A Spy's Honor (7 page)

The door swung open even farther, and John was suddenly surrounded by his family, all of whom were speaking at once.

His brother drew him into a hearty embrace, exclaiming, “It’s about time. I will beat you senseless later for not visiting before now.”

His sister-in-law, blonde and lithe even while with child, stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so glad you are here.”

Allerton and Emily pulled back, and a slim, dark-haired woman with a regal bearing stepped in front of John, her blue eyes surveying the length of him.

“You appear no worse off than when you left.” Her voice started out firm, but by the time she finished the sentence it was trembling, and tears filled her eyes.

John wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. All he could think to say was, “Mother.”

As he let her cry softly against his chest, Claire and Kensworth slipped past everyone and left the room.

John sighed and hugged his mother tighter.

***

Claire led Stephen from the salon, marching down the stairs to the entrance hall. Finally she drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly.

John was home. God had no mercy at all.

“I wonder why he has returned now,” Stephen mused.

She shrugged, not entirely certain she was capable of speaking to Stephen about John. What if he guessed she had once thought herself in love with John? She and Stephen usually spoke of all manner of things, but Claire had always kept John and her feelings for him locked away. She couldn’t trust what she would say, and above all she did not want to hurt Stephen. He was her friend.

No, he was her fiancé, she reminded herself as he took her hand and kissed it. As such, she should offer to continue their time together elsewhere.

Smiling a smile she didn’t feel, Claire said, “The household will be in a jumble all afternoon. Perhaps we should go for a drive in the park.” Escaping from Allerton House sounded heavenly.

“No.” Stephen shook his head. “I think you had best spend time with your family on such an important occasion.”

But she didn’t want John’s return to be an “important occasion.” The event should be no more significant than if her aunt had stopped over for tea. She did not want things to change between her and Stephen.

“You will return for dinner as usual?” Allerton had issued an open invitation to Stephen to dine with the family any night he chose.

His eyes searched her face and then a shadow darkened their bottle-green color. “I’m afraid I have to decline. I promised to meet Robert and David at the club.”

She hadn’t known his brothers were in Town, but that was neither here nor there. “We will miss you.” The words came out automatically, but Claire couldn’t honestly say she wasn’t relieved.

“I will come another day, when the household has recovered from its happy surprise.”

“Very well.”

Stephen leaned down to kiss her cheek. She closed her eyes, feeling an odd rush of guilt, then his coat sleeve brushed her arm as he moved past her toward the door.

***

The reformer pushed his way through the smelly throng at the door of the Black Falcon tavern, hunching his shoulders so as to appear smaller than he was. Being tall and strapping didn’t make his secret work easy.

He crushed his hat further down on his head and made his way toward the dark corner table where a thin, doleful man sat staring at a pot of ale. The unruly noise of the crowd masked his arrival, and the other man started when he slid onto the bench.

“Easy there, Bates,” he advised with a grin. “It’s just me.”

“I don’ like meetin’ in public like this!” Bates leaned forward, his straggly brown hair brushing past his shoulders. “Don’ you know the government’s got spies everywhere?”

The reformer laughed and swiped Bates’s untouched tankard, taking a long drink. “They have not, you hen-hearted fool. Why do you think it’s going to be so easy to bring them down? They think nothing of us!” When a serving girl passed by he snatched another ale, setting it in front of Bates. His friend drank half of it and, as usual, was better fortified for it.

“They wouldn’t have suspended habeas corpus or passed the Seditious Meetin’ Act if they weren’t afeard of us.”

“Right you are, Bates.” He didn’t believe the same himself, but he had best support whatever thoughts gave Bates courage and use them to his advantage. How many times had he wished for a partner of stouter spirit? He sighed, then, and acknowledged the truth. When it came down to it, Bates
was
brave; he’d seen proof of it on the battlefield. But when it came to thinking, his fellow soldier did too much, often until he was nearly pissing in his breeches.

“They are afraid of us, and rightly so. But by the time they realize, the prime minister will be dead.”

