All Smiles

by Stella Cameron

  Evidently William had come this way before. He used the park to take a shortcut to the streets that lay on the other side of the park surrounding Tapwell House. He let himself out by a small tradesmen’s gate and entered into a rather mean cobbled way beyond. Sibyl slipped quickly and silently in his wake, never taking her eyes from the jaunty angle of his beaver hat and the sandy blond hair that showed beneath its brim.

  She must take the great risk of drawing closer to him.

  At the crossroads of Astly Lane and Mona Avenue, he made a left. Sibyl dashed to that corner and stuck her head around. William boldly approached a large Tudor-style inn with bulging, beamed upper stories that overhung the street. A gently swinging—and creaking—sign announced that this was The Frog’s Breath. He entered the establishment confidently, and she was seconds behind him. She had only to stand outside the front doors, where the smell of old ale sickened her, to hear her second cousin jovially greeted by a man who was probably the innkeeper.

  “You’ve got visitors,” the man said. “That Reverend Baggs and a friend.” There was great emphasis on friend. “Classy piece. Wouldn’t have thought the Reverend ’ad it in ’im.”

  “Still waters run deep and silent, hmm?” William said, laughing coarsely.

  “Still waters might,” the other man said. “Your Reverend don’t exactly keep ’is mouth shut often.”

  William grunted, and Sibyl heard him going upstairs. She gave him a minute before following, and the bright blush on her cheeks embarrassed her when she passed the rotund innkeeper. He clucked approvingly and said not a word.

  Listening to William’s footsteps, she climbed to the third floor and immediately heard voices issuing from one of two rooms on the left, the one at the front of the building. On the right there was another room, obviously larger.

  She looked for a place to hide. She could assume the voices she heard belonged to Baggs and William and, in the case of feminine tones, to Lady Upworth. The latter gave Sibyl great hope.

  The only possible hiding place was the room on the right. She tiptoed forward and peeked inside. This was a sitting room. A sitting room furnished, she instantly realized, with pieces from her old home, some that had belonged to the Smiles family for generations. She would not cry now.

  Instead she slipped inside, inside and behind the door—and banged into William.

  “Sibyl,” he whispered, his face a study in horror. He put a finger to his lips and pushed her into the corner behind him. With his mouth on her ear he whispered, “What can you be thinking of? You have a great deal to learn about obedience, my girl. I have walked into unexpected trouble here. Stay quiet and do not move. You could ruin my efforts if you disobey me.”

  She nodded, but longed to tell him she knew all about his criminal doings.

  “There’s someone else coming,” William said softly. “What the devil is this?”

  Head ducked, looking over his shoulder, the Count came in, his black cloak swirling about him and rain running from the brim of his hat. He walked directly across the sitting room, turned and saw William and Sibyl.

  In his hand he carried a deadly looking pistol. This he leveled at William. “Get away from there, Sibyl.” He kept his voice low. “Do as I say at once.”

  “Your time for giving orders is past,” William said, and revealed that he held his own pistol on Sibyl, who opened her mouth to scream, but promptly covered it. “I suggest you get over there, Etranger—against the wall—where I can keep my eye on you.”

  The man irritated Jean-Marc but he didn’t disturb him. “Don’t aim that thing at Sibyl. I thought she was your intended. What can have changed?” He strolled to sit in a chair well out of sight of anyone who passed the door.

  “Sorry, Sibyl, darling,” William said. “I wasn’t thinking there for a moment. Please forgive me.”

  Sibyl didn’t say a word, and Jean-Marc smiled pleasantly at her. “So, our two pigeons are in the room across the hall, hmm? One wonders why they have remained there so long. But we can be relieved to hear Lady Upworth’s voice and to know she is alive, if not necessarily well. Put your weapon away, Godly-Smythe. Fire and you will be fired upon, and we’ll be overrun with constables.”

  “I wonder why Baggs has defied me,” William said, as if Jean-Marc hadn’t spoken. “That woman shouldn’t be here.”

  “Where should she be?” Sibyl asked mildly.

  Jean-Marc looked at her with respect for her calm demeanor. “Where, indeed?” he said.

