Ivy and Intrigue: A Very Selwick Christmas Page 2

  Jane smiled the enigmatic smile she appeared to have perfected during her time abroad. “You weren"t meant to.”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “You can"t claim to be here incognito. Not with the whole family in tow.”

  Uncle Bertrand and Aunt Prudence had arrived the night before, in an antiquated carriage laden with assorted offspring, Aunt Prudence"s embroidery bag, and one agitated sheep. The sheep, apparently, was a Christmas present. Amy only hoped it wasn"t intended for her. She had had enough of her sheep in her upbringing in Shropshire, when the French Revolution had exiled her to the care of her aunt and uncle.

  It had been Amy"s mother-in-law"s idea to invite Amy"s family to join them all for Christmas at Uppington Hall, the official seat of the Marquesses of Uppington. It was, Amy had to admit, a very thoughtful notion. She was more pleased than she cared to admit to have familiar faces around her.

  Well, maybe not all the familiar faces.

  A sharp object was doing its best to make a dent in Amy"s left side. It turned out, upon inspection, to be a fan.

  Only one woman carried a fan that pointy and wielded it with such deadly precision.

  “Incognita,” snapped Amy"s former chaperone, Miss Gwendolyn Meadows, driving the point home with another jab of her fan. “Incognita, not incognito. Despite a masculine occupation, one need not abandon the feminine persona.”

  Jane"s lips turned up at a private joke. “Except, perhaps, when it might be expedient so to do?” she suggested demurely.

  Miss Gwen sniffed. “Expedient,” she allowed, “but never ungrammatical.”

  There had been an untold story in that sniff. Perhaps more than one.

  Amy looked quizzically from Jane to Miss Gwen, trying not to look as left out as she felt.

  Only eight months ago—not that she was counting—they had been a team, the three of them.

  She was the one who had started it all, after all. It had been her idea to track down the Purple Gentian, her idea to join the ranks of those cunning men who slipped from shadow to shadow, outwitting Bonaparte at every turn. But she hadn"t managed to stay quite shadowy enough, and in the space of one fatal evening, everything had changed. Now it was Jane staying with her brother in her old house, Jane outwitting Bonaparte, Jane getting written up in the illustrated papers as the most daring thing to enter the scene since espionage went botanical.

  Amy knew she shouldn"t resent Jane for carrying on with their plans. The point was the goal, not the individual agent.

  But she did resent it. It wasn"t logical, and she didn"t like it, but there it was. She

  wanted to be the one making daring midnight raids on the Tuileries Palace and composing insulting little notes to leave on Bonaparte"s pillow. She had spent years plotting and scheming to find the Purple Gentian and join his League. It was ridiculous beyond all things that the very accomplishment of that goal should have been the cause of both of them being barred from Paris and espionage altogether. It was like of the Greek tragedies her father had loved so well, where the accomplishment of a wish led to its own destruction.

  Not that Amy was complaining, she told herself hastily. If she had to choose between her husband and another season"s spying in France… well, Richard was solid and real and kept the bed warm on cold nights and never once thought it was odd or unladylike when she wanted to practice shooting at targets or climbing over fences or other skills that might just come in handy again. There were many spies in the world but only one man she could imagine spending the rest of her life with.

  They were happy, really they were. And no one could say they hadn"t made good use of their exile. Together, they had cobbled together a comprehensive curriculum for the training of secret agents, combining Richard"s experience in the field with some of Amy"s more inventive ideas to produce a program that purported to plan for every possible contingency.

  They were still working out some of the kinks in the curriculum, but their first batch of pupils were coming along quite nicely.

  But teaching wasn"t the same as doing. If she minded it, how much more must Richard?

  She had caught him, more than once, plotting out routes on the atlas that he would never again follow, and, when he didn"t know she was looking, she had seen him staring broodingly at his old cloak and mask, tokens of the work that was lost to him.

  No matter. It was Christmas; they were together; and they were happy. „Twas the season. It was practically mandatory to be happy at Christmas. She was happy. She was, she was, she was.

  Even if she was just a teeny tiny bit jealous of Jane.

  “How long are you back for?” Amy asked her cousin.

