“I only foresee the need for one table at this party.” Olivia plotted as she wandered the perimeter. “But I’d like to have lots of witnesses. Will we need chairs?”
“A buffet table,” Phoebe suggested, heading for the back of the house. “I assume there’s a kitchen.”
“What kind of witnesses?” Drew asked suspiciously.
“People I trust. I’ll ask the Napiers, Mr. Hamilton, possibly the Jamesons. I’ll ask Sir Harvey and so forth but don’t expect much help there. And I think, just for the fun, I’ll ask the sheriff or his deputies to be in attendance. I’ll tell them Hargreaves has been threatened, and we fear revolutionaries. Or I’ll have Hargreaves tell them,” Olivia said in satisfaction.
“Devious,” Phoebe cried, sailing back into the room. “The kitchen is adequate. There is a good table. Borrow Simon’s staff for the evening. You’ll need all the allies you can find. Gentlemen don’t notice servants and won’t realize that you have an army.”
Olivia headed up the stairs, just to reassure herself that she and Evie and Aloysius could make a home here if necessary.
The upstairs was shabby and mostly empty. She wouldn’t be able to stay any time soon, but it looked like a sturdy house. “There are a few chairs we can carry down for the table,” she called.
“No rats,” Phoebe reported, apparently having done a mental inventory. “A few field mice in the kitchen. This is much snugger than the Hall.”
But Olivia would have to find a way to earn an income if she wanted more than bare existence. The Hall had tenants and land to be leased. The cottage wouldn’t.
First, she wanted the human rats out of the Hall.
Simon returned from meeting with his mine manager to find Viscount Hargreaves on his front lawn with an old woman he suspected was one of Letitia’s odd relations. He almost didn’t stop, but he couldn’t resist. He climbed off Thor and watched as the stooped old woman pushed on his lordship’s thin chest and spine at the same time.
Hargreaves coughed and gasped, then spat, and coughed some more. He choked and protested but the old woman kept on pressing.
“That’s it, my lord, breathe deeply, take in the fresh air the good Lord gave you. Blow out the bad. Another breath, deeper this time.” She punched his spine a little to force him to draw in more breath.
“You’re killing me,” the viscount protested between breaths and coughs.
“Your color is better already,” the old woman said with satisfaction.
That’s when Simon remembered Olivia had said they were bringing in a healer. He’d heard physician, but obviously, he was a dull-wit who didn’t realize there might be a difference.
Annoyance tempered by amusement, he left Hargreaves to his torture.
The house was blessedly quiet when he entered. The boys weren’t home from school yet. The women had apparently found a quiet occupation. Maggie must have stashed the servants out of sight. He wasn’t used to having a houseful of servants.
He needed to become accustomed, he realized, when he found Evie sleeping in the kneehole beneath his desk, along with Enoch’s puppy. He couldn’t yell for Olivia every time children or pets escaped the nursery, not if she meant to leave him—which she did.
He refused to acknowledge the pain in his heart. He was a man who acted, not moped. If these two weans had escaped the upstairs, where were the others?
Lifting the sleeping child, puppy on his heels, he climbed up to the top floor to peer in at the schoolroom. Olivia, Phoebe, Emma, even Drew, sat around the low table looking at cards. The twins apparently had a different deck and were lining up the picture cards and putting the numbered ones in order on the floor.
He recalled walking in on a similar scene on a rainy Christmas Eve and thinking he’d stumbled across the rings of hell, but he’d been blotto at the time. In the broad light of day and completely sober—he still couldn’t work it out.
“You’ve just picked up an ace of the same suit as your king,” Olivia said, not looking at her cards but in Phoebe’s direction. But she wasn’t exactly looking at her cousin, Simon noticed. Her eyes were a strange mirrored silver that saw beyond the table.
“Drew, you have nothing, so I’ll match your bet and raise it,” Olivia blinked, and her eyes were blue once more. “What do you think? Was I right?”
Drew flung down his cards, revealing a useless mix of numbers and suits. “I believe you. I still don’t see how you’ll use Hargreaves.”
Phoebe wrinkled her nose at the cards. “The ace is interesting, but I have no idea what difference it makes. You guessed mine right too. How do you do that?”
Instead of answering, Olivia looked up and spotted Simon in the doorway, holding Evie. She leaped up to relieve him of his burden, but he shook his head and carried the child to her bed in the other room.
“Evie is growing much too large for you to keep treating her like a baby,” he said when she followed him.
Olivia stiffened but didn’t respond as she tucked in her adopted daughter. She spoke to the new nursemaid, then marched out, closing the door between the nursery and the schoolroom. She didn’t even look at him.
“So, can you help me to teach Hargreaves?” Olivia asked her partners in crime.
“Just teaching him to believe you will be a chore,” Phoebe responded doubtfully.
“If he’s listening to an old witch on the lawn, the imbecile will believe anything,” Simon said with scorn. “And you’re all aboot in your heids if you think rotten scoundrels will even sit down at the table with you.”
