Cynthia Bailey Pratt (24 page)

“Yes, Dr. Randall,” Tom said with a reassuring wave. “We’d better go,” he said to the others. He did not fail to notice that the stranger Jocelyn was with did not release her hand on the walk to Tom’s rooms.

Under his cap his brain seethed with questions, and not all the learning imbibed from the great university helped him in resolving them. He knew—for it was common knowledge—that his cousin was not a pretty woman. Why, then, did she seem so confoundedly attractive today? And why did this Hammond person look at her as if she were a pretty woman? Who was this Hammond, anyway? What reason could he have for holding Jocelyn’s hand? Tom began to hope none of his friends would see Jocelyn appearing and behaving so.

After the brief walk to Tom’s rooms, Hammond held the coat in his hands. He felt for the bottom seam. It crinkled as he touched it. He pulled his knife from his boot, at which Tom’s eyes opened wide, and slit the stitches Aunt Arasta had sewed. His fingers hesitated above the open seam. “Who sewed it together?” Hammond demanded.

“My aunt,” Jocelyn said.

“Then she
must
have seen the letter!” He groped for it with shaking fingers and stared at the pale cream paper. “Here,” he said, offering it to Jocelyn.

It was in French. She could only understand a few words that were the same as in English.
L ‘Empereur, dangereux,
and, chillingly,
Les assassins de l’histoire.
She scanned the signature and was about to return the paper when she pulled it back and looked more closely at the almost illegible scrawl at the bottom of the letter. The capital
N
was plain enough, and an
I
halfway down the word. She was a certain as she could be that it said
Napoleon.

Chapter Fifteen

Mr. Fletcher heeded no one and nothing as he ran across the High Street. He ignored the outraged shouts behind him as if they were unvoiced. All his senses focused on Helena, standing on the far pavement, her cloak open and her eyes bright.

On reaching her he babbled, “Please, Helena! Please listen to me. I understand how you feel, but I can’t let you go to your brother. He’s a bad man; you don’t know.” He seized her hands, pressing them to his heart, and received his first inkling of the change in her mood when she suffered him to retain them.

“I know, dearest,” she said. “Someone’s explained it all to me.”

‘‘ Someone?’’ Fletcher asked.

“It is good to see you in such spirits. Lieutenant,” said a voice Fletcher instantly recognized. He turned around with a guilty start that he tried, too late, to turn into the posture of attention.

Lord Ashspring looked out his carriage door. The long ride through the night had deepened the shadows under his eyes, but a smile rested on his thin lips. It vanished when he saw the way Mr. Fletcher gawked at him. “I am surprised at you, sir,” Lord Ashspring said, his voice very dry. “I have gone to a deal of trouble to bring this young lady to Oxford for your express convenience, yet I receive no thanks. I expected better of a man in your regiment.”

Mr. Fletcher bowed belatedly, forced to surrender Helena’s hands. But she willingly gave one back to him when he straightened, so he was none the worse for his courtesy. “I don’t understand,” he said, looking between his lady and his lord.

“Exactly what I should expect you to say,” Lord Ash-spring said. “Indeed, whatever induced me to think you could be taken from your horses, sir, I cannot guess. It is evidently their actions alone you understand.”

“Oh, please,” Helena said. “Don’t tease him.”

“Tease him? By the Lord, I shall give him every opportunity to prove me wrong.” Suddenly Lord Ashspring snapped, “Did you or did you not read the file on Mr. Fain?”

“I did, sir. Before I left for my assignment.”

“Then, if you read with any attention, you shall be able to tell me a simple fact. In what year did Mr. Fain’s father first go to Paris?”

“Uh . . . 1797, sir! Just before Napoleon’s return from Italy.”

“And how old is Miss Fain?”

Mr. Fletcher’s expression uncontrollably softened as he looked at Helena. He saw her lips move and, after a moment of stunned admiration for their loveliness, realized she mouthed a number. “Uh . . . eighteen, sir! As of November of last year!” Mr. Fletcher remembered Helena’s birthday very well, for it had been the first time he’d seen her.

Lord Ashspring did not miss the young lady’s signal and found it necessary to resort to hiding his smile in his handkerchief. After a lengthy cough he said bitingly, “I realize, sir, that you are only in the cavalry. Had you perhaps joined the navy, or even the artillery, where some basic knowledge of mathematics is useful ... I see that light has dawned upon you.”

