Playing the Part

by Jen Turano

  Realizing that the poor man had obviously been just as distraught as Bram had been over Lucetta’s abduction, Bram couldn’t help but smile at their reunion. His smile faded almost immediately, though, when Silas began trying to squirm his way free.

  “I demand you release me at once. I’m Silas Ruff, an influential man about the country. Believe me when I tell you I’ll use that influence to see each and every one of you pay for your interference and careless disregard for my person.”

  Bram walked closer to him and looked down. “I’m afraid your influential days are numbered, Silas. You see, kidnapping is a serious offense, which is why you’ll be spending quite a few years in jail.”

  Silas had the nerve to smile. “I didn’t kidnap anyone.”

  “No, you paid a Mr. Cabot to organize and implement the abduction. And before that you paid him to track down Lucetta’s family, which allowed you to learn her stepfather is a notorious gambler with a bit of a drinking problem.”

  The smile slid off of Silas’s face. “How do you know that?”

  “Mr. Cabot told me, of course.”

  “How do you know Mr. Cabot?”

  “His family lived right down the street from me growing up,” Stanley said, rearranging his backside just a smidgen as he continued to sit on top of Silas. “When Miss Plum got snatched, we figured it was you behind the snatching, so we hightailed it to the city and started asking around the old neighborhood if anyone had heard anything.” Stanley nodded. “Sure enough, my mother had heard that Mr. Cabot was back in town, visiting his dear mama. And since his reputation as a tracker and man who’ll do anything for a substantial fee precedes him, and there aren’t that many men offering up those substantial fees in the city at the moment, well, we had a feeling Mr. Cabot was just the man we needed to speak with. It took us a couple days to find him in the hole he’d crawled into, but when we did—”

  “A man like Mr. Cabot would never divulge the secrets of any of his clients,” Silas said.

  Stanley began inspecting his nails. “Well, I don’t know about that, Mr. Ruff, because after Mr. Skukman, an intimidating gentleman in his own right”—Stanley sent an appreciative nod Mr. Skukman’s way—“got done with him, well, Mr. Cabot divulged just about everything I imagine he knew about you.” Stanley returned his attention to his nails. “You’ll have plenty of time to take him to task about that, though, as I’m sure you’ll be seeing each other quite often in jail.”

  “Mr. Cabot’s been taken to jail?” Silas asked.

  Stanley looked up and smiled. “Indeed, and since that’s where you’re headed, you’ll be reunited with him shortly.”

  Bram felt a rush of satisfaction run through him when Silas’s face began to pale. Nodding to Stanley, Bram stepped forward. “Get him to his feet.”

  A moment later, Silas was standing before Bram, rage evident in his eyes as Stanley and Ernie kept firm holds on him. Summoning up what Bram hoped would come across as a pleasant smile, even though what he really wanted to do was rip the man limb from limb, Bram nodded to where Lucetta was standing next to Mr. Skukman.

  “Before we see you off to jail, though, Silas,” Bram said, “I do think I’m going to have to insist you extend Miss Plum an apology for . . . well . . . everything you’ve put her through over the past few days, and for all the bother you’ve caused her over the past few years as well.”

  Silas considered Bram for the briefest of seconds before he spat on the floor. “That’s the only apology she’ll ever—”

  Before Silas could finish the sentence, Bram’s fist firmly connected with the man’s jaw. All of the fear, fury, and frustration of the past three days was behind the punch, the strength of it sending Silas straight to the floor, where he remained . . . not stirring a single muscle.

  “Impressive,” Mr. Skukman said as he moved forward and, with Ernie and Stanley’s help, hefted Silas’s unconscious form straight off the floor and carted him from the room. In the doorway Mr. Skukman stopped for just a second to catch Bram’s eye. “I’ll help Ernie and Stanley get him into a carriage and off to jail. Then I’ll meet you at your carriage.” As he continued through the doorway, he was less than careful with Silas’s head, allowing it to connect with a piece of what might have been part of the doorframe before Ernie’s dynamite tore it apart.

