Title: Romance, Regards, and Regrets
Author: Sherry Thornburg
Author's Email: Thornburgs77 a gmail
Feedback: Yes, please
Permission to Archive: Privately only, with notice to me where it is.
Category: Spy Adventure
Rating/Warning: K
Main Characters: Phileas and Rebecca Fogg, Passepartout, Jules Verne, and Passepartout.
Summary: Before death, the Aurora, and Jules Verne, there was a family in the service of England. One, a dedicated spy master, two experienced intelligence agents, and an up-and-coming agent, loved by all, working her way up the intelligence ladder. And then—things happened.
Chapter 1
Location, England, at the country home of Lord Robert Sutton.
Rebecca Fogg, age nineteen, a member of Her Majesty's Secret Service, is in training.
Mission–Personal security.
Or at least that was what her guardian called it. What Rebecca was doing involved following a member of Parliament about watching for any threats against him. Poisoned pen letters had been sent to the peer and she, Rebecca Fogg, was to protect him.
Lord Sutton hadn't known a woman had been put to that task. If he had, he would have cried foul and refused her protection. Such was the way of things. Rebecca didn't get upset about it anymore. She had learned how a woman to protecting a man rubbed against the grain of chivalry. Thus, her cousin Erasmus was fronting her.
Rebecca had the advantage in this game. No one expected a woman bodyguard. While the culprit might notice Erasmus, they wouldn't notice her. Rebecca had done this before and had caught her man, at present count, five times.
Presently, the up-and-coming agent had followed her man into the library. Lord Sutton was hosting a hunt this week. Erasmus had escorted her to the country estate where they were pretending to be guests. For the last two days, they familiarized themselves with the grounds and had seen that Lord Sutton was always kept safe.
She was keeping him in sight, when suddenly, he slipped back into the house. Rebecca followed him, losing sight of him near the front parlor. He reappeared in the hall to her left, leading a woman into the library. As Rebecca crept along the rows of bookcases, she heard voices. Lord Sutton and the woman were murmuring.
No, they were not carrying on a conversation.
Rebecca crept closer while a blush crept up her cheeks. What she had walked in on was… well, no one warned me about a mistress. Lord Sutton was a widow. So, who was he with?
"Oh, Richard!"
Oh, d—n! Rebecca would have stomped her foot in frustration if not for the noise. I've done it again! I'm following the wrong man.
Lord Robert Sutton was her man. Richard Sutton was his younger brother. Richard was only a year younger and married to a sunny blonde haired, blue-eyed beauty named Olivia. So annoying how much they look alike. Both men were tall with black wavy hair with straight noses and high cheekbones and eyes the gray of a North Sea storm, devilish handsome. Richard was the more attractive by far, for his more relaxed demeanor and constant ready smile. In contrast, Lord Robert was a serious, calculating man. The only time he genuinely smiled was with his two sons or five nieces.
How am I going to get back to the main door without giving my presence away? She looked about, trying to find an escape route. The library was a large room of bookshelves to the one side and a large conservation space with scattered chairs and sofas under an ornate oriental rug. The Suttons are somewhere on that side on one of those sofas. That one, with a suit jacket and lady's shawl laid over the back.
Rebecca saw sunlight coming into the room in diamond-shaped splashes on the carpet. She crept further along the wall and found a set of French doors.
My escape!
The voices came to her ears again, and the blushes crept back up into her young cheeks with a vengeance. Rebecca was stopped in her tracks.
A husky male voice said, "You're going to be the death of me, Livy. I can't stay away from you. I can't even think of you without wanting you."
Lady Olivia giggled heartily. "Oh yes. Prominent peer, cut down in the prime of life from an excess of passion. You would love that obituary," she teased her lover–Err, husband, Rebecca corrected–husband and lover.
A low male chuckle followed, sending shivers up Rebecca's spine. "I might indeed. But you speak more of my brother than me. I am but a lowly second son, a spare, as they say… not prominent at all."
"If that were the case, why did I choose you over, Robert? You, Richard, don't give yourself enough credit."
He accepted the compliment in a silky, low tone dripping honey. "Thank you, now why don't you tell me what it is about you find so–"
"Damn, these dresses, all the blasted layers. I will be happy to get you back home so you can wear dressing gowns all day."
Rebecca's face blazed while shamelessly listening to such intimate conversation.
I've got to get out of here.
Fighting down the flip-flops her heart had been making as her mind created mental images, she took another step toward the doors.
"I don't know why you insisted on coming to the hunt this year," Richard said. "If you thought for one moment, you would sit a horse; I assure you it was mistaken. I forbid it in your condition, and Robert has promised to back me. The stableman won't let you ride anything but a pony cart our entire stay."
"Insufferable bully," Olivia accused. "Are you accusing me of not knowing what is and is not safe… after being in this condition five times already?"
"I know you and know how much you love riding, my dear. We are just making sure that the temptation is removed from your reach."
Olivia gave an unladylike huff. "You and Robert would take the fun out of it for me. But, as you know full well, I came to be your brother's hostess. As a favor to your brother, which I was doing splendidly, before you dragged me in here."
"Complaining Madame?"
"No."
Feminine giggling was heard again, followed by an excellent imitation of a growling bear.
Rebecca left while the couple was blissfully occupied. Around the corner of the building, she made it to the garden before indulging in a maidenly giggle fit.
Rebecca knew what went on between men and women. She had yet to experience any of it firsthand.
Well, I've been pawed, gotten some sloppy kisses in the line of duty. Thus far, I don't see what the fuss is about. The men who pursued me during my first missions, though reputably well versed in seduction, left me cold, and more than a little repulsed.
Olivia Sutton's words whispered in her mind. Those two don't act like any long-married couple I know. They act like newlyweds, always touching and smiling at each other. Much more than that, they acted like happy lovers.
She supposed it could be different in private, but Rebecca had seen how married couples act like cordial strangers. It was common knowledge most men had mistresses and that married women seemed free to make discreet relationships after an heir was produced. That willingness in society to tolerate discreet infidelity was because of arranged marriages. When one has no choice in marriage, one can't be expected to be happy about it, and no one expected it to be otherwise.
That bleak understanding of the married state made Rebecca dismiss marriage. Sir Boniface allowed her to become an agent. Rebecca wanted to follow her cousins into service more than anything else in the world. The life of adventure felt right to her down to her toes. She loved the training, the chase…
But these two…
Rebecca looked back toward the library doors. Olivia Sutton must be the luckiest woman in England to have such an attentive, loving husband. A one in a thousand marriages, to be sure. One in ten thousand… If man such Richard Sutton gave me his attention… Someone that looked at me and treated me like that…
Rebecca's heart did another somersault before she squashed the entire notion. Such marriages were too rare. No use hoping for a miracle.
Rebecca found another entrance to the country manor so she could find out where Lord Robert was hiding.
The threats against Lord Sutton turned out to be just that-idle threats. Rebecca and Erasmus were reassigned elsewhere a week later. But during the four weeks that Rebecca had spent with the Suttons, she had developed a crush on Richard Sutton. He was the first man to make her think of wedding gowns and orange blossoms in a good light. And in the back of her youthful innocent mind, Richard Sutton became her ideal, a yardstick for measuring men.