A Husband's Wicked Ways (28 page)

Keep away from my daughter.
She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from shouting the words.

She managed a laugh, however, although it sounded rather hollow to her own ears. “I hardly think I can take credit, Don Antonio.”

“Ah, but she takes after her mother, clearly,” he responded with a gallant bow.

Play the part,
she told herself.
Think of it as a game of charades.

She batted her eyelashes and flipped open her fan, half covering her face as she offered a flirtatious smile and murmured, “You flatter me, sir.”

Greville, aware of every movement of her fan from across the room, understood the message. She was telling him everything was going smoothly.

“Perhaps I could show you some of London, Don Antonio?”

“I would be honored, Lady Falconer.” His eyes slid away from her across to her husband. “If your husband would have no objections.”

Again her laugh sounded artificial to her ears, but she hoped a stranger wouldn’t notice. “In London, sir, ladies do not live in their husband’s pockets.”

He bowed solemnly. “We live in a rather more rigid society in Madrid, Lady Falconer. Rather old-fashioned, I daresay, by London standards.”

She twinkled at him over her fan. “Do you disapprove of our free and easy London ways, sir?”

“Not at all, ma’am,” he said, his eyes hooded. “Just a matter of becoming accustomed, and with so many lovely and accommodating ladies, I don’t believe it will take me long to become accustomed.”

And once more, out of the blue, Aurelia felt an eerie breath of cold and thought suddenly that Don Antonio Vasquez was playing with her. She had thought she was doing the playing, but now she was not so sure. She was no longer sure she was in control. She moved her fan with a twist of her wrist to her right shoulder, wafting it leisurely towards her face.

Greville was at her side more quickly than she would have believed possible. “My dear, I don’t believe I have made the acquaintance of your companion.”

To her astonishment, she thought his voice sounded faintly slurred, and when she cast him a covert glance, she thought his eyes looked a little glazed. She performed the introduction, saying lightly, “It seems that Don Antonio is a neighbor of ours, Greville. He has lodgings on Adam’s Row.”

“I believe I may have seen you in Grosvenor Square the other afternoon,” the Spaniard said. “You were accompanying a delightful child and her dog.”

Greville peered at him over the rim of his glass, blinking as if unsure if he was seeing him aright. “Can’t say I noticed you.” He shook his head. “No offense, I hope.”

“Not at all,” Don Antonio said. “The dog drew my attention. One doesn’t see an Irish wolfhound very often.” His lips moved in the semblance of a smile.

Greville gave a bluff laugh and his hand shook, spilling a little of his champagne onto the carpet. “No, indeed not.”

Aurelia was awestruck. She would swear on her parents’ grave that Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer had never been the worse for drink in his life, but he was giving the most superb imitation. But why? He had, of course, succeeded in turning the Spaniard’s attention completely away from her, and she had now regained the composure she had momentarily been afraid of losing.

She turned her full attention to Don Antonio, giving him a dazzling smile. “I do hope you will call in South Audley Street, Don Antonio. I am anxious to fulfill my promise to show you some of the sights of our city. I have my own barouche, so there’s no need for you to concern yourself with a conveyance. I would be delighted to take you up.” That should have given Greville one specific piece of information he’d asked for.

The Spaniard bowed. “I will be in your debt, my lady, and the envy of all.”

She tapped his arm reprovingly with her fan, her eyes sparkling, something approaching a simper on her lips. “I do protest, sir. Such shameless flattery.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips, exclaiming, “It is for me to protest, my lady. You must absolve me. I am utterly sincere.”

“Then I look forward to your call, Don Antonio. I am at home most mornings at eleven o’clock.”

He bowed again to her, then offered a nodding bow to Greville, and with a word of excuse moved away.

Greville spoke into the air above her ear, in that whisper that only she could hear. “Leave now.”

Why?
But she didn’t ask the question, instead stepped away from him and threaded her way through the room to where her hostess was holding court by the piano.

“Ah, Lady Falconer, come and join us.” Doña Bernardina greeted her with an outflung hand. “Give us your opinion on Lope de Vega. We find so few English know any of our writers except for Cervantes.”

“And much as they say they love the book, they cannot pronounce
Don Quixote
correctly,” an effete young man stated with a laugh that bordered on a sneer.

