Elizabeth Boyle (53 page)

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Webb told him.

For a fortnight he’d waited for her scheme to unfold.

And nothing had added up. Until today.

The Lily he’d held in his arms that night in the garden had hardly been the clumsy, socially inept chit he’d spent the past fortnight watching.

That woman had been like a shooting star, a woman of fire, fallen from the sky and into his embrace. And just as quickly, she’d extinguished, in a blinding flash of passion leaving nothing more than a fleeting memory of something incredibly tantalizing.

Yet, the evidence against her seemed insurmountable.

As close as he could tally it, Lily had made more than twenty social gaffes, insulting the duchess as to her choice of gowns, trampling each of her dancing partners, scandalizing the local vicar with her accounts of the proper manner in which to encourage pigs to breed, and then if the night couldn’t have been any worse, she’d taken it upon herself to consume large quantities of wine and then flirt quite inappropriately with half the married men in the room.

Even her fiancé had deserted her, and his mother was loudly demanding an immediate retraction of their betrothal.

Instead of practicing her cover as a sheltered, convent-reared innocent, she’d performed like a Covent Garden doxy who’d stumbled into the wrong party.

Performed.
That was the key to it all.

I’ve done all this to protect you, to protect both of us.

All this
, he thought, adding it up—the clothes, the dancing, the poor lessons, the manners.

To protect her traitorous fiancé.

“I suppose we should tell her as soon as possible,” Lord Dryden was saying. “I hope she isn’t hurt by this, because she has really made such a tremendous effort.”

Webb glanced across the ballroom at her. In that ugly black dress, she was easy to spot—that and the confusion surrounding her on the dance floor.

As last notes of music faded away, her relieved and limping partner led her from the floor.

Since he’d moved to one side of his father, she couldn’t see him studying her, and to his surprise she was intently watching his father’s discussion with Giles, the sly grin on her face evidence of her awareness that she was the subject of their conversation.

Before she spotted him, he saw something else in her expression that finally confirmed all his suspicions.

Triumph glowing in her jade green eyes. As if she’d just won.

“I still find it hard to believe,” Webb’s father was saying to Giles, “that anyone could be as bad as all this.”

Hard to believe? More like impossible.

He glanced back at her, looking beyond the black gown, the misplaced manners, and the hundred or so other mistakes she’d put forth to hide her skills.

She’d played the incompetent to perfection. And if she could do half as well playing Adelaide, she’d have Paris at her feet.

And the woman of fire? The woman who’d haunted his dreams for the last fortnight … well, he couldn’t help but wonder how deep he’d have to scratch Lily’s veneer to find her.

When he looked for her again, he found she’d slipped into the crowd and disappeared from sight.

Webb turned to his father. “Sir, I think we should reconsider, at least until the morning. I’d like to give her one more chance.”

A chance to save herself from being throttled, he thought, as he marched across the floor in search of the conniving little baggage.

T
he evening, in Lily’s humble estimation, turned out to be a social nightmare and a smashing success.

Wait until she got upstairs and told Celeste that all her predictions of disaster had come to naught.

Palm reading, indeed
, Lily thought, as she ducked into the gallery that adjoined the ballroom and then collapsed into a chair in one of the three curtained alcoves at one end of the long room.

Sophia, true to her promise to make sure Lily got in her dance practice, had enticed, more likely bribed, half the young bucks in the county to dance with her. And she’d proceeded to mash everyone one of their toes.

Tomorrow there wouldn’t be a man left in Bath, or the surrounding countryside, who would walk upright, Lily thought with some measure of pride. At least not any who had danced with her.

With Webb, Lord Dryden, and Giles conferring in the corner, their expressions a mixture of dismal failure and utter exasperation, she knew her plan had worked.

Even Adam had left her alone, having sought the company of a countess. She’d embarrassed him completely with her performance tonight.

Served him right, she thought, forcing her hand about the engagement.

False it was, and false it would remain.

Exhausted not only with all the dancing, but with the playacting as well, she reached over and pulled the curtain closed, secluding her from any prying eyes.

