“I’m offering you considerable coin to locate this woman,” Stephen said. “Matilda is in London. She’d not go far from the girl.”
Samuels took a considering sip of his ale. “That narrows it down considerably, doesn’t it? All I need to do is line up a hundred thousand blond women and ask them if they killed somebody six years ago. Who did you say her victim was?”
“Her husband.”
“Not very original, guv.”
The publican took a few coins from the urchin and disappeared into the kitchen. Stephen had agreed to meet Samuels at the Goose because the activity at a commercial venue allowed a certain privacy that a club or park bench did not—and some safety.
“She killed him,” Stephen said quietly. “Saw it with my own eyes. Bashed my poor father repeatedly about the head when the dear man was in his cups and unable to defend himself. A woman with a temper like that will kill again.”
Samuels studied his ale as if a fine summer brew was more interesting than Stephen’s eyewitness account of a killing.
The magistrate had believed Stephen, and that was what mattered. Why would Matilda have run off if she hadn’t been guilty?
“You ever been bashed with a poker?” Samuels asked.
“Certainly not.”
“Takes a prodigious lot of bashing to even put out a man’s lights. Makes me wonder what you were about to let her have at him that way while you stood by and did nothing.”
Samuels apparently spoke from experience when it came to delivering fatal bludgeonings, and this conversation had gone on too long.
“I’m paying you ten pounds to find the woman, Samuels, and that’s in addition to the fifty my uncle has promised upon conviction. I’m not paying you to make a Gothic novel out of a family tragedy.”
Samuels wasn’t overly large, and he dressed respectably, but he had a stillness Stephen distrusted. In the clubs, men talked, laughed, played cards, ate, and drank. If a fellow sat unmoving, he was dozing off over his last glass of port.
Or he was dead. Old Baron Shanahan had expired in his club’s reading room, the day’s paper clutched in his hand. The staff had considerately folded a lap robe over his knees, and nobody had realized he’d stuck his spoon in the wall until morning.
“You are paying me ten pounds to kill your wealthy step-mother,” Samuels said, as if discussing whether to put two bob on Exeter’s Folly in the third race. “Or do I misapprehend your intentions?”
Stephen had read a minimum of law at university, but he knew conspiring to commit murder was frowned upon by the authorities. The idea rather unsettled the ale in his belly too.
“I’m increasing the reward my uncle has already offered. We seek to ensure my step-mother’s safe return to the bosom of the family who’ve been frantic with worry for her for too long.”
That bit about a single blow not being enough to kill a man was speculation on Samuel’s part. That Matilda had profited by Papa’s death was fact, and she’d not only run, she’d hidden long and thoroughly.
What innocent, penniless female could manage that?
The publican emerged from the kitchen and passed a sack to the dirty child shifting from foot to foot at the end of the bar. The child darted for the door, pausing long enough to pass food from the parcel to a skinny blond woman who’d apparently been waiting for a meal.
The blonde began eating a meat pie even as she departed the premises after the child.
“The fare here is good,” Samuels said, gaze on the blonde’s retreating figure. “You should try it.”
“I’ll leave the streetwalkers to those who can’t afford better,” Stephen said. “Find my step-mother, Samuels, or I’ll set a more skilled man on her trail.”
Samuels lifted his tankard of ale. “Go right ahead, guv. Offer a hundred pounds while you’re at it, and you’ll doubtless see a parade of guilty step-mothers apprehended by sundown. A violent lot, step-mothers.”
Stephen rose, resisted the urge to dust off his backside, and pulled on his gloves. “Mind your attitude, Samuels. This is serious business, and you can easily be replaced.”
When reprimanding the lower orders, having the last word mattered. Stephen made a dignified, if purposeful, exit and wondered how much a pawnbroker might give him for his second-best gold snuff box. Matilda Derrick needed finding, the sooner the better.
* * *
Matilda made a credible secretary, to Ashton’s relief.
She stood about his apartment at the Albany, looking like a pale, academic young man who spent too much time hunched over a ledger and not enough time on a cricket pitch.
“I ought to find something secretarial for you to do.” Ashton scooped up a pile of unopened correspondence from the escritoire by the window.
