The Viscount's Deadly Game

by Issy Brooke

It came to him in a rush, then. His suspicions were correct. He almost laughed. “You are the ghost. The leaver of mysterious hoof-prints in the lawns. The walker who causes consternation among the staff and the household. The unlocker of doors that ought to be locked. You are the woman who rides at night.”

  She made a sound which might have been a giggle or a sob. “I am the woman who rides at night,” she repeated. “That sounds awfully ... romantic.”

  “And romance is what you crave. You’d run away with the Romani if you could; though I don’t think the life is what you think it is. But you’d try.”

  “Oh, no, Cecil is...”

  “Cecil is everything to you, I know,” he said to reassure her. “It shines from your face and I don’t doubt your constancy. But you want more and no one will let you have more, will they?” Everyone wants a secret, he thought, recalling Adelia’s words. “But you have a secret freedom and it must be awfully exciting. You could plod around in the daytime on a safe little pony; no one would deny you that if you asked for it. But this, this is something you do for yourself and yourself alone. Mary, I understand.”

  She looked at him then with shining eyes and said, “I thought that of all people you would be the last person to understand!”

  “I’ve been listening to everyone else and putting it all together. I am right, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are. So you don’t think me so very foolish?”

  “No more than your mother. Let me tell you of her plans, and then you will look quite sensible.” Because it was occurring to him then that he did not want Adelia to travel alone, and of all the people to accompany her, perhaps Mary was the obvious choice.

  He began to speak.

  Eighteen

  Smith had been standing at the adjoining door. When Adelia went towards it, so that she could find Theodore and tell him that she was ready to go, Smith put out her hand and stopped her. She bent her head and whispered, “My lady, your husband is in there with your daughter and I cannot hear exactly what they are saying, nor should I want to, but...”

  Adelia understood. They needed some privacy. Instead, she slipped out of the other door and into the corridor, and went to find Grace the Dowager Countess.

  When Adelia returned to Theodore about fifteen minutes later, she felt a little glum. Reality was making itself known to her. The first flush of excitement about her adventurous plans was giving way, at last, to common sense. She found that Mary was still with Theodore but they welcomed her back into the room and she didn’t feel now as if she were interrupting anything. In fact, both of them looked happy and relaxed and there was a feeling of the air having been cleared.

  She tried very hard to feel proud of them and ignored the flash of hurt at having been excluded. How petty, she told herself, and rose above it, mostly.

  She wasn’t excluded for long, anyway. Mary said, as she got to her feet to embrace Adelia, “Papa will tell you everything. It’s not that I am embarrassed – well, I am perhaps a little – but I need to put some things together for your trip.”

  “Hush! No one must know.”

  “And they shan’t. I am mistress of this house, you know. I do not need to explain myself to anyone.” With that, Mary left. Adelia turned to Theodore and said, “I am packed and ready if you would drive me to the station?”

  “I’ve sent a boy already to get a carriage ready for us.”

  “Good. But am I doing the right thing?”

  “You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you? You don’t have to go.”

  “I do. But I shall have to go alone. I did ask your mother to accompany me but she continues to suffer under this cold. She did give me a ream of addresses and contacts from her book that should give me aid every other mile of the way, however.”

  “And I asked Mary to accompany you, but...”

  “Mary! She could not possibly cope with the journey. How could you think of it?”

  Theodore smiled awkwardly and said, “Sit down, my love, and let me tell you everything.”

  He unfurled the story in his own way and Adelia had to make him backtrack and clarify certain points but by the end of it, she was aching with relief. She said, with a wry smile, “You know, she is more like me than I had realised! And I am so glad she was not having an illicit affair.”

  Theodore looked shocked at the idea. “Mary? Never! How could you have even thought that?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Not once.”

  And she saw from his face that it was true. Such a consideration had never crossed his mind and now he was looking at her as if she was the unfaithful one. “You read too many novels,” he said.

  “And I shall read a few more on this interminable journey I am about to undertake. So after all her clamouring for risk and adventure, she said she would not come with me after all?”

  “She wanted to but she also feels her place is here. There are matters she has to attend to which will risk more than she has been willing to face up until now, I suspect. It is easy enough to take a horse from the stables and ride out at night – but ...”

  “But there is Sibyl.”

  “Indeed. Her biggest challenge, I fear. Oh, did you know, Mary has been visiting the racing stables, too? That is how Sir Arthur knew her and spoke so kindly of her.”

