Palace of Spies (8 page)

“Now, Miss Fitzroy,” said Mr. Peele, “you will forgive me for being blunt, but our time is short, and our business urgent. My colleague and I have been searching for a young woman of good breeding to take on our most exceptional commission. She must be in possession of wit, sense, nerve, and complete discretion.” He dipped his chin to better look out at me from under that great shelf of a brow. “Would you be willing to produce a certificate swearing to these attributes?”

“That would depend,” I answered.

“On what?”

“On who was asking and to what use they intended to put . . . my attributes. Mr. Tinderflint said something about a post . . . ?”

Mr. Tinderflint fluffed the lace at his throat nervously. “As maid of honor to Her Royal Highness Caroline, Princess of Wales.”

There was a long moment of silence. I took Mr. Tinderflint’s words into my mind and turned them over, trying in vain to fit them into a narrative that bore any semblance to objective reality.

“I understand how mad it sounds,” said Mr. Peele. “This whole business has involved far more madness than any of us could have foreseen. I will be as plain as I can. Last year, Mr. Tinderflint’s ward, Lady Francesca Wallingham, was named one of the maids of honor to Caroline, our new Princess of Wales. But Lady Francesca was struck by sudden illness while she was visiting home and died of the fever.” Mr. Tinderflint shook his head slowly, his round eyes having turned quite moist. “It is our intent that you should take up the post in her stead,” Mr. Peele continued.

“Because the Princess of Wales’s prerogative no longer extends to choosing her own maids?” I inquired with a mildness that surprised even me.

Mr. Tinderflint adjusted the angle of several buttons on his left sleeve. “We do not mean for anyone to know you are a replacement, no, no.” He switched his attention to the right sleeve. “You will assume the name as well as the place. You will become, yes, become, Lady Francesca.”

Become Lady Francesca
. They had brought me to this house to ask me to assume the place of someone I’d never met, in a station to which I was untrained and unsuited. I looked from one man to the other. Neither betrayed any hint of being other than perfectly serious.

Heaven help me, I had gone down into London and come up in Bedlam.

“And when I’ve stormed the palace in the guise of Lady Francesca, what then?” I inquired. “Shall I marry King George and become Queen of England? Or just bring Pretender James back from over the water to take his father’s throne?”

“Oh, you mustn’t joke about
that
, Miss Fitzroy, you mustn’t.” Mr. Tinderflint fluttered his lace and looked about as if I might be hiding a Jacobite behind my skirts rather than a fireplace implement.

Mr. Peele waved one long, white hand, dismissing us both. “All that will be required of you is that you smile and charm, wait on Her Royal Highness, and generally be an ornament to the court. You’re pretty enough; the rest should follow with practice. For this service, you will be granted by the Crown a salary of two hundred pounds sterling per annum, which you will turn over to your beloved guardian.” Mr. Peele nodded to Mr. Tinderflint, who bowed nervously from his seat.

I smoothed my skirts and tried not to look as if I was searching for additional weaponry. “What you intend is that I risk my neck by committing a patent fraud against the King of England, for which you are to reap the reward?”

Mr. Peele’s patient smile took on an edge, as if he had honed it against some mental whetstone. “A maid of honor is a person of influence. She has the ear of her royal mistress. She is regularly in the company of important ministers, the Prince of Wales, and even the king, when he’s not gallivanting off to Hanover.” Mr. Tinderflint winced at this. Mr. Peele ignored him. “Such a person is much flattered. Gifts come into her hands from all quarters: clothes, jewels, money. Sometimes the value of these gifts amounts to much more than her salary, especially if she is clever and witty. Such gifts would be entirely yours. Mr. Tinderflint would receive only the salary.”

Mr. Tinderflint fluttered again.

“Why?” I addressed myself to Mr. Peele, as he was clearly the more efficient speaker of the two.

The edge of Mr. Peele’s smile was refined several degrees further. “Mr. Tinderflint finds himself in . . . delicate circumstances, from which Lady Francesca’s position—and her salary—would have given him relief. Without her . . .” Mr. Peele waved his so very eloquent hand, indicating we need not say anything further on that score.

