have, unlike you, had a full night to ponder our problem, so I have entertained a few ideas…” Rachel slid in before Mary could snatch up her reticule and go off searching for Lord Rule in order to bash him soundly about the head and shoulders. All three pairs of young eyes immediately concentrated in her direction.
Agreeing with Mary that Sir Henry was best left ignorant of Rule’s assumption, Rachel admitted that the only concrete idea she could come up with was that Tristan Rule needed to be taught a lesson—a very strong lesson. She was now, she told them sincerely, applying to three of the most agile, devious, determined minds she knew for ways to render to her nephew the trimming he so obviously deserved.
“We could have him impressed in His Majesty’s service on a ship bound for deepest Africa,” Mary offered most evilly.
Rachel declined that option, warning, “Mary, my dear, if you would please try for a little more elegance of mind? Besides, knowing Tristan, he would incite a mutiny within three days of leaving port and return here with a full crew of faithful sailors bound to help him expose your dastardly purpose. No, much as I wish it, we shall have to deal with Tristan, not merely transport him.”
Mary just shrugged, then suggested a second option—something vaguely connected with boiling his lordship in oil.
“Oh, I do like this girl!” Lucy said, giggling. “No simpering miss, this.”
Slowly it dawned on the company that Jennie had not spoken for some time. Lucy looked over at her cousin to find the girl wiping away a tear, and promptly asked her what was amiss. “I’ve been thinking about poor Mary, and how she must feel to be supposed guilty of such a grievous crime,” Jennie supplied before daintily blowing her nose. “It is horrid, simply horrid! I wonder how Tristan would feel to be placed in such a position. Perhaps if the slipper were on the other foot for a change, it might show him how unfair his assumptions can be.”
Mary immediately stopped her pacing, an unholy grin lighting her beautiful face. Racing over to swoop the still-sniffling Jennie into her arms, she gave that girl a resounding kiss on the cheek. “Jennie, you dearest thing, you have hit upon it exactly. Lord Rule is long overdue for a lesson. For too long has he been allowed to make hare-witted assumptions about his fellow man and then set about proving how right he is, no matter what the cost to his victim. For Lucy’s injured sensibilities as a child, for his insult to Sir Henry, and for all the other people he has persecuted with his single-minded, not to mention simpleminded determination—we shall teach him a lesson!”
Lucy tipped her head to one side. “I agree about the rest of it, but I don’t know if you can truthfully say I was a victim,” she corrected impishly. “After all, I have it from my old nurse that I quite enjoyed showing off for the vicar, and repeated the practice every time an adult came into range for the next few months—until Papa finally broke me of the habit.”
“How did he do that?” Jennie was the only person interested enough to inquire.
“By the simple expedient of basting her drawers to her shift until she got the message,” Rachel supplied, smiling a bit to herself. “It was my idea, actually. Hale wrote to me in desperation.”
Ben entered the room and announced luncheon with all the pomp and ceremony Montague’s creations deserved, and Jennie quickly ushered her guests into the dining room, where Mary once again commanded everyone’s attention by unveiling the plan that had already grown to major proportions within her agile brain. If Tristan Rule had thought he could prove Mary to be a spy, she was going to be extremely helpful in convincing him of her guilt! In other words, if he wished her to act like a traitor, she would accommodate him—in spades.
“Oh, for a humdrum existence,” Rachel said to no one in particular, envying every bored on-the-shelf spinster in all England.
Lucy was all for Mary’s idea. Indeed, she even volunteered her every assistance, but she couldn’t help but ask: “Just how is this going to provide Tris with his overdue lesson in minding his own business? I mean, skulking about leaving messages and acting suspicious sounds like whacking great fun, but surely it will only work to make Tristan more sure of his convictions.”
“Not if I—with a little help from you, my dear friends—also behave, as if Tristan is the real French spy in our midst, and return his treatment of me twofold!” Mary told him confidently.
Lifting her glass in a salute to her new friend’s genius, Lucy promised jovially, “And when it is all over, and Tristan has been suitably humbled, he will fall at your feet begging for your hand in marriage!”
Mary’s smile faded as she remembered the events of the previous evening. “Then I will have him aboard that ship to Africa after all!” she vowed sincerely, not noticing Jennie’s and Lucy’s exchange of broad winks.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARY FLUNG DOWN the magazine she had been reading, unable to sustain an interest in a gushing description of the latest fashions from Paris, and hopped up to pace back and forth impatiently across the drawing-room rug, her small hands clenched into unladylike fists. Oh, she was so angry! Drat that Tristan Rule anyway!
She halted in her tracks momentarily to stare malevolently at a Sevres figurine, seeing Rule’s dark, well-made features rather than the smiling face of an innocent young country maid dressed in pink ruffles. Who does he think he is, she ranted to herself, to be judging me like the Lord on Doomsday? He’s an obtuse, despicable, intolerable, opinionated… Mary turned on her heels and set about pacing once more, unable to continue her thoughts else she’d be forced to throw something.
And it wasn’t bad enough that the man had all but convicted her of spying for the French, oh no—he had also shown her, by his actions of the previous week, that he was not about to do his accusing from the sidelines. Acting as if she had never warned him to approach her again, he had been up to his old tricks, standing up with her for the length of one infuriating dance and then retiring to a nearby pillar to glower at her like some angry ancient god for the remainder of the evening, just as if he expected her to give herself away somehow, proving his ludicrous theory to be correct.
Even worse, everyone was so all-fired afraid of the man. It was almost ridiculous to see all her former beaux defecting from the ranks one by one as they put their tails between their legs and ran from Rule’s intense stares. How was she to have any fun at all if her main amusement—harmless flirting—was to be denied her? What it had come to, she realized as she brought herself up with a start, was that she had only two options open to her—either allowing Rule to court her openly so that she could at least go out in society without feeling like a pariah, or else retiring posthaste to a nunnery!
Crash! It was no use—something had to satisfy Mary’s outrage, and the china maiden had been elected. Staring at the porcelain shards scattered about in the cold fireplace, Mary was angered even more when she realized that she had broken a valuable piece of Sir Henry’s property without the action easing her fury by so much as a jot. Oh, if only she could have Rule here in person; smashing him would be entire worlds more satisfying.
Almost as if she had conjured him up by sheer force of will, she whirled at the sound of the butler’s announcement to see Tristan Rule striding big as life into the drawing room. “You!” she exclaimed, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “What do you want?”
Tristan quickly took in Mary’s flushed cheeks and belligerent stance and impulsively decided to change his mission from that of seeing his aunt to the possibly more profitable one of trying to goad Mary Lawrence into betraying her guilt. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he pronounced in perfect accents, making her an elegant leg.
“It was,” Mary snapped peevishly, and then, sparked by an imp of perversity that she could no more deny than she could her need to breathe, she launched herself into a long, involved speech concerning the growing list of fêtes and receptions planned for the upcoming celebration of peace, all in faultless French. There! If the man wants signs of guilt, I’ll give him signs of guilt until he drowns himself in them!
Tristan could not