The Heart That Wins (Regency Spies Book 3) (13 page)

There had been an air of unreality about the last few weeks. Every day brought new rumours that the French had crossed the border or that the allies were going to depart at any moment. Sophia had been surprised to learn that even Edmund had little idea about Bonaparte’s strategy. Whatever plans he had put into action to discover the whereabouts of the army had failed.

The review passed off perfectly, with an excited crowd cheering the soldiers and their commanders.

They saw John and Sophia knew that he saw them, for he seemed to sit up straighter on his horse.

It was the first time she had really seen him as a soldier and she realised that he would soon be fighting again and all her efforts for the last two years had been for nothing.

She still felt this sense of futility as she went into Lord Uxbridge’s party.

Sophia watched John who was with a small group of officers. Every now and again he glanced at her.

She was surprised by the exuberance of the party.

“They know some of them will die before many weeks have passed.”

Sophia had not noticed Franz come to her side.

“Is that why they laugh and shout? So that they might know they’re alive now?”

John had been the most exuberant of all, unnaturally so. He never let anyone else see his emotions, yet this evening they were on display, as if they were his armour. Was she the only one who could see how false he was? She hoped he derived some sort of comfort from it, but doubted it.

Sophia had thought this might be her chance to talk to John. She had not seen him at any of the balls she had attended recently and had only glimpsed him at another race meeting. If he had called at the house again, he had waited until she was out to do so. She thought she understood now why he was avoiding her, but she still wanted to talk to him.

He had not been pleased to see her here, she could see that, and, as she started to move towards him, he turned his back to her and walked away.

“Don’t chase after him,” said Edmund gently, as he took her hand and placed it on his arm. “He wouldn’t want to see you embarrassed. You know that.”

Sophia shook her head, as much to clear the tears from her eyes as anything else.

“Surely…” she started, but surely what? Surely he wanted to talk to her to make her the subject of gossip? Surely he wanted to ruin her reputation as he had ruined his own? He had told her that he loved her and avoiding her was the only way he could show it.

1st June 1815

“I want you to be Sophia’s lover.”

“What!”

John reached for where his sword would be, were he wearing one, then remembered who was speaking. Edmund smiled innocently.

“French armies are moving towards the border. You will set Sophia up in a village between here and the border. She will have two lovers. Franz, who will bring her information from the French army and you, a young man from Brussels, who will bring it back to me.”

They were in John’s lodgings. When Edmund had called, John’s first thought had been that something was wrong with Sophia, although he had seen her in the last few days walking in the park or at balls and once at the races. Usually he left when he saw her but had had to stay and watch her with Franz at Lord Uxbridge’s dinner. He had come perilously close to drinking himself insensible in order to stand it. Only the memory of Edmund’s dinner had held him back.

“Why me?”

And why Franz?

“Because you care enough about her to do it right and to keep her safe. And because she trusts you, as do I.”

“We agreed that I should keep away from her.”

Edmund shifted in his chair as he glanced at the sleeping child in John’s bed. John hoped he knew what he was asking. Since he had arrived in Brussels more than two months ago he had spent less than an hour in Sophia’s presence and now Edmund wanted him to spend entire evenings with her, alone.

“We did agree that, but I think she’ll be safer with you. I don’t trust Sophia’s life to just anyone. This is important.”

John stood and began to pace. This would not be good for him or Sophia.

“You’d better add blackmail to your list of talents,” he said.

“Sophia will be more comfortable if it’s you,” insisted Edmund.

“I’d rather she wasn’t doing this at all. Is it my fault or yours that she got mixed up in this?”

“Both.”

Edmund looked again at the child, as if ashamed of his part in all this.

“Could I talk her out of it?” asked John.

“I trust that’s a rhetorical question.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It should have been. You know how single-minded she can be. She’s not going to stop until it’s really over.”

“Then it had better be me.”

This was not a good idea. If Sophia was going to be in danger, he wanted to be there to protect her all the time, but he would have to leave her to face the danger alone. He was not sure he could do that.

He had already made the mistake of telling her that he loved her; now he would pose as her lover.

