Rebecca frowned doubtfully. “And my costume would be?”
“A musketeer, of course. I’m sure no one will notice you don’t have a rapier to add the final touch. It’s the old-fashioned hat that makes it, you see. And it’s such a perfect costume for a woman. A man couldn’t pull it off. Remove the hat and he wouldn’t be in costume! But a woman—it’s the one time we can wear breeches, you know! For us, it is a costume and a good one.”
Elizabeth was right, actually. And she seemed so pleased with herself for finding this solution for Rebecca that Rebecca didn’t have the heart to say she’d rather take her chances with the disapproval she might incur for not attending than show up in a silly-looking patched-together costume that could earn her disapproval of a different sort, for trying to masquerade as a man.
“You will want to put your hair up under the hat,” Elizabeth added as she tossed it toward Rebecca. “It’s too bad you sent your maid off for the day, isn’t it?”
There, that was better. That catty remark and tone were more in line with what Rebecca expected from the other girl. She could be forgiven for mistrusting her roommate’s sudden offer of help.
But Elizabeth didn’t seem to expect an answer. She pulled a costume out of her wardrobe for herself, but didn’t lay it down on the bed. She just draped it over her arm.
“I prefer to have my hair done first, which usually means I must cart my clothes all over the palace so I can dress afterwards,” she said with a sigh. On her way out the door, she added, “I will have a jacket sent to you.”
She probably wouldn’t do any such thing, Rebecca thought as she sat down on the bed, alone again. Elizabeth’s mentioning the inconvenience of having to go to someone else’s maid to have her hair done pretty much guaranteed it. She was sure Elizabeth wouldn’t do her any favors. But then a jacket was delivered, and not five minutes later another footman handed her some breeches to go with it. Suddenly Rebecca felt quite bad for doubting Elizabeth Marly.
Chapter Four
REBECCA WAS RATHER PLEASED as she stood back from the vanity mirror to have a better look at her improvised costume. She wished the room had a longer mirror, but the oval one at least let her see some of her length.
Her height was going to help her pull this off. The breeches actually fit! That made her decide to go ahead and dress the part of a dashing cavalier. Had the jacket been less fancy, she might have claimed the role of a pirate instead, then she wouldn’t have had to stuff her hair away. The hat, with its rakishly long feather, would probably have worked either way.
While she would rather have looked perfect for her first public appearance at court, the costume was obviously a costume. She turned around and glanced at her backside in the mirror and was assured that she could pass for a man until someone got a look at her face. Finished primping, she was beginning to feel excited. This was her first ball of any sort. She would have missed it altogether if not for Elizabeth’s help. She owed the girl an apology for doubting her.
She hurried out of the room, then slowed down considerably as the long corridor stretched in front of her and she realized she had no idea where the ball was taking place. One of the main rooms, surely, and once she got to the end of the corridor, there would no doubt be servants she could ask.
“Got your days mixed up, old chap?” a male voice asked from behind her. “The costume ball is tomorrow night.” The man turned his head and glanced at her briefly as he walked by.
Rebecca stopped in her tracks. Him? What was he doing here?
The man didn’t stop to hear her reply, not that she could have replied because she was speechless. His long legs carried him far beyond her and soon he was out of sight. He hadn’t looked at her closely enough to realize his mistake in assuming she was a chap. But she’d seen enough of his face to recognize him and be rendered dazzled and dumbstruck for the third time he had come into her view.
She thought of him as The Angel. He was too beautiful to be just an ordinary man. So tall and strapping, with long black hair that bounced about his shoulders with his long stride. She’d thought his eyes were a light gray, but then she’d never been so close to him before. At his brief glance just now, she saw that they were actually a lovely shade of pale blue.
