The Secret Heart, page 3
“He’s a big man,” his lordship said vaguely. He glanced at her, and his eyes softened slightly. “Don’t be upset, Lily, I will sort something out. But you should go before your father finds more cause to distrust me.”
She bit her lip, mortified to be shown how coming here could be interpreted by anyone else, by him.
“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” she muttered, moving almost blindly to the door.
She found him ahead of her, his fingers wresting on the latch as he frowned down at her. “I am not disturbed.” His hand lifted, and she held her breath as his fingertips brushed her cheek in a brief caress. “Don’t worry.”
A girl could drown in those eyes, she thought. So deep, so fathomless, so… fascinating. His gaze dropped away from hers, looking somewhere in the region of her lips. Flame licked through her body. She had never let any man kiss her, but with him… How would it feel to have his lips pressed to hers? In that instant, she wanted nothing more. Her lips parted in sheer desire.
Butterflies soared in her stomach as his head inclined toward her.
Then he paused and straightened, his breath rushing out in something that was not quite laughter. “Lily, Lily, you will be the death of me.” He opened the door, peered into the passage, and stood aside.
There was nothing she could do except whisk herself out of his chamber and rush up to her own.
Chapter Three
In the morning, Lily and her parents worked more or less in silence, none of them referring to last night’s argument or the proposal that had set it off. And it was her father who carried breakfast into the parlor to their noble guest. Fortunately, he forgot the plate of toast, so, getting there just before her mother, Lily swiped it up and trotted after her father into the parlor.
Lord Torbridge, once more properly dressed in coat and cravat, was seated at the table, reading a newspaper that had come down from London yesterday.
“Ah, good morning, Villin,” he greeted her scowling father in his usual, amiable manner. “Glad to see you so early because I wanted to ask you about borrowing your daughter.”
“I can’t spare my daughter, sir,” her father said woodenly, placing before his guest the plate piled high with ham, kidneys, and eggs, and another with honey cakes.
Lily set down the toast, and he gave her a quick, civil smile of thanks.
“Well, no, of course you can’t,” Lord Torbridge said, taking Lily and her father by surprise. “Which is one reason we need to talk. I realize it would be mightily inconvenient to you, so I would propose to pay the wages of whoever you need to replace her while she is away. And obviously, I would pay Lily for her service to me.”
Lily’s father, who could appear almost too respectful on occasions, was actually afraid of no one. He met Torbridge’s gaze with open hostility. “What service?”
“To my sister,” his lordship said in surprise, “Did Lily not explain? Shut the door, Lily, for this is between us and the walls. My sister, Lady Masterton, is in need of an agreeable person to sort out her accounts, take care of her correspondence, that kind of thing. She has a massive backlog and has got herself in a bit of a fankle, financially speaking. Lily, with all her talents, and being used to all kinds of company through the Hart, would be the perfect person.”
“Sounds to me like her husband would be the perfect person,” her father said bluntly.
“She would rather manage it herself,” Torbridge said delicately. “Or, at least, have Lily manage it for her, for she does not, sadly, have an organized mind. However, as I’m sure you know, she is of the first respectability and would take excellent care of your daughter.”
Lily could see from her father’s slightly less rigid stance that he was softening toward the idea. However, he said suspiciously, “Then how come you are paying for all this and not her ladyship?”
“Well, that is between my sister and me,” Torbridge said pleasantly. “But if you are imagining I haven’t yet told you the whole truth, you are correct.”
“I am?” her father said ominously.
Torbridge stroked his smooth chin. “I have been here a few times in the last year,” he pointed out. “Often at moments of…excitement, shall we say? You have probably guessed I am involved in matters that also involve some of your other occasional guests.”
“Like Lord Verne and Captain Cromarty?” her father hazarded.
Torbridge smiled benignly. “It is possible that while she is with my sister, Lily might assist me with such matters—matters that concern the Crown and the security of our country. I want you to understand, I shall not fritter her time or waste it.”
Lily’s father closed his mouth. “And her safety?” he demanded after a moment.
“If I thought there was any risk, I would not have asked her. If that changes, I shall send her straight back to you. With her full remuneration, of course.”
Lily’s father glanced at her, then back at Torbridge. He tugged indecisively at his lower lip, scowling once more. “You want to do this?” he flung at her. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Lily said earnestly.
Her father threw up his hands. “I don’t like it,” he exclaimed. “For any number of reasons, all of them concerned with Lily. Have you even considered, my lord, how placing her among such high and mighty folk will affect her? Make her discontented with the reality of her life? Which is, she’s a common innkeeper’s daughter!”
“Villin,” Torbridge scolded. “There is nothing common about you or Lily. Or this inn, come to that. Why do you think I keep coming back?”
Again, her father fixed Torbridge with his stare. “Oh, I know why you keep coming back. My lord.”
To her surprise, Torbridge allowed a rueful twinkle into his eyes. “I expect you also know that I have never given anyone an excuse not to call me a gentleman. I don’t intend to change that. Even for her.”
Lily’s father groaned. “Let me speak to her mother,” he growled and strode out of the room.
