The Shadow Queen (41 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying not to betray how deeply bewildered she was, “but I have no idea what being a courier entails.”

“In your case, Mrs. Spencer, it would entail carrying classified documents to highly placed personnel in both Hong Kong and mainland China, doing so under the cover of joining your husband—though whether you actually do so is immaterial.”

“I thought China was too unsafe for Navy wives to be sent there?”

“It is.” His steepled fingers interlocked and he rested his chin on them, steel gray eyes holding hers. “It is the dangerous situation out there that necessitates the use of couriers. At the present time all telegraph messages transmitted to the U.S. Navy in China are being intercepted and read, and the ciphers broken. It is a difficulty that has to be circumvented. If you accept this challenge, Mrs. Spencer, you will have to travel from Hong Kong to Shanghai and Canton—possibly even to Peking. In a country that is in the grip of a brutal civil war, such travel will not be easy, and your safety cannot be assured.”

Wallis struggled as to how to make the right kind of reply. The thought of physical danger didn’t daunt her. What daunted her was the knowledge that Felipe would be highly unlikely to remain faithful to her if she left for China—especially since she would be sworn to secrecy.

Harry W. Smith unlocked his fingers and leaned back in his chair, his gimlet-sharp eyes never leaving hers.

“Once in Hong Kong you wouldn’t be traveling out to Shanghai alone, Mrs. Spencer. Mary Sadler, the wife of Rear Admiral Frank H. Sadler, will be traveling with you and, when your mission is completed, there is an old friend from your Pensacola days, the former Katherine Bigelow, who is at present living in Peking and would love you to spend time with her and her second husband, Herman Rogers.”

Slowly Wallis said, “I’m honored that I’ve been thought trustworthy enough to act as a courier, but I intend to institute divorce proceedings against my husband very shortly and, when they are finalized, to remarry. A lengthy mission to China just isn’t possible for me.”

He hadn’t argued with her. He had merely walked her to the door and bidden her a clipped good-bye.

She’d returned home deeply bemused. It wasn’t every day a woman was asked to act as an intelligence agent. She wished she could tell Felipe about it. That she couldn’t, and couldn’t tell anyone else about it either, was something she was going to find intensely annoying.

When she arrived home, Corinne was waiting for her.

“Hi, Skinny,” she said to her even before she had put her handbag down. “There’s something I need to tell you.” She stubbed a half-smoked cigarette out into a cut-glass ashtray. “You’re not goin’ to like what it is.”

Wallis took off a hat that perfectly matched her navy silk dress. “Tell me the worst. It can’t be so bad.”

“It is.”

At the tone of Corinne’s voice, Wallis frowned. “What is it about? Henry hasn’t been taken ill, has he?”

“No. It’s not about Henry. It’s about Felipe. There’s no easy way of saying this, Wally. He’s seeing someone else. He’s dating Courtney Letts Stilwell, and according to Courtney he’s asked her to marry him.”

For a second Wallis felt as if her heart had ceased to beat, and then realization as to the absurdity of what Corinne was telling her kicked in. “Never in a million years, Corinne. Courtney Letts Stilwell has been divorced
twice
.” There was amusement in her voice. “Felipe is a Catholic. He might, with a lot of persuasion, overlook one divorce, but he’d never overlook two!”

Corinne didn’t share her amusement. “Courtney Letts Stilwell is a wealthy woman, Skinny. You might find that counts for a lot where Felipe is concerned.”

At the certainty in Corinne’s voice, Wallis’s own certainty began to ebb. With legs that were suddenly weak, she sat down.

“When are you due to see him again, honey?”

“Tomorrow night. There’s a party at the Brazilian embassy.”

“Don’t confront him at the party, Skinny. Even if what Courtney is saying isn’t true, Felipe would never forgive you for creating a public scene.”

Wallis’s violet blue eyes flashed fire. “If it’s true, Corinne, it’s something
I’m
never going to forgive. Not
ever
!”

