The Seduction of a Duke (47 page)

He must be a widower
, she thought.
That’s why his wife isn’t here instead
.

Given Estelle’s fascination, it took a moment for her to notice his daughter had been crying. Tears streaked her little cheeks as she clung desperately to his hand. Estelle could have told her she needn’t fear her strange surroundings. The child was pretty, her clothes stylish and expensive, her flaxen curls shiny. Nary a wrinkle marred the perfection of her navy frock. She was like a doll from the very best department store. Odds were good she’d have a dozen tiny sycophants before the day was through, all vying to be her new best friend. Appearances mattered in a place like this, as did who one’s parents were. No amount of Great Wars could level the youngest child’s understanding of who belonged on what rung of the class ladder.

Estelle pegged this girl’s father as a resident of considerably loftier reaches than her own.

A cynicism beyond her years had her burying her nose back in
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
. Books didn’t care which year’s footwear one was shod in. Books let one step into their characters’ shoes instead. She was trying to focus on doing that when the sound of someone politely clearing his throat brought her head up again. Her breath whooshed from her as if a giant’s hand had given her ribs a squeeze. The throat-clearer was the tall man in the trilby. His little girl was beside him, still clinging tearfully, but Estelle scarcely had a scrap of awareness for her.

Up close, the man was shockingly beautiful. Beneath the slanting shadow of his hat, his hair was a darker gold than his daughter’s and surprisingly poet-long. Pansies were not bluer than his eyes, which seemed to glow with their rich, dark hue. His mouth was cut to perfection, like stone buffed to the finest of smooth edges. Estelle couldn’t help but lick her own nervously.

“Forgive me,” said the man as if he hadn’t just laid all her Rudolph Valentino fantasies to rest. His voice was deep and cool. “I’m sorry to intrude, but you have a wonderfully kind face. Do you think you might look out for my daughter, Sally? Just until she gets settled in her class. She’s a little nervous about her first day in school.”

He thought
she
had a kind face? Was something wrong with his eyes? Resentful was more like it. Or sulky. As if her mind wished to prove this, all the not-so-kind things Estelle had been thinking about his daughter flew through her head and out again.

“Only if you wouldn’t mind,” the beautiful man added. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“
You
stay,” pleaded his daughter, tugging his jacket sleeve. “You stay with me, Daddy.”

He looked down at her, such love and patience in his expression that Estelle’s throat went tight. She didn’t think either of her parents had ever looked at her that way. They didn’t look at her
any
way very much.

“You know I would, Lovey, if I could.”

“I like it better at home,” Sally insisted. “Ben can teach me to read when he gets back from boarding school.”

The man knelt before her and squeezed her hands.

“I’ll look out for her,” Estelle said, before he could utter whatever parental platitude he was searching for.

Clearly surprised to be interrupted, man and girl turned their faces to her in unison. Estelle had the odd sensation that she was being put to the test by both sets of eyes. She felt dishonest, but couldn’t she decide to be kind if she wanted to? Was what this man saw in her necessarily a lie?

“I’ll look out for you, Sally,” she repeated, meaning it—a bit to her own surprise. “I’m one of the big girls. You’ll be perfectly safe with me.”

Sally bit her lip and looked at her father.

“You see?” he said, bracing her little shoulders between his palms. “What could be better than having a lovely young lady like this to show you around?”

“I
have
to stay?” Sally asked.

“You do,” her father confirmed, that gentle smile lifting his mouth as he rose.

“This is awfully decent of you,” he said to Estelle. “You’ve no idea what a load you’ve taken off my mind.”

“ ’S nothing,” Estelle mumbled, still off balance from being called lovely.

Her shyness seemed to amuse him.

“I’m Edmund Fitz Clare,” he said and held out his hand. “I’m a professor of history at the university.”

He must mean London University. That was the closest one to here. But who would have guessed he was a
professor
? His clothes seemed too Savile Row for that. Conscious that her thoughts were rude, Estelle shook his hand awkwardly, nearly dropping her Agatha Christie as she tried to tuck the book out of the way beneath her other arm. “I’m Estelle Berenger.”

He put his second hand over hers, easily swallowing it between his gloves. Within the supple leather, his fingers seemed very hard. “A star among women, to be sure.”

She knew he was making a joke about the meaning of her name—Estelle, star, all that rot—but a flush washed through her exactly as if he were serious. What would it be like to be a star among women, and to be one to a man like this? She wasn’t worldly enough to know what that might entail, but trying to imagine caused her to grow hot so swiftly that all her clothes went prickly.

She could almost feel his smooth, cool lips on her neck.

So softly she almost didn’t hear it, Professor Fitz Clare drew a sharpened breath. Perhaps the timing of the inhalation was only chance. Perhaps she was listening too hard to him. But if he’d guessed what she was thinking . . . what his inadvertently exciting touch had done to her . . .

She couldn’t finish the thought. His eyes looked darker than before, the faintest quiver widening his nostrils.

She yanked back her hand at the same time he released it.

“Well,” he said. He turned up the collar of his coat, despite the mild morning temperature. His neck was pink, she noticed, as if he had a slight sunburn. “I should be getting back to my books.”

“Bye, Daddy,” Sally said forlornly.

“Bye, Sunshine,” he returned.

As a pair, Estelle and Sally watched him hurriedly cross the street, loping toward the shelter of a waiting Model T. Considering how graceful he’d been before, his gait was oddly unsteady.

“The professor drinks,” Sally announced sadly with the wise-innocent air of a child repeating something she’s heard adults say. “That’s why he sleeps all day.”

The words rang false for Estelle. The professor hadn’t smelled of liquor, nor had his speech been slurred. “Perhaps he’s a night owl,” she said, giving Sally’s soft curls a tentative stroke. “Even if he isn’t, you probably shouldn’t tell everyone you meet that he drinks.”

