In My Wildest Dreams (26 page)

“Events such as we experienced last night cannot be allowed to occur without amends.”

A ticket to Paris. An annual income
. “I'm sure you're experienced in this.”

His smooth lips curved down into a severe line. “I do not seduce young women who are in my employ.”

Bastard.
“Apparently you do.”

“No, never before.”

“So my mistake was taking the position you offered.” She winced. After a night such as they'd shared, one had to be more careful than normal about one's terms. “Of governess,” she clarified. “Then you wouldn't be facing a challenge to your mores.”

He cocked his head and studied her. In an excessively patient tone, he said, “You are perhaps worried about my habits—”

“No!”

“As you have every right to be.”

“I don't.”

“But I assure you, I have kept my indulgences far
away from my home. Therefore I believe—”

“You did not seduce me. I am not so craven as to allow myself to be debauched.” Self-loathing filled her tone. “I remember very well that I asked for your expertise.”

Bafflement and then indignation knit his brow. “Your tone puzzles me. Did you find me repugnant?”

“No.”

“Inept? Uncaring of your gratification?”

“No. No.”

Leaning back, he twitched the crease of his trousers and smiled that loathsome, complacent smile. “Of course not. I quite satisfied you. I didn't allow you to hide your joy—even though you tried.”

Color flooded her face. She hated this scene. She hated herself. Most of all, she hated him, with his relaxed form and his smug mouth and his tranquil perfection. And she loved him because . . . because . . . right now she couldn't remember why she loved him. She only knew love mixed with the humiliation, the disappointment, the hatred to create a formidable brew of anguish and fury.

“I've been thinking about your future.”

“You have it all settled,” she muttered.
A ticket to Paris. An annual income
.

But he surprised her.

Kneeling at her feet, he captured her hand.

She twisted her fingers, trying to free them. She had achieved calm. His touch could destroy that.
Why was he kneeling? What did he think he was doing?

He tightened his grip, not cruelly, but enough that if she fought, she would hurt herself, and in a pompous, know-it-all, typically Mr. Throckmorton tone, he said,
“I know you must wish that I would go to the devil. I'm not Ellery. I'm not dashing, or carefree, but as you rightly pointed out, I didn't seduce you.”

“Get up.”

He ignored her. He even looked puzzled as he continued, “You participated fully, even eagerly.”

She didn't care if she hurt herself. She wrenched her fingers away, then cradled them against her bosom. “Don't remind me.”

“But I must, for we have only one possible remedy.”

She began to understand; this was even worse than being sent away. “We don't need a remedy. No one's sick.”

“Celeste, I am older and wiser in the ways of the world. You must trust me to know our best course.”

Oh, he sounded good. Sincere, intense, dedicated to her best interests. Another woman might have been duped, but just this morning he'd held Celeste in his arms and suggested she pass Stanhope a message. She'd seen Garrick's hesitation; he had known the unseemliness of putting the woman he had just debauched into danger.

He'd done it anyway, and now he was trying to pretend it hadn't happened.

She reminded him. “Did Stanhope pass the message?”

Garrick shook his head like a wolf who'd been struck with a cudgel. “What?”

“Did Stanhope pass the message to his contact, thus betraying his country and making your use of my unwitting assistance worthwhile?” She experienced the satisfaction of seeing Garrick's tanned skin pale.

“How did you know that?”

“Let me see.” She enumerated the reasons on her
fingers. “First, I hear a Russian lady, who badly wants to see
you
, talking about how an Englishman is betrayed, arrested and never heard from again. Why? I wonder. Why should she wish to see you? Then Stanhope lies to you about the message. You're clearly suspicious about him and about me, but I must have passed the test because suddenly Stanhope is no longer acting as your translator, I am. But I am to pass any messages I interpret onto him if he desires, which he does, even enough to be courteous to me when he asks. The passing of messages becomes so important that, this morning, you manage to remember to give me a message even before the sweat had dried from our bodies.” She wanted to smile scornfully, but she found her lips would not work in that manner. “Let me reassure you again. The message is passed. Your duty to England is done, or rather, that particular duty is done.”

He had risen to his feet. “What do you mean?”

“I know who you are, Garrick Throckmorton.” She stared up at that unyielding, staunch, mountain of a man. “You direct all of England's spy operations.”

He hesitated, then confessed, “Not all. My specialty is India and beyond.”

“The Great Game,” she said, giving name to that struggle between England and Russia for Central Asia.

He paced away, then turned to survey her.

She knew what he saw; a petite, attractive blonde who scarcely appeared clever enough to dress herself. Most men saw her that way. Such an appearance of helplessness was both a blessing and a curse, for while being underestimated worked in her favor, at the same time it could be a source of incredible irritation.

Right now, she was irritated.

“You discerned all that on your own?” he asked.

