Rendezvous

  “One party. That should be sufficient. I do not want to get into the habit of entertaining on a frequent basis, Augusta. ’Tis a frivolous waste of time.”

  “Yes, my lord. Most frivolous.”

  • • •

  In spite of her instinctive feelings that Harry was a deep and mysterious man and in spite of her knowledge of his enigmatic and frequently autocratic ways, nothing prepared Augusta for the Graystone who summoned her downstairs to the library a week later.

  Augusta was startled when a maid knocked on the door of the bedchamber and told her that Harry wanted her downstairs at once.

  “He said at once?” Augusta looked at the maid with surprise.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The girl looked distinctly anxious. “Said to tell you it was most urgent.”

  “Good heavens, I hope nothing has happened to Meredith.” Augusta put down her quill and set aside the letter she was writing to Sally.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. ’Tweren’t nothin’ like that. Miss Meredith was with his lordship until just a few minutes ago and she is back at her studies now. I know because I just took a pot o’ tea to the schoolroom.”

  “I see. Very well, Nan. See that his lordship is informed I shall be downstairs immediately.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nan bobbed a quick curtsy and hastened off down the hall.

  Curious to know the reason behind the unexpectedly urgent summons, Augusta paused only long enough to check her appearance in the looking glass. She was wearing a cream-colored muslin gown with a delicate green print. The low-cut neckline was trimmed with green ribbon and there was more green trim on the flounced hem.

  Aware from the maid’s nervous expression that Graystone was apparently not in a good mood, Augusta plucked a filmy green fichu from a dresser drawer and draped the scarf around her neckline. Harry had made it clear on more than one occasion that he found her taste in clothes a trifle immodest. There was no sense irritating him further this morning with the sight of a low-cut bodice if he was already annoyed about other matters.

  Augusta sighed as she hurried out the door. A husband’s foibles and moods were one of the many things a woman had to begin taking into consideration after she became a wife.

  To be fair, however, she had to admit there was no doubt but that Harry had been obliged to make a few changes in his attitudes since their wedding. He had actually surrendered on the subject of watercolor painting and novel reading for Meredith, Augusta reminded herself.

  Augusta swept into the library a few minutes later wearing a cheerful, placating smile. Harry got to his feet behind his polished desk.

  Augusta took one look at him and dropped the cheery smile of greeting. The maid had had the right of it. Harry was in a dark and dangerous mood.

  It struck Augusta quite forcibly that she had never seen him this coldly intent. There was something distinctly predatory about the stark, grim lines of his face.

  “You asked to speak to me, my lord?”

  “I did.”

  “If it is about the house party, sir, you may rest assured that all is under control. The invitations went out several days ago and we have already begun receiving responses in the post. I have contacted musicians and the kitchen staff has begun ordering supplies.”

  “I do not give a damn about your party, madam,” Harry interrupted grimly. “I have just finished the most fascinating conversation with my daughter.”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “She tells me that the day of the picnic when you were extolling your brother’s virtues, you mentioned a certain poem he left in your possession.”

  Augusta’s mouth went dry, although she had no notion of where this was going. “That is correct, sir.”

  “It seems this poem was about spiders and their webs.”

  “My lord, it is just a simple little poem. I had not planned to show it to Meredith, if that is what you fear. I do not think it would have frightened her unduly, even if I had shown it to her. Indeed, I have often found that children rather enjoy scary verses.”

  Harry ignored her hasty assurances. “I am not concerned on that score. Do you still have this poem?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Fetch it at once. I want to see it.”

  A chill went through Augusta. “I do not understand, Graystone. Why should you wish to see Richard’s poem? It is not a very good poem. Rather nonsensical in many places. In fact it is a terrible verse. I only kept it because he thrust it into my hand the night he died and bid me to keep it safe.” Tears burned in her eyes. “It had his blood on it, Harry. I could not throw it away.”

  “Go and get the poem, Augusta.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “Why must you see it?”

  Then a thought struck her. “Does this have something to do with your suspicions about him?”

  “I cannot tell you that until I have seen the poem. Bring it to me at once, Augusta. I must have a look at it.”

  She took an uncertain step back toward the door. “I am not certain I want to show it to you. Not until I know what you think it will prove.”

  “It may answer some long-standing questions.”

  “The sort of questions that have to do with spies, sir?”

  “It is just barely possible.” Harry bit each word out between set teeth. “Not likely, but possible. Especially if your brother was working for the French.”

  “He was not working for the French.”

  “Augusta, I do not want to hear any more of the elaborate theories you have constructed to defend the circumstances in which Richard Ballinger died. Until now I have had no objection to your maintaining your illusions as long as you liked. In fact, I encouraged the process. But this matter of a poem about a spider and its web changes everything.”

  Augusta braced herself, her mind racing. “I will not show it to you unless you promise me you will not try to use it to prove Richard guilty of treason.”

  “I do not give a damn about his guilt or innocence. I have questions of my own to answer.”

  “But in answering them, you might very well seek to prove Richard’s guilt. Is that not so, my lord?”

