A Husband's Wicked Ways (6 page)

“You haven’t told me what those particular traits are,” she pressed. “I need to know what Frederick had…was…that through all the years of my knowing him escaped me, and not you in a few short days.”

“A readiness to be tested, to break barriers, cross boundaries, to face danger with relish. Oh, a healthy fear is necessary, too, make no mistake, but to do this work one must have the courage to overcome fear.”

Aurelia leaned back in her chair, letting her head fall back, her eyes closing for a moment. Frederick
had
been a reckless huntsman, always first over the fences. He’d played every sport at school and university with a fierce competitiveness that usually brought him out on top. He’d joined the navy without hesitation at the start of the war and had fretted about the lack of action. And yet she hadn’t thought him any different from any of his peers. Greville Falconer had seen something different, and with Frederick’s own words playing in her head she had to acknowledge that he had seen what was there,
even if she and his friends and family had not fully understood it.

“Any further questions?”

The quiet voice broke into her reverie and she sat up abruptly. Her body was reacting strangely again, hot and cold, heart beating fast. But this time she knew the cause. A confused knowledge certainly, but it had everything to do with the man sitting opposite her and the almost palpable currents of danger, mystery, intrigue, that seemed to swirl around him.

“What are you going to be doing in London?” Her voice had the tiniest quaver, but she didn’t think he would notice. Then she knew that he had of course noticed it. This man was trained to notice everything.

“A little work,” he said casually, careful not to appear to be watching her too closely. She reminded him again of a bird, one that sensed the approach of a possible hunter but was still unsure. Ready to flee at a moment’s notice, yet hovering. Something in what he’d said had caught her attention.

“Perhaps you could help me,” he said, watching her start of shock and surprise.

“Help you? How?” Aurelia was fully upright now. She looked straight at him.

“I need lodgings,” he said with a deprecating smile. “I am staying with my aunt on Brook Street at present, but if I’m to make an extended stay in town, as I intend, then I must set up my own establishment. Perhaps you know of somewhere suitable.”

The request was a welcome cold shower. “I am not in the landlord business, Sir Greville.” Her voice was cool and dispassionate.

“I didn’t imagine you were, ma’am. I merely thought that since you’ve been in town for some time, you might have heard of something…a tenant giving up some rooms, perhaps. It’s not a wildly unreasonable assumption.” He rose to his feet. “But I won’t keep you any longer.”

Aurelia stood up. “No, not an unreasonable assumption, I suppose. If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know if you’ll give me an address where I can reach you.” She extended her hand in farewell.

“I am staying with my aunt, Lady Broughton, on Brook Street,” he said, taking the hand with a meticulous bow. “But I trust I may call upon you again soon, ma’am.”

Was there more to that than the surface platitude? Why did she have the absolute sense that this man never did or said anything without a specific purpose? And how should he have any purpose that concerned her? Once he’d reclaimed the package for the ministry, she should be of no further interest to him.

“Please do,” she heard herself respond politely. “I’ll see you out.”

A
URELIA CLOSED THE DOOR
on her departed guest and went up to her bedchamber. She took Frederick’s letter from the jewel casket and sat down to read it again, but this time with dispassionate knowledge of its contents. Now she could tease out meanings, read between the lines, try to understand properly what had driven her husband to abandon everything that she believed he had held dear. And she did believe that he had loved her and their child. So how had he been able in good conscience to sacrifice not just himself but his wife, leaving her to a life of widowhood, at first a pretense and now a reality?

She was not happy in her widowhood. In motherhood, yes, but there was a barrenness to her present existence. Maybe she was selfish to complain, maybe she should be satisfied with motherhood, but Aurelia found it difficult to accept that that was all there was to her life from now on. In her heart of hearts she knew that she envied her friends who had found love. A second chance
for Nell. She would welcome her own second chance, there was no point pretending otherwise.

Once again she was flooded by that strange pulse of energy, the feeling that was a combination of excitement and fear. She had no idea what prompted it, but she could feel her cheeks flush, a slight mist of perspiration on her brow, and her heart was fluttering as frantically as a wild bird in a cage. Was it the appeal of a double life, the thrill of excitement, as well as the obligations of patriotism, that had sent Frederick on the path he had taken?

The dainty ormolu clock on her mantel chimed the hour, and Aurelia realized that she’d been sitting motionless for more than half an hour. Her moment of near panic had vanished as quickly as it had come. She looked down at the letter on her lap. She would never know for certain what had driven Frederick. He had told her all he could or would, and now he was gone.

She folded the letter again and replaced it in her jewel casket, then flung open the armoire in search of a gown suitable for a luncheon where the conversation would be less frivolous than usual. Cecily Langton’s husband was a bishop, a somewhat worldly bishop let it be said, but he encouraged his wife to espouse good causes, and she threw herself into the business with a happy heart. She was renowned for her refusal to take no for an answer when she was dragooning her society friends into parting with their money, time, and energy. Cornelia, Livia, and Aurelia had always enjoyed Cecily’s deft manipula
tions of the reluctant givers, a category in which they could not themselves be counted.