  William glowered but didn’t answer. “You will both remain here while I confer with Reverend Baggs. Better yet, run along home and I will report to you later.”

  “Run along home?” Jean-Marc laughed. “I’m sure that would make things easier for you, but I don’t think so. Hush.” Light feet softly trod up the stairs.

  “Hell’s teeth,” William Godly-Smythe said. “This must stop. I’ll tell the innkeeper to turn any other strangers away.”

  “And draw more attention to yourself?” Jean-Marc asked.

  The footsteps reached the landing and halted as the owner of the feet listened to the conversation between Baggs and Ila. Rather than turn toward the sitting room, the newcomer went the other way. A door opened, and the sound of voices grew at first louder, then stopped.

  Jean-Marc rose at once and looked around the door—in time to see that beloved baggage, Meg Smiles, slip into the room with Baggs and Ila.

  He looked heavenward. “Oh, my God.”

  “You look ridiculous,” Meg announced in ringing tones. “Absolutely ridiculous. What do you think you are doing?”

  Jean-Marc signaled for William and Sibyl to remain where they were and prepared to cross the landing, only to see a flash of movement that warned of yet another approach.

  “Damn it all to hell.” He spat the words out, managing, with great effort, to hold his voice down.

  Pistol in one hand and dagger in the other, Verbeux got to the top of the stairs and took several steps before he saw his master watching him narrowly. Jean-Marc kept his own weapon trained on William Godly-Smythe and hissed for Verbeux to join him.

  “A pox on you,” he said when his man arrived. “If we come through this without shooting one another it will be a miracle. Godly-Smythe, sit in that chair! Miss Smiles, you in that one. Verbeux, watch them. Do not allow them to move.”

  Godly-Smythe didn’t hesitate to haul Sibyl before him and hold his pistol to her temple. “I only do this to stop you from taking dangerous steps. Don’t worry, Sibyl, sweetness, I would never do a thing to hurt you.”

  “Then why bother to hold me like this?” she said. “You’ve already told everyone this is a pretense.”

  A number of expressions passed over Godly-Smythe’s face, each one more comically confused than the one before. “Yes, well,” he muttered, releasing her. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot anyone else who gets in my way.”

  “Just be a good chap and sit down there,” Jean-Marc said mildly.

  William bumbled about a bit, but finally did as he was told. He kept his pistol out and aimed it at first one, then another of the room’s occupants.

  “I want to see Ila,” Verbeux said. “I hear her voice. I must see her.”

  “You must watch this one,” Jean-Marc replied.

  “I want to speak to Baggs,” William Godly-Smythe insisted. “He’s a frightened fellow. Push him and you can’t know what he will do. But I know how to manage him.”

  “I’m going to Meggie,” Sibyl said, jumping up. “That man is wicked. He may do something to her.”

  “Preserve me from civilians,” Jean-Marc said. “And you, Verbeux, should know better.”

  “I want to go to Meggie,” Sibyl insisted stubbornly.

  “Be quiet,” he told her. “Very well. This is how we will do it. When I am certain there is no danger, you, Godly-Smythe, and Miss Smiles will go in first. M. Verbeux and myself will be behind you with the necessary weapons. A circus,” he muttered to Verbeux. “We control
it or the animals will tear each other apart.”

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  Godly-Smythe and Sibyl crowded close together and advanced across the landing with Jean-Marc and Verbeux close behind. In the same formation, they entered what was a bedroom.

  An extraordinary tableau greeted them. Seated on the wide windowsill, his broad-brimmed hat resting on the back of his head and gray-tinged beard stubble darkening his round face, Reverend Baggs pointed an overlarge pistol at Ila. Still dressed in her red harem costume, her hair falling about her shoulders, Ila sat cross-legged on the bed, a small silver firearm trained on the minister.

  Meg seemed incapable of subduing her laughter, laughter that had rendered her a helpless heap on top of an old carved chest. “They must—” She choked and hiccuped. “They must have been like that all night. They don’t dare move. If one falls asleep, the other may sh-sh-shoot. Or they would if they could see.”

  “Baggs,” William said ferociously. “Why did you bring her here?”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted.” Baggs swayed, and from time to time his eyelids almost closed. Each time it happened, he gave himself a startled shake and peered down the barrel of his pistol with one eye while his extended arm wobbled.