She managed both the smile and the scorn. “All with my own puny, feeble, feminine brain.”

“I have never thought you feeble, and you've just proved you're almost too intelligent.” Leaning over her, he put his hands on the arms of her chair and thrust his harsh face into hers. “It's imperative that you tell me the truth. How did you know this?”

“I worked for the Russian ambassador. The Russians eat, breathe and live espionage. How could I not recognize the ambassador's counterpart in England?” She knew so much about how the Great Game worked, how the spies thought, she even knew that Garrick must now suspect her. “Do I know too much?” She mocked him. “Will you have to send me to prison—or worse?”

“Have you told anyone?” He took her shoulders. “Did you tell Stanhope?”

“As much as I would like to teach you the pitfalls of exploiting your lover's talents, I'll have to admit I don't consider you or I or our affair so important when weighed against the good of my country.” She enunciated clearly, “Will you let go of my shoulders now?”

He did, and she hated that she missed his touch. He stood, fingers stroking his chin, watching her, weighing what she knew against her antagonism, trying to decide how best to turn the situation to his advantage. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head, and thought how pleased she should be that the end of the scene was in sight.

In an absent tone of voice, he said, “The duration of a director of operations is brief, for sooner or later his identity is always discovered. Obviously my identity is no longer a secret. Considering Stanhope's treachery,
my family is in danger. I've handed the job onto the next chap. The London Office will put someone else in charge of Central Asia. I won't know who.”

She might have cynically wondered if he told her because he still harbored fears about her loyalty, but she chose to take the report at face value. “For the children's sake, I am relieved.”

“But I'm at a loss. If you knew about my business and understood your part of it, and still came to me last night . . . why are you so unhappy with me? I want to marry you!”

He seemed to think she would jump at the chance . . . to wake in his arms every morning, to talk with him in the day, to cradle his children in her arms.

Furious with her own weakness, she shook off temptation. “No!” She stood, a laborious act as she forced her limbs to move at last. “I'm not refusing you because of your occupation. I'm refusing you because you, Garrick Throckmorton, are a liar.”

“If I have to be,” he admitted readily, “but I can't think when I've lied to you.”

Once again, she found herself light-headed, and she clutched the chair for support. “A liar of the most loathsome sort. I understand why you lied to me about Stanhope. You plotted to advance our country and defeat our enemies. But you plotted against me, too.”

Becoming cool, distant, wary, he said, “
Plotted
seems an immoderate term.”

“Tickets to Paris. An annual income.” She observed him closely.

For a brief moment, his eyebrows shot up. Then he smoothed all trace of emotion from his face. He became a machine who thought.

She didn't want to marry a machine. “I'm the gardener's daughter,” she said. “I'm the governess. When I stepped on your plan for Ellery's marriage, you could have sent me back to the Governess School. You could have refused me the run of the house. You could have done anything rather than attempt my seduction.”

In an excessively reasonable tone, he said, “I would have lost my gardener. Ellery would have been distracted.”

“And
I
would have been heartwhole and virtuous. Ah, but I forget—I'm not as important as the state of the Throckmortons' gardens or the well-being of their younger son.” Her feet and hands tingled as blood rushed in and brought them to painful life. She feared seeing Garrick and talking to him was having the same effect on her feelings.

“It was not well done. I admit that. But it wasn't a lie, not technically. I'm offering reparation.”

“No.” She looked down at her hands as she flexed them. “You're offering marriage.”

“What other reparation would you have me offer?”

“Hm.” Going to his desk, she opened the drawer and pulled out the red velvet drawstring purse. She looked at it, considered the contents, knew she would need the tickets and the bankdraft to return to Paris. But when she had a job, she would pay him back, every cent. “It would be met if you . . . jumped off the highest tottering tower of your gothic trifle and smashed yourself onto the stones of the courtyard below. Perhaps you would be lucky. Perhaps you would land on your heart, and rise uninjured.”

25

“B
ut you have to marry me. I've never had such pleasure with a woman.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Throckmorton wanted to kick himself.

Celeste stood very still beside the chair, gripping the ladder back with white knuckles. She held her shoulders too wide. Her complexion flushed and paled with disproportionate intensity. Her erotic, joyful mouth smiled not at all, and she mocked him with word and tone. “That would, of course, be the defining reason to give up any hope of happiness.”

He seldom said the wrong thing, but this time his blunder stunk like carrion. Rattled, he compounded his mistake. “You would be happy. I would make sure of it.”

“This morning has almost killed me.” She turned toward the door, moving as stiffly as his mother when the wind was in the north. “I don't think I can bear much more of your kind of happiness.”

In an unusual turn of events, Garrick Stanley Breckinridge Throckmorton didn't know what to do. Forcibly sit Celeste down and enumerate the advantages of marriage to him? Let her go and assume she would get over this little upset—which in truth he didn't quite comprehend—and return to him on her own accord? Take her in his arms and kiss her until she softened and clung? Somehow none of the choices seemed the right way to handle her. There had to be a better way, one he'd overlooked.

