Born and raised in a rural area in the North Island of New Zealand, she shares her life with one adorable husband, two delightful adult children and their partners, four delicious grandchildren, and too many cantankerous farm animals.
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UNWISE BUT NOT DISHONORABLE
by
BARBARA MONAJEM
It won’t be a merry Christmas. Dorothea Darsington plans to show up uninvited at a house party, even if it infuriates her matchmaking mother and risks her virtue. How else can she steal back the St. George medallion her foolish brother gambled away?
Spies don’t get time off for Christmas. Cecil Hale follows the trail of the St. George medallion to a Christmas house party—and finds an unexpected guest, the daughter of his spymaster. She’s beautiful and desirable and very much in the way, and he’s honor bound to protect her.
But Dorothea is in the mood to be unwise. Can she and Cecil work together to unmask a traitor despite the distraction of falling in love?
Chapter One
Dorothea Darsington frowned out the coach window at the wintry countryside, doing her best not to brace herself. She hoped that when the “accident” happened, she wouldn’t be flung across the seat into her mother’s lap, or across it into the arms of the shivering maid.
When she’d asked Rigby, their coachman, to arrange for the coach to break down close to the gates of Restive Manor, he’d nodded placidly, as if he did it all the time. Perhaps he did—her father worked for the Home Office and employed a number of spies. He might easily have ordered such subterfuge before. “Happy to, miss,” Rigby had said, without showing the slightest curiosity about her motive. “Easily done.”
It didn’t seem easy to Dorothea. She rubbed her hands, chilly despite her gloves. There were, she realized, so many don’ts: Don’t stare nervously out the window, hoping he won’t drive past the manor by mistake. Don’t cling to the strap as if expecting an abrupt halt. Don’t glance surreptitiously at Mother, wondering if she suspects.
Mother would do more than suspect—and be furious—once the accident happened, but Dorothea would cope with that, as long as they were obliged to spend Christmas at Restive Manor rather than at the seat of Lord Forle, a pompous oaf and mother’s latest candidate to marry Dorothea. His estate was another ten miles away. Fortunately, Lord Restive’s seat was on their route, for she would have been hard put to find another means to get there.
She shivered. The day grew steadily colder, and the hot bricks at their feet had long since lost all their warmth. The coach emerged from between hedgerows to a view of bleak, brown fields, with a church spire in the distance. Almost there.
She must stop looking out the window. Dorothea reached into her travel bag and purposely pulled out Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise on the rights of women.
“Not in my presence!” Mother trumpeted predictably. “Your father may permit such folly, but when you are with me, you will do as I say.”
“I’ll read poetry, then.” Dorothea stowed the book away and dug for another. “You can’t possibly object to Shakespeare.” Actually, she probably would if she’d read some of his sonnets, but—
A loud thunk was followed by a startled-sounding oath, and the coach lurched to a halt. Dorothea wasn’t flung anywhere. Fortunately, she was looking down at her bag, so she didn’t have to assume a false expression of surprise. She did have to bite her lip against a relieved sigh.
“Why have we stopped?” her mother cried. She banged on the roof, but when Rigby didn’t respond, she turned to Dorothea. “Get out and see what is wrong.”
Dorothea obeyed, opening the door and clambering onto the road without the aid of the steps. She hurried to the front of the coach. The groom had gone to the horses’ heads, while Rigby, favoring one leg, examined the box, one side of which had collapsed.
“What happened, Rigby?” she asked, loudly enough for her mother to hear. “Are you injured?”
“A little,” he grunted, then sketched her a wink. “The box broke under me. Luckily, I felt it giving way and jumped free in time, but one of the traces is torn. Easy enough to mend a trace, but I can’t drive the coach with nowhere to sit.”
“Certainly not.” He had timed it perfectly, only fifteen yards or so from the manor’s gates. “We must get help. Are we near a village?”
“I expect so, miss, but I doubt we’ll get it repaired quickly. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.”
“It must be done immediately!” That was Mother’s voice. “Let me out. I shall see for myself what is wrong.”
The groom left the horses to set the steps down and hand Mother out, followed by her maid. Mother stomped to the front of the coach. “Humph. Mend the trace, and then lead the coach to the next village and have the box repaired. We must reach Forle Court tonight. Dorothea, get back into the coach. We cannot stand in the road.”
“Safer out here than in the coach, my lady,” Rigby said. “Lucky we stopped when we did, for I see that a lynchpin is cracked.” He nodded toward one of the wheels. “If it should break, the wheel will fall off.”
Dorothea’s breath misted in the chilly air. “How far is it to the village?”
“Can’t say for sure, miss. I don’t travel this way often. More than a mile. Maybe two.”
“My mother can’t possibly walk that far, and you have hurt your leg, so you shouldn’t be walking either. We must seek shelter.” She gazed about.
“Good thought, miss. It might come on to snow.” That was doing it rather too brown, since the sky was clear.
Mother narrowed her eyes and pointed. “Whose gates are those?”
Cecil Hale and his friend and host, Lord Restive, cantered across the last field in the direction of the manor house. It was cold and getting colder, and apart from that, Cecil would make no headway in his mission of unmasking traitors and spies whilst out riding.
“We’ll make a bowl of rum punch,” Restive said. They topped the rise. Below them on the road stood a coach and pair. Two fashionably dressed ladies hovered whilst the coachman and groom fiddled with the traces.
“Who can this be?” Restive said, and then added slowly, “Damnation. I do believe I know.” They made their way slowly down the slope.
The younger and much slimmer of the ladies, shapely in a blue pelisse, with strands of golden hair escaping from under her matching bonnet, turned and saw them. She waved a gloved hand and broke into a brilliant smile.
“Good God,” muttered Cecil before he could stop himself. He wasn’t cut out for this spying business. One was supposed to be in control of oneself at all times.
Fortunately, Restive took his blurted oath for a comment on the lady’s undeniable beauty. “A diamond, isn’t she?”