  “Shall I follow you down, Mr. Haverstein?” Tilda asked. “Just in case we run into unexpected trouble?”

  “That would be greatly appreciated, Tilda,” Bram said.

  He walked back to join Lucetta, offering her his arm. “I’m sure you’ve had all the trouble you want to experience for years to come.”

  “Indeed,” Lucetta said, taking his arm.

  “We’ll go to Abigail’s house,” he told her as they picked their way through the debris the blasting of the door had created and headed down the stairs. “She, along with Archibald, my mother, Ruby, and Mr. Kenton, insisted on traveling to the city in order to be kept updated on any progress we were making.”

  Reaching the sidewalk, he led her to his waiting carriage, surprised when she stopped in her tracks and looked around. “But we’re right by my theater, just off Broadway,” she said slowly.

  “We are.”

  Temper flashed in her eyes. “Silas had been planning this for a very long time, hadn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid he might very well have been.”

  Muttering something about the madness of overzealous admirers, Lucetta climbed up into the carriage.

  “I’m sure she wasn’t including you in with those overzealous admirers, sir,” Tilda said quietly when Bram paused outside the carriage.

  “She might after she learns what I’ve done for her,” he said.

  “You can’t compare what you’ve done to an abduction,” Tilda argued.

  Sending Tilda a faint smile as she climbed up to join the driver on the carriage seat, Bram turned and waited as Mr. Skukman joined him, both gentlemen watching the carriage that held Silas, Ernie, and Stanley depart for the jail before Mr. Skukman took a position on the back of Bram’s carriage, while Bram ducked inside to take a seat opposite Lucetta.

  “Are you certain you’re unharmed?” he asked as the carriage surged into motion.

  “My nerves are a little rattled, as can be expected, but other than that, I’m fine.” She caught his eye. “I’m incredibly grateful that you and everyone else worked so hard to find me, and were able to rid me of Silas once and for all.” A smile tugged at her lips. “I’m sure after a few weeks have passed, or . . . maybe a few years, when it’s not so very fresh to me, I’ll be able to laugh about it and tell people I was able to participate in my very own gothic-style story, quite like one our favorite author, Mr. Grimstone, might pen.”

  The mention of Mr. Grimstone had him leaning forward. “We have much to discuss.”

  Lucetta immediately took to looking wary. “Why do I have the feeling we’re no longer talking about me and . . . my abduction?”

  “Because we need to talk about us, and talk about where we go from here before we get back to Abigail’s house and everyone distracts us.”

  Lucetta’s wariness immediately increased. “I’m not certain there’s any need for that, Bram. The danger to me has passed, which means I’m free to return to the theater, and . . . you and I are free to go on our merry ways—and our separate merry ways, at that.”

  Bram settled back against the carriage seat. “I never took you for a coward, Lucetta.”

  Temper flashed in her eyes. “I’m not a coward.”

  “Then why aren’t you willing to at least see where whatever this is between us leads?”

  “There’s nothing between us.”

  “Your lips said differently a few days ago, and . . . you enjoy my company—you can’t deny that.”

  “Perhaps I do enjoy your company, but we’ll leave my lips out of further discussion, if you please. The truth of the matter is that I don’t trust you, I don’t like secrets, which you’re obviously keeping
, and . . . I have no desire to become attached to a gentleman who spends time in a dungeon, of all places, and has a mausoleum marking the entrance to his drive.”

  “Ah, well, yes, but you see, those are some of the things I’d like to discuss with you.” He sent her what he hoped was a most charming smile, but one that only had her arching a brow his way again. Clearing his throat, he sat forward. “To continue, I have to admit that I’ve thought out my explanation regarding all of the things I need to explain in a certain order. So . . . if you’ll humor me, I wrote down a list, and . . .” Digging a hand into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the list and read it through, nodding before he lifted his head.