The first time she’d ever seen him had been in the town of Norford, and she’d been so awestruck, she’d imagined an ethereal glow about him, thus he’d become The Angel in her mind. The notion had been reinforced the second time she saw him, when he’d been riding along the road to Norford Hall, a sunbeam peeking through the tree branches shining directly on him, like the light of heaven. She’d been awestruck that time, too. She might have thought she’d imagined the whole thing if she hadn’t been with her mother the second time and Lilly had noticed her reaction.
“He’s related to your future husband,” Lilly had said. “One of Raphael Locke’s many cousins, I believe. I swear, that entire family was blessed with exceptional looks.”
Her mother had had such great expectations that she would marry the Locke heir. Rebecca had had them, too. From the day she’d first met Raphael Locke when he’d come to one of her mother’s garden parties, she’d been enthralled by his handsomeness and charming manner. So she’d been in wholehearted agreement when Lilly had suggested he might do for her husband. Unfortunately, that had been five years ago when she’d been way too young for marriage, whereas Raphael had already been of a marriageable age.
Rebecca and her mother had both worried when he’d gone to London for his first real Season. But then the rumors flew that he wasn’t looking for a wife yet. Then more rumors flew about how most of the mamas of the debutantes that particular Season refused to believe that he wouldn’t be enamored of their daughters. He had tried to put them off by having one brief affair after another, hoping for the title of rake rather than eligible bachelor.
It didn’t work. The mamas still trotted their daughters forward. As the Duke of Norford’s heir, Raphael was simply too good a catch to ignore. They hounded him so badly that they more or less chased him out of London and right off to the Continent for a two-year tour of Europe. Which was a relief for the Marshall ladies. They saw it as a reprieve, time for Rebecca to grow up a little more.
But when Raphael returned to the homeland, something unexpected happened. With no rumors to give warning, and not even a courtship, he up and married Ophelia Reed, the most beautiful and spiteful woman in London. What a disappointment that had been. Rebecca had been left floundering without a goal.
Of course Lilly had blamed herself for introducing the subject of marriage when Rebecca hadn’t been close to the age for it. She didn’t make that mistake again. Marriage was still discussed, but just in a general way that didn’t involve any specific names.
But here was Raphael’s cousin where she would have least expected to find him. Come to think of it, it wasn’t so far-fetched to see him at Buckingham Palace. He was a marquis, after all. At least, she thought he might be a marquis. Hadn’t his mother married one, then next they heard, she had become a widow, so the title went to her eldest son? He could certainly have been invited to the palace for one of the entertainments.
Coming out of her daze, she realized that this was the first time she was seeing The Angel when she didn’t have designs on his cousin. Previously, she had put aside as inappropriate her curiosity about the man. Besides, he wasn’t well known in Norford. His mother, one of the duke’s many sisters, had married and moved to London before Rebecca had been born. So she’d never learned his full name, as people referred to him as Raphael’s cousin, or Julie’s son. He simply remained The Angel to her.
Of course she knew he wasn’t an angel. She’d even heard some vague rumors about Julie Locke’s son being a notorious skirt-chaser, which was a kinder way of saying he was a rake of the worst sort. She hadn’t believed a word of it. How could anything tawdry be associated with him?
Alone in the empty corridor, Rebecca started moving again, but she didn’t take more than
a few steps before she came to a dead halt again. So utterly distracted by who had given her the warning, she hadn’t fully processed what that warning entailed.
There was no costume ball tonight? Could Elizabeth really have gotten the days mixed up, or did she lie to make Rebecca look the fool? She would certainly have looked foolish showing up at a social event dressed as she was. Some sort of entertainment must be taking place, or Elizabeth wouldn’t have concocted a plan designed to embarrass her in front of others. If it had been a plan.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Rebecca mumbled under her breath. “Give her the benefit of the doubt. She really could have been trying to make amends only to have it backfire on her. It would be a shame then to make accusations only to be wrong and end up looking the fool anyway.”
She walked slowly back to her room, all of the ramifications running through her mind of what could have happened if The Angel hadn’t passed her in the hall. What would her mother do? She wished she could ask her for advice, but Lilly was probably back in Norford by now.
