The Marquess

by Patricia Rice

  “Your message said she was seriously burned. You said she might be blind and could lose the use of her hands. A gently nurtured female does not take up carriage driving while blind and handicapped. What have you done with her?”

  The physician could add little more to his story. By the time the two men departed the small surgery where Blanche had been treated, the younger had reached a state well beyond coherency.

  “There is nothing else you can do, Neville,” the earl suggested. “If your cousin has chosen to run away rather than receive the treatment she ought, you owe her nothing else. If we don’t return to London directly, we will miss the debate on the Home Security bill. Your vote is too important to neglect your duty.”

  “It wasn’t Blanche. It had to be that blasted companion of hers. The wench is too sly by far. She’s a scheming baggage if I ever saw one. I should never have let Blanche hire her. What in Hades does she think she’s doing by stealing Blanche? What can she possibly gain?”

  He’d finally caught the older man’s interest. “Money?” he suggested. “Perhaps the lady’s companion sees your upcoming nuptials as a threat and seeks to gain sufficient income so she need not worry about her position any longer.”

  The young duke didn’t look placated. “Miss Reynolds is too cunning for something so simple as that. She has convinced Blanche to put off our announcement for months. She has something planned. She is behind this. I’ll set Bow Street on her.”

  His Grace looked up with an air of decision only to be confronted with a slight auburn-haired man in a rather eccentric pink waistcoat and gray frock coat. The duke tried walking around this apparition, but the man swept off his tall beaver hat and made a polite bow.

  “Michael O’Toole at your service, Your Grace. Might I suggest we walk along to your carriage as we talk so as not to attract attention?” Boldly, the eccentric apparition caught the young duke’s elbow and steered him down the narrow village street in the direction of the carriage at the bottom of the hill.

  Neville jerked his arm away. “You may not suggest anything. Remove yourself before I whistle up my servants.”

  The tall hat returned to cover auburn curls. O’Toole didn’t look in the least concerned by the threat. “Bow Street is good for locating stolen goods and known thieves,” he informed the air at large. “They have their sources in all the dens of iniquity in the city. They are of little use out here in the countryside, and you can be certain the Lady Blanche did not run to a den of iniquity.”

  The young duke scowled. “How did you know about my cousin?”

  The dapper O’Toole shrugged. “The carriage was last seen heading south on the main highway about nine of last evening. I have men checking the way stations now. I am extremely good at what I do. The origins of that fire were suspicious, you know.”

  His Grace clenched his fingers and stopped before they reached the carriage. The older statesman presented an expressionless visage as he studied the intruder.

  “If you know that,” Neville said, “then you know the magistrate is a sapskulled idiot who thinks an unhappy employee set it. Blanche’s servants are never unhappy. The house was nearly two centuries old. It was a firetrap.”

  “The magistrate arrived in time to observe that the fire came out all the downstairs windows before moving up. A fire started in one place goes directly up before spreading out. I have enough experience to have observed that on any number of occasions myself. That fire must have started in several downstairs locations at once to spread in that manner.”

  The duke stared over O’Toole’s shoulder at the narrow village town houses leaning up against one another. Had Blanche’s house not been separated from the village by a narrow park, the whole town could have gone up in flames. He gritted his teeth and returned his glare to the stranger whose face now disappeared in shadow beneath the wide brim of his hat.

  “What in hell kind of business are you in that you have such wide experience with fires?”

  “Military, Your Grace,” O’Toole answered snappily. “Until the end of the late war, I was an officer on the Continent as well as the Americas. You have heard, of course, of how we burned the capital of that country to the ground? I learned a great deal from that event which I found useful when Napoleon emerged from hiding later. But that is not my specialty.”

  “I suppose your specialty is finding runaway heiresses?” Neville asked snidely.

  O’Toole shrugged. “I would not say offhand that she ran away. She could have been stolen. As injured as she was, I would say that the more likely answer. My specialty is finding people who are considered unreachable.”

