Twice Tempted Page 2
“No. Pip would have alerted me. Especially if she learned that they’d been evicted from their home. Pip has a finely honed sense of justice.”
The first time he’d met Fiona had been in response to his sister’s sense of justice.
Chuffy grinned. “Little spitfire, Pip,” he said, pushing at his sliding glasses. “Popped me in the nose once for insulting the Ripton chit.” He rubbed at that appendage. “Not intentional, o’ course. Had no idea she was so shy. Never forget now.”
Alex was nodding, but he really wasn’t paying attention. He was remembering the first time he’d seen Fiona Ferguson four years ago. She had been sixteen and running away from the school her brother had put her in. Alex, hung over and surly from too much brandy the night before, had gone after her at Pip’s insistence.
And then, chasing down the coach he thought might be carrying her, he had seen Fiona lean out the window. Tall, stately, with a square face, high cheekbones, and startling blue eyes. A mature beauty on a deceptively fragile girl. And the most glorious red-gold hair he’d ever seen, gleaming even in the rain like precious metal. She had been as bold as brass, fearless, focused on finding her sister, whom she thought was in some kind of trouble. She had fit that glorious hair to a farthing.
But when he’d seen her four weeks ago, she had changed.
Quieter, tidier, as if she were a foot squeezed into a too-small shoe. That barely tamed light he had unconsciously sought in her stunning blue eyes had been gone, replaced by a disturbing placidity. She had been expensively clad and shod in Indian muslin and kidskin, groomed to a fare-thee-well. And oddly pallid.
What had happened in the last four years to douse that ineffable spirit? A spirit that had survived a childhood of hardship, upheaval, and death, all by her fourteenth birthday.
Why had Alex not realized that Fiona’s promising future had gone wrong? Had she even had a season? Suddenly he couldn’t remember. Certainly not when his sister Pip came out. The year after? He had been on the continent through much of that season, interceding between Wellington’s paymaster and the Rothschilds.
He was furious, suddenly. At the marquess, at the vagaries of life. Mostly, at himself. At his assumption that the only thing Ian’s sisters had needed four years ago had been warmth and a full belly. That when he had brought Fiona to that great house in the Yorkshire dales to meet her grandfather, he had delivered her to paradise.
After all, she and her sister had spent their lives scraping by, alone except for a brother who was never there. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a family again?
But he had judged her family against his own, and he knew perfectly well how unfair that was. He had the love not only of his mother and sisters, but a stepfather who had taught Alex most of what he knew about being a gentleman. To Alex, the greatest gift a person could be given was a family. He’d forgotten that not all families were worth coming home to.
It was Chuffy’s portentous throat-clearing that yanked Alex back from his thoughts. He looked up to discover a middle-aged man standing at their table, his curly brimmed beaver clutched in his hands.
“Lord Whitmore?” the man asked. At Alex’s nod, he smiled. “Oh, thank heavens. I was afraid I’d missed you.”
Alex and Chuffy both stood to receive the unprepossessing gentleman, Chuffy’s napkin still tucked into his neckcloth.
“Can we help you?” Alex asked.
The man put out his hand. “Gilbert Bryce-Jones. The marquess’s secretary. I just returned to find the marquess ready to lop off heads and the staff all in a fuss. Seems a pair of gentlemen called his lordship to task for failing his responsibilities.”
Hands were shaken, names exchanged, and outerwear removed. Reclaiming his seat, Alex took a draught of his ale and evaluated the newcomer, who seemed interchangeable with most other secretaries he’d met. Trim and tidy, with unremarkable features and neatly cut, mouse-brown hair, as if seeking anonymity.
“Bryce-Jones?” Chuffy asked, fork and knife back in hand. “Know your family. Good ton, no luck with money.”
Bryce-Jones chuckled, but Alex caught a glint of discomfort in his gray eyes. “You are absolutely correct, my lord,” the secretary said, his right hand brushing against his marcello waistcoat, as if expecting to find something there. “I am fortunate that my cousin the marquess was kind enough to give me a position.”
Chuffy shook his head. “Not kind at all. Cheese-paring old misery guts. Must be sharp in the brain box.”