  “First, I need to say that—” he blew out a breath—“I’ve bungled practically everything with you so far, starting when I almost drowned you in the moat, er . . . twice.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me on that.”

  “I neglected to warn you about my goat.”

  Her lips twitched right at the corners. “That might be being a little hard on yourself, Bram. You couldn’t have known someone would turn Geoffrey loose on me up in the tower room.”

  “True, but I should have mentioned that I owned a goat with a curious dislike for ladies in skirts.”

  “I don’t believe Geoffrey is really at the root of the issues I have with you and Ravenwood, Bram.”

  He caught her eye and nodded. “I’m at the root of your issues, Lucetta—me and all of my secrets—which is why . . .”

  He consulted his notes again before he lifted his head. “I’m going to tell you everything, and then . . . ” He glanced one last time at his notes before he looked her way. “After you hear me out, I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d consider allowing me to . . . court you.”

  “Court me?” She began inching toward the carriage door, which was rather disturbing considering the carriage was traveling at a fast clip down the road.

  Stiffening his resolve, and ignoring the disbelief in her eyes, he nodded. “It would be my greatest honor to court you, especially since I should have asked to court you before I kissed you, and certainly before I offered to marry you . . . twice.”

  “You offered to marry me once, and then told me we’d have to get married after we were found in a compromising situation.”

  “That was not well done of me.”

  “Again, I won’t argue with you there, but I’m really afraid, given all the secrets you’ve kept from, well, everyone, and the dodgy nature of your castle, I don’t see that we have much of a future ahead of us.”

  “I’m Mr. Grimstone.” The words burst out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m Mr. Grimstone.”

  A single blink was her first response, before she leaned ever so slowly forward. “As in . . . the author?”

  He summoned up a smile. “One and the same.”

  Her eyes flashed in a most ominous fashion. “You penned a play specifically for me and never once allowed me to know your identity?”

  “It would have defeated the goal of me wanting to remain anonymous if I’d disclosed my identity to you.”

  “Your sister wanted to meet you and have you squire her about society.”

  “And isn’t she going to be surprised when she finds out that won’t be a possibility? Although, I’m not sure she’ll be that fussed about it, given her apparent interest in Mr. Skukman.”

  Lucetta leaned back. “Ruby’s still showing an interest in Mr. Skukman?”

  Relieved to have the topic move to someone besides himself, Bram smiled. “She does seem to enjoy his company, and when we’ve stopped by Abigail’s to give them reports of our progress, Ruby always makes a point of speaking with him before we depart.”

  “They’d probably suit each other well, and you’ll not find a more reliable man, but . . . Mr. Grimstone, you do realize that penning a play for a woman you’d never met in person can be considered an act of a less than sane individual, don’t you?”

  Seeing little point in avoiding the question, since he had vowed to disclose everything, he shrugged. “I only did so because I wanted to make certain you’d have a steady income.”

  “What?”

  “I knew that if I penned a play, everyone would want to see it because of Mr. Grimstone’s popularity. And, if I specifically requested you as the star, well, you’d have access to a steady income for quite some time because The Lady in the Tower was almost certain to be an immediate success.”

  “Just how infatuated with me were you?”

  He sat forward and caught her eye. “I’ve done a lot of thinking regarding that while I’ve been searching for you, and . . . I don’t believe we can say I was infatuated with you, since you’re not anything like I imagined you to be. You’re not demure, or delicate, or possessed of a gentle spirit.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Of course it is, because you see, the truth of the matter is this—the woman I thought I was a touch in love with is a shell of the woman you turned out to be.”

  Her lips curved into the faintest of smiles, something she quickly tried to hide by dipping her head, but he’d seen the smile and it gave him just a tiny ray of hope.

  Lifting her head a second later, she frowned. “What I don’t understand is why you’ve kept your writing a secret from your family. There’s nothing shameful about being an author, especially not given the fame you’ve earned.”

