Chapter Seven
Giselle took the back servant stairs at a clip and left the hotel in the basement through the kitchen door.
This morning, she’d told herself she had no need to be fancy to complete her errands and buy a new supply of watercolors.
She’d strolled outside the hotel earlier this morning and felt the humid air.
She had donned an older gown of apple green with a matching shawl.
To top it off, she had chosen a plain cloche straw hat that hid her features.
Pausing on the walkway, she glanced about.
The streets were empty of foot traffic. Only a few public carriages and lorries crisscrossed, out and about at this early hour.
No one suddenly appeared. Not even her regular guard—again.
She had strolled the shore briefly yesterday to take her measurements and had not spotted hide nor hair of him.
She had seen Lord Carlisle. Not to talk to. But both days, she had emerged from her rooms to walk the town and do her calculations. Tuesday, she’d spied him with Bella and his sister, enjoying ices in a small café. Yesterday, they ran the two kites Giselle and Bella had constructed Monday.
Giselle had not approached them. They looked so carefree, she did not want to intrude on their fun. Yet she was pleased he had not yet returned home, wherever that was. That meant, hope against hope, vain as that was, that they might meet again.
As for her guard, who knew where he was? He seemed to have vanished. Disturbed by his absence, she tempered her anxiety by focusing on her exact measurements of height, distance, and quality. Then she had returned to her rooms to put all her knowledge to her primary pencil sketches.
But in one way or another, both men hampered her progress with her work.
If she could not go out with absolute confidence in her safety, venture about the town at will, how could she complete her sketches and watercolors on time?
She had already missed one deadline for the seascape of Ramsgate.
That, she would have to skip. She was not going back.
The drawings of Brighton would complete the set of townscapes she’d been ordered to produce.
Ramsgate—her friend and coordinator Lady Ashley had told her—would most likely not be a choice for the French to land. She would not worry about it.
But she did grumble to herself about men and duty.
“Yet do not complain.” Only with Ramsgate, and now here in Brighton, had she encountered problems. In Ramsgate, it was bad weather that had deterred her daily research trips.
Here in Brighton, she seemed to have lost her bodyguard.
His lack annoyed her, but she resolved that it would not constrain her. She went about town anyway.
She stopped to gaze into a modiste’s shop window. A bolt of royal-purple silk rippled across the floor of the display. She licked her lower lip, seeing herself in a ball gown that flowed around her like a royal river as she danced with monsieur le marquis. Clive. Dear Clive.
Bah! Non! Fantasy!
Still, she wanted that gorgeous silk. Plus, the dressmaker, she could tell by the fine stitching on the yellow dress in the corner of the window, offered excellent craftsmanship.
She began to turn toward the shop entrance.
But a frisson whirled through her. She paused.
Reflected in the wide window, a man stood against a lamppost across the street.
He was long, lean, beak nosed, and beady eyed.
In truth, he resembled a man she’d seen briefly when she was in Hastings.
His gaze slid over her in a deathly stare, then he shifted and walked in the opposite direction.
The hair on her neck tingled now as it had then in Hastings.
Her next thought disturbed her in a different way.
Months ago, when she had rented a small cottage along the Thames in Richmond, she’d felt the same phenomenon, as if…
as if someone watched her. The feeling had been oddly pleasant.
Her intuition told her she should not be afraid of that experience.
Days later, when she had spied a tall, blond, handsome man in town, she imagined it might be he who observed her.
She’d shaken off that illogical assumption, and indeed, she’d not felt that way since leaving Richmond.
She had become watchful then, but had never felt afflicted.
Nor had she discovered anyone near her. She’d forgotten that until now.
She sucked in a huge breath and pushed her fears away.
She went inside the shop and stood for the measurements for a glorious purple silk gown.
It would be a devastatingly gorgeous creation, frivolous of her to commission, but she’d have it.
She deserved her small rewards. Her mind full of her work, she allowed herself a smile.
Tomorrow she’d meet her two friends from London, Lady Ashley and Lady Ramsey, who came to Brighton to discuss her progress.
She would tell them about the laxness of her guard… and that man there who seemed familiar.