  Neville strode impatiently toward the carriage. “That is faradiddle. The military does not run a lost and found.”

  O’Toole made a polite cough as he unhurriedly kept up with the duke’s longer strides. “I did not say people who are lost. I said people who are considered unreachable.”

  The duke stopped and stared. Growing impatient, the earl continued on down the hill to yell at the coach driver.

  “You’re saying you were a spy. Do you have references?”

  O’Toole gave a deprecating smile. “I could give the name of my commanding officer, but he only handed me my orders. You don’t really think anyone in the ministry would willingly admit to my existence, would you? You need only pay my daily expenses if I fail. Such a sum is trifling if I have a chance of succeeding, and I can assure you, I have a very good chance of succeeding. I have already told you more than you knew before.” O’Toole removed a card from a gold carrying case and handed it over.

  At this point Neville was prepared to pay the devil himself if he offered to find Blanche. He glanced at the card, scowled at the Mayfair address, and reached for his purse. “How could a scoundrel like you have a nobleman’s address?”

  O’Toole turned his face up to the sun and smiled. “I live a charmed life, I suppose.”

  Neville didn’t have time to ask more. The damned earl had set the coach in motion. He had to return to London. With an air of resignation, he handed over a hundred-pound note. “This should be sufficient to set the entire countryside on fire. I want her found, do you understand me? If you don’t, I’ll have your head on a platter. If you do, I’ll see you amply rewarded.”

  O’Toole whistled as he tucked the note into his pocket and watched the duke hurry down the hill toward the waiting carriage. A hundred pounds was a hundred pounds. The duke could spare it. He knew others who could use it more.

  Smiling cheerfully, Michael strolled back up the hill in the direction of the now cold ashes of a once lovely Elizabethan cottage.

  * * * *

  Exhaustion finally overcoming her need for exploring their new circumstances further, Dillian slipped through the secret passage at dawn to check on Blanche. She tripped on a misplaced piece of lumber and caught herself on the filthy wall, cursing lightly under her breath. She wouldn’t remain a secret for long if she kept this up.

  A distant female squeal made her grimace. Someone had heard her. Now they would send a squadron of servants to flush her out.

  Dashing to the end of the passage, she listened at the wardrobe door. Hearing only Blanche’s rustlings, she stepped into the early morning light. Apparently, gathering an army of servants took a while. She heard none rushing up the stairs.

  She found Blanche sitting up in bed, her singed hair tumbling across a wealth of pillows in the early morning light.

  “I must look for a place to sleep,” Dillian whispered. “I don’t know when I can come back to you, but I won’t be far. Just scream if you really need me.”

  It made her heart ache watching Blanche’s proud head nod sadly, but she could do nothing about their predicament now. Blanche had more courage than ten people. She would hold up for a few hours more.

  Examining the burns on Blanche’s palms, applying the unguent Michael had apparently stolen, Dillian did all she could to make Blanche comfortable before leaving. Then slipping into the hall, she head
ed for the servants’ stairs to the upper stories before the hounds could catch her.

  On second thought she needed food to fortify her for the day ahead. Instead of taking the stairs up, she hurried down them. She’d already discovered from the layers of dust that no one used these back stairs. If they sent an army looking for her, they’d have to climb up stairs wider than these. She hadn’t grown up in a military family without learning the meaning of outflanking the enemy.

  She heard two women murmuring to each other in the kitchen but no more shrieks of alarm. She had located the pantries and cellars in her earlier explorations. Dillian knew how to reach them without walking into enemy territory.

  Capturing one of the pastries that she hadn’t seen in the pre-dawn darkness, she almost made it back to the stairs when she heard the sound of someone coming down the passage. Obviously not their host, she thought dryly as she slipped into the dumbwaiter and pulled the door. This intruder wore shoes.