It was impossible, however, to think that anyone else should play the part of Sophia’s lover. He could trust no one else with her life, any more than Edmund could. It meant that he would have to meet her and talk to her and see the recrimination in her eyes. He wished he had had the courage to blow his brains out after he had told her that he loved her.

Such thoughts were harder to resist as each day passed, but he could not leave Sophia defenceless. Each night he fell asleep wondering how he could face another day, but each morning he dressed knowing that Sophia’s safety was all that mattered. Franz could not protect her and Edmund had his own family to care for. John was the only one for whom Sophia was everything.

Edmund spoke and broke into his thoughts.

“Good. The army has released you to me for a week or two, so you don’t need to worry about that. Since you’re the richer lover of the two, you can go with her tomorrow and take a place to set her up in. Sint Stefaan is where Franz is expecting to find her. I’ve had rooms taken in your name.”

John had never had any choice in this, then. It did not matter. If Sophia was being put into a place of danger, John’s place was beside her, protecting her, if necessary laying down his own life for her.

Would she grieve for him, he wondered, if he died? Would she forget what he had done and remember the boy who had been her friend? There was no other hope for him, of that he was certain.

“Will Franz look after her?”

It was a stupid question; John knew he could not. The Prussian could not even look after himself.

“I told you, there aren’t many men I would trust her to. He’s one of them, despite everything, but I’d prefer to have you. Franz is resourceful. He may be little use with a sword, although I’ve done my best to rectify that over the last few weeks, but he’s a very good shot. If you’d chosen pistols, I doubt either of you would have survived.”

John ignored the compliment.

“I meant after.”

“After?”

“He’s in love with her.”

“Yes. That was the point of the duel, wasn’t it? For him, at least?”

John shrugged. The duel was hardly the issue now.

“Then he will look after her.”

He realised that he was pleading with Edmund.

“You have a terrible habit of wishing people who don’t love one another to marry. At least I assume we’re talking about marriage.”

“Of course we are.”

Nothing else would do for Sophia. She was not made to be some man’s mistress. John had recognised as a child that Sophia was meant to be a wife and mother.

“You would have them marry despite the duel?” asked Edmund.

“Despite the duel.”

“Even though he demonstrated that he’s not worthy of her?”

Edmund smiled in that annoying way again and John wondered what he was thinking.

“She doesn’t love him,” Edmund reassured him. “She’s fond of him, certainly, but she doesn’t love him.”

“She might be hiding her feelings from you.”

“She might, but she doesn’t.”

John stopped pacing.

“Are you sure you can’t you talk her out of this?”

“I told you, it can’t be done.”

“This is something else I must have on my conscience. And if she should be discovered or killed?”

Edmund’s expression did not change.

“I have trained her as well as I could. She is resourceful.”

“But it would be your fault and mine.”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t use her.”

He was begging, he knew, but he did not care. Sophia’s life was more important than his pride and God knew there was little of that left.

“She’s too good at what she does and she would never forgive me, or you.”

“But she would live.”

“She would not be in the same danger, but there are other dangers.”

He did not need to say more. If the French entered Brussels even a gentlewoman like Sophia would not be safe. John had been part of a successful army entering a conquered town often enough to know what could happen.

“You cannot protect her from everything, but you both might make the difference between victory and defeat and save other lives.”

John closed his eyes.

“No one’s life is worth hers.”

“You will have to disagree with one another on that.”

Was that it, he wondered. Was Sophia doing this to protect someone else? Whose life, John wondered, did Sophia think was worth hers?

“Whose?” he whispered. “Whose life is worth this much to her?”

“You must ask her.”

“But you know?”

“Yes, I know. There are very few secrets between us.”

For a dreadful moment John thought he had made a terrible mistake in changing his mind about Sophia and Edmund being lovers and she was doing this for Edmund’s sake. It did not matter. He had no claim to Sophia’s confidences anymore. His duty was to protect her and he would do so.

“Now,” continued Edmund, “I have other people to see. I will have a carriage ready for you at the house tomorrow morning. Sophia has a story made up for you, so please learn it.”

