by Jane Feather
“True.” Livia nodded, grinning broadly. “I might even decide not to sell the house. Maybe it would make better sense financially to keep it and hire it out. I have to consider all my options, don’t I? The rental would give me a regular income, and it’s in a good part of town. Plenty of people like to rent houses for the season.”
“Of course that would depend on the condition of the house,” Aurelia said. “No one of substance is going to hire a house that’s falling to pieces.”
“And I know nothing of this mysterious relative’s circumstances,” Livia mused. “She could have been destitute, living on crumbs in a collapsing attic.”
“You’re letting your romantic imagination get the better of you again, Liv,” Cornelia stated. “I doubt she was destitute. She was a Lacey, when all’s said and done.”
“And Laceys are notorious penny-pinchers,” Aurelia said. “With the notable exception of Liv.” She chuckled. “For all we know, this distant relative could have been living on crusts while the house fell apart around her ears.”
“Except that this Lord Bonham is so keen to buy it,” Cornelia reminded them. “Unless he’s simpleminded, he wouldn’t be rushing to buy a pig in a poke.” She reached over and took the letter from Livia’s loosened grip. “Viscount Bonham,” she murmured. “Never heard of the family.”
She folded the sheet carefully. “Yes, I think it definitely behooves us all to go and inspect the property and…” Her eyes gleamed, chasing away all residue of her previous anger…“And the prospective buyer. I confess to being somewhat intrigued by this unknown gentleman. Who knows, Liv, he might be a prospect for you.”
“A house and a husband,” Livia declared, flinging up her hands in mock astonishment. “I doubt I could be that lucky.”
“Well, you never know,” Cornelia said cheerfully. “But first things first. You should write to the solicitors, Liv.” She held up the letter to read the masthead. “Masters & Sons on Threadneedle Street…and tell them you’re not interested in selling until you’ve considered all the options.”
The gleam in her eye intensified. “Who’s to say what those options might be.”
Chapter 2
TURNED DOWN?” Harry Bonham frowned at the stiff-backed gentleman sitting behind the massive desk in the lawyer’s office on Threadneedle Street. “Why, man? Was it not a fair offer?”
“Oh, yes, my lord. I considered it to be more than fair…considering…” The lawyer meticulously adjusted the papers on his desk so that every edge was neatly aligned. “Considering the condition of the property,” he concluded, raising his eyes to meet his visitor’s steady green gaze. “I explained that to your own solicitors, my lord.”
He coughed into his hand. “I have to say that I expected to be dealing with them rather than yourself, my lord. It is customary to conduct such affairs through the solicitors of the parties concerned.”
“I prefer to conduct my own business,” his lordship declared with an impatient toss of his hand. “It’s a damn sight quicker for one. All that middleman nonsense. As to the condition of the house, I don’t give a fig.” The viscount frowned at Masters. “I told you that already. Is it more money they’re after?” His eyes narrowed, and he leaned back in his chair, crossing one buckskin-clad leg over the other, regarding the lawyer closely.
Mr. Masters fussed a little more with the papers. “There’s no mention of that, sir. No counteroffer has been made at this point.”
“Mmm.” Harry, still frowning, tapped his booted foot with his riding whip. “So who owns the house now that the old lady’s gone?”
The lawyer hesitated, wondering about the ethics here, but Viscount Bonham did not strike him as a man it would be wise to obstruct, and there were no confidences in the lady’s letter. He selected one of the papers in front of him and pushed it across the desk. “A Lady Livia Lacey, my lord.”
Harry picked up the paper and read it. The hand was elegant, the vellum plain and unscented, the message unequivocal. It seemed that Lady Livia Lacey wished to inspect her inheritance for herself before making any decision as to its disposition.
“And who exactly is the lady?” he inquired, returning the letter to the desk with an air of finality.
“I believe her ladyship is distantly related to the late Lady Sophia Lacey, although I’m unsure of the exact connection.” Masters took the letter and returned it to its place in the sheaf of papers with yet more care over the alignment of the edges.
“Lady Sophia was not specific, but she was most insistent that the property be left to a female relative who bore her name. Lady Livia was the only one who fitted the specifications.”
“Some old spinster biddy, I presume,” Harry said without any particular malice in the description.
“Well, as to that, my lord, I’m not sure,” the lawyer said. “The handwriting is not that of an elderly lady.”
“No, but she probably has a young companion, a charity-case relative, to walk her pugs and see to her correspondence.” Harry held out his hand. “Show me the letter again, Masters.”
With a barely concealed sigh, the lawyer disturbed his neat pile to extricate the sheet of vellum and passed it over.
“Ringwood, Hampshire,” Harry murmured. “A nice sleepy little village in the New Forest. Now just why would some maiden lady living in peaceful country retirement want to trouble herself with a trip to London to inspect a deteriorating property for which she’s already received a more than handsome offer?” He shook his head. “Beats me.”
Masters cleared his throat. “It’s always possible, sir, that the lady’s circumstances are not what we think.”
Harry uncrossed his legs with an energetic movement that made the lawyer flinch reflexively. “Maybe so. Do what you can to discover the circumstances, Masters. And offer another three thousand.” He uncoiled himself from his chair, rising to his feet with the same energy as before.