Lily lingered, gazing after him in wonder. “I think you did it, sir.”
“Then, I hope it doesn’t take you long to pack.”
She turned to him, frowning. “What did the pair of you mean, just at the end? Why do you come here?”
“Peace,” he said ruefully. “God help me.”
*
If Lily had wondered how she was to leave the Hart without causing a lot of hurtful local gossip for her parents to contend with, the problem was solved by the time she came downstairs. She descended with her few belongings—a wooden hairbrush, a toothbrush and powder, a change of linen, and her Sunday gown—in a rather smart valise unexpectedly provided by her mother.
“I didn’t know we had this,” Lily had said in surprise.
“There are many things you don’t know,” her mother had said briskly. “Hold on to your common sense, and don’t forget to come home.”
“I’ll write,” Lily said huskily, her throat suddenly closing up.
The front door was open when she descended to the hall, and she saw a luxurious traveling carriage waiting in the yard. It had, apparently, just caught up with its owner, Lord Torbridge, who had expected it to pick him up this morning. It came with his valet, who sniffed as he climbed onto the box with the coachman.
Lily hugged her parents fiercely—for this was the first time she had been apart from them for longer than a night—and found herself handed into the coach by Lord Torbridge himself. Jem, the ostler, closed the door, his eyes round as saucers, and the horses leaped into motion. Lily waved out of the back window until she could no longer see her parents. And the enormity of what she had done hit her like a blow.
She turned back on her luxurious, velvet cushioned seat, feeling very small and very out of her depth. Lord Torbridge gazed at her, his eyes more veiled than usual.
“You can still change your mind,” he said. “In fact, you can change it at any time, and I’ll send you safely home.”
“Of course, I don’t want to change my mind,” she said valiantly and realized something else. Lord Torbridge sat with his back to the horses, rather than facing the direction of travel. “Oh, I am in your place!” She half-stood as she spoke, but he waved her back down with some amusement.
“Stay where you are, there is plenty of room. Besides, you are a lady. Remember?”
“But I’m not, am I?” She spread her hands, encompassing her bright but well-mended red wool cloak and the work-a-day gown beneath. “And no one will believe it.”
“Which is why you had better practice being Lady Lily.”
“That isn’t really my name, though, is it?” she said, self-consciously, like one of the Maybury sisters.
“Perhaps, Lady is too much, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be Miss Lily…Darrow. You belong to the Irish branch of my family, which in fact, should take care of any minor slips in your accent. Following the death of your father, you have come to your distant cousins in England for a few weeks.”
“Being in straightened circumstances,” Lily contributed.
“Exactly,” he said, pleased. “But my father is too ill for you to stay at Hayleigh House, and so I have brought you to my sister. Where you may make yourself useful as a companion to Millicent.”
“Yes, but were any of those things you told my father true? Will your sister not object to me being foisted upon her.”
“Lord, no. Millie rarely objects to anything, which is how she got into this mess in the first place. She will be delighted if you can help her out of it.”
“Could you not?”
He shrugged. “She won’t let me pay her debts. And frankly, I don’t have the time to sort it all out. You really will earn your salary even if you do nothing else.”
“Tell me about that nothing else,” she said, all her eagerness returning as their distance from the Hart grew.
He shifted in his seat and glanced out of the window. “It’s complicated,” he said with apparent reluctance.
“You’re not used to telling anyone what you do, are you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I’m impressed you even told my father as much as you did,”
“So am I,” he said ruefully. “But he is not a man who would have put up with vague nonsense and lies. A little truth was the best I could do. I will tell you this much. Information—important information, such as certain correspondence with Wellington and with foreign leaders—has been finding its way to France.”
Her eyes widened. “How do you know?”
“I know,” he said firmly. “In some cases, because the documents themselves are missing from the Foreign Office. In others, because my…because our people in France have told me so.”
“But who could, who would steal such things? Is some spy or traitor working at the Foreign Office?”
“My money, sadly, is on the latter. In particular, upon one Mr. John Hill. He is the only link to all the missing documents, and yet I can find nothing else to implicate him. He is from a respected family, the brother of Lord Pennington, and is a pleasant, apparently open-natured young man. He has no unexplained absences, no sudden jaunts to the coast, or even to the London docks. And he has never once slipped or given any information to…informants. I have placed servants in his house, clerks in his office, even pretty women to—er—entertain him, and none of them can implicate him.”
“Then what is it you expect me to do?” she asked helplessly.
“You will be something else entirely. A respectable young lady he’ll wish to court, or at least have around him. My aim is for you to be invited to Pennington’s house party next month.”
“Won’t you be there?” she asked, bewildered. “Your sister?”
“Probably. But Millie is too scatterbrained, and I am not a woman. Men let down their guard with women, often because they underestimate them.”
“You said you’d tried that,” she pointed out.
“Not a woman of his own class,” he said hastily. “Which you will be, to all intents and purposes. You can be in the right place when he receives messages or gives orders, that sort of thing. Anything that would give us a clue as to the route this information is taking from the Foreign Office to France.”
