Elmwood Epistles: A Lost Novel

• Chapter 1 Arrival at Elmwood Park
• Chapter 2 Confidences by Candlelight
• Chapter 3 Rumours from the Continent
• Chapter 4 The Curate’s Ledger
• Chapter 5 A Morning in the Shrubbery
• Chapter 6 An Intercepted Packet
• Chapter 7 The Assembly at Bath
• Chapter 8 Whispers in the Drawing Room
• Chapter 9 Secrets of the South Wing
• Chapter 10 The Major’s Return
• Chapter 11 A Broken Cipher
• Chapter 12 Shadows in the Gallery
• Chapter 13 The General’s Displeasure
• Chapter 14 Midnight in the Library
• Chapter 15 A Treacherous Vow
• Chapter 16 Echoes of the March
• Chapter 17 A Friend Betrayed
• Chapter 18 Suspicion at Elmwood
• Chapter 19 Flight into the Tempest
• Chapter 20 Refuge at St. Jude’s
• Chapter 21 The Truth Unsealed
• Chapter 22 Drums Across the Channel
• Chapter 23 The Eve of Waterloo
• Chapter 24 Tidings of the Fallen
• Chapter 25 A Coalition Restored
• Chapter 26 The Final Missive

Miss Clara Pembroke to Miss Harriet Linfield, at Thornbury Parsonage, Hampshire.

Elmwood Park, Somersetshire
April 14th, 1815

My dearest Harriet,

You made me promise three times over the tea-urn on our last morning together that I should conceal nothing from you, not even the number of ruts between Salisbury and the gates of Elmwood. I shall spare you the arithmetic of the ruts—which, had I counted them, would have rivalled the national debt—and tell you instead that I have arrived in whole skin, though with a bonnet so battered by the interior squabs of the post-chaise that even your charitable sister Jane would declare it fit only for the scullery maid’s Sunday best.

The journey was tedious beyond the usual limits of spring travel. The roads through Wiltshire were heavy with the late rains, the post-horses were sullen beasts who seemed to share my uncle’s opinion of long jaunts, and my travelling companion, poor Miss Garrow, did nothing but suck lozenges against the damp and sigh over the wickedness of Bonaparte. Every post-boy who changed our cattle brought some fresh scrap of London gossip regarding the Corsican’s return from Elba. One would think, from the terrified faces at the posting inns, that the Emperor had landed in Devonshire rather than the Gulf of Juan, and was already marching upon Devizes to requisition the country cheeses.

Yet as the carriage turned at last through the stone piers of Elmwood Park, all thoughts of the tyrant across the Channel were swallowed by the sheer magnificence of my new surroundings. You know, Harriet, that my poor father’s rectory was a modest house, where one could scarcely turn round without brushing against a bookcase or a fishing-rod. Elmwood is another country altogether. A great winding avenue of ancient limes leads from the lodge, their branches just hazing with pale green buds, opening at last upon a grand gravel sweep. The house itself is a vast pile of pale Bath stone, built in the Italian taste by Sir Peregrine’s grandfather, with an imposing portico supported by Corinthian columns that look as though they might withstand a siege of French artillery.

The great double doors flew open before our chaise had even ground to a halt upon the crushed stone. Two footmen in liveries of deep blue and silver came down the steps with that peculiar gliding solemnity known only to servants in houses of five thousand a year. Miss Garrow had scarcely finished retying the strings of her crushed bonnet when Mr. Henderson, the butler—a personage far more intimidating than the Bishop of Winchester—bowed us across the threshold into the great hall.

Harriet, you would have dropped your embroidery. The hall rises two full stories to a painted ceiling where various unclad goddesses disport themselves among improbable clouds, completely unmindful of the Somersetshire draughts. A fire of sea-coal blazed in a hearth large enough to roast an ox, flanked by two brass cannons that Sir Peregrine took from the Spanish during his service under Rodney. It was there, warming her hands against the chimney-piece, that my dearest cousin Sophia stood waiting for me.

She flew across the marble pavement without a thought for decorum, crying out my name, and caught me in such an embrace that I smelled the lavender in her hair and the damp wool of my own pelisse all at once. She is entirely unchanged, Harriet, save that she has grown into a woman of astonishing beauty. You remember her as a girl of fourteen, all long limbs and tangled curls, forever climbing the apple trees at Thornbury. She is now twenty, with an air of delicate composure that seems almost unnatural in someone once so wild. Yet the moment she released me, her hazel eyes sparked with that same irrepressible devilry we both remember.

"Clara!" she cried, holding me at arm’s length to inspect my travelling dust. "You are half-frozen, and your pelisse looks as though it had fought the Peninsular Campaign single-handed. Henderson, send hot chocolate to the morning room instantly, and have Miss Pembroke’s trunks carried directly to the Chintz Room. Do not wait for Lady Margaret’s bell."