  Harry came around from behind the desk in two long, prowling strides. “Bring the poem to me, Augusta.”

  “No, not unless you will give me your word that what you discover will not harm Richard’s memory in any way.”

  “I will only give you my word to keep silent about his role in whatever was happening at the time. That is the most I can promise, Augusta.”

  “That is not enough.”

  “Damnation, woman, it is all I can give you.”

  “I will not let you have that poem. Not if there is the least chance it can hurt Richard’s reputation. My brother was an honorable man and I must protect his honor now that he is no longer here to do it.”

  “Bloody hell, madam wife, you will do as you are told.”

  “The war is over, Graystone. No good purpose can be served by showing you that poem. It is mine and I intend to keep it. I am never going to let anyone see it, especially not someone like you who believes Richard was guilty of treason.”

  “Madam,” Harry said in a soft, deadly voice, “you will do as I command. Bring me your brother’s poem. Now.”

  “Never. And if you try to take it from me, I swear I shall burn it. I would rather destroy it, even though it is stained with his life’s blood, than risk allowing you to use it to further tarnish his memory.” Augusta whirled and fled from the library.

  She heard the muffled crash of shattering glass just as she slammed the door shut behind her.

  Harry had thrown something very heavy and very fragile against the library wall.

  Stunned at his loss of control, Harry gazed in fury at the sparkling shards of broken glass. They glittered in the sunlight like the paste jewels Augusta wore with such pride.

  He could not believe he had allowed her to drive him to this.

  The woman had bewitched him. One moment he lusted for her with a
n outrageous passion; the next he was consumed with gratitude as he watched her slowly but surely befriend his daughter. In yet another instant she would make him laugh or drive him to distraction with her unpredictable actions.

  And now she had finally brought him to the jagged edge of a seething jealousy that was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

  And the worst of it was that Harry knew he was jealous of a dead man. Richard Ballinger. Bold, daring, reckless, very likely traitorous Richard.

  Augusta’s brother, a man who, even if he were still alive, would not be a sexual rival. But a man who, emtombed and enshrined as the last male issue of the dashing Northumberland Ballingers, occupied a place in Augusta’s heart that Harry knew was forever closed to him.

  Locked in the safe, untouchable realm of the beyond, Richard would live forever in Augusta’s imagination as the ideal Northumberland Ballinger, the glorious older brother whose honor and reputation she would defend to the last.

  “Goddamn you to hell, you damn Northumberland bastard.” Harry stalked back to his chair and threw himself down into it. “Were you still alive, you son of a bitch, I believe I would call you out.”

  And thereby sever whatever fragile bond I do have with my new wife and cause her to hate me forever, Harry reminded himself bitterly. He might as well confront the logic of the matter. There was no doubt but that if the situation were put to the test, Augusta would side with her brother against her husband.

  As she had proven only a few minutes ago.

  “Bastard,” Harry said again, unable to think of any other word to describe his ghostly rival for Augusta’s affections.

  How does one fight a ghost?

  Harry sprawled in the chair behind the desk and forced himself to contemplate the disastrous situation from every angle.

  He had to admit that he had handled the thing wrong right from the start. He should never had summoned Augusta to the library with such urgency. Nor should he have ordered her to turn over the poem. If he had kept his wits about him, he would have done it all much differently.

  But the truth was he had not been thinking all that clearly. After Meredith had casually dropped a mention of Richard Ballinger’s poem about webs and spiders, Harry had been swamped with a violent need to get his hands on it.

  Harry thought he had convinced both himself and Sheldrake that he had put the war and all its horror behind him. But he acknowledged now that he would never be able to forget the man called the Spider. Too many men had died because of the bastard. Too many risks had been taken by good men such as Peter Sheldrake. Too many battlefield losses had been caused by the traitor.

  And the knowledge that the Spider had very likely been English had only made the frustration and anger all the more searing for Harry.

  Harry knew he had had a reputation for going about his intelligence work with cold blood and even icier logic. But the truth was that it had been the only way he had been able to perform his grim tasks. If he had allowed his emotions to interfere, he would have been paralyzed. Each move and countermove, each decision, each estimate or analysis would have been skewed by the gut-destroying fear of making a mistake.

  Cold, clear logic had been the only way to carry on. But beneath the veneer of ice, the anger and frustration had raged. And for Harry, because of the role he had been obliged to play, most of that dark fury and desire for revenge had been focused on his opposite number in the field, the Spider.

  Harry’s talent for logic and a desire to get on with his life had enabled him to put aside his desire for revenge in the months since Waterloo. Knowing that there would most likely never be answers to the tormenting questions he had often lain awake asking, Harry had accepted the inevitable. In the haze of war, many facts were forever buried, as he had explained to Augusta on the day of the picnic. The true identity of the Spider had appeared to be one of those lost facts.

  But now, because of a chance remark from his daughter, a fresh clue to the Spider’s identity might have been unearthed. Richard Ballinger’s poem about the spider and its web might mean everything or nothing. Either way, Harry knew he had to examine it. He could not rest until he had seen the damned thing.

