Charming a Spy (10 page)

Unknown circumstances were conspiring against him and Katherine being together. During dinner, she was seated at the other end of the table with Trig Trannen while Geoff was stuck listening to Mrs. Townsey’s interminable chatter about Ivy’s painting skills. After the meal he suffered through the men droning on about French weaponry, of which they knew virtually nothing, while they drank his finest spirits and smoked his imported cigars.

As soon as he could reasonably leave, Geoff stepped into the hall, intent on finding Katherine.

“A word, Sir?” Pennington, dressed in household livery and masquerading as a footman, stopped him in the hallway.

“Will this take long?” Geoff asked in as haughty a tone as he could muster in case any guests unintentionally overheard their conversation.

“It won’t be but a moment,” Pennington replied with appropriate deference. He turned and led Geoff out of the hallway, through a servant’s passage to an unoccupied salon.

Pennington pulled back the curtains and looked out the windows while Geoff double-checked the hallway to ensure they were alone.

“What have you learned?”

“It’s about Ms. Dubois,” Pennington said almost apologetically. Geoff’s stomach knotted in anticipation of unwanted news. The visceral response alerted him to his loss of objectivity. Dammit. He’d been hoping whatever Pennington drudged up would concern the Griers instead of Katherine.

“Let’s have it then,” Geoff urged.

“Katherine’s father, Antoine Dubois, was a Bonapartist. Prior to moving to England, he was one of the key ministers who pressured the directors to resign, effectively allowing Napoleon to rise. Then he moved to England, where he lived for twelve years until he died in a carriage accident.”

“Why would a prominent Bonapartist move to England?” Geoff asked.

“Our solicitors were able to recover some letters he wrote to his mother around that time. He wrote of a British woman he’d fallen in love with, presumably Kat’s mother.”

“So love was strong enough to turn him against his country and the ideals he risked his life to uphold? Possibly. But more likely that was a cover story so he could infiltrate British society and attain the secrets valuable to France.”

“It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a spy used a woman as an excuse to gain access and information,” Pennington said.

Geoff turned to look over his shoulder, thinking he might have heard someone approach.

“No, it would not,” Geoff said, thinking woefully about Katherine in her red dress. “So Mr. Dubois was a spy working for France. Like father like son then?”

“Unfortunately, that looks like the case.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“I’ve known you a long time, my friend,” Pennington said. “I’ve never seen you so obsessed over a woman before.”

“Obsessed? Don’t be so dramatic, Pennington. I’m hardly obsessed.”

“When I stopped you in the hall earlier, you looked like you were running towards a burning barn. Where were you going with such urgency?”

“To find Ms. Dubois.”

“My point exactly.”

“My feelings for Ms. Dubois are neither here nor there. The real question is, does she know about her brother’s deception or more importantly where he is? I suppose I’ll have to go find out. In the meantime, see what you can dig up on Rafe’s stay in Germany.”

“I’ve already begun digging,” Pennington responded. Of course he had. Pennington was always one chess move ahead of him.

“Right. Find me again when you have something else. In the meantime, I have a party to host.”

When he rejoined the group in the drawing room, Geoff was taken aback to see Katherine and Rafe sitting together. He didn’t expect to see the accuser and the accused’s sister chatting like old friends. Of course, Katherine didn’t know Rafe reported her brother as the man who sold secrets to the French military.

But Rafe knew. Geoff watched their body language for a moment, trying to interpret what they were saying to one another. They leaned in in a familiar way. Their conversation appeared serious while they spoke in low voices as if they were sharing secrets. Was she confronting him or perhaps the other way around? For a brief second, Geoff felt a pang of jealousy but pushed it away. She was the sister of his suspect, not his intended for the love of God.

Then something Katherine said upset Rafe. He put his hand to his head and hurried away. What could she have possibly said to rattle a military man? Then a very unwelcome thought occurred to him.

Perhaps Katherine and Rafe were in this together. Maybe they were secretly lovers and she was the one who spied for the French and got her
amante
to do her dirty work, sneaking into the French lines and giving away the British position. It actually started to make some sense. After all, Katherine was as French as her brother so maybe her loyalties lay with her father’s country. She was certainly smart enough to have masterminded the elaborate plot.

Was it possible Katherine and Rafe framed Luke Dubois? He was Katherine’s own brother. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Geoff had seen families turn on one another. Blood may be thicker than water… but not than money.

It could also explain why Katherine was so obsessed with talking about finding her brother. While other sisters grieved their brothers’ deaths, she ran around London, asking every person remotely connected to the military for information about him. It did make a good cover-up. No one would ever suspect a woman obsessed with finding her brother as the one who framed him for treason.

More than ever, Geoff realized he should closely watch Katherine Dubois.

“Do you like the idea, Your Grace?” Geoff suddenly realized Jessica was standing beside him waiting for a response to a question he hadn’t even heard.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Grier, I was momentarily distracted. Ask again, would you?”

She was obviously miffed by his inattention but asked again in her most saccharine voice, “What do you think about a game of charades?”

Geoff abhorred charades and all parlor games, but he remembered his role as the sporting bachelor on the prowl. “A capital idea. Charades would be fun.”

Jessica organized the group into a battle of the sexes, ladies vs. gentleman.

“The rules are simple,” she explained. “One gentleman shall give any lady of his choice a clue to act out. Everyone will guess at the clue and the first to choose the right answer will earn a point for his or her team. Then a lady will choose a clue and give it to a gentleman to act out. The game will proceed like so until one team has five points.

“And what shall the winning team be awarded?” Mrs. Chaplin asked. The Townsey twins, sitting next to her, giggled as if she’d said something outrageous. Jessica looked momentarily flustered, trying to think of a prize for the game she’d invented.