  “My family has always found me to be a rather curious being, not caring for business matters, and spending my time lost in imaginary worlds. They were incredibly disappointed when I didn’t finish pursuing a law degree, but halfway through law school I had this dream, one that turned out to be my first novel, Murder at Highcliffe Hall.” He smiled. “I disappeared for nine months to write that book, renting an isolated cottage by the ocean, and then it took me another year to find a publisher.”

  Lucetta wrinkled her nose. “I know writers who’ve written dozens of books and have yet to get a single one of them published after years and years of trying. You were fortunate indeed to get a first novel picked up so quickly.”

  Bram leaned back. “Perhaps I was, but it was a stressful time for me, and again, I knew I’d disappointed my parents by abandoning the law, a profession they both thought would be a suitable and respectable option for me.”

  Lucetta tapped a finger against her chin. “I suppose I can see why you withheld the information then, but why not disclose all after your books began to get such great acclaim and became in such high demand?”

  “By the time I started making money off my work, a few years had gone by and I’d started traveling to the tenements to search out story ideas. It was while I was in the tenements that I realized I could be of assistance to a great many people, and help those people turn their lives around, so . . . I didn’t want the notoriety of Mr. Grimstone to affect what has turned out to be the most important work of my life.”

  “But surely you realized that your family would find your desire to save people a noble calling. You’ve done them a disservice by keeping them in the dark.” She shook her head. “Your mother believes you’re involved in some type of criminal enterprise.”

  “I know, and you’re right. But it became harder and harder to disclose the truth the longer I kept it hidden from everyone.”

  To his surprise, she nodded glumly. “I can understand that, but tell me—that dungeon—is it where you go to find inspiration for your work?”

  “It is. I had Stanley tied to the railroad track to try to puzzle out a plot point.” He smiled. “I was going to go with your idea about hanging him from the ceiling by his feet, but for some reason, Stanley flatly refused to participate in that idea, even for a riveting scene in my next novel.”

  “You were thinking about using my idea?”

  Bram nodded. “Until Stanley balked, and until it became clear that no one else wanted to help me work out th
e particulars of seeing how the hero could get undone from the ceiling.” He smiled. “I think their lack of willingness might have had something to do with me suggesting they dangle from the ceiling for unspecified amounts of time.”

  “The heroine was supposed to cut him down.”

  “Well, yes, that was your suggestion, but I’m still not completely sold on the idea that readers want to see that strong of a heroine, or if ladies and gentlemen in general truly believe a lady should be the one to save the day in the end.”

  “Perhaps you need to draw up a list about areas to avoid while attempting to court a lady. If I were you, I’d put ‘Adopting a condescending attitude toward independent ladies’ right at the top of such a list.”

  “You might have a point,” he muttered before he summoned up a smile. “But getting back to the dungeon and why I have one, it’s a wonderful place to plot out a story because, what with all the staff members I’ve accumulated ever since I bought Ravenwood, it’s difficult to find places that afford me any measure of quiet.”

  For some reason, Lucetta suddenly closed her eyes, kept them closed for the merest of seconds, and then opened them. “That’s what’s been bothering me about the dungeon scene. You have a typewriter down there mixed in with all the torture devices.”

  “You remember that?”

  She didn’t bother to answer his question. “Explain the mausoleum as a gatehouse.”

  Bram smiled. “That was Ernie’s idea, as was the graveyard we’ve built in the middle of the forest at the back of Ravenwood. I was working on The Bell Tolls at Midnight, one of my best-received novels, and I couldn’t picture the scene of the crime, let alone write it out descriptively, so . . . Ernie loves to build things, all kinds of things, and . . . we’d been talking about adding a gatehouse, and the next thing you know, he’d built one that looked exactly like a mausoleum.” He shook his head. “It’s been quite the talk of the neighborhood.”

  “I’m sure it has been, but how do you explain the bloody sword stashed in your fireplace?”

  “It wasn’t blood, it was red stain, and Ernie stashed it in the fireplace because I needed a new plot idea, and he thought if I had to search for the sword after he’d hidden it, I’d get some good ideas.”