The Spy's Kiss (21 page)

He got up and came over to her. “Clara, are you so very angry at Simon? Surely you don't think his escapade tonight ruined the dance? If anything, it offered an amusing topic of conversation.”

Her pent-up frustration exploded. “Yes, I am angry! The boy monopolizes Serena! He positively
clings
to her, like a—a limpet! And she to him! Well, tonight she had a chance to spend time with people her own age—to flirt and dance and have someone fetch her shawl and all those other little diversions a young woman of her birth and looks should enjoy. And our wretched son managed to make a spectacle of himself
and
my niece, with the result that she left after supper—and you know perfectly well that it will be another five years before I can persuade her to emerge in public again!” She added, despairing, “I am the worst mother in the world! I cannot make Serena and Simon behave, try as I might. I don't understand either one of them, and I never will.”

He sat down next to her, which made the little upholstered bench very crowded. Taking her hand, he said gently, “Would it make you feel better to learn that Julien Clermont has made an appointment to speak with me tomorrow evening about a private matter?”

She turned toward him, incredulous.

“And that I received a confidential message from Mr. Hewitt late this afternoon that Clermont has deposited a large sum at the bank to be held in my name?”

“Settlements,” she breathed. “He means to make an offer. Oh, George.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them back. An odd, half-selfish happiness filled her—happiness for Serena, happiness for herself, that she had not bungled so badly after all. “Yes, it would make me feel better.”

“Not a word to anyone, mind you! Not to Robbins, not to Mrs. Digby, and especially not to Serena.”

“Of course not,” she said automatically. “Of course not.”

 

 

By noon of the following day, every single person in the Bassington household had learned that Julien Clermont was coming that evening to ask the earl for Miss Serena's hand. Every single person except Serena, that is. When she got up and came downstairs, she did notice that the servants were giving her peculiar glances, but she assumed those sideways looks were the result of her involvement with Simon's disgrace. Her aunt was nowhere to be seen; that, too, was a bit odd. Probably the countess had come home very late last night and was still abed.

Feeling restless and oddly discontented, she went off to the sitting room she and her aunt shared on the second floor and sat down at her desk to catch up on her letter writing. Her principal correspondents were her mother's cousins, the same ones who had foisted Mrs. Childe on her aunt. She had never enjoyed writing to them, or reading their slightly condescending replies, but she considered it a duty. This morning, however, she found the task impossible instead of merely distasteful. After ten minutes, she sighed, threw all her attempts in the grate, and went in search of Simon.

He was not in his room, not in the nursery/schoolroom on the fourth floor, not in the library, not in the kitchen, where the servants all melted away as soon as Serena entered. She heard a breathless giggle from one of the scullery maids as the girl scampered away. The cook, who was too large to scamper, made a great pretense of stirring something on the stove. He was an Austrian, the earl feeling it unpatriotic to employ a Frenchman at this particular moment.

“Dietrich, have you seen Simon this morning?” she asked.

He shook his head, still stirring.

Puzzled, and beginning to be annoyed, she went up to her room and rang. A maid answered the bell—not Emily, but one of the new upstairs maids. Serena didn't even know her name. “Where is Emily?” she demanded.

“Begging your pardon, miss, but the countess summoned her earlier this morning and left word that I was to answer your bell.”

“I would like to see Rowley, then,” she said. “At once.”

When the elderly butler appeared, he evaded her questions masterfully. The servants? Why, they were exhausted from their labors last night. Or they were helping clean over at the Barretts'. Or they had been given a half-holiday. Yes, he believed Emily was assisting the countess with something. He had no idea what it was. Where was her ladyship? He was not certain. Would Miss Serena like him to inquire? Only when she asked about Simon did she get an answer. The viscount was with his lordship, in the bookroom. They had been closeted together for quite some time, Rowley believed.

