Neither seemed likely sorts to heave an expectant mother and her child into the cold, then beat them brutally. Or to descend into kidnapping.
But then, she would never have suspected any of their guests to stoop so low.
She listened to the new arrivals offering the usual gallantries while Celeste explained that Lela was suffering from being out in the rain.
It was only the child’s reaction that was interesting. Rose had her nose and sticky palms pressed to the window. At least she wasn’t saying bad man. How could she ask the child if the men were familiar?
She couldn’t, plain and simple. It might take months to teach the child to write whole words. Rose knew a few, but even then, she might not know names. Or their connection to Bess. And Lela didn’t dare endanger the child by taking her downstairs to introduce her to the company.
Frustrated, she concentrated on the banal conversation below. Aster and Celeste had a list of the house party guests and would know these two were on it. They questioned the men on their enjoyment of the party, what they’d been doing since, anything that occurred to their creative minds.
Rush and Baldwin responded with platitudes, as any gentleman might. Rush had been enjoying the theater. Baldwin said he’d recently taken new accommodations. Rush said he’d acquired a country estate and was thinking of removing there once everyone left the city.
Lord Rush had been living with his mother on the other side of the park. . .
Before she could finish that thought, a maid rapped on the door. Annoyed, Lela nodded at her to enter.
“One of the gentlemen’s grooms has took sick, my lady,” the maid said, with a curtsy. “He says not to bother his master, but he’d like to come in for a bit of hot tea. Cook says she won’t have him, and there’s a bit of a pother.”
Ah, so that was the quarrel in the kitchen. “Cook is correct. We allow no strangers inside the house. You have my permission to disturb the gentleman in question. Do you know who it is?”
The notion of an outsider nosing around inside the security of her father’s house made her itch. Lela glanced at Rose, who hadn’t turned at the maid’s entrance but remained plastered to the window.
“Jack’ll ask, my lady.” The maid bobbed and hurried out.
Lela wished Will were here. He could have Ajax check each guest as he left—and take a sniff of their grooms as well.
Uncomfortably, she realized Will would rather sit on the steps waiting for visitors than come inside and talk with the guests. There was part of the enormous divide separating them. She could not save lives by training dogs as he did and must. She could only better the world by using her wealth and position in society. And the twain could never meet. As Will’s wife, she’d have to become a recluse again, living in the country while he traveled.
She returned to the conversation below. More new arrivals, women this time. She recognized the voice of the footman asking for a word with Lord Rush—he must be the gentleman with the ill servant.
His lordship sounded peeved, as any wealthy aristocrat might. With interest, Lela stood to look out the window with Rose. She could hear the gentlemen making their farewells. The footman would be providing them with their hats.
A minute later, the two gentlemen reappeared on the front step. Rose patted the window excitedly. The older of the gentlemen—Lord Rush—glanced up, but he shrugged and hurried down the step with the slighter Lord Baldwin on his heels. They waited on the street for their vehicle to be brought around from the mews.
“Da,” Rose said worriedly. “Dabro.”
Dabro. How did one translate that?
A small cabriolet rolled around the corner, the groom smartly whipping the horses to a halt without splashing the gentlemen on the curb. He leapt down to assist the men into the seat. He didn’t appear ill.
And Rose shrieked hysterically.
Will returned to a house at sixes and sevens. He’d intended to change into city clothes and track Clayton and Baldwin, but Rose shrieked and ran down the staircase to throw herself in his arms. Tiny followed, yipping and leaping against his legs as if this were a new game. Lela was shouting at servants in the upper halls while his sisters-in-law ushered confused guests out the front door. Servants ran about in bewilderment, and he had a good mind to turn and walk out again. Ajax and Tiny made more sense than this domestic confusion.
