CHAPTER1
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ART EXHIBITION
“Bella!”
Lady Isabella Blessingame turned from her study of the large paintingWaterloo: Final Defeat of the Frenchby George Jones to look about for the source of the voice. She’d heard that the crowds in The Great Room of the Royal Academy of Art had been large every day, though this year’s exhibition had been open since late April and it was now June. It would be hard to find anyone in this mass of people that came from all walks of life.
“Bella!” she heard again, then she saw a hand waving at her. She smiled, and despite herself, her eyes watered as memories flooded her mind. Blasted nuisance. They did that at times, her memories, calling forth powerful emotions, try as she might to keep them in the past.
She threaded her way between knots of people to meet the Dowager Duchess of Malmsby. Trust the Duchess to shout at someone across a crowded room. Done by anyone else, it would be considered bad ton—dreadfully vulgar. Lady Malmsby was a force unto herself. She smiled at the memories of spending time with Lady Malmsby and her granddaughters.
Bella hadn’t seen the older woman since she’d left the Villa de Fiori two years ago, a little more than a month after her husband, Sir Harry Blessingame, had been killed.
Lord William Candelstone, the Duchess’s son-in-law and a spymaster for the crown, had briskly decreed the time for grief was later, when the war with Napoleon was at an end. He’d pressed her into continuing her cryptography work and completing Harry’s spy work. Numbly, she’d complied for a year, until the day after the Battle of Waterloo.
At the time of the battle, she’d been in Brussels with many of the international diplomatic denizens who weren’t in Vienna. There were spies everywhere, some for Napoleon, some for the Alliance, some for neither side but gathering data for whoever crossed their palms with gold.
Her assignment from Lord Candelstone had been to provide cryptography to captured French communications for Wellington and his generals, and to observe and report on Vizconde Miguel Carrasco-Torres, the Spanish envoy to Brussels, and to Bella’s consternation, quite a lecherous man. Unfortunately, as the Spanish envoy, society accepted him everywhere.
Candelstone suspected he was also a spy for Napoleon.
It had proven easy to get into Carrasco-Torres’s circle of friends and acquaintances. It had been difficult to keep his hands off her body.
When news of the victory reached Brussels, he’d wanted to celebrate the occasion with her.
Intimately.
She decided her employment with Lord Candelstone had to end—right then. She was not like her late husband, who would jump into bed with any woman—or man—he thought could provide knowledge useful to the war effort! She’d packed up and left the city amidst the fireworks and party celebrations everywhere.
She talked her way onto a packet returning to England and hid for the past year, away from any society, at Lennox Hill, the small property in Derbyshire she’d acquired with her marriage settlement.
However, when she’d learned Lord Candelstone had found out through her brother where she lived and that he wanted her to come back to work for him, and since her solicitors, or more correctly, Harry’s solicitors, summoned her to London to give her further information about her inheritance, she would confront Candelstone while in the city. Besides, it was time to return to London and return to society. She vowed she would tell Candelstone face-to-face that there was no way she was going to resume any spy or cryptography activities.
She’d had a long time to think. She considered him responsible for Harry’s death. He had known he was sending Harry into a dangerous situation. Harry did, too, but for Harry it was a game. Candelstone did not consider anyone’s safety in his plans. He just decreed it was a job that had to be done—for king and country—and he sent off someone to do it.
Lady Malmsby grasped her hands when they met in the center of the Great Room.
“Bella, oh Bella, it is so wonderful to see you!” raved the petite, silver-haired Duchess. She leaned forward and brushed Bella’s cheeks on either side with a light kiss in the continental fashion.
“Where have you been? Why no correspondence, you naughty girl?” Lady Malmsby asked. She tucked one arm around Bella and pulled her to her side. The Duchess then held out her other hand to the woman who had followed her across the large room.
“Sally! Do you know Lady Isabella Blessingame?”
“No, though I have heard you speak of her many times,” Lady Sally Oakley said warmly.
“Bella, this is Lady Sally Oakley. She is Lady Travis’s sister!”
“Lady Travis from the Villa de Fiori?”
The dowager nodded. “The same. They don’t look at all alike, do they?” she said with a chuckle.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bella said thoughtfully. “While their coloring is different, their smiles are the same. I always thought Lady Travis had a beautiful smile.”
“Bless you, child!” Lady Oakley enthused, her smile radiating. She turned to the Duchess. “Can we keep her?” she asked playfully.
Lady Malmsby laughed. “I should think so.” She turned to Bella. “Have you seen my granddaughter, Ann, yet?”
“Ann is here?”
