The Pretender (6 page)

Only a few short hours later, Simon yawned as he passed the little maid scuttling down the hall on early-morning maid business. Nellie flashed him a cheery smile and a cheeky giggle.

The sun was not yet up, but Simon was determined not to let Agatha have the complete running of things. If she said seven, he would breakfast at six. He pushed open the door of the breakfast room, fighting another yawn, then stopped short.

"Good morning, Mr. Applequist. Did you rest well?"

Perched, fully dressed, at the table in the yellow-papered breakfast room, Mrs. Applequist cut a triangle of toast and daintily chewed it.

Simon couldn't believe it. She was as chirpy as a bird digging for worms in a pre-dawn garden. Forcing his yawn away with iron will, he nodded briskly.

"And you?" he asked, as she had rehearsed with him the night before.

Her eyes widened appreciatively at his perfectly modulated words. Simon felt a tiny surge of ridiculous pride. Of course he could speak well. He always had. Well, not always, but for years. Why should her approval mean a thing to him?

The gangling footman left the room, and Mrs. Applequist sighed with visible relief.

"You may be at ease now, Mr. Rain."

Simon simply shot her a glare and fixed himself a heaping plate from the sideboard and sat opposite her at the cheerful table with its bright crockery. The lady's cook was better than his own, he decided as he chewed.

He watched her covertly as they ate in silence. The sun had begun to shine into the room, glancing off her hair with reddish shine. Odd. He had thought her hair to be pure black, not a brown so deep 'twas almost sable.

Brown hair, brown eyes. So very ordinary, really.

Except she wasn't ordinary at all, was she? Suspicion sneaked through his thoughts. What more perfect disguise for a woman than to be ordinary? People never noticed the ordinary.

Their eyes would go right over her, to be attracted by the more exotic, the more flamboyant. Like his guise of a chimneysweep, so everyday as to be invisible.

The news-sheet she read crackled under her fingers, and she gave a little gasp of excitement.

"What's afoot?" he asked.

"Read this!" She slid the paper halfway across the mahogany tabletop, then paused. He looked up to see her eyeing him hesitantly.

"What?"

"You… you
can
read, can't you?"

Simon almost snatched the paper away with a growl, then decided that his chimneysweep character might well be illiterate. He simply sat back without replying and let her read to him, eyeing the sheet as he listened.

It wasn't a real newspaper but more of a gossip sheet, full of references to "Lady B—" and "Lord F—," nattering on about marital matches and gowns and spies—

Spies
. Oh, no. Not again.

" 'Your Voice of Society wonders that England's greatest hero-spy has not been rumored about town recently. Although he is the Crown's closely held secret, your Voice knows that not so long ago he upset an entire attack against the Sons of England with his swift action against the wagons carrying cannon shot and powder.

" 'He crept behind the lines in the dark of the night, risking life and limb in a sure-suicide mission to destroy the very weapons of war that Napoleon wields against our Sons and Brothers.' "

Simon had heard it before, or something very like it. The workings of his secret organization, spread out for public consumption. Facts that only one man besides himself could know. Simon's hands twitched with rage.

Later.
Simon quelled his fury, returning his gaze to Agatha. She read on, the praise growing more exorbitant and flowery, until it almost held the flavor of mockery.

Simon had to make it stop. "What's this rot?"

Mrs. Applequist put the paper down with a sniff. "This 'rot' is why I am here. I am looking for someone. He is missing, and I must find him."

"Who is it, then?"

"His name is James Cunnington. He is my—he is very dear to me," she finished.

James
. So she gave her lover's name.

"What's it got to do with me?"

"With you by my side, I may move about Society much more easily. I may ask questions, make inquiries. The spy this speaks of is the Griffin. It has as much as said so in previous issues. If I can find the Griffin, then I think I may be able to find James."

"The Griffin, eh?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I have only one clue to follow, so I will begin there. A letter I once saw in James's possession, signed "The Griffin." "

"Not much of a clue."

"Oh, I know it is a remote chance. But whatever else, I must find James. He is all I have left."