  “Ach, no, child, ye’ll not find one to deliver anything here. The cowardly lot of them would see us starve first. Now, go and ask Mac to go down to the village for ye. I’ve not heard of one objecting to taking the master’s money yet.”

  Dillian’s sleepiness faded beneath this more interesting topic. She listened eagerly as the voices drew closer.

  “I heard the lady walking last night,” a faint voice whispered. “They say she walks before disaster strikes. Perhaps we’d best do like the others and leave this place.”

  The voice of the older woman scoffed. “And where would ye go, then? Enough with the foolishness, child. Leave the ghosties to theirselves and go about yer business. The master doesna’ ask ye to go about where ye dinna want, does he, now? My lady says he is a good man, and I’ve seen naught to say otherwise. It’s a good position, and ye’re lucky to have it. Now, go away with ye.”

  Dillian held her breath as the steps approached. She had thought the dumbwaiter unused, but perhaps the master even now waited in the deserted dining hall for his breakfast. Remembering the mess in the formal dining room, she shook her head. No one in their right mind would eat there.

  The steps passed on by. Dillian settled down to eat her pastry as she heard the sound of the “master’s” voice rumbling through the wall on her other side. The monster kept early hours.

  * * * *

  “My lord, ye should have knocked me up if ye wanted something to help tide ye over the night. It’s my duty to see that ye’re proper fed,” the cook remonstrated as she set out platters of eggs and toast on the billiard table that had been converted to breakfast table with the simple expedient of throwing some boards and a cloth over it.

  Gavin had sold the Queen Anne breakfast table months ago, but the billiard table had warped to worthlessness for its original purpose.

  At the cook’s words he turned his gaze with apparent interest to the crack sifting plaster dust over the linen, hiding his laughter at the British expression that would have had his American friends howling. Considering the cook was fifty if she was a day, and round as she was tall, knocking her up in the American way would have been extremely difficult, if not outright unnatural. Besides, he would never take advantage of a woman so blind she couldn’t see his face. He grimaced at the image that raised.

  “I will remember that in the future, Matilda.” Gavin refrained from mentioning that he hadn’t raided the larder. No doubt Michael had stolen a pasty before taking the carriage out for its long ride.

  “Young Janet said she heard the lady walking last night. The lady always walks in time of trouble. Is there aught I should be telling the others?” the old woman asked wisely, her eyes narrowing with concern.

  Startled, Gavin brought his gaze back down from the ceiling. “The lady?”

  Blind to the falling plaster, Matilda stepped back from the table and wrapped her plump hands in her apron. “The ghost of the fifth marquess’s wife, my lord. She died in the master chamber, before the sixth marquess added those new rooms. She only haunts the old part, I understand. They say she walked the nights the seventh marquess suffered with the toothache that killed him.”

  Gavin glanced suspiciously at the wall, which sounded as if it had emitted a muffled giggle. He must see about getting another cat if the rats had entered this far into the house.

  Returning his attention to the subject his cook had introduced, he rather suspected if any ghost walked these floors, it was the last marquess. In the year since his arrival, he had found his female cousin and her mother, the marchioness. He felt sympathy for the seventh marquess’s young widow and daughter, but any man who would die of an abscess rather than have a tooth drawn deserved his fate.

  He didn’t mention his opinion to the loyal cook. Matilda still considered the marchioness the lady of the house, and he was more than grateful for the lady’s influence in persuading her personal chefs back to this rotting mansion. He didn’t much care about dust and disorder, but he had gone hungry too many times in his life to like doing so again. He saw nothing extraordinary in employing both cook and pastry chef since both were willing to work in this reportedly haunted mansion when others would not.

  “I’ll look into the matter, Matilda. No doubt one of the sashes has come loose up there. I’ll not have Janet’s sleep disturbed again. She has trouble rising as it is.”