An idea flashed into his mind. “You have to marry me,” he tossed out. “We've been compromised!”

She favored him with a withering glance, the kind that made him feel insignificant and inept.

He didn't like that, and took a stride toward her—when with a rustle of skirts and a pounding of boots, Hyacinth and Ellery rushed into the office.

“She's the one.” White-faced, Hyacinth pointed a shaking finger at Celeste and said to Throckmorton, “She's the reason Ellery's been neglecting me.” Turning on Celeste, she yelled, “You're the one Ellery fancies himself in love with!”

What an unfortunate time Ellery chose to be honest with his betrothed! Now not only did Throckmorton have to manage the problem with his own courtship, he had to handle Ellery's, too. He glanced at Ellery, who didn't take his gaze off Hyacinth.

She did seem rather more animated than previously, and she was in the same room with Ellery and not hanging on his every word. That had to be good. Lacking even a jot of finesse, Throckmorton said, “Lady Hyacinth, I'm sure you and Ellery would prefer privacy.” He wanted to be alone with Celeste to settle the matter
of their marriage. If he just said the right thing, she would surely see reason—if he could just calculate the right thing to say.

Hyacinth ignored and avoided him, moving toward Celeste instead. “I admired you. I trusted you, and you lied to me.”

“I did not!” Celeste answered.

Hyacinth pointed at Celeste, a sweeping gesture quite unlike her previous, timid motions. “You did so, in the conservatory! I poured out my heart to you about Ellery, and you never said
you
were the reason he was neglecting me.”

Celeste stalked over to Hyacinth, a miniature virago facing an Amazon. “That isn't a lie. I just didn't have the heart to tell you.”

Throckmorton couldn't resist. “Exactly,” he said.

Celeste whirled to face him. “You keep out of this!”

Throckmorton subsided, satisfied he had made his point.

“I'm sorry,” Celeste said to Hyacinth. “I should have never tried to steal your fiancé, but if it makes you feel any better, I've been thoroughly punished.”

“No punishment could be payment enough for such a betrayal,” Hyacinth shouted.

Oh, no. Throckmorton didn't want the argument to proceed in that vein, so in his most soothing tone, he said, “You needn't ever have worried, Lady Hyacinth. I took measures to keep Celeste otherwise occupied.”

“Yes, Lady Hyacinth. Calm yourself. Mr. Throckmorton took measures to keep Ellery and me apart.” Celeste batted her eyelashes at Ellery in mock adoration. Her voice rose. “But I don't want Ellery.” She turned on Throckmorton in a rage. “I wouldn't have either one of
these treacherous, lying, cheating Throckmorton swine if they were roasted with an apple stuck in their mouths and served on a silver platter.”

“Neither would I!” Hyacinth declared.

“Now, wait—” Throckmorton began.

The women paid him no heed. In a rustle of starch and cotton, they rushed to the door, each racing to reach the exit first. Hyacinth won by virtue of her height, but she stumbled when Celeste hurried close on her heels and stepped on her skirt.

Unsure exactly what had happened, Throckmorton stared at the empty doorway.

“That went well,” Ellery drawled. He leaned against the liquor cabinet, legs crossed, arms crossed, examining Throckmorton as if he were a writhing asp and Ellery a boy with a rock.

Throckmorton didn't enjoy having his hell-bent younger brother view him in such a manner.

Ellery added, “When you're done with the spy game, perhaps you could go into diplomacy.”

Throckmorton's composure collapsed. Did
everyone
know? “What do you mean, spy game?”

Seemingly unimpressed by Throckmorton's ire, Ellery asked, “What do
you
mean, you took measures to keep Celeste from me?”

“Answer me,” Throckmorton snapped. He couldn't be distracted. After all, what was more important here?

“Because I trusted you. You're my brother. You said you'd help me with Celeste, and now I find out you took her for your own.”

Throckmorton could be distracted after all. “Where did you hear that?”

“Every one of the departing guests were gossiping
about how Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh saw you with Celeste this morning. She was rumpled and still in her ballgown. You were putting on your boots.” Ellery pushed away from the cabinet. Looking as murderous as ever the easygoing Ellery had looked, he stalked toward Throckmorton.

Hands up, Throckmorton backed toward his desk. Ellery had reason to be upset, but Throckmorton didn't want a fight.

“My own honorable, upright, morally superior brother seduced the gardener's daughter.”

“I've offered to marry her!”

“So that makes it all right?” Ellery roared. “You jackass! That beautiful, laughing girl is unhappy, and it's your fault!”

“Lady Hyacinth's unhappy, too, and it's your fault.” He was trying to shift the blame, Throckmorton realized. It was one of Ellery's favorite tricks. Now Throckmorton utilized it in the desperate hope Ellery wouldn't realize the full depths of his iniquity.