Matilda snatched them from his hand. “Give me those. A personal secretary opens your mail and sorts it by urgency and type.”
They were alone, Ashton having sent Helen off to fetch them a midday meal from the Goose, and Cherbourne to retrieve the latest batch of finery from Bond Street.
Pippa had remained at Pastry Lane. She’d periodically scurry about the market in Matilda’s cloak and hat and otherwise support the fiction that Matilda yet bided several streets away.
“You’ve had a personal secretary?” Ashton asked.
“Of course. You haven’t?”
Matilda was more qualified to be a countess than Ashton was to be an earl. She communicated easily with the French chef who cooked for the duke’s heir lodging across the corridor. She’d directed Ashton’s footmen to rearrange the parlor furnishings to take better advantage of the warmth of the hearth and the light from the windows.
And damned if Ashton didn’t adore watching her take charge of his domicile, striding about in trousers, to all appearances a fussy young fellow with airs above his station.
“I had a secretary,” Ashton said, moving a bud vase from the escritoire to the window. No daffodils for a lordly abode. Only a forced rose would do. “Like many of the trappings of the title, I inherited my secretary from my brother, Ewan, and he’d inherited old MacFarland from our papa, who’d inherited him from the previous earl.”
“You retired him,” Matilda said, taking up a nacre-handled letter opener and slitting the first seal. “Or perhaps he expired?”
Ashton had hoped that men’s attire would mute Matilda’s attractiveness, but no. Trousers made her more alluring, even with a proper swallowtail coat hanging to the backs of her knees. The blade in her hand made her more alluring. The auburn wig that exposed the nape of her neck and the curve of her jaw made her more alluring.
“I pensioned MacFarland off.” Ashton took a chair before the hearth, lest he perch himself on the desk, within sniffing distance of his secretary. She still smelled of lemons, and the competence in her hands struck Ashton as unfairly attractive.
Matilda studied a single sheet of paper covered with Alyssa’s handwriting. “Why not replace him?”
“I had much to learn,” Ashton said. “How better to become acquainted with my own business than to read my correspondence firsthand and reply in my own words? Ewan told me I was daft, but he’s my brother. He’s been telling me I’m daft since he was in dresses.”
Matilda set the letter aside and slit open the next seal. “Write to your sister-in-law and tell her you’re keeping well, but you miss her and your brother.”
With a staggering ache, now that Matilda had said the words. “I appreciate Ewan, more than I could have five years ago. I miss the children, I miss my sister-in-law.” And Scotland. Sweet Jesus at the wedding feast, did Ashton miss Scotland.
“This is from a tenant,” Matilda said. “Don’t you have a land steward?”
“I have three land stewards. One for the tenancies, one for the estate holdings, one for the villages and commercial undertakings.” The recitation made Ashton tired. The sight of Matilda attired as a man but still every inch a female made him randy.
“So why does this…”—she turned the
letter over—“Mr. Breckenridge write to you?”
“Because he’s one of my English tenants, and they are the whiniest damned lot of sluggards you ever met. They are eternally annoyed to have a Scottish landlord when their holdings lie in England. I understand now why my uncle considered diverting the river, despite the expense and the—”
Helen popped around the door from the antechamber. “A proper nob coming up the steps. Drives a coach and four complete with liveried footmen and grooms.”
“Thank you, Helen,” Matilda said, rising from the escritoire. “I’ll admit him. You can’t, my lord. You’re the earl, and the footmen are on half day.”
“If it’s Hazelton, I’m no’ home,” Ashton said.
“Don’t be a coward,” Matilda shot back, but she was smiling the same smile Helen wore when holding forth about the letter b —bum, backside, bosom.
“What should I do with the meat pies?” Helen asked, holding up an aromatic sack.
“Take yours upstairs,” Matilda said. “His lordship will eat when his guest has departed.”
Helen helped herself to a pastry and nipped up the back steps while a knock sounded at the front door.
“His lordship,” Ashton said, brushing a kiss to Matilda’s cheek, “will eat with his secretary while we plow through that lot of drudgery.”