W
hen Felipe called for her the next night in his six-cylinder Buick, she was as tightly wound as a coiled spring. Alice was present and so he didn’t kiss her in the house, but the instant they were together in the car he did so.

As her hand curved around the back of his neck and her mouth parted beneath his, she was taut with fear as to what the next few moments were going to bring.

Sensing her tension, he lifted his head from hers. “What is it,
mi querida
? Is something wrong?”

Her heart began beating in sharp, slamming little strokes she could feel even in her fingertips. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

He shot her a down-slanting smile that turned her knees to water. “Then if you don’t know, it cannot be too serious.”

He put the Buick into gear and eased it away from the apartment block.

Her hands tightened on her beaded evening purse. “Corinne passed on some gossip to me yesterday that she says is quite widespread.”

“Washington is a city of gossip,” he said, his voice lightly dismissive. “What is the latest rumor going the rounds?”

Feeling like a vertigo sufferer on the edge of an abyss, she said, “That you’ve proposed marriage to Courtney Letts Stilwell.”

The Buick veered violently to the left. He righted it, a nerve pulsing hard at the corner of his jaw.

Her whole life felt as if it were on the line as she waited for him to rant at the stupidity of the gossipmongers, to vehemently deny that he’d ever been anything more than socially polite to Courtney Letts Stilwell.

He didn’t do so.

Instead, gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white, he said explosively, “
Jesucristo!
Can people never mind their own business in this town?”

He swerved the car to the side of the road, slamming his foot down on the brake. “It was something I wanted to speak to you about in a reasonable way, Wallis. That you should have heard like this … It’s despicable. Absolutely unforgivable.”

“Are you telling me that it’s
true
?” She was over the edge of the abyss now, falling into a bottomless pit.

With the Buick at a halt, he turned around in order to face her. “We couldn’t have gone on together indefinitely,
mi querida
. I’m thirty-five. I’m getting to be a bit too old to remain a bachelor any longer.”

“Then marry me, not Courtney! It’s me you love, isn’t it?”

“You are married, Wallis. How could we marry? You would have to get a divorce, and I’m a Roman Catholic …”

“Courtney Letts Stilwell has been divorced
twice
!” Wallis was blind, deaf, and dumb with pain. “Why her? Why her and not me?”

He ran a hand over slickly sleek straight hair. “Courtney comes from a famous political and military family …”

“I come from one of the oldest families in America! William the Conqueror was one of my ancestors! I’m related to the Dukes of Manchester
and
the Earls of Sandwich! You’re not marrying Courtney Letts Stilwell because of her family background! You’re marrying her because she’s wealthy!”

He flinched, and she knew her guess was right. Something inside her snapped and broke. Where matters of the heart were concerned she’d been let down too hard, too often. That she was now being let down again, simply because she didn’t have the wealth her Warfield cousins enjoyed, was something so hurtful she couldn’t even begin to deal with it.

“Bastard!” she sobbed, her hand shooting out clawlike toward his face.

He tried to duck but wasn’t fast enough.

Her nails made contact with his cheek and raked downward in a bloody trail.

“Perá!”
he screamed disbelievingly as he scrabbled in his pocket for a handkerchief to stanch the blood.
“Puta!”

Wallis wasn’t listening. Blinded by tears, she stumbled from the car and, with the door swinging open behind her, began running as fast as her narrow-skirted evening gown would allow.

He didn’t come after her, and she didn’t need a fortune-teller to tell her that he never would.

A cab turned into the street, and she flagged it down. The address she gave the driver was Pamela’s. Sinking back against the cracked leather seating, she prayed she would find Pamela at home, certain that if she didn’t she’d be tempted to throw herself into the Potomac from the highest bridge she could find.

A
t the elegant town house Pamela and John Jasper had moved into, an English butler opened the door to her. “Good evening, Mrs. Spencer,” he said cordially. “I will tell Mrs. Bachman you are here.”