"Is my aunt engaged?" I asked, when the butler had retreated with an impassive inclination of his powdered head.

Sophia made a small, telling grimace, catching my elbow to steer me toward the warmth of the fire. "Mother has been in the drawing room since noon, consulting with Mr. Crump about the estate accounts and lamenting the price of oats. You will see her soon enough, Clara. The family is assembled in force. We are expecting company for dinner, and you know how Mother thrives upon an audience when she has a grievance."

She led me not to the great drawing room, but to the little morning room that looks out upon the western terrace. Here, at least, was human comfort: low chairs covered in faded rose damask, a modest fire crackling behind a brass fender, and a round table already laden with cold fowl, plum cake, and a steaming silver pot of chocolate. I fell upon the cake with a hunger that would have shocked our dear vicar, while Sophia sat opposite, leaning forward upon her elbows, studying my face with an affection that warmed me far more than the coals.

"You have been an angel to come so swiftly," she said, her voice dropping into that conspiratorial murmur we always used when plotting mischief at the parsonage. "When Papa wrote to invite you, I feared your aunt in Bath might claim you for the pump-room season."

"Aunt Norris could not compete with the prospect of Elmwood," I replied, sipping the rich chocolate. "Besides, she was deeply offended that the waters did not immediately cure her sciatica, and has taken to her bed with a French novel and a bottle of peppermint water. I was entirely superfluous to her misery. But tell me, Sophia—your letter hinted at anxieties far heavier than the price of oats. What has happened here since Sir Peregrine returned from the War Office?"

Sophia’s smile vanished, and she cast a swift, instinctive glance toward the door. The lightness in her manner, which I now perceived had been somewhat forced, gave way to a troubled seriousness that made my heart contract.

"Papa is not well, Clara," she said softly. "Oh, the physicians call it gout and fatigue, and Mother blames the late sittings in Parliament. But it is neither. He has aged ten years since the winter. Ever since the news came that Bonaparte had escaped his island, Elmwood has been like an armed camp. Papa spends his days shut in the library with messengers from Whitehall. Men arrive on foam-flecked horses at two in the morning, deliver oilskin packets, and gallop off again before dawn without touching a glass of small beer. There is something brewing, Clara—something far darker than the newspaper reports let on."

"The country expects war, surely," I ventured, thinking of the anxious faces at the inns. "Every post-chaise we passed was full of young subalterns rushing to their regiments. My brother George wrote only last week from Portsmouth that the 33rd is under orders for Flanders."

"It is not merely the prospect of war," Sophia murmured, leaning closer. "Papa was a soldier, and he does not blanch at the sound of the drums. It is something within our own walls, Clara. Some betrayal. He trusts no one—scarcely even Henderson. Two nights ago, I found him standing at the gallery window in the dark, watching the Bristol road through his field-glass. When I spoke to him, he started as though I were a French spy, and concealed a letter he had been reading beneath his waistcoat."

Before I could press her further, the door opened with a sudden, decisive latch-click, and my aunt, Lady Margaret Pembroke, swept into the room.

Time has treated Lady Margaret with the same unyielding severity she exercises toward everyone else. She is a tall, spare woman, dressed invariably in stiff black silk that rustles with an aggressive energy, like the mainsail of a frigate coming about in a gale. Her hair, which has turned from chestnut to the colour of pewter, was arranged beneath a cap of Valenciennes lace that sat upon her head with the authority of a helmet.

"So, Clara, you have reached us at last," she said, offering a dry cheek for my salute. "I trust the roads were as abominable as usual. The overseers of the highways in this county should all be transported to Botany Bay. They do nothing with the rates but drink ale and fill the ditches with rubble. Sit down, child, sit down; you need not stand on ceremony, though I observe that the journey has not improved your posture. You stoop, Clara. You always had that inclination from your mother’s side."

"I am merely tired from the chaise, Aunt," I replied, keeping my countenance with some difficulty. "The Wiltshire hills are unforgiving."

"Everything is unforgiving in these times," Lady Margaret declared, taking the armchair opposite mine and instantly adjusting the fire-screen. "We live in an age of total collapse. If it is not the Radical weavers smashing frames in the north, it is this wretched French monster running loose through Provence. And Sir Peregrine will do nothing but sit over his maps and ruin his digestion with port wine. He has invited guests for dinner tonight, Clara. Can you imagine the folly? With the country on the brink of revolution, he chooses to entertain."

"Who is coming, Mamma?" Sophia asked, her tone carefully neutral.

"The Vicar, of course, who will eat twice his share of the venison and talk of nothing but his tithes," my aunt recited with brisk disdain. "And young Captain Woodfall from the Yeomanry, who smells perpetually of the stables. But worse still—Sir Peregrine has thought fit to include that foreign person who has taken the dower house at Highclere."