Bates’s skittish hazel eyes darted around the room, as if he were looking for a spy. “Shhh! Sometimes you ain’t got much more sense than a pig with a full trough.” He shook his head. “I don’ even know why you’re still a member of the Hampden Club, what with the title and all.
You
don’ need parliamentary reform.”

“The title was happenstance. It doesn’t change the fact that the privileged few are running this country into the ground. We—you, me, my brothers, and every other soldier—did not triumph over the Frogs in order to better the lives of the aristocracy. We fought to better the lives of all Englishmen. I am set on my course.”

His companion seemed bolstered by this avowal, nodding in affirmation, but was still impatient to be gone from the crowded tavern. “What did you want? I can’t be comin’ up to Town every few days if you want me gettin’ stuff ready. May ain’t that far off.”

The reformer grasped Bates’s arm, garnering his full attention. “I’m changing the plan.”

“What?” Bates squeaked.

Leaning forward, the reformer whispered, “April twenty-third.”

Panic in the form of a sheen of sweat swept over Bates like a red-hot fever. “No! No, we can’t move it up. I can’t be ready! We still need more help. We—”

“Calm down!” the reformer whispered harshly. “I don’t doubt for a minute you’ll be ready. We’ll recruit all the help we need at the next meeting. It’ll be best if we already have our plan in place when we ask for assistance. The less time there is for someone to let slip our plot, the better. I’ve told you before, Bates, I—
we
—will not be caught. It’s not even a consideration.”

Bates’s jaw dropped. “The twenty-third is less than two weeks away. Why?”

The reformer ignored the desperation in his coconspirator’s voice. Bates
would
rise to the occasion. “Because Liverpool will be attending a production of
Macbeth
that night, along with Sidmouth.”

Leaning back, he waited for Bates’s reaction, and Bates did not disappoint him. “Together? But that would be… If we got them both… Oh my God!”

“Exactly.” He couldn’t help grinning. “You see why the date must be changed.”

“Do I! To be rid of that tyrant along with Liverpool? There won’t be anybody to replace them with
but
reformers!”

The reformer finished off his ale. Pulling a purse from his pocket, he slipped the serving girl a coin and then withdrew a few others, sliding them across the table to Bates. “This should help you be ready sooner. Do you need anything else?”

Bates shook his head. “I’ll see you on the eighteenth, right?”

Rising, the reformer turned his back on the other patrons. “Don’t worry; I’ll be at the meeting. We will change things, Bates! You and I will change the course of history. It’s a grand feeling, isn’t it?”

He didn’t wait for a reply but, grinning happily, turned and pushed his way out of the tavern.

Chapter Five

Claire dawdled long enough so that she entered the drawing room mere minutes before the butler would announce that dinner was ready. She fell into conversation with the duke and her sister, Emily. While always grateful for their hospitality, at the moment she wished she lived anywhere but at Allerton House.

At the call to dinner, she slipped her arm into the dowager duchess’s and couldn’t contain her pride at not even noticing John. But once in the dining room she sat next to the dowager and realized one chair was empty.

John rushed into the room. “Please forgive me.”

Very well. She hadn’t noticed him in the drawing room because he hadn’t been there. But she also hadn’t noticed his absence, which was much the same thing.

He sat down opposite Claire and explained, “It took longer than expected to find my old clothes.”

Which did not quite fit him anymore, Claire noted with dismay. When he’d left five years ago he’d been a couple of inches shorter and much, much thinner. He was still lean, but his shoulders stretched the maroon coat taut and the black breeches clung indecently to his thighs.

“Pea soup, my lady?”

Claire started and nodded at the footman, who ladled the liquid into her bowl. She would have to spend the entire meal facing John.

She spooned up her soup and listened to the others chatter excitedly with the prodigal son. His inky black hair was ragged, but the longer locks lay nicely tousled about his head. His face had lost the smoothness of youth. It was firmer, more rugged, even though he had now shaved.

Behind his spectacles, his midnight blue gaze found hers and Claire couldn’t look away. Again, he looked as if he wanted to kiss her.

She silently groaned at her wild imagination. Pursing her lips she asked, “Where have you been all these years, John?”