“She knows you’re asking me to do this?”

“Didn’t I say? It was her idea.”

John did not rise to see him out.

“Your name is Louis Macquard,” said Sophia as John handed her up into the curricle the following morning, “and I am Sophie Langlois.”

“Very funny,” muttered John.

Despite the danger, he was already enjoying being with Sophia.

“I thought so.”

She smiled at him and adjusted her skirts. She was breathtaking this morning, her gown deceptively simple, but showing more décolleté than she was usually comfortable with. Her jewellery was also simple. Somehow she looked much older than her twenty-four years. Ironically she must have decided that John looked like a man who would take an older woman as a mistress. She had not mentioned that she had not seen him for some weeks and, by her manner towards him, John knew she had not yet heard the stories about him and he began to relax. He did not know how she had managed not to learn about his reputation in all that time, but he was glad that they could be easy together. Somehow she had explained his absence to herself; his avowal that he still loved her should have meant that he would try to see her every day. He hoped she thought that it was consideration for her own lack of feeling for him that kept him away, even though she must have seen him at social events just as he had seen her.

Now, however, he could look at her as much as he wanted, secure in the knowledge that she still thought he was the man she had always known.

He was glad she had not made up her face, for her pale skin and freckles were bewitching this morning. Once she was seated, he set the horse in motion and gave his attention to her.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said, interrupting the flow of facts that were pouring out of her lips. “I’d happily ride fifteen miles out of Brussels and back just to spend an evening with you.”

It was the truth. She did not need to know that he would ride a hundred miles to spend a minute with her.

She became very still beside him and he did not dare look at her face.

“That’s what people are supposed to believe,” she said at last.

“Franz is a lucky man.”

“Why?”

She seemed truly puzzled.

“Surely you reciprocate his feelings.”

Although Edmund had told him that she did not, he wanted to hear it from her.

“I won’t pretend not to know his feelings, but why do you believe they’re reciprocated?”

He risked a glance at her.

“Then you don’t reciprocate them.”

“I didn’t say that. I merely asked why you think they are.”

John pulled the horses to the side of the road and the curricle came to a halt.

“I had forgotten that I may no longer speak my mind to you. I apologise. It is, of course, none of my business.”

“That won’t do. You’ve been my friend since we were children. If it hadn’t been for...”

“I won’t apologise for proposing, only for the way I did it.”

This had the benefit of being true. The proposal had not been the mistake. The setting had been wrong, the words had been wrong, he had been wrong, but the proposal had been right. Sophia should be his wife.

“I apologise. I forgot we were friends that night. I’m sorry,” she said.

She looked sorry and John cursed himself for bringing it up. He had thought about that night every day for the last three years. It had never occurred to him that Sophia might have done the same. He had assumed that she had been protected because she had not loved him.

“You were hardly at fault.”

“I was cruel. I should have... Why could you not have waited?”

He heard her anguish, but could not examine what it might mean.

“Because I saw you going farther and farther away from me. You were avoiding me...”

“You were behaving badly.”

He smiled ruefully.

“I was, wasn’t I?”

He set the horses in motion once more.

“I do not love Franz and I will not marry him.”

She said it quietly, as if she did not want him to know, but she had said it and John was satisfied, even though he had no right to be.

Sint Stefaan was a small village, made up of a few houses, a church and a bakery gathered around a square. The landlady of the house Edmund had chosen seemed to understand their situation exactly, but John offered her more money than the rooms were worth to ease her conscience. They were shown upstairs by a very curious servant. John gave her another large sum of money and required that Madame Langlois receive constant attention and the little delicacies that she loved. The maid, who had apparently never seen anything quite as abandoned as Sophia, fled with an embarrassed giggle.

The rooms, a sitting-room and a bedroom, were small, but comfortably furnished. It was not really the kind of place in which a wealthy man could be expected to install his mistress, but John did not doubt that Sophia had a story prepared to explain it. Neither the landlady nor the maid would expect him to know whatever stories Sophia told them.