Rose buried her face against his shoulder and refused to release her grip on his neck, so Will stalked up the broad marble stairs to the family’s private floor as if he belonged there, despite his mud-splattered rural clothes. He ignored the stares of his brothers’ elegant wives. He saw only Lela rushing down the corridor from her chamber, garbed in the battered cloak and old bonnet she’d worn the other day to disguise herself. In grim determination, he stopped her.
“You will not go out without me,” he said, surprising even himself. He did not generally go about ordering anyone but his dogs.
“Rose has seen the villain, I’m sure of it!” She circled around him and headed toward the front of the house. “We must find that groom.”
So much for ordering Lela to do anything. Was she even listening to him? And where in hell was she going now?
Still carrying Rose and trailing the yipping terrier, Will strode after her. The walls of the upper hall were covered in silk and adorned with gilt-framed artwork. The carpet beneath his muddy boots was softer and thicker than some of the beds he’d slept in over the years. His brother’s estate at Iveston might be as large as a duke’s palace, but it had always been a hovel in comparison to this grandeur. The all-male Iveston household he’d known had few servants and no women to care if the floors were bare and dirty. He had been content living as if the place were a barn. Here, Will feared his every step polluted the space he traversed.
Worse yet, Rainsford strode out of his study to confront him while Lela continued on.
“What the devil is all this caterwauling about?” the marquess demanded in the cool, controlled voice for which he was known.
Will admired Rainsford’s lean elegance and the aristocratic graces the marquess used as a shield, but he didn’t necessarily like Lela’s half-brother, not the way he liked the more earthy duke. With malicious intent, Will pried Rose from his neck and thrust her at Rain. “I’m trying to find out. Here, you take her while I try to make Lela focus.”
He’d called her Lela, as if he had the right to the intimacy. Which, given what they’d done last night and the duke’s command, he did, Will realized with a jolt. Rainsford didn’t seem to appreciate the familiarity though. He glared at Will and instead of hauling Rose back to the nursery, he followed him after Lela.
They found her in the private sitting room overlooking the street, pacing the carpet and giving instructions to her bewildered maid, who looked up at them in relief when they stormed in.
Lela accepted the child her brother thrust at her, hugging Rose and stroking her hair to calm her down. “Thank goodness, you’re here, Will. I think she’s seen the villain who cast her out in the cold and beat her mother.”
Rainsford drew in a breath with a distinct hiss. “Here? The villain was here?”
“Driving Lord Rush’s carriage, I believe. The man called Crockett? The description we’ve had seems apt, but he was in cloak and hat, and I didn’t have a good look. I can only wonder that Rose recognized him, except she seemed to be familiar with either Lord Rush or Lord Baldwin before she even saw their driver.”
“And just exactly what did you think you could do about it?” Will all but shouted. He bit his tongue when she cast him a look of annoyance.
“The only thing I can do, listen,” she said. “I thought I might question Lord Rush’s servants, at the very least. He is only across the park.”
“And you think he might confess to attempted murder and kidnapping and you’d haul him off to prison?” Rainsford asked in incredulity.
Will started liking the man a little better. There was some soul behind that mask at least.
/>
“We have to start somewhere!” Lela cried, looking to Will with a plea in her eyes.
“She’s right,” Will acknowledged with a shrug, knowing he irritated the marquess even more. “We can’t let a murderous villain discover that the witnesses to his evil are still alive. If this groom is the man called Crockett, we need evidence.”
“Rose said something that sounded like dabro when she saw Rush and Baldwin. I think she knows one of them, and that might be her name for them.”
Rose watched them intently, tilting her head close to Lela, perhaps to hear her speak. At the sound of the familiar word, she nodded and began gabbling.
They all stared at her in astonishment. Generally, she did not utter a sound.
“We need a translator,” Rainsford said dryly.
“We need a plan,” Will countered. “Baldwin has just moved into the City. Do we go after him or Rush?”
“Lela is going nowhere,” Rainsford said with the same authority as Will had just used.