As a ruse, it failed miserably. “You let me handle Hyacinth. It's Celeste we're talking about now.”

“You think you can handle Lady Hyacinth?”

“As well as you handled Celeste.”

“I thought Lady Hyacinth was going to be angry about Kiki.”

“She was.” Ellery made a right turn to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass full of whisky.

Throckmorton wanted to curse. Ellery was drinking again. Still. “You don't need that. If Lady Hyacinth won't marry you, you've got nothing to drink about.”

“But now I want to marry Hyacinth. I always wanted to, she just scared me with her expectations and her
worship. I knew I'd fail her sooner or later.” Ellery took a healthy swallow of the amber liquid, then chuckled as if amused at himself. “Guess it came sooner. So”—he straightened his shoulders—“if I can't marry Hyacinth, I want to be in espionage, just like the rest of my family.”

With a jolt, Throckmorton remembered. Ellery
knew
. Throckmorton played for time. “In . . . espionage?”

“Yes, in espionage,” Ellery mocked. “Men riding in and out at all hours of the night, guards around Blythe Hall, women babbling in foreign languages . . . no one pays any attention to me, but that doesn't mean I don't pay attention to you.”

Throckmorton had always thought he was the epitome of wiliness. Now in the space of an hour, two different people had proved him wrong. “Does everyone in England know?”

“You mean did I tell?” Ellery took another long drink, then lifted the glass in toast. “Not even when I was foxed, dear brother.”

“I mean—have I been so obvious?”

“No. Most people see what they want to see, and a good part of the goings-on can be explained by the business. But I live here, Garrick, how did you expect to keep me in the dark?”

Throckmorton didn't have an answer.

“All my life, I've been waiting for someone to ask me to join in. First Father and Mother played the game, and then you. No one ever invited me in, even when I hinted. All you could say was, ‘Come into the business, Ellery.' Well, I'm not good at business, but I'd be good at spying.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Garrick, I speak four languages and could easily learn more. More important, I'm a worthless libertine. Do you know how much people say in front of me?”

“I hadn't thought—”

“Just because they think I'm too stupid to comprehend. Why, in the past year, I'd wager I've heard Stanhope pass half-a-dozen messages to that slick valet of his.”

Throckmorton's jaw dropped. “You . . . heard Stanhope . . . pass messages—”

“You're stammering, Garrick. You did know about Stanhope, didn't you?”

“Found out this week!”

Ellery poured another glass full and offered it to Throckmorton. “Drink?”

Throckmorton took it.

“I thought you must be using Stanhope as a double-agent, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Throckmorton tried to remember Stanhope's valet. A quiet, efficient man of medium height and build, with medium brown hair and medium blue eyes. He looked no different than half of England, and right beneath Throckmorton's nose he had been passing messages to the Russians and paying Stanhope for the information.

Ellery grabbed Throckmorton's arm and shook it, sloshing whisky all over the oriental rug. “If I'd been in the know, this would have been nipped in the bud.”

“You should have come to me.”

“No. You should have come to me.” Ellery pointed to his chest. “Take me in, Garrick. I want to work for you.”

Throckmorton looked at Ellery. Blond, handsome, debonair. Throckmorton couldn't bear to think of him at risk, shot or blown to bits. And if the Russians took him and held him for ransom . . . Throckmorton didn't want
his patriotism put to that kind of a test. “I can't,” he said. “As of today, I'm out.”

“Then put me in touch with someone who's in charge,” Ellery demanded.

Throckmorton shook his head. “I want you safe. Mother wants you safe. Don't ask this of me.”

Ellery jerked back as if Throckmorton had hit him. He smiled, a bitter parody of his usually cheerful insouciance. Picking up the bottle, he hugged it to his chest. “Then I'll go to hell in my own fashion.”

The family was going to hell.

Lady Philberta's cane crunched in the gravel as she hobbled along the garden path. Ellery was drinking. Hyacinth was livid. Throckmorton had seduced the girl he was supposed to be ousting. And Celeste . . . well, Lady Philberta needed to talk to Celeste, to find out why Throckmorton was in his office, alternating shouting about Stanhope's valet, who had managed to slip away, and staring into space.

Lady Philberta had heard something about Celeste not accepting his offer of matrimony. Lady Philberta grinned. She'd also heard something about stodgy Garrick and radiant Celeste in the conservatory in full view of Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh. On hearing the report, Lady Philberta wanted to laugh and dance. Instead she wandered the garden, following the leads given by the under-gardeners. She found Celeste and Milford in the walled kitchen garden, both down on their hands and knees, weeding the herbs.

Poor Celeste. She glanced at Lady Philberta, and when she realized who had limped into her domain, she put her head down and weeded faster.