Enveloping Henrietta in an enthusiastic hug, Amy all but dragged her down the folding steps of the travelling chaise. Tugging her towards the front door, Amy exclaimed, ‘How are you? Did you have a frightful trip from London? We were so worried about you! Do you want to freshen up? Just wait until you hear the plans for the weekend!’
Henrietta hugged Amy back, made the requisite number of delighted squealing noises, and submitted to being tugged.
‘Where is Richard?’ she asked, as a footman bowed them into the front hall. The footman, like everyone else in the house, was a devoted participant in her brother’s undercover activities. No one was employed at Selwick Hall who had not been proven entirely trustworthy. A mistake in judgment could prove fatal. It had, after all, been a French operative, posing as a lady’s maid, who had caused the demise of one of her brother’s closest friends. ‘Doesn’t he love me anymore?’
‘Oh, he’ll be along,’ said Amy, helping to divest Henrietta of her bonnet and shawl. ‘He was supervising the footmen setting up the targets and climbing walls for Saturday. You won’t believe all the wonderful things we have planned!’
Targets? Climbing walls? That sounded ominous. Henrietta didn’t mind aiming at targets – in fact, there was a certain large, blond target she wouldn’t much mind taking a shot at about now – but wall climbing? She couldn’t even climb a tree. And those had branches.
Putting alarming thoughts of physical exertion aside, Henrietta broke into Amy’s spate of words to edge towards what she really wanted to know. ‘Who else will be here this weekend?’
Amy abandoned alarming explanations about walls and steel picks. ‘There’s Mrs Cathcart,’ she said, naming a cheerful widow of middle years and ample proportions, who had made her debut with Lady Uppington in the latter’s mythical youth, ‘and Miss Grey…’
‘Miss Who?’
‘Grey,’ said Amy, herding Henrietta into a small drawing room at the front of the house. ‘She was a governess. And then the Tholmondelay twins – I know they haven’t a brain between them, but Richard is quite taken with the idea of identical agents.’
‘Is that all of us?’ asked Henrietta, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. The Tholmondelays, pronounced, in the mysterious way of English nomenclature, Frumley, were not the men she had in mind.
‘Geoff was supposed to join us, but he was unavoidably detained.’ Amy rolled her eyes. ‘Can’t you guess by whom? Oh, and then there’s Miles, of course.’
‘Of course,’ echoed Henrietta, dropping down onto a blue-striped settee. ‘Is he here yet?’
‘Miles?’ Amy had to stop and think for a moment. ‘Not yet. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Richard wanted his help with the ropes course.’
Ropes course? Henrietta didn’t even want to think about it. Wasn’t being a spy supposed to be a mental exercise, involving deep ratiocination? Ratiocination she could do; ropes were another matter entirely.
‘Is there any tea?’ she asked hopefully.
‘No, but I can ring for some,’ replied Amy. ‘I’ll have Cook send up some biscuits, too. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘We had a light meal at the Greyhound while we were waiting for the chaise to be repaired.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Amy. ‘The others should be arriving tomorrow morning, just in time for the seminar on French geography. Did you know that Richard knows more than fifteen escape routes to Calais? After that, I’ll be coaching everyone on local dialects. My favourite is the Marseillaise fishwife.’
‘The Marseillaise fishwife?’ Henrietta echoed, looking longingly at the door in the hopes a tea tray would materialise.
‘You get to screech a lot for that one,’ explained Amy enthusiastically, checking herself momentarily as she added, ‘Although the smell is dreadful. Oh, Stiles! Tea for Lady Henrietta?’
Henrietta could see why Amy had ended on an interrogative. Richard’s butler had clearly already entered into the spirit of the weekend. He was wearing a striped jersey and a black beret, and had slung an odiferous necklace of onions around his neck. He looked far more likely to hit someone over the head with a bottle of Bordeaux in a rough seaside tavern than carry in a tea tray.
‘Eeef eet eez posseeblah, madame,’ he hissed in an impenetrable accent that the Frenchest of Frenchmen wouldn’t be able to understand, flung his onions more securely over his shoulder, and stalked out.
