Beauty and the Spy (34 page)

She was trimming limp roses from their bushes when the breeze sprang up, a small surprise from the north; she closed her eyes briefly, let it trail around her neck like a damp silk scarf. The moist
sirocco
winds blew across Italy early in the fall, reminding her that she was not a native, would never quite feel like a native, even after seventeen years. The weather inside her was English.

Italy was beautiful, and she had been known safety and anonymity here, but any place that wasn't home would always feel like a prison.

The pain had become an ever-present dull hum over the years; she'd learned to accommodate it the way one did an amputation. She'd known laughter again; she'd even known the faint rush of attraction again; she still turned heads, even as her middle years approached. Her very small circle of acquaintances knew her only as a widow, quietly committed to her mourning.

She'd risked two letters, two selfish letters, in the early years. She hadn't signed them; even still, she knew sending them had been tantamount to aiming a gun at James—or at herself. But the longing and pain had been so fierce then she sometimes thought she would have happily died, happily sacrificed James or anyone else, for one scrap of knowledge of her daughters. James had replied only once:
they are safe
. He was right to discourage her from writing, of course. No doubt it had cost him not to ease her pain. But he'd been protecting them still.

But year after year, hope bloomed and died and bloomed again, like the roses she now pruned to make way for new growth. She would see her daughters again, and the truth would some day be known: this hope kept Anna Holt fiercely alive.

Julie lives in the Sail Francisco Bay Area with a fat orange cat (little known fact: they issue you a cat the moment you become a romance novelist). Visit her Web site at www.juheannelong.com, or write to her at Julie® julieannelong.com

She supposed it had a little something to do with control: when she danced,
she
commanded her body. Well, and Monsieur Favre had a bit of a say in it, too: "I said like a
butterfly
Sylvie, not a cow. Look at you! I want to moo!" Or "Your arms, Sylvie, they are like timber. Lift them like so—ah yes, that is it,
mon ange
, you are like a dream. I suspected you could dance." Monsieur Favre was a trifle prone to exaggeration, but if she was his best dancer, he had helped make her so, and confidence was marvelous armor against sarcasm.

She'd rather be at Monsieur Favre's mercy any day than that bloody wooden ship, heaving this way and that over the choppy waters of the channel.

He would not be pleased to find her gone.

The letter in her reticule said very little. But what it did say had launched her like a cannonball across the channel to England for the first time in her life. For two weeks, Sylvie had furtively planned her journey, from Paris to Le Havre to Portsmouth, propelled by hurt and fury, poignant hope and a great inner flame of curiosity. She hadn't told a single soul of her plans. This seemed only fitting, given the magnitude of the things that had been kept from her.

Odd to think that a few mere sentences of English could do this. The letter had begun with an apology for bothering Claude yet again.
Yet again
—a little flame of anger licked up every time Sylvie thought of these words. It was not the first such letter sent, in other words. Or even the second, it would appear. And then, in the next sentence, it begged information about a young woman named Sylvie.
For I believe she might be my sister
.

The signature at the bottom said: "Susannah Whitelaw, Lady Grantham."

My sister
. Sylvie had never before thought or said those two words together.

To Sylvie the letter meant a past she'd never known, a future she'd never dreamed, and a store of secrets she'd only half-suspected. Her parents were dead, Claude had told her, God rest their souls; Claude had raised Sylvie as her own. And if not for the fact that Claude had decided to holiday in the South as she did every year at this time, with a kiss on both cheeks for Sylvie and instructions to mind her parrot in her absence, Sylvie might never have seen the letter at all.

Sylvie had left the parrot in the care of Claude's housekeeper. He would be in danger of nothing but boredom, as he spoke two more languages than the housekeeper, which was two fewer than Etienne.

Etienne
. Sylvie's thoughts immediately flew from him as though scorched. And then flew back again, guiltily.

He was generous, Etienne, with ardor and gifts. He flirted as only one descended from centuries of courtiers could flirt; he moved through the world with the confident magnanimity of someone who had never been denied anything. He made heady promises she hardly dared believe. But his temper… Sylvie would never understand it. Her own was a starburst—quick, spectacular, gone. His was cold and patient, implacable. It waited; he planned. And his retaliations always came with chilling finality and a sense of righteousness.

