her at these words matched any champagne she had ever drunk.

Tompkins nodded as if gratified by a successful experiment. Complex ideas seemed to form behind his expression. His smile broadened a little before fading. “I will tell you some things,” he said then.

He said nothing, however, until he had called for tea and it had been brought on an odd bronze tray etched with curling designs that made Laura's eyes cross when she tried to follow them. She tried not to be impatient. He was testing her, she thought; he had been since the moment she entered his rooms. She had the feeling that George Tompkins weighed the value of every person he met, and found important uses for some few of them. She found she very much wanted his good opinion.

“Gavin Graham,” he said meditatively at last. “I have had my eye on him for years.”

Laura sipped her tea, a strange smoky blend, and tried to look only mildly interested.

“He was hopeless at first, of course. So many of them are. Sent out to India to the political service when they only want to stay in London and idle their time away. But then we managed to…catch his interest.”

Questions weren't a good idea, Laura thought. She must let him tell the story in his own way.

“Sent him north through the Punjab to meet with a fellow who claimed to have information on Russia's plans for the khan of Khiva. Graham succeeded at the mission, and had a fine time skulking about the frontier as well. Requested another such job at once, I believe. And after a bit, he was given it.” Tompkins looked at Laura as if checking to see whether she was following.

“Khiva?” she couldn't help but ask.

The old man put the tips of his fingers together. “A city in central Asia. You have seen Asia on a globe.”

“Of course.”

He smiled slightly at her offended tone. “Russia has extended her empire across northern Asia, all the way to the Pacific. She controls the great Siberian forests, and so on. Britain is extremely influential in southern Asia—India, Burma, Ceylon. But in between…” He made a gesture.

“The two countries are rivals.”

He nodded. “Bonaparte took advantage of that. He offered to join the czar in an invasion of India, you know.”

Laura shook her head. She hadn't heard this before.

“They were to march through Persia, another country where we are vying with Russia for an alliance. Graham was one of the chief reasons why the French lost out in Persia. His work there was brilliant.”

“What did he do?” Laura still didn't understand the exact nature of this “work” everyone kept mentioning.

“I can't tell you much more about that,” was the frustrating reply.

Laura put aside her empty teacup.

“Gavin Graham's talent is his ability to win respect,” he went on. “He discovers what the people in a given area admire, and then he does it. If it is horsemanship, he risks his neck on their wildest mounts. If it is skill with weapons, he matches it. If it is intrigue and treachery—well, he's shown a remarkable flair for those for an Englishman. His father's doing, I suppose.”

“His father?” echoed Laura, surprised.

“One of the most devious men I've ever encountered.”

She digested this.

“This attack on him is interesting,” Tompkins added.

“That's what he called it,” she replied. “You are both rather cavalier about knife wounds.”

The old man smiled. “It is easy for me. These days, I only analyze dangers from comfortable armchairs in well-heated rooms.”

“But once you were out in them,” guessed Laura.

He met her gaze, amusement lurking in his dark eyes. “Perhaps. That is another story. We are wondering who is showing Graham such marked attentions.”

“The Russians?” wondered Laura. “Sophie is Russian. Isn't she?”

“I have heard Hungarian,” murmured Tompkins. “I have also heard Swedish and Belgian. She has a new story each time she is asked.”

Laura remembered Sophie's advice—to remain a mystery.

“I have never inquired seriously,” added Tompkins. He considered this lapse for a moment, then said, “It could be Russia. We are allies now, but it won't last. And Graham has certainly antagonized them. The French hate him, of course. And he
will
offend the Prussians by making jokes at their expense.”

“What is he doing here? He doesn't seem at all suited to the congress.”

“I may have suggested it,” answered Tompkins with studied vagueness.

“You?”

“It is always…useful to add an unexpected element in negotiation. When men are off balance, they trip themselves up.” He nodded to himself. “It wasn't a popular request. Of course, a number of his own countrymen dislike him quite intensely.”

“You don't think…?”

“I don't have enough facts to form a theory,” he responded. “I shall endeavor to gather more.”

“I could help,” offered Laura, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

His expression said he'd heard it anyway. “Most of my colleagues would politely suggest that you stay in the drawing room and not bother your pretty head about such matters.”

“Rubbish!”

He smiled. “Not entirely, I'm afraid. You have no experience, and no organization behind you. This is not a criticism of your intelligence. You are too vulnerable.”

“I have looked out for myself for the last ten years!”

He raised his white brows inquiringly.

“I was governess in the house of the Earl of Leith.”

“The deplorable Anthony? I am sorry.”

“And he never noticed me.”

Tompkins looked her over as if he didn't quite believe this assertion.

“No one did.”

“It's true I heard nothing about you.”

Laura got the impression that he heard about most things that went on in London.

“You never cared to join your parents in Bombay?”

She stared at him in astonishment.

“I don't agree to see people without finding out a bit about them,” he told her.

“By the time they were settled there, I had already been employed for two years. And my father was not…optimistic about being able to support me.”

“Spends every cent he has on horses,” Tompkins commented.

“He always did.”

“A convivial man, I understand.”

“My father is the best of good fellows unless you have to rely on him for something he finds unpleasant.”

“You are on the outs?”

“On the contrary. I exchange regular letters with my parents. We are all quite comfortable with the current arrangement.”

“Hah.”

Laura didn't know what to make of his tone. Indeed, she didn't understand why he had brought up this subject.

“You may come and see me whenever you like,” the old man said, as if he had come to some sort of decision. “I will instruct the servants to admit you.”

Because of the way he said it, Laura felt compelled to thank him. It wasn't until she reached home and told Catherine about the conversation that she discovered just how rare a privilege she had been granted.

* * *

Prince Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand had arranged a most unusual entertainment for the members of the Congress of Vienna. He had discovered a huge glasshouse attached to a nearby estate and convinced the owner to let him use it for a night. Lit by a thousand tapers, the orange trees and orchids and other exotic plants made the guests feel they were in a tropical paradise, instead of the chill of Vienna in December.

“Isn't it odd that everyone has come?” wondered Laura as they removed their wraps.

“What do you mean?” said Catherine. “Look at that grapevine. It covers half the wall.”

“Well, he is French,” continued Laura, “and the head of the French delegation. I'd think people would avoid him, after the war with France and…everything.”

“Can't afford to,” grumbled the general. “Man's as slippery as a sack of cats. Trying to keep us at each other's throats so we won't have time to give France what it deserves. Shouldn't even have been allowed to come, I say.”

“Why was he?”

“Observer.” Pryor practically spat the word. “Ingratiated himself with King Louis as soon as he was restored to the French throne. I swear, the Bourbons never had a—”