If that was the case, something would have to be done immediately to neutralize the amateur plotters. They would have to—
Richard caught himself up short. They. Not he. He had nothing to do with it anymore. He had been retired. Rusticated. It was Jane Wooliston"s business now. The Purple Gentian had left the garden.
Richard took a long swig of his port before speaking. “Why tell me? I"m out of commission these days.” He could feel himself wallowing. Surely, a little wallow was permissible, on an occasion such as this.
“Only in France,” said Miles helpfully.
“If you"ll forgive me pointing out the obvious,” Richard said sarcastically, leaning over to splash a second round of port into Miles" glass before topping up his own, “France just happens to be where the enemy is.”
“That doesn"t mean there isn"t work to be done here. Some of us never got to go romp around France in a black mask in the first place.”
“Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?” Richard tossed back, setting the stopper firmly in the decanter.
“No.” Something in Miles" voice made Richard"s hand still on the stopper. It was perfectly cheerful, but…. Richard looked up from the decanter and met his old friend"s guileless brown eyes. “No more than I do for you.”
“Hmph,” said Richard.
Miles played the buffoon so well, it was easy to forget that he was generally brighter than he let on. He was bright enough not to spoil his advantage by pressing it home. Instead, he said cheerfully, “You still have connections among the émigré community in London, haven"t you? And on the coast?”
Not entirely recent ones, but…. “Yes,” he said guardedly.
“Excellent! Once Christmas is over—”
He broke off as Richard abruptly held up a hand. What was that? Old instincts died hard. He had acted before he had even fully identified the noise. There had been a creaking sound, like a floorboard, or a door hinge.
“Is anyone there?” he called out sharply.
His instincts were rewarded. The door swung slowly inward, revealing the figure of a woman, her hair drawn into curls at the sides, held up by violet flowers that matched the color of her half-mourning.
“I"m so sorry,” said Deirdre. No, not Deirdre, Richard reminded himself. Lady Jerard. “I do hope I"m not interrupting.”
Both gentlemen rose hastily to their feet.
“Not at all,” said Richard smoothly.
Miles made a grunting noise that just barely passed for assent, but the expression on his face couldn"t be mistaken for anything other than hostility, iced over with a fragile veneer of good manners. He nodded generally in Deirdre"s direction, without ever looking directly at her.
Miles had never forgiven Deirdre for Tony.
“I should be getting back,” Miles said, brushing his hands vigorously against his thighs, as though scrubbing off something unpleasant.
Richard suppressed a sigh, feeling all the fatigue of the day descending upon him. He didn"t particularly want to deal with Deirdre either, but his reasons weren"t quite the same as Miles".
When he looked at Deirdre, he didn"t see her crime. He saw his. He had been young and foolish and desperate to impress the object of his infatuation. It had been his indiscretion, boasting to Deirdre of their plans in France, that had led to Tony"s death. Why should Deirdre have suspected her maid of being a French spy? That had been his responsibility, not hers, and he had failed.
The only crime Deirdre had committed was in choosing Baron Jerard over him, and that was a crime he could easily forgive, although at the time, it had felt like capital treason. Now, years removed, it was hard to remember why. Oh, she was certainly easy on the eyes—she still was, at that—but there had never been anything more. All his memories were of long looks, of worshipful silences, of his own voice singing her praises. They must have conversed, but he couldn"t recall a single conversation worth remembering. When it came down to it, they had never really had anything to say to each other.
That was not a problem from which he and Amy could be said to suffer.
He really ought to get back to the drawing room and Amy. But there was Deirdre to be dealt with. He did feel that he owed her something, after all these years. She had been his first love, even if a hollow one, and one didn"t dismiss that lightly.
Richard forced a pleasant smile onto his face, and said, “Were you looking for me?” Given their history, that hadn"t come out quite right. He modified it to, “Might I help you?”
Deirdre"s eyes scanned the room, as though searching for something she had lost, before settling, sadly, on him. “You might have. Once.”
Richard could hear the chime of silvery bells in his brain. Warning bells.
Before he could get too alarmed, Deirdre shook her head, holding up her hands in a charming gesture of abnegation. “Don"t mind me,” she said ruefully. She glanced down at the bulbous sapphire ring that still circled her finger, Baron Jerard"s betrothal ring. “It has been a difficult season.”
“At least you had several good years together,” said Richard awkwardly. It did feel a bit bizarre to be belatedly consoling her for the death of the man for whom she had jilted him.
But he felt, in retrospect, more than a little bit grateful to Baron Jerard. Who knows, he thought generously. Perhaps Deirdre had genuinely loved the man, for all that he had been fifty if he was a day and shaped like the more bulbous sort of beer barrel.
“Several years, yes.” Deirdre stared down into the depths of her sapphire as though it were an oracle and might speak to her. “Good years?” She shook her head slowly in unspoken condemnation of her late husband.
Bloody, bloody, bloody blast. This was the last thing he needed, to play father confessor to outworn infatuation.
“I"m very sorry to hear that,” he said, for lack of anything better.
His half-hearted words made more of an impression than he had intended. Deirdre roamed idly around the room, her ruffled flounce making a muted swishing sound, like snow shifting in tree branches.