The familial conviviality around the table died a sudden death. At her curt tone everyone stared, first at Claire and then at John.

“Touring the Continent,” he said without even a blink.

“Oh, you’ll have to regale us with stories of the places you’ve visited,” Emily said cheerfully.

Claire did not relent so easily. “You toured the Continent during the war? What did you do, sit on a grassy hill and watch the battles unfold?”

John shifted his gaze to his pea soup and set his spoon down carefully. “During the war I went farther afield. But after Waterloo I made the traditional stops in Europe: Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Rome.” He glanced at Emily. “I brought some trinkets for the children.”

Happy conversation resumed, with a discussion of his brother’s growing family. Claire’s sister and Allerton had a son, a daughter, and another child on the way. The house never knew much quiet.

Claire usually loved to talk about the little ones, but just now she was disconcerted by John’s response. When they had first met, he’d worked in the Foreign Office as a translator. Had he given that position up merely to “tour” the Continent? Had he been so eager to get away from her?

Footmen in the green and gold Allerton livery removed the soup dishes. Claire took a fillet of the main course, salmon, and brought a forkful to her mouth only to find John staring at her again. A shiver raced up her spine.

Dash it! She set her fork on her plate without taking a bite. “I am surprised you did not purchase a commission in the army,” she commented, in what she hoped was a conversational tone and not an accusatory one, though the latter better described her feelings. It rankled that he had gadded about Europe—just like her father—practicing his fancy languages while a war ensued, fought by young men such as Stephen who’d served with the 52nd Regiment of Foot. Though she didn’t like to admit it, she’d thought more highly of John.

Again, everyone else stopped speaking and eating, the tension hovering like a thick fog. Lord, the month would be long if the entire family continued to behave in such a manner whenever she and John talked.

This time he didn’t look away from her when he spoke. “I tried to join the army. Though I would like to think I could have proved useful in some manner, they wouldn’t have me.”

Well, then, she had to give him some credit. But why would the army reject him? Because of his eyesight, or was he just considered too weak? She’d never heard of anyone else being rebuffed, especially a man with money for a commission, but then none of the family seemed to have an issue with his answer.

Without any hint of rancor, John moved on, asking Allerton about his estate, Bellemere. The conversation turned to farming and Claire ate her salmon in silence.

Suddenly her skin prickled. She looked up…into John’s eyes, which burned with an emotion she didn’t recognize. Or didn’t want to recognize.

Then he smiled.

Claire reached for her goblet and downed the last of her wine, her heart pounding all the while. Oh-so-serious John rarely smiled, but when he did his eyes sparkled like the most beautiful sapphires and he looked more like the young, carefree six-and-twenty he was. She could not stop the soft smile that shaped her own lips, nor the small sigh that escaped. At least when he smiled he didn’t look as if he wanted to kiss her.

Except…his smile lost its cheerfulness, turning more sensual, and now he gazed at her from beneath hooded lids, once again giving her the impression he wanted to whisk her upstairs to a bedchamber and ravish her.

“Let us have dessert!” the duke ordered in a sharp tone that jerked Claire out of her fanciful reverie.

Footmen swarmed the table, clearing away dishes while Claire silently chastised herself. Her immature romantic tendencies were sprouting again. She was
engaged,
and they were sitting at the dinner table with family. Of course John wasn’t making sheep’s eyes at her.

She could not, however, stop herself from taking out her irritation on him. She knew she was being ungracious, if not downright impolite, with her intrusive questions and brusque manner; everyone in the family had to have noticed how strident she was this evening. Nevertheless, an irrational force made her ask, “What do you intend to do now you are returned?”

“I think I will re-enter Society and find an heiress to wed,” he announced without any hesitation.

Nearly everyone laughed or chuckled, clearly thinking he was teasing. Claire’s dinner turned to lead in her stomach. John merely sat there, his expression perfectly serious, perhaps even a little smug.

Emily scrutinized him. “You’ll need new clothing. We don’t want the heiresses thinking you are a fortune hunter. And you will need to learn to waltz. The girls nowadays will not soon forgive you if you don’t know how.”