The Wolf's Promise

‘Why? I’ve told you everything it contains,’ she said rebelliously.

‘Nevertheless, I’d like to see it,’ he replied equably. ‘This one belongs to you.’ He handed back James Corbett’s letter and stood up.

Angelica was taken by surprise by his sudden action. She tried to stand up too, but she’d been sitting on her legs, and she was already stiff from the long hours in the coach. A flurry of pins and needles made her gasp and sink back to the floor.

Benoît reached down and took both of her hands in his, drawing her easily to her feet. She winced slightly as the tingling in her left leg made it extremely uncomfortable to put her full weight on her foot, and he steadied her with a light hand on her waist as she took an involuntary step sideways.

She looked up at him, very conscious of how close together they were standing, and the almost casual intimacy of their actions, which nevertheless did not seem entirely unnatural.

His brown eyes were as watchful as ever, but they didn’t lack warmth.

‘You’re right,’ he said, and he was so close his deep voice seemed to reverberate through her. ‘I do owe your father a life—and that life would appear to be your brother’s. But it will be best if you leave it up to me as to how I rescue him. I will write a reply to your father’s letter and you may take it to him tomorrow.’

‘But what are you going to do?’ Angelica demanded. ‘And when are you going to start?’

‘That’s my business,’ Benoît retorted firmly. ‘Does your father know you’re here, by the way? He must have changed a great deal since my brief meeting with him if he allowed you to beard me in my den without a murmur.’

‘Of course he knows!’ Angelica exclaimed indignantly, stifling the uneasy awareness that she had informed the Earl of her intentions by the cowardly expedient of leaving him a note.

The Earl had wanted his secretary to bring his letter to Benoît, but Angelica had been deeply suspicious of asking a smuggler to rescue Harry. She hated doubting the Earl’s judgement, but since his accident his decisions had often been erratic and even unreasonable. Harry’s life was too important to entrust to a stranger on the strength of one brief meeting, sixteen years in the past. Angelica had been determined to discover what Benoît Faulkener was like for herself.

Benoît smiled. His dark face hung dizzyingly above Angelica’s and she closed her eyes. The candle flames had begun to merge together in a glowing, misty haze. Now that she had finally put her case to Benoît—and he had apparently agreed to help—she was suddenly overwhelmed with weariness.

She was dimly aware of an almost imperceptible touch on her hair, so light that she couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been a draught from the window disturbing her curls, then Benoît put his hand on her shoulder.

‘You’re swaying like an aspen tree in a summer gale,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘You’ve had a tiring day. I suggest you go to bed. You’ve done your part. Tomorrow you can safely return to your father.’

Angelica opened her eyes, insulted by the idea that she could be worn out by the carriage ride from London and irritated by Benoît’s calmly amused dismissal of her.

‘Don’t patronise me, sir,’ she said coldly. ‘I am a little weary, but I am quite equal to my responsibilities. If your inordinately secretive disposition means that you prefer not to discuss you plans with me, so be it—but don’t pretend it’s because I’m not capable of understanding their complexities!’

Benoît stepped back and inclined his head in acknowledgement of her comment, but he didn’t trouble to retaliate.

‘After you, my lady,’ he said, opening the door for her. ‘I am sure we will all see things more clearly after a good night’s sleep.’

Angelica gritted her teeth and walked out of the room with as much dignity as she could muster.

Chapter Two

‘W e’ll be going back to London today, my lady?’ said Martha grimly as she brushed Angelica’s hair.

She wasn’t much more than thirty, but she’d cultivated an air of old-maidish disapproval from an early age.

‘I expect so,’ Angelica replied distractedly.

She had fallen asleep almost the moment she had climbed into bed the previous night. She’d had no time to reflect on her meeting with Benoît. She knew so little about him, and she wanted to be sure she was doing the right thing in entrusting Harry’s safety to him.

Martha sniffed disparagingly.

‘Nasty, damp, miserable, unfriendly place,’ she said sourly. ‘I don’t know why we came here at all.’

That was, quite literally, true. Angelica hadn’t thought it prudent to explain the whole story to her maid. She had simply said that Benoît Faulkener was an old acquaintance of the Earl, and that he might be able to help Harry.

‘I came to deliver Papa’s letter,’ said Angelica calmly.

‘No good will come of it,’ said Martha grimly. ‘It’s an ungodly household. Comings and goings at all hours. Secretive servants… You mark my words, Sir William was right when he told the Earl Sussex was nothing but a nest of villainous—’

‘What are you talking about?’ Angelica interrupted quickly. ‘What do you mean, comings and goings at all hours?’

‘Far be it from me to talk ill of strangers,’ said Martha, looking down her nose disdainfully, although her shrewd eyes watched Angelica closely in the mirror. Her mistress might not have told her everything, but Martha was quite capable of making her own deductions about the situation.

Angelica returned her maid’s gaze suspiciously.

‘What have you found out?’ she demanded imperatively.

‘They gave me a little attic room, overlooking the back of the house,’ said Martha, her lips pursed with, for once, genuine distaste. ‘The wind rattles through the casement something shocking—and the draught under the door…I got up to see if I could fix it and then I heard voices. Someone came to the house late last night, but they didn’t come openly. There were no lights, just low voices.

‘Then the Master himself went out. I saw him, and I heard the horses. You can be sure I didn’t go to sleep after that. I waited for him to return, which he did. Two or three hours later, and on his own. But I’m asking you—what kind of a carry-on is that for a respectable household?’

‘There might be a perfectly innocent explanation,’ said Angelica slowly, not sure whether what she was hearing was good or bad news from her point of view.

‘Oh, yes, and I’m a Chinaman,’ said the maid scornfully. ‘If it was all so innocent, why did they look at me as if I was mad this morning when I mentioned I’d heard visitors last night? “Oh, no,” said the cook. “It must have been the sound of the wind you mistook, Miss Farley. You being more used to city life than the sounds of the countryside. No one came to the house last night.’”

‘I see,’ said Angelica. ‘I admit, it does sound suspicious.’

‘That’s what I’ve been telling you!’ Martha exclaimed triumphantly, momentarily forgetting to be disapproving.

‘But it may not be altogether a bad thing if what you suspect is true…’

‘What?’

‘Think! Martha!’ Angelica twisted round in her chair to face the maid, seizing both the woman’s hands in her eagerness. ‘The reason Harry’s escape failed was because he couldn’t find a boat to bring him across the Channel. Who better than a smuggler…?’

Martha stared at her mistress for a moment, then she nodded grimly as if she wasn’t entirely surprised.

‘I guessed it might be something like that,’ she said heavily. ‘But how do you know they won’t take your gold and then betray Lord Lennard to the French to make an extra profit on the deal?’

‘I don’t—yet,’ Angelica replied. ‘But it may be the best chance Harry has. I have to do everything I can…for Papa’s sake…’

Martha pressed her lips together, accepting Angelica’s argument, although she didn’t like it very much. But she knew better than anyone how hard the past eighteen months had been for her mistress. No one had been able to break through Lord Ellewood’s morose mood. He had shut himself up in his Town house and refused to receive old friends.

For months Angelica had done little but read to her father and try to persuade him to take up his life again—but nothing had helped. If Lord Lennard’s return could change all that, then Martha as well as her mistress would do anything to hasten it.

‘Very well, my lady,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

‘Just keep listening for the moment, I think,’ said Angelica, smiling ruefully. ‘You’ve been more alert than I, so far.’

Martha sniffed disparagingly.