When she was told who had unexpectedly arrived, Pamela, who was in her bedroom dressing for the evening, didn’t ask that Wallis wait in the drawing room for her. Severing the in-house telephone connection, she ran, still shoeless, out onto the landing and from the top of the wide sweeping staircase called down, “Come on up, Wally! John Jasper isn’t in. I’m due to meet him at the Brazilian embassy party in half an hour. Are you on your way there as well?”

Wallis didn’t answer her. With a fresh lot of tears falling down her cheeks, she began mounting the stairs, and the instant she was on a level with Pamela and Pamela saw her face, Pamela’s gaiety vanished.

“Dear Lord, Wally. What’s happened?”

“Felipe has asked Courtney Letts Stilwell to marry him.” Her voice was hoarse from crying, her face sheet white.

Pamela sucked in her breath, told her maid she no longer needed her, and, as the girl swiftly left the bedroom, closed the door on her so that she and Wallis were alone.

“When?” she asked succinctly. “Why? How did you find out?”

“I don’t know when. Why is much easier. Because she comes from a socially prominent military and political family, and marriage into it will help further his career—and plus she’s indecently wealthy.”

She sat down on the toile-covered ottoman at the foot of Pamela’s bed, a sodden handkerchief clutched in her hands. “Corinne says gossip about his proposal is widespread, but I didn’t have an inkling. So how long have I been a laughingstock, Pamela? Do you know?”

Pamela shook her head. “I haven’t heard a whisper, Wally. If I had, I would have told you.”

“I wanted to marry him so much! Far more than I ever wanted to marry John Jasper or Win. Why is it nothing ever goes right for me, Pamela? Why can’t I have someone love me the way John Jasper loves you?”

Pamela sat beside her and, as Wallis wept and wept, hugged her close. At last, when Wallis had wept herself into a state of exhaustion, she said gently and with great reluctance, “I have some news of my own that you’re not going to want to hear, Wally. John Jasper has been recalled to London. We leave Washington at the end of the week.”

The thought of living in Washington without Pamela, when Felipe would be squiring Courtney Letts Stilwell around the city, was a horror too far. “Oh God,” she said in despair. “Oh Christ. Oh hell.”

“What will you do, Wally?” Pamela asked, knowing exactly what Wallis felt unable to face. “Will you leave Washington and go back to Baltimore?”

For a long moment Wallis made no reply, and then she said slowly, resolution replacing despair, “No. I’m never going back to Baltimore.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I’m going somewhere much farther away. I’m going somewhere I’ll never run the risk of seeing Felipe with Courtney Letts Stilwell. I’m going to China.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

T
here was a longer time gap than she had wanted between her agreeing to take top-secret documents to China and leaving for China.

“You need to be fully briefed, Mrs. Spencer,” Harry W. Smith said to her. “That will entail you staying for several weeks with Captain Luke McNamee, chief of naval intelligence, and his wife, Dorothy. They live in Georgetown. I’m sure you will be very comfortable there.”

Despite knowing that she was under close scrutiny, Wallis enjoyed her stay with the McNamees. Dorothy McNamee was a painter and lively, intelligent company. As Luke McNamee gave her a crash course in Chinese politics, telling her how the People’s Party under Sun Yat-sen was heavily influenced by Russia and deeply divided by violent internal conflicts, and of how the government in Peking that it was trying to overthrow was just as deeply faction-riven, Dorothy told her of the living conditions she would meet with.

“For an unescorted woman, the violence that can erupt on the streets at any time is the worst danger,” she warned. “You will need to carry a small pistol with you for self-protection. Sickness is the next huge danger. Even in British-controlled Hong Kong, raw sewage is a problem and outbreaks of typhoid are frequent. Then there are the extremes of temperature. In China the summer heat is unbearable and in winter the cold is crippling.”

Wallis was uncaring. All that mattered to her was that she wouldn’t be at risk of going to a party and seeing Felipe with Courtney Letts Stilwell.