Knowing him, that was a pertinent question.
He didn’t frown, but she sensed his irritation, sensed, as he answered, that it wasn’t directed at her.
“They know I had to come down.”
Had to? She fought to cover her dismay. “Why?”
Surely, surely it couldn’t be…?
Charles wished the light were better or the chair closer to the bed; he couldn’t see Penny’s eyes and her expressions—the real ones—were too fleeting to read in the dimness. He’d chosen the safe distance of the chair to avoid aggravating their mutually twitching nerves. That moment in the corridor had been bad enough; the urge to seize her, to have his hands on her again, had been so strong, so unexpectedly intense, it had taken every ounce of his will to resist.
He still felt off-balance, just a touch insane. He’d stay put and make do.
She appeared as he remembered her, tall, lithe, and slender, a fair sylph who despite her outward delicacy had always had his measure. Little about her seemed to have changed, but he mistrusted that conclusion. As a gently bred nobleman’s daughter, the thirteen years between sixteen and twenty-nine had to have left their mark, but in what ways he had no clue, except in one respect. He would take his oath her quick wits hadn’t got any slower.
“I’m here on business.” True enough.
“What business?”
“This and that.”
“Estate business?”
“I’ll be attending to whatever’s on my study desk while I’m here.”
“But you’re here for some other reason?”
He could sense agitation building beneath her words; his instincts were awake, alert, and suspicious. His mission here was to be open, overt not covert. For once there was no reason he couldn’t cheerfully tell all, yet the very last person he’d expected to tell first—if at all—was her.
But if she was asking, then his most direct way forward was to tell her, and see how she reacted. Yet he wanted quid pro quo—what the devil was she doing traipsing about the countryside at midnight, let alone dressed as a male? And why the hell was she there and not at her home, Wallingham Hall, a mere four miles away? Come to that, why wasn’t she in London, or safely married and living with a husband? Oh, yes, he definitely wanted answers to all those questions, which meant the distance between them wasn’t going to work. If she lied…if he couldn’t see her face, her eyes, he might not pick it up.
Unhurriedly, he stood; his gaze on her, he walked, as unthreateningly as he could, to the bed and propped one shoulder against the post at its end. Her gaze hadn’t left him; he looked down into her eyes. “I’ll tell you why, exactly why I’m here, if in return you’ll explain to me why, exactly why you’ve arrived here at this hour, dressed like that.”
Her grip on the edge of the bed had tightened, but otherwise she hadn’t tensed. She stared up at him for a finite moment, then looked at the door. “I’m hungry.”
She rose, walked to the door, and without a backward glance went through it.
Lips lifting, he pushed away from the bedpost and followed, closing the door behind him.
He caught up with her on the stairs and followed her to the kitchen. She marched in and went straight to the kettle, left sitting to one side of the hob; taking it to the pump over the sink, she started filling it. Crossing to the stove, he hunkered down, opened the furnace door, and riddled the grate until the coals glowed red. He piled in kindling, then a few split logs, conscious of the sharp, assessing glances she threw him as she moved about the room.
Once the fire was blazing, he shut the furnace door and rose. Reaching across, she set the kettle to heat and placed a teapot into which she’d ladled leaves on the bench alongside. Glancing at the table, he noted the cups and saucers she’d set out, the plate of Mrs. Slattery’s almond biscuits she’d fetched from the pantry. Not once had she hesitated in assembling those things. She knew where everything in his kitchen was stored better than he did.
He studied her as she sank into the chair at one end of the table. Mrs. Slattery, the Abbey’s head cook and housekeeper, would never allow her to help herself, which meant she’d learned all she knew on forays like this, long after his staff were abed.
She’d set his cup and saucer halfway along the table, the plate of biscuits between them, beside a single candlestick. The plate was as far from her as she could reach, and equally far from his designated place. He drew up a chair to that spot without comment. The candle flame was steady in the well-sealed kitchen; he’d achieved what he’d wanted—he could see her face.
Picking up a biscuit, she nibbled, over it met his eyes. “So why are you here?”
Leaning back, resisting the lure of the biscuits for the moment, he studied her. If he answered simply, succinctly, what were his chances of getting anything out of her? “My erstwhile commander asked me to take a look around here.”
Where to go from there? He could see the question in her gray-blue eyes, could only wonder why she was being so very careful.
“Your commander…” She hesitated, then asked, “What arm of the services were you in, Charles?”
Very few people knew. “Neither the army nor the navy.”
“Which regiment?”
“Theoretically one of the Guards.”
“In reality?”
If he didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t understand the rest.
She frowned. “Where were you for all those years?”