“You must forgive us our ignorance,” Aurelia said with a chilly smile. “The English are not known for their linguistic skill, I have to admit. I daresay it is because our language is spoken everywhere and we have grown quite lazy as a result.”

“But you, Lady Falconer, you speak a little Spanish, no?”

Having done her patriotic duty in defending her countrymen’s lamentably arrogant lack of interest in foreign languages, Aurelia was prepared to yield the ground. “Not really. Only French, and a little Italian.”

It was a while before she could politely excuse herself from the conversation and make her farewells to her hostess. She could hear Greville’s voice from the far side
of the room, pitched a little too loud to be appropriate, and while he couldn’t be accused of actually slurring his words, a thickness indicated a lack of control, and his tall frame seemed to waft a little as if he were a tree in a high wind.

Aurelia would have laughed at such a brilliant display, except she assumed that what lay behind it was probably not funny at all.

T
HE CARRIAGE WAS WAITING
by the door in the same place it had dropped them off, Jemmy standing by the horses. But Aurelia noticed for the first time that there was an unfamiliar coachman on the box. Usually Jemmy managed the carriage with just the help of Greville’s groom. Greville must have hired the new man without telling her. Not that he had any obligation to do so. Jemmy ran to open the door.

“I didn’t realize we had a new coachman,” she said as she climbed into the carriage.

“Just this morning, m’lady,” Jemmy informed her in a tone that rang with disapproval. “Sir Greville said as ’ow there ’ad to be the two of us to drive you, even though I’ve been doin’ it quite satisfactory for years.”

It was presumably part of the protective net Greville had thrown over her, Aurelia thought. She smiled rather wearily at Jemmy. “I’m sure Sir Greville was not casting aspersions on your skill, Jemmy. He probably felt two
coachmen were necessary for his wife. Husbands often think like that. It adds to their consequence.”

“Mebbe,” Jemmy said doubtfully. “The new bloke don’t say much, that’s fer sure.” He closed the door and went around to jump up on the back step, clinging to the strap as the coachman started the horses and the carriage moved off at a fast clip.

Aurelia was astounded at how suddenly exhausted she felt, as if she’d been walking a high wire for hours. She leaned back in a corner and closed her eyes, wondering why Greville was staying on, and why he was putting on such an act.

She was almost asleep when the carriage drew up outside the house. Jemmy let down the footstep and opened the door, peering into the dark interior of the vehicle. “We’re ’ome, mum.”

“Oh, goodness, are we, Jemmy. I was almost asleep.” She gathered herself together and stepped out into the street. The night air had a breath of warmth, a real intimation of spring at last, and the faint scent of early-May blossoms drifted from the trees in Grosvenor Square.

She let herself into the quiet, lamplit house and went into the library, determined to wait for Greville’s return. The soiree would not go on for much longer by the unexciting nature of the entertainment offered, but Greville might go on somewhere if it suited his plan. But Aurelia decided to take her chance for an hour. She kicked off her satin slippers and curled up in a corner of the sofa with a small glass of cognac, thinking over
the events of the evening, and particularly Don Antonio Vasquez.

He frightened her, she realized after a minute’s careful thought. He was like a large cat with his eyes on unwitting prey. Was she a match for him?

Greville let himself into the house quietly an hour later. The lamps were still lit, and he saw that the library door was open. He trod quietly to the door and looked in. Aurelia was fast asleep in a corner of the sofa, her paisley shawl draped over her. The fire was almost out, the candles on the mantel guttering, the lamps burning low. He went over to the sofa and gently shook her shoulder.

“Aurelia, wake up, my love. It’s late and you need to be abed.” He touched the curve of her cheek with a fingertip and her eyelids fluttered, then her eyes opened and she looked up at him in bleary confusion.

“Greville?”

“Yes, it’s me, as ever was.” He bent and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Come, let me help you to bed.” He slid an arm around her shoulders and half lifted her off the sofa. “Shall I carry you?”

“No,” she said with a semblance of indignation. “Of course not. I’m quite capable of walking on my two feet…which, I might say, you did not seem to be earlier this evening.”

He chuckled. “You noticed.”

“Hard to miss.” She gathered her shawl around her, decided to ignore her discarded shoes, and set off resolutely on stockinged feet to the door.

“Ah, and there I thought I was giving a good imitation of a drunk acting sober.”

Aurelia laughed. “You probably fooled everyone but me.”