Rebecca closed the door to her room and leaned back against it. She wasn’t sure if she should just retire so she would be fresh for her first full day at the palace, or change clothes and seek out Elizabeth to demand an explanation. The window caught her eye. The offensive window. The silly window draped with her petticoat! The kernel of anger she was trying to ignore couldn’t be ignored any longer.
Chapter Five
DID YOU FIND YOUR room satisfactory this time?”
Rupert St. John, Marquis of Rochwood, reposed in the stuffed chair in an insolent manner, a leg draped over one arm, his back resting against the other. He sniffed the brandy he was handed, but didn’t drink it, and he didn’t answer the question. The disrespect he showed to his superior was deliberate. But then he despised Nigel Jennings and they both knew it.
The first time Rupert had been asked to reside in the palace for a few days so he could be close to his quarry, he’d been shoved with his servant into a room so tiny it could by all accounts have been called a box. This time he’d been given a suite of rooms that a foreign king had just vacated. So the question didn’t require an answer. He hadn’t really complained about that other room, he’d merely told Nigel never to ask him to stay in Buckingham again, particularly since his home was no more than a five-minute ride from the palace. But Nigel had stressed how important it was. So Rupert had in fact been a little surprised by the grandeur of his current accommodations.
His pale blue eyes remained on Nigel as the older man poured himself a glass of brandy as well, or half a glass, and began looking for another bottle in the cabinet. Short, wiry, and unassuming, Nigel Jennings could blend into any crowd—which made him all the more deadly. Rupert couldn’t do the same. He had a face no one ever forgot. Handsome, excessively so, he’d even been called beautiful on occasion, which could set off murderous impulses inside him, since his beauty was what had gotten him into his present role in the first place.
Not that he didn’t like what he did. He enjoyed the danger. It was almost addictive. He enjoyed the thrill of success as well. And he liked being the unknown hero. He just loathed how it had all begun.
Distracted by the search for that second bottle, Nigel asked, “What did you find out, darling?”
Rupert stiffened at the endearment and said precisely, “One of these days I’m probably going to kill you.”
Nigel swung around in surprise, and, apparently having realized what he’d accidentally said, he paled slightly. “That didn’t come out right.”
“Didn’t it?”
“I was joking. It won’t happen again.”
Rupert didn’t believe it and said in a hard, thoughtful tone, “You impressed a boy into thinking only he could save his country from doom. You impressed a boy into believing that this face”—he stabbed a finger at his cheek—“was the only thing that would work.”
“You were perfect for that mission,” Nigel insisted. “When I first saw you when you visited George’s court with your father, good God, you were the most beautiful child I’d ever encountered. I never forgot that. Years later when a particular mission became necessary, you came to mind for it immediately, so, yes, I sought you out, and at fourteen you hadn’t quite matured to your full masculinity, yet you were old enough to decide for yourself—”
Rupert continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “You enlisted a boy to do the unthinkable—for the sake of his country. And you really wouldn’t have given a damn if he had done it your way, instead of finding a different way that didn’t tarnish him for life. But that boy is no more.”
“For God’s sake, Rupert, it was a slip of the tongue!”
“It was a slip of your emotions,” Rupert corrected in a snarl as he stood up. “We agreed, long ago, that you would keep those perverted emotions to yourself.”
He was being too harsh. Nigel’s face flamed with embarrassment. He had cried drunkenly that night four years ago when he’d let it slip that he was in love with Rupert. He said it was something that had just happened, that he couldn’t help it. But he’d sworn that he would never mention it again, that he wouldn’t let it interfere with their working relationship. By all accounts, Nigel’s sexual preferences didn’t even lean that way. He had once had a wife, who was now deceased. He had several children. He kept mistresses. All of which could be a ruse—or not. Rupert knew that some men leaned both ways, but Rupert had to give Nigel the benefit of the doubt, or he wouldn’t have been able to continue to work for him.