Aurelia picked out a gown of dove gray silk with a brown velvet pelisse trimmed with gray fur. Suitably sober, she decided, but undeniably elegant. The costume had been through various transformations, and she was fairly certain only her closest friends would recognize it in its present manifestation. The pelisse was now belted beneath the bosom with a brown silk cord instead of the tasseled gray that had previously adorned it. The fur trimming replaced a dark gray taffeta, and the gray silk gown now had darker gray flounces and little puff sleeves instead of the elbow length of before.

She rang the bell for Hester, who had added lady’s maid to her general laundress and seamstress duties, and took off the simple cambric gown she’d worn to Mount Street.

“Good morning, m’lady.” Hester, slightly breathless from running up the stairs from the basement, appeared in the doorway. “Should I press the gown, ma’am?”

“I don’t think it needs it, Hester. But I’d like you to help with my hair. You’re a wonder with that curling iron.”

“Oh, thank you, ma’am. I does me best.” Hester flushed with pleasure at the compliment. She helped Aurelia into the gown, then took the curling iron to the fire to warm it while Aurelia unpinned her hair, letting the corn-silk locks tumble free. Ringlets required a lot of attention to maintain, and her coiffure now was beginning to lose its curl.

She had very straight hair and unfortunately curly hair was the fashion, so she must submit several times a day to the hot iron in Hester’s skillful hands. She’d always envied Livia her mass of dusky curls that could effortlessly be teased into any number of styles.

The smell of singeing hair made her wrinkle her nose, but Hester seemed oblivious, twisting, twining, pulling at the corkscrews she created until the soft, pale hair clustered in shining ringlets on either side of Aurelia’s face.

“Lovely. Thank you, my dear.” Aurelia reached for the hare’s-foot brush to apply a little rouge before getting up from the dresser. Hester helped her into the pelisse.

“Will you wear the little velvet hat, ma’am. The brown one?”

“Yes, perfect.” Aurelia took the hat and arranged it over the ringlets. The dab of a hat with a wisp of a veil looked very well atop her pale hair. Aurelia examined herself in the mirror and gave a little self-deprecating smile at the knowledge of her own vanity. She looked elegant, a figure to draw the eye. Of course as a widowed matron with a six-year-old daughter, such matters should be of no interest to her at all. But they were, and if that was a sin, then so be it.

She gathered up her gloves and reticule and left the house to walk the short distance to Hanover Square where the bishop had his residence. The day had warmed a little and a pale sun shone weakly from a light blue sky whenever the scudding clouds permitted. The square
was quiet and Aurelia decided to walk through the garden to Holles Street on the far side.

She entered the cool, damp garden through the little wrought-iron gate. The daffodils were in full bloom and the forsythia was beginning to bud. The grass was a rich green after the winter rains, and the air had a wonderful moist, earthy scent. There was a sense of freshness, of new beginnings, and her step quickened with a renewed surge of that earlier energy.

The garden appeared deserted, not even a gardener tending to the shrubs. The children who usually played in the verdant square were presumably at their lessons, but it was unusual not to see a nursemaid giving a baby an airing. Aurelia strolled down the gravel pathway between privet hedges interspersed with macrocarpa. She took off a glove with her teeth, then broke off a macrocarpa twig and rubbed it between her fingers. The lemony fragrance of the cyprus oil took her back to her childhood and the tall hedges that surrounded the house where she’d grown up.

And the olfactory memory brought Frederick clear as day into her mind’s eye. He had proposed to her one hot day in the shade of a macrocarpa hedge while she’d been doing just what she was now doing, rubbing the oil into her fingers and inhaling deeply of the scent. Everything about that day had seemed right. His proposal was far from unexpected. It was no secret to anyone that the families of Frederick Farnham and Aurelia Merchant had promoted the connection since their children were
small. Their children had obliged them by falling in love. Aurelia couldn’t now remember exactly when she’d realized that her feelings for her childhood friend had deepened into something much stronger than friendship and the shared experiences of growing up. But when Frederick proposed, she had felt such happiness, such a sense of fulfillment, of the absolute rightness of the future that lay ahead for her. Now, as she inhaled the lemony fragrance on her fingers, she wondered if Frederick had felt the same on that bright sunny afternoon. Perhaps his feelings had not run as deep or as strong as hers and she had not allowed herself to see it.

With a tiny sigh she tossed the twig aside and replaced her glove as she walked on down the path. As she emerged onto the grassy space in the center of the garden, a strange feeling hit her. The fine hairs on her nape lifted and her scalp crawled. She stopped and looked around. There was no sign of anyone. But she had company, she knew it. Her skin knew it. Or maybe it was simply the random goose prickles of someone walking over her grave. Her thoughts had been occupied, after all, with the dead.

She paused for a second on the path, hearing the reassuring rumble of traffic just a few yards away on the other side of the iron railings. There was nothing to fear in the middle of London on a bright morning. But the silence in the garden seemed unnatural. Even the birds were quiet. She jumped at a rustle behind her and twisted to look over her shoulder. A squirrel was digging in the rich soil beneath an oak tree. Nothing else.