The subject in question shoved Rose at her brother and walked out. With a shrug, Will followed her. He was damned no matter what he did. He might as well go with the more pleasant company, even if she did wish to string him from the highest tree.
Chapter 22
Furious at being treated like an infant, Lela raced for the stairs down to the public floor, only to be met with an onslaught of loud chatter inside her head.
Is the lady mad?
Do you think we should leave her like this. . .
Rainsford should handle. . .
Let Will. . .
She halted on the stairway, pressing hands to her temples as the noise in her head escalated. Will was following right behind her. Why wasn’t Will blocking the noise?
Back in the sitting room, when he’d been present, she’d been fine. Almost.
While she hesitated, Will caught up with her. With the boldness she’d allowed him by her actions last night, he grasped her waist and hauled her back up to the family floor. That got her attention—as it did Rain’s. Her brother’s shocked expression almost equaled her moment of rare fury.
To her shock, she could think again. Why now and not a moment earlier?
“I’ve been focusing on you!” Lela said angrily when Will set her down in the upper hall. “If I’m thinking about you, I don’t hear much else. But if I’m angry, I block you too.”
He didn’t set her down but his expression was one of bemusement and. . . hope?
He hugged her tighter. “We’ll work that out later. Right now, I want it understood that you are going nowhere near that villain. I cannot bear another night like the last,” Will announced with a firmness he seldom used. Using his bandaged palm at the small of her back, he pushed her past Rainsford, who still held Rose, toward the front sitting room again.
“But I can listen,” she insisted. “The villain could be talking about his misdeeds right now. Or planning more. I think he tried to worm his way into this house by saying he wasn’t feeling well!”
Will stopped to stare at her. She turned to one of the maids hovering in the corridor. “Tilly, take Rose back to the nursery.”
Rose refused to go with the maid but wept and reached for Will. Looking more bewildered than any man deserved, he took the child back from Rainsford. He returned to stalking toward the family sitting room, sorting his thoughts aloud. “First, let us determine who the coachman belongs to and which one of the dolts Rose recognizes. Neither Rush nor Baldwin seem likely to order the killing of women and children.”
“Your brother hinted that Lord Rush is a molly, but why would he court me, if so?” Lela asked, throwing off the nasty bonnet and plopping down in a seat at the window overlooking the street, still agitated but more focused now that she could watch Will. “It must be Lord Baldwin, but I’ve never seen him with anything more dangerous than a book in his hand.”
Rainsford looked as if he might explode. “Who taught you such cant?”
Will, thankfully, ignored him. Not many people ignored a marquess, and certainly not to listen to her. Lela thought she might preen, until she realized Will’s half-brother was a marquess and Will had experience in ignoring brothers.
“I am not a green goose,” she insisted. “I do not perfectly understand except that sometimes men who never marry, like Lord Rush, prefer men to women. It’s of no concern to me, but it does make it seem unlikely that he would marry for wealth or otherwise.”
“He might to hide the illegality of his predilections,” Will suggested.
“But if Lord Rush is wealthy, he doesn’t need any meager inheritance Bess might have.”
Will set Rose on the floor, caught Tiny, and dropped the terrier in the child’s lap. Rose settled down to hold her pet and warily watch the adults.
Rainsford stalked up and down the carpet. “Rush’s mother is in funds, but I wouldn’t call him wealthy. He wasted his father’s inheritance in his youth. He seems to have an allowance from his mother now but not enough to haunt the clubs.”
“Where did his mother come into wealth that her son does not possess?” Will asked, reasonably enough. He filled a chair near Lela’s seat and sprawled his long legs across the flowered carpet.
Even in his country tweed, Will overpowered the room with masculinity and an innate nobility, Lela decided. If she must make a fool of herself over any man, she’d found a good one. And blessedly, all the gabble in her head faded without her having to do more than watch him. With practice, she might learn to focus better.
For now, she had to settle her pounding heart by looking away from Will so she could listen to what Celeste and Aster below were doing—apparently instructing servants that visiting hours were over. She returned her attention to the men.
