Chapter 34 #2
“How close have you gotten to her?” Anthony asked. “Have you really looked at her?”
“I make it a point not to,” Julian said.
Bracing against the stone pillar, Anthony blew out a stream of smoke and watched it billow into the cold air. “Her drapery is the color of sunset.”
“Thank you for that.” Julian grimaced.
“I need you to invite her to the party. I’ll remain well out of sight, but Dixley has something of mine.”
“Your pride?”
Anthony shrugged.
By the rigid offset of his friend’s jaw, this wasn’t a joke. Miss Dixley, or whatever her name was, rose in Julian’s esteem. Except why was she here?
Anthony peered through tendrils of smoke as if reading Julian’s mind. “Perhaps she’s on holiday.”
“Right. Assassins require recreation like the rest of us. I assume killing people must be taxing to one’s nerves.”
“Exhausting,” Anthony said.
And what a peculiar way to seek respite, as a God-fearing, scripture-quoting spinster. Was she hiding?
Julian ruminated on Miss Dixley’s motives with the wintry sun low in the sky before returning inside with Anthony to watch the arrival of the savior, the Magi, shepherds, and a host of angels.
True to her word, Kitty had left the plans for her Christmas party, and the lodge’s staff had seen to every detail.
The dining table groaned with roasted venison, goose and brawn, plum puddings, and mince pies.
In the morning room, tables had been arranged and piles of holly and pine boughs supplied for the children to create their own Christmas wreaths.
In the drawing room, men and women sang carols while Lucretia Carleton accompanied on the pianoforte and Miss Dixley, who Julian had invited on Anthony’s urging, sipped mulled wine with a smitten Jeffrey Dillon.
Anthony, who had made himself scarce owing to Miss Dixley’s presence, was deeply indebted to him. Julian had actually been forced to apologize to Dixley. Apologize. And he had seen past the woman’s judgmental grey eyes when doing so, into something not necessarily dangerous, but altogether cunning.
Julian escaped to the front lawn where a bruising game of football was underway.
In the dropping temperature before nightfall, Julian stripped to his shirtsleeves and entered the fray.
For the price of a goal, Julian’s nose was the recipient of Sam’s elbow.
Spying a group of wives watching the game, he bit back expletives and wiped the blood away with his sleeve.
He played on, happy for the exertion and camaraderie which distracted him from his thoughts: it was Christmastime, he was without Kitty, and she might never return.
Julian scored for the win, and the men shook hands and drank wassail in the twilight. With the women off to warm themselves inside, all took turns drinking to each other’s health in an ear-scorching spirit of ribaldry until snow began falling in earnest.
After dinner, Julian disbursed the Christmas rewards. There were also gifts for each wife and child and various dependent relatives like Jeffrey Dillon’s rheumatic grandmother. Every one of them had been chosen by Kitty.
The children whooped and aahed over their gifts as Julian leaned against the mantel. He studied Miss Dixley. Why was the woman here? His gut said she wasn’t hiding.
Sam sidled up, offering Julian a fresh cup of wassail. “When’s Madame coming back?” he asked.
“She’s not returning. To the office at least.”
“You got rid of her?”
“A harsh turn of phrase, Sam.” But yes, he had.
He should write Kitty and assure her the party had gone off as planned. Thank her for her unorthodox schemes that had given him back his dreams.
“I got something to say,” Sam said.
Julian dragged his gaze from Miss Dixley.
First, Sam took a hearty drink. “We all figured your wife’d be a man-a-hanging when you got word on Lovett.”
“So you’re saying you kept Lovett secret because…” Julian paused for Sam to finish.
“Aye.”
“You knew I would be furious.”
Sam peered down at his shoes. With a deep breath, he looked Julian in the eye. “I ain’t gonna lie. Her being a woman and all, and you lettin’ her lead the yard—”
“When you felt it was your place.”
Sam swallowed. “I didn’t like her much, though she never did nothing for me not to like her. So when Lovett came to the yard, I didn’t help her. Defend her like I should’ve. If she fancied herself the man for the job, then I wanted her to prove her mettle.”
It was a predictable but awful truth, one for which Julian could only blame himself. The men had kept quiet expecting Lovett and his ilk would strike again and knowing Julian would be furious and retaliate.
Sam shifted on his heels. “When Lovett called her a French whore, I knew where he was going. I should have chalked him good, and none of this would have happened.”
The top of Julian’s head lit like a cannon wick. “He called my wife a French whore? Specifically?”
“Aye. A Frenchy too. Alice says I don’t deserve my position for not defending her.”
Like a fist planted in Julian’s abdomen, the truth hit him.
The earl had referred to Kitty as a French whore, a Frenchy.
Whores all of them, his father had said.
He detested Julian dirtying his hands in trade.
What easier way than to discourage a son who would capitulate at a challenge as he had before?
It made perfect sense. How far would the earl go?
He had admitted to having men watching him disembark in Southampton.
Julian swerved his gaze to Miss Dixley. Just like your father, Dixley had yelled at him.
Miss Dixley was hiding. As his father’s spy.
The prayer book hanging from her waist by a thin silver chain, had she ever once opened it? What was in it? Not scripture, Julian was sure. Now he had a decision to make. Confront her in the midst of a Christmas Eve celebration or let Anthony have at her.
Julian was at Anthony’s bedroom door in a trice. He knocked once and braced in the threshold when his friend called out to enter.
“Dixley’s not on holiday,” he said to Anthony lounging in his shirtsleeves with Ollie and a book. “She’s my father’s spy. I suggest you discreetly remove her from my home before I scar some thirty-odd children for life by strangling her under the mistletoe.”
Anthony leapt from the bed, scooping into his waistcoat and buttoning it in haste. That was the best quality in his friend. When it mattered, he left off his biting wit and did what needed to be done. Shrugging into his coat, Anthony strode from the room.
The earl would pay for this. Bringing a spy into his home. Julian had paid Dixley. Paid her to spy on him and Kitty. How much did the earl know? Why hadn’t he confronted Julian on his marriage? More, if his father didn’t know he was married, why had Dixley not told him?
He cranked open the casement for a dose of freezing air when he wanted to smash something.
Nothing good came from anger. All his regrets, they stemmed from it. Was he like his father? He had uttered crushing statements to Kitty and then turned about, just like his father, and acted as if it had never happened. He was cold. Then he was warm. All his life?
All his life.
He was the bloody spit of the earl.
Staring out into the cold night, his gaze hardened on the leafless treetops and the grey-metal river rippling toward the Southampton Water. A frisson coursed up his spine. Kitty’s sketchbook. The rendering he had recognized as his father along the riverbank and had decided was Uncle William.
A gust of wind hit his face, coalescing his thoughts into a reality he grasped.
Kitty knew his father, and he had done something to her.
Something very, very wrong. Something that had put what he now recognized as fear in Kitty’s eyes whenever he spoke of his family.
He had been too blind with self-righteousness to see it. That was his father too.
His anger turned cold in his stomach. He closed the window and with Ollie at his heels, he returned downstairs to find Miss Dixley gone and Anthony nowhere in sight. He joined in singing Christmas carols at the fireside and contemplated how to ensnare the earl without him knowing of the trap.