London Calling Read online

  A SUSANNA AND THE SPY Novel

  ANNA ELLIOTT

  a WILTON PRESS book

  LONDON CALLING

  Copyright © 2012 by Anna Elliott

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, please visit www.AnnaElliottBooks.com

  Anna Elliott can be contacted at [email protected]

  WILTON PRESS

  Product Description

  Romance and treason in Regency London

  It is the autumn of 1809, and Susanna Ward’s life is more perfect than she could ever have dared hope. She is reconciled with her estranged family and engaged to the man she loves, Lord James Ravenwood. But across the English Channel, Britain’s war with the Emperor Napoleon still rages. And when a chance letter arrives from London, Susanna learns that James has secretly allowed himself to be drawn into the shadowy world of espionage and intrigue. To be with James, Susanna travels to London—and is soon caught up in a dangerous operation to uncover a ring of French spies and a traitor within the British War Office.

  Susanna will risk her life to protect both her country and the man she loves. And yet as she sees James torn between love for her and duty to King and country, she realizes that the greatest danger may be to her own heart.

  Set against the glittering backdrop of a Regency London Season, London Calling is a cozy mystery, appropriate for all ages. It is approximately 61,000 words or 244 pages in length.

  Although London Calling can be read alone, the story builds on the events of Susanna and the Spy.

  Chapter 1

  Susanna Ward stared through her sitting-room window, barely conscious of the grand expanse of rolling green parkland that lay before her. Rutherford Hall, her uncle’s estate and now her own home as well, was a beautiful place, even on a chill September morning like this one. A touch of frost gilded the green of the lawn, and threads of white mist twined like gossamer through the branches of the trees.

  But Susanna barely saw the scene before her. Rather, her thoughts were absorbed in the words of two letters that lay in her lap. There was no need to pick them up again; by now she knew them practically by heart.

  The first was a missive from her Aunt Sophia, written from London, where her aunt had rented a house for the winter. It was, Susanna reflected grimly, all that might be expected of a letter from Aunt Sophia: a masterpiece of spite and mischief-making, breathless with underlines and exclamations.

  In it, her aunt declared herself positively amazed to have recently seen Susanna’s affianced husband, Lord James Ravenwood, in London at a recent ball at those most fashionable of assembly rooms, Almack’s.

  He left before I could get across the room to speak to him, but I am sure it was he, Sophia wrote. I had not a notion dear James intended a visit to town. Particularly as you informed me he had been called away on urgent business to his estate in Derbyshire. Do you know, my dear, whether he has any cousins or other female relations? When I saw him, he was accompanied by a woman. She was very beautiful, and I think she must have been a relation of some kind, to judge by the intimacy that seemed to exist between her and James. Though I do wonder that she was able to obtain a voucher for Almack’s. They are so very hard to secure. And this lady wore a dress that was very nearly transparent. And she had painted her toenails gold, besides, in a manner hardly respectable.

  And the second letter was from James himself. It started out: My love. And it ended: Will it sound like something from a bad romance novel if I say that I miss you at each and every separate moment of the day? I imagine you will tell me that it does. Laugh at the man when he is down if you like. But it is true. Every time my heart beats, every breath I take, I am thinking of you.

  Which was, she thought, all very well and good. But it was postmarked from James’s estate in Derbyshire, and certainly made no mention of London, assemblies, or squiring about young women, beautiful or otherwise.

  Susanna realized that her teeth were so tightly clenched together that her jaw ached. And her fingers twitched with the urge to tear James’s letter into tiny shreds.

  Not that she believed her aunt’s spiteful insinuations. In a way, she wished that she could. Mere infidelity seemed positively tame in comparison to what she feared James was actually about.

  She shut her eyes. And instantly her memory served up an image of James as she had seen him on the night they first had met: wounded, disheveled, his lean face ashy pale, a blood-soaked rag pressed over the gunshot wound in his shoulder.

  When first she had met him, Lord James Ravenwood had been a spy, entrusted with the mission of hunting out Napoleon’s agents as they ferried vital information back to their Emperor in France. And now, four months later, Britain’s long and bloody battle with Bonaparte’s forces was raging as fiercely as ever, with small prospect of an end.

  Susanna opened her eyes, staring unseeingly out at the parkland again. James had succeeded four months ago in unmasking a particularly dangerous spy and murderer. But he had almost lost his life in the process. And now—

  Her fingers clenched themselves again. Now James must have accepted a new assignment. An equally dangerous one. And he had done it without a word to her.

  Not, she thought, that she would have tried to stop him. She might as well try to stop the tide from rising as try to keep James out of danger or stop him from taking risks. But James had also promised her that their union would be a partnership of equals.

  It was the memory of that promise that sent the hot blood rushing to Susanna’s cheeks. She welcomed the anger, though. Because if she stopped being angry, even for a moment, she was going to start being afraid. Afraid that James would be hurt. Or killed. Afraid that even now, right this moment, he could be—

  Susanna snapped that thought off before it could take root. But she still felt suddenly cold.

