Dangerous Deceptions (25 page)

TWENTY-TWO

I was out the door before my aunt could make any reply. I was down all three flights of stairs before I realized Olivia had followed me. Indeed, I had no idea at all she was there until she grabbed my elbow and whirled me around.

“Have you lost your mind?” she inquired. “If you leave by the front door, you’re sure to be noticed.” She pushed me down the corridor, through the dining room, and then through the French doors that opened onto the garden. When we were halfway down the path to the back gate, she halted.

“Now, tell me quickly. What did you find?”

I found that Mr. Tinderflint had been concealing far more from me than even I had guessed. But of course that was not what Olivia meant. I forced my whirling thoughts to steady themselves. Fortunately, I’d had a good deal of practice at this of late.

“There was nothing in the book room, Olivia. A deed for a warehouse, some bills of exchange, but nothing else. I couldn’t even find the betrothal contract.”

This seemed to take Olivia aback, but not for long. “Well then, the proof must be in the Sandfords’ house,” she said. “That’s going to be difficult, but we’ll think of something.”

Anger welled up in me. Had she heard nothing at all of what had passed in her mother’s bedroom?

“Olivia, we can’t continue with this,” I said.

“We can’t abandon it now.”

Olivia’s face had taken on her most serious expression, the one that indicated she was turning over her endless stock of stories and ideas to see which would best suit the current circumstances. If I gave her any more time, she would find something and cut it down to measure.

“Olivia, listen to me!” I grabbed both her hands. “This involves the king, and the Crown. I know Mr. Tinderflint looks odd and plays the fool, but he stands next to power, and Robert Walpole is watching over his shoulder, and mine.” I had been a bit suspicious of my patron before. I had tried hard to be wary of him. Now I was afraid. “If Mr. Tinderflint learns I’ve been looking into Uncle Pierpont’s affairs, he’ll start looking too.” And there was someone who could tell him all about it. Sophy Howe. I had absolutely no doubt that he could charm and deceive her, just as he had me.

I waited for Olivia to argue. I waited for her to remind me Mr. Tinderflint was still in Paris and couldn’t possibly learn anything about my peregrinations around London. But given what I had just heard, Paris did not seem anything like far enough to keep Mr. Tinderflint from learning all he wanted to know.

Olivia folded her arms and faced me with an air of disappointment and patience stretched to the breaking point. “Is that all?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“I’ll tell you what’s enough. Your Mr. Tinderflint has been keeping secrets, from me and from you. And you’re telling me to simply stand back and take no notice!”

I was unprepared for the full onslaught of her anger, or its source. I’d thought she would be annoyed with me for being so cautious and lily-livered a creature as to be unwilling to attempt an assault upon yet another house. But this was different.

“Secrets are hard things, Olivia,” I told her. “Whole lives can be broken on them.”

“Then let them break! I will not let that man pull
my
strings because it amuses him!”

Her words, and their implication, slapped me hard. I set it aside. I must. I had to douse the fury blazing in her, or it would burn her alive. She’d do something foolish, and she’d be caught out, and it might be by someone far more dangerous than her father.

“Olivia, you must let this go for now. Just until we understand what’s truly happening. He helped ruin your family before—he could do it again.” Ruin came easily to bankers such as my uncle. I heard tales of such ruination gleefully bruited about over cards and wine cups. There might be pity for those broken by the lost investments, but seldom was any spared for the banker himself. If her father was ruined, if he was taken up under suspicion of treason, Olivia was done for.

“You go on, then, Peggy,” said my cousin. “I’ll see you later.”

Fear stopped my breath. Surely she was already forming some new plan. There was no knowing what she’d do once I left, or where it would lead.

Inspiration struck, and it struck with such force that it knocked the next words out of me before my mind had any chance to properly consider them. “Come stay with me.”

“At the palace?”

“Yes. It can be for as long as you like,” I said, my confidence growing with each word. “We can sort through this mess together. I can ask the favor of Her Royal Highness. You’re already friends with Princess Anne. She’d love to have you as a companion for her and her puppies. You know she gets whatever she wants.”

