2

Lydia’s damp cloak felt as though it were lined with lead, weighing her down from her shoulders to her heart to a sinking sickness in her belly. If this man were telling the truth, she had misread Christophe Arnaud, had looked into those beautiful blue eyes and read truth instead of the lies he’d said about his gratitude for her assistance.

No, not lies. He must be grateful. She’d given him the means to get away from his enemies.

His enemies, her countrymen. Countrymen she had betrayed by trying to make up for her failings of the past.

Her heart began to pound like the drums of approaching soldiers. She took a deep breath in an attempt to lift the pressure crushing her chest. “I would never have helped a dishonorable man, abetted the actions of an enemy. I—I thought he was—”

She stopped. She need not admit her poor judgment in character. No one need know she found Christophe Arnaud attractive as a man, appealing as a brother in Christ, touching as a man in need of help, as her husband had been when captured behind enemy lines after the Spanish disaster three years earlier.

“You gave Monsieur Arnaud a bracelet, did you not?” The man’s quiet voice purred across the space between them. “A bracelet given to you after your husband somehow didn’t manage to get aboard the transport ships and return to England.”

“Somehow?” Lydia clenched her fists. “He was a good officer. He waited to see his men safely aboard.”

“And Monsieur Arnaud just happened to help—”

“How do you know this?”

“It’s my business to know.” He released her arm and moved away from her.

Lydia took a step backward. “Hodge—”

No Hodge. The leash went slack in her hand. The cat no longer tugged at the end of the leather strap.

“Are you looking for your cat?” The man loomed up before her, a blackness against the rain-gray evening. He held her cat. The feline’s white fur shone against his dark coat. And Hodge was purring, the traitor. Another treacherous male.

Except she was the one accused of treachery.

“Give him to me,” she commanded.

“When we’re done speaking.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“You have a great deal to say to me. To begin with, tell me, my lady, how would your husband, wounded and behind enemy lines, manage to send you an expensive piece of jewelry?”

“Monsieur Arnaud—”

“Out of the goodness of his heart for an enemy?” The man’s laugh rumbled like Hodge’s purr. “More likely it was a favor for a comrade in arms.”

“But my husband was an English—” Lydia’s stomach twisted. Only her will kept her from doubling over. “You’re accusing my husband of working for the French.”

“And the bracelet was sent to you with a coded message just for such an occasion as today—the means to get a fellow follower of Napoleon out of prison, should the worst occur.”

“That’s preposterous. He’d have no way of knowing I’d use it. I could have sold it, lost it, refused to help.”

“Could you have refused to help?”

“I—” Lydia swallowed against the bile burning her throat.

Again that purring chuckle, echoed by her unfaithful cat. “Of course not. Even if you no longer possessed the bracelet, you would have done what you could to help Arnaud for the sake of your husband’s memory.”

To prove she could succeed in one of his requests as a widow, as she had failed to do as his wife. But Sir Charles Gale would never ask her to betray England. He wouldn’t have betrayed England. He had returned to his regiment out of loyalty in the dark days when the war was going badly for England and fears of invasion were only minimally allayed.

“I erred in assisting Arnaud.” The words barely managed to emerge, though “I erred” should have slipped out with ease. She had said them far too often in the past seven years. “But it proves nothing against my husband or me,” she added with haste.

“Does it not?” He stroked Hodge’s pale coat, his hand, perhaps in a glove, dark against the silvery fur. The purr grew louder. “The Home Office and War Department wouldn’t agree.”

“The Home Office?”

“We manage matters of domestic protection. Spies and traitors on our soil.”

He might as well have thrown her feline against her middle. His words struck with the force of ten pounds of clawing cat. For a dozen heartbeats, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

And the man kept talking as though discussing the March drizzle soaking her hair and cloak. “Arnaud never took the road to Tavistock.”

“How do you know?”

“I was waiting for him.”

Cold more profound than the late winter weather ran over Lydia’s skin, penetrated to her bones, her marrow. “Why?” she whispered.

“Why did you help him escape?”