Obviously uncertain how to react to Chuffy, Bryce-Jones turned to Alex. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you came. Although I doubt I could have been more help.”
Alex waited for the innkeeper to bend like a slow crane to deposit Bryce-Jones’s ale on the table and leave before answering. “You truly have no idea where the women went?”
“No.” Bryce-Jones picked up his mug but didn’t drink. “I can’t begin to tell you how worried I am about them. If it were in my power, I would have sent Bow Street after them. If only I’d been here...”
“You weren’t?” Alex asked.
Another sorrowful shake. Another quick swipe at his vest. “In London for the marquess. I came home to find Ladies Fiona and Mairead gone and the staff inconsolable.” He leaned in as if sharing a secret. “They were greatly loved.”
“Even Lady Mairead?” Alex asked. “I’ve heard she can be...difficult.”
“You don’t know her?”
“We have never met. I was looking forward to it.”
Bryce-Jones smiled, his expression almost paternal. “Lady Mairead is...special. I worry about her, though. She doesn’t do well when she is forbidden her routine.”
As if in response, Chuffy began scratching the side of his nose. Alex paid attention. Usually when Chuffy started worrying at his face, something bothered him.
“Mrs. Weller said the marquess’s grandson is alive and vindicated,” Bryce-Jones said. “That is wonderful. When should we expect to see the viscount?”
It took Alex a moment to realize that the man was speaking of Ian Ferguson. When Alex had been introduced to him, the Scot had been no more than a lucky street gypsy from Edinburgh who had chivvied and lied his way into a commission in the Black Watch. Even when Ferguson had learned that, far from being a bastard he was the heir to a marquessate, he had never thrown his position around.
“I don’t know when he’ll be released to return home,” Alex said.
Bryce-Jones nodded. “Of course. I hope then the marquess can make his peace.”
“Can’t ’til we find the girls,” Chuffy said, pulling off his glasses and wiping them with his handkerchief.
“I don’t know if this will help,” Bryce-Jones said, reaching into his jacket, “but they had quite a correspondence.”
Alex’s head snapped up. “Who?” he asked. “The twins?”
Bryce-Jones pulled out a packet of letters and handed them over. “Some odd characters, from all over. No one we ever met, of course. Could they have sought refuge with one of their correspondents?”
Alex picked up the packet and began to riffle through it. There were about eight envelopes in all, a few from foreign countries. Alex recognized a few names and frowned.
“Have you read these?” he asked, looking up.
The secretary smiled. “The ones in English. They’re fascinating, aren’t they?”
Alex nodded, his focus on a return address in Slough that belonged to a familiar name. Caroline Herschel. The letter was in German. More important, it seemed filled with complex mathematical equations.
“Well,” he said, checking a few more addresses. “It’s a place to start.”
“Please keep me apprised.” Bryce-Jones frowned. “I realize the marquess seems intractable, but he’ll want to know.”
“If you’d like,” Alex said, his attention now on a letter from Pierre LaPlace, who was saying somethin
g about black holes. “I’ll give you my card...oh, no, wait. They’re up in my room.” Scraping his chair back, he stood. “Chuff?”
Chuffy’s head snapped up and he blinked. “Keep you company, Bryce-Jones.”
Alex took all the time he could. It was an old tactic. If Chuffy gave the signal, it usually meant he needed some time alone with the person they were interviewing. He rarely failed to learn something interesting. It was amazing what people told Chuffy.
By the time Alex got back, Bryce-Jones was sitting back in his seat, his ale mug in his hand, smiling. Chuffy was checking his pocket watch, which he’d pulled from a plum-and-silver-striped waistcoat.
“No, no,” he was saying. “Appreciate the offer. Late. Need to be up early.”
“Here’s my card,” Alex said without sitting.
Bryce-Jones was forced to stand to accept it, and Chuffy followed suit. After that it took only five more minutes to get the secretary out the door, after which Alex and Chuffy secured a bottle of brandy and glasses to take upstairs.
“What did you find out?” Alex asked as he followed Chuffy into his room and shut the door.
Chuffy stretched out on Alex’s bed as if it were his own. “Close-mouthed as that minx fella.”
