Louise Allen - Regency Scoundrels And Scandals

‘Gone. May I have a scone, Mama?’ She nodded absently, shifting slightly to give the footmen room to deposit the teapot and cream jug on the table beside her.

‘Gone where? Thank you, that will be all.’ She did not want to discuss Jack in front of the domestic staff.

‘I don’t know, Mama. Oh, and he said would I please make his excuses to you, and…’ Freddie frowned in concentration ‘…he said I must take care to get this right—he said to say goodbye, and that it was better that he went now, as his job was done and he did not want to make complications. And that you were to remember him if you ever have a bad dream.’ A mammoth mouthful of scone vanished and Freddie chewed valiantly. ‘Mama, do you think that means he isn’t coming back at all? I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but—’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ Eva said automatically. ‘Yes. I think that means Mr Ryder is not coming back.’ He had walked away, without a word, without a kiss. There was just the memory of the pressure of his hand when the three of them had stood together in the hall and the knowledge that she would love him and miss him and want him for the rest of her days.

‘That’s a pity.’ Freddie picked up a slice of cake, looked at it and put it down. When his eyes met Eva’s, they glistened with a shimmer of tears. ‘I like him. I’ll miss him.’

‘You hardly know him,’ Eva said bracingly. What was upsetting Freddie so much?

‘Yes, I do. He came to see me three times at Eton, and we had long talks. He wanted to know all about the castle and my uncles and you. I said I didn’t remember very much, but he said I was intelligent, so if I put my mind to it, I would recall lots—and I did. It was really exciting. He said I was briefing him for his mission, and he would send me coded dispatches, and he did.’

‘He did? How?’ And why hadn’t Jack told her so she could have sent messages, too?

‘They went through his agents to the Foreign Office. And when the first one arrived, they sent Grimstone with it to stay with me. They said he was just a butler, but I think he’s a bodyguard, don’t you, Mama? Because the first message from Mr Ryder said there was danger and I had to take great care and Grimstone started going everywhere with me. I got ragged a bit, but then the chaps shut up, because Grimstone showed everyone how to box.’

‘How dare he worry you like that?’ Eva banged down the teapot, disregarding the splash of hot liquid from the spout. ‘And if I’d known he was writing to you, I would have sent a message.’

‘Mr Ryder said the messages had to be short and you wouldn’t like me to be worried, so you’d fuss. But Mr Ryder said I was old enough to understand and start taking care of myself. Are you growling, Mama?’

‘Yes, I am!’

‘But he was right, wasn’t he? Things were dangerous. I don’t expect Uncle Bruin’s really just ill, I expect someone’s tried to poison him, like they did me with those mushrooms.’

‘Freddie!’

‘It’s Uncle Rat, isn’t it? He’s a Bonapartist.’ Freddie’s clear hazel eyes regarded her solemnly over yet another piece of cake.

‘Yes. Freddie, I wasn’t going to tell you all this, all at once. But I’m afraid Antoine has been very…foolish. He may be…hurt.’

‘Mr Ryder said he was trying to develop rockets for the Emperor, and he was trying to kill both of us and he took Maubourg troops into France—so I expect I’m going to have to write to King Louis and say sorry, aren’t I?—and he may have been killed, but we can’t be certain.’

Eva picked up her cup with a hand that shook and took a gulp of tea. It did not help much. ‘When did he tell you all this?’

‘Just now, before he left. He said it’s called a de-brief and he had to tell me because you probably wouldn’t, because of mothers worrying. May I have a macaroon?’

‘You’ll make yourself sick,’ Eva said distractedly.

‘And he said you were a heroine, and found out about the rockets and helped him raid the factory, and fought off Uncle Rat’s agents and probably saved his life.’ The macaroon vanished and Freddie sank back with a happy sigh of repletion. ‘And he said I wasn’t to worry if you seemed a bit upset about things, because you had had a very difficult time, and finding I was all right would actually make you more upset, because that’s the way shock and relief work.’

‘Did he?’ Eva took a macaroon and ate it rather desperately. Sugar was supposed to be good for shock, was it not?

‘I like him a lot,’ Freddie said again. ‘And I think he likes me. And I thought perhaps, when I saw him looking at you, that he likes you, too. And now he has gone away.’ He scuffed a toe in the Aubusson carpet. ‘He’s just the sort of person a chap would like for a friend, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. He would be a very good friend,’ Eva agreed, filling up her son’s teacup. Jack appeared to have handled breaking the news of all this to Freddie much better than she would have. She was angry with him, of course she was…but it was all part of the role he had assumed when he undertook to bring her back to England. Do as I say, when I say it. When Jack was with her, she knew he would look after her. Totally.

She would have resisted him telling Freddie about the danger, but her son was so much more grown up and perceptive than she had realised. He would have spotted the new bodyguard for what he was, and, in the absence of information, would have worried. Jack had involved him in the adventure, treated him like an intelligent young man so it became understandable and exciting. What a wonderful father he would make for Freddie.

‘Mama! You are spilling your tea.’

‘So I am.’ Eva put down her cup, and dabbed at her skirt. A father for Freddie. I am thinking of marrying him, she realised. And that’s impossible, of course, Dowager Grand Duchesses do not marry King’s Messengers. Only he’s a duke’s son…

‘What are you thinking about, Mama?’

‘I am having a very silly daydream about something that cannot possibly happen,’ Eva said briskly. ‘Now, let’s go and sit down, kick off our shoes, and we can talk until we are hoarse.’

It took three days before the invitations began to arrive. Three days during which Eva and Freddie did indeed talk themselves hoarse, she shopped exhaustively for a new wardrobe and they explored the house until it became like a second home and the staff familiar faces.

It was not just Grimstone who was a bodyguard, she soon realised. The pair of large footmen were never far from the door of any room she and her son were in. They stuck to her like burrs whenever she went outside the house, politely refusing to wait in the carriage whenever she entered a shop. Eventually she tackled the butler. ‘We are here and safe, Grimstone. Surely there is no risk now? Prince A…The source of danger may not even be alive.’

‘But his agents will be, ma’am,’ the butler pointed out in his gravelly voice. ‘This has just come for you from the guv’nor, ma’am.’

‘Mr Ryder?’ Eva snatched the letter off the silver salver before she could school herself into an appearance of indifference. She broke the seal and read the three lines it contained. The handwriting was black, sprawling, undisciplined, a complete contrast to Jack’s methods of operation. Or was this Lord Sebastian writing? she wondered.

The absent troops returned home with the body of A. It has a bullet wound in the back. From very close range. P. improves daily. Show this to Grimstone and assume A.’s agents are still at large and may not yet know of his death. It was signed with a J., a slashing flourish across the bottom of the page.

Wordlessly Eva handed the letter to the butler, who read it through with pursed lips, then gave it back. ‘Own men shot him by all accounts,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t like being made traitors of, especially in view of what happened. P. will be the Regent, ma’am?’