Twelfth Night Secrets by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page B

pies on a low table by the fireside chair. “Will that be all, then, ma’am?”
    “Yes, thank you. Go to your bed now, and wake me at eight in the morning, if you please.”
    Agnes bobbed a curtsy and disappeared with a murmured good night. Harriet sat down by the fire, taking up her drink with a smile of pleasure. These quiet moments before bed were her favorite time of the day, when she could reflect on the day’s happenings and contemplate the morrow. It would be a busy day, and somehow, in all the bustle, she must manage to field the twins while keeping a close but covert eye on the Earl of Marbury.
    For some reason, she found the prospect of the latter task rather appealing, for all the anxiety it caused her. She seemed to take a perverse pleasure in his company, even as the strain of watching her every move and expression grew stronger. It was most inconvenient—so much simpler to find him distasteful, unpleasantly arrogant or secretive, or just plain unattractive. And yet he was none of those things, at least not on the surface. He actually seemed to enjoy the children’s company, which in itself was sufficiently unusual to be interesting. In Harriet’s experience, bachelors of the Earl’s meansand stature barely noticed children, let alone bothered to gain their confidence.
    Had Nick really liked him? Had he trusted him? She sipped her milk and frowned into the fire. She no longer found it surprising that Nick had never mentioned Julius to her. They were engaged together in the same clandestine work, and Nick had been involved in the covert world for at least a year before he had told Harriet about it.
    Just before he had gone on his last mission, just after Spain had declared war on England . . . she remembered she had been picking grapes in the hot house at Charlbury to send to London as a present for her old governess, when Nick had come into the damp, overheated conservatory. He was on leave before shipping out, and she was already steeling herself for the moment of good-bye. She had looked up at him, brushing a damp tendril of hair from her eyes, smiling at him through the misty atmosphere. But his expression had been oddly somber, she remembered, and when he had spoken, his voice had been barely above a whisper.
    He had told her he was leaving Charlbury that night, heading for Dover, where he would take a fishing boat to France. Apart from his masters, only shewas to know that he was not leaving with his regiment.
    Harriet had listened at first in disbelief, thinking he was playing some strange joke upon her, but Nick was not one for practical jokes. Slowly, she understood exactly what he was telling her. Her brother was a spy. It was expected that France, under the military leadership of Bonaparte, would soon begin planning an invasion of Britain, and Nick was to go to France to join up with an intelligence network along the Brittany coast, from where they would pass information back to their country. He needed a safe address outside the usual intelligence channels to send his coded information, and he wanted his sister to act as his poste restante. She would not be involved in any danger; the coded information would be included within the ordinary letters he sent her as a matter of course. The letters would travel on the packet boats with the routine mail just as always, and they should attract no particular attention from anyone watching the mails for suspicious activity. She would be contacted in the London house in order to pass on the correspondence.
    Harriet would never refuse her brother anything, and it hadn’t occurred to her to refuse him then, however astonishing the request and what it revealedabout her best friend. It was a simple enough part to play, after all.
    It seemed oddly naïve now, how easily she had agreed, Harriet thought. But then, she had been infected by Nick’s enthusiasm for his role, by the power of a patriotism that could actually manifest itself in some concrete