  “Just past Christmas,” said Jane. “I don"t like to leave our affairs unattended for that long.”

  “I"m glad you were able to get back at all,” said Amy, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  Jane smiled down at her. “You made it very easy for me. How clever of you to find relatives with an estate so near the coast.”

  Despite herself, Amy grinned back. She knew better than to ask Jane exactly how Jane had made her way from Paris or how she intended to return. Jane kept her own counsel on such matters. It was a trait Amy had found maddening while they were working together. One could never tell quite what Jane was planning until she had done it.

  Discretion was something Jane had always done very well. She, on the other hand….

  It was her indiscretion that had bollixed Richard"s career as the Purple Gentian.

  “Well, happy Christmas!” she said, so forcefully that Jane blinked and Miss Gwen frowned.

  But, then, Miss Gwen always frowned. It was when Miss Gwen smiled that one had to worry.

  “Hmph,” said Miss Gwen. “Christmas hasn"t happened yet. We have no idea if it will be happy or not.”

  “Spreading good cheer as always, I see?” Richard strolled over to join them, accompanied by two women.

  One of the ladies was roughly his own age, with pale blonde hair clustered in curls around a china oval of a face. The other, her mother by the look of it, had the determined look of the faded beauty, trying to make up in too-rich fabric and jewels what she could no longer accomplish with her face. Her white hair had been swept into an elaborate coiffure topped with a diamond parure. A very silly thing, Amy thought, to be wearing to a county affair, even one at the home of a marchioness. The older woman clung very determinedly to Richard"s arm.

  Detaching her without visible sign of effort, Richard moved in a touching show of husbandly devotion to his accustomed place by Amy"s side.

  It was, thought Amy, rather clever of him. It put her in between him and Miss Gwen"s fan.

  He was no fool, her husband. He smelled rather nice, too. Like citrus. With a hint of cloves.

  He must have been raiding the gingerbread again.

  Quick to deflect any accusations of good cheer, Miss Gwen favored Richard with her steeliest stare. “Don"t expect me to start spreading goodwill towards men. Useless, the most of them.”

  “What about peace on earth, then?” inquired Richard blandly.

  “Bah,” said Miss Gwen.

  “Bah?” inquired the older of the women Richard had brought with him, in tones of frigid disbelief. “Bah?”

  Miss Gwen looked down her nose. “One bah was entirely sufficient. There is no need to imitate a herd of sheep.”

  “Sheep?” Uncle Bertrand might be slightly deaf when it came to social niceties, but any mention of his favorite subject brought him bounding to his feet. He crossed the room in record time. “Did I hear sheep?”

  “Ah,” murmured Richard. “The pitter-patter of playful sheep.”

  “I had a lamb once,” said the blonde woman helpfully. “But it was a very long time ago.”

  “Never too late for another,” said Uncle Bertrand heartily, clearly empathizing with her plight.

  Amy hastily intervened. “I don"t believe we"ve been introduced,” she said, forestalling Uncle Bertrand before he could inquire after t
he name, age, and cause of death of the late, lamented little lamb.

  “Forgive me for neglecting my duties,” said Richard. “Allow me to present Mrs. Ramsby and her daughter, Lady Jerard.” He carried on with the introductions, presenting Miss Gwen, Jane, and Uncle Bertrand in turn, but Amy heard nothing after that second name.

  Baroness Jerard. Here. Now. For Christmas.

  Why hadn"t anyone warned her?

  Amy must have said the civil thing. She must have bowed or curtsied. Early training did win through, even when one"s mind was entirely elsewhere.

  No one had told her that Lady Uppington had invited Richard"s…. Oh, heavens, Amy didn"t even know what to call the dratted woman. First love? First disappointment? Careless betrayer of valiant English agents?

  There wasn"t an exactly a one word tag for the-woman-who-broke-his-heart-and-caused-the-death-of-his-second-closest-friend.

  At times, the English language was sadly lacking in crucial terms.

  Ivy and Intrigue: A Very Selwick Christmas

  Chapter Two

  Now bring us some figgy pudding,

  Now bring us some figgy pudding,

  Now bring us some figgy pudding,

  And bring it right here.