Henrietta’s incredulous gaze met Amy’s and the two burst into laughter. It had seemed to Richard a fine idea to incorporate an out-of-work actor into the League of the Purple Gentian, until he had realised there was one slight hitch. Stiles had a good deal of difficulty divorcing role from reality. This had, occasionally, worked in Richard’s favour, but it was very hard to discern who Stiles was going to be from one moment to the next. He had a marked fondness for tragic Shakespearean heroes of the toga-wearing sort. There had been a brief, but lamentable, Macbeth phase, involving haggis on the tea tray and bagpipes at odd hours of the night.
‘Even with the onions, it’s an improvement on his last incarnation,’ pointed out Amy cheerfully.
‘I don’t know,’ mused Henrietta. ‘I rather liked the pirate impression. The parrot was darling.’
‘Oh, no, you missed the last one – he was a highwayman for a full two weeks. He put up wanted posters all over the house, and took to calling himself the Silver Shadow.’
‘Why silver?’
‘The dye from his octogenarian phases hadn’t grown out yet. We wouldn’t have minded so much if he hadn’t kept insisting that we stand and deliver.’
‘Deliver what?’ asked Henrietta practically.
‘Our money or our lives, of course. On the bright side’ – Amy’s big blue eyes took on a reminiscent gleam – ‘it did keep the house clear of guests during our honeymoon.’
Henrietta adored her sister-in-law and her brother and had done all she could to facilitate their nuptials (since Richard had, of course, made a proper muddle of it), but in her present mood, honeymoons were the last thing she wanted to think about. After the glorious rapture of Friday night, Henrietta’s own romance had taken a rapid turn for the worse.
On Saturday, Henrietta had put on her most becoming frock, arranged herself attractively on the settee in the morning room, and waited for Miles to call. She had, over a sleepless night spent mostly in rapturous reliving of the Kiss, gone over Amy’s spying advice, and drawn up a comprehensive plan to pin down Vaughn and ferret out his spy ring. She knew Miles would initially be difficult – he tended to be a little overprotective where she was concerned – but had no doubt he could be talked around. After that, maybe a walk in the park together, strolling among the fragrant spring flowers, her hand tucked away in the crook of his arm, while he soulfully recited poetry…all right, maybe not the poetry. Henrietta wasn’t quite infatuated enough to abandon reality entirely. Besides, she liked Miles the way he was, even if his conversation did tend more towards horses than heroic couplets.
There was just one slight problem. Miles didn’t appear.
Miles didn’t appear Saturday, and he didn’t appear Sunday, and he didn’t appear Monday, even though Henrietta cleverly spent the entire day out shopping, on the grounds that the moment she happened to be out was the moment he would choose to call. He didn’t.
‘Are you sure no one called?’ Henrietta asked Winthrop, just a little shrilly. It had, after all, been three days at that point. ‘Perhaps someone could have come up to the door and left again without your seeing? Are you quite sure?’
Winthrop was quite sure.
By Wednesday, there was only one possible solution. Miles had to be ill. In fact, he had better be very, very ill. Henrietta delegated her maid, Annie, who was niece to Miles’s Mrs Migworth, to discover the state of affairs at chez Dorrington. Annie, face flushed from running, returned to report that Mr Dorrington was quite well, in fine form, in fact. Mr Downey, Annie added, blushing, was also recovering nicely, and looked to be about his duties withi
n the week.
Henrietta suspected that Annie was sweet on Downey. She considered delivering a pithy warning on the perfidy of men, but didn’t want to disillusion Annie. Annie would find out on her own soon enough, when Downey kissed her as though he never wanted to let her out of his arms, and then didn’t bloody call for five blasted days, while she sat there in emotional agony waiting for a knock on the door that never came and her heart slowly turned to a leaden lump of bleak despair within her chest. Or something like that.
‘He may have just been busy,’ suggested Charlotte.
‘He wasn’t good enough for you,’ pronounced Penelope.