“They’ll sit,” Olivia said with irritating calm. “They need funds. Unless they are independently wealthy, Glengarry and Ramsay cannot convert the Hall into a paying enterprise in its current condition. I’ve talked to a few people, and they tell me there isn’t a soul in the entire county willing to work for the Hall these days. People knew the Jamesons would see them paid as best they could. But the Jamesons have gone to live with their daughter in the village.”
She didn’t even offer him a look of triumph but calmly gathered up the scattered cards, then kneeled down to admire the ones the girls had laid out.
Simon wanted to rage and stomp and shout she was to have naught to do with the scoundrels, but she drew all the wrath out of him. Maybe he should go outside and let the old woman pound his lungs too.
“The Association might fund them,” Simon suggested.
“If anyone meant to fund the villains, they would have paid off their debts by now. The Hall is so deeply in debt that I don’t think anyone but a wealthy nabob could find servants. No, the Association—and quite possibly the earl—are keeping their hands clean for the moment. They think they’ll acquire the property without paying a farthing.” Olivia gathered up the cards on the floor, kissed the twins, and sent them in for a nap.
Olivia stood and faced him. Behind her, Drew had his poker face on, but Phoebe was grinning like a simpleton. Simon could sense the challenge coming.
“I’m asking if I might use Letty’s Cottage for one evening,” Olivia said with an air of defiance. “If you don’t wish it polluted by the evils of gambling, I will understand, and find somewhere else. But it is only for one night. After that, I may have to ask to rent it so Evie, Aloysius, and I have a place to call home.”
Letty’s Cottage? Simon had to think hard before he remembered Letitia’s dream of converting that old house into a shop. It had been so long. . . The pain was duller now, but not gone by any means. Her absence was like an abscess that ached every time he brushed against it.
“The cottage was foolishness,” Simon said gruffly. A breeze chilled his bones, and he aimed for the door. “The foundation is probably falling apart, the roof needs replacing, the chimneys are likely beyond repair. . .”
“One night,” Olivia insisted. “We only need it one night. If it isn’t suitable for habitation, I’ll look elsewhere.”
“Given the current state of the Hall, you’ll need to, no matter what happens with the game,” Pho
ebe said cheerfully. “You can return to Edinburgh with us, Olivia. Drew, we can stay until the card game, can’t we, please?”
If Olivia walked out of his life, there would be another damned abscess to ache. At least this way, he could shield her better from villains.
“You’ll do what you please, anyway,” he said grudgingly.
Twenty-nine
On the fourth day of the new year, Olivia shoved a paper across the card table where she’d gathered Hargreaves and her partners in crime. “Now that Simon has agreed we may use the cottage, there’s the wording of the missive you must send to your friends at the Hall. Use your seal and have Bertram deliver it. Mrs. Susan has sewed him fancy livery so he’ll look impressive.”
Hargreaves studied the wording. “I don’t talk like this.”
“Of course, you don’t. This is a formal request, not a conversation. I’ve asked the minister to arrive with Bertram as witness that it was delivered.” She wanted no excuse for Glengarry and Ramsay to avoid Hargreaves’ demand to win back his vouchers.
“You’re a damned bossy witch,” his lordship muttered, folding up the paper. “Don’t know how Owen tolerated you.”
“Owen taught me.” Not taking offense, Olivia broke out the cards. “He disliked correspondence. He showed me his files, and I learned from them. You would have done better to have listened to him instead of playing in London.”
The viscount looked relatively healthier this afternoon, she decided, studying his aura. The black line was smaller, and there was a little more clarity in the yellow, but mostly, his midsection was still a brownish-gold. His father had drained any confidence or self-esteem from his son.
“I need whisky,” Hargreaves whined, staring blankly at his cards. “I can’t think like this.”
“Whisky is why you can’t think at all.” Olivia threw down a card and took another. “You’ve pickled your brain like an old cucumber. What will it take to help you remember the signals? And don’t say whisky. Will you notice if I stack my buttons in a certain way?”
He glared at her stack of white buttons. “We don’t play for buttons.”
“You don’t have any coins,” she reminded him. “Buttons prevent your so-called friends from offering to track your wagers.”
Drew took another card. “You marked all the kings?”
Olivia was grateful that he was willing to join her game. She hadn’t wanted to be alone with only Hargreaves as support. “I did, but only to prove what can be done when the cards are marked. You need to pick up your cards and hold them so others can’t see the backs in case they try to mark our decks.”
Drew and Hargreaves closed up their cards and concealed them with their large hands. Phoebe grinned and used hers for a fan.
Olivia rolled her eyes at her cousin. “If either Glengarry or Ramsay have auras that are as hard to read as you and Drew, I may become desperate enough to cheat. You make it difficult because neither of you honestly cares about the coin but display only curiosity in how the game works.”
Phoebe smiled and discarded two cards. “The queens are ugly.”
Hargreaves gave her a look of disgust. “You’re not supposed to let anyone know what cards you hold.”
“Phoebe won’t be playing, or she’d lose everything Drew ever earned. But you can learn from her anyway,” Olivia admonished. “Even if you can’t read auras, you can see that she shuffles the cards in her hand to put them in numerical order, and smiles when she draws one that fits with the others. So you don’t want to wager against her on this hand.”
“That wasn’t in the book,” the viscount grumbled.
