From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 84)
It seems a rather innocent letter of mine has been causing matrimonial strife in the Stapleford household. I ended one of my letters to Euphemia with ‘yours as ever’ and Bertram has taken umbrage.
Euphemia and I had decided, a while ago, that I needed to become an obvious family friend. This was to deter the outside world from realising that we were working together in espionage for our country. The fact is so deplorably well known, or suspected, among her immediate family and friends (the Mullers, the Bishop and her mother, her brother, Merry, etc.) that we sometimes forget that even within the service very few people know. I believe she explained this previously to her currently fuming husband. He has taken such offence that she has even phoned me.
I asked if it would help if I told him that when writing to my lovers, and ex lovers, I end with something far more romantic and intimate than ‘yours as ever’. I also, in such cases, include, or allude, to various activities that we have shared. The letters in question are often a precursor to some deal the department wants me to make with a married woman as wives are one of our primary sources of information. I would not call it blackmail precisely as no one forced any of these lovely ladies to cross the moral wasteland over to my side of the bed.
Euphemia responded, rather tartly I thought, that reminding Bertram of my Casanova-like reputation was guaranteed to make him get even angrier. He fears the letters being seen by others - which was the whole point in my writing them - and Euphemia leaving them around so that ‘other people’ (unspecified) might assume that his wife and I are lovers.
Such tedium. Why, if we had so chosen, Euphemia and I could have been lovers for years. During missions we are often thrown together into circumstances of closeness the likes of which many married couples never experience. In fact, I believe we know each other far better than the majority of so-called happy married people ever do. Besides, if we were lovers, we would be able to hide it completely from Bertram.
Or maybe this is what he fears. That should we become lovers, there is nothing he could do to prevent it, or stop it. I am not usually a petty man, but when I consider the efforts that I have gone to in order to ensure the Stapleford’s marriage continues to be a virtuous one, I rather feel like encouraging poor Euphemia to be my lover. I certainly appear to value her, and what she says, much more highly than her husband. The man is a dog in the manager. It’s not my fault, well not totally my fault, he cannot accompany her on missions himself. It seems he begrudges her what sense of purpose serving her country brings to Euphemia. I mean, ye gods, the rest of the time he makes her live in the damned fens, with no more social contact than the odd Heron.