Chapter Twenty Three

Lies are inconvenient and troublesome. I avoid telling them whenever possible.

And when it's not possible?

Then I lie.

That brief snippet of conversation from the not-too-distant past floated through Emma's head in the wake of the door closing once again. Rafe had lied to her just before he had left; she was certain of it. Not a stretching of the truth, or a dodge, or even a deflection. A lie.

"He didn't mean it," Kit said, though his gaze sheared away from her own. "He didn't mean it, Em."

There was a great, monumental something there, hovering in the air between them. Something that had been there a long while, and which had been dangled just out of her reach. A secret to which she had never been privy, and which she suspected that Rafe had intended to go to his grave keeping.

She squeezed Kit's fingers in hers. "No more secrets. Be honest with me, now, when it is most important." Now, when honesty was the only thing he had left to give to her. "Please, Kit."

"He wouldn't want to burden you with it."

"That isn't his choice to make for me." But then, Rafe had struggled through a rather long career making such difficult choices again and again and again, taking whichever burdens might have come along with them upon his own shoulders. "I would rather a hard truth, Kit, than a simple lie."

"Simple," he said on a disdainful little sniff, wincing at the pain it caused. "Good God, Em, none of this has ever been simple. You cannot unlearn a thing once you know it. And you might well end up wishing you did not."

"Then I will weather the consequences, whatever they may be," she said. "Kit, please."

His head bent, the ruffled gold of his bangs drooping over his eyes. "Rafe wanted you first," Kit said quietly, in the way of one confessing a mortal sin. "Even before Ambrose."

Before Ambrose? "Kit, Ambrose has been dead for a decade. We married thirteen years ago." What was he saying? The words were anchorless in her brain, floating unmoored.

"Rafe wanted you before Ambrose won you, before Ambrose had even begun to court you," he said. "Ambrose was not the only one who hung upon every word I spoke of you, Em. But Rafe was only a second son who was just making his way in the world, with nothing but a courtesy title and a modest bequest from his grandfather. And Ambrose was wealthy beyond reason. We decided—"

"You decided!"

A flush of embarrassment slid into Kit's cheeks. "He had nothing to offer you," Kit said. "We all knew it."

Love. He could have offered her love.

"We were so damned young, Em, Rafe and I. We thought we knew a great deal more about life, about the world, than we truly did. And once Ambrose had offered for you, you never looked elsewhere." He gave a ragged laugh. "I thought it would kill him. But you seemed so damned happy, and that—that was enough for him, I think. He wanted that for you."

I don't hold it against you. You weren't meant to notice me.

She hadn't been happy. She had wanted to be; she had tried to be. She had lived three years in the desperate hope of winning Ambrose's heart. But she could never have been happy without being loved. It had taken years to come to terms with the fact that she had wasted her love upon a man who had never wanted it.

"Rafe wanted you to be happy," Kit continued, "but he was fucking miserable. And so he leapt at the opportunity to leave the country. He didn't return until shortly before Ambrose's death."

But that had been ten years ago. She'd been a widow for a decade already. An eligible one. He could have sought out an introduction. They had shared the same social circles. His sister had become her dearest friend. "He should have—he ought to have—"

Kit gave a weary chuckle. "If I had not compelled him to go to you that night, Em, he never would have approached you. He could never tell you what he'd done. What we'd done. Secrets of state required it. Any relationship that might've formed between you would have been built upon a lie." He bent his head, and a thick lock of hair tumbled over his forehead, obscuring his eyes. "He counts himself responsible for ruining your life. It was best, he said, to stay out of it."

Always on the fringes, unnoticed. Deliberately invisible—even to her. Perhaps especially to her.

"It wasn't difficult," Kit said, "after Ambrose. The both of us had to negotiate on your behalf with the Home Office to keep you from suffering the consequences of his actions. They took ten years continued service each from us. Rafe has spent more of them out of the country than in. I think he preferred it that way."

And when he had been in, when they had been working together upon England's shores, she supposed those were the occasions upon which he had brought children to her. Without recognition, without acknowledgment, without even a damned introduction.

Only because he had wanted her to be happy. Even if she would never know him.