“Toulouse.”
She blinked; her frown deepened. “With your mother’s relatives?”
He shook his head. “They’re from Landes. A similar distance south, so my coloring and accent were acceptable, but far enough away for me to be relatively safe from being recognized.”
She saw, bit by bit realized. Her gaze grew distant, her expression slowly blanked, then she snapped her gaze, now appalled, back on him. “You were a spy?”
He’d steeled himself, so didn’t flinch. “An unoffocial agent of His British Majesty’s government.”
The kettle chose that moment to shriek. His words had sounded sophisticated, dismissively cynical, but he suddenly wanted that tea.
She rose, still staring, lips slightly parted. Her eyes were round, but he couldn’t read the expression in them. Then she turned away, snagged the kettle, and poured the boiling water over the leaves. Setting the kettle down, she swirled the pot, then left it to steep.
She turned back to him. Her gaze searched his face; she rubbed her hands down her breeches and slowly sat again. This time she leaned forward; the candlelight reached her eyes.
“All those years?”
He hadn’t, until that moment, known how she’d react, whether she’d be horrified by the dishonor many considered spying to be, or whether she’d understand.
She understood. Her horror was for him, not over what he’d been doing. A massive weight lifted from his shoulders; he breathed in, lightly shrugged. “Someone had to do it.”
“But from when?”
“I was recruited as soon as I joined the Guards.”
“You were only twenty!” She sounded, and was, aghast.
“I was also half-French, looked completely French, spoke like a southern native—I could so easily pass for French.” He met her gaze. “And I was ripe for any madness.”
He would never tell her that part of that wildness had been because of her.
“But…” She was trying to work it out.
He sighed. “Back then, it was easy to slip into France. Within a few months I was established, just another French businessman in Toulouse.”
She viewed him critically. “You look—and act—too aristocratic. Your arrogance would always mark you.”
He smiled, all teeth. “I gave it out that I was a bastard of a by-then-extinct family on whose grave I would happily dance.”
She studied him, then nodded. “All right. And then you did what?”
“I wormed my way into the good graces of every military and civilian dignitar
y there, gathering whatever information I could.”
Exactly how he’d done that was one question he wasn’t prepared to answer, but she didn’t ask.
“So you sent the information back, but you stayed there—all that time?”
“Yes.”
She rose to fetch the tea, returning to the table to pour; he watched, soothed in some odd way by the simple domestic act. So distracted was she that when she came close to fill his cup, she didn’t seem to notice. As she leaned forward, his eyes traced the curve of her hip, plainly visible courtesy of her breeches. His palm tingled, but he ruthlessly kept both hands still until she straightened and moved away.
He nodded his thanks, picked up the cup, cradled it between his hands. He sipped, then went on, “Once it became clear how successfully I could penetrate the highest civil and military ranks, there was more at stake. Leaving became too risky. The French had to believe I was always there, always accounted for—not the slightest question over what I was doing at any time.”
Leaving the pot on the sink, she returned to her chair. “So that’s why you didn’t come back for James’s funeral.”
“I managed to get out for Papa’s and Frederick’s, but when James was lost, Wellington’s forces were closing on Toulouse. It was more vital than ever that I stay in place.” Frederick, his eldest brother, had broken his neck on the hunting field; James, the second eldest, had succeeded Frederick, only to drown in a freak boating accident. He, Charles, was the third son of the sixth earl, yet here he now was, proclaimed and established as the ninth earl. One of the vicissitudes of fortune that had overtaken him.
She nodded, her gaze far away; lifting her cup, she sipped.
Eventually, she refocused on him. “Where were you at Waterloo?”
He hesitated, but he wanted the truth—all of the truth—from her. “Behind French lines. I led a few others, half-French like me, to join a detachment from Toulouse. They were guarding artillery on a hill overlooking the field.”
“You stopped the cannons?”
“That’s why we were there.”
Her gaze remained steady on his face. “To reduce the slaughter of our troops.”
By slaughtering others. He left the words unsaid.
“But after Waterloo, you sold out.”
“There was no further need of us—agents like me. And I had other duties waiting.”
Her lips curved. “Duties you and everyone else had never imagined you’d have to take up.”
Indeed. The mantle of the earldom had fallen to him, the wildest, outwardly least suited, least trained to the challenge of his father’s three sons.
She continued to study him, after a moment asked, “How does it feel—being the earl?”
She’d always had an uncanny ability to probe where he was most sensitive. “Odd.” He shifted in his chair, stared into his half-empty cup.
