CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Felicity’s stomach turned as she and the other ladies retired to the drawing room. But how relieved she had been when Mr. Merrick had raised his voice and halted the humiliating debacle. Tears rose behind her eyes as she recalled how he had stood up for her, but she blinked them away.
It doesn’t matter. Why did she care? She wouldn’t marry Mr. Ratley, but it still stung. She had thought him disinterested because he did not care that she did not possess a fortune, but that did not necessarily mean that he liked her for herself. As it turned out, he only cared about her beauty and her childbearing capabilities. And it made her cheeks sting all over again that she could have been so fooled as to think him worthy of her love, admiration, and hand in marriage.
But she could not dwell on that now. She had to stuff it down, down with the humiliation of everyone laughing at her buffoonish fiancé trying to come up with compliments for her—and failing miserably.
The few ladies in the room had paired up and were talking amongst themselves. Lady Blackstone seemed distracted. She even got up and looked out the window, then went back to her seat.
“Felicity.” Lady Blackstone turned to her, startling her out of her reverie. “I hope you are not upset at what happened at dinner. Mr. Ratley is not especially good with words or compliments. It does not mean he doesn’t wish to marry you as much as any man might wish to.”
“Oh, I never assign any worth to compliments.” Felicity tried for a light and airy laugh, but it came out sounding hollow.
Lady Blackstone patted her hand. “Mr. Ratley adores you, and he is a good man. You two shall be very happy.”
I shall be very happy as soon as I leave this place.
“Lady Blackstone.” A man appeared in the doorway, a stranger to Felicity. “The delivery has arrived.”
Her hostess stood quickly. “Ladies, I regret I must part from you early this evening. And I will borrow your husbands for a little while. Our task may take a couple of hours.”
The ladies all expressed their regrets, but briefly, as it was evident that Lady Blackstone was eager to go.
The other ladies began talking together. As they were all ignoring her, Felicity slipped out without excusing herself.
Lady Blackstone was talking in a low voice in the corridor with three men.
“. . . take the weapons to the grotto . . . With all the men helping, it should only take a couple of hours.”
Felicity’s heart crashed against her chest. Mr. Merrick! If they were all outside, they might see him as he came out of the shed after damaging the printing press.
“Tell all the men to change their clothes if they do not wish to get them dirty and meet us in ten minutes at the head of the trail that leads to the grotto.”
Felicity ducked inside the nearest room—a small sitting room. She held her breath as Lady Blackstone walked past.
She waited only a few seconds, then headed for the back door.
With her white dress, she was like a lantern walking in the moonlight, but there had been no time to go to her room and change. Her heart thundered as she glanced around, seeing no one, and ran to the shed where the printing press was stored. She tried the door. It wasn’t locked. She hurried inside.
It was dark and smelled of ink. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed, and she saw a hulking shape, like a large machine. “Is anyone here?” she whispered loudly.
No answer.
“Mr. Merrick?”
The door opened. She gasped as a dark figured rushed in, then closed the door behind him. He turned to face her and put a finger over his lips.
She took a step back, and her foot hit something hard and round. She flailed her arms as she began to fall, and the man grabbed her and pulled her toward him.
She found herself pressed against Mr. Merrick’s chest.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered gruffly, his lips next to her ear.
She froze, her forearms trapped between them. He had one arm around her, holding her up, as she still didn’t have her footing. One foot rested on something like a log or a heavy metal cylinder.
Then she heard male voices outside the little shed. They grew louder, along with the sounds of a carriage or wagon being pulled by horses.
Mr. Merrick’s chest rose and fell with hard breaths, which soon slowed to normal. Pressed so close to him, her cheeks heated for the second time that night.
“Are they coming here?” she whispered softly.
No, no. She remembered. “It’s a delivery of weapons. I heard Lady Blackstone say”—she paused to listen—“that they were taking them to the grotto.”
