A Lady's Guide to Passion and Property

by Kate Moore

  —The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

  Chapter 6

  Lucy woke early to sun streaming in her window. She was in her room in her bed, but not in her nightgown or between the sheets. Her brush and comb lay on the chest, and her lady’s portrait hung over the mantel in the most ordinary and familiar way. She simply couldn’t remember going to bed. Her gaze drifted to her clothes lying discarded in a heap on her chair and Margaret’s letter lying on the carpet. The present rushed back, and she was throwing off the counterpane, her feet slapping the floor, and Papa was dying, dead, and buried, and she had the inn to run and Adam to care for. She had slipped back in time while she slept to before, but waking had borne her swiftly into the present like a twig tossed in a swollen stream.

  It was already too bright out, and the birds’ morning chorus had quieted. She hurried through her washing and dressing. It troubled her that she could not remember climbing to her room or undressing. Worse, she had abandoned Adam. Unthinkable that she had done so. She did not remember helping him to bed. He could not have gone on his own. With the briefest nod to her smiling lady, she ran down the stairs.

  Adam was not on his bench, but Queenie jumped down and meowed, loudly demanding breakfast. Lucy made herself stand and think while the cat wound around her legs. A night’s sleep should not have altered things so completely as if she’d entered a dark wood and lost her bearings.

  Queenie’s cries grew more insistent, and Lucy headed for the kitchen. Feed the cat. Find Adam. And the world would right itself. She quickened her step at the sound of Hannah’s voice and found her at the long kitchen worktable arranging a teapot and covered dish on a silver tray. The girl looked up and bobbed a curtsy and offered a good morning as if nothing were amiss.

  “Morning, Hannah.” Lucy filled the cat’s dish with the fish scraps Queenie preferred. Once the cat stopped mewing, Lucy could think. She had merely overslept. “Adam’s not on his bench.” It was an odd thing to say, like saying the earth is flat. “Do you know where he is?”

  Hannah looked down with a slight blush. “Don’cha remember, miss? Captain Clare did for ’im last night. After he did for you. I expect ’e’s with the captain in ’is room.”

  After he did for you. He did for her? Lucy did not remember. Why did she not remember? “Thank you, Hannah. Carry on.”

  She left the girls in the kitchen and marched up the stairs and down the passage to the captain’s corner bedchamber, sentences forming in her head. She would tell Captain Clare what she thought of a man interfering with her running of the inn. He had one of the inn’s finest rooms, with its half-tester bed and a view over the meadows beyond their little village at the edge of London. At his door she reached for the keys at her waist, found them missing. She rapped sharply on the heavy door.

  “Come in,” a muffled male voice called.

  When she pushed open the door, her complaint died. Captain Clare stood with his back to her, his back bare, with a towel draped over one pale broad shoulder, his left hand holding a razor to his jaw. Once before she’d had an encounter with him when he’d first come to the inn. She hadn’t realized which room her father had given him and had opened the door to discover him lying in the copper bath.

  Whatever she meant to say about his interference with Adam died in her suddenly dry throat. His shoulders needed no epaulets. They were quite broad. His smooth skin was marked by tiny white nicks, and one long, thin red line that slashed from under his right shoulder blade down to the band of his trousers.

  Heat shimmered in the lazy gaze that collided with hers in the glass. The meaning of Hannah’s words came clear and robbed Lucy of speech.

  “You.” His raised hand paused in its scraping of the lather on his chin, like a clock figure waiting for the next second to tick off. Then he shook the foam from the blade into the white, chipped basin in front of him. “Come to scold, have you? Adam’s safe.”

  Lucy bowed her head to hide her flaming cheeks. Harry Clare had undressed her and put her to bed. His hands had touched her where no one touched her. Her whole body flashed with sudden warmth at the thought. She tried to tell herself that his attentions must have been swift and impersonal, or at the least not...not other than her care of Adam.

  She had forgotten Adam, but there he was in a chair by the fire, dressed and combed, his hands resting on his knees, his head cocked at an alert angle. She crossed the Turkey rug to rest a hand on his shoulder.