  -- “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”

  Amy pasted a smile onto her face and took inventory

  of her—well, not rival. She couldn"t call the other woman a rival when they weren"t in competition. They had better not be in competition. Her predecessor, then, even though there was nothing deceased about her.

  Lady Jerard—Deirdre, as Richard had called her—was everything Amy had imagined and dreaded. Hair like silk floss, lips of rose, teeth of pearl, blah, blah, and so on. She could see how Richard had once composed reams of poetry to this woman; the material practically wrote itself. The violet of half-mourning perfectly set off Lady Jerard"s roses and cream complexion. Amy felt suddenly very conscious of the whopping case of wind burn she had acquired earlier that afternoon on a last minute mistletoe expedition, Lady Uppington having deemed the quantity already acquired woefully insufficient.

  Amy"s cheeks pinkened with more than windburn at the memory of the use to which that mistletoe had already been put. The thought cheered her up immensely, and she slid her gloved hand into her husband"s.

  Squeezing her hand, Richard smiled down at her, his own peculiar, familiar smile, the one that he kept just for her. Amy felt the fog that had begun to descend on her lift. The candles sparkled like stars off the long, Venetian mirrors set into the walls, and, in the background, the choir was singing again, like angels calling from the mountaintops. Everything was cinnamon-scented and perfect and just as it ought to be.

  Until a shrill voice intruded. “So you"re the wife, are you?” said Mrs. Ramsby.

  Amy could see Miss Gwen stiffen with offense at Mrs. Ramsby"s tone. It wasn"t that Miss Gwen minded on Amy"s behalf; she just disliked rudeness in others. It took the edge off her own.

  Amy smiled cheerfully at the faded beauty, baring as many teeth as possible. “As far as I know.” She batted her eyelashes at Richard. “You do have only the one, haven"t you, darling?”

  “Minx,” said Richard fondly, but there was a warning note to it.

  “Tetchy creatures, minks,” contributed Uncle Bertrand. “Now what you want is good English wool. None of that slippery foreign fur.”

  Mrs. Ramsby looked like she had bitten into a bad piece of toffee. “And this is your uncle,”

  she enunciated. Without waiting for a response, she looked to Richard, “However did you contrive to, er, meet her?”

  Amy clasped her hands together and looked soulful. “It was a dark and stormy night,” she began.

  She could hear Jane stifle a chuckle behind her.

  It was true, as far as it went. It had been a dark and stormy night on a packet bound from Dover to Calais. Sometimes, truth could be stranger than fiction.

  “We met while my wife was visiting her brother,” said Richard repressively. That was true enough, too, but much less entertaining. It left out all the colorful bits.

  Lady Jerard was as sweet as her mother was sour, but she put Amy"s teeth on edge just as badly. “Does your brother live near here?” she inquired innocently. “Might I know him?”

  “I don"t think you would want to,” said Amy. “He"s a great disappointment as a sibling.

  Aside from being the means of my meeting Richard, of course.”

  She flung in an extra simper, just for good measure.

  Richard sent her a quelling look. “Shall I fetch you something to eat?” he said, just a little too jovially.

  “Reputation, lightly sautéed?” Amy muttered under her breath.

  Her husband looked down at her with a wry expression, “Stewed, more likely. Or boiled. We are in England, after all.”

  She didn"t need to be reminded of that. But for her, he wouldn"t be. “I know,” said Amy miserably. “I know.”

  Two long lines dented Richard"s forehead as he looked down at her. So much for holiday cheer. “Amy—” he began.

  But before he could get any farther, his mother swooped down on them, folding them both in a mince pie scented embrace.

  Mince pie wasn"t Lady Uppington"s usual scent, but one of her grandchildren had already contrived to mash one against her green velvet bodice. As Lady Uppington said, it was all part of the joy of the season, and she had carried blithely on, mince pie, grandchild, and all.

  She seemed to have deposited Peregrine somewhere, but she was still wearing the mince pie.

  Releasing her offspring, Lady Uppington beamed holiday cheer all around. “I do hope you"re all enjoying yourselves.”