He gave a small nod to let her know he’d heard her.
The voices continued, some close, some farther away. Felicity thought she heard Lady Blackstone’s voice amidst those of the men’s. And Mr. Merrick continued to stand perfectly still, his arm around her like an iron band.
Finally, the voices grew fainter and then ceased to be heard altogether.
“Forgive me,” he said, stepping back. He kept hold of her, and she held on to him, until she was able to stumble forward and get her feet under her again.
She took the liberty, now that they were not so close, of looking up into his face. His expression was not quite visible in the bit of moonlight shining through the one small window, which was higher than her head. He was staring down at her too. Was he angry at her for coming here when she had agreed to let him take care of it?
“I—I came out here to warn you,” she said quickly. “I heard Lady Blackstone saying that the delivery of arms had arrived. I was afraid they would see you, so I ran out here . . . I didn’t want you to get caught.”
“I was stealing the papers from Lady Blackstone’s room.”
“Oh. You got them?” Her heart expanded, and she could not help clasping her hands together and sighing with joy. “That is wonderful.”
“Now I must copy and return them. I was coming out here to sabotage the printing press when I saw you running across the yard. You might as well have been a beacon of light darting across the yard. What if someone had seen you and followed you here?”
“I’m glad it was only you.”
He exhaled rather loudly.
She still couldn’t be sure if he was more angry or relieved. Perhaps it was better she didn’t know. “Now, how do we wreak havoc on this machine?” Felicity was careful not to step backward again. Instead, she turned in place and looked at the large printing press the revolutionaries were using to generate rhetoric intended to deceive and inflame the masses to revolt against the government and do Lady Blackstone’s bidding.
“Be careful,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Have you ever seen a printing press before?”
“Never. Do you have any idea how it works?”
He leaned over part of it. “I have some idea, but . . . it should be simple. I should be able to find some tiny but important part, take it out, and bury it in the ground so they’ll never find it.”
“Sounds reasonable.” She stood back and let him prowl around the machine, examining it. He stepped slowly, probably trying not to make any noise. She heard more voices outside. Apparently a lot of people were getting involved in the unloading of the guns.
“I should try to leave as soon as possible,” Felicity whispered. “To get back to the house while everyone is busy.”
“If someone were to see you . . . In the morning, the servants who do the printing work will find that the press is no longer working. If anyone saw you coming from here, they will assume you tampered with it.”
“That is true, of course. And, if someone sees me leaving, they might be curious enough to come here and find you. I suppose we had better both stay where we are until no one is lurking outside who might see us.”
“Yes, that would be safest. Please,” he said, and she imagined that he was looking at her, although she could not see him well enough to know, as he was on the back side of the printing press now. “You may as well make yourself comfortable.”
She found a stool and sat down.
She heard some slight sounds coming from the printing press, metal on metal. Voices could be heard outside, but it was difficult to tell how far away they were. More metallic noises, then a whispered word from Mr. Merrick that she could not make out. He must have been talking to himself.
Many minutes later, she leaned her back against the wall of the building and closed her eyes. Why was she so exhausted? Perhaps because she’d been tense and afraid and fending off the advances of Mr. Ratley for days and slept very little the night before.
“Miss Mayson?”
Felicity jerked awake, lifting herself off the wall and nearly falling off the stool she was sitting on. Mr. Merrick grabbed her arms to steady her.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He squatted in front of her.
“I must have fallen asleep.”
“I took out a bolt and used a vise to break it, then put it back in. That will slow them down for a few days at least, and hopefully it will seem as if the bolt broke on its own.”
“That’s very clever.” She stretched her back.
Loud laughter exploded from just outside the wall where Felicity was sitting. She caught her breath with a high-pitched, strangled sound in her throat.
Mr. Merrick pressed two fingers to her lips. He quickly took them away, but her lips tingled strangely, as if she could still feel his touch.
