“Whatever is all this wretched noise, Mary?” he demanded. A plump, contented-looking man, he had also the firm chin and tightly satisfied lips of the man who is contented because he generally gets his own way.
“N-nothing, Papa,” said Mary, stuttering in her nervousness. “Only a m-m-mouse.”
The baronet squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled deeply, seeking patience. Having found a simulacrum of that state, he opened them and gazed at his offspring.
“Say it again, child,” he ordered. “But straight. I’ll not have you mumbling and blithering. Take a deep breath, steady yourself. Now. Again.”
Mary obeyed, inhaling ’til the laces of her bodice strained across the budding chest. Her fingers wound themselves in the silk brocade of her skirt, seeking support.
“It w-was a mouse, Papa. Mrs. Fr … er, this lady was frightened by a mouse.”
Dismissing this attempt as barely satisfactory, the baronet stepped forward, examining me with interest.
“Oh? And who might you be, Madam?”
Captain Mainwaring, arriving belatedly after the search for the mythical mouse, popped up at my elbow and introduced me, handing over the note of introduction from Colonel MacLeish.
“Hum. So, it seems His Grace is to be your host, Madam, at least temporarily.” He handed the note to the waiting butler, and took the hat the latter had taken from the nearby rack.
“I regret that our acquaintance should be so short, Mrs. Beauchamp. I was just leaving myself.” He glanced over his shoulder, to a short stairway that branched off the hall. The butler, dignity restored, was already mounting it, grubby note reposing on a salver held before him. “I see Walmisley has gone to tell His Grace of your arrival. I must go, or I shall miss the post-coach. Adieu, Mrs. Beauchamp.”
He turned to Mary, hanging back against the paneled wainscoting. “Goodbye, daughter. Do try to … well.” The corners of his mouth turned up in what was meant to be a fatherly smile. “Goodbye, Mary.”
“Goodbye, Papa,” she murmured, eyes on the ground. I glanced from one to the other. What on earth was Mary Hawkins, of all people, doing here? Plainly she was staying at the house; I supposed the owner must be some connection of her family’s.
“Mrs. Beauchamp?” A small, tubby footman was bowing at my elbow. “His Grace will see you now, Madam.”
Mary’s hands clutched at my sleeve as I turned to follow the footman. “B-b-b-but …” she began. In my keyed-up state, I didn’t think I could manage sufficient patience to hear her out. I smiled vaguely and patted her hand.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “Don’t worry, it will be all right.”
“B-but it’s my …”
The footman bowed and pushed open a door at the end of the corridor. Light within fell on the richness of brocade and polished wood. The chair I could see to one side had a family crest embroidered on its back; a clearer version of the worn stone shield I had seen outside.
A leopard couchant, holding in its paw a bunch of lilies—or were they crocuses? Alarm bells rang in my mind as the chair’s occupant rose, his shadow falling across the polished doorsill as he turned. Mary’s final anguished word made it out, neck and neck with the footman’s announcement.
“My g-g-godfather!” she said.
“His Grace, the Duke of Sandringham,” said the footman.
“Mrs.… Beauchamp?” said the Duke, his mouth dropping open in astonishment.
“Well,” I said weakly. “Something like that.”
* * *
The door of the drawing room closed behind me, leaving me alone with His Grace. My last sight of Mary had been of her standing out in the hall, eyes like saucers, mouth opening and shutting silently like a goldfish.
There were huge Chinese jars flanking the windows, and inlaid tables under them. A bronze Venus posed coquettishly on the mantelpiece, companioned by a pair of gold-rimmed porcelain bowls and silver-gilt candelabra, blazing with beeswax candles. A close-napped carpet that I recognized as a very good Kermanshah covered most of the floor and a spinet crouched in one corner; what little space was left bare was occupied by marquetried furniture and the odd bit of statuary.
“Nice place you have here,” I remarked graciously to the Duke, who had been standing before the fire, hands folded beneath his coattail as he watched me, an expression of wary amusement on the broad, florid face.