Her voice was still soft, but Simon could hear the steel determination beneath. This was not good. These were deadly people. Even if she were merely a mistress looking for her lover, she was going to severely shake the tree.

She was not only dangerous, she was in danger herself. She could have no idea what she was dealing with.

"We've much to do today, Mr. Rain." She smiled and placed her napkin beside her plate. "If you'll join me in the parlor once you've breakfasted?"

Simon nodded as she rose, then was unable to keep himself from watching the way her skirts twitched over her bottom as she walked from the room. He tore his eyes away with difficulty. It was going to be a very long week.

In the meantime, he may as well enjoy the food. Picking up his fork, he attacked his breakfast once again.

A fellow needed to keep his strength up around this one. There was no telling what she expected him to do.

"I ain't doing it! Not now, not never. And if you're thinking of trying to make me, you'll cop a packet!"

The powdered wig hit the bedchamber wall with an explosion of talcum. Mrs. Applequist and Button, the valet she had hired and sworn to secrecy, watched the powder drift to the floor to lightly coat the other items that had suffered from Simon's intransigence that morning.

A horribly wrinkled cravat, collar points, and a monocle lay discarded on the floor, testament to his rejection of dandified fashion.

Mrs. Applequist sighed.

Again.

"Very well, Mr. Rain. Perhaps the wig is a bit much. After all, you'll hardly be making an appearance at Court. If we do without the collar points and the monocle, will you
please
try to accustom yourself to the cravat? No gentleman would appear in Society without his neckcloth intricately tied."

"Oh,
all right!"
Simon muttered crossly, hiding his desire to laugh. He was beginning to enjoy the role of the rascally chimneysweep.

Tilting his chin back, Simon allowed Button to wrap and tie a freshly pressed cravat around his neck. The little valet's hands were shaking, and Simon spared a moment of sympathy for the fellow.

Between Mrs. Applequist's dramatic pleas for secrecy and Simon's ranting, the man no doubt thought himself in the hire of Bedlamites.

Looking back on the past three days, Simon couldn't help thinking he might well qualify as a madman soon. Every waking moment had been filled with elocution exercises, tableware memorization, and dance lessons.

From dawn 'til night, he was worked as hard as he had ever been worked before. It was nearly as difficult to play a man who had no knowledge of those things as it had been to learn them all the first time.

Mrs. Applequist had been forced to attach a valet for him, but she wasn't taking any more chances on exposure. She prepared his lessons herself, ate with him, and nagged him constantly.

"Remember the
h
, Mr. Rain."

"Kindly recollect the
g
, Mr. Rain."

"That is your
salad
fork, Mr. Rain."

If he had been the poor uneducated man she thought him, he would be a babbling idiot by now. As it was, he was barely able to survive until afternoon tea without strangling the little martinet.

Ah, but following tea, it was time for his dance lesson. That's when his little tyrant would go soft and almost shy.

After sending away the tray and winding a delicate porcelain music box, she would pace slowly to the center of the parlor "schoolroom" and beckon to him silently.

Simon had never danced so well. Previously, there had been no reason to attain any real level of accomplishment, and at first, his clumsiness had not been entirely feigned.

His patchwork education had been centered around stealth and secrecy, not style and Society.

Sadly, until this afternoon he was expected to let her dress him like a mannequin. Button finished his precise tying ritual with a tug and a sniff, and Simon moved to stand before the looking glass.

The man in full evening dress he saw reflected there gave him pause. Button might not be the bravest soul in creation, but he was an absolute genius as a valet. Simon blinked at the picture he made.

Very dapper. He looked an absolute lord. Not his usual style at all. How odd to see himself this way.

"Button, you are a wonder!" Mrs. Applequist clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, Mr. Rain, you look like a gentleman through and through!"

Careful, old man. Mustn't make progress too quickly.
He scowled into the mirror. "I looks like a bloody tea leaf, that's what I looks like!"

Roughly he pulled off the cravat and waistcoat. "You can trick me out like this when you must, but I ain't wearin' this rig every day."