“Which is why we’re practicing now.”
He shot her daggers and laid down his cards. “Two pair. I win.”
Olivia pointed at her stack of white buttons. “That was my signal not to wager against me.” She lay down her hand, a full house. “I need you to play with me as if we’re playing whist. And since I have advantages you don’t, you need to let me lead.”
He sank against his chair as if exhausted. “It’s witchery. It ain’t right.”
“Cheating isn’t right either,” she asserted. “And that’s what your friends have been doing.”
She could tell he didn’t like that but was grudgingly accepting that his companions had not been his friends. Teaching Hargreaves was a painful process, but Olivia was determined that he suffer through the game. She couldn’t carry it off alone as her father once had.
Of course, if the Hall’s inhabitants didn’t accept Hargreaves’ challenge, she might never have to play cards again.
Simon listened in on the practice session from his desk. Hargreaves was a stupid sot if he didn’t understand Olivia’s perfectly comprehensible instructions. Even from the little Simon had learned from Drew, he understood the need to bluff. Essentially, it was a game where liars won. She was right. He’d turn over tables rather than accept trickery.
But it gnawed at him to be excluded. At least the cottage was close by. He could take a few of his men over. . .
He started making lists.
When Drew entered later, Simon pushed one list at him. “The women can use all the hocus-pocus they like, but I want a few logical heads involved. Is there any chance you can help out?”
Drew raised his eyebrows over the list. “You want a chemist?”
“You mentioned you knew a professor who is a physician. We ought to have better evidence that Hargreaves is being poisoned and how. If you can think of anyone better?” Simon tapped his pen on his lists, ready to add names.
“Zander Dare is an aloof bastard. I don’t know if we can interest him, but I’ll try. And a photographer, why?” Drew studied the list more thoroughly.
“Because Lady Phoebe mentioned she knew one, and I thought physical evidence of the party might be used in court if it becomes necessary. We can wait until we receive a reply from the Hall. I want to be prepared. We’ll want to show who was there, that there were no mirrors or means of cheating, and that no one was being held at gunpoint.” Simon frowned at his list, knowing his request was odd.
Drew scraped his chair back. “I like the direction of your thoughts. Physical evidence to throw out the bastards would impress far more than the word of the women in court.”
“We’ll need a few reliable witnesses to provide oral evidence as well.” Simon rose from his chair, trying not to think of his lonely bed. “I don’t know if we can persuade the villains to confess to anything, but it won’t hurt to try.”
Drew grinned broadly. “This is a much better plan than swindling the bastards. We’ll ask Dare if he knows a truth serum.”
Simon laughed. “That would be dangerous. Imagine how wives could use that!”
Feeling a little better now that he had a bit of control, Simon headed up the stairs after the party broke up in the parlor. He’d like to talk to Olivia about some of his plans. He threw a longing look to her bedchamber, but he could hear Drew and Phoebe in their room, and Emma’s door was open so she could talk to Maggie. He resisted.
Instead, he climbed up to the nursery. Maybe by some fine chance. . .
But the governess’s room was empty. He checked on the children, and for once, they were all snug in their beds, although Evie appeared to be buried in kittens.
It was good to have a woman in the house, he decided. A woman would be here for household crises, while he was gadding about the mines or in Glasgow on business. He needed Olivia.
He had to prove to her that she needed him too.
He returned to his room and paced, wishing he really did have an abnormal power and could just whoosh Olivia out of her bed and into his.
“Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Glengarry looked like highwaymen,” Bertram, the new footman, declared in a rare display of delight, entering the parlor early the next afternoon.
Olivia tried not to show how much she depended on the missive in the footman’s hand. “The Hall replied?” she asked calmly, while her fingernails cut into her palm.
“The stationers wouldn’t send fresh ink when I ordered it,” Hargreaves said from his usual place by the hearth. “There was no paper either.”
Olivia read the thin scrawl across the bottom of the letter that demanded the presence of Glengarry and Ramsay at Letty’s Cottage on the morrow. Glengarry had initialed the acceptance.
It was happening. This was it.
“They don’t have debtors’ prison anymore, do they?” Hargreaves asked gloomily.
The viscount was looking stronger, she noticed with relief. Whatever poisons he’d been fed were apparently leaving his system.
She hoped maybe the near brush with death had made him grow up just a little.
To her surprise, Simon joined them at the card table for their practice a little while later.
“I won’t gamble,” he insisted. “But I want to understand what you’re aboot.” He yanked over a chair and sat between Olivia and Drew.
She wasn’t certain how to take Simon’s overpowering presence—as a lover interested in what she was doing, as a host worrying over her safety, or just a curious man. Perhaps all three, she decided as his big hand brushed hers to take the buttons. He might not even know how his presence thrilled her and disturbed her concentration.
“Do you know anything about poker?” she asked cautiously.
“Enough to know I can’t bluff.” He picked up the cards she dealt as if he’d been handling them all his life.
Warily, Olivia finished dealing the cards, observing Simon’s aura. His clear red was so rampant that she wanted to fling aside the cards and climb into his lap. But passion had its bad side, and she needed to remember it.
A Bewitching Governess Page 24