He couldn’t. He wanted to; Alec saw the hope in his sister’s eyes and knew she wanted to believe him. But Julia was expecting him to tell her something honorable, or at least pardonable. That he had become entangled with a woman who incriminated him, perhaps, and then fled England in shame. That he had committed some error on the battlefield and been made a scapegoat by his superiors. Something, anything that would explain why he had disappeared for so long. What would she think of the truth, especially when even he didn’t know the complete truth?
Alec sighed. That was the trouble. Without the complete truth, his story didn’t sound much better than the rumors. He could all too easily picture Julia flying into a temper at someone in town, responding to someone’s sly comments about him, and bursting out that he had been a spy, but for England. The gossips would pounce on it. It would only make things worse, for his family and for him. He was still Stafford’s man, in fact if no longer in full, and he knew exactly how well the general public would take that news. Another of Stafford’s agents had taken a terrible beating just a fortnight ago after being discovered working as a serving wench in a tavern in Cheapside, and barely survived. Announcing himself a spy for the Home Office wouldn’t have the exculpatory affect Julia might expect.
“I can’t, Julia,” he said quietly. “Not yet. There are too many things I don’t know myself. I swear to you I never dealt with the French. But the rest of it…” He lifted one hand and let it fall. “It might not comfort you as much as you think.”
Her face grew wooden. “No,” she said, her voice tight and clipped. “I see that now. Forgive me for prying into your affairs.” She snapped the reins and the horse leaped forward.
Alec watched her go. Perhaps that had been the wrong decision. He felt as though he had been boxed into several of them lately. Or perhaps there were no more right decisions for him anymore. Perhaps it was no longer possible for him to be anything but a spy, keeping his troubles to himself and fading from sight when his job was done. But Stafford had sent him home, thrusting his true name and old disgrace back upon him, and he no longer had the luxury of fading from sight.
With a sigh he started after Julia and the gig. There was no other direction to go.
Chapter 8
June 1816
London, England
The man he had come to meet was late.
Alec Brandon took a swallow of ale and let his eyes wander around the room. This fellow, Mr. Phipps, was supposed to be here by seven o’clock. Alec had arrived half an hour before that, and waited close to an hour now. If he hadn’t been reduced to desperate measures, he would have been gone before the clock finished striking the hour.
He sighed and gazed into his tankard. That was a lie. If he weren’t in this position, he wouldn’t have come here at all, let alone still be waiting for a man who might have nothing to offer him. He didn’t even know what the offer would be, since James Peterbury had told him little when he arranged this meeting.
“Just listen to him,” James had urged. “I think he could help us.”
Alec hadn’t really believed it then, and he still didn’t. The anniversary of Waterloo, as the battle was now dubbed, had passed with a great fanfare of patriotic pride just last week. A year had gone by. A year in which Alec had learned precious little about his fall from grace, and all of it was bad. There were incriminating letters, found in his belongings and sent up the chain of command until Wellington himself saw them. The general had lost his famously sharp temper and declared Alec far better dead than alive. James Peterbury had tried to locate those letters, but without success; his every move, Alec realized, was hamstrung by the fact that no one else knew Alec had survived the battle. Everyone considered the matter closed, the less said about it the better.
But it was better that way, for now, although it made Alec a man without a name or a country. To some that would be an invitation to disappear for real. Many casualties in any battle were simply lost, their bodies dumped in unmarked graves and forgotten, particularly when looters had picked the corpse clean of identification. It would be all too easy to take advantage of that and leave the army and England and accusations of treason far behind, immigrate to the American wilderness and begin a new life.
But Alec couldn’t bring himself to do it, even though staying in England under this cloud of suspicion risked a date with the hangman. He preferred to remain, but to remain presumed dead. Leaving the country would appear an admission of guilt. And Alec would go to his grave in truth before he gave in to that.
So he had spent the year in hiding, recuperating from his wounds, working odd jobs and moving around every few weeks. With Peterbury’s help he came back to England, and finally to London. As the peace settled on the land, the army contracted, disbanding regiments and furloughing officers. He was just one of many unemployed army men filling England’s towns and cities, all at loose ends now that their training was no longer needed. Alec felt their despair and anger and helplessness, both as one of them and as a gentleman who, in the normal scheme of things, might have made a small difference. He had promised to look after Will Lacey’s widow and