He patted her backside as she bustled off to the door and braced himself for a recitation from Hazelton about every scandal to plague London in years past.
Except that the guest Matilda admitted was one Hannibal Shearing, late of Northumberland. Shearing was as rich as he was plainspoken, though his clothes were the finest money could buy.
“Mr. Shearing,” Ashton said, bowing with a sense of futility. “You will please excuse the household’s disarray. I am only newly come to London.”
“Been keeping an eye out for you,” Shearing said, passing Matilda his walking stick and hat. “Birds of a feather and all, you being from the north. Hear you’re going to the levee on Tuesday.”
Matilda silently left the room and would probably wait in the porter’s nook while Ashton expired from the demands of lordly hospitality.
“A friend has asked me to accompany him. I can have tea brought up from the kitchen if you’re so inclined?”
“Cat lap—bah. The missus makes a great to-do over her tea service. I prefer more gentlemanly libation.” Shearing produced a flask, held it aloft as if Ashton was supposed to admire the sunlight winking on the silver, then downed a portion.
“Shall we have a seat?” Ashton asked.
Shearing had the brawn of a yeoman—broad shoulders, barrel chest, and oddly trim legs and waist. He stood with that chest thrust forward, a caricature of military posture, and his white hair bristled in all directions, despite obvious use of pomade.
“I won’t take up much of your time, Kilkenney. All I mean to say is this: If I return to the north without a barony to my name, the missus will bar me from my own premises. Both of her sisters married baronial heirs, and she settled for me.”
Ashton had heard some of this recitation before. “Clearly, your wife is a woman of discernment.”
Shearing ran a gloved hand through his hair, further disarranging his locks. “She’s a woman of a certain age, if you know what I mean. Poor lady has more hysterics than a biddy hen when the fox is digging under the fence. I mean for her to be a baroness, my lord, and I’m enlisting your aid to make it so.”
Ashton liked Shearing, liked his bluntness, his determination, and his devotion to his would-be baroness. If anybody deserved a barony, it was such as he.
“Shearing, I don’t even sit in the Lords. I’ll be lucky to have five minutes of George’s attention.” Lucky being a relative term.
“He’ll dodge me entirely,” Shearing said. “George ain’t as stupid as folk want to believe. He’ll have his hand in your pocket one moment and pretend he’s never met you the next. Fair warning, in case he hasn’t got up to his tricks with you yet.”
“I’ve been spared so far, but I appreciate the admonition. How long will you be in London?”
“Too damned long,” Shearing said. “Place stinks worse than a muck pit in July, and every shopkeeper and footman thinks he’s next in line to the throne compared to a Yorkshireman’s son. Where’s that young man got off to with my walking stick? It’s my favorite. My oldest girl gave it to me on my fortieth birthday. Just wanted to ask you to put in a word with George, if the opportunity arises.”
“I’ll see you out,” Ashton said, “and I expect I’ll see you again on Tuesday. Good to know there will be at least one friendly face amid all the lords and princes.”
“Do I still sound like a dalesman?” Shearing asked as Ashton herded him toward the door. “Been taking lessons, you know. Silliest damned thing, teaching a grown man how to talk, how to dress. I’m supposed to read books about taking tea and paying calls. This barony will be the death of me, Kilkenney. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
Ashton passed Shearing his hat and a simple carved walking stick that would do fine service as a cudgel.
“What clubs do you belong to, Shearing?”
“Clubs? The Engineers and Surveyors, though they mostly survey the brandy and engineer the whist and piquet. Useless damned lot.”
“If you were invited to join a more prestigious organization, one frequented by some of the titles, would you care to accept?”
Shrewd blue eyes assessed Ashton from beneath bristling white brows. “I’d be a damned fool not to, though I’d rarely set foot on the premises. I’m not a complete bumpkin. They take my money, and someday, my grandsons might play cards with theirs, provided my family continues to prosper and theirs persists in trying to live exclusively off the land rents.”
Ashton’s great-uncle had seen the folly of that snobbery decades ago—thank God. “The Lords needs more men like you, Shearing. I wish you the best of luck with George.”