Why hadn't she remembered that Simon would be called to account this morning for his misdeeds? No wonder the servants were avoiding her. In their eyes, she was the traitor who had turned in her own cousin. Little did they know that it was far worse than that. She was the traitor who had sacrificed her cousin to protect herself. Feeling lower than a worm, she dismissed Rowley and walked slowly back downstairs to the bookroom. The doors were still closed. She could hear her uncle's voice. He wasn't shouting. And she didn't hear the sound of a cane. Her guilt eased slightly. But when the earl was still talking, in the same low, serious voice, ten minutes later, it began to creep back. When Simon was caned—a relatively rare event, but not unknown—it was all over in a few minutes. Was there something worse than caning? Some punishment males never even mentioned in front of delicately nurtured females? She began to pace back and forth in front of the door.

After an interminable interval, her uncle's voice stopped. There was a brief exchange; she heard Simon answering a question. Then the door opened. Her cousin, very pale, came out first. His lips were pressed together and he walked stiffly. Perhaps he had been caned, before she arrived. Her uncle emerged behind him, looking stern. When he saw Serena, he brightened.

“Serena, my dear!” he said. “I thought I heard someone pacing out here.” He kissed her cheek. She tried to remember the last time he had kissed her, and failed. “Are you recovered from last night's revelries? I trust Simon's misbehavior did not spoil your evening entirely.”

“I am fine, Uncle. Merely worried about Simon. I hope you were not too hard on him.” She was battling an overwhelming urge to confess everything.

“Hard on him? I don't believe so. We have had a long-overdue discussion, that is all. Eh, my boy?”

Simon nodded, eyes lowered.

“Well, I must get back to my desk. Barrett and I have a meeting this afternoon, and I've a great deal to do beforehand.” With a genial nod, he went back into the bookroom, which also served as an antechamber to his office.

She walked with Simon all the way up to his room in silence. He didn't seem to be limping, she noted. But he wasn't talking, either, which was very unlike him.

“May I come in?” she asked when they reached the door.

“If you like.”

Only after they were both inside, with the door closed, did his expression change. He looked furious.

“Oh, Simon,” she said, feeling wretched. “I am so sorry. This is all my fault. Did he beat you very badly?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and said between his teeth. “He didn't touch me.”

“He didn't?”

“No.” He brooded darkly over the injustice of this departure from tradition. “I'm to be sent away. To school. But that wasn't the bad part. I don't think I shall mind school so much after all.”

“Then what is it? What else?” A very logical punishment suddenly occurred to her. “Simon, he isn't confiscating your telescope, is he?”

“No, nothing like that. No punishment at all. I wish he
had
caned me. He simply talked to me. It was horrible. He told me I was his heir, and that I had responsibilities, and that Mr. Clermont had opened his eyes to what I was capable of—capable of in a good way—and that he was ashamed to find his son malingering and teasing his own mother with feigned illnesses. And he told me things about Cousin Charles—awful things, Serena, things I wouldn't repeat to you even if he hadn't sworn me to secrecy. And he said I reminded him of Charles, and he was afraid for me.”

“Well, it's true you look like Charles, Simon—at least like the portrait of him as a boy—but physical resemblance doesn't mean anything.”

“He wasn't talking about my appearance,” he said, scowling. “He was talking about my character.”

“I think you have a wonderful character,” she said gently. “Look what you did for me last night. The rest is just mischief, Simon, mischief and boredom and the knowledge that you are more intelligent than your tutor and your nurse.”

“He said that as well. I was too clever for my own good, he said. That was why I needed to be in school.” He clenched his fists and burst out, “I hate him! How dare he compare me to—to some rascally
cheat
! It would serve him right if I ran away and became just like Charles!”

She sat down next to him and put her arm around his shoulders. She could feel him trying very hard not to cry.

He looked up at her. “When you are married may I come and live with you? During school holidays, that is?”

“I am not likely to be married any time soon, silly. That's no solution. Go and apologize to your mother; you'll feel better.”

His jaw dropped. “You're not getting married? To Mr. Clermont?”

“No! Why would you—” Then she remembered what Simon had seen last night and blushed furiously. After a constrained pause, she said carefully, “Men and women do not always marry after they kiss each other, Simon. Although they are often expected to do so if someone has seen them alone together. That is why I am so grateful to you for helping me.”

“Don't you want to marry him? Don't you love him?”