  Matilda snorted in mixed reproof and agreement. When she left, Gavin gazed at his breakfast with less than interest. How could he transport it upstairs to the invalid without inviting all sorts of interesting questions? His conversation with Matilda made it evident that the servants knew everything that went on in this house even when they slept. But Michael had insisted on keeping their guest hidden.

  Maybe he should encourage the superstitious fear of “the lady.” Of a certainty that would keep the servants out of the upper story. They seldom strayed up there as it was since he didn’t use those rooms. Janet had all she could do to keep the library, study, and billiard room clean. He could sleep on his couch in the study as well as anywhere, and he certainly had no need for salons and drawing rooms. He only employed Janet, the maid, and a man of all trades, in any event—outside the eccentricity of employing both a cook and a pastry chef.

  Deciding he was master of this household and could do anything he liked, Gavin lifted a tarnished silver tray from the liquor cabinet, which served as sideboard, and slid his morning fare onto it. The invalid should be ready for some company about now.

  When he stopped in his study to don what remained of his shoes, he noticed the book on family history had moved from its usual place. He wouldn’t have noticed such a small thing anywhere else in the house, but that particular moth-eaten volume rested on a high pedestal in a place of honor. Janet had removed the cobwebs at some point, but disregarded the dust that had gathered since. He hadn’t complained of the neglect. Family history meant little to him under the circumstances.

  Apparently, it meant a little more to someone else. The dust had been disturbed, and he could see a clean square of wood where the book had originally rested. It had changed angles over night.

  He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. He didn’t believe in ghosts. He didn’t believe “the lady” had chosen last night to walk and examine her ancestor’s lineage. But he also found it difficult believing that a seriously burned and possibly blind invalid could find her way down here. That led one to question the extent of the invalid’s actual injuries.

  With less compassion than he’d originally intended, Gavin carried his breakfast tray up the stairs.

  He found Miss Perceval sitting on the edge of the bed, fiddling with the bandage over her eyes again. He’d deliberately left off his shoes after his discovery. He had entered softly, but she looked up at him with expectation.

  “Mr. Lawrence?” she asked eagerly, blindly turning her face from side to side in hopes of pinpointing his presence.

  He didn’t want to believe it an act. With the heavy draperies still drawn, the morning sun lent only a vague golden aura to
the room. The filtered light enhanced the highlights of his patient’s hair and made her slender figure in the bulky nightgown look very young and helpless. Maybe Michael had disturbed the volume for one of his many mysterious projects.

  “I brought breakfast,” he said gruffly. He wasn’t accustomed to company. His social skills had never been of the best and had deteriorated to nothing of late.

  “That’s very kind of you, sir,” she said uncertainly, finally focusing on his location by the sound of his voice. “Will you share it with me? It is rather lonely sitting here by myself.”

  She tried hiding the plaintive note but she was too young to do it well. Her social skills, however, possessed everything his did not.

  Gavin scowled and placed the tray on a table he drew up beside the bed. “You will find some difficulty managing cutlery with your palms like that. I ordered the eggs scrambled so you needn’t cut them. Tell me what you would like on the toast.”

  “I can’t see the cutlery to pick it up,” she reminded him gently. “Perhaps if I tried taking the bandage off...”

  “No!” He reached across the table and curled her fingers around a fork, then led her hand to the plate. “If the physician says your eyes must remain bandaged to prevent damage, then you must listen,” he said with a little more politeness than his first shout.

  “I think I would like a second opinion,” she answered with irritation, maneuvering the fork through the eggs. Blindly managing fork and food required a delicate sense of balance but she accomplished it. “I cannot see how these bandages accomplish anything except to conceal this place from me. Mayhap I have truly been stolen and hidden away, and you don’t wish me to see your face to identify you.”

  Gavin certainly didn’t wish her to see his face, but that wasn’t the reason. He didn’t even bother fingering the scars that ravaged his once handsome jaw and drew one corner of his mouth up in a permanent smirk. He merely forked a mouthful of eggs from his plate and added jam to his toast.