“I never—” She stopped. She need not defend herself to this stranger. This enemy.

“Where is he, Lady Gale?” the man purred along with Hodge.

“I have no idea.” She injected her tone with all the hauteur of a lady of quality, as she’d been raised.

“Why did you help a French prisoner escape from England?” The demand lashed out at her.

She winced but remained silent. The hair on the back of her neck felt as though it stood on end, rather like Hodge when he sensed a foe nearby—puffed-up fur and silence.

Yes, silence. He’d stopped purring.

A shiver crawled down Lydia’s arms. She slid a foot back, then stopped. Even if she could leave her cat behind to an uncertain fate, she couldn’t run away now. She must know what this man wanted, why he had approached her in the dark with his accusations of treason and offhand mention of the Home Office. What proof he possessed.

“You can remain as silent as you like, my lady,” the man said, shifting and receiving a protesting mrauw from Hodge, “but I have a fisherman in Falmouth who will swear to the fact that you were there arranging transport across the Channel for him.”

“I wasn’t.” His announcement startled the denial from her. “I couldn’t have been.”

“Can you prove it?”

“I was with someone all day.”

“Your paid companion.”

And she hadn’t been with Barbara all day. She’d gone into Tavistock before leaving for the prison. Any number of urchins loitered about. She could have sent one with a message to Falmouth, Plymouth, or anywhere in between.

“I see you understand your dilemma.” Self-satisfaction colored the man’s tone. “But you needn’t believe me. That fisherman is waiting not a dozen yards away, ready to tell you he received your message and complied.”

“But—” Lydia’s nostrils flared, as though she could smell the fisherman.

Something smelled like dead fish indeed, but it didn’t lie in the rain-washed garden.

“And I found this in a Falmouth jewelry store.” The man shifted. Gravel crunched. The light from the inn reaching the garden shimmered off metal interspersed with the dark fire of jewels. Lydia didn’t need to touch or see the object to know it was her bracelet.

“You—you could have stolen it, set upon Mr. Arnaud on the road.”

“He had an armed escort. And I have a statement from the jeweler besides.”

The bracelet sparkled in the feeble light from the lantern above the inn door. Hodge batted at it.

The man chuckled and the bracelet disappeared. “All this evidence gathering has cost me dearly.”

“Then why—?”

As though lightning streaked against the gray-black sky, illuminating the scene like day, understanding flashed into Lydia’s mind.

Blackmail.

“I can pay you nothing for your silence.” Now that she knew the game, she stood upright and composed. “I have no money.”

“I know that. But you have something I hold of more value than money—social connections.”

“I don’t—”

But of course she did through her family. Everyone who was anyone would either come to Bainbridge House or invite the Bainbridges to their homes over the next four months.

“What do you want me to do?” She would go along with him, find out as much as she could.

“Introduce my friends to your connections so they get invited to the best parties.”

“Why?” She didn’t have to feign bewilderment. “How will that help your . . . cause?”

With every word he spoke, the more she realized he could not be from the British government. The English government didn’t need to resort to blackmail for aid.

She was being blackmailed by a French agent.

“I won’t do it.” Despite the frozen lump in her middle that had once been her liver, she spoke her declaration with clarity and strength. “I won’t betray my country.”

“But you already have.”

“Your evidence is false.”

“Then produce Monsieur Arnaud. Otherwise you must do what I say.”

“Or call your bluff.”

“Do you dare?” The man shifted. A hint of lemon verbena wafted to her nostrils. “Let’s see here. You have a brother who is a promising student at Oxford. You have a sister about to be married to a peer of the realm, and another sister about to make her come-out into Society. And we mustn’t forget your frail mother and your father’s standing in the House of
Lords.”

Lydia folded her arms across her middle, pressed hard against the desire to be sick or run or drop to her knees in surrender to the burden he dropped onto her shoulders. If she were a lone woman, she would take the chance of calling this man’s bluff.

But she had a family she’d already let down too often as she pursued her own way in the world.

If she were allowed to succeed at something in her future, protecting her family from this villain would be it. And yet . . .

