Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3)

by Pearl Darling

  “You don’t think Lady Anglethorpe will be a little put out? After all, I did make things quite difficult for her niece, for Harriet I mean?”

  “Aggie? No. She feels the same way as me.”

  “I… I will have to think about it. Times are difficult at the moment.”

  Victoria nodded. “I quite understand. I have had troubles of my own.” She smiled. “Do you remember Earl Harding? He and I used to, how can I put it delicately, comfort each other, back when he was still hurting over the marriage of his true love to another man, and I had just emerged from my marriage to old Lord Colchester.” Victoria made a moue with her mouth. “It wasn’t exactly comfort. The earl is as hard as ice, and allows himself to express very little emotion.”

  A roaring escalated in her Melissa’s ears. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked for a galloping horse, for anything. But there was nothing. Facing forwards, she folded her hands in her lap. “Really?” she managed weakly.

  Victoria gave her a quick glance. “It was a long time ago. But that is not the funny thing.”

  “Gracious.”

  “No! He came to my house a couple of weeks ago, walked in and kissed me, without so much as a by your leave.”

  A shudder ran through Melissa’s body.

  “It wasn’t just a chaste kiss on the lips I tell you!” Victoria picked at her skirt. “He really went for it. It was unlike any kiss he had given me previously.”

  Melissa gripped at the door of the carriage and pushed it open, gazing at the ground as it rushed by beneath her. “I must go.” The maid next to her bounced slightly on the seat in surprise. “Oswald, stop here, please.”

  The coachman brought the carriage to a stop. Without waiting for the tiger, Melissa jumped through the open door.

  Victoria stood unsteadily and looked down at her in surprise.

  Melissa put up a hand and waved. “I’ve just remembered I’ve left the kettle on the stove. I need to get back quickly to make sure it doesn’t explode.”

  Victoria frowned and gripped the edge of the carriage with two hands. “But we can take you back.”

  “No, no, I needed the exercise, that was why I was in the park in the first place.”

  Victoria nodded and glanced at her maid, before looking back again. A small smile played around the edges of her lips. “Do remember my invitation to Brambridge. We’ll keep a room available for you, just in case you decide to come.”

  Melissa nodded and waved again as the carriage pulled away.

  The walk home was short, through the western exit of the park and then only a few turns before she reached the small road with the identical houses that ran in straight terraces either side of it. She could see the chaos outside her house before she got there; the front door was open, and all the newly cut and dried flowers and herbs that she and Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs had painstakingly prepared had been thrown in and around a large sack. The glassware that she had amassed so painstakingly, for distilling and preserving, lay in a shattered heap in a bucket outside a large black carriage. Mrs. Hobbs’ weeping rang for yards down the street from her position on the front doorstep.

  “What is it? What has happened?” Melissa cried, breaking into a run for the last few yards. Oh gracious, surely her mother hadn’t returned had she, really?

  “It’s men from the gov’nment,” Mrs. Hobbs sobbed. “They’ve got some kind of paper but I don’t understand it.”

  Loud shouts from inside the house drew Melissa inward. She patted Mrs. Hobbs wanly on the shoulder as she pushed open the door. When would the upset ever end?

  In the kitchen at the end of the hall, two men were wrestling a newly made flower press from Mr. Hobbs’ arms.

  “Stop it,” she cried. “Just stop it!” Not another press; not more of my meagre belongings. She ran forwards, pulling at the arm of the smaller man. Without noticing her, he stepped back and slipped on the tiles of the floor, clipping Melissa on the head with his elbow. With a scream, she sank to the floor, as the three men toppled onto the tiles, following the heavy press.

  Rubbing her left temple, Melissa stood and clung to the sideboard. Her glasses had been knocked askew in the fray. Feeling carefully for the lenses, she was relieved to feel that they were still intact and not cracked. She pulled the legs of the spectacles behind her ears and resettled the rims on her nose.