Disappointment dug oddly deep. Mr. Tinderflint had lured me here with mention of my mother and a post at court simply for money. Perhaps I should have guessed. Many a gentleman in our troubled times found himself with a distressing shortage of funds and had to make shift to supply the lack. Make shift or flee the country.

I could only assume it was Mr. Peele that Mr. Tinderflint owed. With those soft, unmarked hands, Mr. Peele could easily be a financier. Or possibly a tailor. Given Mr. Tinderflint’s evident passion for lace and ribbons, he could have amassed a substantial debt to London’s various stitching men.

I covered my mouth, because I was coming dangerously close to hysterical laughter. I had to remain serious. The scheme was mad. It was also dangerous, and the threat to my neck quite real. Our Hanoverian-born sovereign lord, George, by Grace of God King of Great Britain and Ireland, was not reported to have much sense of humor. Or any at all. I could not picture an ordinary man—let alone a king—taking kindly to discovering a fraudulent upstart in his home. But how could I refuse? The way back from this house led to repentance, obedience, and Sebastian Sandford.

It occurred to me that I might have a third option. I could play the game just long enough to find out what Mr. Tinderflint knew about my parents or any surviving family. Then, once Kitty Shaw came back to town or Honoria Dumont recovered from her measles, I could flee. I’d already gotten away once. I could do it again.

True, it might not be easy to discover information about my friends while I lived under an assumed name in a strange house, but that was a problem that could be solved in its own time.

Perhaps it appears I tripped rather lightly across this marsh. The truth of the matter is, I could not think about my situation too deeply. Otherwise, what remained of my senses would sink into sheer terror. I had to hold tightly to the belief that I could escape as soon as I truly tried.

“Very well, Mr. Peele,” I said. “Mr. Tinderflint. I accept.”

CHAPTER NINE

Thus began my time as lady-in-training. Had I any conception of what lay before me, I would have used that poker and made my escape, rain or no rain.

I cannot in honesty say my situation in the house was cruel. I had an airy and well-appointed chamber, a comfortable bed, and the use of all Lady Francesca’s clothing and jewels, which were as plentiful as one might expect for a girl who had lived at court. What I did not have was even a modicum of freedom.

Had I found my time in my uncle Pierpont’s house dull and confining? Oh, the follies of youth! That life was a whirlwind of social gaiety compared to the one I now led. There, I had Olivia as friend, my aunt as a silly but affectionate chaperone. I had but one master, and him I saw only on select occasions. Now I had no friends at all and a total of three taskmasters, who seemed determined not to leave me a moment to myself.

Mrs. Abbot was my mistress of the robes. Not that she dressed me—oh, no. She had a whole infantry of little Dutch maids for that. Mrs. Abbott quizzed me. I must memorize all aspects of a lady’s dress: all fabrics, all trimmings, all furbelows and gewgaws, and all their gradations. I must be able to identify the difference between Egyptian cotton and Irish linen on sight. I must be able to tell which lace was Belgian and which Parisian. Nor was it simply clothing. It was cosmetics, the styles of patch, jewel, and fan, and all the ways hair might be dressed and wigged. I knew some of this, of course, but the extent of all I was now expected to recognize was bewildering.

When my head was dull and aching from this delightful tutelage, I was permitted the luxury of a midmorning snack: cold ham and lobster salad, perhaps, or oyster pie and spring greens accompanied by small beer or a light wine. Then it was Mr. Tinderflint’s turn. He was my master of dancing and deportment. As a woman of the court, I must move with perfect poise and grace, and without disturbing a false hair on my wigged head. “The true lady treats the whole world as her dance floor,” he said, and being Mr. Tinderflint, he said it two and three times. “Concealment is her highest art. You are an ornament to the company. Such a decoration must show only decorum. A misstep would be disastrous. Disastrous.”

Which remark invariably made me stumble.

But Mr. Tinderflint was not only a master of deportment. Despite his mild eyes and stuttering speech, he proved to have a prodigious memory. He could recall without effort the names, ranks, and genealogy of all the members of court. I must learn precedence, politics, alliances and enmities, and I must demonstrate what I knew in conversation, usually while being led through the steps of yet another variation of the minuet.