In fact she’d chosen this spot because it was hidden away, and for the moment, she could remove her dancing slippers, rub her aching toes, and wish she didn’t have two left feet.

Just as she wished she’d never returned to Byrnewood and Webb Dryden.

“Lily?” a voice inquired, breaking into the solitude of her hideaway.

Adam.

Probably come to berate her for her outrageous behavior.

Well, she realized, he had every right.

“I’m here, Adam,” she said, parting the curtains.

He crossed the room and stuck his head into the alcove, while Lily fumbled for her discarded slippers and at the same time tried to get to her feet. She failed in both, catching her toe on the hem of her gown and stumbling halfway up.

He laughed, then pushed the curtain aside, so he could enter into her private hideaway. “Don’t get up. I’m certainly not about to ask you to dance.”

The curtains closed in around them and they were alone.

“Thank you for that favor,” she said, tossing her slippers back to the floor.

“Truce?” he asked.

“Certainly.”

“We’re partners, you know,” he said. “I don’t want you to regret bringing me along on this adventure. It sure is grand.”

A grand adventure, she thought wryly, twisting the ring on her finger and thinking about the day she’d received it. Thomas’s father had pulled it from his pinkie and slipped it onto her finger before he’d died. She’d thought it no more than the sentimental gift of a dying man.

But he’d given her more than that when he asked her to wear it. He’d asked her to continue the Copeland legacy.

Several months after her father-in-law’s death, Adam had told a stunned Lily that once a year a Copeland supplied a British customs agent with a lion’s share of gold. Throughout the year, the man then provided lists of ships going in and out of the London pool, as well as other ports.

More importantly, he also provided naval movements.

The ability to track British naval movements had aided American ships in avoiding the increasingly unpleasant encounters with their English counterparts. Ships stopped. Cargoes seized. American sailors and passengers pressed into the Royal Navy.

Confrontations the Americans were as yet unable to stop.

This arrangement had been going on for over twenty years, and after the death of Lily’s father-in-law, the British agent had refused the overtures of a new American contact.

“I’ll only do business with a Copeland,” the man had stubbornly declared. He wanted to see the bearer of the ring. A bumblebee ring. Her bumblebee ring.

And so the American government, led by the wily Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, and his neighbor, and her friend, Adam Saint-Jean had enlisted the last of the Copelands, Lily D’Artiers Copeland, to carry on the family legacy of espionage for the Americans.

And though she wasn’t a Copeland by birth, Lily informed her adopted government, she thought she had the right blood to be an excellent spy.

Adam had begged to be allowed to come along, for he’d been looking for just such an adventure in which to serve his country. Besides, he argued, Lily needed someone to watch her back. He’d vowed to guard the last of the Copelands with his very life.

“Lily, I think you should tell me what’s going on.” He reached out and took her hand, holding it almost reverently between his. “I can help you. I can take you away from here. Marry me, and we’ll finish your work here in England without any further delays. Then I’ll take you home. To Virginia. Think of it, us married. Why we’ll be tremendously happy, and think of the tales we can tell all our grandchildren.”

For all his playfulness, all his teasing, all his jokes, Lily now saw it, now knew the awful truth of the matter.

Adam was in love with her. His playacting during the last two weeks as the dutiful fiancé, the outraged betrothed had been so real she’d marveled at his skill in deception.

A deception which fooled even her. For he’d meant every word, every kiss.

If anyone knew the feeling of unrequited love, it was Lily, and his honest admission wrenched at her heart.

“Come with me, Lily. We’ll be married before we sail, and we’ll have a long and happy life together.”

She closed her eyes. She should be in love with Adam. He was so handsome and dashing and charming, and so much like Webb, and yet …

So much like Webb?

She was doing it again—comparing every man she met to Webb.

She should never have kissed him, never have come to Byrnewood, never have come to England.

Never have fallen in love with him all over again.

“But I’m not in love with him,” she whispered.