“I can’t aid in your doing something to harm my country or my family,” she said.

“Your country? What makes you think it’s not mine too?”

“A manner of speech, is all.” She made herself smile so he could hear congeniality in her voice. “I speak of England as my country. But of course a loyal Englishman would be concerned about a French officer escaping back to France.”

“Indeed, I am. I have reason to believe he intends to send agents to foment trouble. You fear revolution, do you not?”

“A guillotine in Hyde Park? Y-yes.” The quaver in her words was genuine.

“So I will send you someone to help ferret out these troublemakers.”

“Indeed. Well, sir, you only needed to ask. You needn’t resort to blackmail.”

“It is necessary.” He lifted Hodge in his hands and held him toward her. “In the event you grow fearful of your role, I need a leash to keep you bound to me.”

And what a leash—the potential to cost her her life and ruin her family.

“What must I do?” she asked on an exhalation of breath.

Carrying her limp and still-purring cat in her arms, the cut leash dangling from her wrist, Lydia trudged back to the inn. Warmth surrounded her inside the entryway. Aromas of roast beef and spilled ale stung her nostrils, and her stomach roiled. Her heart ached. She thought she’d been given an opportunity to make up for resenting being a wife, for driving her husband back to the battlefield and keeping him there. All she had to do was give aid to a French prisoner who had given aid to her husband. But she’d misread the man, mismanaged the release, risked the future of everyone in her family.

Feet dragging, she climbed the steps to her bedchamber. Before she shifted Hodge so she could open the door, the latch clicked and Barbara stood between jamb and panels.

“Where have you been?” her companion demanded.

“Hodge’s leash broke.” With the help of a knife. “I had to find him.”

“And now your cloak is all muddy. You should have left him behind with that Frenchman.”

“Hodge and I haven’t been separated since Charles gave him to me as a betrothal gift. He would have been distressed.”

“Captain Gale couldn’t be distressed,” Barbara pointed out. “He’s dead, God rest his soul.”

“If God has it,” Lydia muttered.

“Lydia.” Barbara’s eyes widened with shock.

“Forgive me. I’m fatigued beyond reason. I can’t be accountable for what I say.” But of course she could. She was accountable for her words and her actions. “Where’s—ah.” She set Hodge in his box.

He sniffed at the now-empty bowl, flashed her an indignant glance from clear, green eyes, and snuggled into a nest of blanket strips.

His life wasn’t topsy-turvy. He could sleep with a clear conscience.

Although she knew her conscience was clear as far as the stranger’s accusations were concerned, Lydia couldn’t sleep. She dared not toss and turn for fear of waking Barbara, who enjoyed the sleep of the innocent—or was that naive?—so she lay awake with her eyes open. That way she managed to focus on the occasional display of lights tossed across the ceiling by a passerby with a lantern. She strained to hear snatches of conversation in the street or corridor. She recited every poem she knew by heart, anything to keep herself from thinking of the accusations, the evidence—false as it was—a pair of deep blue eyes, and a melodious voice.

Lord, I only wanted to do something right on my own.

If it only affected her, she wouldn’t care. She would retire to her little cottage on the edge of Dartmoor and keep drawing her sketches and painting her pictures, selling enough to keep the wolves from the door, since her husband had left her with an income of less than a hundred pounds a year. She had failed to produce the heir that would have had the Gale lands and income going to his branch of the family instead of to a distant relation.

But if she went along with the man’s request, succumbed to the blackmail, let yet one more man control the order of her days, she would likely be stepping into a den of traitors. With the country at war with France and experiencing unfriendly relations with America, any number of personages wanted to bring harm to England. And not all of them surfaced from outside the realm. Unrest murmured through the cities and countryside. Parliament enacted laws many opposed, and mill owners installed power looms. And no one liked the way the Navy pressed men into service against their will.

She could never find the source of the blackmailer, how he’d gathered so much information so quickly, how he’d known to use her, how he would follow through. But surely the Home Secretary or someone in the War Department would keep her information secret if she turned herself in. They would want to do so in order to hunt down the real traitors.