"God, Em, don't cry," Kit said, and Emma swiped futilely at the helpless flow of tears with one hand. "I shouldn't have told you. He wouldn't have wanted me to do so. He always knew it would come to a bad end."

Because he had always loved her, and could never have had her honestly. He'd asked her, once, what she had wanted of him. At the time, she had been too angry, too hurt and humiliated to hear the honesty within the question. She'd read only exasperation into it, when the question had been in earnest. And she'd told him nothing, which he had given her.

He would go to the gallows alone—he would suffer her hatred—so that she did not suffer for his death. Where was the justice in that? Already he was doomed to die disgraced, beneath a cloud of shame, in the service of the country that had turned its back upon him. Those same people he had spent so many years protecting would speak his name only in vicious whispers.

"If you can—if you can bring yourself to do it—please come," Kit said. "I have no other family but you. If I am to be sent on to Old Nick, I'd be grateful for just one friendly face in the crowd to see me off as I go. And whatever Rafe might have said, I am certain the final face he wishes to see before he dies is yours. Do him that one small kindness. Please."

Emma choked on a sob. "I cannot lose you, Kit. I cannot bear to lose either of you."

"Every agent of the Crown makes his peace with the possibility of death. It isn't your fault." His eyes closed on a weary blink. "I'm tired of it all, Em. So damned tired. Go, now—you know what must be done."

Yes, she did. To keep safe what he and Rafe had sacrificed their lives to protect. To give them justice, even if it would be weeks—months—years too late to save them. But every minute that she let slip past was another closer to the inevitable. There would be a time to mourn, and it was not now, while they yet lived. While there remained a sliver of a chance, however remote, that they might be saved.

∞∞∞

Three days.

Sir Roger had whispered those words to Emma in a silken hiss just as the door of her carriage had closed behind her, and Emma had known them for the ultimatum he had intended them to be. Three days to hand the journal over to him. Three days, and then Kit and Rafe would hang.

He would hang them anyway, she knew. It was a false deadline meant to force her into a state of panic, to enshroud her within a layer of desperation so thick she could see nothing beyond it. And it had worked, damn him. She hardly noticed the rock of the carriage over cobblestone streets, so severely had she trembled at the thought.

She could not do this alone. Rafe and Kit had tried already and failed, and they were so much more experienced than was she. They had had weeks, and she—she had only three days to save them. Three days in which to unravel the damned indecipherable cipher that had thus far resisted all of their efforts.

She was only one woman. Even the queen, the most powerful piece upon the board, could make only one move at a time. And her paltry moves, no matter which direction she took, could not hope to counter Sir Roger's. He played by his own rules and cheated whenever it was to his benefit to do so. He had swept multiple pieces out of play in one move, taken more turns than those to which he was entitled. And there was no one but her to cry fair or foul, no arbiter of fair play to enforce the rules he chose to break. Under veil of secrecy, he moved the pieces to his whim, manipulating the board to his will.

Under veil of secrecy. Emma caught herself as the carriage lurched around a corner, and her breath whistled through her teeth at the realization. Secrecy—a spy, she supposed, had great need of it.

But she was no spy. The rules—Sir Roger's rules, the ones he had impressed upon Kit and Rafe over so many years, molded them to adhere to—did not apply to her. She could never have hoped to go up against such a man in a game of his own devising, when the board had been set against her from the beginning. That had been a fool's gambit, every meager move playing straight into his expectations, toward his own ends.

She could not do this alone. But she didn't have to. Sir Roger had been forced to limit himself to underhanded tactics to win, curtailed by his need for discretion. But she was not so constrained. She could fill the board with pieces of her own. As many as she could assemble; a queen amassing an army.

Months—perhaps years—of labor might be reduced down to mere days. At least, she hoped. Since they would have only three.

∞∞∞

Emma had planned, initially, to host this gathering of people she had called together within the green salon, but then she had not expected so very many people to turn up. Out of necessity, the few letters she had sent had been terse, opaque, and laden with warning.

Clear your schedule and come immediately. Bring everyone you can whom you would trust with your life.

And they had. Dozens upon dozens of them—Diana and Marcus, of course, but also their spouses and children and in-laws and at least half of the theatre company Lydia managed. Phoebe, naturally, but also her parents, her siblings, and their spouses. All told, it amounted to a great deal more people than the green salon could comfortably have held.