“I hope so.” He took her arm and led her to the stairs.

“Why did you want Don Antonio to think you were drunk?” she asked over her shoulder as he urged her upward.

He laughed a little. “A man who can’t hold his drink is quickly dismissed. It never does any harm to encourage people to discount one, particularly those in whom one might have some interest oneself.”

“Oh…smoke and mirrors.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I didn’t like him,” she said, turning towards her room at the head of the stairs.
And that was the understatement of the year.

“With good reason.” Greville followed her down the passage. “I believe him to be a very dangerous man.”

“I wish he hadn’t seen Franny.” She gave voice to the amorphous apprehension that had gripped her earlier.

“My dear, I was with her and so was Lyra. You need have no fear for Franny, I swear that she is in no danger, and never will be.”

Her feelings for this man were confused and often conflicted, but despite the fact that he had drilled into her the mantra that she must trust no one, she trusted his word in this instance. “The new coachman is in some measure a bodyguard?”

“Yes. He’ll drive you everywhere if you’re not with me. And there will be someone to escort Franny wherever she goes, unless she’s with me.”

It was sufficient reassurance and Aurelia willingly accepted it, yielding now to her fatigue. “Why am I so tired?”

“You had a hard evening,” he said, propelling her to the bed and pushing her down with a hand on her elbow. “Harder than you realized at the time. Deception is not an easy business.”

“Is that why you sent me away?”

“I judged you’d had enough. As I keep saying, you’re still new to the business.”

He bent over her as she sprawled on the coverlet and began to undress her with a deft efficiency that she thought through the tendrils of fatigue had less of the lover and more of the nursemaid about it. He helped her into her nightgown, offered her toothbrush and tooth powder, and while she brushed her teeth, he unpinned her hair and pulled a brush through it to loosen the curls.

Aurelia crawled under the coverlet, still astounded at how utterly exhausted she was. But when he bent over her to kiss her, she looked into his dark eyes that glowed
with a strange warmth and she thought,
You called me “my love.”
Never before had that word in any context passed Colonel, Sir Greville Falconer’s lips in her hearing. Did he know he’d said it? Would he remember?

The words accompanied her into sleep, and when he slid in beside her, she turned into his embrace, burrowing into the hollow of his shoulder, falling into a sleep that she knew was safe and protected.

When she awoke in the morning to his soft, whispering touches beneath the coverlet, she smiled to herself in the dim light of the curtain-hung bed, thinking again of those words he had spoken.
He had called her “his love.”

Perhaps he hadn’t been playing the drunkard after all, perhaps there’d been some truth to the charade. But, no, he had not been drunk when he’d helped her to bed, not one iota. And he had not been drunk when those words had passed his lips.

Of course, he didn’t know she’d heard them. She’d been dead to the world as far as he knew. But he’d still spoken them.

She stretched languidly and parted her thighs to give his tongue and fingers access to her core, and her smile deepened as she curled her fingers in his hair and caressed his ears, lifting her hips to the rhythmic waves of delight.

“The woman never leaves the house without the dog if she’s on foot or on horseback,” Miguel stated, watching
his master covertly. Don Antonio was unusually restless, pacing the drawing room of the house on Adam’s Row as he listened to his assistant’s report. “I don’t follow her, of course, but I watch.”

Don Antonio spun on his heel and walked to the window that looked down on the street. “Have we identified anyone else of interest in the house?”

“Apart from the child, no, sir. There have been no unusual comings and goings that would give us any indication of—”

“Don’t be any more foolish than you must, Miguel,” his master interrupted acidly. “Do you really think a man of the
asp
’s skill and experience would make it
obvious
that his house was a center for espionage? You’re supposed to be skilled enough yourself to notice things that shouldn’t be noticeable.”

“Yes…yes, of course, Don Antonio.” Miguel flushed. “But I swear there’s nothing.”

Don Antonio regarded him in speculative silence for a moment. Then he sat down in a winged chair beside the fireplace and said more moderately, “Very well. If you swear it, I’ll take your word for it.”

Miguel blossomed under the rare vote of confidence. “How do we proceed now, sir?”

His master frowned. “The
asp
has given no indication as yet that he has broken my cover. As long as he continues to believe that we’re planning an information-gathering mission, according to the misinformation given to their
network in Madrid, we will proceed exactly as intended. It’s obvious that they would assume our very public arrival at Dover was part of that information-gathering operation. Looking for me at Doña Bernardina’s soiree was an obvious step.”

