“A little,” the Duchess conceded with a pout, mollified by Alec’s reassurances. She looked past his shoulder at her nephew, tongue firmly in cheek. “Of course that’s precisely what you were also going to tell me, wasn’t it, Clive?”
“To the word, too,” the old man added, and for his cheekiness got a poke in the ribs from the Duchess’s fan.
“Yes. Yes, precisely my thoughts, and what Sir Gilbert and I had discussed prior to coming here,” Lord Cobham lied through his teeth. “Isn’t that so, Parsons?”
“Was it? Ah! Yes!” agreed his minion, nodding vigorously. “Precisely my thoughts on how we should approach the problem upon reaching the Midanich Court. Halsey here—”
“
Lord
Halsey,” Plantagenet Halsey cut in.
“Er, yes, forgive me. Lord Halsey and I will present our credentials and I will open trade negotiations with Margrave Ernst in the hopes that through these diplomatic efforts we shall secure the release of those two good people,” Sir Gilbert explained. “And while I am in these negotiations, Lord Halsey is free to pursue alternative avenues that may need to be applied to free His Majesty’s subjects from a foreign prison, should dialogue between our nations prove less than satisfactory.”
“You are a diplomat after all, Parsons!” Plantagenet Halsey declared, but it was not meant as a compliment. “What you mean is, while you sit on your rump sipping coffee and offering your respects to a Continental tyrant, my nephew will be riskin’ life and limb by breakin’ in to a dank dark dungeon?”
“Oh, it’s not that dark, Uncle,” Alec quipped. “But it is dank. But you needn’t worry I am required to storm a dungeon. Cosmo has been accorded a room in the palace complex. So at the very most I may have to bust down a door!”
“And Emily, where is her room? Is it near Cosmo’s?” the Duchess asked anxiously. “Does Mrs. Carlisle have a separate room, or is she quartered with Emily?”
“What of this ransom?” Alec asked, again ignoring the Duchess’ direct question and hoping to divert her before he would be forced to lie to her outright. He asked after the British Consul’s ransom demand. “What does Mr. Luytens’ letter command as a ransom?”
“No need for you to concern yourself with that for the time being, my boy,” the Duchess told him, suddenly making movements to leave, flouncing out her silk petticoats and letting her fan dangle on its silken cord about her wrist so she could draw on her kid gloves. “Cobham and I are putting our heads together to sort out what is needed. You have a great deal of preparation to do before we leave for Midanich, and this is at least one matter I can take care of and not bother you with the minor details.” She put out her crooked arm to Lord Cobham. “Come along, Clive. Your dear wife is waiting for us to dine and—”
“But I’m expected at my club. I have to—”
“That can wait. This cannot.”
Lord Cobham instantly capitulated. The only sign of his frustration was in the way he snatched his walking stick from the footman with a loud sniff. He obediently gave the crook of his arm to his aunt, bowed silently to the room and escorted her to the waiting carriage. Sir Gilbert was left to wait in the vestibule while a junior footman ran to the top of the street to secure him a sedan chair.
Alec had not insisted he be shown Luytens’ letter, though he found it odd in the extreme that the Duchess did not want to discuss the ransom with him, least of all show him the letter. He was just glad to see his godmother finally take her leave so that he need not deflect more questions regarding Emily, and because he was eager to get on with the hundred and one matters which required his attention before setting sail. But just as he was about to excuse himself and go in search of his valet, his godmother’s words struck him and he regarded his uncle with a puzzled frown.
“What did Olivia mean
we
?” he asked. “Just now she said I had a great deal of preparation to do before
we
leave for Midanich.”
“We do,” his uncle said matter-of-factly. “So much so I wish Tam were here to help me, or at the very least mix up some more of that lotion he concocts to help m’arthritis, so I can take it with me.”
Alec was not to be diverted. “What did she mean?”
“Just what she said. We do have a lot to do before the ship sails.”
“You keep using the word
we
, too. Why?”
Plantagenet Halsey clapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Because, my boy,
we
are coming with you.”