Though it was obvious that Mr. Fletcher was otherwise occupied. Lord Ashspring continued. “It is not difficult for a man to father a child if he is not married to a woman. It is, however, impossible if they are nowhere near each other!” Lord Ashspring wondered if he spoke too plainly for the delicate ears of young Helena Fain. He reassured himself that kissing kept her too busy to notice any mere verbal impropriety.

Lord Ashspring was willing to wait an adequate interval, though it seemed the time required to kiss a girl had lengthened from the days he fondly recalled. He was obliged not only to clear his throat but to pound upon the floor of the carriage with his stick before Mr. Fletcher raised his head.

Still Mr. Fletcher could spare no attention even for his most superior officer. “Then you forgive me for ... my profession?” he asked Helena, looking deeply into her eyes.

Her long lashes flickered and then lifted to return his gaze. “My . . . Nicholas has always been very kind to me. He sent for me when he heard of my mother’s death and my desolate condition. I owe him everything. But now that His Lordship has explained it, I can see that my gratitude cannot be as important as the prevention of the crime my bro—Nicholas is intending. And ...”

Now Helena’s face became suffused with rose, and her eyes modestly dropped. Her voice was so low that Mr. Fletcher needed to strain to hear it, and Lord Ashspring missed her words altogether. She said, “I confess to feeling for you nothing but admiration and . . . love.”

Lord Ashspring, compelled once more to attempt to rouse Mr. Fletcher from a most pleasant activity, soon surrendered the futile effort and sat back on the velvet seat of his carriage. Though his expression was sour, internally he began to feel as if a fountain of kindness, long stifled, began once more to flow. The feeling was not unlike indigestion, he thought, but pleasant.

At last the lingering and envious whistle of a passerby awakened the young people. Then it was Mr. Fletcher’s turn to blush as he met Lord Ashspring’s eye. This was definitely not the behavior to exhibit before the man whose acerbic comments were legend at the War Office. Mr. Fletcher paused before speaking, and Helena said, “You haven’t even told us how clever we were to find you so quickly.”

“Yes,” Mr. Fletcher said, “I’m very surprised.”

His Lordship said, “I merely assumed a young man after a hard journey across half the country would want his breakfast immediately upon arriving in his destination. I still have some powers of imagination and deduction, young man.”

“I suppose Jocelyn was terribly upset by my foolishness?” Helena asked. She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I think I must have had some kind of fever, to run away so from my dearest friend. I will make it up to her. We shall have her come to stay with us, almost at once, after we are married.”

Helena looked up at Mr. Fletcher to see if he would accept this extremely broad hint and renew his offers of matrimony. She was wounded to see him looking so absent. Perhaps, she thought, he has forgotten that our engagement was broken off. If that were so, she decided she would not add to her follies by reminding Mark she had been so stupid as to set him free.

After a moment that stretched an eternity for her. Mark said, “I can do better than that. She can be present at the wedding, if Mr. and Mrs. Luckem can spare her. Oh, you don’t know . . . they’ve a new housekeeper.”

“They do? How wonderful,” Helena said.

“Putting domestic details aside,” Lord Ashspring broke in. “Is this Jocelyn Burnwell you are speaking of?”

“Yes, my lord. She’s here, in Oxford. She insisted on coming with me, to help Helena if she wanted it.” He looked vaguely off into the middle distance. “I thought . . . she was with me a moment ago. Maybe I left her on the other side of the road.” He turned toward Lord Ashspring. “Sir, Hammond is here, as well.”

“Hammond! Go bring him immediately,” His Lordship ordered.

* * * *

Jocelyn cleared books and papers off her cousin’s armchair by pushing them onto the floor and sat down. Now that Hammond had found the letter, she didn’t quite know what to do. She was not looking forward to meeting her aunt and uncle some one hundred miles from where she was supposed to be. She felt she betrayed their trust by leaving their home in the hands of someone of whom, after all, she knew nothing. She thought of Mr. Quigg and felt comforted by the knowledge that he, at least, could be depended upon.

Nagging at her, too, was her certainty that Hammond would shortly be leaving for London. He said as much now, asking Tom which of the many coaches they’d seen that morning was the fastest. “It’s imperative I be in London as soon as possible.”