Her army, comprising some forty people, all come immediately at her bidding. For the first time in weeks, the grey pall in which she had lived lifted, just the tiniest fraction. Like a sudden, startling ray of hope had sheared through it.

Despite the upheaval into which they all must have been thrust by the merest association with Rafe, still they had come. And as servants flitted about, bringing in trays and trays of tea and biscuits and cakes and sandwiches, bringing in stacks and stacks of paper, bottles of inks and quills, still the only conversation that flowed about the room was—consoling. Kind. Comforting.

It had been in all the papers, the news of Rafe's and Kit's arrests, along with the charges of treason they presently faced. Not one person present believed it. A minor blessing, that. It would make the explanations less fraught, less complicated.

As the servants at last filed out of the room, Neil took Ambrose's journal from her hands. "You're certain?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. It must be done. But do it carefully, please, Neil." And still she winced as Neil took a seat at the nearest table and began to—neatly and precisely—tear the pages from the binding of the journal one by one, sorting them into neat stacks ordered by entry.

"I say." This, from one of Phoebe's brothers-in-law. "What in the world is this about?" His eyes scanned the wall, now adorned with rows of letters in massive, tidy lines; a replica of the ciphering table that Rafe had once given to her, which Neil had painted upon the wall as they had waited for her guests to arrive. "You've ruined your paper-hangings."

She could always buy new. Emma took a shuddering breath and her voice to reach the farthest corners of the room. "The purpose that I have called you here for is a dangerous one," she said, and the last of the whispering fell into silence as her voice echoed about the rafters. "It is no small thing I am asking, and it comes with great risk. If you are not prepared to bear it, then you should leave immediately, and I will ask only your silence and circumspection. But before you do, please know that two innocent lives hang in the balance."

No one moved. No one breathed. But Diana's eyes filled with tears, and beside her, her husband wrapped his arm about her, easing her head toward his shoulder.

"You're speaking of Lord Rafe," Phoebe said, and she leaned forward in her chair to give Diana a reassuring pat. "It's not true, what has been said of him," she said. "We know it, at least."

"Of course it's not true," Marcus snapped. "My brother is no traitor."

"No," Emma said. "He isn't. And neither is mine. But my late husband—he was." Amidst the queer riffle of whispers that slid through the room, Emma pressed on. "Ambrose left behind a journal," she said. "I suspect that it contains information that will incriminate the man who has taken Rafe and Kit into custody, Sir Roger Banfield. It is likely the only thing that exists which might implicate him. However—" Emma faltered, her voice breaking. "The text is ciphered. Without the proper keys, it cannot be read."

"Then what are we to do?" Lydia asked.

"If you will permit," Emma said, "I will tell you everything I know and give you every tool at my disposal. It is my hope that by our combined efforts, we might break the cipher in time to save them."

"In time?" Marcus echoed, his voice lowered to a distraught rumble. "What do you mean, in time?"

"We—we have only three days," Emma said haltingly.

"Three days!" Diana's husband, Ben, jolted upright. "Could we not simply give the journal to the Home Office? Certainly they can decipher it?"

Emma shook her head. "Sir Roger works within the Home Office. Without evidence in hand, we cannot trust anyone within it." Despite herself, she grimaced. "This particular cipher is terribly difficult. I—I fear that even if they were to manage to break it, it would be far too late. Which is why I have asked Neil to divide the journal up into separate entries." A literal division of labor, separating the pages of it out into parts to be disseminated to any who chose to stay. "I cannot do this alone. Will you grant me just three days of your time? Just a few days to save the good, honorable men whose lives depend upon your aid?"

The answer was not so much a yes as it was a surfeit of unintelligible shouting and a mad scramble for the table at which Neil was occupied in carefully tearing pages free of the journal. Though she had expected that Rafe's nearest and dearest would certainly be first in line, she had not expected the fervor with which every person within the room vied to be the first to offer assistance, the first to show support.

It was enough to move a woman to tears, had she the time for such an indulgence. Instead she took just a moment to collect herself, to gather her thoughts and every one of the notes that Rafe had carefully compiled for her, and prepared to give a ballroom full of people an impromptu lecture on cipher-breaking.