“With whom?” Adam squeezed her hands. “Thomas? Of course you’re not in love with him anymore. He was a cad and a fool. I would never do anything to hurt you, Lily, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it.”

The right words from the wrong man. She shook her head at him, hating herself for letting him see the truth. “No, it isn’t Thomas. It’s …”

For all Adam’s outward foolery, he was a very intelligent man.

“Webb.” He said the name quietly, without any malice, rather with the resignation of a man who knows there is nothing he can do.

She nodded.

He looked away for a moment. “Does he know?”

Lily bit her lip, then shook her head. It would be forever before she ever heard Webb utter the words Adam so freely offered.

“Is that why you feigned this engagement? To hurt him?”

“No. Not that it would have worked anyway. He still thinks of me as the gawky little girl he met so many years ago.”

Adam laughed. “Well, if you’d stop wearing those awful weeds and doing whatever it is you’ve been doing to your face, I doubt any man would look at you and not see what I’ve seen, a beautiful woman.”

Lily looked away, unsure of how to react to Adam’s praise now that she knew his true feelings. “I’ve treated you terribly.”

“No, you haven’t,” he said. “No more than I’ve allowed myself to be taken in. Though tonight’s performance, for whatever your reasons, truly was your finest. I think everyone in that room considers me a complete fool for not having called off this engagement. But I doubt you want me to do that, at least not yet. Tell me one thing: why, Lily? Why have you gone to such great lengths to deceive …”

Before he could finish his question, the curtain whisked open and Lily found them faced by a furious Webb Dryden.

How much had he heard? Too much, she gathered, judging by the way every muscle in his neck and arms appeared tense with rage. And then he confirmed her suspicions as he finished Adam’s question.

“Yes, Lily, do tell. Why have you attempted to deceive everyone with your nearly flawless performance?”

Deceive.

All Webb needed to hear was the one damning word that told the truth about Lily.

She’d deceived them all, including her beloved betrothed.

He wondered how many lies, like a juggler, she had tossed up in the air. Well, she’d thrown up one too many of them, and now they were all about to crash around her feet.

“Come, now, Lily,” he said to her. “No witty response, no quick falsehood to save your hide?”

At this, Adam rose to his feet. “I don’t think your presence is welcome here, sir.” His rich Virginia accent rolled over the words, adding to the threat behind them.

Webb gave Adam credit for standing his ground. When her young hero filled out his lanky limbs in a few years, Webb knew he would have to think twice before manhandling the fellow, but for now he used what advantage he had over his opponent.

Webb turned an icy stare on Lily’s fiancé before grabbing him by the collar and dragging him upward until he stood on his tiptoes. “One more word from you and I’ll have you and your friend, the countess, hauled in for treason.”

Lily bounded to her feet, her hands pulling at his sleeve. “What the devil are you talking about? Treason? Have you gone mad?”

Webb glanced over at her and, for the first time since he’d arrived at Byrnewood, saw what might be honesty in her stormy features.

“Your beloved here has spent most of the evening with a suspected American spy, the Countess Allen.” He turned to Adam. “Isn’t that right, my friend.”

The man didn’t even flinch. “I haven’t the vaguest notion what you are talking about. The countess is merely an old family friend.”

But Lily’s performance wasn’t as convincing. She visibly paled and looked first from Webb then to Adam, her face awash with disbelief and, if he wasn’t mistaken, anger.

Still, if she was mad at her betrothed for risking such outright treachery in her sister’s house, she wasn’t going to let Webb denounce him. “Unhand him, Webb, or so help me I’ll cause a scene that you’ll never forget.”

Webb let go of the man only because he knew she would.

“This is none of your business,” Adam said, straightening his cravat, and brushing off the last creases Webb’s grip had left in his otherwise immaculate coat. “You have no right to meddle in her affairs.”

“Her
affairs
are my business.” Webb jerked his head in the direction of the door. “And if anyone is leaving it will be you. Leave now and I might forget what I’ve seen, but if I catch even a glimpse of your face in this house in an hour’s time, it will be the last hour you spend in freedom.”