Sophia’s hand, resting upon the walnut table, tightened until the knuckles showed white. "Monsieur de Saint-Vire?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"The very same," Lady Margaret snapped. "An emigré of the old nobility, they say, though for my part, I never knew an emigré who could not invent a Marquisate out of two yards of faded ribbon and a broken sword. He is polite enough, to be sure, and speaks English without that dreadful gutter sound common to the lower provinces, but he has an eye that seems to be valuing the plate whenever he enters the dining room. Your uncle insists he has the highest recommendations from the Duke of Portland. A recommendation from a Duke is all very well, but it does not prevent a man from having revolutionary sympathies if it suits his purse."

"He was received at Carlton House during the Prince’s levee last winter," Sophia said quietly, keeping her eyes fixed upon her teacup.

"The Prince Regent would receive a dancing bear if it wore a well-fitting coat and knew how to flatter his waistcoats," retorted Lady Margaret. "No, Clara, you must use your wits while you are here. Sophia is far too impressionable, and Sir Peregrine’s head is entirely filled with troop movements and the price of hay for the cavalry. I depend upon you to observe what goes on. A clergyman’s daughter is usually bred to observe, if only to see that the parish poor do not carry off the communion plate."

With this flattering appraisal of my talents, my aunt rose, smoothed the heavy silk of her skirts, and informed me that I had precisely three quarters of an hour to dress before the first bell.

"Your trunk has been taken up," she added from the doorway. "Put on your cambric with the lavender ribbons. You are too pale for yellow, and the blue silk you wore at your sister’s wedding was already beginning to fray at the hem. We dine at six precisely. If Captain Woodfall is late, he may eat his soup cold; I will not have the mutton spoilt for an officer of militia."

When the door closed behind her stiff back, Sophia and I exchanged a long look, and then, as we had done a thousand times in our childhood, burst into helpless, silent laughter.

"You see," Sophia whispered, wiping a tear of mirth from her cheek, "we are to have a delightful evening. Come, I will show you to your room myself. We have placed you in the Chintz Room, next to mine, so that we may talk through the dressing-room door. There is a bolt on the inner door, but we shall leave it drawn."

The Chintz Room proved to be a charming apartment in the south wing of the house, far more luxurious than anything I had ever inhabited. Its walls were hung with printed cotton depicting exotic birds roosting in impossibly winding branches of blue and cinnabar; the bed was draped in white dimity, and a cheerful wood fire danced upon the hearth, casting long, lively shadows across the polished floorboards. My modest portmanteau lay open upon a luggage bench, and the housemaid had already laid out my lavender-ribboned dress upon the quilt.

Yet what drew me immediately was the window. It overlooked the south lawns, which sloped gently downward to an ornamental lake bordered by dense rhododendron thickets, beyond which rose the dark, undulating line of the Elmwood woods. The afternoon sun was sinking rapidly behind a bank of purple cloud, bathing the terrace below in a strange, amber light.

As I stood by the glass, letting the cool draft from the casement soothe my forehead, I saw a figure emerge from the shadow of the yew walk. It was a man, dressed in a long, dark riding coat with a triple cape. He walked with a light, purposeful stride, pausing once or twice to look up toward the upper windows of the house. Even at that distance, there was something singular about his bearing—an ease of movement that did not belong to the Somersetshire squirearchy, nor to the heavy-footed country parsons I had known all my life.

"Is that Monsieur de Saint-Vire?" I asked over my shoulder, as Sophia stood by the hearth, untying the ribbons of her afternoon cap.

She crossed the room with an agility so swift it surprised me, coming to stand just behind my shoulder, shielded by the heavy fold of the curtain. She looked down at the dark figure upon the gravel path, and I felt her fingers tighten upon my arm with painful intensity.

"Yes," she whispered. "That is he. He has arrived early. He often does."

"He walks as though he owns the terrace," I remarked, watching the Frenchman stop near the sundial, take a small silver watch from his pocket, consult it, and then turn his face directly toward our wing. It was a handsome face, lean and sallow, with dark brows that met above a high-bridged nose, and hair worn somewhat shorter than the English fashion, without powder. He seemed to gaze straight into our casement, though the glass must have reflected only the setting sun to his eyes.

"He owns nothing here," Sophia said, her voice hard with an emotion I could not quite decipher—anger, apprehension, or perhaps something more dangerous. "Yet he has gained an extraordinary ascendancy over my father. Clara, you must watch him tonight. Watch how he speaks to Papa. Watch his hands. Whenever he is near, Papa looks like a man awaiting the blow of an executioner."

"Sophia, you terrify me," I said, turning to look at her. "What could an emigré gentleman have over Sir Peregrine Pembroke? Your father has served the Crown for forty years with unblemished honor."

