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“With me, but I’ve secured a companion for her, a sort of governess. I’ve not let her alone.”

Goldsworthy began to move the papers about on his desk, a restless habit to which Charles had grown accustomed. It meant the big man was thinking, reading the cards like a player who knows everything that’s been dealt. Charles had learned a bit about him from Lynley. Goldsworthy had several networks of informants. The man himself could not operate in fashionable society, but he had ways of knowing the doings of scores of people. And he had a gift for spotting men like Charles, who were right for the job of counteragent.

When Charles had first learned who his predecessors in the club had been—Blackstone, Hazelwood, and Clare—he had not connected himself with them. Blackstone and Hazelwood had been recruited to spying from debt and disgrace. Clare had been a faded war hero watching helplessly as his wastrel older brother ruined the family estate. Charles, with his spotless reputation and thriving estates, was puzzled to find himself chosen for the club’s year-and-a-day contract.

But Charles was an analyst. That’s what he did, he analyzed, and he kept at it until the deeper pattern of Goldsworthy’s choices became clear. He saw the thing that made him one of the band of spies: a lack of attachments.

Goldsworthy’s previous spies had all been extraordinarily detached from that web of cordial connections that most London gentlemen took for granted, the ties of family and friends. Charles was indeed one of them. He led a London life of surfaces, of skimming across a frozen pond, and that was why he’d been recruited. He had no one to lose. Except, he had discovered, that one deep attachment that he’d kept hidden from the world—his sister.

The paper rustling stopped. Charles faced Goldsworthy’s stare. There was something else about the list of former spies that eluded him, but he would analyze that later.

“You have a plan?” Goldsworthy asked.

“I have invited the marchioness to the theater with my sister.” He did not need to mention that Harriet Swanley had put the idea into his head or that her presence was necessary to his interest in the plan.

* * * *

The scene at Hadleigh Pond seemed to lift Octavia’s spirits after the disappointments of the Throckmorton party the night before. The fine, cold winter day had just enough of a breeze to bring a blush up in the cheeks. The narrow pond, nestled in a wooded hollow, was perhaps a hundred yards long. Leafless elms towered overhead. Several parties of young people had taken to the ice, and both the young gentlemen and ladies greeted the Luxborough party’s arrival with shouts and encouraging cries. While the young men skated with brooms, brushing piles of snow and scattered leaves from the ice, Octavia, Anne, and Camille sat on a blanket-covered log at the pond’s edge. Jasper dropped his skates and tried to bring Cat to order, but the dog ran a circle round the edge of the pond, sending birds squawking up from reeds and brush.

Octavia sat fitting the wooden skates to her boots and adjusting the leather straps that would hold them in place. She wore a bright red wool pelisse. “It’s just like a bad ball,” she lamented. “There are more ladies than gentlemen.”

“Fortunately,” said Harriet, “skating does not require that a gentleman ask a lady to stand up with him. Did you skate with a partner at home in Hampshire?” she asked. She recognized Octavia’s way of hinting at the hurt that troubled her.

The dog came panting up to them and laid his head on Octavia’s knee. She rubbed the silky head, ignoring Harriet’s question. Then she pushed up from the log. Cat jumped up in anticipation of play, but she told him no and headed for the pond with determined strides. John Jowers, seeing her, skated over to offer a hand. Octavia thanked him but refused the hand, reached the pond, and then with easy grace took to the ice. Within minutes she was circling the pond in fine style. When Ned Luxborough offered her a broom, she accepted and joined the young men in clearing the ice. John Jowers stood transfixed until Anne and Camille called for help.

The skaters made a perfect winter scene in their bright woolen scarves and gloves against the ice and the bare black branches of the trees. For a few minutes Octavia seemed to forget her husband hunt as she spun and skimmed over the ice in great looping arcs. Anne and Camille clung laughing on wobbly legs to John Jowers’s arms. The Rivers girls took turns partnering with Ned, and several other girls, unknown to Harriet, found willing teachers in the crowd.

The scene reminded Harriet of her own country childhood, of her old groom teaching her to skate. It was a small winter pleasure among dozens. She hadn’t thought of skating as something to be missed. The air was still invigorating. The landscape pared down to its bare bones was lovely. She had come to Hadleigh Pond with the Luxborough children before and not felt deprived as her charges took to the ice. Only Octavia’s pursuit of a husband changed everything, reminding Harriet of the path she had refused to take.

She had gone from girlhood to responsibility with no interval of giddy pleasure or romantic folly in between. She shook herself. She would be foolish to lament that now merely because she was doing a favor for Wynford.

A deep-voiced howl from Cat made Harriet turn away from the skaters. The dog stood on his hind legs against a tree, letting out the unholy sound. Harriet looked up. Jasper had climbed nearly to the top of the tree and lay along a thin branch that extended out from the trunk, ending in a tracery of twigs and an unmistakable ball of green with pale gleaming berries.

Harriet berated herself for letting the restless boy out of her sight, but she knew the folly of urging caution at such a moment. She glanced back at the skaters, who had linked arms, making a chain across the pond. Octavia had been included and laughed with the others. The day could be counted a success, as long as Jasper did not break a bone when he took the inevitable fall, which his daring and the slight branch under him insured.

Harriet tromped through the snow to the tree. Cat howled as Jasper inched along a slender branch, which bent under his weight. He paused and stretched one hand out, almost touching the green ball of mistletoe. Harriet looked at the snow-covered bushes beneath the boy. The bare foliage between him and the ground should break his fall.

“Hallo, everyone,” he shouted to the skaters. “Look what I’ve found.”

The line of linked skaters turned, swinging toward the boy, Octavia at one end. Contradictory cries of caution and encouragement added to Cat’s howls as Jasper stretched the last few inches and grabbed the thin branch from which the mistletoe hung. He bent the branch downward, snapping it and sending the mistletoe plummeting.

A louder crack followed as Jasper’s branch tore away from the main trunk. He rolled sideways and tumbled into the snowy bushes below, disappearing in a great tangle of bare shrubbery. A moment of silence reigned. Harriet’s heart pounded in her chest. The dog ran in circles around the bush. The line of Luxborough siblings broke as they skated for the edge of the pond and scrambled up the bank to their fallen brother. Octavia stood alone at the edge of the pond. Behind her the other young people paired up and skated on.

Then Jasper’s hand emerged from the bush, holding the clump of mistletoe aloft. He straightened up, a long red scratch on his right cheek.

“You clunch. You could have broken your neck,” said Ned, extending a hand to help Jasper out of the tangle of bush.

Jasper grinned. “But I didn’t, and you all will thank me later. Look at this bunch.” He held up his prize. “There must be a score of berries, enough for each of my sisters to have a kiss. And you too, Miss Davenham,” he called to Octavia.

“Not me,” she replied. “Mistletoe is just another Christmas fraud. A kiss under the mistletoe means nothing.”

The others looked shocked at the contemptuous outburst.

Jasper turned to Harriet. “Can we hang it in our drawing room tonight?” he asked.

Harriet did not have the heart to refuse. “After you risked life and limb to procure it? Of course,” she said.

Octavia turned abruptly and skated away toward the far end of the pond, against the flow of the other skaters. As she veered around a couple in her path, she hit a patch of ice that caught her skate and sent her pitching in a wild tumble, her arms windmilling as she fell, hit hard, and slid to the far side of the pond on her bottom.