Olivia did not answer; she just kept looking toward the house.
Why are you hesitating?
I wanted to shout at her.
Don’t you see this is perfection?
But even as I considered the scope of its perfection, I involuntarily found myself counting coins in my head. If she came to stay, I’d have to manage Olivia’s keep along with my own. I told myself it didn’t matter. I would find a way, even if I had to sell every single thing I owned.

“You’re inviting me to come to the palace now?” Olivia held her blue eyes wide open in an expression of entirely feigned wonder. “So you can stop me from going where you do not want me? Or from asking too much about my father, or yours, or your precious Mr. Tinderflint?”

Now it was my turn to be angry. This was about her and her life and whether she could be saved from a descent into chaos and misery. In short, whether Olivia’s life could be saved from Olivia’s intervention.

However, since she’d brought up my family to illustrate her particular point, hers was entirely fair game for mine. “You can’t really want to hurt your mother, can you?”

My cousin paused, and for a moment I thought I’d carried the day. But when Olivia spoke again, it was with a terrible politeness I’d never heard from her before.

“If you do not want to know how you came to be as you are, Peggy, that is your decision. I will respect it. You can go back to the palace and your Mr. Tinderflint, and we will simply never speak of this again.”

“That’s monstrously unfair, Olivia.”

“Is it?” she replied, raising a single perfectly arched brow. “Then I apologize.”

This cool, distant declaration struck deep in my heart and lodged there. I do not think Olivia knew in that moment how close I came to turning around and walking away.

But I was facing the house, and a motion caught my eye. The curtains in the book room window were still open. Aunt Pierpont had drawn them back to discover me, and none of us had bothered to close them. None of us had stopped to think that when my uncle came home, he would have a clear view of the garden—and Olivia and me.

My uncle now stood at his open window, taking in that particular view.

“What on earth . . .” began Olivia, but she turned as she spoke, and so there was no need for her to finish. She saw exactly what on earth had transfixed me and sent all the color rushing from my cheeks.

While we both watched in wide-eyed disbelief, a second man—older, with a weathered face and good clothes—came to join my uncle at the window. His mouth moved, and my uncle made some reply. Whatever the stranger said in response did not please my uncle. Uncle Pierpont raised his long hand, crooked his finger, and slowly, deliberately gestured for me to return to the house.

Olivia’s cool distance fell away at once. “Leave,” she urged, pushing on my shoulder for added emphasis. “Quickly. He can’t stop you.”

But I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t my uncle who wanted my return. It was the weathered man next to him. Whatever he’d said had caused Uncle Pierpont to summon me. The combination of the dim room and the reflections on the glass of the partially raised window obscured the details of his face, but I knew that withered frame and those slouching shoulders. This was the man who’d twice emerged from the great black coach in front of the House of Pierpont.

The old man wasn’t the only stranger in the book room. Yet another man moved into my field of view, so that the window framed the group to make a formal portrait of them—
Three Men Spotting Trouble in the Garden.
This third, younger man also spoke. My uncle shrugged and gestured again to me.

I should have ignored them all and left at once. I was at the very least jeopardizing my post and risking hurting Matthew’s feelings yet again. But I had come here for answers.

“I’ll go in,” I told Olivia. “It will be all right.”

“And you think I’m the one who’s lost her wits,” breathed Olivia.

Nevertheless, she gathered her hems and we started up the garden path. We walked so close together our skirts and shoulders brushed each other constantly. We stepped through the French doors to find Guinevere flopped down by the threshold. She heaved herself to her feet with an affronted growl for her errant mistress and waddled after us, still complaining. Olivia paused just long enough to scoop the fluffy creature into her arms.

I wished that I had something, anything, to hold on to. The great case clock chimed solemnly as Olivia and I brushed past. The hour had gone on five of the clock. It was not possible my absence had been overlooked. Matthew was waiting in an empty room, and I was finished at court.