If they didn’t arrest her on the spot.

By the time a rooster crowed the dawn, before the light penetrated Lydia’s chamber, she knew she must go to the authorities and take the risk. She could not compound her error in judgment about Christophe Arnaud by giving in to further treacherous actions.

Decision made, she rose and prepared for the next leg of the journey. Her family met her in the private parlor, where fresh rolls and coffee steamed on the table.

“You look awful,” Honore announced upon Lydia’s entrance.

“That’s unkind,” Mama scolded. She tilted her head to one side and nodded. “But you do. What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

“You can’t be.” Honore leaped from the table. “If you’re ill, we can’t go to London, and Cassandra’s wedding will be a disaster.”

“Did someone want me?” Cassandra glanced up from the book beside her plate.

“No, dear.” Mama patted Cassandra’s hand, where it held her pages down. “Go back to Mr. Homer.”

“Boring old Greeks.” Honore curled her pretty upper lip. “I want to find all the Minerva Press novels I can in London. That’s as much Greek as I want.” She giggled. “Minerva? Greeks? You know, it’s a fine joke.”

“Minerva was the Roman goddess, not the Greek one,” Cassandra said in repressive accents.

Honore giggled again. “Will you take me to the lending library, Lydia?”

“Yes, of course.” If she wasn’t in Newgate. Or would it be the Tower of London for a traitor? “Or Barbara can, if I’m occupied.”

Occupied going to the authorities, the Admiralty there in Portsmouth, and beg for their mercy, their assistance. If the man from the garden who had called himself Mr. Lang was a faithful subject, someone in the government would provide her with better proof, assure her she was working for the right side.

If he was on the wrong side, her life and her family’s lives could crumble to bits.

“I’m afraid we cannot leave as early as we planned.” Lydia poured coffee for herself and Barbara, whom she heard running down the steps. “I have an errand I have to take care of first.”

“But we’ll be forever,” Honore protested.

“Can’t it wait, my dear?” Mama asked. “I was hoping we could reach London today.”

“No, I’m sorry, it cannot.” Lydia grasped the door handle. “I’ll send word if I’ll be more than an hour.”

“But where are you going?” Barbara asked. “You can’t go tramping about Portsmouth without an escort.”

“Yes, I can. I’m no green girl. I’m a widow.” Lydia opened the door.

“And pretty enough to make a sailor forget himself.” Barbara slid off her chair. “I’ll come with you.”

Lydia held out a hand. “Please. It’s business having to do with . . . with . . . my husband’s military service.”

That would do. It was close enough to the truth she didn’t feel she’d lied to her companion or family.

“I’ll be back before you finish breakfast.”

Hopeful words.

Cold before she exited the warmth of the inn, Lydia strode forth into the damp morning. A brisk wind off the sea brought the odors of fish along with even less pleasant smells from the naval vessels bobbing at anchor. Her nose wrinkled. Her stomach rebelled. She shoved her hands more deeply into her fur-trimmed muff and headed for the Admiralty. The walk took her long enough to compose her speech. She hoped it didn’t sound like an excuse of the guilty.

But when she reached the premises primarily occupied by the Admiralty, every word slipped from her mind. Faced with a sea of blue naval uniforms and red-coated marines carrying swords and muskets, and all of the men staring at her—a woman striding alone to the door—she faltered and bent her head as though she would find her scattered thoughts lying about the pavement.

“Don’t do it, my lady.”

Lydia started at the now-familiar voice murmuring behind her.

A hand pressed against the small of her back. “Don’t turn around. You don’t want to be able to recognize my face.”

“I know your voice.”

“Do you.” He chuckled.

No, she didn’t. Muffled, it could have been any man.

“You’ll learn to know that what I say is truth,” he continued, “even if you know not the voice. Believe me, my lady, you will cause more trouble for everyone—to yourself, to your family, to England—if you walk through those doors. If you try to go to the government again, you will be stopped and your family ruined. Is that clear?”

It was clear. The choice had been taken from her. She must play his game, appear to cooperate.

And try to ferret out who the true traitor was in their midst.