Ivy and Intrigue: A Very Selwick Christmas Page 5

  Amy slowly gathered up the fabric of her train, pleating it up bit by little bit, with slow movements entirely unlike her usual self. “So I would go back to France and you would stay here.”

  No, he wanted to say. Out of the question. But having broached the possibility, he couldn"t snatch it away again. There were nasty names for people who offered gifts and then took them back.

  “It is a possibility,” he said, as neutrally as he could. “Think about it. Decide what you want.”

  Amy looked at him sideways, her brows drawing together over her nose. “What do you want?”

  That was easy enough. For both of them to be in France again, swinging through windows on ropes, leaving mocking notes on pillows, and spiriting men out of prison, together.

  Oh, hell. He didn"t even need France. It was the together bit that counted. He would settle for being back at Selwick Hall, pre-Christmas, pre-Deirdre, setting up their spy school and arguing over the best route from Calais to Paris.

  He took refuge in banalities. “For you to be happy.”

  “On the opposite side of the Channel?”

  I could not love thee dear so much, loved I not honor more…. It had always been one of his favorite verses. Why should it be only the woman who waited, while the man went adventuring? The sentiment applied both ways.

  “If that"s what it takes,” he said grimly. That hadn"t come out quite right, had it? This whole waving from the castle portcullis thing might be harder than he had thought. Pinning his face into a great, big, fake smile, Richard said with exaggerated heartiness, “Think about it.

  Consider it… a Christmas gift.”

  “Thank you.” Amy"s voice was curiously subdued, her face shadowed by that absurd sprig of greenery. Shouldn"t she be… happier? Excited? Relieved? Richard frowned, trying to see around the spiky leaves. “I will.”

  Richard"s eyes followed his wife"s progress as she strode out of the room. He was trying to read the set of her back. It told him nothing more than that her dress appeared to have even more than the usual number of buttons and that if the set of her shoulders was anything to go by, he wasn"t going to be the one undoing them. He had blundered and he wasn"t quite sure how.

  Wasn"t that what she wanted? To have the chance to go back to France?

  Bloody snow. Bloody Deirdre. Bloody, bloody, bloody Christmas. He knew he should have just given her a kitten.

  Richard realized, belatedly and unhelpfully, just how much he had counted on an immediate denial. She was supposed to elated, tearful, thankful—and then say no. “No, dearest,” said a ridiculous falsetto in his head. “Never mind the espionage. My place is here with you.” Cue embracing. And so forth. He got to be all noble, she said no, and they all lived happily ever after.

  Instead… Richard buried his head in his hands. What the devil was he to do when she actually took him up on his offer?

  * * *

  The holly was bobbing loose against her cheek again.

  Plucking it out, Amy let it drop onto one of the small tables that littered the hallway. She wasn"t feeling terribly festive at the moment. In the space of five minutes, the entire holiday had gone as rancid as last year"s Christmas pudding.

  It couldn"t be a good thing when one"s husband of nine months started suggesting cross-Channel living arrangements.

  There was a cold breeze in the center hall, snaking under the heavily carved panels of the front door, whistling around the corners of the windows, lurking beneath the great curved dome of a ceiling that soared three stories above. The greenery Lady Uppington had draped across every available surface ought to have leant warmth to the space but the vast proportions of the chamber seemed to dwarf all human efforts. Amy pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders.

  There was someone else in the hall, blending neatly into the wall. It was Jane, holding a creased piece of paper close by one of the tall branches of candles that lit the hall.

  “What are you reading?” Amy asked, crossing the hall to her cousin.

  “Just some… verse,” said Jane abstractedly.

  “Verse?” It was Mrs. Ramsby, standing in the open door of the receiving room.

  In a moment, Jane had gone from an accomplished operative to a blushing debutante. The transformation was astounding. A gentle flush stained her perfect porcelain cheeks as she modestly lowered her eyelashes. “Just—just a poem,” she faltered, the picture of maidenly guilt. “From a friend.”

  Pat on her cue, Miss Gwen stalked out from behind Mrs. Ramsby. “A gentleman friend, no doubt,” she snarled. “Give it here.”

