Chapter 5

Phileas Fogg gave his cousin a sour looks over his teacup before shifting his gaze to the older lady and seconding his cousin's assurances. He stayed silent, imagining ways to make Rebecca pay for that remark. A high-altitude flight on the Aurora with her dangling from the lift platform, perhaps?

"You must have some new gowns this season, Katharine," Aunt Eleanor said. "Fashions are changing this year."

"Oh?" Katharine looked hopeful. Maybe hoops are being tossed? They kept one from having to wear so many petticoats, but they were such a pain to walk and sit in. She detested hoops and detested corsets but put up with them as a required evil. She was a country girl and heart. Give her a garden, horses to ride and long walks, and she was happy.

"Maybe we could do a shopping together," Rebecca said. "I haven't made all my season purchases yet."

Katharine was surprised at the offer. The polished city lady was maybe four or five years older and seemed an odd person to befriend her so quickly, but it would be nice to have someone to do things with other than the two matrons. "I would like that very much," she said, looking askance at her aunt.

"Perhaps later this week. Send me word on an agreeable day." Rebecca said.

"It is perfectly agreeable," Eleanor assured her, "and very kind of you to offer to take Katharine about town. Is ten in the morning of Thursday a good time for you?"

Rebecca replied affirmative and their excursion was set.

Phileas had listened to the exchange with more than just annoyance. This would not go unpunished. It is bad enough Rebecca has obligated me for weeks of boring dinner parties, and now she is offering to befriend the woman, knowing full well what Eleanor had in mind.

Make that last thought a low altitude flight over the north Atlantic, same seating arrangement. Time to put an end to this.

Phileas stepped into the conversation, making his excuse to leave and graceful goodbyes as he clamped down on his cousin's hand and led her out the door.

Rebecca put up with the handling until they entered the carriage. Inside, and out of sight of others, Rebecca retaliated, giving him a whack on the hand with the fringe of her reticule. Despite the lightness of the material, the attack stung.

"What was the meaning of all that?" Phileas said. "Did you know she was coming when we arrived?"

Rebecca's anger disappeared. She grinned and giggled like a schoolgirl at his expense. "Turnabout is fair," she said. "No. I did not know she was coming. I was only establishing a cover for our next mission."

"Our next mission?" He said. "I don't remember being asked to join you on a mission."

Phileas was even more annoyed now. Rebecca had a habit of presuming on him. He had resigned from the service after that disaster in Prussia, turning his back on that life. The very thought of being pushed into any part of it brought back visions of blood on snow… Blood on his brother Erasmus's coat and hands where he had tried to staunch the blood from a shot he had taken. Blood on his own hands he could never wash off after his brother's hand slipped out of his. The waterfall…

Phileas shook his head of the memory. He had cited his father for incompetence in his resignation letter for letting them walk into an ambush and had cut himself off from Sir Boniface just a month before his death, which made it permanent.

Rebecca was saying, "That is because this is an ongoing mission that you would not think to be left out of. Queen Mary is coming back."

Old resentments and discomfort flew from his mind. A mission never completed…

"She is? When?"

"We do not know when she will arrive. Only that she is believed to be carrying the usual damaging information for distribution."

In the last five years, ten more British agents across Europe had been flushed out. Three had been found dead; the others had barely escaped their posts with their lives. Every time an agent's cover had fallen, Phileas and Rebecca felt personally responsible.

"Sir Jonathan has been in a state over it," Rebecca said. "He has taken oversight of all efforts to find her. The woman is a menace, but a consummately professional are lucky one."

Phileas dropped his head, frowning. Chatsworth, his father's politically motivated addition to the service, should never have been given charge and would not have had Phileas not resigned. He had received the office by default when Sir Boniface had died unexpectedly. Rebecca had recounted how he had changed formulas for information passage, hired new couriers, and had changed codes in response to the master spy's successes, but none of it had stopped her ability to see through their security.

Their one close brush with her had been his greatest disappointment. The song and dance the woman had given him at the embassy ball had proven pure rubbish. Of all the Scottish women at the ball had been accounted for. None were known to him. And none had been wearing the Mary Stewart costume. She was not directly invited, perhaps a guest of a guest. All they had discovered was that she was not meant to sit beside him that evening. A change had been made at the last minute. No one would admit why that had been done, likely to protect themselves.

A check of costume shops and dressmakers across London had turned up no orders for a dress of black and burgundy. The woman had simply come from nowhere and had to nowhere returned.

Phileas watched for her invitation. Only Eleanor's continued efforts to get him to meet her grandniece came. That and his father's pushing for the same. Later, she sent a missive informing him that the girl had unexpectedly returned home.

Just as well, I would not have come.

Phileas liked Eleanor and always had, but he detested this obsession she and Sir Boniface had about marrying him off. He had been warned about what was being set up by a friend before he could be hooked. Given the details, Phileas understood their reasoning, but had not been willing. The girl was too much his junior. Phileas did not care about her rank, how eligible or pretty she was. It was the principle of the thing.

I am no boy under family thumb to be set upon. Why had the girl's family not married her off by now? Now, I will be obligated by association to spend time with her.

"D—m."