That was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that someone had asked her if she loved Julien Clermont, and her response to Philip was beginning to seem a bit disingenuous, in retrospect. She hedged. “That is beside the point. Mr. Clermont has made it very clear that he has no interest in marrying me. He has merely been trying to be an agreeable companion. That is a far cry from making me an offer.”

He stood up. “Is that so?” His blue eyes flashed. “Well, Miss Know-It-All Allen, if he doesn't want to make you an offer, then why is he coming this evening to ask my father for your hand?”

At a little after half past eight, Julien was shown into the very same bookroom which had witnessed Simon's downfall earlier. Had he known that fact, it would not have made him any more nervous than he was already. For a man who had hidden under floorboards during the Terror, fought a hired assassin in a duel, and shot a bear at point-blank range, he was remarkably apprehensive about this interview. It was no use telling himself that the die was cast, that his visit to the bank had committed him beyond retreat. The candlelit chamber, with its fine old rugs and cheerful fire, seemed unaccountably sinister. He could feel himself fraying, had to force himself to breathe slowly, to take the earl's hand in a grip that did not tremble, to lower himself into the offered seat instead of collapsing.

“Well, Mr. Clermont,” said Bassington, very genial, “I won't pretend to be ignorant of your purpose in coming here tonight, and I shall say at the outset that I shall be delighted to welcome you to the family. The countess, of course, feels the same.”

He was stunned. In all his rehearsals of this scene, it had never occurred to him that the earl would react in this fashion. “You know why I am here?”

“Mr. Hewitt was kind enough to inform me of your visit to the bank.” Bassington smiled. “I must say, I think your gesture was unnecessary, but I understand that young men have their pride.”

He swallowed. “You don't believe there will be a scandal?”

“Scandal? Why?”

“Because I'm illegitimate,” he said bluntly.

The earl snorted. “There are as many Condés on the wrong side of the blanket as on the right, from what I can tell. The great-grandson of Louis XIV need not blush for his parentage. Even in staid Protestant England we are aware that kings and princes are exempt from the restrictions which bind lesser men.”

His head was spinning. Bassington had discovered who he was, was prepared to acknowledge him. A dream he had relinquished by the age often was suddenly unfolding as reality in a small, softly lit room in London.

“You will have been raised Catholic, of course,” the earl mused. “That is why you were at school with Philip. I do not think that an insurmountable problem.”

Julien was not particularly devout, but he would have said that nothing could make him consider converting. He would have been wrong. In this new, unexpected world opening out before him, everything had changed. If Bassington wanted him to join the Church of England, surely the fifth commandment would require his compliance. He ventured a grave smile, to show his willingness to compromise.

“Something to drink?” the earl asked. “I keep some very fine brandy in here, no need to summon the servants.”

“Thank you, no.” He wanted to be sober, he wanted to survey his unexpected treasure with a clear head.

Bassington rose and took a decanter and matching glass from a tray on an adjacent table. He spoke as he poured the drink, so that he wasn't even looking at Julien when it happened. “By the way,” he asked casually, “who is your father? The Duc de Bourbon? Or is the prince, in fact, not your grandfather but your sire?”

The dream exploded into thousands of tiny, cruelly sharp pieces. It was all the more painful because it had been so plausible, so vivid. At the back of his mind the nagging question intruded: why, if the earl did not know the truth, had he welcomed Julien so effusively, stated that he understood why Julien was here? But he had no room for anything at the back of his mind right now. He had to answer the earl's question. At least now he could go back to his original script.

“You are,” he said. “You are my father. That is what I came to tell you.”

Bassington turned, slowly, and set the glass down on the table. He looked stupefied. “I am your father?”

Julien nodded.

“But—you are a Condé!”

“My mother was Louise-Aline de Bourbon-Condé. You knew her perhaps as Aline DeLis.”

The earl shook his head. “I cannot recall anyone by that name.”