"I do not know," she replied, and there were tears glistening in her eyes now, though she blinked them back with fierce resolution. "I only know that letters have gone missing from the study. Papers concerning the embarkation of the troops from Bristol. And yesterday, when I went to fetch a book from the library, I heard Monsieur de Saint-Vire say to Papa, 'A secret known to four men is no longer a secret, Sir Peregrine; it is merely an open market.' Papa did not strike him. He did not order him from the house. He merely sat with his face buried in his hands."

The first dressing bell began to toll from the stable turret, its heavy, bronze chime scattering the rooks from the lime trees and vibrating through the floor beneath our feet.

Sophia started, pulling the curtain shut with a sharp rattle of the brass rings.

"We must dress," she said, her voice instantly returning to its customary, collected tone. "Mother will be unforgiving if we are not down before the Vicar arrives. Put on your lavender ribbons, Clara. We must appear as though we have nothing on our minds beyond the weather and the price of muslins."

She slipped through the communicating door into her own dressing room, leaving me alone in the gathering dusk of the Chintz Room. I stood for a moment by the covered window, listening to the crackle of the hearth and the distant murmur of the servants moving in the corridors below.

The world I had left at Thornbury—a world of parish visits, dull sermons, and quiet evenings over the cribbage-board—seemed suddenly separated from me by centuries rather than a few dozen miles. Here at Elmwood, beneath the gilding and the Corinthian marble, a strange drama was playing out, its script written in the shadow of the approaching continental tempest. And as I turned toward the looking-glass to unpin my travelling hair, I knew with a chilling certainty that my arrival was not to be the quiet country visit I had envisioned, but the prologue to an affair of whose conclusion I dared not even guess.

I shall write to you again, Harriet, the moment this evening’s dinner is concluded and the house is at rest. Keep my letters secret, I entreat you; burn them if you must, or lock them in your cedar box where even Jane’s prying eyes cannot reach them. For I fear that the walls of Elmwood have ears, and that the ink upon these pages carries more than the idle gossip of cousins.

Your ever affectionate and faithful friend,

Clara.

Miss Clara Pembroke to Miss Harriet Linfield, at Thornbury Parsonage, Hampshire.

Elmwood Park, Somersetshire
April 15th, 1815

My dearest Harriet,

It is past one of the morning, and the great house has sunk at last into that profound stillness which belongs only to ancient stone piles surrounded by miles of damp woodland. A single wax taper burns upon my escritoire, flickering whenever the draught stirs the heavy chintz hangings behind my chair. My fingers are stiff with cold, yet I cannot bring myself to seek my bed until I have unburdened my mind to you. The evening has proved every bit as perplexing, and indeed as alarming, as Sophia’s warnings led me to anticipate.

When the second bell summoned us down to dinner, I descended the grand staircase with my skirts gathered carefully in one hand and my heart hammering against my ribs in a manner most unsuited to an undaunted English gentlewoman. Sophia joined me upon the landing, looking exquisite in white sarcenet trimmed with pale green ribbons, though her colour was higher than usual and her fingers, when they touched mine upon the balustrade, were as cold as marble.

The drawing room was already occupied. Sir Peregrine stood before the marble mantlepiece, leaning heavily upon an ebony walking-stick, his gouty foot encased in a velvet boot. He greeted me with that warm, gruff affection he has always shown toward his sister’s children, pressing my cheek with dry lips and swearing roundly that I grew more like my poor father every day. Yet even in that brief embrace, Harriet, I was shocked by the change in him. The hale, hearty veteran who had once tossed us both over the haycocks at Thornbury seemed withered from within. His eyes, usually so keen and commanding, were ringed with dark circles, shifting constantly toward the double doors of the salon with the watchful unease of a sentinel in enemy territory.

Beside him stood the Vicar, Mr. Pargeter, whose broad, rubicund countenance offered a striking contrast to my uncle’s haggard aspect. The worthy divine was already launched upon an exhaustive discourse regarding the drainage of the churchyard meadow, punctuating his observations with vigorous pinches of snuff that dusted the lapels of his somewhat shiny black broadcloth. Captain Woodfall of the Yeomanry hovered near the card tables, looking thoroughly miserable in a scarlet tunic that appeared several inches too tight across the shoulders. He is a well-meaning young man with sandy whiskers and an earnest devotion to fox-hunting, who greeted Sophia with a bow so profound and clumsy that he nearly overturned an ornamental pedestal of Sevres porcelain.

Then there was Monsieur de Saint-Vire.

He was introduced to me just as Henderson announced dinner, and I had the opportunity to study him closely under the brilliant light of the branch candelabra. Seen near at hand, he is perhaps five-and-thirty years of age, possessing that consummate, effortless polish which makes ordinary English gentlemen appear either boorish or rustic by comparison. His dark hair was brushed back without artifice, his linen was immaculate, and his plain black coat had clearly been cut by a master hand in St. James’s rather than the provinces. Yet it was his gaze that struck me most forcibly. His eyes are of a pale, clear hazel, extraordinarily intelligent, and marked by a quiet, calculating stillness. When he bowed over my hand, expressing in faultless English his pleasure at meeting Sir Peregrine’s niece, I felt an instinctive shiver run through my veins, as though an icy wind had blown through the warm room.