“Thank you,” he said, in the piping tenor that came so oddly from that barrel-chested frame. “Your presence adorns it, my dear.” Amusement won out over wariness, and he smiled, a bluff, disarming grin.
“Why Beauchamp?” he asked. “That isn’t by chance your real name, is it?”
“My maiden name,” I answered, rattled into the truth. His thick blond eyebrows shot up.
“Are you French?”
“No. English. I couldn’t use Fraser, though, could I?”
“I see.” Brows still raised, he nodded at a small brocaded love seat, inviting me to be seated. It was richly carved and beautifully proportioned, a museum piece, like everything else in the room. I swept my sodden skirts to one side as gracefully as I could, ignoring their liberal stains of mud and horsehair, and delicately lowered myself onto the primrose satin.
The Duke paced slowly back and forth before the fire, watching me, still with a slight smile on his features. I fought the growing warmth and comfort that spread through my aching legs, threatening to drag me into the abyss of fatigue that gaped open at my feet. This was no time to let down my guard.
“Which are you?” the Duke inquired suddenly. “An English hostage, a fervent Jacobite, or a French agent?”
I rubbed two fingers over the ache between my eyes. The correct answer was “none of the above,” but I didn’t think it would get me very far.
“The hospitality of this house seems a trifle lacking by comparison with its appointments,” I said, as haughtily as I could manage under the circumstances, which wasn’t all that much. Still, Louise’s example of great-ladydom had not been entirely in vain.
The Duke laughed, a high, chittering sort of laugh, like a bat that has just heard a good one.
“Your pardon, Madam. You’re quite right; I should have thought to offer you refreshment before presuming to question you. Most thoughtless of me.”
He murmured something to the footman who appeared in answer to his ring, then waited calmly before the fire for the tray to arrive. I sat in silence, glancing around the room, occasionally stealing a look at my host. Neither of us was interested in making small talk. Despite his outward geniality, this was an armed truce, and both of us knew it.
What I wanted to know was why. No stranger to people wondering who in hell I was, I rather wondered myself where the Duke came into it. Or where he thought I did. He had met me twice before, as Mrs. Fraser, wife of the laird of Lallybroch. Now I had turned up on his doorstep, posing as an English hostage named Beauchamp lately rescued from a gang of Scottish Jacobites. That was enough to make anyone wonder. But his attitude toward me went a long way past simple curiosity.
The tea arrived, complete with scones and cake. The Duke picked up his own cup, motioned to mine with a lift of one brow, and we took tea, still both in silence. Somewhere on the other side of the house, I could hear a muffled banging, as of someone hammering. The soft chime of the Duke’s cup against its saucer was the signal for the resumption of hostilities.
“Now, then,” he said, with as much firmness as a man who sounded like Mickey Mouse could manage. “Let me begin, Mrs. Fraser—I may call you so? Thank you. Let me begin by saying that I know a great deal about you already. I intend to know more. You will do well to answer me fully and without hesitations. I must say, Mrs. Fraser, that you are amazingly difficult to kill”—he bowed slightly in my direction, that smile still on his lips—“but I feel sure that it could be accomplished, given sufficient determination.”
I stared at him, unmoving; not out of any native sang-froid, but from simple dumbfoundedness. Adopting another of Louise’s mannerisms, I raised both
eyebrows inquiringly, sipped tea, then patted my lips delicately with the monogrammed serviette provided.
“I am afraid you will think me dense, Your Grace,” I said politely, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Haven’t you, my dear?”
The small, jolly blue eyes didn’t blink. He reached for the silver-gilt bell on the tray and rang it once.
The man must have been waiting in the next room for the summons, for the door opened immediately. A tall, lean man in the dark habiliments and good linen of an upper servant advanced to the Duke’s side and bowed deeply.
“Your Grace?” He spoke English, but the French accent was unmistakable. The face was French, too; long-nosed and white, with thin, tight lips and a pair of ears that stood out from his head like small wings on either side, their tips fiercely red. His lean face grew still paler as he looked up and spotted me, and he took an involuntary step backward.