‘
I
DON
’
T
KNOW
how many ways to say it. Midanich is in the midst of a bloody civil war. And I’m not swearing at you when I use the word bloody, though I could very well do so, such is my frustration in not being able to convince you of what awaits us—no,
me
. There is no
us
or
we
, just
me
. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes. Understand completely,” Plantagenet Halsey muttered, attention on a long checklist of items considered necessary for travel to foreign winter climes. He looked about at Hadrian Jeffries, who was in his master’s spacious dressing closet, the doors wide on several mahogany clothes presses, and arms full of white linen shirts. “When did you say m’tailor would be here to deliver those fur-lined breeches?”
“Later this afternoon, sir.”
“How many pairs did you order for his lordship?”
The valet glanced at Alec but answered the old man. “Four pairs, sir. Three are fur-lined. The fourth pair is of a heavy twill cord, which his lordship says affords enough warmth within doors at those places where there are Dutch stoves installed to heat the rooms.”
“Got y’self a pair of fur-lined breeches, too, I hope?” Plantagenet Halsey asked the valet.
“Yes, sir. His lordship was very generous in having me fitted for a suit, and an all-weather cloak.”
“Good. You’ll need ’em. His lordship is intimate with the weather in that part of northern Europe, and he says it’s damnably freezing and blowing gales off the North Sea all of the time. And there ain’t nothin’ to stop the winds blowing far inland because the landscape is so flat and featureless. Sounds damnably inhospitable, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would, sir,” Hadrian Jeffries responded with a rare smile, which disappeared the instant his master spoke.
“I am still in the room,” Alec stated flatly.
“Ah, and so you are!” Plantagenet Halsey winked and smiled lovingly at his nephew. “And we’ll talk when you stop haranguing me about our upcoming journey, which you’ve been doin’ since yesterday mornin’. Olivia St. Neots and I are comin’ with you and that’s that.”
Alec nodded to his valet to get on with what he was doing and went through to his dressing room, the old man following. He tried to temper his annoyance and worry and be conciliatory.
“Even if I were to sanction you both being part of the legation, you must see that permitting Olivia to do so is foolhardy at best, and shows a wanton disregard on my part for your safety. If something were to happen to her—or to you…”
“I won’t change my mind, and you have as much chance of convincin’ Her Grace to stay at home as you do of findin’ a kernel of wheat with your name etched upon it. Don’t you see, she needs somethin’ to occupy her mind, just as you do—as do we all. All she thinks about is what that lovely young girl and that fine young man are being subjected to, imprisoned in a hostile country that, yes, is at war. When she first told me her plan, well, I reacted the way you have. But the more I thought on it, the more I could see it will be a good thing, for her and for me. We can’t stay here pacing the leather soles off our shoes while you go off into God-knows-what danger. Besides, you’ve not given me a chance to explain what we intend to—”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow it,” Alec interrupted bluntly as he perched on the edge of the window seat. He continued before his uncle could interrupt him. “I’ve never mentioned what happened to me while I was in Midanich…why I was imprisoned… how I managed to escape a prison fortress… why I vowed I would never return…”
“You said you weren’t permitted to tell me. Somethin’ to do with Foreign Department regulations and official secrets.” Plantagenet Halsey shook his head and chuckled. “That Sir Gilbert Parsons, he’s up on all the do’s and don’t’s, ain’t he? Officious little turnip! You must’ve snapped a few quills in frustration in your time, workin’ for him!”
The old man was trying to lighten the mood, but one look at Alec and he knew he’d taken the wrong tack altogether. It was obvious that even after all these years, his nephew’s experience on that particular diplomatic posting still affected him greatly. He could see it in the way his arms in their white linen shirt sleeves were stiff at his sides, with his long fingers curled about the polished edge of the window seat frame, and so tightly the whites of his knuckles were visible. It was as if he was forcing himself to remain seated and calm when he felt anything but composed. And most telling of all, his nephew could not look him in the eye.
Plantagenet Halsey instantly tempered his cheerfulness. He sat beside Alec and said in an altogether different tone, “You know you can tell me anythin’. I’ll listen. I’ll never judge.”
Alec took a few moments to steel himself before he spoke. Thinking back on events within Herzfeld Castle still had the power to make him nauseated. Since his escape he had done his utmost to consign the ordeal to the far reaches of his memory, and with every intention of it remaining there. Reading Olivia St. Neots’ note at Bath about Cosmo and Emily’s plight had brought the harrowing experience hurtling out of oblivion to again take center stage. What was worse, what paralyzed him with dread, was that he knew precisely what awaited him in Midanich, and if he hoped to save Cosmo and Emily he would have to succumb; there was nothing he could do to extricate himself from the inevitable.