  “How are you this morning, Adam?” she asked.

  “Captain Clare takes a bath every day,” said Adam. “He likes baths.”

  Lucy’s face warmed again. A slight shiver passed through her. She stood where the copper bath stood. In that moment he had lain in the tub, his arms resting over the edges, his hands with their long fingers dangling, his head tilted back against the lip, his eyes closed, water beaded on his shoulders, steam rising around him.

  “You undressed me,” she said, putting it plainly, sounding him out.

  He glanced at her again over his shoulder. “I’m sure you’d return the favor if I needed it.”

  “Favor?” The image of him in the tub remained vivid in her mind. He filled her with vast impatience, she who had patiently cared for Adam for years.

  “I hope you slept well. Adam did.” He tossed the towel aside and reached for a shirt lying on the end of the bed. He pulled it over his head, and the loose lawn fell into place, shadowing his torso. He had seen her in a similar state.

  He fastened the cuffs of the shirt. She ought to be glad he was decent. The conversation had veered away from her complaint, and she sought to bring it back. “Adam is my responsibility.”

  “Along with everything else, apparently.”

  “Yes, and I’ll thank you to return my keys.”

  “Such a lot of brass to carry. You must feel the weight of them with every step.”

  “I can manage. You think I’m not up to running an inn.”

  He shook his head. “You needed sleep, not another night of watching over Adam.” From the table by the bed he gathered up her ring of keys, hefting them in his palm and handing them to her. Their fingers met with a brief shock.

  Lucy went to tie the keys to her waist, but found the ribbon had been cut. She dropped them in her pocket, where they made a heavy bulge. When she looked up, she saw her missing book lying on the table beside the bed.

  “You took my book, the book my friends gave me.”

  “You left it behind. You’d better read it, you know.” He picked up his scarlet regimental jacket from the end of the bed.

  She laughed. “I’m not likely to hunt a husband any time soon.”

  Lucy watched him shrug into the jacket. She had dressed Adam countless times and never thought about shoulders or backs or waists. “Don’t you have ordinary clothes?” The war was long over, yet he still wore his uniform, and under it his scars. “Is England at war?”

  “She still has enemies.” He smiled grimly.

  “And you fight them?”

  “Every day.” He shrugged. The scarlet coat hung loose around him. The shirt hung over his trousers. Lucy felt oddly rooted to the carpet and realized he was waiting for her to leave. She had things to do, whatever he thought of a woman’s capacity to manage an inn.

  “I’ll take my book, thank you.”

  He moved with lazy ease to retrieve it and hand it to her. This time there was no meeting of their fingers. “You have more neighbors nerving themselves to propose, you know.”

  “Propose? To me? Who?”

  “You turned Wittering down, but John Simkins will have a go at it. You’re a woman of property. Fair game. You haven’t noticed the new coats and combed hair?”

  She dropped the little book in her other pocket—it was far lighter than her keys—and turned to Adam. She squeezed his hand once, a signal they had when it was time to move from one spot to
another. Adam tottered to his feet, and Lucy led him to the door.

  “Thank you, Captain,” she said, “for seeing to Adam last night.”

  “My pleasure,” he said as she and Adam passed through the door.

  Lucy looked back, unable to help herself. He hadn’t moved, and his face had its hardest look. “Your father protected Adam, kept him from being noticed, pretended that what Adam says makes no sense, but what if it does make sense? What if Adam knows a secret that could bring him...and you great harm?”

  * * * *

  Harry breakfasted in the common room over an ordnance survey map of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. Studying the map should help him clear his head after his morning encounter with Lucy Holbrook. He had no quarrel with the Tooth and Nail’s eggs and toast, but his cup of undrinkable inn coffee cooled as he studied the map for likely ambush sites. A number of details puzzled Harry about Adam’s past.

  If Lucy’s account were accurate and Adam had been in service, and if, as Tom Holbrook’s marked copy of the peerage suggested, Adam had been employed at Hartwood Park, then the attack would likely have occurred on the Aylesbury-to-London road, a road Harry had often ridden between Mountjoy and town. It was the route Radcliffe’s Rockets followed.

