by Rebecca King
Taking pot luck, he decided to work his way toward his room from the opposite side of the house.
It was easy to pick out Mr. Brammall’s room. The pink silks and light blue of his clashing shirts spoke of a rather effeminate character. The powder pots, wigs, and high buckled shoes were more befitting the ballrooms of the ton from a bygone era and certainly didn’t belong in such a countrified place like Smothey. It made Marcus wonder what had driven him to pick a village like Smothey to live in because it was such a strange place for him to choose. He got no answers from the room. The papers in the drawer were personal but gave very little away about the man he truly was. A letter to an aged aunt; a few notes; a brief letter to a friend in London. All of which gave Marcus no hint that the man was up to something sinister.
It was just that the man didn’t fit the place – but did that make him suspicious? Did he have reason to suspect Brammall of anything?
“Until you get proof of his innocence, don’t discount him,” he mused as he let himself into the room next door.
“Mr Ball,” he mused as he studied the piles and piles of books littering two thirds of the floor space. He took a moment to study the spines but found nothing other than an odd mix of philosophy, nature, etiquette, and a few fiction books. Unless he took the time to shake out each book, he had no way of finding any personal papers hidden inside. There was no clue about the man’s personality in the book titles either. It was just a random selection anyone could pick up from a pawn shop. He considered that while he studied the room.
There was something niggling him only he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. It hovered in the darker recesses of his mind but was as elusive as Jess’ brother. There were hidden secrets in the room, he just knew it. He just had no hope of finding out what they were unless he turned the room over completely, and he had neither the time nor the opportunity for that. He had to wait.
It was only when he was about to leave that he glanced back into the room and realised then what it was. Closing the door, he thoughtfully made his way to the room next door.
Mr Abernathy was the man who purportedly worked studiously – well – somewhere. The room was, for all intents and purposes, just an ordinary room occupied by someone with a tidy mind.
“Too tidy,” he murmured, eyeing the spare pair of boots beside the bed positioned precisely parallel to each other.
Even the brush on the dresser was lined exactly with the edge of the top. It was almost too neat. Opening up the drawer, Marcus was unsurprised to find each of the shirts inside pristinely folded and lined up in a tidy row. All of it was almost fastidiously neat and indicated that the person who lived like this had very little else to do.
Did the man live to work?
Strangely, there were no quills or inkpots anywhere. No books either for that matter either. In fact, Mr Abernathy’s room was very much like his own. Sparsely furnished, neat and clean, but well-worn. A thorough search revealed nothing other than a few bills of moderate amounts, several notes, and a few letters to someone who lived in Swanwich.
“God, does everyone in the house have something to hide?” he grumbled as he began to search the room for hidden compartments.
Empty handed, he was quietly closing the door behind him when an ear-piercing scream shattered the silence.
Marcus lurched into motion and immediately raced down the corridor, his gun drawn in readiness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bursting through the bedroom door, he slammed to a halt when he found Jess standing on the bed, protected by nothing more than a poorly placed sheet she clutched to her chest.
He began to smile at the delectable picture she made and lifted his brows.
“Don’t just stand there, kill it,” She ordered, pointing to the far corner of the room.
“What am I supposed to kill?” he asked.
He looked. There was nothing in the corner except for a small spider. He wasn’t interested in that. Not when Jess was displayed so brazenly for his avaricious gaze.
“Th-that spider. Kill it,” Jess demanded. “S-sh-shoot it.”
Marcus started laughing. “I can’t shoot a spider. Think of the damage to the house.”
“Think of the damage it has done to me,” she protested. “I just woke up and found that running across my hand. Get it out of this house.”
“Alright, alright,” Marcus soothed.
Still grinning, he pocketed his gun and scooped up the offending arachnid. He slid the window up and dispatched it to the wilds of the garden before he turned back around.
“I take it you don’t like spiders,” he murmured as he dropped to his knees in front of her.
“I hate the wretched things,” she replied, feeling her cheeks heat. “Sorry. I just panicked when I woke up and found it there.”
“I am just glad you like me more. If you had woken up and shrieked like that at finding me lying there, I would have been most offended,” Marcus teased.
He eyed the ample mound of Jess’ bosom barely contained beneath the sheet hungrily, and mentally assessed how much time they had left before the other lodgers were due back.
Jess sighed. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied.
“What are you doing up?” She felt a little awkward that he was fully dressed while she wore only a sheet.
Marcus smiled. “I was on my way downstairs to try to find some parchment. I need to write a couple of letters today,” he explained.
“Do you usually use your gun to write letters?” she asked eyeing the wicked-looking object he placed on the dresser.
“Not usually. I carry a firearm with me; that’s all.” He shrugged as if to say that it was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill thing he did.
Jess studied him and knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. This is Smothey, a village where nothing much ever happened. Nobody walked around with a gun unless they were hunting.
Marcus sensed she didn’t believe him. He had a choice now. He could either take her into his confidence, and garner her help if he ever needed it, or keep her in the dark. That meant lying to her. If he did that, at some point he would be forced to tell her everything, including the fact that he had lied, and he could very well lose her.