  “I told you to make sure she could never talk about me again.”

  “About what?” Jean-Marc asked at once.

  “Nothing,” William snarled. “Mind your own business.”

  “Reverend Baggs saved my life, you know.” Ila turned sleepy eyes on Jean-Marc and said, “He didn’t mean to, but if the other one had taken me away, well, there I should be, shouldn’t I? Baggsy, we must tell the truth. Baggsy’s one of the best, you know. A victim of circumstances with a golden heart. We know everything about each other. Everything.” The hand that held her pistol started to sink. She jumped and aimed it at the Reverend again.

  “Too dangerous to tell them,” Baggs said, supporting one hand with the other as if the pistol grew too heavy. “I’m not talking to any of you.”

  “This is my fault,” Verbeux said. He passed a hand over his face. “I’ve been too busy trying to save myself.”

  “Verbeux?” Jean-Marc said, bewildered. “You? You have had a hand in all this?”

  Ila made soft sounds and said, “He’s a good man. I am a monster. What I did, I did for gain, but it’s all over. Your uncle Louis said that when he was on the throne, he would make me his princess. He said your days were numbered, Jean-Marc, and I would soon be cast out with nowhere to turn. But if I helped him, I would be richly rewarded. If I failed, as I have failed, I would die.”

  Jean-Marc thought of the letter in his desk drawer. So much intrigue, and for nothing now that his uncle Louis was dead. “And I was convinced you were in love with me.” He made sure his voice oozed sarcasm. “I may never recover.”

  “Don’t speak to her in such a way,” Verbeux said. “She has been a woman alone and with diminishing means. She did what she thought she must to survive. If only we had found each other sooner.

  “My own villainy is much longer-standing. I was also told of your expected fall from favor and promised a place at your uncle’s right hand.” He looked the most miserable of men. “I refused at first.”

  “But you changed your mind.” Jean-Marc knew deep disappointment.

  “For the sake of another, I had to. I will not beg for understanding. I don’t deserve any. I allowed them to use both an unforgivable mistake, and my position, to gain information about you. I urged you and Miss Smiles together to help make certain your father would decide never to make you his successor. I saw the opportunity the moment she came to Number Seventeen and you reacted so differently to her. I admit I wasn’t sure it would come to anything—until you returned from taking her to Windsor on that excursion I engineered.”

  The sound of quiet crying brought Jean-Marc’s attention to Meg. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “Marvelous,” he said. “I have been betrayed, made the target for assassination, and everyone present feels sorry for anyone but me!”

  Ila’s eyes grew moist. “And Verbeux didn’t know that the instant you should decide to arouse your father’s wrath by marrying Meg, I was as good as dead. Louis didn’t need me as your unsuitable wife-to-be if you found one even more unsuitable. Forgive me, Meg, I’m only telling the truth—for once.”

  Meg sniffed, but would not look at any of them. “What has any of this to do with Sibyl or me, or William or Mr. Baggs? What of the violence that has befallen me?”

  Sibyl, also sniffing, said, “Lady Upworth, I don’t think I could possibly explain what you told me.”

  “Well, I can,” Ila said and, talking over Godly-Smythe’s protests, regaled the gathered company with a wild story of the man’s gambling and his plan to marry Sibyl, force Meg to become part of his household and trick them both out of any proceeds from the sale of The Ramblers, the house he had inherited from the sisters’ father. “He brought Reverend Baggs to London to dispose of Meg altogether because he feared she would not cooperate. And Baggsy managed to live at Number Seven, where he could watch every move she made.”

  “You do not know that,” William snapped.

  “On the contrary,” Ila said sweetly. “Baggsy and I have spent the night together, hmm, Baggsy, dear? We are intimately acquainted now.”

  “Have a care what you say,” Reverend Baggs said, his plump face shiny and pink. “My reputation is invaluable to me.”

  More than one chuckle followed.