  Jane pressed the scrap of paper to her chest, looking imploringly at her chaperone.

  Miss Gwen extended her hand.

  Reluctantly, clinging to the paper until the last moment, Jane surrendered the forbidden token to her chaperone.

  It was, thought Amy, better than the dumb show in Hamlet, and far better acted than most theatricals she had seen, even at the Comedie Francaise.

  “One of those London bucks, I shouldn"t wonder,” snapped Miss Gwen, reveling in her role.

  “Hmph!”

  “It"s just a poem,” offered Amy, doing her best to play along, but something about the smoothness of the interplay between Jane and Miss Gwen made her feel like a grain of sand that had somehow got into a well-oiled clockwork.

  Miss Gwen turned the full force of her glower on her former charge. “Poems today, love letters tomorrow. Don"t think I"ve forgotten your example, missy!”

  “Hullo! What"s everyone doing out here?” Henrietta poked her head around the door, followed by Lady Jerard. Amy could have hugged her. Henrietta, that was. Not Lady Jerard.

  “Don"t worry. You"re not missing anything at charades. Miles is being a glass elephant again.”

  An indignant howl came from within the reception room. “They hadn"t guessed it yet!”

  echoed hollowly through the hall.

  “They were going to!” Henrietta tossed back blithely over her shoulder. “He"s always a glass elephant. What"s the entertainment out here? Mummers? Morris dancers?”

  “Poetry,” offered Amy.

  “Oh,” breathed Lady Jerard. “Did Richard write you poetry, too? I mean—oh dear, I shouldn"t have said that, should I?”

  Amy tossed her head. “I"ve always preferred prose.”

  “You mean he didn"t write you any poetry,” cackled Miss Gwen.

  “I think I"m going to watch Miles be a glass elephant,” said Henrietta loudly. “Who wants to join me?”

  Everyone, apparently. Amy watched as Henrietta expertly shooed the straying guests back into the reception room. It was a useful skill for a hostess to have, guest herding. As they trooped back into the room, she could hear Miss Gwen"s voice raised in strong disapproval of any pachyderm with the poor sense to choose such a fragile material as glass. “Entirely impractical!”

  Amy lingered behind, waiting until Henrietta had signaled the footmen to close the twin door behind them before sidling over to Jane"s side.

  “What was it really?” Amy asked. “Before Miss Gwen appropriated it?”

  “Better Miss Gwen than someone else.” Jane"s brows pulled together, creating two small, perfect furrows. Even Jane"s worry lines were symmetrical. Amy could feel her own hair sticking up on one side where she had pulled out the holly, and hastily shoved it back under the bandeau. “It was a message. From Augustus. In verse,” she added, with a hint of a smile.

  Augustus Whittlesby had carefully cultivated his reputation as the most prolific poet in France, author of verse so bad that even Bonaparte"s secret police thought twice before trying to slog through it.

  So it was Augustus now, was it? Amy had long had her suspicions that Whittlesby"s attentions were more than professional. But Jane didn"t look like a woman who had just received a love letter.

  Jane frowned. “It was foolhardy of him to send it to me here.”

  “It is in code, isn"t it? In verse.”

  “I believe we clarified that already,
” said Jane dryly. “Oughtn"t you to be enjoying the charades?”

  “I don"t like glass elephants.” Now would be the time to tell Jane that she was free to join her in France. But Amy balked. Instead, she found herself blurting out. “Have you heard that the lovely Lady Jerard is staying the night?”

  Jane delicately raised her brows. “The same lovely Lady Jerard who used to receive poetry from your husband?”

  Amy bared her teeth. “That is the one.”

  “I don"t think you really have anything to worry about,” said Jane kindly.

  Why was it that being told not to worry made one more inclined to do so? “Of course I"m not worried,” Amy lied stoutly. And she wasn"t. Not really. Not about that.

  “I"m surprised Lady Uppington invited her,” Jane said thoughtfully, digging the hole deeper.

  “Given her history.”

  Amy didn"t ask how Jane knew. Jane knew everything. Always had done, always would.