Rain shrugged at Will’s question. “Rush’s mother is from York, so I’m familiar with the family. Her father is a wealthy merchant who provided her with a large dowry when she married a baron. My supposition would be that when the last Baron Rush died, his wife kept her dowry and possibly more. Her son, the lavender-loving Lord Rush, would have inherited his father’s title and entailment but not necessarily funds. After a brief mourning, his mother married Viscount Simmons. Her merchant father was exceedingly pleased, and she was again well provided for in the settlements. Those monies would most likely come to her at his death also.”
“Lord Rush’s mother remarried?” Lela asked. She’d never paid attention to London or Yorkshire gossip, but she knew human nature. “Does she have more children? Or is Lord Rush her only child?”
“I don’t know the particulars,” Rain said with a scowl. “It’s not as if they travel in our circles, and Rush is a decade or more older than I am. Far too old for you.” He frowned formidably at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
“I never met the late Viscount Simmons,” Rain continued. “His estate was more in Northumberland and North Yorkshire, and I heard he wasn’t a social sort. I have a vague memory that he left a son, but he’d be more Rush’s age than mine.”
“Might the elder Simmons be a heavy snuff taker?” Will said, looking up from Rose and the puppy.
Lela and Rain both turned to him expectantly.
He shrugged his big shoulders uncomfortably. “An old Lord Simmons used to come through the village on his way to York and stay at our inn. The maids hated cleaning his room because of the stench of snuff. I could only have been nine or ten at the time, but I remember him grumbling about his wife and her son’s expensive sojourns to London. He may have been a viscount, but he never struck me as more than a country squire with muddy boots, threadbare attire, and a filthy habit.”
“Simmons may have preferred living in the country, and his wife had grown tired of it,” Lela said with a shrug. “With wealth of her own, she could do as she pleased. Not all aristocracy lives in each other’s pockets.”
Could she do that? Live in London and start a school while Will returned to traveling? But Aster had said he was ready to settle down. What was she to ma
ke of that?
“Why do you ask?” Rain demanded in irritation, missing the obvious.
“If Lady Simmons gave the viscount a son, he would be Lord Rush’s half-brother,” Lela explained. “Lord Rush may have grown up in a surly viscount’s rural household, with a younger brother who inherited a title and possibly an estate greater than his own.”
Will rubbed at his eyes—an indication that his sleepless night was taking its toll. “So lavender-loving Rush might have had a snuff-sniffing stepfather, one who did not travel in aristocratic circles, and whose son may have followed in his grubby path.”
At least he was following the path of her thoughts. “So Rush’s half-brother might have been a country-loving viscount who married Bess just to get a son to inherit so his citified older brother wouldn’t?” Lela suggested.
“Simmons’ half-brother could not inherit his title or any entailment,” Rain said with scorn. “There is no blood connection between their fathers. There would be no benefit in murdering Simmons’ wife and child, if that is who they are.”
He stopped pacing, apparently remembering the tale Lela had told him. He studied Rose playing on the carpet. “But there may have been dower funds that would revert to Simmons’ mother if there were no wife, child, or surviving siblings. The estate itself would be in the hands of an executor, presumably one searching for the next in line to the title. The process can be long and drawn out and the estate funds might vanish during the search.”
“Unless Viscount Simmons’ heir is Bess’s son,” Lela said, also studying the silent child on the carpet. “Rose could be a minor heiress, and the nearly-orphaned infant in the marchioness’s nursery could be a viscount. Bess may be a viscountess. If she was no more than a serving wench prior to marriage, she may have a right to fear her husband’s wealthy, aristocratic family.”
“And if the executor handling the estate happens to be the infant’s half-uncle, Lord Rush?” Will stood up. “We need confirmation, but I’m not waiting. It’s time to take Ajax out.”
No Perfect Magic Page 23