“I think it is time I came clean,” he began.
When she immediately began to withdraw from him, he sat on the bed and hauled her into his arms, refusing to allow her to pull away from him.
“It’s not what you think,” he hastened to assure her.
She leaned back to look up at him and remained still while she waited for his to explain.
“Are you married?” She asked boldly.
“Jess, I know you don’t know me very well at the moment but, take it from me that I am not the kind of man who would bed one woman while being married to another. No, I am not married.”
He struggled to find the words to say that would reassure her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her undue worry. However, neither could he allow her to live in the house ignorance of the dangers she might face.
“Are you in trouble with the law?” she whispered, eyeing his gun again with a frown.
“No, I am not in trouble with the law. I am the law. Well, sort of.” He slid down on the bed and tugged her close.
“Well, you either are or aren’t,” she said.
“I work for a department of the War Office. Very few people know about it. While we were at war, a group of hand-picked men were seconded to the War Office and worked to protect England’s borders from the French. The work we did was primarily aimed at stopping the smuggling, and we did. When the war ended, our attention turned to more domestic crimes like murders, pick-pocketers, and burglaries. Of late we have been investigating a spate of thefts and burglaries from big houses in London owned by the aristocracy. The man behind it all is a hardened criminal called Sayers. He is into everything illegal. There are no depths to which he won’t sink, an
d there is no depravity he won’t consider. Several bodies of rather eminent gentlemen in London have been strangled and left in woods. We think Sayers is responsible but are gathering evidence to try to prove it. Unfortunately, we are struggling to catch him. He is as elusive as a rainbow.”
“Go on,” she prompted when he fell into thoughtful silence.
Her heart began to swell with pride the more she listened to him. Suddenly, the penny dropped. She sat bolt upright in bed and turned to stare at him.
“Please don’t tell me that this Sayers person is here,” she demanded.
Marcus eyed the innocent way she sat upright, boldly displaying what God gave her, and mentally groaned. She hadn’t even noticed how much she was displaying to his avaricious gaze, but he didn’t tell her in case she covered up again.
“We don’t know,” he replied honestly. “One of our men was in a village where a couple of the bodies turned up. We went to help him, and learned of a planned burglary, and so set a trap. Although we caught the burglar, we lost the jewels he stole because he handed them over to a courier before we got him. My colleague and I followed the courier here. He is in the village somewhere. We are trying to find him.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Jessica whispered. “Do you think he is here, in this house?”
She didn’t object when Marcus repositioned her until she was practically lying over him. Her attention was locked firmly on what he had just told her.
“Where is the rest of your – this organisation?”
“Some of the men are in London, and some are in other parts of the country trying to uncover the depths of Sayers’ crimes. It is going to take us a long time yet, but we will find him. We always get our man,” he admitted modestly.
Slowly but surely, her new position began to register on her. She was now sitting astride her lover, looking down into his face. It felt terribly risqué but wonderfully liberating.
“Don’t do that,” he pleaded huskily when she wriggled experimentally.
“Does it hurt?”
“Nope,” he groaned. “I am just trying to tell you who I am and why I am here.”
“It’s why you knew so much about the law, and how to deal with Lloyd, isn’t it?” she asked with a delighted smile.
She watched his face change and felt the hard evidence of his desire for her nudge her thigh. Suddenly her smile of feminine satisfaction dimmed. It was difficult to concentrate on anything when her body thrummed with sensual anticipation.
“What do you plan to do about Ben?” She gasped, trying to ignore just how intimately they were entwined.
Watching her eyes grow wide, Marcus sighed. “I am not going to arrest him. The lad is what, one and twenty?”
At her nod, he forced himself to focus on the reassurance she seemed to need.
“He is a young man who is only trying to feed everyone. I am sure the owner of the Priory could afford to lose a few pheasants. While I am not condoning it, you understand, I am not going to arrest him either. He has to learn there is a right way of going about things, and a wrong way.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, placing a gentle kiss on his chest.
His revelation made her feel infinitely closer to him and left her free to experiment with her new-found freedom. When he moaned, she began to tease him by wriggling her hips again.
“Is this the right way of going about it?” she murmured.
Marcus smiled and knew he couldn’t deny her anything she wanted. He would have to tell her the rest later. Before he could reply, his lover decided to show him just how much she had learned.
Later that afternoon, Marcus finally relented and left the bed. He could quite happily have kept her there for the rest of the day. The guests could help themselves to dinner as far as he was concerned, but Jess insisted they had to get up before Ben came home. The last thing she wanted was to face the embarrassing situation of having to explain herself to her brother.
Marcus reluctantly had to admit she was right. Until he could get matters settled in his mind, he couldn’t explain to anybody where his delightful new relationship would lead him. Besides, he had to write letters to Sir Hugo in London, and Jeb and Barnaby in Framley Meadows.
An hour later, he found Jess humming in the kitchen while she chopped vegetables.