She braced her hands against the edge of Robert"s father"s desk. Her head bowed, she said,
“There is something I have wanted to say to you for a very long time, something long overdue.”
“If it is that overdue,” suggested Richard gently, trying very hard not to glance at the clock on the mantle as he said it, “perhaps, then, it is better not said at all.”
“How like you,” murmured Deirdre, “to try to spare me pain.”
Well, no. Once upon a time, he had wished her a good deal of pain. Once upon a time, he had also written a vast quantity of very mawkish poetry, comparing her eyes to pansies sprinkled with morning dew, and her teeth to peerless pearls. Or was it her skin that had been peerless pearl? One forgot, after all these years. Richard tried to imagine how Amy would react were he to address something of the kind to her. Hooting sounds of laughter seemed the most likely response.
He nearly betrayed himself into a grin, but the somber expression on Deirdre"s face caught him up short just in time.
Poor woman; they had both suffered from their brief affair. They had both lost the dream of what might have been between them. He, at least, had had the luxury of resenting her for it.
He had fumed and come to terms and found someone, in the end, who suited him a hundred times better, not in an illusion of romantic love, but in the rough and tumble of the workaday thing. She, on the other hand, had borne the burden of having made the decision, with nothing to show for it in the end but an empty title and an emptier bed. He could find it in himself to feel sorry for her. Now.
Deirdre looked at him long and earnestly. “I am sorry that it ended… as it did.”
It was a compliment, of a sort. “Thank you,” said Richard gravely.
What time was it? Long past time to be getting back to the drawing room. Unfortunately, Deirdre didn"t seem to be done yet. She held out one gloved hand to him.
“I never meant to hurt you.” Candlelight gli
nted off her curls as she bowed her head in remembered pain. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”
Poor consolation for Tony, dead these six years.
But there was no point in recriminations. Deirdre had been careless, not malicious. In his hurt and resentment, it had been easy to forget that she must suffer Tony on her conscience, just as he did.
“Of course, you didn"t,” said Richard, all manly solicitude. “Let"s say nothing more about it.”
“I hope…” she began falteringly, stopped, and tried again. “I hope that I was not the end of your operations abroad. So much good to be stopped for so little.”
Her mathematical skills never had been much to talk about, had they? His unmasking in the press—and, more importantly, in Bonaparte"s files—had occurred last spring; Deirdre"s role in his life had ended six years ago. There was a slight time lag there.
“Think nothing of it,” he said gallantly. At least, it might have been gallant if he hadn"t meant it quite literally. There really was nothing to think of.
“Do you mean… that is…” her voice dropped to a breathy whisper. “Are you still carrying on your work, despite it all?”
Richard felt as though he were stuck in a curious sort of gap in time. If they had to have this conversation, shouldn"t it have been seven years ago? It was entirely irrelevant now. Unless, he thought, she was still caught in the net she had woven for herself, even though, to him, those were all as events from another lifetime.
He much preferred this lifetime, he realized—even if it did mean a cessation of those cross-Channel activities that even Deirdre"s accidental meddling had failed to end.
Kindly, but firmly, he said, “Whatever passed between us was over long, long ago. Your conscience should have no qualms about it.”
“How noble you are,” she said sadly. “How good! If I had known then one half of what I know now…. Oh, Richard!”
“Well!” said Richard heartily, beating a hasty retreat to the window. “Just look at that snow!”
Thank goodness for the weather. It was always there, always a proper topic of conversation.
Nothing forestalled inconvenient displays of emotion quite like a disquisition on climatic conditions.
“Oh dear,” said Deirdre softly. Richard had once dotingly termed that tone “dulcet”. In his new lexicon, Richard re-labeled it “bloody hard to hear properly”. “It is coming down.”
“That is what snow does,” Richard agreed, moving purposefully towards the study door.
“Shall I show you and your mother to your carriage? You must want to get a start on the drive.”
Deirdre remained remarkably stationary. She looked up at him from under her lashes.
“Our coachman doesn"t like driving in the snow….”
Ivy and Intrigue: A Very Selwick Christmas
Chapter Four
The holly bears a berry, as red as any blood….
The holly bears a prickle, as sharp as any thorn….
The holly bears a bark, as bitter as any gall….
-- “The Holly and the Ivy”
“You invited her to stay?”
“It"s just for the one night.” Richard added defensively, “Their coachman doesn"t like to drive in the snow.”
“Oh, for heaven"s sake!”
It didn"t help that Richard agreed with her. “Well, what I was supposed to do?” he asked testily. “Fling Deirdre and her aged mother out into the snow?”
The use of his former beloved"s Christian name had been a tactical error. He could see it in the narrowing of Amy"s blue eyes.
“No,” she said with dangerous calm. “You were supposed to fling them into their carriage, which is designed to ride through the snow. That"s what carriages are for.”
Richard scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Not this one apparently.” Letting his breath out in a long sigh, he looped an arm around Amy"s shoulders, pulling her against him. “Why all the fuss? If we were back at Selwick Hall, you would do the same for any other guest who didn"t want to travel. There"s certainly room enough in this old pile.”
