Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
It was, of course, a terrible idea.
Evie had told herself that at least a hundred times in the last half-hour, but it had not changed the fact that she had gone ahead with her plan anyhow.
Concocting terrible ideas was Evie’s speciality, so she did not allow that to deter her from her plan.
To be fair, it had not been a plan, exactly. She’d cobbled it together on the spur of the moment. She had no idea what exactly she’d intended to do.
She only knew that she had to see Hartenberg, and so she’d taken her maid and a coach to his town house.
The butler had been surprised when he saw her, but he’d quickly masked it with a formal bow and by letting her in, albeit reluctantly.
“His Excellency is not home,” he’d announced, clearly uncertain how to proceed.
She was the bride of his master and his future mistress.
One did not send his future mistress away when she came to call.
On the other hand, to admit her when the master of the house was not at home?
Which was worse? She could see the dilemma play out on his face.
Before he had had the opportunity to send her away, she’d sailed right past him. “Then I shall await him until he returns.”
The butler followed her, defeated.
He did serve her a rather nice tray of tea, and Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce. It was just the right kind of thing to eat in weather like this.
It was quite a masculine dwelling, she noted as her gaze travelled over the room.
There were leather armchairs and a heavy leather chesterfield sofa arranged in front of the fireplace.
The walls were panelled in wood, and bare of any kind of decoration save a single massive portrait that hung over the fireplace.
Evie went over to inspect it. It was a landscape scene, and in the distance, a castle.
She leaned forward to look at it closer.
It was Wolfsthal Castle, surrounded by the forest. A smile of recognition stole over her face.
Then there were bookshelves to the left and right of the fireplace.
His drawing room looked more like a study than a reception room for guests.
The study!
Evie’s eyes travelled to the double door on the right side of the wall. She wondered where that door led to, and whether it would take her to the study.
She looked quickly back at the drawing room door to confirm it was closed. Then she stepped up to the door to the study and gently pushed down the handle.
It opened easily.
The room was dark. Taking a candle that was placed on the mantelpiece, she stepped inside.
It was the study, indeed.
The walls here were lined with more bookshelves. The man clearly liked to read. And ah, there was the desk. She stepped further into the room to the desk, walked around it, and stumbled over something.
It toppled over and rolled across the carpet.
Was it a scrap paper basket? She set it up again, and felt something soft, like…
wool? It was a ball of wool indeed. Puzzled, she followed the thread of the woollen ball that had rolled out.
There were knitting needles too. And what was this?
She lifted a soft fabric out. Was this a half-finished… sock?
A field marshal’s study, instead of harbouring pistols, harboured knitting work.
A snort escaped her. So he had not been telling a fib when he said he liked to knit in his spare time?
How excessively…droll!
Maybe that was what he needed to do when the pressure of his position got too high. And maybe it was exactly the right thing to do, as well. She gave the basket a pat. “Continue knitting, Field Marshal. Your soldiers are in need of socks.”
She lifted her candle to survey the bookshelf and saw nothing remarkable there. The usual classics, English and German, and Latin books, leaning to the more belligerent side. Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Thucydides, Plutarch’s Lives, Tacitus. The usual literature.
She trailed a finger over the book spines.
A sigh escaped her. Really, what was she doing here?
A man like Hartenberg was far too intelligent to keep sensitive information in his private study.
He would never do that. It was more likely he’d had it entrusted to his aide-de-camp, or in a safe somewhere in the depths of the War Council, impossible to access.
Yet what was she to do? That widowed baroness was sending her on a wild goose chase when it wasn’t even certain that Hartenberg had the information she needed.
She would never betray Hartenberg. She knew that for a fact. She loved the man far too much, and he would have her loyalty until her dying day.
But not to do anything, not to even try, that was not Evie, either.
Her gaze travelled along the shelves, which were interrupted by a space of wall, where yet another portrait hung, this time an oil painting of a hunting scene. Then there were bookshelves again.
Her eyes snapped back to the painting.
Strange that it hung there. Why, of all places? It was rather impractical to have it hanging there, and such an insignificant painting…
She stepped up to it, holding the candle high.