“Jess,” Marcus said. “I need to go into the village to post these. How about coming for a walk with me?”
She hesitated. Her instinctive response was to refuse. She had a mountain of chores to do, all of which would still be waiting for her when she returned. The hours she had spent in his arms already meant that some of the chores would not get done today. Could she spare the time for a wander to the village with him?
“That would be nice,” she replied softly.
When she passed him to fetch her shawl, he stopped her for a very thorough kiss.
“Go and fetch your shawl, I am going to put my boots on,” he murmured.
Jessica’s heart was hammering as she hurried off to get ready. She was sore from the morning’s activities but delighted at this new intimacy she shared with him. She had never felt this close to another living soul, and it was as wonderful as it was worrying. The only issue to dampen her joy was that she knew his job would take him away at some point. It was highly unlikely he would want to stop in a small village like Smothey, not when mysteries and crimes awaited him in London.
She quickly closed that particular gloomy thought out, and hurried into the hallway where she found Marcus waiting for her.
Minutes later, he escorted her out of the house. To his surprise, when they left, Jess didn’t just close the door as most people would. She took a huge iron key out of her pocket and locked the house up behind her.
His brows lifted as he watched her.
“Does a lot of crime happen around here?” he asked, partly to get a better understanding of just how effective the magistrate was.
“No. Not really. Well, no more than any other village. There are questions as to whether the people the magistrate has arrested during his time in office were guilty of doing anything wrong or just enemies of his, but nobody has any proof,” Jess explained. “I lock the door because it stops people wandering in. Because it is a lodging house, there have been one or two occasions when I have returned from Retterton to find people in the sitting room, looking for accommodation. Of course, they haven’t done anything wrong exactly, but I just don’t want to come home to find strangers, or Lloyd, waiting for me in the sitting room.”
“Lloyd shouldn’t even cross the threshold now, but I know what you mean,” Marcus replied. He was relieved she was so conscious of her own safety. It made his job of protecting her considerably easier.
They ambled out of the front gate and turned toward the village.
“If I am honest, I need your help. I don’t know my way around the village to know where to post this,” he confided.
“I thought there might be an ulterior motive,” she replied dryly.
Marcus opened his mouth to answer her but then noticed someone waiting for them at the end of the road: Joe.
There is news; Marcus mused eyeing the secretive look in Joe’s eyes, and the surreptitious wink his colleague gave him once they reached him. Nodding his acknowledgement that he would meet Joe as planned, Marcus followed Jessica’s instructions and, minutes later, arrived at the posting office.
“I won’t be a minute,” Marcus murmured.
He left her on the doorstep while he went inside to send his missives. When he re-joined her on the pavement minutes later something wasn’t right.
“What is it?” he asked as he studied her dark scowl.
When she didn’t answer him, he turned to see what had captured her attention and saw Ben chatting to a man a little older than himself. It wasn’t the age difference that was alarming; it was the heavy build, thick muscles, and rough fighter appearance that warned Marcus the man was a thug.
“Who is that?” he murmured as he studied the man’s
dirty clothing.
“He is George Smithers. He is a bad lot. I hope that Ben isn’t consorting with him now,” Jess bit out. “He is a thief of the worst kind. He is sly.”
Anger was visible on her face. Before Marcus could stop her, she marched determinedly toward her brother. Her gaze remained locked on Ben with such fixation that she didn’t see the magistrate appear beside her.
“Oh, get out of the way,” she snapped, shoving him roughly aside.
Startled at the ferocity of the push from someone so small, Lloyd staggered back and careered into his colleague.
Unaware of the chaos she left in her wake; Jess stomped down the street and left the men staring at her.
Bemused, Marcus followed.
“I am telling you that I can-”
“Ben? You do know we have jobs to do,” Jess snapped. She ignored Smithers completely.
“Mornin’,” the burly man said, and doffed his imaginary cap.
“Smithers,” Jess replied coolly.
“I am just having a chat with a friend, sis. I know have things to do,” Ben informed her.
“Yes, back at the house. I suggest you get back there and get on with them,” Jess said crisply.
“I have to go over to Retterton first,” Ben protested.
“No, you don’t. There is nothing in Retterton that requires your attention more than the house. Get back home; your Retterton visit can wait.”
She threw a warning glare at him, then turned around and stomped away before Ben could reply. From the look of the dark flush on Ben’s cheeks, she knew he would follow. If only to rant at her about how unfair life was and how stupid the house was. That was what he usually did in situations like this, but she didn’t care.
“I take it that Smithers is likely to get your brother in trouble,” Marcus murmured when he caught up with her.
Jess threw him an apologetic look and slowed her pace.
“I am sorry for storming off like that. I just get so angry with him sometimes. Smithers has been in jail a few times over the years, always for theft, or poaching. He always gets back out and promises everyone that he is a reformed character, but is always up to his old tricks within a few weeks. No wonder Lloyd is hassling Ben about stealing the Priory’s game. He has probably helped Smithers steal it.”