Title: Ladies in Distress, Part 4/4
Author: Sherry Thornburg
Author's Email: Thornburgs77 a gmail
Feedback: Yes, please
Permission to Archive: Privately only, with notice to me and where it is.
Category: Suspense
Rating/Warning: T
Main Characters: Sir Jonathan Chatsworth and Phileas and Rebecca Fogg
Disclaimer: SAJV and original characters copywrite Tailsman/Promark/etc., no infringement is intended.
Summary: Sir Jonathan Chatsworth discovers an old friend's wife taken advantage of by a con man. When he discovers the man's repeated villainy against women includes domestic and international espionage, he takes up the cause, enlisting Phileas and Rebecca. Their cat-and-mouse chase delves into the plight of women in Victorian society and explores Rebecca's relationships with Phileas and Chatsworth.
Chapter 31
Rebecca had been anything but amused when she received a large envelope in the mails a few days later. Inside was a notice of blackmail without an announced source. It contained a preposterous fiction based on tiny facts strung together to make a monstrous lie. Rebecca's chin rose and her lips compressed as she sealed it back up and sent a message to Phileas's house requesting a private meeting.
The single word message sent to Phileas's home shot Fogg's heart rate up instantly. It was code for disaster. He and Chatsworth arrived separately to an alternative office on the north end of London late in the afternoon to await the bad news.
Rebecca arrived ten minutes afterward. Phileas judged his cousin as looking ready to pounce on someone. She walked into the room and tossed a large envelope on the desk in front of Chatsworth, as if it were a venomous snake.
Half an hour later, the three digested the contents, looking for ground to stand on. Rebecca stood accused of spying for Prussia. The blackmailer believed she worked directly for her husband, Baron Von Kessler, whom she had secretly married several years before. Nathaniel St. Pierre had been listed as a fellow enemy agent of Rebecca's recruiting. The blackmailer threatened to send the evidence of their crimes to the Queen, the authorities, and the London scandal sheets if Rebecca did not pay an astronomical blackmail. There had been enough truth in the assertions to justify the lies woven in. It was a neat and tight trap.
"A web of lies to do Isaac Jordan proud," Rebecca said. She did not put Jordan past doing this sort of thing, but could not see how he could know any of those details.
Phileas looked it over with growing tension. Yes, they had met Von Kessler at a dance in Austria. It had been how they had arranged for Rebecca's introduction to him. The man had taken the bait, Rebecca, to his castle where she had been caught rummaging through his office looking for the battle plans for an invasion. She was later chained in the dungeon to await her execution for spying. In the end, she broke free, stole the evidence by accident, and escaped to the Aurora.
Von Kessler had come to England after his lost property. He had nearly blown the local church up to kill his enemies. He succeeded had it not been for the spacecraft launching itself from under the church bell tower and the quick work of Passepartout. When it had all been over, all the Prussians had been captured, along with a mole agent. All had later been paroled back to their home country.
The whole story of the moving bones of the saint residing in the church, his father's body's disappearance, spies, spacemen, and the long-ago hidden space craft had dutifully written in the church records by a fool of a vicar who had thought it should be recorded for prosperity. Phileas had met with the vicar just as he had been finishing his narrative. His plan to visit the man had been to warn him against speaking of what had been a national security issue. The churchman had argued with Phileas with more strength than Fogg had expected, but he insisted, even threatened everything but the wrath of God on the man's head if he didn't turn over those entries and swear never to write or speak of it again.
"Someone evidently found out about Von Kessler's visit and those missing pages," Phileas said after reading that portion of the report. "They came to their own conclusions about what the missing records contained."
Sir Jonathan stayed silent through his examination of the papers. At that comment, he said, "These details are several years old and happened either abroad or on the privacy of your estate. Your someone did a great deal of digging to bring all this together, yet still did not come to the right conclusions. It's a bit of hope that the real story will stay hidden."
Rebecca turned on him with all her indignation. "Nonetheless, I am to be ruined by this misrepresented fiction." She moved about the office, itching to pick up something breakable to smash against a wall. It would do her good to hear something shatter and pretend it was her blackmailer's head.
Sir Jonathan looked up at her pronouncement, but said nothing. He was angry, too. The information in this was based on Rebecca's activities as an agent, something he had gone to great effort to shield. It may, however, have been an exercise in futility, as she had been a member of the service for so many years. And yet, this bit of tyranny did not label her an agent of the Crown, so perhaps he had succeeded after all.
Rebecca's sudden return to society and her reports were being used as evidence of spying against her government. No evidence of St. Pierre's guilt had been included. It did not need to be. The man had been Rebecca's sole escort to court functions. He had taken her to the people who provided her with the information. He had even led the questioning that brought it out. St. Pierre would be as good as convicted of treason by association. The purpose of this was clear. Rebecca was to accept financial ruin, or be destroyed, and St. Pierre was to go down with her.
"Fogg, would you excuse us for a moment?" Sir Jonathan said.
Phileas looked up, somewhat surprised at that request, but did not argue. He left the room for the outer office to wait.
Sir Jonathan waited for the door to close before asking Rebecca to take the chair Fogg had vacated. Rebecca took the seat–reluctantly, stiffly.
