The Great Christmas Ball Read Free Page B

made hot scones. There’s raspberry jam.”
    “I am waiting for a customer to return,” Cathy replied.
    A tall, elegant, slender form followed the sleek head into the room. At nineteen, Sir Gordon had acquired the height but not the bulk of manhood. His features were similar to Cathy’s, with the same chestnut hair and hazel eyes, but with a stronger nose and jaw. As the sole son and heir of an illustrious father, handsome, not entirely stupid, and the apple of his mama’s eye, Gordon felt he honored the world by condescending to decorate it with his presence.
    He had left for university an unlicked cub, and come home a man of the world, but just what world his mind inhabited was unclear at present. He had arrived wearing the Belcher kerchief and wild hair of a poet, but when he had settled on a diplomatic career, he had switched to a proper cravat, got his hair barbered, and begun speaking in the oracular tones of his late papa when he remembered to. When he was hungry, as he was at that moment, he reverted to his own age and nature.
    “Dash it, it’s five o’clock. How long are you going to wait? It is unfitting for a Lyman to be taking in work from commoners.”
    “It is an affair of the heart,” she replied with a forgiving smile. Gordon was suffering from his unrequited love for Miss Elizabeth Stanfield, and might accept this excuse.
    “A lover should be more eager. To hell with him, say I. The scones will be cold.”
    “You go ahead.” She was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Oh, here he is now.”
    She hopped up with alacrity to open the door and found herself staring at a curled beaver pulled low and a scarf drawn high over a man’s nose and mouth. All that was visible of his face was a pair of narrowed eyes, but she knew at a glance that the man was not Mr. Steinem. He was the wrong size, the wrong shape. He peered over her shoulder into the study at Gordon.
    Before she could speak, the man jostled her rudely aside and stepped in. As she closed the door, a frisson ran up her spine. It was not quite fear; she was too annoyed to be afraid yet. It was not until she turned around and saw the black circle of a pistol barrel pointing at her that fear rose to engulf her. She looked in wordless horror to her brother, who gazed at the pistol as if it were Beelzebub incarnate.
    “Give me the letter Costain left with you,” the man said in a gruff voice. Cathy had the feeling he was changing his voice on purpose, making it a growl to frighten her.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a trembling whisper.
    “The man who just left—the message from Austria,” he said impatiently. The gun moved in his hand.
    Cathy felt ready to swoon. She had anticipated future excitement, but not of quite this sort, and not so quickly. At no time had a gun figured in it. Then she remembered Mr. Lovell. This was her chance to prove to him—why did this man call him Costain?—that she was fit to assist him. The intruder glanced at the letter on her desk, and she suddenly had the solution to her problem.
    She picked up Mr. Steinem’s billet-doux and her translation. The man grabbed them from her fingers and glanced at the original, then at the translation. “This is a love letter!” he exclaimed.
    “That is what Costain left,” she said with wide-eyed innocence. “You see the original is in German.”
    Gordon listened, and as the first terror subsided,  his mind began to work. It was clear to the meanest intelligence the man with the gun wasn’t an outraged husband as he had first thought, or he would have been expecting a love letter. The only other possibility was that he was a spy. “It must be in code,” he said without thinking. As soon as the words left his lips, he regretted it.
    The intruder looked at him with interest, and seemed to accept the idea. He stuffed the letters into his pocket while still leveling the pistol at them with his other hand. “You two, down on the