Sandringham watched this with a frown of irritation, then switched his gaze to me.
“You don’t recognize him?” he asked.
I was beginning to shake my head, when the man’s right hand twitched suddenly against the cloth of his breeches. As unobtrusively as possible, he was making the sign of the horns, middle fingers folded down, index and little finger pointed at me. I knew, then, and in the next instant had seen the confirmation of my knowledge—the small beauty mark above the fork of his thumb.
I hadn’t the slightest doubt; it was the man in the spotted shirt who had attacked me and Mary in Paris. And all too obviously in the Duke’s employ.
“You bloody bastard!” I said. I leaped to my feet, overturning the tea table, and snatched up the nearest object to hand, a carved alabaster tobacco jar. I hurled it at the man’s head, and he turned and fled precipitately, the heavy jar missing him by inches to smash against the door frame.
The door slammed to as I started after him, and I stopped in my tracks, breathing heavily. I glared at Sandringham, hands braced on my hips.
“Who is he?” I demanded.
“My valet,” said the Duke calmly. “Albert Danton, by name. A good fellow with neckcloths and stockings, but a trifle excitable, as so many of these Frenchmen are. Incredibly superstitious, too.” He frowned disapprovingly at the closed door. “Bloody papists, with all these saints and smells and such. Believe anything at all.”
My breathing was slowing, though my heart still banged against the whalebones of my bodice. I had trouble drawing a deep breath.
“You filthy, disgusting, outrageous.… pervert!”
The Duke seemed bored by this, and nodded negligently.
“Yes, yes, my dear. All that, I’m sure, and more. A trifle unlucky, too, at least on that occasion.”
“Unlucky? Is that what you’d call it?” Unsteadily, I moved to the love seat, and sat down. My hands were shaking with nerves, and I clasped them together, hidden in the folds of my skirt.
“On several counts, my dear lady. Just look at it.” He spread out both hands in graceful entreaty. “I send Danton to dispose of you. He and his companions decide to entertain themselves a bit first; that’s all well and good, but in the process, they get a good look at you, leap unaccountably to the conclusion that you’re a witch of some kind, lose their heads entirely and run off. But not before debauching my goddaughter, who is present by accident, thus ruining all chance of the excellent marriage I had painstakingly arranged for her. Consider the irony of it!”
The shocks were coming thick and fast, and I hardly knew which to respond to first. There seemed one particularly striking statement in this speech, though.
“What do you mean ‘dispose of me’?” I demanded. “Do you mean to say you actually tried to have me killed?” The room seemed to be swaying a bit, and I took a deep gulp of tea as being the nearest thing to a restorative available. It wasn’t terribly effective.
“Well, yes,” Sandringham said pleasantly. “That was the point I was endeavoring to make. Tell me, my dear, would you care for a cup of sherry?”
I eyed him narrowly for a moment. Having just stated that he’d tried to have me killed, he now expected me to accept a cup of sherry from his hands?
“Brandy,” I said. “Lots of it.”
He giggled in that high-pitched way again, and made his way to the sideboard, remarking over his shoulder, “Captain Randall said you were a most diverting woman. Quite an encomium from the Captain, you know. He hasn’t much use for women ordinarily, though they swarm over him. His looks, I suppose; it can’t be his manner.”
“So Jack Randall does work for you,” I said, taking the glass he handed me. I had watched him pour out two glasses, and was sure that both contained nothing but brandy. I took a large and sorely needed swallow.
The Duke matched me, blinking his eyes at the effect of the pungent liquid.
“Of course,” he said. “Often the best tool is the most dangerous. One doesn’t hesitate to use it on that account; one merely makes sure to take adequate precautions.”
“Dangerous, eh? Just how much do you know about Jonathan Randall?” I asked curiously.
The Duke tittered. “Oh, virtually everything, I should think, my dear. Most likely a great deal more than you do, in fact. It doesn’t do to employ a man like that without having a means at hand to control him, you know. And money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.”
“Unlike blackmail?” I said dryly.
He sat back, hands clasped across his bulging stomach, and regarded me with bland interest.