Her fingers trailed the edge of the gilt frame. There was more space there than there would be for a normal oil painting. She lodged a finger underneath, and with a soft click, it swung open.
Behind it was a shelf. And in it stood a strongbox, made of wood covered in leather, with studded iron.
Evie’s heart began to hammer faster. There it was.
Julius had an almost identical chest, and in it he kept the family jewels, and the most important documents and deeds pertaining to his estate.
She knew that for a fact because she’d used it to practise picking locks.
There was no reason to believe that it would be any different from Hartenberg’s.
She ran her tongue over her lip.
“It’s not right to do this. But…a tiny peek inside won’t hurt, will it? Just a peek.”
She set the candle on the desk behind her and attempted to lift it out of the shelf. As expected, it was too heavy.
After a moment’s hesitation, she reached into her hair, and pulled out a hairpin.
She straightened it and bent one end so it formed an L-shape.
Then she inserted it into the lock and turned it once, twice, and after a few minutes of fiddling around, to her eternal shock, it clicked, and the lock opened.
“This cannot be. This is too easy,” she muttered. Her hands were sweating, and her heart was beating so fast it was almost jumping out of her chest. Here she was, in her future husband’s study, breaking into his strongbox.
Evie swallowed.
If she was caught… A hasty glance towards the door told her she was still alone, but time pressed, for the butler could return at any moment to pick up the tea tray.
She lifted the lid and peeked inside.
Some papers, as expected. They appeared to be deeds pertaining to property, nothing unexpected nor remarkable but exactly the sort of thing that would be in there.
A pouch with gold coins.
And this? What was this? Evie lifted out a small, velvet bag. It was a miniature.
Of a lady.
She lifted it closer to the candle.
It was a girl, rather, with auburn curls and merry eyes, her lips in an elusive smile.
It took a heartbeat for her to realise that it was a miniature of herself, considerably younger. So young, in fact, she must have still been in the schoolroom.
Why had he kept a portrait of her for so long? And such an unflattering one, as well. She supposed Julius must have given it to him.
Somewhat confused, she set it aside, and turned back to the box, taking out the final item.
A single sheet of paper, covered with a painting. A watercolour.
She stared at it. It looked vaguely familiar. It was lopsided and not particularly well drawn, a drawing of, she gasped, Aldingbourne Hall.
It was her own work of art. She did not particularly enjoy watercolours, and she’d done it quickly and half-heartedly, only because it had been an assignment by Miss Smith, the governess.
She hadn’t been satisfied by it at all and had left it on the table.
It wasn’t something one showed to anyone, least of all presented as a gift.
Miss Smith had sniffed. “Do things properly, or not at all,” she’d scolded. “A Stafford-Hill never does anything by halves.”
Evie had hung her head in shame, knowing she was right, and she’d spent the entire next day re-doing the assignment. The second painting she’d produced as a result had been more satisfactory; as a matter of fact, it was now gracing the wall of the blue drawing room of Aldingbourne Hall.
But why was this awful draft here?
She turned the drawing over. There was some writing on it. She squinted at it, deciphering, ‘Evie made this especially for you.’ It was Julius’s handwriting.
The scoundrel!
Rifling through the remaining contents of the box, Evie saw that it was full of her creations.
Horrible pencil sketches of Julius and herself, a misshapen embroidery of a handkerchief, another watercolour.
Had Julius sent him all these, claiming she’d made them specifically for Hartenberg?
They were all drafts and miscreations she’d cast aside.
And what on earth had possessed the man to keep them all in his strongbox, as if they were precious jewellery?
Contradictory feelings washed through her.
Shame, because all those years it had never truly occurred to her to send him one of her watercolours.
Surprise that Julius had thought of it. Annoyance that he hadn’t asked her directly.
Maybe because he knew that she would have declined such a request?
And then there was something else, something she could not quite name, that caught her off guard entirely: that Hartenberg appeared to truly treasure these creations of a gauche schoolgirl whom he’d never met.
Something warm spread through her chest.
What did that mean? Could their union have meant far more to him than he had ever let on? Could he have held her in some secret affection all those years, though he would deny it to his dying breath?
