A Spy's Devotion Read online

  “Can’t you make it higher, Molly?” Phoebe’s voice carried through her open doorway.

  “I’m trying, miss,” Molly’s patient voice answered.

  “See how flat it is? I look like I just came in out of the rain.”

  Phoebe could occasionally be petulant with the servants and her parents, but with Julia she was invariably affectionate and warm. Julia admired her cousin’s ability to make conversation without being intimidated by even the most formidable military officer or dowager. Phoebe’s verbosity and easy banter made her a favorite with many. She did perhaps go a bit too far at times with her talkativeness and drew a muttered “Impertinent girl” occasionally, which Phoebe never seemed to hear.

  A knock came at Julia’s open door. Sarah Peck stood at the threshold.

  “Come in, Sarah.” Julia had long since stopped calling her former governess by her surname. She was too near Julia’s own age to take offense, and Sarah had become Julia and Phoebe’s companion since they no longer needed a governess. Julia and Sarah were of similar natures, and Sarah was also an orphan, brought up to educate others.

  Sarah stepped in and shut the door behind her. Her pretty face bore a sad, drawn look and an almost wild glint in her green eyes. Her reddish-blond hair was pulled back away from her face.

  “What is it?”

  “I am departing tomorrow, to go to my new situation.”

  “What? You are leaving?” Julia had thought the Wilherns would keep Sarah on as a companion for Julia and Phoebe, at least a while longer.

  Sarah nodded. “A situation in Sussex Mrs. Wilhern found for me, with four boys and two girls.” A tear slipped down Sarah’s cheek.

  Julia stood and placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Oh, Sarah.”

  Sarah sniffed and fumbled to reach her handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

  Julia tried to think of some words of comfort. “I shall miss you terribly, and I know Phoebe will too. Please do write to us. We will write too, if you wish it.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes, I thank you for that.” She looked Julia in the eye, grabbing her forearm and leaning close. Her voice strained and insistent, even strident, she said, “Julia, you must marry.”

  Julia was taken aback by her sudden entreaty, as well as by the intensity in Sarah’s red-rimmed eyes.

  “I will do my best, Sarah, but you know we always promised each other never to marry unless there was a strong attachment.”

  “Who was that man I saw mooning over you two nights ago?”

  Julia blinked, trying to think whom she meant.

  “I saw a young gentleman staring at you all night. He did not ask you to dance, but you gave him no encouragement at all. I believe his name is Dinklage.”

  “Daniel Dinklage? He couldn’t be interested in me. Everyone knows his mother intends him to marry well. He might be interested in Phoebe—she has twenty thousand pounds, but I have no—”

  “Listen to me.” Sarah tightened her grip on Julia’s arm. “He isn’t interested in Phoebe. He’s interested in you. His eyes drank you in every moment of the evening. You should secure his affections, and as soon as possible.”

  Secure his affections? “I hardly know the man.”

  “Julia, do you want to become like me?” Her voice lowered to a rough whisper. “A governess? Torn away from the family you have come to love, every few years sent to live with new strangers, with no real ties to anyone?” Tears swam in her eyes, and her chin trembled. She gave Julia’s arm a little shake. “Make as advantageous a match as is in your power.”

  “Sarah!” Julia blinked, hardly able to believe her friend’s mercenary plea.

  “Marry any gentleman rather than become a governess. To be a governess is a living death, like being in the grave and yet alive. It is always looking at love, observing it, but never able to touch it.” She covered her mouth as a quiet sob escaped her.

  “Oh, Sarah.” Julia groped for the right words. “God will never forsake you. You must believe that. Something good will come to you. You are a commendable, faithful, handsome young woman. You never know what your future may hold.” Julia grasped Sarah’s trembling hand.

  “No, you know it isn’t likely . . . that I shall ever have a family of my own, that anyone would ever want to marry . . . a governess.” Sarah was crying in earnest now, her head down and face covered with her handkerchief.