The old bitterness rose up in Julien, the familiar, grim will to hurt as he had been hurt. This was better, much better than the cheerful welcome he had received, through some peculiar misunderstanding, a few minutes ago. This was what had driven him through all the lies and manipulations. His father might have grown into someone Julien respected now, but thirty years ago he had been the kind of man who didn't even remember the name of a gently born girl he had seduced and abandoned. It was unpleasant, perhaps, but not unjust that the good man of today should pay for the sins of the bad man of yesterday. Indeed, part of the neatness of his chosen means of revenge lay precisely in the knowledge of how the upright Bassington of 1814 would squirm contemplating both his younger self and the son that younger self had spawned.

He stood. He couldn't remain seated any longer. “Let me remind you, then,” he said. “My mother was a blonde, with green eyes. She was by far the youngest in her family, and very willful, or so I was told. When she was seventeen, she was sent to a finishing school at a convent near Beauvais. She hated it. A few months after arriving, she ran away with the help of a servant she had bribed. The man had promised to escort her to Amiens, to a married cousin. He abandoned her at the first inn they came to, a rough, noisy place catering to wag-oneers on the Paris road. Within minutes she knew she had made a terrible mistake; she swallowed her pride and asked the innkeeper to send her back to the convent. The inn's customers, however, had other ideas. More frightened than she had ever been in her life, with one of the filthy louts actually holding her by the arm—or perhaps worse than the arm, I don't know—she suddenly sees a young man in the doorway of the inn. A handsome young man, well dressed. He is a foreigner, but someone accustomed to command. He rescues her from the lout, takes her to a private parlor, orders food and drink, comforts her, promises to take her back to the convent. By the end of dinner she is desperately in love with him. He is an English lord; not an ineligible husband, even for a Condé. A mile before his coach reaches the convent gates he asks her to marry him, and she says yes. She has given him a false name and, fearful that her family will try to prevent the match, she does not enlighten him even after the betrothal.”

The earl was frowning, looking puzzled.

“He did not marry her,” Julien said coldly. “In case you do not remember the end of the story. He persuaded her to stay with him in a small village near the coast while he sent for funds from his estate in England, and then one day he simply vanished. I, however, did not vanish. I grew larger and larger, in fact, and my mother, after using up nearly all the money her would-be husband had left with her, finally made her way back to the convent. I was born there. My mother was immediately sent away to another convent. My aunt took me home to my grandfather's house and gave me to a wet nurse. When I was old enough to understand, she told me that my mother was dead, that I had killed her, and that I was a walking incarnation of the sin of lust. My mother was not, in fact, dead—not yet. By the time I learned where she had gone, she was. I never met her.”

He paused, staring at nothing. A small gesture by the earl—of pity? of bewilderment?—went unacknowledged.

“In '90, when I was five, the new National Assembly did something to make my grandfather even angrier and more outraged with the republicans than usual. As a reply, a sign of his contempt for the weakness of the king and his fellow nobles, he recognized me as his grandson and endowed me with one of his titles. He conferred a number of estates on me, most of which were confiscated after the revolution, but he also gave me a large sum which would have been my mother's dowry. That money, and that money alone, I have been willing to use. I was fortunate enough to make some very good investments after leaving school. You need not think this evening's visit is a request for money. In fact, I have deposited in your account at the bank every penny of the payments which were eventually made to my mother in Switzerland.”

“What payments?” The earl had finally found his voice.

“The payments Mr. Hewitt confirmed for me when I visited the bank yesterday. Six payments, totaling just under two thousand pounds, sent to my mother under the name DeLis at her convent in Lausanne. Come, sir, surely you will not bother to deny it?”

Bassington took an unsteady step forward. “I have never heard of the woman in my life.”

Julien drew the draft from his pocket and laid it on the table next to the untouched brandy. “Authorized by your father,” he said. “Hewitt told me as much.”

The earl looked down at the creased paper in bewilderment. He sank back down into his chair. “I assure you—I was no saint in my youth, God knows, but I have never, to my knowledge, sired any child but Simon. And I would certainly remember any episode such as the one you describe. Even if the tale is distorted, as it may well be, with your mother shut away and unable to speak for herself, I would not confuse a gently bred maiden with the tavern wenches I favored in my time in France.” Something struck him. “When were you born?”

“In the summer of '85.”