She watched with wide eyes as his fingers began undoing the studs of his shirt. Simon was careful to fumble the littlest bit, then he pulled it off over his head impatiently.

She took a tiny step back, but her gaze didn't waver.

"Got your eye full?" Simon snarled.

When her eyes widened and she stopped breathing, Simon finally had to laugh. She flushed at his guffaw and turned away.

"Button, would you be so kind as to prepare Mr. Rain for tea?"

With brisk steps she crossed to the door. When she raised her gaze to Simon's, the delight was gone and her eyes were large and dark with something else entirely.

After beating her strategic retreat, Agatha paused a moment outside Simon's room, leaning on the paneled wood of the hall and breathing deeply.

What sort of weakling was she, to vow one moment to see him as an instrument of subterfuge and the next to be blinded by his masculine appeal?

And he was appealing, wasn't he? It was very disturbing. In—and out of—his new garments, he was any young girl's ideal gentleman. But she wasn't a girl any longer, and he was no gentleman.

"Will you be wanting tea served in the parlor now, madam?"

Agatha opened her eyes to find Pearson gazing at her, apparently unperturbed to find her propped against the wall like a broom.

"Yes, thank you, Pearson." Agatha cleared her throat and smiled brightly at the butler. "That will be lovely."

A bracing cup of tea did sound lovely. Mr. Rain was coming along beautifully with his table manners, although he still had a tendency to eat rather too appreciatively. One really shouldn't make those delighted sounds in one's throat. Terribly distracting.

Tea, and then she would play dancing master. Agatha felt the heat rising within her again. Today she would teach Mr. Rain—no, Mr.
Applequist
—the waltz.

As a married couple, he and his wife were perfectly entitled to perform the somewhat scandalous dance. It was only the maiden woman who was discouraged from pressing herself so closely to her partner, swirling intimately across the floor in his arms.

Heavens. How would she survive it?

Mrs. Applequist looked as though she wanted to kill him. Simon watched as she visibly fought down her growing frustration and began again.

"Place one hand thus, Mr. Applequist. Then lightly— lightly I say, not as though one is handling a coal shovel!— lightly take the lady's hand, here, holding it precisely at shoulder height…"

Simon stopped listening. He was far more interested in watching her mouth move. It was odd how, when you took her features one by one, they did not amount to much in themselves. It was the entire mixture that was so attractive.

She was no classic beauty, but her snapping brown eyes and full lips combined with her fresh rosy complexion, making up a veritable recipe for appeal.

He especially liked her lips. They were highly colored, all of their own merit, and when she was nervous, such as now, the pretty Mrs. Applequist had a tendency to slide her tongue across them quickly.

There. She did it again. It made him ache a little more whenever she did so.

It occurred to Simon that he had never really seen her smile with those lips. She had made polite faces to her lady guests and been pleasant to her household, but he had yet to see her smile naturally.

He wanted to see that. Very badly. At any rate, he was tired of making himself step on her toes.

"You know, where I come from, dancin' ain't just for those what dressed up for it."

"What do you mean?"

"Me mum used to work in Covent Garden on Market Day. After the whole lot was packed out at the end of the day, the buskers and fiddlers'd sit out in the empty square and play into the night."

"I haven't yet seen the Covent Garden Market. What did your mother sell?"

Herself. But Simon wasn't going to let that tidbit out.

"Oh, this and that."

"What about your father?"

Best not to talk about that. "Are you tellin' this or me?"

"I apologize. Please go on."

He didn't, though, not for a moment. He simply enjoyed the feel of her in his arms as they stepped about the parlor to the sound of the music box chime.

"Mr. Rain? You were telling me about the musicians after Market Day?"

"We'd all gather round, you see, after the regular sorts went home. Them as had coin would buy up the last of the tarts and meat pies for near to nothing, and pass 'em out. Spirits'd be brought out to wet throats dry from hawking wares all day, and things'd get right jolly."

Sometimes they had gotten rather dangerous as well, but she needn't hear about that.

"And then there was the dancing. The baker in his apron and the seller women in their caps, without a care for their dress, all just dancing for the joy of it, and of a day well ended."