We went in to dinner without further delay, my uncle taking in Lady Margaret with that stiff punctilio he never abandons, while Captain Woodfall had the honour of escorting Sophia, and Monsieur de Saint-Vire offered his arm to me. The Vicar brought up the rear, murmuring cheerful anticipations of the turbot.

The dinner itself was a masterpiece of culinary art, though I doubt any of our party, save Mr. Pargeter, derived much enjoyment from it. Lady Margaret presided from the head of the long mahogany table like an empress reviewing a doubtful battalion, issuing sharp commands to the footmen and directing barbed observations toward the lower end. Sir Peregrine scarcely touched his soup, drinking two glasses of Madeira in rapid succession and answering the Vicar’s pleasantries in monosyllables.

"We hear very strange tidings from the coast, Sir Peregrine," the Vicar observed, pausing between mouthfuls of roasted capon. "A carrier who arrived from Weymouth this morning reports that three transports of light dragoons sailed for Ostend on Tuesday. The village is full of the wildest rumours. Some say Lord Wellington has already taken the field in the Low Countries; others insist that Boney has been proclaimed in Paris without a musket being fired."

"The country will always have its rumours, Mr. Pargeter," my uncle replied, his voice rough and constrained. "The rabble will believe whatever lies the tap-rooms choose to dispense. The War Office does not conduct its business through the gossip of carriers."

"Yet the movement of the fleet cannot be hidden under a bushel," Captain Woodfall chimed in, leaning forward with youthful eagerness. "We have orders in the Yeomanry to hold ourselves in readiness for internal disturbances. They say the weavers in Nottingham are stirring again, and if French gold should find its way to our northern manufacturing towns—"

"French gold, sir, is currently somewhat scarce in its native land," Monsieur de Saint-Vire remarked smoothly, slicing a pear with deliberate precision. "The King’s treasury at the Tuileries was found entirely empty when His Majesty was compelled to retire to Ghent. It is not gold that moves armies across France at this hour, Captain, but an idea—or perhaps a memory."

"A memory of plunder and bloodshed, monsieur!" barked Lady Margaret, rattling her silver fork against her plate. "That Corsican butcher has nothing else to offer the wretches who follow him. I am only astonished that a gentleman of your ancient blood can speak of such villainy with so much composure."

The Frenchman inclined his head with the most exquisite, unshakeable politeness. "Madame, when one has seen one’s family estates confiscated by the Jacobins, one’s father perish upon the scaffold in the Place de la Révolution, and oneself driven into exile across half the capitals of Europe, one learns to view the convulsions of nations with a certain detachment. Rage does not alter destiny; it merely impairs the digestion."

I watched Sophia while this exchange took place. She sat directly opposite Saint-Vire, her eyes fixed upon her plate, her fingers shredding a piece of bread into tiny, forgotten crumbs. Once, and once only, she raised her eyes to his. There was a mutual look exchanged between them—a glance so swift, so laden with mutual comprehension and hidden meaning, that I felt a cold knot tighten in my stomach. It was not the look of casual acquaintances, Harriet. Nor was it the shy coquetry of an admired lady and her suitor. It was the look of two conspirators who share a dangerous, unutterable secret.

"You have lived long in England, Monsieur de Saint-Vire?" I asked, wishing to break the awkward silence that had fallen upon the table.

He turned his pale eyes upon me, and a faint, melancholy smile touched the corners of his mouth. "For three years, Miss Pembroke. Your country has offered me a hospitality as generous as it is secure. Yet an exile is always a ghost, wandering in rooms where he has no true right to dwell. One is forever listening for footfalls from the world one has left behind."

"A very poetic sentiment, I am sure," said Lady Margaret tartly, "though for my part, I think an exile would be better employed in looking after his practical affairs than in wandering about like Hamlet’s father. Sir Peregrine, you are letting the claret stand by your elbow. The Vicar has been eyeing the decanter this ten minutes."

My uncle started, as if recalled from some grim internal reverie, and pushed the bottle along the mahogany. As he did so, his sleeve caught against the salt-cellar, overturning it upon the polished wood. In the small commotion that ensued—the footman hurrying forward with a napkin, Lady Margaret delivering a brisk homily on carelessness—I saw Monsieur de Saint-Vire’s hand move with lightning speed toward the edge of the table. He did not touch the salt; instead, his long, pale fingers brushed against Sir Peregrine’s wrist, and I distinctly saw a small, folded piece of paper pass from the Frenchman’s palm into the cuff of my uncle’s coat.