“I shouldn’t?” Sally asked.

“You shouldn’t,” Estelle said firmly.

Luckily, Sally believed her, and her first day of school unfolded exactly as Estelle foretold. Estelle gave Sally what help she needed to fit in: predictably, not much. The girl was bubbling with enjoyment by the time her father picked her up again. She remembered to thank Estelle without prompting, which Estelle couldn’t help but be impressed by. That Sally’s father’s thanks were what really warmed her Estelle kept to herself.

Never mind that Sally—her chattiness irrepressible—had revealed that her father wasn’t married, that he’d adopted Sally and two older boys after they were orphaned in the last war. Estelle knew Edmund Fitz Clare wasn’t thinking of her romantically. No matter how kind he seemed, Estelle was just a girl to him.

A lovely young lady
, she repeated soundlessly to the sky. It was darker now, almost night. Lightning flickered yellow within the clouds, the sight exhilarating to her wound-up nerves. A dog bayed with longing down in the square, invisible beneath the trees. Estelle could have hugged the sound to her in delight. Wolves howled like that when they missed their companions—though of course no real wolf would be racketing around London!

She wondered if Sally’s father would speak to her tomorrow.

“Estelle!” her mother called from behind her closed bedroom door. “Your father’s home from the bank. It’s time to come down for tea.”

“In a tick,” she responded, loath to lose the magic of her own daydreams.

Tea with her parents was a tiresome business, a pro forma family gathering not a one of them was interested in. Her father would grumble over Britain’s monetary policy, how it kept men like him from advancing as they deserved, her mother would say “yes, dear,” and Estelle would entertain herself by stabbing her fork into her toast points until her mother ordered her to stop. Watching a storm approach was much more thrilling, hearing the thunder rumble, seeing the power of nature snake inexorably closer. Estelle would have to change her clothes for tea, in any case. She was wet through, the rain spitting hard against her cotton dress. The clinging cloth made her more aware of her body, of its strength and femininity. Maybe she was becoming a woman. Maybe this day had been a part of it.

What came next unfolded without warning.

The mournful dog howled again, and then a flash filled the air above her balcony. Estelle couldn’t believe what she was seeing: lightning blooming into being right in front of her. Fine hairs stood on end all across her skin. The electric burst was streaking toward her blinding as the sun. She was going to die, but she didn’t have a chance to feel more than surprised.

Really?
she thought in the millisecond left to her.
I’m supposed to go now?

She could have sworn she heard someone growl, “
No!
”

Thunder buffeted her ears just as a shadow leapt between her and the blazing light. She would have blinked if she’d had time. The shadow looked like a wolf at full gallop—a hallucination, she was sure. The lightning bolt pierced straight through the phantasm, breaking into rainbow shards. One stabbed her right eye, ran down her arm and out her middle fingertip. She flew backward like she’d been thrown, sailing clear across the room. Her back crashed into the wall behind her bed, the plaster cracking beneath the flowered wallpaper. None of her limbs would move. Helpless to brace for the fall, she slid until she half sat, half slumped on the mattress. Smoke issued in gray tendrils from the soles of her shoes.

Her right ear felt like a burning coal had lodged in it.

“Estelle!” her mother screamed, but Estelle had lost her power to answer.

She was seeing pictures through her lightning blasted eye. Knights on horseback. A diminutive dark-haired woman with skin like snow.

Goodness
, she thought.
Maybe I did die, after all.

GRAHAM FITZ CLARE WAS A SECRET AGENT.

He had to repeat that to himself sometimes, because the situation seemed too ludicrous otherwise. He was ordinary, he thought, no one more so, but he fit the profile apparently. Eton. Oxford. No nascent Bolshevik tendencies. MI5 had recruited him two years ago, soon after he’d accepted a job as personal assistant to an American manufacturer. Arnold Anderson traveled the world on business, and Graham—who had a knack for languages—served as his translator and dogs-body.

He supposed it was the built-in cover that shined him up for spywork, though he couldn’t see as he’d done anything important yet. He hadn’t pilfered any secret papers, hadn’t seduced an enemy agent—which wasn’t to suggest he thought he could! For the most part, he’d simply reported back on factories he and his employer had visited, along with writing up impressions of their associated owners and officials.

Tonight, in fact, was the most spylike experience he’d had to date.

His instructions had been tucked into the copy of
The Times
he’d bought at the newsagent down the street from his home.

“Paddington Station,” the note had said in curt, telegraphic style. “11:45 tonight. Come by Underground and carry this paper under your left arm.”

Graham stood at the station now, carrying the paper and feeling vaguely foolish. The platform was empty and far darker than during the day. The cast iron arches of the roof curved gloomily above his head, the musty smell of soot stinging in his nose. A single train, unlit and silent except for the occasional sigh of escaping steam, sat on the track to the right of him. One bored porter had eyed him when he arrived, shaken his head, and then retired to presumably cozier environs.

Possibly the porter had been bribed to disappear. All Graham knew for sure was that he’d been waiting here fifteen minutes while his feet froze to the concrete floor, without the slightest sign of whomever he was supposed to meet. Doubly vexed to hear a church clock striking midnight, he tried not to shiver in the icy November damp. His overcoat was new, at least, a present from the professor on Graham’s twenty-fifth birthday.

That memory made him smile despite his discomfort. His guardian was notoriously shy about giving gifts. They were always generous, always exactly what the person wanted—as if Edmund had plucked the wish from their minds. He always acted as if he’d presumed by wanting to give whatever it was to them. The habit, and so many others, endeared him to his adopted brood more than any parent by blood could have. The professor seemed to think it a privilege to have been allowed to care for them.