She'd last seen Etienne a week ago in the mauve, predawn light, an arm flung over his head, his bare back turned to her as he slept. She'd placed the letter on her pillow, telling him only that she would see him again soon.

He loved her. But he used the word so easily.

But just as she knew Etienne would have tried to dissuade her from leaving Paris, she knew he would try to find her. And his temper would have been waiting all the while, too.

She did not want to be found until she'd learned what she'd come to learn.

The ship had released the passengers, and now Sylvie's feet pressed against England. She allowed herself a giddy surge of triumph: she'd made it this far, entirely on her own. But she could still feel the sea inside her stomach, and color and movement and noise came at her in waves: Men swarming to unload the ship, sun ricocheting hard between smooth sea and blue sky, gulls wheeling in arcs of silver and white. No clouds floated above to cut the glare or soften the heat. Sylvie took her first deep breath of truly English air: it was hot and clotted with dock odors, and made matters inside her stomach worse instead of better.

She nodded to the man who shouldered her trunk for her, and briskly turned to find the mail coach that would take her to London. She had never before traveled alone, but she had contrived the perfect disguise, her English was passably good, and she was not a child needing coddling or protection from a man. Besides, after Paris, a city as intricate, beautiful and difficult as the ballet itself, no city could intimidate her.

She glanced up then and saw just the back of him, through the crowd, the broad shoulders, the way he stood. The sight of Etienne slammed her hard, sending a cold wave of shock through her confidence. She went motionless against it, uncertain what to do.
It couldn't be. Not yet. Not so soon
.

But it was not a risk she was prepared to take. She swiveled her head, saw the mail coach.

Tom Shaughnessy was alone in the mail coach when a woman flung herself into his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and burrowed in, crushing her face against his.

"
What
in the name of—" he hissed. He lifted his arms to try to pry hers from about his neck.

"Hush," she whispered urgently. "
Please
."

A
man's head peered into the coach then, jerked back. "I beg your pardon, monsieur, I thought—
pardonnez-moi
." He jerked his head hurriedly back.

The woman in his lap had gone completely rigid, apart from her rapid breathing. And for a moment neither of them moved: Tom had an impression of rustling dark fabric, a lithe form, and the scent of spice and vanilla and roses and female.

Startling, granted. But not entirely unpleasant.

Apparently deciding a safe interval had elapsed, she took her arms from about his neck and slid from his lap into the seat a distance away from him.

"And just when I was growing accustomed to you, Madame," he wryly. He touched her arm gently. "Allow me to intro—
ow
!"

He jerked his hand back. What the
devil
—?

His eyes followed a glint to her lap.

Poking up from her neatly folded gloved hands was a… was that a
knitting
needle?

It was! She'd jabbed him with a damned
knitting needle
. Not hard enough to wound anything other than his pride. But certainly hard enough to make her… er… point.

"I regret inserting you, sir, but I cannot permit you to touch me again." Her voice was soft and grave, refined; it trembled just a bit. And absurdly, she did sound genuinely regretful.

Tom glared at her, baffled. "You regret inser—Oh! You mean 'stabbing'. You regret…
stabbing
me?"

"Yes!" She said almost gratefully, as though he'd given her a verb she considered useful and fully intended to employ again in the future. "I regret
stabbing
you. I regret sitting upon you, also. But I cannot permit you to touch me again. I am not... " She made a futile gesture with her hand, as if she could snatch the elusive word from the air with it.

She was not… what? Sane?

But he could hear it now: She was French. Which accounted for the way her syllables subtly leaped and dipped in the wrong places, not to mention her unusual vocabulary choices, and perhaps even the knitting needle, because God only knew what a Frenchwomen was capable of. And apart from that tremble in her voice he would have assumed she was preternaturally self-possessed. But she was clearly afraid of something.