Tentatively she called out, “Who’s there?”

There was no answer. She began to walk quickly towards the street, and its pedestrians and carriages. Her back felt exposed, as if it had a target printed on it. This irrational fear was surely explained by the events of the last day. Frederick had somehow risen from the dead, then been buried again, and it was no wonder her nerves were on edge.

Her fingers were clumsy as she fumbled with the latch on the gate, but at last she was outside the dim, green shadows of the garden and in the bright and busy street. She drew another deep, steadying breath, settled her shoulders, smoothed down her skirt with a little comforting pat, and started walking towards Holles Street.
But someone was following her.
She stopped, looked behind her. Plenty of people were around, all apparently going about their business. No one she recognized.

She swallowed convulsively. She was being ridiculous. What possible reason could someone have for following her, and what possible harm could anyone do her in the middle of the busy street?

A hackney carriage stood against the curb a few feet ahead of her, and instinctively she increased her pace towards it. A passenger was just getting out on the pavement side. With a murmured apology, Aurelia climbed up into the carriage as he stepped to the ground, then without thinking slid across the bench and out of the opposite door into the thronged street, narrowly avoid
ing a passing curricle. The jarvey stared at her sudden appearance, opened his mouth to shout something, but she was already dodging traffic as she made for the far side of the street back towards Cavendish Square. She had no idea where she was going now, only that she needed to get rid of this fearful intuitive sense of being stalked.

She found herself breathless on Henrietta Place and stopped, listening, looking around. Again, nothing sinister was to be seen, and slowly her panic faded as her heartbeat returned to something approaching its normal rhythm.
What on earth had possessed her?
For the life of her, Aurelia couldn’t imagine what lunatic impulse had driven her in the last few minutes. Now she was going to be late and she was facing the opposite direction from her destination.

She shook her head vigorously in an attempt to clear away the cobwebby residues of her fear and set off quickly in the right direction. Once again on Holles Street, she was walking briskly towards Hanover Square when someone stepped up beside her and a familiar voice said, “I must congratulate you, ma’am. You nearly lost me. That’s a professional trick, dodging though a carriage like that. Where did you learn it?”

Aurelia stopped dead and stared at Greville Falconer, who was smiling at her with a cool serenity that made nonsense of her panic.
“You?”

“Yes, me,” he agreed with his unwavering smile. “I’m
sorry if I startled you, but I suddenly had the irresistible urge to see if you remembered the games you used to play as a child.”

“Games?” she repeated, aware that she sounded like a parrot. “What games? You scared me half to death. How
dare
you do such a thing?”

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and his smile became even more disarming. “Forgive me. But Frederick told me of a particular game you used to play, a kind of hide-and-seek, I can’t remember what…”

“Hunt the hare,” Aurelia said slowly, still staring at him. “One of us set off across the countryside and had to be in a certain place by a certain time, while the others hunted us.” She remembered the excitement and the trepidation of being the prey on those long-ago days. Sometimes it had felt almost real, that desperate need to evade, to hide, to trick. That was exactly what she had felt in the last few minutes.

“Yes, that’s right. Frederick told me about it. He said it had laid some groundwork for the kind of tricks he needed in the trade that became his.” Greville put a hand lightly on her arm. “It was unforgivable of me to frighten you. Please believe that I truly didn’t intend to.”

Aurelia looked blankly at him. She could think of nothing to say. But she didn’t brush his hand aside.

Greville said swiftly into the silence, “To tell the truth, I didn’t really think you would even be aware that you were being watched. Many people wouldn’t have felt an instant’s unease. Most people are oblivious of their sur
roundings much of the time. And if you hadn’t known you were being watched, you wouldn’t have been frightened.”

“A somewhat disingenuous excuse, don’t you think, sir?” Aurelia demanded with heavy irony. She had found her tongue and her composure, and lightly and dismissively, as if it were a fallen leaf, she brushed his hand from her sleeve.

He let his hand fall away and bowed. “I won’t intrude upon you further, ma’am.”

“For which I am grateful.” With a twitch of her flounced gown, she turned from him and continued on her way.

Greville watched her until she reached her destination. She had a right to her anger, he reflected somewhat ruefully. He certainly hadn’t been playing fair. But he had learned something useful. Aurelia had the necessary instincts. Instincts that could be honed. But did she have the inclination? Or the willingness to consider incentives that might overcome a lack of inclination?

Aurelia spent the next two hours wrestling with her anger, which was directed as much at Frederick as at Colonel Falconer. What right had Frederick had to discuss something as intimate as those childhood games with
anyone,
let alone the man he worked for in such dubious circumstances. By sharing such an intimacy it seemed to her that he had given tacit permission to the colonel to use that information. But what was he using
it for? Some cat-and-mouse game, just for the sake of it? That seemed ludicrous. Unless the man was deranged, and that, she decided, was a distinct possibility.