  From the determined look in her eye, it was quite clear that everyone was going to have a happy Christmas whether they liked it or not.

  “Oh, very much so, Lady Uppington,” piped up that puling pudding face of a Lady Jerard.

  Hmm, Amy liked the alliteration of that. She rolled it a few times in her mind. Yes, even better with repetition.

  Lady Uppington wafted her fan vaguely in the direction of her son"s lost love. “Yes, yes,” she said dismissively, “very good,” before turning to radiate an extra measure of warmth in Amy"s direction. “And how are you, my dear?” She smiled a butter-wouldn"t-melt smile at Mrs. Ramsby and Lady Jerard. “They"re only just married, you know. And so very, very happy.”

  Amy quickly straightened up and did her best to look very, very happy. She began to understand why Lady Uppington had invited Richard"s lost love. From the expression on Richard"s face as he looked down at the top of his mother"s golden head, so did he.

  One of his mother"s green ostrich feathers poked him in the nose, and he sneezed.

  “Bless you!” trilled Lady Uppington cheerfully, getting in an extra glare at Mrs. Ramsby for good measure. “You can"t be getting sick now! Not when you"re just married!”

  Hell hath no fury like a mother whose son has been scorned, even when the scorning was a very long time ago.

  Richard himself was remarkably silent. Amy glanced up at him, but he was smiled blandly at no one in particular, looking maddeningly urbane and diplomatic.

  Uncle Bertrand dealt Lord Uppington a staggering whack on the shoulder. “Your sheep are looking much improved since the last time I visited them, Uppington. Much improved!”

  With the consummate tact for which he was famed in diplomatic circles, Lord Uppington discreetly dodged a second whap, leaving Uncle Bertrand"s hand to land harmlessly against the wall. “It must be that mash you recommended for them,” he said kindly.

  “Most like, most like,” agreed Uncle Bertrand. “I sampled it meself. What"s good enough for my little ones is good enough for me, I always say. Excellent stuff, that mash.”

  “I"m afraid we haven"t any for supper tonight,” Lady Uppington chimed in, the bobbing feathers on her headdress doing little to conceal the glint of mischief in her amused green eyes. “But it can be arranged if you so desire.”

 
“Nah, nah,” demurred Uncle Bertrand, visibly softened by his hostess" solicitude. “I shouldn"t like to be a bother.”

  “Dear Mr. Wooliston,” said Lady Uppington with the charm that had brought princes to their knees and made even that hardened ovine enthusiast blush, “you could never be a bother. We shall always be entirely in your debt for the pleasure your niece"s presence in our family has afforded us.”

  “Niece…” It took Uncle Bertrand a moment to recall himself from his flocks. Lady Uppington put him in mind of an ewe he had once known. A charming one, she had been, with a jaunty curl to her fleece and a certain something to her eye.

  Lady Uppington discreetly signaled with her fan.

  Uncle Bertrand"s eye cleared. “Oh, you mean our Amy! More of a daughter than a niece to me, she is,” he said heartily, a sentiment that won him a warm smile of approval from Lady Uppington.

  Amy could have told Lady Uppington that Uncle Bertrand meant exactly what he said. He couldn"t remember his own daughters" names either. It was a matter of pure luck that he had managed to give the correct daughter away at her cousin Sophia"s wedding.

  “How very sweet,” interjected Mrs. Ramsby, in a voice like a nutcracker snapping down on a particularly tough shell. “Such rustic simplicity. Like something out of a comedy by Mr.

  Shakespeare. You have been to the theatre, haven"t you, dear?”

  Really! Just because she had been raised in Shropshire didn"t mean she was a complete rustic.

  Somehow, it no longer seemed quite so amusing that Mrs. Ramsby appeared to have decided that she was a glorified sort of shepherdess, rescued by Richard from rural obscurity. Amy spared a moment to hope that Uncle Bertrand had left his sheep outside.

  Was there some way to work into the conversation that her father could trace his lineage back to Charlemagne, or might that be considered tacky?

  “I"ve been to the theatre both here and abroad,” she said loftily. Ha! Let them compete with that. “My brother has a box in the Comedie Francais.”