She did not look at him in her usual professional but friendly manner. Her gaze was hostile, and he did not think it was completely due to the present circumstances. That took him back for a moment. He had expected some lingering animosity over the way he moved her into this mission, but had expected her to have gotten over that by now. The way she was staring daggers at him said otherwise. But right now, there were more important matters to deal with than ruffled feathers.
"The charges as written against you say treason," Sir Jonathan said. "Add the fact that you are an agent of England, and they disappear. That is your only present defense if this becomes public. Such an admission might force an end to your career. We both know the biases against women. If the blackmailer does as he threatens, your defense will cause uproar on every level."
Rebecca tallied that. "Socially, politically, professionally–Well, I am not a secret within the Service or to the Queen. I am mostly need-to-know otherwise."
"Exactly," Sir Jonathan said. "And I would prefer it stayed that way. Your contributions to the service are too valuable to lose. But if your position were spread all over the gossip rags, I would have a devil of a time keeping your from being let go, even with the Prime Minister and Queen backing you."
If they would back her publicly; he seriously doubted it. There were no guarantees if this became a full-scale public scandal.
"Mind you, while blackmail is certainly a prosecutable offence, blackmailing a crown agent over performing their duties is even more so. It is a kind of treason, not to mention the blackmailing of peers," Sir Jonathan said. "St. Pierre is an Earl's son. Despite being an independent adult, what happens to him would reflect on his father. Lord Thornbourgh is powerful, and a rather unforgiving sort. He would not take this well."
"Now, your mention of this being up to Jordan's standards is quite right. It is his sort of fabrication," Sir Jonathan said, moving on to his next point. "If Jordan is behind this, it raises some interesting questions."
"Such as why?" Rebecca said. "Such as, if he has been using me as some sort of payment in kind to St. Pierre, then what disaffection has caused Jordan to implicate him in my supposed wrongdoing? What is he planning to gain from it? I can't believe it is money. There must be something he is after that Nathaniel is not supplying as expected."
"My thoughts exactly," Sir Jonathan said. "Now, how do we prove it?"
"We would need to approach St. Pierre," Rebecca said. "I could set up a meeting to ask how to handle this. That would give us somewhere to start, depending on what his response is."
"Yes, that will need to be done, no matter," Chatsworth said. "But we need to recognize one advantage we have over whoever set this up, be they Jordan or another. They do not seem to know of your status as an agent of the Crown. If they did, this would never have been tried. If it is Jordan, and he knew your status, he would have cut you off as a victim long since. Trouble with the Crown would be the last thing he would want. So again, if this is Jordan's doing, he has made a fatal misstep. So, shall we invite Fogg back in and consider a plan of action?"
"Wh–Why did you send him out in the first place?" Rebecca said. Phileas was acting as the lead agent in this. He should have been in on everything.
"Fogg is not the lead agent of this mission. You are," Chatsworth clarified. "He is supervising, as only he can stay as close to you as needed to oversee this mission. He will walk away when this is over, as he always does–as a private citizen who has a soured attitude about how the service is run. What we have been discussing is the running of the service; specifically, how you and I plan to keep your position as a field agent from being compromised. That is personal to you and an administrative matter he has no say in."
Sir Jonathan added one more thing before Rebecca could get her mind around what he had just said. "Normally, I tell agents beforehand what they are getting into, but in this case, I chose not to. I suspect there is some animosity in you over how I arranged this. I also consider it perfectly natural. But I am the director, and set up the mission in this fashion because it was the method I considered the best path to success. You may disagree with that. That is your prerogative, but it should not impede your focus."
Rebecca blanched at the criticism.
Sir Jonathan sat back in his chair, assessing her reaction. "The question is, are you going to hold it against me and resign, or will you remain in the service when this is over? I will not expect an answer to that until the end of the mission. But understand, I consider you an important part of the service. You have a future in the service under my watch. Whether you choose to keep it is your choice."
During the conversation, he had been leaning over the desk looking at her directly with no apologies. He did not feel any apologies were needed. He did, however, feel the need to clear the air between them to maintain their professional relationship. Sitting back in his chair had reasserted his professional distance, which was their usual professional relationship.
A personal relationship with Rebecca Fogg or any of his other agents was something Sir Boniface had warned him against strongly, saying it would impede what he might have to do for mission success.
"Always hold to detachment with your personnel."
Sir Boniface had said that when he noticed Chatsworth bantering with an agent companionably in the halls. Phileas had resigned only a few weeks before, and Sir Boniface had taken Chatsworth as his new second, putting him through a grueling heavy-handed orientation in the service's management. He had not approved of the perceived fraternization and had called Chatsworth to his desk over it.
"Our personnel are your tools in the service of the Queen," he had said sternly in a hard yet brittle tone. "Detachment lets us hold loosely, lets us do what's necessary, without personal and emotional concerns getting in the way. Allowing close relationships makes this job very difficult indeed." He said that last part in a lowered tone, a cold tone, carrying a hint of the bitter truth recently faced. "You will understand just how vital detachment is as you go," Sir Boniface said, strengthening his voice once again. "When you take over this office, you will see."