„Well as might any whose soul still wanders Between the Worlds,“ Gardner said,
the Scots burr of her girlhood still evident in her soft voice. „I pray me that the Luck
is with us, and we may lead her back to us again.“
„It wants more than luck,“ Dame Alecto said, as if to herself. Strong magic had.
opened the Veil Between the Worlds, allowing one Sarah to pass away through it
and another to arrive. The woman who had been bom in this house and this bed was
dead in a world now sealed to them, but her world-double was here, and in their
power.
Dame Alecto regarded the figure in the bed with a gaze more critical than any the
false Roxbury’s servants had employed. If one knew what one was looking for, it
was easy to tell this was not the trueborn Marchioness. The weathered skin, the
work-roughened hands, small scars from wounds that Sarah Conyngham, Lady
Roxbury, had never suffered… the differences were patent, if subtle. Even Dr.
Falconer, her ladyship’s personal physician, when called to her side in haste for the
second time in one day, had only taken Sarah for the Marchioness in the heat of the
moment – and in the heat of his fury at finding her breathing strong, the raging
consumption vanished. Falconer had ascribed the Marchioness’s improvement in
health to some other device than the one that Dame Alecto had employed….
„I might have expected this of you,“ he said in a jury to the baffled Sarah.
„Doesn’t Tour Ladyship know that such bargains only come to HI ends?“
Dame Alecto smiled her small cat-smile at the memory of the moment opened to
her in the scrying glass. Let young Falconer think that Roxbury had forged a
forbidden bargain with the Oldest People – it was better he suspect that than guess
me truth. And Dame Alecto would take care to keep him from returning to the chit’s
side until there was nothing about his patient to distinguish her from the woman he
had known from her cradle. The marks of work and weather would fade with time
and soothing lotions, scars could be covered with paint and patch and long satin
skirts.
There was only one difference that the Lotion of the Ladies of Denmark could not
erase, and that was an inward one. This Sarah knew nothing of her double’s life and
obligations, and they dared not count upon her assuming them willingly. To shape
this new Sarah to their plans would require an even more cunning trick than any
Dame Alecto had yet worked, and a ruthless one at that, and Dame Alecto was more
than willing to supply it.
„Do you go on reading to Her ladyship, Gardner,“ Dame Alecto said. „And I will
prepare her cordial.“
(Gardner’s voice took up her reading once more. „‘April 14th, 1798: Mama’s
funeral was held today, a most extraordinary fine turn out. The death-coach was
drawn by six black horses, all in plumes, and King Henry himself sent his warmest
condolences; all the County was there, and I do not know how many Pairs of
Gloves Buckland distributed to them all. Now Mooncoign is mine, and I am the
Marchioness! How strange it all seems: they tell me I must make my bow to Society
this Season instead of waiting until next year, even though of course since I am in
Mourning for Mama everything must be Very Quiet. And there is to be a Court
Presentation as well and I must have a Whole Wardrobe in the First Stare of Fashion
– although it must all be Black; how dull! But perhaps I shall set a new mode, for I
am Roxbuty new, after all – ’ “
Gardner’s quiet voice droned on in the background, reading aloud from Lady
Roxbury’s diary, as Dame Alecto set the small ebony box down on the table beside
the bed. Opening the casket, Dame Alecto lifted out the small crystal flask of Cordial
of Lethe, The liquid gleamed a baleful violet in the dim light of the bedside candle.
A full draught of the cordial – crafted from La Montespan’s own recipe, faithfully
handed down through the centuries – would destroy all memory, leaving its victim as
mindless and unknowing as a newborn babe. But that was not what they wanted for
this new Sarah. This hard-won substitute must take up Lady Roxbury’s place in
Society. She must do their work in Mooncoign’s name against the oppression of the
Corsican tyrant who so ravaged the Continent, and take the place of her world-twin
whose life had been cut so untimely short by her own recklessness and folly.
Carefully Dame Alecto measured a few drops of thick liquid into a silver spoon.
After tipping the cordial into a brilliant cut crystal wineglass, Alecto poured in
enough wine to cover the bowl of the spoon, then stirred until the two liquids were
well mixed.
„Come, Your Ladyship,“ she said to the drowsy girl. „It is time to take your
medicine.“ .
For the past week Wessex had been on the road, the warning he carried too
sensitive to trust even to the heliograph that could communicate between men ashore
and the English ships that patrolled the Channel. It had taken three precious days to
get himself and deMorrissey from Paris to Calais, and another endless day waiting
until a longboat could safely beach to take them off Once they reached Dover their
ways would part, Wessex to London a-horseback, leaving deMorrissey to follow a
little more sedately in what ever transport he could commandeer or hire.
All during the turbulent day-long Channel crossing Wessex had paced and fretted,
drinking only of delivering deMorrisey’s information and saving Saint-Lazarre.
Saint-Lazarre was at Mooncoign. Wessex cudgelled his brains. He had to admit
he did not know Roxbury at all well, even though his grandmama had stood her
godmother and Wessex himself had been formally betrothed to her when she was
sixteen and he was twenty-four. His work for King and Country meant he had not
seen much of the girl in the intervening years – it was, however, impossible not to
have heard of her: the dashing parties, her autocratic behavior, her outrageous
friendships. These scandals had been among the hottest on-dits of the Ton since the
Marchioness had made her bow to Society – but her betrothed had taken little notice
of them. A man playing the Shadow Game possessed little time for the
claustrophobic world of the Upper Ten Thousand. And in fact, no matter how
hideous Roxbury’s behavior, his own was worse.