And if what had happened in the final weeks of his time at the castle was personally traumatic, the months preceding his imprisonment haunted him. He had become too close to the Margrave’s heir, Prince Ernst, and matters had escalated to a point where he had not only put his life, but also the lives of a Countess and her young son in peril. He had been so naïve and trusting, so arrogantly self-assured, he had not foreseen the dangers of what was to come, firstly from his friendship with Prince Ernst and his sister the Princess Joanna, and then from his affair with the Countess. Then again, he doubted anyone could have done so, so complete was the sinister subterfuge. That, of course, was of no comfort to him.
“Yes, I do know that,” he finally replied to his uncle’s assurances. “Thank you. I wish—I wish I could confide in you. But you do not need to be burdened with this. And, selfishly, I don’t want your high opinion of me to change.”
“That will never happen!”
Alec grinned at the fierceness in his uncle’s instant reply and he relaxed.
“Do you know, while I was in that fortress prison, it was thoughts of coming home to you that kept me resolved? That, and not wanting to disappoint you.”
“You’ve never disappointed me, m’boy, and that’s the truth. I should’ve added that you can
not
tell me, if you so wish. It is entirely at your discretion.” The old man’s brow furrowed for a moment. “Are those two young people in for the same ordeal you experienced?”
“Dear God, no!” Alec assured him quickly. “That’s not to say what they are experiencing isn’t an ordeal, but I am hopeful—and I must remain so—that they will be treated as political prisoners, and be accorded every civility. They are merely the bait. I am the one the old Margrave’s children want.”
“Children?”
“Prince Ernst and his sister, Princess Joanna. Ernst is the newly-elevated Margrave. But it is his sister who rules, through him.”
“I guess they didn’t like you runnin’ off like that, eh? Not used to being defied, is my guess.”
When Alec showed surprise, Plantagenet Halsey explained.
“You’ve been asked for specifically by name. That’s not the usual way of negotiatin’ the release of prisoners between kingdoms, is it? A sovereign usually decides who to send to bargain for his subjects with a foreign power. In this case it is the foreign power who has requested you. That’s either because that foreign power has a special cordial relationship with you, or—and I fear this is the case—this new Margrave has gone to all this trouble because he thinks you’ve wronged him, or someone close to him, and he’s seized upon a unique opportunity to lure you back. As you were imprisoned and managed to escape, I’d say it’s the latter.”
“Not the Margrave—his sister,” Alec said abruptly. “The Princess Joanna.”
“That don’t surprise me.”
The old man’s smile only deepened the furrow between Alec’s black brows. “Doesn’t it? It should. It’s much more complicated than you can ever imagine.”
“I’m not makin’ excuses for you. I don’t know the circumstances. But if you engage in bedroom politics, then there’re bound to be miscalculations from time to time.”
“Miscalculations!? Ha!”
“I ain’t just sayin’ this because I’m your doting old uncle… I might look as if I date from Biblical times, but I was a young male in my prime once, and I did my fair share of bed-hopping. Ask Olivia St. Neots—”
“Good God,
you
and Olivia?”
The old man sat tall, hands to his boney knees. “I don’t see why not!” he answered belligerently. “But no,” he added quickly. “She was a good girl and I was a Corinthian of the first order. When we were both much younger, she’d put her little nose in the air and refuse to even acknowledge I was in the same room. And it had nothin’ to do with my politics. She was wise to stay well clear of me
then
. ”
“What changed her mind?”
Plantagenet Halsey gave a bark of laughter. “You think she’s changed her mind? Still calls me
caitiff
when she thinks no one is listenin’! Baggage!”
Alec hid his smile at this level of intimacy between his republican uncle and a duchess steeped in aristocratic privilege, and repeated his question.
The old man shrugged and said simply, “You. More correctly, you changed my life. I couldn’t raise a cub and carry on with my wicked ways, now could I? That ain’t bein’ a responsible parent, or much of a role model. But it’s taken how many years for Olivia St. Neots to change her opinion of me? How old are you? So, you see, I had a reputation once, and I wasn’t backward in braggin’ about it, too—arrogant idiot that I was!”