I’d dreamed of being back in this narrow hallway, of approaching the closed door and knowing my uncle was behind it. With each step, I shrank, becoming smaller and younger and more confused, and yet I could not stop walking. This was enough like those nightmares that for one wild moment, I actually believed I might wake up.

But I was not waking up. I was putting my hand on the cold metal knob of my uncle’s door, and turning it, and walking once more into his book room.

TWENTY-THREE

The candles had been lit, so I could plainly see the two strange gentlemen who flanked Uncle Pierpont beside the great desk I had so recently rifled through.

The years had not been kind to the older of the two strangers. His face had been so battered by wind and burned by sun, it seemed less a human visage than the sculpted side of an ancient cliff. The skin of his hands, which he folded over the top of his silver-handled walking stick, was loose, leathery, and impressively spotted. His shoulders had taken on a permanent hunch, and his protruding belly looked decidedly at odds with his bony fingers and loose-jowled face.

I wondered if his black coach with its load of armed men waited in the street while he was in here.

The younger man had also been deeply bronzed by the sun. His was a lean face with hollow cheeks, but his build was broad and square beneath his plain blue coat. The contrast was such as to make his head appear just a bit too small for the rest of him. Even as I thought this, it occurred to me I’d seen those blue eyes and that sharp face before, but I could not tell where.

For my uncle’s part, he looked as he usually did—black and white and entirely disapproving.

“Well, miss, what is the meaning of this?” Uncle Pierpont growled to Olivia. “What is
she
doing here?”

Olivia moved to speak, but I touched her hand. Recent experience had taught me that being caught was a likely outcome to any of my confidential ventures. So, for once, I had made sure to have a story ready before I entered the house.

“I came to deliver Olivia a message from Princess Anne.” I tried hard to keep my gaze directed toward Uncle Pierpont rather than letting it flicker to the as yet anonymous, but oddly familiar men. “Olivia had not been to deliver an update today, and the princess was anxious to know if her dog had given birth yet.” Guinevere, apparently aware she was being talked about, whined and squirmed in Olivia’s arms. My cousin shushed and patted her, bending over ostentatiously to set her down, in case any of the three men we faced had failed to take note of her existence.

“Well, well.” The older man leaned forward and gave a smile that was supposed to be indulgent, but succeeded mostly in becoming a thin leer. “That would make you the famous Miss Fitzroy. Ain’t you going to introduce us, Pierpont?”

But there was no need. The younger man was looking me over from head to toe, assessing me. All at once, I knew where those eyes and face belonged.

“Lord Lynnfield,” I breathed, meaning the older man. “And you’re . . .”

The younger of the strangers gave a perfunctory bow. “Mr. Julius Sandford, at your service.”

Julius Sandford, Sebastian’s elder brother, heir to the barony of Lynnfield, had kept hold of his walking stick, although custom and etiquette dictated that it should have been surrendered at the door. I noted Mr. Sandford’s stick was a match for the one his father held. It could have, in fact, been a match for the one I’d seen Uncle Pierpont carrying when I’d spied on him in front of his banking house. My instincts as both courtier and agent rose up from the back of my thoughts.

“I, for one, am glad to find you here, Miss Fitzroy,” Julius Sandford was saying. “We’d been meaning to come up to the palace to get a look at you, but instead you’ve come to us.”

It was evident from this that Julius had none of his brother’s easy charm. Still, I made my curtsy as if I’d been highly complimented. The gesture brought my line of sight closer to the silver handle of Mr. Sandford’s walking stick. It was not just silver, I saw now, but silver-gilt, and heavily embossed with a design of islands rising out of a stormy sea.

“I’m only sorry, Lord Lynnfield, that it’s taken so long to make the acquaintance of yourself and Mr. Sandford.” I batted my eyes at Julius Sandford as I straightened. A great deal could be told about a gentleman from the way he reacted to the flutter of painted eyelids. But Mr. Sandford had no reaction. His sharp face did not so much as twitch. The cold finger of worry touched the back of my neck.

“I’m surprised Sebastian is not with you, Lord Lynnfield,” I continued, using conversation to cover disquiet. “I hope he is well?”