“A picnic on the morrow,” Geoff said, coming to her rescue, although he wasn’t sure why he was fueling the irksome girl’s enthusiasm. He’d already planned the picnic anyway, so it wasn’t a great hardship.

“Oooo!” the women tittered like he’d offered them rubies.

“But wouldn’t a picnic be a prize for everyone? Not just the winning team?” Trig Trannen objected.

“Indeed it will. But the losers will have to plan the entertainment for the afternoon,” Geoff improvised.

“What a delightful idea, Your Grace,” Jessica said, looking very much relieved that a suitable prize had been decided for the game.

Charades commenced with Trig pretending to be a balloon seller at a county fair who got carried away by his merchandise. The men won the clue. Trig then gave the next clue to Maribel to act out. Geoff noticed that Trig was obviously taken with Maribel and he suspected she also harbored feelings for him, but was far too female to figure it out. It was idiotic when two people so obviously attracted to one another could miss the romance between them.

The women correctly guessed that Maribel was crossing the Atlantic on a pirate ship. Maribel gave to the next clue to Rafe Grier and the game went on like that for far too long. Geoff could not remember a time when he had to try so hard to look amused. This was a special kind of torture; death by parlor games.

At least the distraction gave Geoff plenty of time to think about his houseguests, and what the connection was amongst them. His thought kept wandering back to Rafe and Katherine. What was the truth about their relationship? He imagined them involved in a romantic tryst, but his mind quickly turned into a fantasy about him and Katherine instead. Primarily Katherine. Mostly Katherine in a silk night rail standing in front of a fire, where he could see the outline of her slender legs leading up to a delicious point.

Then he realized Katherine really was standing in front of the fire, in real life, no longer in his fantasy. She was not wearing the transparent dressing gown of his daydream, but a red dress cut so low the tops of her breasts peeked out, like a soft fleshy pillow begging him to rest his head there.

She couldn’t possibly be involved with Rafe. She was too brave, too outspoken, too damn curvy, and too French. Rafe seemed the type of man who would want a simpering English bride, a willow of a girl with alabaster skin who accommodated his wishes implicitly. Katherine was simply too much woman for Rafe.

“Socrates teaching at the Pantheon,” someone shouted out. Katherine nodded while the crowd erupted into laughter and cheers. Geoff realized that while he’d been imagining her in a series of lewd acts, she’d actually been acting out a clue in the game.

Now it was Katherine’s turn to choose a victim. She held the tip of her pen to her mouth as she carefully contemplated her next move. Oh, how he’d like to be that pen. Kat finally wrote down her clue and folded the paper so many times Geoff thought she might have actually rubbed the words off.

Getting up from her chair, she stepped in his direction. The room fell into an awkward hush. No doubt they were shocked she would dare to give the host, and a duke, a clue to act out. He, on the other hand, was not shocked at all. Despite her protests to the contrary,
his
Kat was no wallflower.

Geoff took the slip of paper and unfolded it as quickly as he could. He felt like a child on Christmas morning, anxious to see the present lying inside. He read the clue and a slow smile grew across his face. The party relaxed a little when it was obvious the duke seemed to be in a sporting mood. He looked at Kat and sure enough, the dare sparkled in her eye. What a little minx. Fine, he would play her silly game.

He placed one finger on the inside of his elbow, indicating the “first word.” Then he put the finger to his lips and leaned forward as if making a shushing sound. People started to guess.

“Quiet.”

“Listen.”

“Go away.”

He shook his head side to side and motioned that he was going to start again. He cupped his hand around his mouth and leaned in as though he were whispering to a friend.

“Secret,” Elizabeth Grier yelled.

“Yes!” The duke pronounced. All clapped and Elizabeth looked quite pleased with herself.

He put two fingers to the inside of his elbow, indicating the second word. He pushed his fists together over and over.

“Fight?”

“Angry?”

“Upset?”

He tried again. This time he used two fingers as stick figures, showing them “walking” to a certain spot and the two fingers from the other hand “walking to the same spot.”

“Rendezvous!” yelled Rafe Grier.

“Yes,” Geoff confirmed. “Secret Rendezvous.” The crowd erupted into applause again.

Geoff opened the piece of paper again in his hand and smiled. It read: 11:30 in the portrait gallery. He hoped the “Secret Rendezvous” was actually what she intended and not a charades situation.

Now he was even more curious. If Katherine were the traitor, why would she be arranging secret meetings with him in the middle of the night? Maybe she knew he was on to her. She had overheard those men the night of his ball calling him a spy. Perhaps Kat was luring him to the portrait gallery where Rafe would be waiting to kill him. Or maybe she planned to kill him herself. God, he didn’t want to believe it was true.

Honestly, he wasn’t exactly sure what the chit was up to. Perhaps she was only trying to catch herself a husband like all the other women there. But that didn’t make sense either. If she really were fortune hunting, she could have said one word aloud in the library and his hand would have been forced. Certainly she understood a gentleman was duty-bound to marry any woman who he compromised. Hell, they could have been married for several weeks by now if she were after his money.

Maybe she really did want him for sex. A man could dream.

‡

“Y
ou came,” Kat
said. Until she saw him standing there, she wasn’t positive she actually
wanted
him to show. If he did, she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to go through with her plan. If he didn’t, she would have failed Luke. Her stomach was in knots over the whole ordeal.

But when she saw Geoff confidently stride into the portrait gallery, her anxiety began to diminish. He was so achingly handsome, but at the same time, familiar. How could he make her physically jumpy and at the same time cause her soul to feel strangely calm?