After I’d worn myself out by dancing and deporting, I was given a sumptuous nuncheon, served by Mrs. Abbott’s infantry and supervised by Mr. Tinderflint so that I would not neglect the intricacies of soup spoons and fish forks. I had been taught all my life that ladies ate sparingly in public, but Mr. Tinderflint evidently had not received this bit of news. Nothing would do but that I taste everything presented to me and come back for seconds, until I felt my stomach press tight against my stays, which, I suspected, were being let out little by little. During these meals, in addition to practicing my skills with the entire range of superfluous cutlery, I must practice all my languages in conversation, including the Latin and the Greek, where Mr. Tinderflint matched me easily enough to set me wondering about the true depths of this round, overdecorated man. But my attempts to draw him out failed. He had nothing to say about himself, let alone about my mother or my father.

“I understand, my dear, I do,” he twittered. “And one day we will have a good talk. For now, we must focus on the task at hand. It would not do for you to get your stories confused, it would not.”

After this, Mr. Tinderflint launched again into the life and history of me, that is, Lady Francesca.

Lady Francesca was born in Dover, daughter of Francis Wallingham, second Duke of Kingsbroke, and the Countess Sophia Frederica von Hausen, a Hanoverian born lady. “Which makes your ability to speak German so very fortunate, my dear,” he told me cozily. “So fortunate!”

I did confess I had never been to Dover, which might have been a mistake, because for three solid weeks after that, I was permitted to read nothing but descriptions of Dover, its famed cliffs, its principal towns, its imports and exports, all of which were added to my quizzes, in three languages.

I was further informed that Francesca’s parents and her only surviving brother had all died of the smallpox when it had swept through London three summers ago. It was her mother’s last act to write to Princess Caroline. The von Hausens had apparently known the princess’s family back in Hanover, and Countess Sophia had begged that her daughter, Francesca, be given some post at court when King George came to take possession of the kingdom.

“Also terribly fortuitous for us, you see. Francesca was— you were—raised in England. Prior to her arrival in ’14, Princess Caroline never actually met Fr—you. Her Royal Highness, therefore, will not be overly familiar with the tiny details of your past life.”

“But I was at court,” I argued. It had ceased to feel odd to talk of my alternate past this way, and I found that disquieting in and of itself. “I formed friendships, shared intimacies. They’ll notice when I contradict myself.”

“But you’ve been ill. Deeply ill. Severely ill,” Mr. Tinderflint reminded me, in French, which was the court language, so we used it frequently. “Such long and serious illness disorders one’s memories. Besides . . .” He paused here, and I thought I saw something underneath Mr. Tinderflint, a hint of something hard and unforgiving. “No one at court remembers anything for long. Unless it be to disgrace an enemy. Then they never forget.”

This tidbit dropped so cold and serious from him that I started and my napkin slid from my lap. I bent to retrieve it, but a waiting member of the Dutch infantry was there before my fingers touched the linen.

“
Merci
,” I murmured on reflex.

“
De rie—”
she began, but clamped her lips shut tight around the end of the word and backed swiftly away.

I dropped my gaze, to cover my fresh surprise. Mr. Tinderflint had already turned the conversation back to names, genealogies, and politics. He’d missed it, but I’d marked her. The middle-sized girl with the spotty chin and unruly reddish hair under her cap had understood my French, and she had returned to her place, pretending nothing had happened. There was a chink in the fence erected by the firm of Tinderflint, Peele, and Abbott.

After nuncheon, it was on to what was rapidly becoming my least favorite activity. I must sit down and play Mr. Peele at cards.

“Cards are the chief activity of the ladies of the royal household, including Her Royal Highness,” that gentleman explained to me. “They play deep, and they play constantly. If you cannot match them there, all the rest of this practice is for naught.”

And so it was cards, for hours upon end: lottery, basset, piquet, cribbage, and particularly and dreadfully, ombre. This last, my tutor assured me, was the game most favored by the denizens of the court. I must learn all its variations: two-handed, three-handed, four, and five. For these last, Mrs. Abbott was drafted to join the game. I may say without fear of contradiction that the only thing worse than being quizzed by Mrs. Abbott was sitting across the card table from her. She was a grim and terrible player, and she hated to lose. My stays, earrings, and ribbons all got tighter if I had the nerve to take even a single trick.