She thought about that for a while, as the carriage bowled through Finsborough. It was market day, and stalls were being set up in the square. “Why would he do this, though? Why would he betray his country, his family, his friends?”
Lord Torbridge shrugged. “I don’t know that either. He is a second son, so short on wealth, status, prospects, forced to work for his living. And I don’t think his salary covers his extravagant lifestyle. Maybe Pennington’s tired of bailing him out. Or perhaps he’s tired of asking.”
“You mean he’ll be paid for this information? Who pays him, and how?”
“I can’t find any trace of that either,” Torbridge confessed. His lips quirked. “You see, I am floundering in the dark and ready to try even this mad start. If nothing comes of it, then we have lost nothing. But if anyone can pry Hill’s secrets from him, it is you.”
*
Lily wasn’t quite sure what she expected of the journey to London. Her prime motivation, after all, was simply to stay close to Lord Torbridge. And she achieved that, although there was nothing remotely lover-like in his behavior toward her. Mostly, he was her teacher, correcting her words and accent, explaining the customs and expectations of society, and family history that she might be expected to know. In between times, he was an amiable friend.
They did not alight from the coach when the horses were changed—which they were frequently—except once to stretch their legs and be comfortable. Nor did they pause at any of the coaching inns to eat. Instead, Lord Torbridge’s valet brought them some choice morsels, which they ate inside from napkins as they traveled.
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me?” she asked once.
His eyebrows flew up. “Of course not. But I don’t want anyone making connections between the innkeeper’s daughter who left the Hart and my cousin Lily from Ireland. Also, I would like to catch Millie—your Cousin Millicent—before she goes out for the evening.”
“How do you know she plans to?”
“I’m not sure planning comes into it, but she will almost certainly go.”
Dusk had fallen by the time they reached London, but there was more than enough light for Lily to stare out of the window at the massive buildings so close together, the crowds of people, and traffic swarming in the streets. The noise was incredible.
Eventually, the carriage bowled along broader, quieter streets and squares, lined with large, tall houses, and it was outside one of those it eventually stopped.
“Here we are.”
The steps were let down, and the door opened. Lord Torbridge handed her out and called up to the coachman. “Don’t wait for me. Give me the valise, Higgins, and go home with the carriage.”
And then, with her hand on his arm like a great lady, she was ascending the steps of a grand house. The front door was flanked by pillars and opened by a liveried servant, who immediately bowed them into the house, welcoming Torbridge as “my lord.” He seemed to avoid looking at Lily after the first flickering glance.
“Is her ladyship at home?” Torbridge asked cheerfully, handing him his hat and traveling cloak.
Taking her cue from him, Lily unfastened her own cloak, and the footman whisked it over his arm.
“Yes, my lord,” he replied.
A superior, well-dressed gentleman appeared, crossing the entrance hall toward them with a stately gait. Lily’s mouth went dry. This must be Sir George Masterton, the husband of Cousin Millicent. “In her boudoir, my lord,” he said grandly.
Torbridge said to her, “This is Gatting, who has been my sister’s butler forever. Gatting, ask her ladyship to join us as soon as she may. Is Sir George at home?”
“At his club, my lord.”
“Then we’ll wait in the library. This way, Cousin.”
She was afraid to look to see how the servants took the news that this shabby girl on his lordship’s arm was their employer’s cousin. Instead, trying not to stare, she walked up a carpeted staircase. Everything, stairs, ceilings, passages seemed to be built on a larger scale than anything she was used to.
He led her into a room lined with full bookshelves from floor to ceiling.
Her mouth fell open. “Goodness, it would take a person their whole life to read all of these.”
“In most cases, it would probably be a complete waste, too,” Lord Torbridge said. “Masterton’s father bought them by the yard.”
A giggle escaped her, hastily swallowed back, though she saw the gleam of response in Torbridge’s eyes.
Lily wandered about the room, gazing around her, touching the luxurious softness of upholstery, the shining wood of the tables and shelves.
“Don’t look so frightened,” Torbridge advised. “You haven’t come from a mud hut, you know, but from an Irish gentleman’s country house.”
“Oh, I’m not frightened,” she assured him. “It’s just all so beautiful.”
“Lady Lily’s voice,” he reminded her.
“Oh. Sorry, of course,” she said, returning to more refined accents at once.
“Why don’t you sit down and be comfortable?”
“I have been sitting all day.” She frowned. “I don’t think there’s a polite way to say how I feel.”
Torbridge laughed, just as the door opened, and an extraordinary lady flew in amidst a waft of delicious perfume. She wore layers of diaphanous silk and gauze and a stunning, jeweled turban from which the most enormous feather waved, curling about her head. Her age was impossible to guess.
“Torbridge, what is this nonsense about a—Oh!” She broke off, blinking as her gaze fell on Lily.
“Millie, this is Lily,” Torbridge said. “I would like you to be kind to her.”
Millie, however, looked more wrathful. “No, Dolph, that is too much!” she exclaimed. “I will not have you bring your—”
“Millie,” he interrupted with a sharpness Lily had never heard before. “Be sensible. Why the devil would I bring such a creature to your house? This young lady is perfectly respectable and is here to help both of us.”