Bassington gave a sigh of relief. “It is all a dreadful misunderstanding, then. I cannot possibly be your father. For that entire year, and most of the preceding one, I was in the West Indies.”

Julien sneered. “I am to believe this?” He was angry now, and secure in his anger.

“Do you dare suggest I am lying?”

“This from the man who ruined my mother? Yes, I do suggest it! Or do you fancy I will believe my mother's deathbed letter a lie? She told me her lover was the son of the Earl of Bassington. Had your father two sons? I saw a portrait of you as a boy at Boulton Park; it could be me at the same age, save for the clothing. How do you explain that? What of Hewitt? Do you accuse your own banker of deceit? Why, if you were not my father, did
your
father send payments to my mother?”

“I have no idea!” roared the earl, as angry as Julien. “How dare you come in here and make these nonsensical accusations? Damme, it seems a rather odd coincidence now that you should have come hunting butterflies at Boulton Park! What is your game, you scoundrel? What do you want with me? I've half a mind to call the constable!”

“What do I want with you?” Julien's voice was cold. “I want you to understand what kind of son you bred. What living as a bastard, ‘an incarnation of the sin of lust,' has made me. My aunt had more grandiose ideas of revenge. When we discovered your name after my mother died she proposed that I should seek you out and kill you. I pointed out that parricide was usually regarded as an even graver sin than fornication. Her next thought was that I should seduce Miss Allen. Since she was your ward, not your daughter, I did not even risk the taint of incest.

“It seemed to me that it would be punishment enough to know that your son was the sort who would cheat his way into your house. At first I intended only to visit for a few days, on the pretense of studying the collection. But I was curious—I admit it. And I was looking for proof, indisputable proof that you were my father. So I rigged the trap on Clark's Hill and rode my horse straight into it. And then I was living in your home, the perfect situation to investigate my own past. I read your father's diaries. I spoke with the servants, with your son, your niece. Despicable, no? But not, perhaps, as despicable as what was done to my mother.” He paused. “Would you like to know the richest part of the jest? I came to admire you. I liked you. I liked your family—my family. I started to soften. When I came in just now, and you told me you would welcome me, I was almost ready to forgive you.”

“Out,” said Bassington, breathing hard. “Get out.” He staggered to the wall and rang the bell.

Julien picked up the bank draft, pale but composed. “Your great-great-grandfather was a wealthy yeoman ennobled by a money-hungry Stewart. Mine was one of the greatest kings of Europe. And yet I would have been willing to claim you as my father—in spite of your treatment of my mother. If you choose not to acknowledge me, even here in private, that is your right. But I would not have thought it of you.”

“Out,” repeated Bassington implacably. He pulled the bellrope again, harder. “Serena is well rid of you. I shall tell her so myself.”

With her name the nagging thought which had disturbed him earlier slithered back out from its hiding place.
I shall be delighted. I shall be delighted to welcome you to the family.

“Where are those blasted footmen when you need them?” muttered Bassington, staring at the door.

“Wait—I hadn't realized—it must have seemed—” He broke off, swallowed. “Why
did
you greet me so warmly just now? What did you think I was here for?” But the answer was emerging, the cruel, ironic answer, as he spoke.

“I believed you had come to make an offer for my niece.” The earl gave him a scathing look. “Don't pretend ignorance. To someone of your warped nature, I am certain that the chance to wound her only added extra spice to the affair. I have no idea why you should have fastened upon me and my family as the victims of your malice, but you may count yourself lucky that my reluctance to upset my wife inclines me not to prosecute you.”

Julien had not heard a word since the phrase “offer for my niece.” “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Christ.” An aching void was opening up inside him. He felt very cold. “Does Serena—does Miss Allen also believe I am here on her account?”

“She does,” said the earl grimly.

“May I see her? Briefly? To—explain, apologize?”

“You may not.” A breathless footman had appeared in the doorway, and Bassington raised his voice to make certain the servant would hear. “I forbid you to set foot in my house. I forbid you to see my niece, or write her, or send her any sort of message. All contact between you and any member of my household is at an end from this moment on. Do I make myself clear?”