The lawyer gazed at him in consternation, then blurted, “Indeed, my lord, in all honesty I must tell you that if I were your solicitor I would most earnestly counsel against such a move. The property is not worth your original offer. Another three thousand would be a reckless expenditure…in all conscience, sir…” His voice trailed away.
The viscount regarded him with a degree of sympathy. The poor man was clearly caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he was obliged to advance the interests of his clients, in this case the Lacey ladies both late and present, but his conscience obliged him to tread an honest path.
“I appreciate your advice, Masters, don’t think otherwise,” he said equably, drawing on his driving gloves. “And I fully understand your difficulties in offering it, but I will take the liberty of declining to act upon it. Please relay my new offer to this Lady Livia Lacey, and do what you can to discover her circumstances.” He gave the man a nod as he went to the door, flicking his riding cloak off the coatrack as he passed. “I bid you good day, Masters.”
The lawyer hastened to accompany his august visitor down the narrow stairs to the front door. A sleety rain was falling. Harry drew the cloak tightly over his shoulders as he looked up and down the street. Beside him, his companion shivered in his black coat and britches.
“Go inside, man,” Harry instructed. “My groom’s walking the horses, he’ll be back any minute, there’s no need for you to catch your death.”
Gratefully Masters shook his visitor’s hand and retreated within.
Harry stamped his feet, clapped his hands across his body, and cursed his groom, but without much conviction. He’d instructed the man to walk the horses to keep their blood moving, and he’d need to go farther than the end of the street and back to do that. Soon enough the two horses appeared around the corner of Cornhill. The groom, astride a sturdy cob, saw his master immediately and urged his own horse and the raking chestnut he was leading to lengthen their strides.
“Devil take it, Eric, I thought you’d headed for the nearest tavern,” Harry said, taking the reins from
the groom and swinging himself into the saddle. “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”
“Aye, m’lord. Sorry to have kept you waiting,” the man returned stolidly. “Is it home now?”
“Yes, but have a care, the road’s slippery.”
“Aye, m’lord,” the groom muttered. “I had noticed it meself.”
Harry shot him a quick glance and grinned. “Off your high horse, Eric. I know you had.” He clicked his tongue, nudging the horse’s flanks with his heels, and the chestnut moved forward, his neck arched, nostrils flaring against the cold.
Harry left the horse to set his own pace on the slippery cobbles and concentrated on the considerably more than irritating news he’d just been given. If he couldn’t enter the house on Cavendish Square legitimately, he would have to resort to more devious means. There was no time to waste in this race to retrieve the package.
Whoever was responsible for the original theft, either the French or Russians, or indeed both if they were cooperating with each other in this instance, knew that the key to the code was hidden somewhere in that neglected house on Cavendish Square. It had been a week since the theft and the debacle that had led to Lester’s injury and he knew they were as frantically trying to retrieve it as he himself. And they had the advantage of knowing exactly where to look, although they wouldn’t evade the surveillance of the Ministry’s watchers who had been in place in Cavendish Square since the dawn fracas.
Neither it seemed would they get legitimately past the eccentric guardians of the gates. Despite his anxiety he couldn’t help but smile grimly at the recollection of his own reception at the hands of Sophia Lacey’s three retainers. After the lady’s death, he had knocked on the door with what he thought was a perfect pretext to enter and search. He was to value the contents for probate.
His reception had been dusty to say the least. An elderly man in stained leather britches and jerkin, bent almost double but with fierce if rheumy eyes, and two severely black-gowned women, both with a greenish pallor that made them look as if the earth of the cemetery had just opened to disgorge them, stared at him in forbidding silence as he’d explained his business.
The gentleman, whom he took to be a butler of sorts, turned to his companions and stated, “One of them, again, Ada. Not a furriner this time, though.” And he had closed the door in the visitor’s face, locking and bolting it with a vigor that belied his age.
Somehow he had to get into the house, and his first thought had been that the easiest way of doing that was to own it. But thanks to Lady Livia Lacey, the house didn’t look to be his in the foreseeable future.
However…however…
A slow smile spread across his face. Maybe he didn’t need to own the house to gain access; maybe cultivating its new owner would do the trick. He had the perfect excuse for introducing himself…he was still a prospective and most eager buyer for her property, hoping to persuade her to sell.
He gave a nod of satisfaction and urged his horse to increase his pace. The Ministry would keep the house under observation until Lady Livia Lacey came to town, then he’d pay a social call and see what he could see.
But despite this logical plan he found it impossible to sit on the sidelines during the next few days and took his own part in the surveillance of the house on Cavendish Square even though he knew the Ministry’s observers were more than capable.
It was several days later on a moonless night when the long hours of cramped and frozen watching were rewarded. A figure approached the basement steps…a darker shadow in the shadows of the night, with his black cloak drawn tight about him, a black hat pulled low over his brow.
The prospect of action warmed his blood. Harry crept out of his observation point behind the hedge in the square garden and moved soundlessly to crouch behind the railings on the pavement while he waited for the intruder to reemerge safely in possession of the package, if the gods were on the side of the angels. If he himself couldn’t catch him, there were four other men strategically positioned along the street and around the square who could pick up the pursuit if necessary.