They both stayed perfectly still as people talked and laughed just a few feet away. After a few minutes, the raucous voices moved a little farther away.
“I think I hear Mr. Ratley’s voice,” Mr. Merrick said.
Felicity heard it too. He was speaking very loudly—he’d obviously had too much to drink. She sighed, remembering her humiliation.
“I haven’t thanked you,” she whispered.
Mr. Merrick brought another stool a couple of feet in front of her and sat down. “For what?”
“For coming to my defense tonight at dinner.”
“Mr. Ratley is a toad.”
Felicity covered her mouth, but her heart was still too heavy to laugh.
“What kind of man speaks that way about his fiancée?” Mr. Merrick’s voice was tight, his whisper gruff. “And he’s too half-witted to realize he was being disrespectful.”
Felicity felt the sting of embarrassment all over again. It seemed so much more humiliating knowing Mr. Merrick had seen her kissing the man.
“You probably should not have done it,” Felicity said, “as it might throw suspicion on us and jeopardize your mission.”
“Please know, Miss Mayson, I wish I could have done more, and I certainly would have said much more . . . were we not in the situation we are. Please forgive me.”
Her heart leapt inside her. But then it crashed back down. This was the kind of man she’d always hoped to marry. But . . . there was still the same issue that made all the handsome, eligible gentlemen reject her—she had no fortune.
Philip’s chest tightened again at the awful, helpless feeling of not being able to properly defend Miss Mayson’s honor. And yet, she was right. He shouldn’t have even said what he did, as little as it was.
“There is nothing to forgive, and I thank you for your words, for they were decent and kind. You are a man of noble character, Mr. Merrick.”
Was it noble to be glad she was here at this house party, because he might never have gotten to know her otherwise? Somehow, knowing she was in the world made him feel less cynical.
“I had seen you somewhere before,” she said. “I realized it the day you arrived.”
“Yes, and I had seen you before.”
“I think it was at a ball.”
“You were talking with Mrs. Langdon and Lady Withinghall, before she married the viscount.”
“And probably not dancing.”
“I saw you dance once or twice. You were wearing a blue dress. I remember you very distinctly.”
Her lips were parted as she stared at him. A moonbeam streamed through the window and lit her face enough that he could see her expression. His breath stuttered in his chest at how ethereally beautiful and delicate she looked. To think that she was forced to let that oafish Mr. Ratley kiss her and touch her . . . If only he could save her from that. But he should be careful not to give Miss Mayson the impression that he was in love with her. She was far too beautiful to want him. And as the fourth son, he had no fortune to keep her in the style to which she seemed accustomed—not to mention that her two close friends Lady Withinghall and Mrs. Langdon were quite wealthy. She would not want to marry so far beneath them. And a man who had yet to distinguish himself, who was little more than a clerk at the Home Office, was certainly far beneath them.
“Were you a spy then, when you were at the ball?”
“I’ve been working at the Home Office for four years now, but I have not done a lot of spying. When I was able to infiltrate Lady Blackstone’s group of revolutionaries, they gave me this assignment.”
“How did you infiltrate it? Did you know Oliver Ratley?”
“I did not. The Home Office had been informed by someone who frequented the Black Boar Inn that a group was meeting there and taking illegal oaths. Lord Sidmouth sent me to investigate. I hid behind a partition in the back room where they were meeting and discovered Lady Blackstone and Mr. Ratley were the leaders. I wrote up a seditious tract and had it printed, then a few days later I tracked Mr. Ratley and struck up a conversation with him. Before long, I began talking of the injustices in our country, then I gave him my tract. He invited me into the group, introducing me to the other members. I promised to buy weapons for the revolution, and they asked me to be one of the leaders.”
“That was a very clever strategy.”
He shrugged. “Lord Sidmouth never believed that this group was as dangerous and well established as they are. We certainly had no idea they were so organized and had operatives all over the country, or stashes of weapons in at least fifteen locations. When I am able to give them this information . . . well, let’s just say, I’m hoping for a promotion.”