  Supposing Adam had been attacked and blinded somewhere within walking distance of the inn, which Harry thought to be five to eight miles for a man of Adam’s strength, there were a few likely ambush spots where the road passed through woods or open heath.

  But what he knew of the attack still made no sense. A man in service would have been traveling with a master or mistress and at least a coachman, if not other servants. If a child had been present, the party would likely have included the mistress of the house and a nursemaid. So how had Adam alone ended up at the inn? What had become of the child whose bloody garments lay in Tom Holbrook’s wardrobe?

  At the time, the master of Hartwood had been the Clares’ neighbor, Edward Lydford, whose offspring were closer in age to Harry’s brother, Richard, than to Harry, two sons and a daughter. As far as Harry knew, Lydford, a man in his seventies, still held the title; his eldest son was betrothed or married, but Harry did not remember what had become of the other two Lydford children. Harry knew of no child belonging to the family twenty years earlier. He had been thirteen at the time.

  The answers to the puzzle lay locked away in Adam’s disordered mind. Ordinarily, when Harry and his fellow spies wanted information out of an informant, they’d take the fellow to the nearest public house and keep the drinks coming until the man opened up. He could not treat Adam that way. The old man sat all day in a busy taproom, but no amount of drink would loosen his tongue. Apparently, only a reminder of his blinding could make him talk. As tempting as it was to put those bloody garments in Adam’s big rough hands and ask him direct questions, Harry had no intention of harming Adam or further scattering his wits. To get Adam to talk, Harry was going to have to win Lucy’s cooperation.

  And while he tried to get the girl on his side, his brother, Richard, could sell Mountjoy out from under him before the government ever paid him a shilling of what he was owed for his year and a day as a spy. He lifted the cold coffee to his mouth and put it down again. The problem was charming Lucy Holbrook. Harry was no Hazelwood with an easy, engaging manner or a playful way with words. His uniform was apparently distasteful to her. He’d only been in London for a few weeks one Season when he’d returned briefly from the Peninsula to recover from a wound. Maybe he should have read her little book before he’d returned it to her.

  He pushed the cold coffee away, laughing at himself. Whenever he let himself think about Lucy, he stopped thinking straight. He was a soldier with a mission. He needed to ride out and find the likely place of the ambush. Reconstructing the crime would be the first step toward understanding Adam’s disjointed ravings.

  Harry looked at his watch. The stage was past due, and Lucy remained in her kitchen preparing for its arrival. He suspected her of hiding from him after their earlier encounter in his room. Without her cook, the duty of preparing a meal for the stage passengers fell on her. He would stay until she got over that hurdle.

  He folded his map, aware suddenly of the distinctive aroma of fresh strong coffee somewhere near him. He looked around the common room for one of Lucy’s serving girls, but there was only the usual crowd of bench sitters, now gathered to see the drama of Lucy’s managing the stage passengers. His gaze found a man in a familiar cap hunched over his drink at the far end of one of the benches. As if aware of Harry’s scrutiny, the fellow in the cap turned.

  Nate Wilde flashed his toothy grin and lifted a leather-coated flask in a salute.

  Harry nodded, and the youth slid from his bench and crossed the room, putting the flask down at Harry’s side. “Thought you might need some decent coffee, guv.”

  “Whelp, what are you doing here?”

  “The big man sent me.” Wilde slid onto the bench beside Harry.

  “And?”

  “He thinks you might need help.” Wilde opened the flask, and the full rich scent of the coffee hit Harry.

  He wanted to say that he worked alone, but a look at the youth stopped him. Wilde was buzzing with pent-up energy. “Feeling idle?”

  “Useless. Do you know Will Jones employs a fellow that will turn down your sheets for you and...and more?” Wilde grinned, all his strong, white teeth in view.

  Harry laughed. In some ways he and the youth were alike. Both had fended for themselves for years, Wilde in a bleak, lawless London rookery, and Harry at war.

  “Is that your blind man?” Wilde asked, looking across the inn at Adam on his bench.