Rupert sighed. “I may have overreacted. Let’s drop it, shall we?”
It was as close as he’d come to an apology. Nigel accepted it with a curt nod and, grabbing the half-filled glass of brandy, moved over to a chair as far across the room as he could get. It was a decent-size room. Nigel had called it home since the queen had made Buckingham Palace her home. Here, or at one of the other royal residences, he had the distinction of having served three monarchs now.
Spy, royal agent, whatever one chose to call him, Nigel carried out the business of gathering information that might help or harm the country. Forewarned was forearmed, after all, for good or bad. Some people even thought he was one of the late King George III’s bastards, which would explain why he was always in residence with the monarchs. Royal spy just didn’t fit the chap, as unassuming as he was.
There was no pay for the people who worked for him. Nobles were enlisted to serve for the good of the country. Pay was reserved for the riffraff who couldn’t be trusted unless a coin was placed in their pocket for their efforts. Unscrupulous, though not without some redeeming qualities, Nigel would go to any lengths for the sake of his country.
With the unspoken apology in the air between them, Nigel broached the question again. “Did you find out anything yet?”
“Do I look like a miracle worker? I only just got here.”
The older man smiled at Rupert’s sarcastic reply. “I wouldn’t exactly call them miracles, though you have been known to produce amazing results from time to time.”
“I still don’t see what warranted my taking up residence here. The prime minister isn’t stupid. He isn’t going to appoint anyone to the palace who will make him look bad.”
With the Whig party in control for so long, Nigel had a long list of contacts among them. He’d even made use, on occasion, of some of the Whig ladies of the court for minor missions. But now that the Tories controlled the parliament, his life would be a little more difficult. Not that Nigel favored either political party. He couldn’t really afford to, in his line of work. He would just have to begin from scratch, making new contacts among the court ladies.
“Of course they all come from good families. I have no concern in that regard—yet,” Nigel said. “But two of the ladies assigned to the duchess when she reconciled with the queen after the Princess Royal was born were firmly in my camp. They understood the necessity of reporting anything out of the ordinary concerning the duchess. Having lost them??
?”
Rupert cut in, “Don’t tell me you’re still worried about the Duchess of Kent? That’s old news, under the carpet. She and the queen get along famously now, don’t they?”
That had been quite an estrangement during which the queen had not allowed her own mother to live in her household. It was because of John Conroy, the duchess’s private secretary and adviser. He was reputedly also her lover, though that had never been proven. But even Victoria suspected as much. When Conroy had had the audacity to try to coerce Victoria into making him her personal secretary, she had had quite enough of the domineering pair and had banished them from her household.
Prince Albert, the queen’s husband and a nephew of the duchess’s, had patched up the rift between the two women after Victoria gave birth to her first child last year. It also helped that Conroy had left the country by then. Rupert was surprised Nigel hadn’t just arranged for the man to be assassinated. But Rupert didn’t doubt Nigel had had a part in encouraging Conroy’s self-proclaimed exile, though Nigel had never admitted as much.
Now Nigel agreed with Rupert’s assessment. “By all accounts, the duchess has become a doting grandmother and she and Victoria are close again. But I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I just assumed there is no need to keep an eye on that front—particularly since Sarah Wheeler is not being replaced with the rest of the Whig-appointed maids of honor. Smart woman not to declare her politics.”
“Did she gain a new position in the transition?”
“Not an official one, but since all the other ladies are new, the duchess has given her authority over the new maids of honor assigned to her.”
Rupert knew very well that Nigel had been suspicious of Lady Sarah since she’d first arrived at court. An impoverished noblewoman, the last of her line, she had been part of the duchess’s household prior to the queen’s moving into the palace and had never actually been given a position. Lady Sarah was merely in the duchess’s employ. Then she and Nigel became rivals of a sort. Yes, rivals was a good name for the competition that had somehow developed between them earlier this year.