“Well,” Tom answered, pulling at his chin. “It’s not so much a matter of which coach does the distance in the least time. It’s finding one to take you. The term’s nearly up, and everyone’s trying to go home. I’m staying on, until my friends and I leave for Italy.”

“Tom!” Jocelyn exclaimed, surprised out of her gloom. “You’re going to Italy?”

Her cousin nodded proudly. “Yes, Mother and Father gave their permission last night. Mackensie-Clarke and I have been wanting to go for years, and now that the war is over, there’s nothing to stop us. Phillips, Munro, and Harbinson are coming along as well. We’d have left already if Harbinson’s mother hadn’t insisted he visit her before we go. We’re only waiting for him to come back.”

“How marvelous,” Jocelyn said. “If you don’t write to me every week, I’ll never forgive you.”

“We’ve permission to stay away three months and perhaps longer. Maybe, once I know the place, we’ll go back together.”

Jocelyn looked at him with approval. His generosity pleased her more than words could express. Two years ago he’d considered her almost as big a nuisance as Arnold now did.

Hammond waited impatiently for the cousins to finish speaking before saying, “What about the coaches?”

“Oh! Yes. Well, there’s Bew’s Flying Machine, the Worcester Ply . . .”

Jocelyn stopped listening. She did not want to know what decision they came to, for that would tell her when Hammond would leave. To stop from thinking about it, she took up a newspaper that lay on an oaken bookcase, scarcely serving its purpose, for the majority of the books were strewn about the floor. Jocelyn looked at the front page.

It announced in bold type that she held in her hand
Jackson ‘s Oxford Journal
and bid all young men to remember their Maker in the days of their youth. The paper was divided between reports of the sinking of a coal barge, the visit by the Regent, a student protest against the new lecture system, and discreet advertisements. Moving her hands so that more light from the window behind her fell on the paper, she opened it, noticing that the pages were already cut and felt glad that Tom took an interest in the city. She read with great attention, yet the print blurred before her eyes.

Tom, remembering with a snap of his fingers that his cousin and her companion might appreciate refreshment, went out to yell down the staircase for his fag. Hammond took advantage of the boy’s absence and approached Jocelyn.

He stood looking at her tangled swirl of dark hair, admiring the gleams of red where the sun touched it. Jocelyn, feeling his gaze, smiled up, and he looked into her gray eyes fringed with dark lashes. She laid the paper on her lap, and her lips curved into a calm smile of polite interest.

He did not speak. A look gleamed in his eyes that made Jocelyn’s breath come short. Her smile faded, a faint frown between her brows. He opened his mouth to speak, and Jocelyn felt her heart catch. He said, “Good God, what’s that?”

Hammond snatched the paper from Jocelyn’s grasp and stood staring at the newsprint. Jocelyn’s disappointment was tempered by curiosity and alarm. She stood up, touching his arm and looking over it at the paper. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“The Czar! He’s here!”

“Of course, I know ...” She felt the room begin to spin as every drop of blood drained from her face.

Hammond threw upon her a look of savagery that consorted oddly with the utter deadness of his voice. “You knew!”

“Oh, Hammond,” she said, her fingers tightening on his arm. “Everything’s been happening so fast—Helena, Mr. Fain, Mr. Fletcher . . . you. I got muddled. I told Mr. Fletcher that Fain was coming here for that... to kill.” Her voice dropped to an apologetic whisper. “I forgot to tell you.”

Hammond nodded to everything she said, his teeth tearing at his lips. “You knew. You knew Fain was coming here. You knew the Czar and the Prince were coming here. And you forgot to tell me! What in God’s name did you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

Jocelyn could only shake her head.

“Good God,” he said again, staring at the words in smudged newsprint. “It’s tonight. There’s no time to prepare ... no time to send a message to London for help. There’s only me.”

“I thought you wanted an opportunity to—”

“To what?” Hammond said, looking at her with hard eyes. “To play a lone hand again? I’ve had enough of that. One of the reasons I came back to England was to feel ... I don’t know ... a part of something more than myself. I was going to take that letter straight to the Old Man. I wouldn’t mind being in the forefront of the battle again, but alone? Oh, no.” His wry smile came back to his face. “I want help, all I can get. But there’s none to be had. So alone it must be.”