  “Yes.” Harry took his first taste of Wilde’s coffee, rich and strong. “What do you see?” An early occupation of picking pockets had taught Wilde to be a sharp observer of people. Harry enjoyed a few more swallows of the coffee while the youth studied Adam, who was buffing a pair of boots.

  “I see the cat, sir. The cat’s not moving. I’d say the old man sticks to his business as long as the cat sleeps. When the cat stirs, the old man will prick up his ears. There’s nothing wrong with his hearing, is there?”

  “Nothing.” Harry thought it a good performance for a man trying to win a place on the case, and maybe Harry could use him. He could certainly use the coffee. He’d think it over.

  The inn bell jangled, and the door blew open. Every head turned to the entrance. In walked King Cole, the most notable coachman of Radcliffe’s Rockets. His flushed and angry face, his muddied boots, proclaimed trouble. Then he started shouting.

  “Holbrook! Where are ye, man? Call the constables, damn ye! My Rocket’s been robbed again.” Cole strode straight to the tap. Blodget handed him a pint, which he downed in a single drink. The bench sitters left their benches to gather around him, a jumble of shouting voices.

  Harry kept his gaze on Adam. The cat had left the bench, and the old man sat in a strained frozen posture, his hands still, his head cocked to listen to the din from the tap.

  Lucy came running from the kitchen, checking only to put a hand on Adam’s shoulder before striding up to Cole.

  “Mr. Cole, what’s happened? Where are your passengers?”

  Cole looked surprised to be addressed by her. Harry watched the man’s face change as he took in the keys Lucy had retied to her waist.

  “They shot out the lamps at the seven-mile stone. Got my guard, Fishlock, too. And took the bleeding ’orses.” He reached for another cup of ale.

  “Who?” someone from the crowd asked.

  “Gypsies. Spoke gibberish, the lot of them, except the leader. Big fellow on a black horse.”

  “Mr. Cole,” Lucy interrupted. “Is anyone hurt?”

  Cole frowned at her. “Had to leave the passengers, miss. No ’orses.”

  Lucy turned and strode for the door. Harry nudged Wilde. “Go help her. Get the stable mas
ter to collect the passengers.”

  Wilde was up off the bench and at Lucy’s side before she reached the door. Harry heard him calling, “Miss,” saw them talk, and Wilde hurry out the door. Lucy turned back, watching Cole.

  Harry stood and crossed to Adam’s side, settling beside the old man. “King Cole is telling a story, Adam. Lucy’s listening.” The cat jumped into Harry’s lap, and he shifted the creature over to Adam to hold. The old man’s hands curled around the animal.

  Cole was on his third pint, telling the story of the encounter at a place where the road curved around a low rise and ancient pollard beeches cast a deep gloom. The highwayman, whoever he was, had worn no lace or plume. No silver had glinted from his weapon, and the dark brim of his hat had hidden his features. Adding insult to injury, the fellow had taken Cole’s whip and tommy, a short murderous weapon of weighted whalebone that could make the slowest horse give a faster mile.

  Harry did not have to consult his map to know that the place Cole described was one Harry had already identified as a good place for an ambush. He placed a hand on Adam’s shaking knee. The old man was muttering, “Geoffrey ran away.”

  “Steady, Adam. Lucy’s safe.” It was a guess, a stab in the dark, but the muttering stopped. “Lucy’s here. She’s safe,” Harry repeated.

  Adam quieted, still holding his head cocked in a listening attitude. His right hand stroked the cat. Queenie purred and began to knead Adam’s leg with her claws.

  A constable arrived, and Lucy led him and Cole to the inn’s private parlor. The bench sitters continued to talk about the robbery, speculating about the odd behavior of the thieves in taking Radcliffe’s horses. Everyone knew Radcliffe’s night-run horses were on their last legs and apt to die in the traces, especially with a coachman like Cole driving them.

  Only Lucy’s passage back across the common room to Adam’s bench created a brief pause in the talk. Every man took a moment to lift his pint pot again. While they were drinking, Wilde slipped back into the crowd, a pair of eyes and ears Harry could count on.