  There were times when it came in quite handy. At other times it was unspeakably infuriating.

  Fortunately, this was one of the former. The fewer explanations she needed to make, the better.

  “I think she wanted to gloat,” said Amy frankly. “Over Richard being all settled. Besides, it was just her maid who was the French spy.”

  “And her maid was dismissed,” Jane mused.

  “Well, yes. One would assume so.”

  “She was.” Jane sounded quite definitive about it. “Without references.”

  Sometimes, Jane had the most irritating way of getting caught up in inconsequentialities.

  “What sort of references would one give? Excellent at cleaning linen, eavesdropping, and general mayhem?”

  Jane gave Amy one of her patient looks. “Which meant that no one was able to track her down after… the incident. She simply disappeared.”

  “Back to France, presumably.” Amy couldn"t have cared less about the loathsome Deirdre"s former maid.

  To be fair, Deirdre wasn"t even so loathsome. She was just generally insipid. When it came down to it, Amy wasn"t even really jealous of her. Richard wasn"t the sort to pine after lost loves. Lost careers, on the other hand….

  On the whole, Amy would far rather the problem were Lady Jerard. One could compete against another woman. One couldn"t compete against a lost way of life, especially when one was the direct cause of the losing of it.

  “Oh, drat it all,” Amy said belligerently, starting across the hall. Even glass elephants were preferable to the unpleasant gyre of her own thoughts. And maybe she could find Peregrine and get him to mash some more mince pie against her dress. “It"s Christmas Eve and I"m going to go play charades.”

  Jane regarded the drawing room doors with an abstracted expression on her face. “It may be a more interesting game than you think.”

  Chapter Five

  Silent night, holy night,

  All is calm, all is bright.

  -- “Silent Night”

  The room was quiet. Too quiet.

  Amy flung out an arm and felt along the empty space next to her. The sheets were cold, the mattress smooth, not dented by the weight of a human form. Richard still hadn"t come to bed.

  If she went to France, the other side of the bed would always be cold.

  That was another problem with an empty bed; there was too much space for thought to creep in. Never a good idea late at night. Groaning, Amy rubbed her face in the pillow before levering herself on an elbow to peer at the clock on the mantel. The fire had burned down, but there was just enough of a glow left to make out the faint shape of the hands of the clock, angled somewhere past three.

  The snow had died down sometime after midnight, lending the landscape outside the draperies an eerie calm. The branches of the trees were stark and black beneath their white tracery, and the moon glinted blue-white off the frost-crisped snow. There were already tracks across the ground, the double dots left by deer and the longer, blurrier footprints left by their two legged peers, the gardeners and the gamekeepers.

  Where was Richard? She had left him playing billiards with Miles, after Henrietta had made sure that the pointy sticks were going to be used entirely for hitting the balls and not each other. It wasn"t like him to stay up so late. On the other hand, it also wasn"t every day that he broached the possibility of her moving to the side of the Channel.

  Did he want her to go, or was it simply that he believed that she wanted to go? Amy felt a twinge of guilt at the memory of all the times she had made careless comments about how unfair it was that he had got to spend seven years playing hero, while she had three measly months, all the times she had grimaced over the appearance of the Pink Carnation"s name in the illustrated papers, or sighed over the atlases of places she might never see again.

  But just because she said she wanted to go didn"t mean she actually wanted to go—at least, not on those terms. Didn"t Richard realize that? Oh, heavens, how did she expect him to make sense of it when she couldn"t make sense of it herself?

  It was useless! Amy flung back the covers. There was no point in even pretending to sleep.

  She would get herself some pie. That was what she would do. Pie. Lots and lots of pie. And maybe some of the gingerbread, too, unless Miles had already demolished the lot. Then she would wash it all down with hot, buttered milk. By the time she ate her way through all that, she would be too full to do anything but sleep. Either that, or she would have enough of a stomach ache to distract her from less pressing worries.

  It might not be a brilliant plan, but at least it was a plan.