Alex couldn’t help but smile. “Sphinx, Chuff.”
His eyes opened. “Egyptian cove? Furry hands?”
“The same.”
He nodded. “That. Didn’t even admit that he hates the old man. Does. Thinks he’s smarter. Probably is.”
“And?” Alex knew there was more. There always was with Chuffy. Getting it was like bringing in a recalcitrant trout, though.
Chuffy was scrubbing at the side of his nose again. “Not sure. Marquess stiff-rumped as a deposed king. But something in the way Bryce-Jones described him made me think there’s more. Lion?”
Brandy bottle in hand, Alex paused. That would certainly alter the picture, now, wouldn’t it? The Lions were the group of highly placed aristocrats Alex and Chuffy had been investigating over charges of possible treason when they’d been pulled to deliver Ian’s good news to Fiona.
Fiona. Dear God, where was she?
“I haven’t heard anything that might implicate the marquess,” Alex said, his gut sour with dread. “But you’re right about his attitude.”
Alex handed Chuffy a glass of brandy and some of the letters Bryce-Jones had given him. “What do you make of these?”
One look had Chuffy sitting up. “Zounds.”
Opening the letter more fully, he shoved his glasses atop his head and held the paper close, as if the German would be easier to translate. It took a minute of reading before he looked up. “Do you know what this is? And from whom?”
“Equations of some sort,” Alex said, pouring them both out a tot of brandy and handing Chuffy his. “From someone named Gauss.”
“Someone?” Chuffy set his glass down untasted. “Only one of the greatest mathematicians of the age. He seems to be debating a theory using Euler’s formula in something ...I’m not sure what, though. I don’t recognize it.”
This time Alex admitted surprise. “You? Impossible.”
Chuffy was nibbling on his thumb, his lips moving as he scanned the letter. “Astronomy ain’t my field. Need to ask the pater.”
Alex nodded, not understanding any of it but the fact that it took complex mathematics to get Chuffy to speak in complete sentences.
“Didn’t you say they lived in the streets?” Chuffy demanded. “How could they have learned this? It’s advanced, even for me. Must be wrong.”
Alex downed his drink and poured another. “Not wrong. Their mother spirited them to Scotland when they were young to save them from their father. You remember Viscount Hawes.”
Chuffy shuddered. “Didn’t die soon enough.”
“Ferguson supported them all with army pay from the time he was fifteen. He came home some time later to find his mother dead and the girls living under a bridge. But as I said, they were already twelve or fourteen or so. The marquess didn’t step in until Hawes died and left him without heirs.”
“Might have known.”
“Tell me these letters will help us find them.”
Chuffy was shaking his head, his focus obviously on the squiggles and letters and numbers. “Depends on whether they feel comfortable battening down on any of these folk. Not sure I would, but I’ve never had the nerve to correspond, either.”
Alex separated out a few letters. “Fiona bought coach fare to London. A few of these addresses are in the vicinity. We might as well look there first.”
Chuffy began to carefully fold his letter. “Read the others later. Right now, need to do some more work on those blasted ciphers.”
Alex looked up. “No luck?”
“Dead annoying. Have half a dozen messages. Have a whole bloody poem full of keywords. Nothing seems to fit. Awful poem. Hurts my eyes.”
Alex cuffed him on the shoulder. “Well, if anybody can crack the thing, it’s you.”
It was the Rakes’ greatest secret. No one who met Chuffy would think him a codebreaker without equal.
Chuffy frowned. “Feel like Octopus, solvin’ riddles all the time.”
Alex tried not to smile. “You mean Oedipus? Well, it could be worse, Chuff. He did solve the Sphinx’s riddle and get the fair princess.”
“Don’t want a princess. Want to sleep.” Handing over the letters, Chuffy gave a mournful sigh. “Might have known it’d be back to the minx fellow.”
Alex grinned. “The Sphinx is actually female.”
“Figures.” Chuffy shook his head and slid his glasses back into place. “At least I don’t have to tell Drake we’re deserting the princess’s house party. I’ll let you do that.”