He looked hard at her, but she kept her head angled slightly away from him. She was wearing mourning; he could see this now that she wasn't precisely on top of him. Her hat and veil revealed only a hint of delicate jaw and gleaming hair, which seemed to be a red shade, though this might perhaps be wishful thinking on his part. Her neck was long; her spine as elegantly erect as a Doric column. She was slim, but the gown she wore gave very little away of the shape of the woman inside it. The gown itself was beautifully made, but it fit her ill. Borrowed, he decided. He was accustomed to judging the fit of female clothing, after all, and this dress was not only too large; it had been made for someone else entirely.

Since he had done nothing but gape for nearly minute, she seemed satisfied he didn't intend to reach for her again; she slid the needle back up into her sleeve. For all the world like a woman tucking a basket of mending under a chair.

"Who is pursuing you, Madame?" he asked softly.

Her shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. Interesting. A further ripple in that self-possession.

"
Je ne comprende pas, monsieur
." Delivered with a pretty little French lift of one shoulder.

Balderdash. She understood him perfectly well.

"
Au contraire
, I believe you do
comprende
my question," he contradicted politely. His own French was actually quite good. All the very best courtesans were French, after all. Many of the dancers who passed through the White Lily were as well, which is why he knew all about the caprices of Frenchwomen.

The veil fluttered; she was breathing a little more quickly now.

"If you tell me, I might be able to help you," he pressed gently. Why he should offer to help someone who'd leaped into his lap and then poked him with a knitting needle eluded him at the moment. Curiosity, he supposed. And that delicate jaw.

The veil fluttered once, twice, as she mulled her next words. "Oh, but you already
have
helped me, monsieur."

And the faint but unmistakable self-deprecating humor and—dare he think it?—
flirtation
—in her words perversely charmed him to his marrow.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but she turned decisively toward the window, and an instant later seemed to have shed her awareness of him as neatly as a shawl or hat.

Damned if he wasn't fascinated.

He wanted desperately to gain her attention again, but if he spoke she would ignore him, he sensed; he suspected that if he so much as brushed the sleeve of her gown his hand would be swiftly 'inserted' as neatly as a naturalist's butterfly to the mail coach seat.

He was watching her so intently he was startled when the coach bucked on its springs, taking on the weight of more passengers: a duenna ushering two young ladies, both pretty and diffident; a young couple glowing with bemusement, as though the institution of marriage was their own marvelous, private discovery; a young man who looked very much like a curate; a plump prosperous merchant of some sort: Tom made his judgments of them by their clothing and the way they held themselves. At one time, each and every one of them, or someone of their ilk, had passed through his life, or he through theirs.

The little French woman might as well have been a shadow of one of the other passengers; with her slight build and dark clothing, she all but vanished against her the seat. No one would trouble her or engage her in conversation if she appeared not to welcome it; she was dressed as a widow, and ostensibly still inside a bubble of grief.

Tom doubted it. He knew a costume when he saw one.

More and more people wedged aboard the coach, until it fair burst with heat and a veritable cornucopia of human smells, and the widow finally disappeared completely from Tom's view. When they were full to brimming, the coach lurched forward to London again.

And as Tom was a busy man, his thoughts inevitably lurched toward London along with the coach: How he was going to pay for a new theater was one line of thought; he had just the building in mind. How he was going to break the news to Daisy Jones that she would
not
be playing Venus in the White Lily's latest production was another.

He glanced up; the curate sitting across from him gave him a tentative little smile. Very much like a small dog rolling over to show its belly to a larger, more dazzling dog.

"Exceedingly warm for this time of year," the curate ventured.

"Indeed. And if it's this warm near the sea, imagine how warm it will be in London," Tom answered politely.

Ah, weather. A topic that bridged social classes the world over. Whatever would they do without it?

And so the passengers passed a tolerable few hours sweating and smelling each other and exchanging pleasant banalities as the coach wheels ate up road, and there was seldom a lull in conversation. And for two hours, Tom heard not a single word of French-accented English in the jumble of words around him.

When the curate stopped chatting for a moment, Tom slipped a hand into his pocket and snapped open his watch; in an hour or so, he knew, they would reach a coaching inn on the road to Westerly in time for a bad luncheon; he hoped to be back to London in time for supper, to supervise the latest show at the White Lily, and then perhaps enjoy late night entertainments with a most accommodating wealthy widow.