Sir Peregrine did not flinch. His face grew, if possible, even more pale, but he drew his arm back slowly, burying his hand within the pocket of his embroidered waistcoat. The entire transaction took place in less time than it takes to snuff a candle, and had I not been watching with every sense strained to the utmost, I should never have perceived it. Sophia saw it too; her breath caught in a sharp, half-stifled gasp, which she covered immediately by coughing behind her linen napkin.

The remainder of the meal passed in a state of strained civility. Captain Woodfall attempted to engage Sophia in conversation concerning the coming Bath races, but received only absent, distracted answers. Mr. Pargeter ate with unflagging devotion, while Lady Margaret cross-examined Saint-Vire upon the agricultural practices of the Loire valley, clearly hoping to catch him in some ignorance that would prove him an impostor. The Frenchman, however, answered every query with effortless mastery, displaying a knowledge of soil, timber, and tenantry that would have done credit to a Norfolk bailiff.

When at last Lady Margaret gave the signal for the ladies to withdraw, I rose with a sense of immense relief. As we passed out of the dining room, I glanced back through the doorway. Sir Peregrine had already summoned Henderson for fresh candles, his hand resting heavily upon his waistcoat pocket, while Saint-Vire stood by the sideboard, watching him with an expression of quiet, unreadable triumph.

In the drawing room, the evening dragged with agonizing slowness. Lady Margaret established herself at the tambour frame, demanding that I hold skeins of yellow silk while she instructed me in the proper management of a clergyman’s household—a subject upon which she considered herself uniquely qualified, despite never having set foot in a rectory except to attend a wedding or a funeral. Sophia moved restlessly between the pianoforte and the window, playing disjointed snatches of Handel before abandoning the keys to stare out into the blackness of the park.

When the gentlemen finally joined us, bringing with them the smell of port wine and wood-smoke, Sir Peregrine looked utterly exhausted. He excused himself almost immediately, alleging a sudden return of his gout, and retired to his private apartments in the south wing. Captain Woodfall, seeing Sophia still standing near the instruments, made a brave attempt to turn the pages of her music, but she pleaded a severe headache and begged to be excused from playing. Saint-Vire remained only long enough to pay his respects to my aunt, declining the offer of tea with graceful apologies regarding letters that must catch the morning coach from Bath.

By ten o'clock, the carriages had been called, the Vicar had departed with a pocket full of Lady Margaret’s digestive lozenges, and the great house was consigned to night.

I went directly to my room, longing for rest, yet knowing that sleep was impossible while so many dark questions remained unanswered. I dismissed the housemaid, changed into my dressing-gown, and sat down by the hearth to wait. I knew Sophia would not leave me to spend the night in ignorance. The tension between us had grown too taut to hold.

It was nearly midnight when the communicating door between our dressing rooms opened with a faint, oiled sigh.

Sophia stood upon the threshold, silhouetted against the dark opening. She had discarded her dinner gown for a robe of dark blue wool, her thick chestnut hair falling loose over her shoulders in two heavy braids. She carried a small brass chamber-candlestick, the flame casting strange, shifting shadows across her pale, resolute face.

Without a word, she stepped into my bedchamber, turning to shoot the inner bolt with meticulous care. Then she crossed the carpet, placed the candle upon my writing-table, and sank onto the hearth-rug at my feet, burying her face against my knees.

"Sophia," I whispered, laying my hand upon her trembling shoulders. "My dearest girl, what is it? What has happened in this house?"

For a moment she did not answer, her slender frame shaken by silent, shuddering sobs. I did not attempt to soothe her with hollow platitudes, knowing that the terror which held her had been suppressed through hours of agonizing composure. I merely stroked her hair, waiting until the storm of her weeping had spent itself.

When she raised her head at last, her hazel eyes were swollen with tears, but the terror I had seen earlier had given place to a grim, desperate resolve.

"Clara," she said, her voice a cracked whisper in the quiet room. "You saw it tonight. Do not tell me you did not see it. At the dinner table—between Saint-Vire and Papa."

"I saw a paper pass between them," I admitted quietly. "A letter, slipped into your father’s cuff when the salt fell."

Sophia closed her eyes, letting out a long, ragged breath. "Then my sight did not deceive me. I prayed—God forgive me, I prayed that I was going mad, that my own wicked imagination was inventing phantoms to torment me. But it is true. It is all horribly, terribly true."

"What was the paper, Sophia? What hold does that Frenchman possess over your father?"

She rose from the hearth, pacing the width of the room with hurried, agitated steps, her fingers twisting the silken cord of her robe. When she turned back to face me, she stopped in the pool of candlelight, her features sharpened by dread.