  “What do you want?” she asked the groaning men on the floor. Her voice came out cracked and piercing.

  “They want to take our livelihood,” Mr. Hobbs shouted, rubbing his leg. “They’ve taken everything. They’ve smashed up the glassware and taken all the herbs we’ve grown. I’d just made this new press for you and they wanted to take that too.”

  “It’s all in the name of the crown,” the taller of the two men muttered. “We’ve got a right to do it.”

  “Yeah, now just tell us where you keep your mercury and arsenic.” Even though the shorter gentleman was fat and unappealing, he still managed to leer from his undignified position on the floor. Melissa stumbled backwards as memories of the coal merchant washed over her. After she had… helped him to the floor in his unconscious state he had lain in that very position.

  “I don’t keep any mercury or arsenic. I only deal in herbs and flowers.”

  “So you admit it?”

  “Admit what?”

  “That you are running an apothecary.”

  “I… Yes.” Melissa nodded slowly. There were no other words for what she had been doing.

  “Then we have a right to seize your goods and test them for wholesomeness,” the tall man said tiredly, getting to his feet. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and gave it to Melissa. “Apothecaries Act of 1815’.

  Melissa opened the piece of paper.

  The fat man rose from the floor, smiling slyly. “What training did you have to become an apothecary?”

  “My father was a botanist,” Melissa said distractedly, reading aloud the long title from the paper. “Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. An Act for Better Regulating the Practices of Apothecaries throughout England and Wales.” She looked up. “I didn’t know anything about this—”

  The fat man laughed. “She’s a prime candidate,” he said to the tall man who nodded slowly.

  There were thirty one points to the act. Melissa skimmed them as fast as she could. …“master and warden will be allowed…to enter any shops of those exercising the art of apothecary…to examine and try their substances… and to prohibit those practicing the art of apothecary whom they shall find unskillful…”

  “But she is skillful,” Mr. Hobbs protested. “Her remedies actually work!”

  “That’s not what we’ve been told,” the short man said with a sneer. “And she’s admitted it herself that she has no training.”

  Melissa looked up from the paper. “What training was I supposed to have had?”

  “Six months’ hospital experience, instruction in anatomy, botany, chemistry and physic, not to mention formal qualification under license from the Society of Apothecaries.”

  “But this act has only just been put in place!” Melissa stabbed a finger at the date clearly laid out on the paper. “How on earth can one comply with the act if it has only just been passed?”

  The taller man looked uncomfortable. “You are the first person on our list to be investigated.”

  Melissa’s eyes flashed with indignation. “Who put you up to this? Earl Harding? The butcher?”

  “We don’t know,” the fat man said with irritation. “It was someone high up in the Society of Apothecaries. They put you forward as a candidate for our first attempt at regulation.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Melissa folded and refolded the paper in her hands. Surely Hades hadn’t done this to her?

  “I’m afraid that we will need to take you away and try you for masquerading as an apothecary without the relevant license.”

  Melissa looked down at the crumpled Act in her hands again. “I refuse,” she said slo
wly, planting her feet firmly on the floor. “I refuse on the grounds that the Act is only three months old. That does not give anyone time to complete even the six month’s minimum apprenticeship to come up to the bill’s standards.”

  The fat man’s smile widened. “And how are you going to stop us?”

  “We will.”

  Melissa turned and stared at the crowd of people that filled the dark hallway, headed by Mrs. Hobbs and the large butcher from Bayswater High Street. He looked determined, but refused to meet Melissa in the eye. His apprentices stood behind him, large meat cleavers hanging loosely from their hands, and their aprons were still stained with blood.

  “You told me what he did, Miss Sumner, and I’ve just had a chat to his Mum. She said he owed you a favor and I’ve just called it in!” Mrs. Hobbs called cheerfully above the crowd.

  The fat man edged round the table, his smile nowhere to be seen as the first two tall, menacing young men with sharp knives stepped into the kitchen.