The only way to test if he were following her was to hurry on now to do her errands. If he wished to cause mischief, he could not possibly think of advancing on her in broad daylight. Besides, Gus and Amber—Lady Ashley and Lady Ramsey—would see her safe and secure.
Out of the modiste’s, she bought her supplies in the Lanes and hurried back to her rooms. There she settled in, submerged herself in her work…and forgot about the draw of sun and sea and salty air.
But that was not an easy feat.
She laughed and put down her pencil. It should be easy to crush her need to laugh and play with little Bella Davenport.
And forget the beguiling Lord Carlisle.
But it was not.
*
Clive rose from the table outside the sweet shop. Langley must have some emergency with his contact. Their plan, should one be unable to meet, was to do so the following day. Same time, same place.
He could wait. His agent out of Broadstairs had failed to post. So Clive had no news for his friend and colleague.
“Lord Carlisle?” A lady stepped before him. “How lovely to see you here.”
Amber duClare, Lady Ramsey, extended her hand in greeting. A gorgeous creature with sizzling red hair and snapping green eyes, she and her friend Augustine Whittington, Lady Ashley, were noted society hostesses.
“My lady,” he said as he took her hand. “You make my day sunnier.”
“Charmer,” she teased him, and cocked a brow. “Have you met my friend, Lady Ashley? My dear,” she said, and turned to the young woman beside her, “allow me to present Lord Carlisle, Clive Davenport.”
The dark-haired beauty was smiling. “I have often heard of your work in the Lords for voting reforms, sir. I am honored to meet you.”
“As am I to formally meet you. Have you ladies a desire for the crumpets?” Both ladies were friends, Clive had long known.
Married to men who were not only friends themselves, but colleagues, so said rumor.
Clive had met Lady Ramsey only a few weeks ago in London at a reception at the Russian embassy.
There he’d also exchanged a few words with her husband, said to be an agent, as was his wife, for the famous city merchant Scarlett Hawthorne.
The Scarlett ring was unofficial and frowned upon by the home and foreign secretaries.
The prime minister could not confirm Scarlett’s agents’ success with any hard evidence, nor with any regularity.
A problem of merchant trade and agents’ lack of temperance, he termed it.
Yet he valued Scarlett’s work when he could confirm its accuracy.
He declared that the government needed all the help they could get to smother the bastard, Napoleon.
Bound as the PM was by what he knew and what he wished he could learn, he often decreed that a secret was only that if two people knew it.
He chided his official ministers to live up to the reported rumors of the lady merchant’s smart network.
She sat in the City in Clements Lane, but her elegant fingertips controlled strings on innumerable agents that reached as far as Cairo, Jappa, Athens, and, said some, perhaps even the ruthlessly ruled kingdoms of Tripoli and the tribes of Africa who miraculously escaped the horror of the sub-Sahara slave trade.
Clive smiled and tipped his hat to the two ladies. “I do recommend everything here, however.”
“You are leaving?” Lady Ramsey’s eyes swept over his empty plate and cup and saucer.
“I am.” He made to go.
“We could sit, couldn’t we, Gus, and become better acquainted?”
“I apologize, but I must leave.” He wished to heaven he could stay and learn what he could about why they were here in town, if indeed there was a reason other than the pleasure of the moment. “I have another appointment, you see.”
“A shame. Well!” Lady Ramsey said with a bright smile. “My husband and I host a ball in the grand salon of the Old Ship Hotel three evenings’ hence. Please come. I will send round a proper invitation. Where do you lodge?”
He grinned. “The Old Ship.”
“There you have it!” She beamed. “You can simply run down the stairs. I know Godfrey would love to get to know you better.”
“And my husband, Lord Ashley, would as well,” Lady Ashley added.
Because the foreign secretary had long wished that his own agents would coordinate espionage activities with those of Scarlett Hawthorne, Clive thought it the perfect opportunity to draw closer to a few. “Thank you, I would like that myself. I will be delighted to attend.”
He was making to leave them with a nod when Madame Giselle Laurant turned the corner of the bakery shop and halted at sight of the two ladies with him.
Her eyelashes flickered, the only sign of her distress. Her gaze on the two women, she proceeded to walk backward out of sight.
What was wrong?