  Sarah looked up, her face red and blotchy. “You must marry, Julia. Promise me.”

  Julia didn’t know what to say. She wanted so much to ease her friend’s distress. But with such a tiny inheritance, Julia knew her prospects were not promising. Still, she had never believed she was in much danger of being forced to earn her own way. She was part of the family. She had always imagined that, if no one ever sought her hand, Phoebe would invite her to live with her whenever she married. After all, Phoebe had often asserted that she couldn’t do without her.

  “Promise me,” Sarah demanded. “If a gentleman shows interest in you, you will not discourage him. You will do what you can to ensure his attachment to you. And if he is not unworthy, you will accept him.”

  “Of course, if I am able to love him. But, dear Sarah, please don’t worry about me. And please don’t cry.”

  “I must finish packing.” Sarah wiped her face and clutched her handkerchief tightly as she raised and lowered her fist to emphasize her words. “Don’t forget Mr. Dinklage, Julia. You must encourage his attention tomorrow night at the ball. Promise me you will.”

  She’d hardly given Mr. Dinklage a second thought. He was painfully shy and not very handsome. However, he would inherit a fine estate in Derbyshire when he came of age.

  “I will try, Sarah. Now don’t think of me. All will be well.”

  Sarah, with one last backward glance, left the room.

  As everyone knew, Julia would receive only 230 pounds upon her marriage. With such a small dowry, Julia was well aware, if anyone married her, it would be for love alone.

  At least she’d never had to be on her guard against fortune hunters.

  But Mr. Dinklage . . . he was not abhorrent. He was barely taller than herself, and with his hazel eyes and receding brown hair, he wasn’t particularly handsome. But that shouldn’t matter. If a person was kind, respectable, and sensible, they tended to look the handsomer for it.

  Did Mr. Dinklage have those qualities of kindness, respectability, and good sense? He was gentleman-like enough, as far as she had noticed, but was he sensible? The fact that Sarah had caught him “mooning” over Julia, a girl with very little dowry, did not bode well for him being sensible, she was sorry to say.

  A heaviness came over her as she thought of poor Sarah, so distraught, leaving them to go live with strangers. Truly, being a governess was almost worse than being a scullery maid. At least a house servant could commiserate with her fellow servants, could have friends. A governess, brought up in polite society with the benefits of education, having lived a life of leisure, must live amongst a family not her own, unable to mix with either the family or the servants, as she is beneath the family’s station but above the servants’. She is alone, and there is little chance her situation would change.

  She understood Sarah’s urgent pleas for her to encourage the attentions of Mr. Dinklage. But it felt wrong, low and common, to try and secure a gentleman’s affections when she felt no real affection for him. But perhaps when she got to know Mr. Dinklage better, her fondness for him would be forthcoming. And besides, she had promised Sarah she would at least try.

  She would not see Mr. Dinklage tonight at the Smallwoods’ dinner party, but she felt certain he would be invited to the ball tomorrow night at the Caldwells’.

  It should be an interesting ball.

  Nicholas headed toward Whitehall and the War Office. He brushed his hand over his coat and the inside pocket where he had tucked away the mysterious diary. It was a fine April morning, and he decided to walk instead of riding. The air was crisp and light,
and after his meeting with McDowell at the War Office, he could go see his old school chum, John Wilson, who had started a charity mission near Bishopsgate Street. There was no better man than Wilson.

  A little boy darted out from a side alley. “Sir, won’t you let me show you these elegant dueling pistols my father asked me to sell for ’im? Ain’t another pair like ’em in all of London.”

  The boy appeared to be about eight years old, with dirty brown hair that had been cut unevenly. His cheeks were chapped, and his eyes were red. His ragged clothes hung on his bony frame, and his bare toes were black with filth from the street. He motioned with his hand and his head for Nicholas to follow him back into the alley from which he had come.

  “I’ve no interest in dueling pistols,” Nicholas told him. “But when was the last time anyone fed you?” He began calculating how much money he had on his person. His own father would disapprove of giving money to beggars, but how could Nicholas turn away from such obvious need? He dug into his pocket and brought out several coins.

