Page 70 of Souvenir of Love

There must be something hidden in it. Not weapons. She would have seen them when she searched for a nightshirt. Some kind of secret papers, perhaps? Or counterfeit currency? She recalled overhearing her brother discussing a plan he’d heard from French émigrés, a plan to flood the new republic with false assignats and undermine the economy… She pushed Rafe from her mind with some effort and focused on the situation at hand. What was James hiding from the French? And what, she wondered, her mouth tightening, was he hiding from her? She lifted her chair to move it back so they wouldn’t know she’d been spying. The hem of her gown snagged, and her unfastened bodice was pulled to her waist. She grabbed for it, clutched it to her chest, and looked up to James and David standing beside the screen. Elizabeth squeaked.

James inhaled sharply.

David flushed and dropped his eyes. “Sorry, my lord, must check the team we’ve hired for the coach. I’ll be back for your and the lady’s things as soon as everything’s set.”

Not until the door closed behind the big man did James speak. “Do you intend to ask for help?” His blue eyes drifted coolly over her exposed breasts and shoulders. “Or would you rather wrestle with your gown for the remainder of the morning?”

She shifted the chair, tugged the gown back up, and stood. She’d ride to Amiens stark naked before askinghimfor help. Elizabeth twisted around once more in a desperate attempt to reach the elusive buttons.

“You are a stubborn one, Elizabeth Harcrest,” he said as his fingers met hers over the mother-of-pearl discs. She looked over her shoulder at him; his face was close enough to kiss. Her breath caught as she felt him fasten up the remaining buttons.

“You can breathe now,” he said.

She wasn’t sure she could. But, determined to appear as unaffected as he was by the contact, she exhaled. “I had every intention of doing so. It’s something I do quite naturally.”

His gaze swept over her hair, lingering on her face, her neck, and the décolletage of her traveling gown.

The gown’s rose color normally brought out the color in her cheeks and in her lips. Although, at this moment, Elizabeth suspected scarlet would be a better match. “You, however, seem to have forgotten the trick,” she said, smiling as she’d learned to do in the early, happier days of her season and brushing past him. “Shall we make Amiens today, do you think?”

“Weather and roadblocks permitting.”

“And you will show me the maps with our route, just as you promised?”

“I shall,” he said, adding a muttered, “should be a relatively safe topic of conversation.”

“And will you finally tell me the name of the man whom we seek?”

James crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve told you I have no intention of discussing that particular matter with you. It’s safer if you don’t know. We’ve been through this before.”

“I thought you might have had a change of heart.” She shrugged, then added, “But of course, first you’d have to have one.”

“Quite true,” he agreed, echoing her tone.

“I suppose that means you won’t tell me what you’ve got hidden in your trunk?”

His eyes narrowed and there was a different expression on his face as he studied hers, a cautious reappraisal. “Nothing,” he said sharply. “Nothing you haven’t seen and worn.” James held out his hand. “And now, Lady Dinsmore, I believe it’s time to go down to breakfast.”

Anne Dinsmore wasn’tsure which was the worst part of returning to the country after the season, traveling for hours on end with her father and Agatha, or having to oversee the reopening of the house. Striding through the rooms as the maids flipped back the dust covers from the furniture, she was acutely aware that each year there was less furniture and fewer maids. Passing through the portrait gallery, she made a mental note to have the paintings rearranged so that the spaces left by those that had been sold would not be so obvious.

She gracefully arranged her muslin skirts in the chair behind the delicate pearwood desk, picked up an ivory-handled letter opener, and began slicing open the envelopes that had been arranged in neat piles on her blotter. Calling cards, invitations—country entertaining was a bore compared with London. She flipped over Sir Edmund’s invitation to visit his sister, Mrs. Frederick Norcroft, at Hartsdale. How tedious. Not a decentfamily for miles, unless one counted the Harcrests. Not likely there’d be an invitation from them.

If James had been here with her, he’d have kept her amused. She smiled. He’d have contrived some clever reason for her to call upon Moreham Hall and see how Elizabeth was faring in social exile. A neighborly concern for Alix’s welfare, perhaps. The French cow was breeding, and despite their differences, it was the polite thing to do. Anne knew just the outfit she’d have chosen for the visit, a lovely vertical stripe that showed her long, narrow waist to its best advantage.

But James wasn’t here. She’d heard some rumor he was in France. The despair and bitterness had driven him there.Absurd.She didn’t know where her brother was, but she knew he had better sense than that. She jabbed the sharp blade of her letter opener into the soft surface of the blotter and twisted. A jagged tear appeared, just like the tear Moreham had made on her handsome brother’s face, like the rip he’d made in their lives.

He oughtn’t to get off so lightly, Moreham. Enjoying his summer in the country with his French wife and his child on the way—a boy, no doubt. He ought to suffer, as she did. Trapped in an empty house, surrounded by babbling idiots, like Agatha, and her father, and Bogglesworth. Thinking of Sir Edmund reminded her of the story he told about seeing Moreham in Lyon. Most likely, he invented it to impress her. A man of Moreham’s standing would never soil his hands with trade. Nevertheless, it might be amusing to repeat. Prefaced with the appropriate expressions of disbelief, of course.

Anne smoothed the tear on the blotter with the tip of her blade until it was nothing more than a jagged line. Perhaps shewouldpay a call on Hartsdale. Amusing stories, like soup, were always the better for a few juicy morsels to flavor them up.

Twenty-Six

“This is the route we are on now.” James unfurled a map across Elizabeth’s knees. “Rouen is here. Not much farther, as you can see.” He tried not to smile as she stifled a yawn. If she had thought their time in Amiens would be a grand adventure, she’d been sadly mistaken. Each morning, he’d dragged her out of bed early to meet the textile merchants whose names were listed in David’s invisible ink on the inside of his trunk. He’d leave her to sit with the wives while he spent the day negotiating with the men over endless cups of coffee and glasses of wine.

At first, he’d brought her along, because, as he’d told her at the onset of the trip, he didn’t trust her alone in the inn. And, as he’d told himself, he didn’t trust her alone with his luggage. But gradually he realized heneededher. The merchants were suspicious. Times were tense in France. The political ground was constantly shifting, and today’s friend could easily become tomorrow’s enemy of the people. And though the government was encouraging the continuation of trade with England, everyone knew the two countries were on the verge of war.

The merchants met with him because of the letters of introduction he carried from Rafe Harcrest, an English merchant they knew and had learned to trust over the course of many years of transactions. It was a trust they did not automatically extend to James. But when they met his wife, their suspicions eased. What English spy would travel with his wife? And when they learned James’s wife was sister to the man Harcrest, they listened with care to what he had to say. He realized Grenville had been right; the skills he’d developed enchanting and seducing his way through the ton were well suited to the task of recruiting volunteers. He could tell from their eyes, from the expressions of their mouths, or the movements of their hands, who would be willing to provide assistance for his network and who would not.

And when he was uncertain, he found himself soliciting Elizabeth’s opinion. She studied people nearly as carefully as he did. Indeed, comparing observations had once been the source of much of their banter in the ballrooms and house parties of London. She had a gift for seeing beyond the social pose. Though not because she was looking for a weakness she might exploit. Even so, he had no doubt her skill at seeing through people had been sharpened by her encounters with Anne and her circle of harpies.And with me. He glanced at her, sitting beside him in the coach, and wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Highly unlikely it was anything good. He turned his head to look out the window.