Rupert St. Ives Dyer, Duke of Wessex, was the third of that noble line – although
his grandfather, before being so exalted, had been heir to the Earldom of Scathach, a
dignity that had been old when William the Conqueror first beached his boats on
Saxon shores. The Dukedom of Wessex, like so many English peerages, was the
whimsical creation of a Stuart King – in this particular case, of King Charles the
Fourth, upon the memorable occasion of Wessex’s grandfather’s birth. As might be
expected from the nature of the creation of the tide, the mark of Stuart kinship was
writ plainly upon Wessex’s long-jawed countenance. Though the pale wheat-gold
hair worn Continentally long marked the Plantagenet strain in the line, the hot black
eyes were purely Stuart, and Wessex was as stubborn and inflexible of purpose, as
feared an enemy and as loyal a friend as were all the descendants of that kingly
lineage.
Though in the eyes of the world, Wessex was merely Captain His Grace the Duke
of Wessex of the Eleventh Hussars - the Cherubims – a regiment currently with
General Wellesley doing what they might to render Napoleon’s possession of
Europe a matter of doubt – his captaincy was almost a formality; a liveried carte
blanche that provided him the congé to some of the circles in which he must move.
Wessex’s war was fought, not on battlefields, but in shadows and in country
houses, in foreign courts and behind enemy lines.
For the organization for which Wessex truly worked was not even remotely
military in nature. Half a club of the most exclusive, half an order of chivalry sprung
full-flowered from a most unlikely century, it was the Order of the White Tower.
The White Tower was named for the earliest stronghold of English Kings. It had
been founded by Charles the Third, and was the descendant of the espionage
network that Lord Walsingham had run in Gloriana’s time. Its badge was gules, a
tower argent, and a brooch with such a device resided somewhere in the back of a
drawer in Wessex’s Albany rooms, unearthed only on those occasions when full
Court dress was required of him.
The White Tower was the English Crown’s official covert organization, and
membership was an honor conferred by the King alone – quietly, without public
display. The White Tower acted under conditions of strictest secrecy, its true
function known only to King Henry and a handful of his most trusted ministers. Ever
since its founding, the White Tower had served to defend the interests of the British
Crown in any corner of the earth where those interests were threatened… and to
gather the information to keep England free of Continental entanglements. For over a
dozen years now, the eyes of the White Tower had been turned to France, and
France’s regicidal and imperial ambitions.
Wessex had been formally granted the Order of the White Tower at a levee held
on his twenty-first birthday, just after he had come down from Oxford. The White
Tower’s members met once a year for a dinner held in the White Tower itself, and
so far as the world knew, that was all there was to the White Tower and its
membership. It would never do to let the truth become common knowledge. In an
age which venerated the Miles Gloriosus and thought of the Exploring Officer and
his even more shadowy kindred as jackals and cowards, the news that the King
himself employed such creatures might be enough to trigger a second English Civil
War. It would surely topple the government.
From the moment his loyalty had been given, Wessex had dreaded the thought of
his family discovering just how he served the Crown. The knowledge that her adored
grandson was a wretched sneaking spy would, Wessex was certain, quite kill his
grandmother – or if it did not, public knowledge of his shameful trade would force
her complete sequestration from Society, a fate nearly as dire. It was out of shame
as much as for any other reason that Wessex had shrunk from taking his fitting place
in Society, but now he regretted his indifference to the traditional amusements of his
class. Was it there chance that Saint-Lazarre had gone to Roxbury’s house in
anticipation of the Season, and that it was to Mooncoign that a French assassin sped
even now? Did Roxbury play a double game, just as he did?
For a moment the very thought made Wessex close his eyes in utter weariness.
Englishwoman or no, betrothed or no, if Roxbury served the enemy, Wessex would
show her no mercy. His masters had set him on; let the hunt fulfill itself without
mercy or weakness.
Less than an hour after the ship had reached Dover, Wessex had claimed the
horse he had left stabled there and was galloping along the post road to London.
The Frisian asked only to run; as soon as his master was in the saddle, Hirondel laid
back his ears and lunged across the stableyard cobbles, clearing the gate at a flat
gallop.
A coach-and-six took nearly a full day to drive from Dover to London; a
specially-built racing phaeton with a pair of twelve-mile-an-hour tits between me
poles could go the distance in six hours. Wessex and Hirondel did the journey in
four. It had still been dark when they’d left Dover; it was ‘ broad day now – the
morning of April 19th – and Hirondel was covered in foam and staggering by the
time the spires of London were in view. Wessex slowed to a walk to spare the
exhausted animal as much as he could, but he could not afford to pause long enough
to leave Hirondel in his home stable under a groom’s expert care. The intelligence
Wessex carried was too urgent to brook even that little delay.
But no one who saw the dark-eyed man as he rode up Bond Street and tossed
Hirondel’s reins to the one-legged man in tattered regimentals who lingered outside
the select tailor’s shop for just that purpose would have thought that Wessex was on
an errand any more urgent than deciding upon the fabric for a new coat Nothing in
his carriage or demeanor gave any hint that it had been many days since Wessex had
seen a bed of any sort His mud-spattered boots and dusty coat hinted at a night of
hard riding, but the Bloods of the Ton were noted for amusements that were nearly
as dangerous as war.
„Walk him,“ Wessex said, tossing a yellow-boy to the veteran. „I will be some
time.“
He crossed the pavement that separated him from his destination, pushed the
door open, and entered.
„My Lord Wessex.“
The man called Flowers – though Wessex had no notion whether Flowers was his