  “Come. I’ll show you the pistols.” The little boy continued to motion him toward the alley.

  While Nicholas looked down at the coins he planned to give the boy, a blur alerted him to something coming toward his face. Before he had time to react, a thudding blow connected with his forehead. His vision went black, the vague sound of coins spilling from his hand and clattering onto the street ringing in his ears.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rough hands grabbed him by the arms. Nicholas blinked away the darkness. Two tall men with dark handkerchiefs over the lower half of their faces were dragging him toward the alley.

  His vision was still blurry. Nicholas kept his eyes mostly closed, calculating what he could do to inflict the most pain on them and escape.

  His attackers obviously thought he was unconscious. The first man held a block of wood in one hand, which appeared to be the weapon he had used to hit Nicholas in the head. Nicholas couldn’t see the other one, as he was dragging Nicholas backward down the alley, holding him under the arms.

  Using the element of surprise, he kicked the block of wood out of the hand of the first man and then kicked him, hard, in the groin.

  Nicholas jumped to his feet and landed a blow to the other man’s nose. That man drew a knife. Holding his nose with one hand, he slashed at Nicholas with the other.

  Nicholas anticipated the move and sidestepped just in time to escape a stab to the midsection. But in jumping out of the way, he stepped on the first man, who was lying on the ground, moaning.

  The downed man grabbed Nicholas’s ankle, throwing him off balance. As the second man lunged at him again with the knife, Nicholas fell flat on his back in the alley, banging his head.

  Two gray-green eyes loomed over him as the second man held the knife to Nicholas’s throat.

  Nicholas reached up and yanked the handkerchief off the man’s face, revealing snarling lips and even, white teeth.

  The man’s eyes widened, and he fumbled to pull the handkerchief back up over his nose and mouth.

  Nicholas seized the hand that held the knife and twisted the man’s wrist as hard as he could, at the same time throwing his opponent to the ground and then rolling over on top of him. The knife fell from his loosened grip as the man cried out in pain. Nicholas pinned his foe’s wrists to the ground.

  Shuffling footsteps were coming toward him. A boot slammed into his ribs and then shoved him onto his back.

  The first man, breathing hard and with sweat pouring down his forehead, stood over Nicholas. Before Nicholas could move out of the way, the second man brought his foot down on Nicholas’s wounded left shoulder, digging in with his heel.

  Nicholas cried out. The pain sent his vision spinning and growing black as the man continued to press into the very spot where the bullet had penetrated his shoulder.

  Nicholas’s cry of pain turned into a roar of anger. He grabbed the man’s foot and pushed up with all his might. But as he raised his good shoulder off the ground, the second man squatted beside him and slammed him back down. He reached inside Nicholas’s coat, into his breast pocket. Then the two of them ran away.

  The attack was over as suddenly as it had begun.

  Nicholas lay on his back in the alley, breathless with pain. He felt inside his breast pocket with his right hand.

  The diary was gone.

  Nicholas’s head pounded, and his shoulder felt as if he’d been shot all over again, but his arms and legs still worked. He clenched his fists, staring down the alley the men had run down. There was no sign of them. No doubt they were long gone.

  Nicholas must get out of the filthy alleyway. He raised his shoulders off the ground, but the sharp pain in his shoulder caused him to gasp. He ignored the pain and sat up.

  “Sir, are you hurt?” A man hurried toward him. “I saw the whole thing from my apothecary shop across the street. Those filthy beggars. Who should think such foul fellows could be lurking around this part of London?”

  Nicholas accepted the stranger’s offer to help him get to his feet. The pain in his shoulder was intense, like a fiery poker stabbing him. Had all the mending in his shoulder been undone? He suspected if he looked inside his coat he’d see the wound open and bleeding again.