‘Bleargh,’ said Henrietta.
Clearly, the kiss had meant far less to him than it had to her. Henrietta could accept that (she told herself, gritting her teeth). But to kiss her and then disappear for an entire week? Did she mean that little to him after eighteen years? One would think that he owed her some sort of explanation, even if it was only one of those hideous speeches that began with ‘You are a lovely person,’ and inevitably ended with ‘Someday, you’ll find someone who really loves you.’ At least that would show that he held her in enough regard to take the time to crush her heart in person. But, no, he couldn’t even bother to do that.
Even a note would have been preferable.
‘Oh, there Miles is!’ exclaimed Amy, pointing out the window. A smart curricle and four drew into the little circle of light before the door. As Henrietta watched, Miles handed the reins down to a groom and swung easily off the box. ‘I’ll just go tell Richard. Would you mind playing hostess for a moment?’
Assuming that the answer would be positive – and why, after all, should Amy assume otherwise? – Amy darted off before Henrietta could answer.
The long delay in Croydon had provided Henrietta ample time to resolve how she would behave upon seeing Miles. Cool and distant, Henrietta reminded herself as she rose slowly from the settee. Icy elegance. Impenetrable calm.
She was just making her cool, icy, and dignified way across the threshold of the drawing room, when Miles bounded energetically through the front door.
He saw her, and checked himself mid-stride. ‘Uh, Hen,’ he said, with the trapped look of a fox run to earth. ‘Hello.’
Cool and distant ceased to be a possibility.
Henrietta marched up to Miles and looked him dangerously in the eye. ‘Do you have something you would like to say to me?’
‘Your hair looks nice today?’ Miles ventured.
Henrietta’s lips clamped together. ‘That,’ she snapped, ‘was not the right answer.’
Turning on her heel, she stalked off.
Miles clamped down on the urge to go after her. If he did that, he would defeat the entire purpose of this past week’s exercise in absence. At first, he had meant to go see Henrietta. But Downey had been feverish on Saturday, which provided an excellent excuse for inaction. By Sunday, Downey’s temperature was down and there was no impediment in the way of Miles’s trotting straight over to Uppington House – except that he couldn’t figure out what to say. The ‘You’re a lovely person and someday you’ll find someone who really loves you’ speech just wouldn’t work for Henrietta. He thought of sending a note, but what would it say? ‘Unavoidably detained; sorry about that kiss. Miles.’ Somehow, he didn’t see that being awfully well received, either.
The more he had stayed away, the better an idea it had seemed. After all, if he didn’t encounter Henrietta, there was no danger of his libido betraying his brain and engaging in a repeat of Friday night’s indiscretion. One kiss was bad enough, but two? He really couldn’t explain away two. Hell, he couldn’t even explain away the one, which brought him back to his original problem of not knowing what to say to Henrietta.
He knew he should have stayed in London.
‘What the devil did you say to Henrietta?’ Richard strode into the front hall, absently rubbing his arm. ‘She nearly knocked me over on the garden path.’
‘Something about her hair,’ Miles hedged.
Richard shrugged. The ways of little sisters were indeed a mystery no grown man could hope to plumb. ‘How about a glass of claret and something to eat, while you tell me the news from London?’
‘Excellent idea,’ said Miles with relief, matching his stride to his friend’s as they moved in the direction of the dining room. A glass of wine, some sustenance, and a soothing conversation about homicidal French agents. It was exactly what he needed to keep his mind off the far more alarming topic of a certain irate female.
Thwack!
Both men started at the sound of stone crashing against stone. It had come from the direction of the garden.
Richard frowned at Miles. ‘What in the blazes did you say about her hair?’
‘Owwwwww…’
Henrietta clutched her sore shoulder and glowered at the shattered bust of Achilles. Pieces of his helmet littered the garden path, his nose was wedged up against a hedge, and one large, staring eye had rolled under a rosebush. The pillar on which he had perched lay on its side, having dragged half a rosebush down with it. And just who had decided the edge of the rose garden would be a good place to put a top-heavy bust? Oh, goodness, that hurt. She supposed it could have been worse. It could have fallen on her foot.