  But he should have approached the matter more cautiously he chided himself. The present unpleasant situation was entirely his own fault. He had been so bloody anxious to see the poem, so certain that Augusta would obey him in the matter, that he had not stopped to think about where her true loyalty might lie.

  He considered his options.

  If he were to go upstairs and force Augusta to turn the poem over to him, Harry knew he would surely lose whatever tender feelings she had for him. She might never forgive him.

  On the other hand, the knowledge that her loyalty toward her brother’s memory was stronger than her new loyalties as a wife was eating at Harry’s insides.

  He slammed his fist against the arm of his chair and got to his feet. He had told Augusta on the journey down from London that he did not particularly care about love. Loyalty was the thing he demanded from a wife. She had agreed to give it to him. She had agreed to fulfill her duties as a wife.

  She could bloody well do precisely that.

  Harry made his decision. Augusta had issued enough challenges of her own. It was time he issued one to her.

  He strode across the Oriental carpet, opened the library door, and went out into the tiled hall. He stalked up the red-carpeted staircase to the next floor and went down the corridor to the door of Augusta’s bedchamber.

  He opened the door without bothering to knock and walked into the room.

  Augusta, seated at her small gilt escritoire, was busy sniffling into a lacy handkerchief. She started when the door opened and looked up immediately. Her eyes flashed with fear and fury and unshed tears.

  The Northumberland Ballingers are a bloody damn emotional lot, Harry thought with an inner sigh.

  “What are you doing here, Graystone? If you have come to wrest Richard’s poem from me by force, you can forget it. I have hidden it very carefully.”

  “I assure you, madam, it is highly unlikely you could think of a hiding place that I would not find, were I to try.” Harry closed the bedchamber door very softly and stood facing her. His booted feet were braced slightly apart as he prepared to do battle with his wife.

  “Are you threatening me, my lord?”

  “Not at all.” She looked so thoroughly miserable, so tremulously proud, so very hurt, that Harry momentarily felt himself weaken. “It need not be like this between us, my love.”

  “Do not call me your love,” she spat. “You do not believe in love, if you will recall.”

  Harry exhaled heavily and walked across the bedchamber to Augusta’s dressing table. He stood gazing meditatively at the array of crystal containers, silver-backed brushes, and other delightfully frivolous, delightfully feminine items arranged on it.

  He thought briefly of how much he enjoyed walking into this bedchamber unannounced through the connecting door and catching Augusta seated in front of the looking glass. He liked finding her dressed in one of her frilly wrappers with a nonsensical little lace cap perched on her chestnut curls. He took pleasure in the intimacy of the situation and in the blush his arrival always brought to her cheeks.

  Now she had gone from thinking of him as a lover to believing him to be her enemy.

  Harry turned away from the dressing table and looked at Augusta, who watched him with a deep wariness.

  “I do not believe this is a good time to discuss your notion of love,” Harry said.

  “Really, my lord? What shall we discuss, then?”

  “Your notion of loyalty will do.”

  She blinked uncertainly and looked even more wary. “What are you talking about, Graystone?”

  “You vowed your loyalty to me on our wedding day, Augusta. Or have you forgotten so soon?”

  “No, my lord, but—”

  “And on our first night together in this very bedchamber, you stood over there by the
window and swore that you would fulfill your duty as a wife.”

  “Harry, that is not fair.”

  “What is not fair? To remind you of your vows? I will admit, I did not think it would be necessary to do so. I believed you would honor them, you see.”

  “But this is a different matter entirely,” she protested. “This involves my brother. Surely you can understand that.”

  Harry nodded sympathetically. “I understand that you are torn between your loyalty to your brother’s memory and your loyalty to your husband. It is a difficult situation for you and I am more sorry than I can say that I have caused your dilemma. Life is rarely simple or evenhanded in a moment of crisis.”

  “Damn you, Harry.” She clenched her fists in her lap and looked at him with eyes that glistened.

  “I know how you must feel. And you have every right. For my part, I apologize for having sprung my demand upon you with so little consideration. I ask your forgiveness for the summary fashion in which I ordered you to produce the poem. I can only say on my own behalf that the matter is of some import to me.”

  “It is a matter of some import to me, also,” she tossed back furiously.

  “Obviously. And you have apparently made your decision. You have made it very plain that protecting your brother’s memory is more important than doing your duty as a wife. Your loyalty goes first to the last of the Northumberland Ballingers. Your lawful husband will only get what is left over.”

  “My God, Graystone, you are cruel.” Augusta got to her feet clutching the handkerchief. She turned her back to him and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Because I ask that you obey me in this matter? Because as your husband I ask for your full loyalty, not just some small portion of it?”

  “Are duty and loyalty all you can think about, Graystone?”

  “Not entirely, but right now they appear to be paramount.”

  “And what about your duty and loyalty to your wife?”

  “I have given you my word not to discuss your brother’s wartime activities, whatever they may have been, with anyone. That is all I can promise, Augusta.”