  It was as if the miscreants had known of his shoulder wound and had purposely attacked him there. But how could they have known? And how did they know about the diary? Stealing the diary was obviously the object of their attack. They hadn’t demanded money, and they could have killed him if they’d wanted to.

  “If you can make it across the street to my shop, you can rest yourself there awhile.” The man fetched Nicholas’s hat and handed it to him.

  Nicholas took a few steps. “I am very grateful for your help. I think I am well enough now, and I have an appointment that I must keep. But thank you for your kind offer.” Nicholas looked him in the eye. “May I have your name?”

  “Adam Brewer, apothecary. That is my shop there”—he pointed across the street—“where my son is my apprentice.”

  “Nicholas Langdon.”

  “Imagine, a gentleman being attacked in the streets of London. What is this country coming to, I ask you? A crying shame, it is. If my son were here, he’d help you look for the brigands, but I sent him on an errand not ten minutes ago.”

  Nicholas smiled at the man’s good-natured fussing. “It would be fruitless to try to catch my assailants now. I must see to my business. Good day, Mr. Brewer. And thank you again.”

  “Most readily, most readily. I shall keep a sharp eye out for those blighters, you can be sure!”

  Nicholas went on his way, but his stomach sank at the thought of having to tell McDowell at the War Office that he had lost the diary. If only Beechum had told him how important the book was. But the only thing he had said was, “Give this to Garrison Greenfield at the Horse Guards . . . Whitehall, London.” Those were his last words. After he’d handed Nicholas the diary, he had slipped into unconsciousness and died a few hours later.

  When Nicholas reached the War Office, his shoulder still burned ferociously and his head throbbed. But he forced himself to concentrate on his task. This had now become a more serious matter than he had imagined.

  He was taken to McDowell’s office, where the young man, near Nicholas’s age, stood and greeted him. Philip McDowell had always been an amiable, but not overly talkative, gentleman. He had sharp blue eyes, which Nicholas remembered, and a trim, reddish-brown beard, which was new.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Nicholas began, “but I am sorry to say, I have bad news.” He swallowed and took a breath. “I was attacked on the way here. I was bringing you a diary given to me by Richard Beechum just after I was wounded in the Peninsula. Two men stole the diary out of my coat pocket.” He quickly added, “But I copied the entire diary, and the copy is at my father’s house in Mayfair.”

  Both men had remained standing, and now McDowell stared hard at Nicholas. “This is serious indeed. Did you see
your assailants’ faces?”

  “I saw one man’s face, but he was not familiar to me. They wore handkerchiefs over their faces. Both had brown hair, and one of them had green eyes.”

  “If they weren’t after your money and only stole the diary, they must have known already of the diary’s existence.”

  “Exactly,” Nicholas agreed. “I am afraid I mentioned the diary to a friend at a party I attended two nights ago.”

  “Whose party? What friend?” McDowell seemed to lean toward him, his expression intense.

  “At the time, I was completely unaware the diary contained anything out of the ordinary or was anything other than a man’s war diary. Beechum, the man who gave me the book, was a stranger to me. We met in the infirmary, as we had both just been wounded. His injuries were more serious than mine, and he asked me to take the diary to a man named Garrison Greenfield. I assumed he was a relative or friend. Beechum was barely able to talk, so I did not question him further. Then he died.”

  “I understand.” McDowell nodded for him to go on.

  “I have been convalescing at home for the past two months, and my first entry back in society was two nights ago at a small party at Mr. Robert Wilhern’s home in Grosvenor Square. I mentioned to Mr. Hugh Edgerton that I had an errand, to deliver a diary that was given to me by Lieutenant Richard Beechum to a Mr. Garrison Greenfield. Had I any inkling that the diary contained sensitive or important information, I certainly never would have mentioned it, even to an old school chum like Edgerton.” Nicholas felt his face grow warm as he realized what a blunder he had made . . . a potentially serious blunder.

  “Hugh Edgerton, you said?” McDowell grabbed a sheet of paper and quickly wrote the name down. “Is he involved with anything underhanded or suspicious that you know of?”