"Clara, you know that before Papa left active service, he was employed in the secret intelligence department of the War Office. During the campaigns in the Peninsula, it was through his hands that the confidential correspondence passed—the names of our agents in Madrid, the routes of the supply trains, the dispositions of the Spanish partisans. He was a trusted servant of the Crown."

"Everyone knows Sir Peregrine’s honour is beyond question," I said firmly.

"His honour, yes," Sophia replied bitterly. "His loyalty, yes. But his weakness, Clara—his wretched, fatal weakness has ruined us all."

I stared at her in bewilderment. "A weakness? In Sir Peregrine?"

"You never knew my brother Arthur," she said, her voice dropping into a register of dull, flat grief that chilled me to the marrow. "You were only a child when he went away to Vienna, and we were taught never to speak his name before Papa."

A sudden memory stirred in my mind—a half-forgotten scandal from my childhood, whispered among the elders over the parsonage tea-cups. Arthur Pembroke, Sir Peregrine’s only son, an attaché at the embassy, who had died suddenly of a fever in the winter of 1812.

"Arthur died in Austria," I said tentatively.

"Arthur did not die of a fever," Sophia whispered, stepping closer to my chair, her eyes burning into mine. "Arthur took his own life in an inn outside Vienna, after losing ten thousand pounds at faro to an Austrian officer. But that was not the worst of it, Clara. To pay that monstrous debt—to save himself from the debtor's prison and the disgrace that would have stripped his commission from him—Arthur did what no Pembroke had ever done before. He sold what was not his to sell."

The room seemed suddenly void of air. The wood-fire upon the hearth gave a sudden spit of sap, the sound cracking like a pistol shot in the stillness.

"What did he sell?" I breathed.

"Despatches," Sophia answered, her voice trembling. "Copies of the British ciphers used between London and the allied headquarters. Drafts of treaties that had not yet been laid before Parliament. And worst of all—a complete list of the French Royalist gentlemen in Paris and Bordeaux who were secretly in communication with the Prince Regent’s ministers."

I pressed my hand to my lips in horror. "Merciful heavens. If that fell into Bonaparte’s hands—"

"It did not fall into Bonaparte’s hands," she said with a terrible, bitter laugh. "It fell into the hands of a consortium of private speculators—men who traffic in information as other men traffic in wool or timber. They used the intelligence to speculate upon the London and Amsterdam exchanges, making immense fortunes upon the fluctuating news of the war. But Arthur’s ruin was complete. When he realized what he had done, when he saw the blood upon the gold he had taken, he blew his brains out in a miserable garret."

"And your father?" I asked, my heart aching for the proud, broken old soldier I had seen at the dinner table.

"Papa learned of it only after Arthur was in his grave," Sophia continued, sinking onto the edge of my bed, her hands clasped tightly between her knees. "He was in London, at the War Office, when an agent brought him Arthur’s confession, written on the night he died. Papa had the power, through his position, to suppress the inquiry. He paid Arthur’s debts from his own fortune—mortgaging half the outlying lands of Elmwood to do so—and buried the scandal. He believed the secret was interred with his son’s bones in that foreign churchyard. He believed he had preserved the family honour."

"And Monsieur de Saint-Vire?" I asked, though in my heart I already guessed the dreadful answer.

"Saint-Vire was one of the men who bought those papers from Arthur," Sophia whispered. "He was in Vienna then, posing as an impoverished émigré, though he was in truth an agent of the secret police under Fouché. When the empire fell last year and the Bourbons returned, Saint-Vire fled to England, bringing his archives with him. He came here, Clara. He took the dower house at Highclere, three miles from our gates, like a wolf sitting outside a sheepfold. And two months ago, he walked into Papa’s library and laid Arthur’s original letters upon the desk."

The horror of the situation rose before me in all its dreadful clarity. "He is blackmailing Sir Peregrine."

"Worse than that," Sophia cried softly, tears spilling down her cheeks anew. "Blackmail for money could be borne; Papa would give him the last shilling of Elmwood’s revenues, would strip the timber from the hills and sell the very plate from the sideboard, if that were all. But Saint-Vire does not want money. With Bonaparte back in France, with every throne in Europe shaking once more, information is worth more than all the gold in the Bank of England. Saint-Vire wants the despatches that pass through Papa’s hands from Whitehall. He wants the plans for the troop embarkations from the western ports. He wants the naval signals for the Bristol Channel."

"And your father gives them to him?" I demanded, appalled.

"No!" Sophia’s denial was fierce, almost savage. "Papa would die first. He would blow his own brains out, as Arthur did, before he would betray his country. But Saint-Vire is a devil, Clara. He does not ask Papa to write treason. He merely comes to this house under the guise of friendship. He sits in the study while Papa is called away. He leaves messages, as he did tonight, demanding that Papa overlook certain discrepancies in the port registers at Bristol, where Saint-Vire has confederates operating among the shipping merchants. And Papa is paralyzed. He sits between the ruin of his son’s memory and the ruin of his own soul."