Amy shrugged out of his embrace. “I don"t like the way she forced her way in.”
“She didn"t exactly batter down the castle gates,” Richard retorted. “My mother invited her.”
Amy made a grand, sweeping gesture. “Oh, and if your mother invited her, then it must be all right.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” From the look on Amy"s face, she didn"t know either, but she wasn"t about to admit it. Richard pressed his eyes shut. He wished he knew exactly what they were fighting about. Or was it just that they were clearly bound to fight about something? His two glasses of port—or had it been three—were beginning to catch up with him in a bad way. “Look. There was no way my mother could have not invited Deirdre. She"s a neighbor. We"ve always held open house at Uppington Hall on Christmas Eve.”
Amy folded her arms across her chest. “Of course. And she"s a part of that world.”
Richard had a feeling he was about to step into something soft and squishy, but he ventured forward anyway. “Yes.”
“And I"m not.”
Ah. That was the squishy bit. “I didn"t say that.”
Shaking her head, Amy turned away. “Never mind. I"m just— Never mind.”
Concerned, Richard followed after her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Just what?” he asked.
He could see the bared nape of her neck as she bent her head forward, the little tendrils of curl escaping from their ribbon dark against the tender skin. Ordinarily, he would have kissed her curls away, but this didn"t seem a moment for that.
Amy gave a little shake of her head. Richard could feel her shoulders rise and fall beneath his hands as she shrugged. “Nothing,” she said, turning jerkily, so that she was addressing the top button of his waistcoat. “Just—all this. Seeing Jane. Too much mince pie.”
“It"s not the mince pie, is it?” Richard asked grimly. “It"s the Jane bit.”
Amy lifted her head. Her eyes looked darker than usual, too dark in the shadow cast by his body. Richard thought abstractedly that this was the second pair of big, soulful blue eyes he had encountered this evening in this very same room. But this time, there was a difference.
He cared.
“A little,” she admitted. “No. A lot.”
Richard felt a lump in his chest that was more than just the three pieces of mince pie he had shared with his nephew. Out of the mass of indigestible emotion, he found himself blurting out, “If you had it all to do again, would you do it differently?”
Amy took a step back. Someone, presumably his niece Caroline, had stuck a sprig of holly into the bandeau that held back her curls. It had come unmoored, bobbing drunkenly beside one ear, like a buoy in a deserted sea.
“Do what?” she asked warily.
Grimacing, Richard made an abortive gesture. “All this. You had so little time over there before we had to leave—before I had to leave,” he corrected. He, at least, had had seven years playing hero, long enough, if he were being entirely honest, for the exercise to begin to stale. Amy, on the other hand, had had three months, three months after a lifetime of training.
“Are you sorry?”
“Sorry?”
Richard tried to keep his voice light. “That you yoked your lot to mine.”
Amy plucked the sprig of holly from behind her ear, squinted at it, made a face, and tossed it onto the desk. “I don"t usually think of it as a yoke.”
Richard didn"t like the sound of that “usually”. “Just when Jane comes to visit, then.”
Amy sketched an impatient gesture that could equally be taken as negation, assent, or do-we-really-have-to-talk-about-this-now? “We should be getting back,” she said. “Your mother wanted to get up a game of charades.”
“Bother the chara—”
“And you have house guests now.”
Richard cursed bloody Deirdre, her bloody mother, and their bloody coachman to perdition.
/> He threw in the snow for good measure while he was at it. Bother the snow.
“I had house guests before,” muttered Richard. “And they aren"t my guests, they"re my parents" guests.”
Amy dignified that with all the response it deserved. None. Tucking her holly more firmly into her hair, she swept the train of her red velvet dress up over her arm and started for the door, back towards charades, and house guests, and assorted dotty relatives who would effectively preclude their having any sort of meaningful conversation just by being themselves. Not that he was doing too well on the conversation front as it was—digging his own grave appeared to be the operative phrase—but he couldn"t let her go off looking like that. Not when it lay within his power to fix it.
“Wait—” Richard caught his wife by the hand. She looked back over her shoulder. A holly berry gave up its hold on her hair ornament and jounced off her shoulder before rolling harmlessly to the carpet. Before Richard could allow himself to think better of it, he took a very deep breath, and rattled off, all at once, “Would-you-like-to-go-back-to-France?”
Amy dropped her train in her surprise. The heavy fabric slid to the ground with a swish like falling snow. “What?”
“When Jane goes back, you could, too. It would be tricky”—Richard paused, fighting the impulse to enumerate and multiply the trickiness until it moved from tricky into impossible—
“but it could be done,” he finished nobly. “You can still do what you always wanted to do.”
Without him.
That part appeared to have occurred to Amy, too. “And what about you?”
Richard shrugged. “Miles seems to think that there"s work to be done on this end.”
The idea didn"t hold much savor at the moment. Going back to an empty house to code dispatches at the end of the day struck him as immeasurably lonely. He"d got used to being part of a pair. Being by himself would feel like being—well, holly without the ivy. Mince without the pie. Something less than the sum of its parts.