A Very Selwick Christmas Read Free Page A

private joke. “Except, perhaps, when it might be expedient so to do?” she suggested demurely.
    Miss Gwen sniffed. “Expedient,” she allowed, “but never ungrammatical.”
    There had been an untold story in that sniff. Perhaps more than one.
    Amy looked quizzically from Jane to Miss Gwen, trying not to look as left out as she felt.
    Only eight months ago—not that she was counting—they had been a team, the three of them.
    She was the one who had started it all, after all. It had been her idea to track down the Purple Gentian, her idea to join the ranks of those cunning men who slipped from shadow to shadow, outwitting Bonaparte at every turn. But she hadn"t managed to stay quite shadowy enough, and in the space of one fatal evening, everything had changed. Now it was Jane staying with her brother in her old house, Jane outwitting Bonaparte, Jane getting written up in the illustrated papers as the most daring thing to enter the scene since espionage went botanical.
    Amy knew she shouldn"t resent Jane for carrying on with their plans. The point was the goal, not the individual agent.
    But she did resent it. It wasn"t logical, and she didn"t like it, but there it was. She
    wanted to be the one making daring midnight raids on the Tuileries Palace and composing insulting little notes to leave on Bonaparte"s pillow. She had spent years plotting and scheming to find the Purple Gentian and join his League. It was ridiculous beyond all things that the very accomplishment of that goal should have been the cause of both of them being barred from Paris and espionage altogether. It was like of the Greek tragedies her father had loved so well, where the accomplishment of a wish led to its own destruction.
    Not that Amy was complaining, she told herself hastily. If she had to choose between her husband and another season"s spying in France… well, Richard was solid and real and kept the bed warm on cold nights and never once thought it was odd or unladylike when she wanted to practice shooting at targets or climbing over fences or other skills that might just come in handy again. There were many spies in the world but only one man she could imagine spending the rest of her life with.
    They were happy, really they were. And no one could say they hadn"t made good use of their exile. Together, they had cobbled together a comprehensive curriculum for the training of secret agents, combining Richard"s experience in the field with some of Amy"s more inventive ideas to produce a program that purported to plan for every possible contingency.
    They were still working out some of the kinks in the curriculum, but their first batch of pupils were coming along quite nicely.
    But teaching wasn"t the same as doing. If she minded it, how much more must Richard?
    She had caught him, more than once, plotting out routes on the atlas that he would never again follow, and, when he didn"t know she was looking, she had seen him staring broodingly at his old cloak and mask, tokens of the work that was lost to him.
    No matter. It was Christmas; they were together; and they were happy. „Twas the season. It was practically mandatory to be happy at Christmas. She was happy. She was, she was, she was.
    Even if she was just a teeny tiny bit jealous of Jane.
    “How long are you back for?” Amy asked her cousin.
    “Just past Christmas,” said Jane. “I don"t like to leave our affairs unattended for that long.”
    “I"m glad you were able to get back at all,” said Amy, trying to sound enthusiastic.

    Jane smiled down at her. “You made it very easy for me. How clever of you to find relatives with an estate so near the coast.”
    Despite herself, Amy grinned back. She knew better than to ask Jane exactly how Jane had made her way from Paris or how she intended to return. Jane kept her own counsel on such matters. It was a trait Amy had found maddening while they were working together. One could never tell quite what Jane was planning until she