But Harry was grimly determined to retrieve himself what had been stolen from him…the fruits of hours of complex mathematical calculations and intricate mental gymnastics…personal issues quite apart from the theft’s vital significance to the bloody struggle that engulfed the Continent.
The massive explosion sent him leaping to his feet, the months of painstaking training vanquished by the sheer magnitude and unexpectedness of the sound on this genteel, quiet piece of Mayfair. Windows flew open, shrieks rent the air, and up the basement steps came the shadowy figure of a man, his cloak in tatters, hatless, his hair standing up around his head like a halo.
Harry hurled himself at the man’s ankles as he leaped onto the pavement from the top step and brought him down to the hard ground in a tangle of limbs that winded him as much as his quarry.
“It’s all right, sir, we’ve got him.” Hands reached down and pulled him to his feet, while others hauled his breathless quarry upright.
Harry brushed off his hands demanding, “What the hell was that?”
“Haven’t a clue, sir.” The man who’d helped him to his feet looked around as if a clue might materialize from the gloom. “Never heard its like.”
Harry shrugged. “Well, it scared the wits out of our friend, and I doubt that did us any favors.” He regarded the sagging figure with a frown. “He might not have had enough time to retrieve what he was after.”
“Like as not, sir, but we’ll take him anyway. No knowing what we might get out of him.” The speaker put two fingers to his lips and sent a piercing whistle into the square. An unmarked carriage appeared almost immediately, and Harry’s thief was bundled inside, his captors following, before anyone really understood what had happened.
“That’ll larn the bugger.” A rasping Yorkshire accent that Harry immediately recognized as belonging to Sophia Lacey’s rusty butler came from the area steps behind him. He spun around to face the mouth of a blunderbuss wielded by the gentleman in question, clad on this occasion in a purple-striped dressing gown and a somewhat lopsided nightcap.
Harry regarded the ancient weapon in dawning comprehension. A blunderbuss fired in a confined space. The violent explosion now made perfect sense. “How the devil did you manage not to hit him?” he asked with a degree of awe.
The butler peered at him myopically in the semidarkness. “I weren’t aimin’ to, sir. If I ’ad been, ’ed have felt it.”
“Yes,” Harry agreed with a grin. “I’m sure he would. Good night to you.”
“Good night to ’ee,” came the response and the butler and the blunderbuss returned whence they’d come via the basement steps.
It was safe to assume that no other attempt would be made on the house tonight, Harry decided. If the thief had anything to give, he would give it up before the night was over.
Chapter 3
THE IRON WHEELS OF THE CARRIAGE clattered over cobbles, and the city noise rose in increasing cacophony from outside the dim stuffy confines of the vehicle. Cornelia leaned forward to move aside the leather flap that served as a curtain over the grimy windows. The children’s nurse had insisted the curtains be kept in place throughout the journey to protect her charges from the light that might damage their eyes and whatever sights of debauchery that might damage their souls. Not that there had been much of the latter to enliven their tedious journey, Cornelia reflected wearily.
She looked out now with renewed interest. It was early afternoon as the carriage turned into a quiet square, leaving the lively bustle of the streets behind. The garden in the center of the square was winter-bare and had a slightly desolate air, but it would give the children some freedom. The carriage creaked to a halt, and she felt her shoulders tighten in anticipation.
“Are we here, Mama…is this the house…can we get out…?”
“I want to be first, Mama…move, Franny…”
Cornelia closed
her eyes for a moment as the childish voices rose around her, joined belatedly by Susannah’s as the little girl awoke and realized that things were going on that she was about to miss.
Cornelia opened her eyes and exchanged a glance with Aurelia. Journey’s end. Whatever they found here it had to be a welcome change from the long jolting journey in the company of three fractious children.
“Courage,” Aurelia said. “We’re here.”
“So we are.” Cornelia grabbed Stevie as he was about to plunge out of the just-opened door and set him firmly on the seat. “Wait with Linton, all of you.”
Ignoring the rising protests, she stepped down onto the pavement and looked around her. Aurelia and Livia joined her, and the three of them scrutinized the tall substantial house in front of them, long windows on either side of double doors in the center of the facade. Peeling paint, scraped railings, unhoned steps, grimy windows all set it apart from its neighbors.
“I thought we were expected,” Aurelia murmured, as they gazed at the firmly closed front door.
“We are,” Livia announced. “I wrote two days ago. This is my house, in case anyone’s forgotten.” She stalked up the stairs and raised the tarnished knocker and banged it several times.
“Linton, would you and Daisy take the children into the square garden until we sort things out?” Cornelia spoke to the nurse, who was gathering her charges, all the while shooting slightly disdainful glances at the dilapidated house. “Let them run off some of their energy, they’ve been cooped up all day.”
“Yes, my lady.” It was said a mite stiffly, but Cornelia decided she didn’t have time to worry about Linton’s less-than-favorable impressions at this point. Time enough when they were installed. She mounted the steps with Aurelia to stand just behind Livia, who was about to raise the heavy knocker for the third time.