Henrietta dropped down on a nearby bench before she could cause more devastation.
‘I am a walking disaster,’ she muttered.
She really hadn’t handled that very well, had she? When she saw Miles, she was going to put him in his place by treating him with icy dignity, not storm out like a demented two-year-old on a rampage. Like a destructive two-year-old on a rampage, she amended, glancing at the remains of the bust. She would have to apologise to Richard for the decimation of his garden ornament tomorrow.
He did deserve it, though; no one could deny that. Miles, that was, not Achilles. Of course, if there were a bust of Cupid anywhere within reach, Henrietta might be tempted to do violence to it. It really didn’t seem quite fair of Cupid – or Destiny, or Fate, or whoever was in charge of these sorts of things – to place love blissfully, gloriously within her reach and then yank it away, jeering, ‘Ha, ha, thought you had a chance, did you?’
Henrietta yanked a leaf off a neighbouring bush and started to shred it.
Blaming Cupid didn’t solve anything. Miles owed her an explanation. Not because he had kissed her – with two older brothers, Henrietta had grown up knowing quite well that a kiss was seldom a promise – but because they were, or at least they had been, friends. Friends didn’t kiss friends and then go off for seven days. Friends didn’t kiss friends and then try to brush them off with weak compliments. Your hair looks nice today? Ha! Did he really think he could placate her with that?
‘What sort of a ninny does he think I am?’ Henrietta grumbled to the quiet night air.
Only the crickets answered, with sympathetic clicking noises. Henrietta didn’t have the heart to tell them it was a rhetorical question.
Around her, the garden was dark and still, silent as only the country could be. The scent of the lavender and hyssop that bordered the path hung heavy in the air, warring with the heady aroma of the roses that had been trained over a trellis to form an arch above. Henrietta sat there for a very long time, shredding leaves and brooding, while the marble seat grew cold and clammy under her twill skirt.
She was in the midst of a long and complicated conversation in her head with Miles, and was just up to the point where Miles confessed that he had only stayed away because he was paralyzed with fear by the strength of his own emotions for her (this followed the equally long and complicated conversation in which Miles caddishly declared that kisses were commonplace, and Henrietta blistered his ears with a scathing tirade rivalled in length and eloquence only by a Ciceronian oration), when she heard the sound of a foot stepping on a fallen twig just outside her little bower.
Right. Henrietta sat up straighter on her little bench. If that was Miles come to find her, she was going
to tell him exactly what he could do with his meaningless compliments and equally meaningless kisses.
A second footfall followed the first, and a dark shadow paused at the opening of the path.
It was not Miles.
Henrietta instinctively shrank back into her bower as a hooded figure hovered in front of the trellis, a tart rejoinder frozen unuttered on her lips. In profile, the overhang of the hood seemed to encase only empty air; beneath the long robe that fell straight to the ground, sleeves tucked one into the other, there was nothing to suggest a human form. The apparition’s coarse woollen robe swept the stone path with a low swishing noise, as the hooded figure swivelled in the direction of the house.
Henrietta’s hands clenched around the marble seat of the bench, little goose prickles running up her arm. In the darkness, the breeze that had seemed so pleasant before turned chill, the clammy chill of the grave.
Swish, brush. Swish, brush.
Slowly, deliberately, the dark figure paced up the path towards the house, its tasselled belt swinging with each measured movement. It glided smoothly up the three shallow steps to the veranda, pausing once again before the French doors to take stock of the terrain before lifting one robed arm to the door handle. Quietly, seamlessly, the hooded figure slid into the empty drawing room, drawing the door soundlessly shut behind.
Henrietta sat frozen on her bench, eyes fixed on empty veranda.
The Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey had just stolen into her brother’s house.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Is there really a Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey?’
The vicar grinned at me as he dumped a very unclerical portion of gin into his glass. ‘Has someone been bending your ear with that old yarn?’