  Amy thrust her feet into her slippers and flung a dressing gown over her night rail. She wasn"t quite sure where the kitchens were, but it was no matter. A kitchen was a kitchen.

  How hard could it be to find? After tracking down secret agents and hidden dispatches, a large, stationary object like a kitchen should be no challenge at all.

  Amy marched boldly out into the hallway and immediately pressed back into the safety of her own doorway as she heard the creak of another door being opened. A nightcap poked its head out of one of the bedroom doors, looked to right and left, and then dashed across the hallway.

  A brief knock and another door opened. Amy heard a muted giggle as a pale hand reached out and the man was abruptly whisked around the doorframe.

  Hmm. Amy looked back and forth from one door to the other. Clearly someone was having an interesting evening.

  She started forward, but the slow whine of another doorknob in motion sent her scurrying back for safety. Goodness, was everyone in Selwick Hall out and about tonight? At that rate, why not just light all the candles and call it Christmas Day already? After a few cautious moments, a door halfway down the corridor opened. Out stalked a tall, spare woman in the most alarming confection of a nightcap Amy had ever seen, bristling with bows and lace in a garish shade of purple.

  As Amy watched in puzzlement, Miss Gwen strode the length of the hall, one hand shading her candle, back straight, bows on her nightcap flapping gaily, looking neither left nor right.

  Reaching a door at the very end, she put one ear to the wooden panel, gave a little nod of satisfaction, and coolly let herself in.

  Stranger and stranger.

  It was certainly a busy Christmas Eve at Uppington Hall. All that was missing was Father Christmas and Amy had no doubt he would be about sooner or later. With a shrug, Amy appropriated one of the candles from the hall table and resumed her aborted journey.

  This time, she didn"t even have the warning of a whining doorknob; whoever occupied this room must have brought their own oil. Instead, Amy gave a start as she found herself face to face with yet another pale-gowned figure.

  “Jane!” she gasped.

  Jane held a warning finger to her lips. Her pristine white nightcap perched on top of her smooth brown hair, which had been braided into a single long tail that fell nearly to her waist.

  She gave a quick look around. “So you figured it out, too.”

  F
igured what out? Other than the way to the kitchen, that was. Not wanting to admit ignorance, Amy gave a quick, decisive nod.

  “She just left her room,” said Jane, in a hurried whisper. “If we move quickly, we can catch them before we miss too much.”

  Miss what? Amy wondered, nodding furiously in agreement. Catch whom? It was all very confusing. What had Lady Uppington put in those pies? Had everyone run mad except her?

  “Come along,” said Jane. “There"s no time to be lost. Miss Gwen is searching her room as we speak.”

  “Whose room?” Amy blurted out.

  Jane looked sharply at her. “Lady Jerard.”

  “Of course,” muttered Amy. “I knew that.”

  Fortunately, Jane was in too much haste to enquire further. “Here. Take this.” Jane extended the large object she had been holding, adding matter-of-factly, “I have my pistol.”

  Pistol? For Lady Jerard? What?

  Automatically putting out her hand, Amy felt her wrist sag under the weight. “What is it?”

  she hissed, squinting in the dim light.

  “A warming pan,” said her cousin calmly.

  “A warming—” On inspection, that did, indeed, appear to be what it was; a warming pan, with the coals removed. Amy turned it over in her hands, peering closely at the copper casing. Miss Gwen did have that sword parasol and Jane a reticule that doubled as a grenade…. “Does it turn into a crossbow, or have a sword concealed in the handle?” she asked eagerly.

  “Well, no,” said Jane apologetically. “But it does make a rather satisfying thunk when you clunk someone over the head with it.”

  Fair enough. Amy shouldered her weapon and scurried after her cousin down the length of the hallway and around a curve to a stairwell Amy hadn"t been aware existed. It twisted downwards in a dizzying spiral of whitewashed walls.

  Amy caught at Jane"s arm as they bypassed the landing and started on a another flight. “How do you know where we"re going?”

  It was Amy"s own ancestral-home-by-marriage and she hadn"t had the foggiest idea of where half the corridors led. Other than the path between her bedroom and the main reception rooms, of course.