"Why does he not go to the ministers?" I urged. "Lord Liverpool, Lord Castlereagh—surely they would understand! A father protecting the memory of a dead boy—"

"You do not know the world, Clara," Sophia said with a sorrow far beyond her years. "In peacetime, perhaps, there might be mercy. But not now. With Bonaparte marching through France, the government is half-mad with fear. If it were known that despatches had been compromised from this house, Papa would be stripped of his honours, disgraced before the world, and perhaps tried for high treason. The shock would kill him. It would kill my mother. And Saint-Vire knows it. He holds the executioner’s axe over our heads, and he lowers it by an inch every day."

She buried her face in her hands once more, her shoulders shaking with that terrible, silent weeping. I rose from my chair and went to her, wrapping my arms about her, drawing her close against my shoulder. How frail she felt beneath the heavy wool of her gown! This was the girl who had shared every childish joy and sorrow with me, who had laughed in the rectory orchard and dreamed of a future filled with bright, simple happiness. Now she was caught in a web of international intrigue, of treason and shame, spun by the ruthless hands of a continental spy.

"You are not alone in this, Sophia," I whispered into her hair, feeling a steady, quiet strength rising within my own breast—a strength born of that obstinate Pembroke blood which we both share. "You have kept this dreadful burden locked in your heart for months, but you have me now. We shall find a way through this maze. There is no web so cunningly woven that it cannot be cut."

She looked up at me, her eyes searching my face with a mixture of wonder and desperate hope. "What can two women do, Clara? We cannot fight Saint-Vire with pistols. We cannot go to the magistrates without destroying Papa."

"We can watch," I replied firmly. "We can observe every step he takes, every word he utters, every messenger who comes to Highclere. Saint-Vire believes he is dealing only with an old, broken soldier who has lost the will to resist. He does not suspect that the old soldier has daughters who will fight for him. Did you see what happened to that note tonight?"

Sophia shook her head. "Papa put it into his waistcoat pocket. He took it with him when he went to his rooms."

"Then tomorrow morning, before Sir Peregrine comes down to the breakfast room, that note must be read," I said, surprised at the cold resolution in my own voice. "We must know what Saint-Vire demanded of him tonight. If it concerns the shipping at Bristol, we must know the names, the vessels, the dates. We cannot fight in the dark, Sophia. We must have light, even if the light reveals a precipice at our feet."

Sophia stared at me, a faint, tremulous smile touching her lips despite her tears. "You were always the brave one, Clara, even when we went down into the church crypt to look for ghosts."

"There are no ghosts in church crypts," I said, trying to summon a lightness I was far from feeling. "Only dust and dry bones. It is the living men who walk the earth in fine black coats that we must fear. Now, lie down beside me upon the bed. You shall not go back to your own cold room tonight. We will sleep together, as we used to do when the thunder shook the rectory roof."

She did not resist. She slipped beneath the dimity counterpane, her hand seeking mine in the darkness. I blew out the candle upon the writing-table, and the room was swallowed by the red, dying glow of the hearth.

For a long time, neither of us spoke. Sophia’s breathing gradually slowed, deepening at last into the exhausted sleep of one whose spirit has reached the very limit of its endurance. Yet sleep would not come to me. I lay staring up at the canopy of the bed, listening to the wind that had begun to rise in the lime avenue, rattling the casement and sighing through the great chimneys like the voices of the dead.

I thought of my quiet life at Thornbury—the little garden with its rows of sweet-peas, the sunny parlour where your sister Jane sat over her netting, the peaceful chime of the parish bells calling the villagers to evensong. How far away, how utterly unattainable that world now seemed! I felt as though I had stepped across an invisible threshold into a dark and dangerous country, where every smile was a mask, every word a cipher, and every friend an unwitting accomplice to destruction.

Yet beneath the fear, Harriet, there was another feeling stirring within me—a hard, bright spark of indignation. My uncle had served his country with honour for forty years; Sophia was the purest, gentlest soul that ever lived. That their peace, their honour, their very lives should be laid waste to satisfy the greed of a foreign adventurer and the ambitions of an escaped tyrant was an outrage that made my blood burn.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring, Harriet. I do not know if we can outwit a man who has played games of life and death across the courts of Europe. But as I write these final words by the dying embers of the fire, I make you this solemn vow: I will not see Elmwood fall. I will not see my uncle destroyed or Sophia broken. Whatever strength, whatever wit, whatever courage God has given to a country parson’s daughter shall be spent to the last drop in their defence.

Keep this letter safe, my dearest Harriet. If anything should happen to me—if my letters should suddenly cease—take this packet directly to your brother Edward in London. But until then, pray for us. Pray for Elmwood, and pray especially for

Your devoted and faithful friend,

Clara.