Impossible to explain the feeling that had enveloped him when he’d walked up the front steps and through the massive front door earlier that day. The earldom and the Abbey were his. Not just them, but the lands and the responsibilities that came with both, and more—the Abbey was not just his childhood home but the home of his ancestors, the place in which his family had its deepest roots. This was home, and its protection and fostering had fallen to him; to him fell the challenge of seeing it and the estates pass to the next generation not just intact but improved.
The feeling was as compelling as any bugle call had ever been, yet the impulses it stirred were not as yet so clear. Nevertheless, more than anything else, his need to respond by finding his countess, by properly linking himself back into this world, had brought him home; Dalziel had just provided a fortuitous excuse.
“I still find it hard remembering Filchett and Crewther are trying to get my attention when they say ‘my lord.’ ” Filchett and Crewther were his butlers, here and in town respectively.
He’d told her enough. He drained his cup, intending to start his side of the interrogation.
She stopped him with the words, “I heard you and some others had formed a special club to help each other in your search for brides.”
He stared at her, simply stared. “Have you been to London recently?”
“Not for seven years.”
He’d accepted Dalziel knew all about the Bastion Club, but…“How the hell did you know?”
She set down her cup. “Marissa had it from Lady Amery.”
He sighed through his teeth. He should have remembered Tony Blake’s mother and godmother were French, part of the network of aristocratic emigrées who’d come to England years before the Terror. As was his mother. He frowned. “She didn’t tell me she knew.”
Penny snorted and stood to retrieve their cups. “She and the rest only went up to town four weeks ago. How much time have you spent with her?”
“I’ve been busy.” He was grateful he didn’t blush easily. He’d been actively avoiding, not so much his mother—she understood him so well it was frightening, but consequently she rarely attempted to tell him his business—but his younger sisters, Jacqueline and Lydia, and even more his sisters-in-law, Frederick’s wife Annabelle and James’s wife Helen.
Their husbands had died without heirs; for some mystical reason that had converted them into the most passionate advocates of marriage for him. They’d infected his sisters with the same zeal. Every time any of the four saw him, they’d drop names. He didn’t dare go riding or strolling in the park for fear of being set on and dragged to do the pretty by some witless, spineless miss they thought perfect to fill his countess’s shoes.
Initially, he’d welcomed their help, no matter his oft-voiced aversion to such feminine aid, but then he’d realized the young ladies they were steering his way were all wrong—that there apparently wasn’t a right one in all of London—but he hadn’t known how to explain, how to stop them, couldn’t bring himself to utter a straight No; he could imagine their faces falling, the hurt look in their eyes…just the thought made him squirm.
“Have they driven you from town?” Penny watched his head come up, watched his eyes narrow. She held his gaze, amused. “I did warn them—and Elaine and my sisters, too—but they were all quite convinced they knew just who would suit you and that you’d welcome their assistance.”
His snort was a great deal more derisive than hers had been. “Much they know…” He stopped.
She probed. “It’s the start of the Season—the very first week—and you’ve already fled.”
“Indeed.” His voice hardened. “But enough of me.” His eyes—she knew they were midnight blue, but in the weak light they looked black—fixed on her face. “What were you doing riding about the countryside dressed like that?” A flick of his eyes indicated her unconventional attire.
She shrugged. “It was easier than riding in skirts, especially at night.”
“No doubt. But why were you riding at night, and sufficiently hard to appreciate the difference between sidesaddle and astride?”
She hesitated, then gave him one inch—dangerous, but…“I was following someone.”
“Someone doing what?”
“I don’t know—that’s why I was following him.”
“Who is he and where did he go?”
She held his gaze. Telling him was too great a risk, not without knowing why he was there. Especially now she knew the truth of his past.
That hadn’t been that great a shock; she’d always suspected something of the sort—she’d known him quite well, the youth he’d once been. But thirteen years had passed; she didn’t know the man he now was. Until she did, until she could be sure…she knew enough to be careful. “You said you were asked to look around here by your ex-commander. What sort of ex-commander does an ex-spy have?”
“A very determined one.” When she simply waited, he grudgingly elaborated, “Dalziel is a something in Whitehall—exactly what, I’ve never known. He commanded all British agents on foreign soil for the last thirteen years at least.”
“What has he asked you to look into down here?”
He hesitated. She could see him weighing the risk of telling her, of giving her the last piece of information she wanted without any guarantee she’d reciprocate.
She continued to wait, gaze steady.
A muscle shifted in his jaw. His gaze grew colder. “Information has surfaced that suggests there was a spy in the Foreign Office leaking secrets to the French during the war. The information suggests the route of communication lay somewhere near Fowey, presumably via one of the smuggling gangs operating hereabouts.”