A Necessary Deception by Laurie Alice Eakes

Author:Laurie Alice Eakes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-28T16:16:00+00:00

16

The sling into which his valet tied Christien every morning, after a painful session dressing, gave him entrée into the drawing rooms of numerous ton matrons. A bachelor was always welcome to round out the numbers at dinner parties or small dancing parties. A bachelor with an arm wounded saving a lady from injury was pure gold.

“Even if he is French,” he overheard one dowager in a purple turban remark.

“Because he is French,” her interlocutor responded. She was a plump young wife with eyes like pansies. “I know we’re at war with them, but we’re not at war with the aristocracy. We’re trying to save the aristocracy and bring back their king, are we not?”

“Of course. Kings are the natural order of things.”

The young wife giggled. “Men who look and talk like he does are the natural order of other things.”

Christien, resting behind a potted palm tree, slipped away before his heated face set the dry fronds on fire.

He spent a great deal of time ducking behind draperies, doorways, and decorative vegetation in an effort to catch snippets of conversation, avoid other interludes of dialogue, or simply give his aching shoulder a rest. So far, he had accomplished nothing from the first reason. If an agent was working amidst the upper classes of London Society, Christien had no idea who it could be after two full weeks of attending every gathering to which he gained an invitation.

He didn’t even see George Barnaby. The man seemed to have vanished. Christien tried to find him, to confront him about the “accident” the day Lydia fell from her horse. None of the typical haunts for bachelors claimed he was in residence. None of his hosts or hostesses recalled who he was, with one or two exceptions, who said they hadn’t encountered him. Not even young Gerald Frobisher knew where his mentor had gotten himself to.

Christien found Frobisher riding in the park early one bright morning in mid-April. His companion wore a blue riding habit and a loo mask, but Christien thought he recognized the mare and the lady’s honey-blonde curls peeking out from beneath a perky hat. Surely Lydia didn’t know what her younger sister was doing any more than he had known what his younger sister was doing.

He pretended not to recognize Honore Bainbridge and addressed Frobisher. “I haven’t seen Barnaby in weeks. Has he taken himself off from London?”

“I have no idea.” Frobisher shrugged. “I am much too preoccupied with my entertainments to worry about what that stick has gotten himself up to.”

Honore giggled.

“I thought you were friends.” Christien turned so he didn’t accidentally glance at Honore, though he wanted to snatch her off her mare and carry her back to Cavendish Square for her father to deal with. Or Lydia.

But he tried not to think of Lydia these days.

“I wouldn’t call us friends,” Frobisher drawled. “We met at an inn on the Great North Road to London and merely traveled here together. Never saw him before. No need to see him since.

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