“Oh.”
“But of course, the main thing is that we will have saved our country’s government.”
“And many Members of Parliament—my dear friend Lady Withinghall’s husband is in the House of Lords. How horrible if he should be assassinated. And the poor royal family.”
“Yes, exactly. And how would you like a buffoon such as Ratley running the country?”
“I should not like it at all.” She couldn’t help smiling. But her smile only lasted a moment. “I’m so ashamed when I think how quickly I became engaged to him. Lady Blackstone spoke of him in such glowing terms, and she seemed to think our union was the most ideal thing in the world. And even though I knew little about her, I never suspected she was involved in illegal activities. And Mr. Ratley seemed a good sort of person. But when I think of how wrong I was about his character and motivations . . . I was so foolish.”
“Do not be hard on yourself. It is enough that you learned of his unsavory plans and associations before you actually married him.”
“Well, we still have much to do before I am free of him, and before we are sure to escape with our lives.”
“I’m afraid that is so.”
Her delicate brows drew together as she stared thoughtfully off to the side. “The truth is, I do think there is room for reform, for better treatment of our workers and the poor. I can hardly bear to think of anyone going hungry, much less of someone starving to death.”
“Of course,” Philip said. She was so softhearted—just as a lady should be—but also wise and strong.
“But . . . it cannot be good, the things they have planned—to murder and assassinate so many people. It’s so barbaric. How can anyone do such things?” She pressed a hand to her forehead and eyes. “But when I think how I have been lying and deceiving and . . . it makes me physically sick.”
He wished he could comfort her, but he didn’t want to seem as if he, too, was taking liberties.
“I remember you saying you have a mother and brothers.” She must wish to talk of something else.
“I have a mother and father in Westmorland and three older brothers who were in London for the Season when I left. The oldest and heir to my father’s estate is . . .” He couldn’t say much about his brother that was positive. “He divides his time between the estate and London. Another brother is a clergyman in Sussex, and the third is distinguishing himself as an officer in the army.”
“And you? Do you enjoy working in the Home Office?”
“I do. I think my father and brothers did not consider my choice”—how should he put it?—“distinguished enough for them. Their opinion is that I should be an officer fighting in foreign fields, or an orator or statesman, or at least a clergyman making sermons every week. But none of those things appealed to me particularly.”
She was gazing at him, her eyes hardly blinking. She made him feel . . . admired. But perhaps he was only imagining things.
“What did appeal to you?” She leaned closer to him.
“I rather craved to be a spy. There is more of a need these days than you might think. So many reformers are tired of trying peaceful methods and think the French had the right idea—killing off the monarchy and those in Parliament and starting over.”
“Not to mention the Americans, who revolted successfully.”
“Yes, exactly. It should be interesting to see how their democratic government turns out.”
She was smiling now. “I cannot help feeling some admiration for the Americans. If they were brave enough to sail across the ocean and start a new life in a wild and savage country, of course they do not wish to be governed by the country they vacated for a better one.”
“Would you ever go to America?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Would you?”
“If my prospects were good.” He found himself smiling back at her. He imagined the two of them running away to America, escaping every unpleasant thing about their lives—pressure to impress his brothers, her engagement to Ratley, their lack of fortune and status.
But his thoughts once again were not headed in a direction likely to produce peace of mind or prudent decisions.
“You should get some sleep if you can. I will stay awake and listen for everyone to go back in the house.”
A loud laugh came from several yards away, as if conjured up by his words, reminding her that as cozy and private as their conversation seemed, danger was near.
“That is generous of you,” she said, leaning back against the wall. She stifled a yawn. “I am tired.”
Philip’s mind drifted to the false panel in his trunk and the papers and key he had hidden there. What terrible timing to be trapped here when he should be copying those papers. And yet, he didn’t regret the time spent with Miss Mayson.