  She drew back a little from the window and stared at her reflection in the glass, her pale face framed by red-gold hair.

  For a long moment she did not move.

  Then she stood, and walked to her writing desk, thrust both the letters firmly into the center drawer and closed it with a sharp impact. Very well, James had lied. But that did not mean she was required to sit at home and wait for his return, reading his falsified letters‌—‌as though she were a child to be sheltered and comforted with soothing bed-tales.

  Of course, had she been a man, she could have simply ridden to London at a moment’s notice. But a woman‌—‌a young, unmarried woman‌—‌could not even ride in a carriage on her own, let alone undertake a trip to the great City without a proper chaperone.

  What she needed, Susanna thought, was an ally.

  Her Uncle Charles, with whom she now lived, was a dear, but quite impossible for Susanna’s purpose. A gentle, kindly soul, artifice and pretense were as foreign to his nature as a tropical orchid to an English garden. He would be distressed that James had lied‌—‌and disturbed at the thought of his being in danger. And he would never consent to Susanna running into any kind of peril herself.

  Then there was Julia, Susanna’s cousin and close friend. Julia would make a worthy confidante, but she was lately married to the local surgeon, Mr. Carswell, and it would be unfair to take her away so soon from her husband.

  Susanna paused a moment, fingers drumming restlessly on the wooden desktop, before the solution occurred to her. Of course‌—‌her Aunt Ruth Maryvale. The very person.

  She had met her father’s sister only briefly, when Ruth had come to stay at Rutherford Hall in August, but she’d t
aken an instant liking to the older woman.

  Aunt Ruth was sensible, intelligent, and had a ready sense of fun, besides. And what was more, she had heard her aunt mention a plan to rent a house in London for the Season. If she could be persuaded to move her plan forward by a few months . . .

  Susanna reached for paper and pen. She would ask her aunt to bring her to London. And then, somehow, she would find James‌—‌and find a way to keep him alive and safe.

  * * *

  The several days that followed were difficult to bear. Susanna wandered restlessly about the house and grounds, gripped in turns by anxiety, anger, and impatience. Even Uncle Charles noticed something amiss, and, on the evening of the second night, asked her rather anxiously whether anything were the matter.

  “Fretting over young Ravenwood, eh?” He patted her hand. “Don’t worry, my dear. I never in my life saw anyone so much in love as that young man of yours.”

  He paused, his ruddy, square-cut face suddenly wistful. “Enough to make me wish I were young again myself,” he said. Then he brightened.

  “Never mind, m’dear. Your young man will wind up his estate business as fast as may be, and be back here with us before you know it. And now‌—‌what do you say to a game of backgammon? I’ve beaten you every night this week. Care to try your luck again?”

  Susanna managed to smile, but her mind refused to focus on the game.

  She had thought so much these last days that her mind had begun to feel like a child’s spinning top‌—‌whirling around and around and ultimately getting nowhere at all. But she could not stop herself. She kept going over and over again every meeting she had had with James. Every word they had spoken to each other since their betrothal.

  She remembered her first impressions of James. She had found him almost impossible to read. He was charming, mocking, and at times seemed to take nothing seriously‌—‌not even his own life. He was a trickster, an actor who could play any part to perfection and give away no clue as to the real thoughts going on behind the mask of whatever persona he had assumed.

  It was only occasionally that she had caught glimpses of the man who existed underneath the layers of lighthearted mockery‌—‌a man in equal parts hard-edged and dangerous, and absolutely honorable.

  It was that man she had fallen in love with. And agreed to marry after knowing him less than a month’s time.

  She had thought‌—‌hoped‌—‌that in the weeks they had spent together after they had been engaged, James had begun to be less controlled, less private with her. But now, thinking back on all he had said, she wondered whether he truly had.

  He seldom spoke of himself. Though she had not noticed it at the time, because he was always asking her questions, wanting her to tell him of her childhood with her charming but irresponsible father. The posts she had had as a governess after her father had died. It was only now she realized that he had told her almost nothing in return‌—‌nothing that mattered, at least. He had told her funny stories about his boyhood in Derbyshire, the pranks he had played on the instructors at his boarding school. But if she asked him about his previous assignments for the War Office it was as though . . . ‌as though he stepped back behind some invisible wall and then adroitly changed the subject.

  James loved her. Even without her uncle’s assurances, she never doubted that. But James was a spy, through and through‌—‌it was not just that he wished to serve his country. He thrived on the danger, the risks he ran, the daily uncertainty of the life.

  And the question that kept coming back to stare Susanna in the face was whether James might have been secretly chafing to return to that life, all the time he had been with her. Whether he had now come to regret saddling himself with the encumbrance of a future wife.

  #

  Blessedly, the awaited letter from Aunt Ruth arrived the next morning, and was lying beside Susanna’s place at the table when she went down to breakfast. Her uncle had not yet returned from his morning ride, and she was alone. Eagerly, she snatched up the letter and broke the red wax seal.

  Her own letter to Aunt Ruth had cost her some little thought in its composition. After much deliberation, she had determined to confide fully in her aunt. It would be unfair to try to enlist her aunt’s help with a lie, and any pretense would be too difficult to maintain once they reached London. She had set down the whole of the case.