A fall of footsteps outside the door made her head snap up. Without thinking, she dropped to the ground, crouching in front of the desk, hoping it would shield her from whoever entered.
The door opened.
A pair of Hessians appeared in her line of sight. She repressed a curse.
Hartenberg.
“Evie?” The surprise in his voice was palpable. She held her breath. Then, as he took in the open box, he went on in distinctly colder, icier tones. “What the devil are you doing there?”
Grimacing, she drew herself up. “I uh—just happened to pass by and—” she waved a hand, “it occurred to me, well—the truth being—” Her shoulders slumped. “I suppose you just caught me in the act of breaking into your strongbox.”
There was a silence so terrible that Evie cautiously lifted her eyes.
His face was still and pale, and a muscle jumped in his cheek. There was something disquieting in his eyes that made her look away, quickly.
Her brain raced, furiously, to seek some sort of excuse that would make sense, something, anything at all, but all she came up with was a resolute blank. The truth was that there was nothing at all she could say that would alleviate this situation.
“I trust you found what you were looking for?” His voice had an edge of steel that made her shudder.
Evie lifted the watercolour sheet. “Just this.”
He stared at it for one moment, then took it, placed it back into the strongbox, closed it, and snapped the portrait back into place.
Then he returned to the door and held it open for her, waiting for her.
As Evie walked past him, she avoided looking into his face.
He held out a chair for her and motioned her to sit.
Evie sat, clutching at her skirt. He sat in the chair across from her. A quick look up told her that his face was hard.
After another painful pause, he finally spoke. “When we had the conversation with Metternich the other day, I did not dream that you would be dancing to his pipe so willingly. Nor so promptly.”
Ah. So he thought she was spying for Metternich. Of course. Maybe the best course of action was to go along with his assumption, since she could hardly tell him the truth that she was spying for the Widows.
She licked her lips. “Well, my reasoning was that if I gave him something right away, he would be satisfied and leave me alone. Contrary to what you may think, I am not much into this spy business after all, as I see no sense in it. But he wouldn’t leave me alone.”
He still stared at her, poker-faced, which left her squirming rather uncomfortably in her chair. It occurred to her that he was furious, and when he got furious he got terrifyingly quiet, and that was rather more alarming than if he had shouted at her.
“A-are you angry now?” she blurted out. “O-of course you are.” She cleared her throat when he continued to be silent. “I wish you would just go ahead and yell at me. I know what I have done is a breach of trust.” She twisted her moist hands into the fabric of her dress.
“Then why do it?”
She knew what he was asking. Once trust was broken it was broken and gone for good.
“I, um, was just nosing about and I know I should not have. One thing led to the next and then I saw that watercolour…” Her voice petered out. She cleared her throat. “I did not know you’d kept it.”
“It is none of your business what I keep and do not keep.”
Of course it was not.
“How did you manage to open the chest?”
She told him about the trick with the hairpin.
His face darkened. “If you were looking for more substantial intelligence, you would not have found it here.”
That she already knew.
“It is a disappointment, Lady Evangeline. I believed I could trust you.” A pause, in which she felt the full weight of it.
“I see now that my first impression of you was the correct one. At heart you are precisely what you appear: a pretty ornament, decorative and diverting, and entirely false. Since the moment we met, you have lied, dissembled and deceived me at every turn. I was fool enough to think otherwise.”
Evie flinched. Her first impulse was to flare up and tell him how very wrong he was, except…he was right, was he not? She had lied, dissembled and deceived him again and again. She’d given him the worst possible impression of her. What else was he supposed to think of her?
She made herself meet his eyes. “What do you intend to do now? Are you going to dissolve the betrothal?” she whispered, her heart aching at the mere thought.
He studied her for a long moment. “No. This union is too useful for both our families. But I do not make the same mistake twice, Lady Evangeline.” The bite in his voice was precise and cutting as a blade. “I will not trust you again.”
Something in her chest contracted sharply at that, as though a door had been closed and bolted from the other side, with finality.
She hung her head, and a fat tear dropped onto her clasped hands. “You have every right to be angry. I am very sorry, Georg.”
It was the first time she’d used his name. What a shame it had to be in the midst of a quarrel.