“The Lords needs a swift boot in the arse,” Shearing said, tapping his hat onto his head. “Pity you ain’t taking a seat.”
“Perhaps in a few years, when my household is better established.”
Shearing smiled, a jocular, charming expression that would have suited a blacksmith or a publican.
“You need a missus. We all do. Makes all the difference, and even Fat George can’t help with that dilemma, young man. Pity my girls are all married off, eh?”
“My loss, I’m sure,” Ashton said, and a few weeks ago, he’d probably have meant that. “Good day, Shearing.”
“Until Tuesday, Kilkenney. Remember, George is after our groats, and there’s nothing wrong with that, provided he dispenses a bit of favor in return.”
Shearing went jaunting on his way, the soul of England’s future and, doubtless, the apple of Mrs. Shearing’s eye.
“What an interesting man,” Matilda said, emerging from the porter’s nook. “I liked him.”
“So do I. I also like that we’re alone, and nobody will disturb us for at least the next two hours.”
* * *
Damon Basingstoke’s office was more modestly kitted out than Harpster’s. No age-darkened portraits on the walls, but rather, a single painting of St. Paul’s dome as viewed from the countryside south of the Thames hung over the mantel. Writing implements littered the desk blotter, along with a sanded sheet of vellum covered with precise, slanting script.
Ashton had to approve of a man who actually worked at his profession.
“My lord,” Basingstoke said, with a short—not quite rude—bow. “And…?”
Matilda hung back, secretary-fashion, a leather satchel in her hand, but she made a credible bow to the attorney.
“Mr. Matthew MacFarland,” Ashton said. “My personal amanuensis. Mr. MacFarland is entirely in my confidence.”
Ashton had been two kisses away from getting Mr. MacFarland into bed when a messenger had arrived with a note saying Basingstoke was free to meet with his lordship on the hour. Matilda had insisted Ash
ton keep the appointment; Ashton had insisted she accompany him.
She needed to become comfortable in her disguise, an objective she couldn’t achieve in Ashton’s bed—damn the luck.
“How may I be of assistance to you?” Basingstoke asked, gesturing Ashton to a chair facing the desk.
No tea and crumpets, no blethering about the weather—better and better.
“I’ve sacked Harpster,” Ashton said, taking a seat while Matilda did likewise. “He wasted my time.”
Basingstoke settled into the chair behind the desk. “So that I might avoid the same blunder, I will ask you to be more specific about the services you seek, my lord.”
If Ashton had to sum up Basingstoke in a single word, he would have been hard-pressed to choose between self-contained and seething. Basingstoke set the pen in the standish, capped the ink bottle, and poured the sand off into a dustbin. His movements were economical to the point of parsimony, as were his words.
He gave the appearance of tidying up his desk while casually listening, but Ashton suspected he had Basingstoke’s whole attention. The document in progress left on display had likely been intentional too.
Shrewd, then. And good-looking, in a broody, Gothic-novel way. Basingstoke’s dark hair even needed a trim.
“I asked Harpster for a list of the properties I am free to sell,” Ashton said. “He couldn’t produce one, despite having copies of all the letters patent, deeds, and land transactions attached to the earldom and the family’s private holdings.”
Basingstoke folded his correspondence into thirds and set it aside. “Is the earldom in difficulties?”
Harpster would have taken two hours to get to that question. “The earldom thrives. My brother was a conscientious and discerning manager, but land rents alone are no longer a sensible means of safeguarding a family fortune. If I sell off some property, I’ll have more cash to invest in non-agricultural projects.”
Basingstoke’s gaze flicked from Ashton to Matilda, who’d produced pencil, paper, and a small lap desk from her satchel. She sat on the edge of her seat, pencil poised, head down.
“I’ve looked over your records,” Basingstoke said. “The original land grant passed down with the Mulder barony is attached to the earldom’s title and cannot be sold. Most of the estate added by purchase since then, however, can be liquidated with no encumbrance on the title. The entail can be broken on other portions, because any transaction your brother made as the earl—such as renewing a voluntary entail—is arguably invalid.”
Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) Page 20