  And now her aunt’s reply showed that her confidence had not been misplaced. Her aunt made no attempt to dissuade her from her plan; indeed, she offered few comments of any kind. The letter was brief, businesslike, and to the point. She wrote that she quite understood Susanna’s position, and would begin making arrangements at once for renting a house in London.

  Her husband, Mr. George Maryvale, had agreed to the scheme readily. Ruth had not, she assured Susanna, confided the purpose of the business to George. All my own secrets are shared with my husband, my dear, but those of my friends‌—‌those I keep private. She had told him merely that she wished to make the move to London early, but that he might join them as planned in March. They had no small children, the youngest boy being in his first year at Eton, so that Ruth was quite free to do as she liked. She would therefore travel to London at once, and the letter closed with a promise to write again when she had found a suitable house.

  There followed another week of seemingly endless waiting, during which Susanna chafed at the enforced inactivity and delay. She had not even the dubious comfort of a letter from James. Morning after morning brought no post and no word of any kind. At long last, though, word arrived that Ruth had taken a house in Grosvenor Street, and would receive Susanna as soon as she could come.

  It was three days before she set out‌—‌two interminable days full of packing, arrangements for changing horses, and then final good-byes to her uncle and cousin. But finally, on the morning of the third day, she was off, seated in her uncle’s carriage in the cold grey light of early dawn, waving goodbye, as the coachman, with a flick of the reins, urged the horses forward down the gravel drive.

  #

  They had left early, so that by late afternoon they were nearing the outskirts of the city, and soon the rhythm of the carriage changed as the wheels rolled from the beaten earth to cobbled stone. It was months since Susanna had been in London, and at first she was almost overpowered by the sheer noise and confusion that met one like a blow in the face. The air was filled with the bawls of street vendors selling gingerbread, muffins, newspapers, and roasted chestnuts; the clatter of carriage wheels; the cries of coachmen as they shouted to their own horses‌—‌and heaped anathemas on the heads of their fellow drivers. Sleek black private carriages sped past carts piled high with turnips and onions, while a herd of cattle, lowing plaintively, was driven towards one of the many urban slaughterhouses. The streets were crowded with pedestrians, as well. Milkmaids in cotton dresses, hung about the shoulders with yokes and pails; young men of the town, jauntily swinging their canes; and day laborers with rough, careworn faces and callused hands, carrying their midday meals knotted up in colored handkerchiefs.

  Susanna found herself scanning the crowds of faces all around her. Which was idiotic, she knew, since she was hardly likely to spot James on the street the very day of her arrival. But she couldn’t stop herself. And she couldn’t stop disappointment from welling up inside her when the streets yielded nothing but the faces of utter strangers.

  #

  At last the carriage pulled up outside the address her aunt had given, and, amid the gathering shadows of dusk, Susanna looked up at the place that was to be her home while in the City. It was a handsome place, high, and built of brick, set on one of the most fashionable streets of the West End. Susanna, surveying the tall bow windows and domed roof, smiled wryly. What her Aunt Sophia would give to stay in such a place.

  And then the bottle-green door was flung open, and Aunt Ruth flew out and down the steps, hands waving, the ribbons of her lace-trimmed cap streaming out behind.

  �
�Well, my dear. And so you’ve arrived at last.”

  Chapter 2

  Ruth Maryvale was a tiny woman, reaching scarcely to Susanna’s shoulder, with softly curling puffs of grey hair, bright brown eyes, and a face that was as fresh and unlined as a girl’s half her age, above a dress of soft teal blue. She looked, Susanna thought, rather like some tiny, brightly colored bird. She seemed perpetually in motion, darting this way and that, seeing to the unloading of Susanna’s trunks, scolding the coachman for driving without a warmer muffler, directing the servants to take Susanna’s things to her room, ringing the bell for tea to be brought to the saloon.

  Susanna, slightly dazed, allowed herself to be helped out of her pelisse and outdoor wraps and guided to a chair by the fire, where she spread out her numbed fingers to the blaze. Ruth kept up a steady stream of talk the while, and Susanna let her aunt’s words pour over her‌—‌news of home and the two boys at Eton, details of her journey to London, the finding of this house and the engaging of servants. A tray of tea and beautiful little iced cakes was borne in by an almost impossibly stately grey-haired butler, and when he had gone, Ruth leaned forward confidentially.

  “That’s Snell‌—‌isn’t he delicious? He came with the house, and I engaged him at once. He lends such an air of distinction to our establishment, don’t you think? He disapproves of me dreadfully, poor man‌—‌I’ve shocked him to the core at least a dozen times already this week. But he’ll settle down and get used to us.”

  Susanna surveyed her aunt and smiled. Ruth had kicked off her slippers and tucked her feet under the hem of her gown; her lace-trimmed cap was tilted slightly on the fluffy curls, and there was a thin coating of icing sugar on her fingers. She could well imagine what Snell’s opinion of his new mistress would be.