Alex felt a new weight drop on his chest. An old weight, really. A weight Chuffy didn’t know about. “I’m not sure Drake will understand.”
Chuffy gave him a look that reduced him to a first-former. “Gentlemen first, old lad. Spies second.”
Gentlemen first. But was he? Alex wondered.
The truth twisted in his gut like bad meat. Gentlemen didn’t betray their friends. Gentlemen didn’t sell their souls to retrieve incriminating letters. Alex had done both not a week earlier, at the house party he and Chuffy had been monitoring. But at the time he had convinced himself that he could save Ian once he’d saved his own family.
It hadn’t worked out that way.
Alex couldn’t shut his eyes without seeing Ian Ferguson torn and bloody and bowed from his encounter with Minette Ferrar, only still alive because others had found him. He couldn’t think of what he’d done without wanting to vomit.
Every day he promised to make it up to his friend somehow. And now, already, he had failed him again.
He had to find Fiona for Ian.
He had to find Fiona for himself.
“Indeed, Chuff,” he said, downing his drink as if the matter were that easy. “I wouldn’t be able to face my father if I deserted two innocents just to save the nation.”
Chuffy gave that little huff of his as he bundled the letters. “Others can save the nation. No one around for the ladies. Not worried, though. White Knight and all.”
Alex’s stomach lurched again at the hated appellation. “I am no White Knight, Chuff.”
Chuffy blinked. “You are. Always do the right thing.”
Alex clenched his brandy glass so tightly he almost snapped the stem. “Don’t you dare burden me with that kind of nonsense. No one can always do the right thing.”
But Chuffy’s smile was complacent. “First time I met you, down at Eton. Being beat to flinders. Got your lights darkened for me. Never forget. Haven’t changed.”
Have, Alex thought, his gut on fire. Only Chuffy still saw the world in absolutes. Mortals like Alex had had their ideals eroded by time trudging along battlefields, lurking in alleys, betraying friends, being betrayed by friends. By lovers and wives. A man didn’t come out of that unscathed. He learned too quickly that
he couldn’t save everybody.
God knew he hadn’t saved his wife. He hadn’t even saved Ian Ferguson.
But Chuffy wouldn’t understand. So, Alex grabbed the letter in Chuffy’s hand. “I’ll notify Drake that we have been detained. He can get Beau Drummond to take over. He was in the princess’s train anyway.”
Climbing off the bed, Chuffy suddenly grinned. “Your sister’s there. Be happy to help, I’m sure.”
Alex groaned. “Pippin? Don’t even think of it. I am not letting Pip loose anywhere near a government investigation. She’d muck it up more royally than Prinny’s marriage.”
Chuffy gave his head a ruminative shake. “Not so sure. Sharp as scissors, Pip.”
“And too inquisitive by half. Don’t encourage her, Chuffy.” Finishing his own brandy, he put the decanter away. “Now, go be Oedipus.”
Long after Chuffy left, Alex stood at the window thinking. He knew he should get back to Sussex and follow up on that blackmail attempt. He should ride hard for London and confer with the Rakes, the untidy group of gentlemen spies Drake led.
But he couldn’t face Ian Ferguson. Not until he’d made some kind of amends. Not until he’d brought home Ian’s sisters. Until he made sure they were safe.
Until Fiona was safe. Until she knew she wasn’t alone again with no help and no friends and no hope.
He thought again of that day four years earlier when he’d met her. He could still remember that jolt of awareness when he’d spotted her, the gut-twisting connection from just the sight of a girl leaning out a coach window. He could still see the wild banner of lush red-gold silk that was her hair, hear that throaty voice.
He smiled at the memory of her standing before him, head back, back straight, determination a living thing in her. He remembered being surprised. He’d set off after a petulant schoolgirl and stumbled over an Amazon. A young, painfully earnest warrior who only wanted to see her sister safe.
He still didn’t know why he’d kissed her. Maybe it was because she had looked so frustrated, so lost when she’d gotten so tangled up in the briars. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been the most honest thing he’d seen in four months spent trolling London’s underbelly. He just remembered the scent of clean soap and sunlight on her neck as he bent to free her from her prison. He remembered being humbled by her bravery.