  “I say,” he began. But soon the crowd enveloped both of the Society of Apothecaries men, jostling them to the door, forcing them over the glass of the distillation equipment and unceremoniously pushing them into their carriage.

  The tall man pulled the door of the dour black carriage sharply shut and sought out Melissa with his eyes over the baying crowd. “We’ll be back for you,” he mouthed. Melissa trembled as he drew his head in and the carriage left with a jolt.

  “Do you consider the debt repaid?” the butcher asked her, as his apprentices chased the carriage down the street. He sighed with relief as Melissa nodded silently. “For what it is worth,” he continued unexpectedly, “your remedies work, and it would be worth you pursuing your business.”

  He turned on one heel and marched off down the street, following his men back towards the high street.

  “Good grief.” Melissa sank onto the doorstep as the trembling stopped. “I can’t start over again, not another time.” She buried her head in her hands. “I’m sorry but I—I’m not sure what to do next.”

  “I do,” Mr. Hobbs said grimly. “You need to disappear again for a few days.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Hades pressed his ring heavily into the warm wax sealing the note and waited for the image of a lion to set. Peeling the note away from his ring, he handed it quickly to Carter.

  “Send this at once to Bayswater. Make sure Miss Sumner gets the note. If not, give it to Mr. or Mrs. Hobbs.”

  Carter nodded at him knowingly and winked. Hades clenched his quill and cursed as he broke yet another nib. It had been the same way since his mother had left; all of the household staff looked moonstruck.

  I don’t love her, he wanted to howl like Arturo. I don’t know what love is. Was love the reason that he wanted to devour Melissa from her head to her toes every time that he saw her? Was it love that he thought about her every few moments and hoped that she was safe? That he found himself gazing longingly at the leather-bound armchair in his study and hadn’t once sat in it since she left? He dropped the broken quill to the table and scratched at his head. He had even found himself sniffing the head of the chair where she had let her scented hair rest against the cushion. For God’s sake, he could still smell the lavender.

  Pulling the pieces of parchment he had ruined with blots of ink off the desk, he opened one of its lower drawers and shoved the fragile rolls in, catching the edges on the torn paper of the parcel of books that he still hadn’t taken out of the desk.

  If only she didn’t seemingly want everything from him. It was lucky that he was leaving for Brambridge in Devon. He had to get away. Perhaps the Viper would follow him, and there was still the Dutch man that Henry had mentioned that was coming in with Renard to buy the secrets that the Viper was selling. Henry sighed as he slammed the drawer back in place. And if all else failed there was the elusive Mr. Trump to visit, and the books to read that he still hadn’t unpacked from his saddle-bag from weeks before.

  It took him two days in his own carriage to reach Honiton, the main coaching station close to Brambridge. It was a good place to stop for an early midday meal. The main street was lined with coaching inns interspersed with small shops selling lace from the surrounding area. His coachman and tiger were grateful for the stop as he had barely allowed them any rest in the preceding forty-eight hours.

  A short walk took Hades along the bustling main road towards a quiet church which backed on to an orphanage. Opposite the church stood a smaller than average inn, called the Whale, that was much less busy than the others but which Henry had recommended for a pie and a pint of ale. Ducking inside the low doorway, Hades was pleasantly surprised by the airy atmosphere within, with a large taproom, and private room beyond.

  He was even more surprised to see Freddie holed up in the corner of the tap room, a foaming jug of beer in front of him, his leg outstretched on the bench.

  “Freddie. Freddie?” he said again as the man twitched but didn’t look at him. Pushing his way past the empty tables and chairs, Hades bent down in front of Freddie. Lines of pain were etched across the man’s face, and his eyes were half closed. Concerned, Hades sat down opposite him and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Hello, Hades.” Freddie opened his eyes with effort and shifted his foot on the stool to give more room to Hades.

  Hades shook his head and carefully pushed Freddie’s foot back into position. “What are you doing here?” He nodded to the barmaid, who poured him a tankard of beer.