“Ah. You are thinking that blackmail might work both ways, I suppose?” He shook his head, dislodging a few grains of snuff that floated down onto the silk waistcoat.
“No, my dear. For one thing, there is something of a difference in our stations. While rumor of that sort might affect my reception in some circles of society, that is not a matter of grave concern to me. While for the good Captain—well, the army takes a very dim view of such unnatural predilections. The penalty is often death, in fact. No, not much comparison, really.” He cocked his head to one side, so far as the multiple chins allowed.
“But it is neither the promise of wealth nor the threat of exposure that binds John Randall to me,” he said. The small, watery blue eyes gleamed in their orbits. “He serves me because I can give him what he desires.”
I eyed the corpulent frame with unconcealed disgust, making His Grace shake with laughter.
“No, not that,” he said. “The Captain’s tastes are somewhat more refined than that. Unlike my own.”
“What, then?”
“Punishment,” he said softly. “But you know that, don’t you? Or at least your husband does.”
I felt unclean simply from being near him, and rose to get away. The shards of the alabaster tobacco jar lay on the floor, and I kicked one inadvertently, so that it pinged off the wall, ricocheting and spinning off under the love seat, reminding me of the recent Danton.
I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to discuss the subject of my aborted murder with him, but it seemed at the moment preferable to some alternatives.
“What did you want to kill me for?” I asked abruptly, turning to face him. I glanced quickly over the collection of objects on a piecrust table, looking for a suitable weapon of defense, just in case he still felt the urge.
He didn’t seem to. Instead, he bent laboriously over and picked up the teapot—miraculously unbroken—and set it upright on the restored tea table.
“It seemed expedient at the time,” he said calmly. “I had learned that you and your husband were attempting to thwart a particular affair in which I had interested myself. I considered removing your husband instead, but it seemed too dangerous, what with his close relation to two of the greatest families in Scotland.”
“Considered removing him?” A light dawned—one of many that were going off in my skull like fireworks. “Was it you who sent the seamen who attacked Jamie in Paris?”
The Duke nodded in offhand manner.<
br />
“That seemed the simplest method, if a bit crude. But then, Dougal Mac-Kenzie turned up in Paris, and I wondered whether in fact your husband was in fact working for the Stuarts. I became unsure where his interests lay.”
What I was wondering was just where the Duke’s interests lay. This odd speech made it sound very much as though he was a secret Jacobite—and if so, he’d done a really masterly job of keeping his secrets.
“And then,” he went on, delicately placing the teapot’s lid back in place, “there was your growing friendship with Louis of France. Even had your husband failed with the bankers, Louis could have supplied Charles Stuart with what he needed—provided you kept your pretty nose out of the affair.”
He frowned closely at the scone he was holding, flicked a couple of threads off it, then decided against eating it and tossed it onto the table.
“Once it became clear what was really happening, I tried to lure your husband back to Scotland, with the offer of a pardon; very expensive, that was,” he said reflectively. “And all for nothing, too!
“But then I recalled your husband’s apparent devotion to you—quite touching,” he said, with a benevolent smile that I particularly disliked. “I supposed that your tragic demise might well distract him from the endeavor in which he was engaged without provoking the sort of interest his own murder would have involved.”
Suddenly thinking of something, I turned to look at the harpsichord in the corner of the room. Several sheets of music adorned its rack, written in a fine, clear hand. Fifty thousand pounds, upon the occasion of Your Highness’s setting foot in Scotland. Signed S. “S,” of course, for Sandringham. The Duke laughed, in apparent delight.
“That was really very clever of you, my dear. It must have been you; I’d heard of your husband’s unfortunate inability with music.”
“Actually, it wasn’t,” I replied, turning back from the piano. The table at my side lacked anything useful in the way of letter openers or blunt objects, but I hastily picked up a vase, and buried my face in the mass of hothouse flowers it held. I closed my eyes, feeling the brush of cool petals against my suddenly heated cheeks. I didn’t dare to look up, for fear my telltale face would give me away.
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