  Oblivious, Baggs continued. “Mr. Godly-Smythe gives me my living. I thought he did so for honorable reasons. I was wrong. He did so in case he ever needed someone to do dastardly deeds. I can’t risk my living, you see, since I’m unlikely to find another. So—he gave me a choice. Leave Puckly Hinton and seek a place elsewhere, or help him recover from his gambling excesses by getting rid of Miss Meg Smiles. He would have preferred to dispose of both sisters but feared provoking too much suspicion. He doesn’t have long to come up with a lot of money, so—”

  “Silence.” Godly-Smythe seemed to shrink. “You are a fool. The worst clergyman I have ever encountered.”

  “Yes, yes,” Meg said. “But how is it all connected?”

  “Baggs arranged the accident near the Burlington Arcade.” William was suddenly so expansive that his face shone with enthusiasm. “And he caused the second one in Bond Street.”

  “Did he plant the open shaving blade?”

  “I did not,” Baggs said heatedly.

  “We already know Pierre did so by accident,” Jean-Marc pointed out. “The attempt to poison me occurred some time prior to our meeting, Meg. Clearly these are separate issues, separate criminal activities.”

  “There was no attempt to poison you.” Verbeux sat down suddenly and mopped his brow with a large handkerchief. “I made it up. One more little lie to make you agree to leave. I had decided that if you married someone of Meg Smiles’s lowly station in life, your father would not as much as consider you his heir. I had to do it. I don’t want to say why, but I couldn’t bear to think of a certain event becoming public. And you were so obviously passionately involved with Miss Smiles. It seemed the perfect solution, but you would not be hurried.”

  Meg watched Jean-Marc’s face and saw only anger. He was angry that those he trusted had betrayed him.

  He looked directly at her.

  She averted her eyes.

  “Meg,” he said, “will you marry me?”

  Groans and mutters. “What is he thinking of?”

  “How can he deal with such matters now?”

  Meg was shamed and bitter. She said, “Are you mad? You reveal how little you respect me, how lowly you consider me, and ask me to marry you?”

  “Who beat Verbeux?” Sibyl said. “And who attacked you, Meg?”

  “Quite,” Jean-Marc agreed, stinging from Meg’s words. “As we speak, no doubt there are others—obviously loyal to my uncle Louis—who may be closing in for the kill.” H
e had no guarantee that Louis’s followers had withdrawn their efforts against him.

  “Or someone here who is waiting for the perfect moment to finish what they have started,” Meg stated.

  He thought the same but had not wanted to frighten either Meg or Sibyl by saying so. “Come to me, Meg,” he said. When she hesitated, he added, “Quickly. Put your antagonism toward me aside. Survival is more important.”

  She came to him. The blue gown and a matching cloak intensified her eyes, if that were possible. “Go to the innkeeper and ask him to call the constables. Immediately. Tell him not to venture above stairs.”

  Meg obeyed. Limping, she left the room.

  “It’s all lies,” Godly-Smythe said. “Her Ladyship knows I saw her in the gambling hells. She decided to defend herself by defaming me. All lies. I am a man above reproach.”

  “My Lord,” Sibyl Smiles said. “Those sounds. Do you hear them?”

  He did indeed.

  Sibyl was on her feet and making for the door. “Meg. I must see if Meg needs me.”

  He caught her about the waist and swung her away. “You will only cause more trouble. Silence, everybody.”

  The door slammed wide open and clattered against the wall. Miss Lavinia Ash, her hair awry and sopping, rainwater running down her face and soaking her already wet shoulders, stood on the threshold. She held Pierre by the ear while he hissed with pain and tried, in vain, to dislodge her fingers.

  Watch this, dear reader. Haven’t I told you that I, Sir Septimus Spivey, am superior to all these fools? It is mortifying—well, yes—perhaps degrading would be better. It is degrading that I am forced to use the Ash creature, but I have no choice. Clearly, if I do not intervene, all may be lost.

  “Come along, Meg,” Ash said loudly. “Come in here at once. Constables only bring shame, and we’ve had quite enough of that. We’ll deal with this in our own way.”

  To a man and woman the company gaped.

  Ash gave Pierre’s ear a vicious twist and didn’t even flinch when he howled. “I am going to reveal all,” she said, “and tell each of you what is to happen. Listen carefully. You have all failed miserably in assessing the cause, and the cure, for the carelessly planned events that have taken place.”