He tapped the ruby ring on his finger against the wooden arm of his chair in an unmelodic rhythm as he said softly, “But our friend has made things a little easier for us by this marriage. I have long thought that for all your undeniable skills at your profession, Miguel, it’s possible that the
asp
will withstand your techniques. He is no ordinary man. Either that or he will ensure somehow that he is not alive to be broken by them. But a woman and child live under his protection. A strange burden for such a consummate professional to assume. And one that I hope will provide a chink in his armor. We work on the woman, not the
asp,
and we’ll see if he can withstand her agony as well as he will quite possibly succeed in withstanding his own. When we have what we want from him, I will kill them.”

He crossed one leg over the other, gently swinging a quizzing glass on its black velvet ribbon as he surveyed Miguel. “Can you perhaps deduce why
I
have been set this particular task, my friend?”

Miguel made no attempt to guess. “You are the best there is, sir,” he offered simply.

Don Antonio nodded and agreed amiably, “Yes, my
friend, I believe I am. But that is not the entire reason, my dear Miguel. I choose my tasks with great care, and I have a personal reason for choosing this one.” A grim expression crossed his face. “I do not tolerate failure.”

“No, Don Antonio.”

“Particularly my own.” He pursed his lips. “Unlike many of my comrades in the service, I have never crossed swords face-to-face with the
asp
. But I would have done so had he not outwitted me once…and believe me, Miguel, no one ever outwits me twice.” The very softness of his voice accentuated the ferocity of the declaration.

Miguel nodded in hasty agreement. “You are the best, Don Antonio,” he repeated reverently.

His master didn’t appear to hear him. Don Antonio continued in an almost musing tone, “The
asp
is one man I will never underestimate. Over the years he’s cut a swath of destruction through our networks…which is why we can no longer afford to accommodate him,” he stated with a flicker of a smile.

“The question remains, however: will Spain’s best be more than a match for England’s on this occasion?” Don Antonio watched the swinging quizzing glass with a distracted frown, as if mesmerized by it, but then he caught the ribbon and dropped it with the glass into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Don’t trouble yourself to answer that, Miguel. It was purely rhetorical.”

Don Antonio uncurled himself from the chair. “So I shall cultivate the wife. I still cannot understand why the
asp
would complicate his operation with a woman. But he must have some devious reason.”

Don Antonio threw back his head and laughed. “
Madre de Dios,
there is no limit to what the
asp
will do for his work. It’s the man’s lifeblood.”

Miguel found his master’s laughter if anything more alarming than his ferocious contempt. He shuffled his feet and looked longingly towards the door.

“Go.” Don Antonio waved a hand in dismissal, and Miguel bowed and left.

“Ah, yes,” Don Antonio murmured softly into the silence. “Once a spy always a spy…until death brings the endgame.”

Aurelia was returning to the house after walking Lyra in Hyde Park when a smart curricle bowled down South Audley Street from Grosvenor Square. She recognized the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed driver immediately as he reined in the pair of blood chestnuts outside her house.

“Alex,” she called, hastening her step, smiling with delight. “Liv said you’d be in town sometime this week.”

“And here I am.” He jumped down lightly, tossing the reins to his groom. He looked askance at Lyra, who was standing at Aurelia’s side, her massive head at waist level, her deep brown eyes regarding Prince Alexander Prokov with mild curiosity.

“Is it safe to approach you?” he asked, extending an undemanding hand towards the hound.

“Perfectly.” Aurelia gave a gentle tug on Lyra’s left ear, and the dog visibly relaxed, pushing her head into Alex’s hand.

Alex judged he’d established his friendly intentions and embraced Aurelia, kissing her warmly on both cheeks. “Congratulations, Lady Falconer. I bring letters and wedding gifts and all sorts of nonsense from Livia. But I brought only the letter today. I shall send the parcels round this afternoon. There are far too many to fit in the curricle. Shall we go in?”

He led the way up the steps to the front door as confidently as if it was his own house. “Will Morecombe answer the door, do you think? I can’t tell you how grateful we all are at this arrangement. I was beginning to fear that Boris would hand in his notice before we returned to Cavendish Square. And that, my dear, would not do at all.” He raised the doorknocker and banged it vigorously.