  “Lady Colchester and old Anglethorpe twisted my arm to come down to Devon. A small party they said.” Freddie grimaced. “It can’t be that small if you’re here too.”

  Hades nodded. What was Henry and his canny sister up to? “I didn’t know it was a house party. I’m here to see someone about the Viper.”

  Freddie snorted and took a long sip of his ale. “Wild goose chase I’ll bet. The Viper seems to play things close to his chest. From what I’ve heard, he seems to know things a long time in advance of everyone else.”

  Hades took a sip of his beer. It was true. But he was hoping that this time the man would come after him personally. After his ‘stomp the grass’ ploy, he hoped that the villain had been sent off kilter. His enemy, though, was wily and highly intelligent. He set the tankard carefully down on the table. At least he would be focusing his attentions now on Hades, and not on Melissa.

  “How are you getting down to Brambridge?” Freddie reached out for his own tankard and drew it shakily towards him.

  “I’ve brought my own carriage. It seemed a safer bet than my horse.”

  “Hmm, I agree.” Freddie nodded to his leg. “I thought I was better, but the continuous riding seems to have set something off again. Either that or it was Martha at the Pink Canary Club…”

  Hades snorted. The man was incorrigible. Why didn’t he just admit that he needed help?

  Freddie grinned, the lines on his face smoothing away. “I’ll have to wait till it’s better before I can get down to Brambridge. They’ve said they’ve got some rooms here which I’ll take advantage of. And the barmaid is rather attractive…”

  “Why don’t you come in my carriage?” Hades tipped back on his chair.

  “Oh, I really couldn’t…”

  Hades looked up sharply. Freddie sounded nervous, almost as if he didn’t want to go to Brambridge. But that was his to decide. Hades looked out of the open inn door as Freddie mumbled. A sweep of black hair and a silver glint caught his eye. He blinked, and it was gone. Melissa, here in Devon? It was one of the rare moments when he hadn’t been thinking about her. He rubbed his head tiredly. Had his mind been playing tricks on him?

  “Well, I…”

  “Hold on Freddie, back in a minute.” Hades stepped quickly to the Inn door and looked out, but he had been too slow. There were no longer any women walking down that side of the high street, and all the doors were closed on the cottages surrounding the inn.

  He drew back into
the inn and passed a hand quickly across his brow again. Perhaps he too was sickening for something. He sat back down with a thump and took a long draught of his beer.

  “You need to be careful with that stuff,” Freddie said ruefully, pointing unsteadily at his nearly empty tankard. “Believe me, I know.”

  Hades looked away. He was aware of the incident in Brambridge where Freddie had been so inebriated that he had lost his senses in the face of a luscious French spy. Granwich had told him; amongst their circle of War Office colleagues one had to know where each other’s pressure points were. But despite the empty tankard it seemed as if Freddie was sober enough today. Damn it, it was one of the reasons he had been so angry at the ball where he had first met Diana… no, Melissa. He’d just had words with Freddie who’d told him in no uncertain terms that what had had happened in Burgos stayed in Burgos; that it had had no impact on his behavior in Brambridge. That it was just bad luck.

  He looked down at where his knuckles gripped at the handle of his tankard. White showed across the lines in his skin. And then he had been captured by a sly beauty that wouldn’t speak, who could only stare mistily at him and say one word… Diana.

  There he went again. Melissa was in his head. He banged his tankard on the table and started to eat steadily through the pie that had arrived whilst he had been outside. The tension in his fingers eased as he stabbed his fork into the steaming potatoes and hot cabbage that surrounded the game pie. Henry was right. This was indeed was the inn to eat at. As he ate his first real meal for a couple of months, he sighed as his stomach stretched. Perhaps he could persuade Charles and Carlos to cook something similar. Their cooking was still as erratic as ever.

  The two men ate in silence for the next ten minutes. Hades was keen to leave when he had finished. The barmaid did not bother them, arriving only to take their plates away at the end of the meal.