  “Ah. And here she is now.”

  Mary came back into the room, carrying a basket with the lid tied down firmly by leather straps. “Mama, this will see you all the way to Lancaster.”

  “Thank you. Before I go, Mary, have you seen anything strange or suspicious at the racing stables?” Adelia asked. “I am interested in Golden Meadow.”

  Theodore huffed. “Why are you so interested in this horse all of a sudden? I told you – I saw him and he was a fine colt but nothing more. He may, or may not, be currently injured. Those sly hints from that reporter fellow were just his way of fishing for information. I have been reading the local papers and his stories are just fluff; he was a nobody sending me on a wild goose chase.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. I am interested because he was the cause of arguments between Sir Arthur and Lord Beaconberg, was he not?” Adelia said, still looking at her daughter.

  “He was, yes, and I never quite understood it,” Mary said. “The lad, Mackie, was most involved with the horse and its training. He didn’t want to be. For some reason he never quite got on with that particular horse.”

  “The groom did not get on with the horse?” Adelia spluttered, laughing.

  “I’m only telling you what I saw. But the horse was a prize winner and I’ve seen him; I think he should easily go on to win more races but Sir Arthur seems to be on Mackie’s side and be happy to merely let him go to stud when he’s old enough.”

  “What a waste,” Theodore said.

  “Sir Arthur knows his horses. He knows what’s best though I don’t understand it,” Mary said. “Now, mama, there is a carriage waiting but you probably should hurry.”

  A shadowy figure stepped into the door.

  “You are not going alone,” she said. “My lady.”

  “Smith!”

  Her lady’s maid crossed her arms and stared at her mistress defiantly. “And Roberts needs to come too. He has a pistol.”

  “Roberts?” Adelia looked at Mary.

  “He is one of our footmen – yes, of course you must take him, that makes perfect sense – though I want to hear all about this pistol when you get back,” she added, shooting Smith a fierce look that made Adelia smile.

  Off they hurried to the back of the house, Theodore still insisting that he at least accompany her to the station though it was going to be a tight squeeze now with the retinue that had sprung up around Adelia. She was heartily glad of it, though, and wanted to hug Smith for her forceful impropriety. Roberts, the footman, hurried out of a side door to join them. He was dressed in sober but good clothing out in the yard, not in his livery that would have marked him out, and he looked like he was sure to be a capable man in a
fight. Not that Adelia was expecting any trouble from Lady Beaconberg, but she had heard of the ruffians that roamed the moorland wastes they were to pass through, and was grateful for his presence.

  Everyone’s hastily-packed things were strapped into various parts of the carriage and then they began to load themselves. Roberts would drive it and he sat up front. Adelia was helped into the back of the carriage first, with Theodore alongside her. Smith was wedged in on the backwards-facing seat with the baskets and boxes piled up next to her. Their knees touched and everyone pretended that they didn’t.

  Mary came to the carriage door while it was still open and reached in to take her father’s hands, looking past him to where Adelia was pressed between Theodore and the other side of the carriage. But what she was about to say was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Sibyl.

  “What? You’re all leaving so soon and without even bidding a farewell?” she demanded, and her face was not its usual blankness or scornful disdain. She looked angry.

  She doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on, Adelia thought, and her surmise was proved correct. Adelia said, “Oh, no, none of us are leaving; I am merely going on a trip for a day or two and my husband is accompanying me to the station.” So much for the prepared fiction of being confined to her room with a cold, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Sibyl snapped, “But why was I not told?”

  Mary turned to her and said stiffly, “Why should you be told, Sibyl?”

  “Surely as a matter of courtesy in my – I mean, as a member of this household...” she tailed off. But everyone must have heard the almost-spoken phrase “in my house.” Adelia looked at Mary and decided that her daughter had certainly heard it.

  “You have told me, over and over, how you consider yourself to be unworthy of notice and prefer to keep yourself quietly. I respect that, Sibyl, and rest assured that I deliberately did not trouble you with this information and I shall not trouble you at any point in the future with any such information as pertains to the running of my household.” Mary turned away from Sibyl, bid the carriage occupants farewell in a manner so formal it would have done for the Queen herself, and slammed the door with an unexpected display of force. Adelia leaned forward and watched her daughter through the open window. Mary stalked past the sagging Sibyl and into the house without a backward glance.

  That argument was not over. Sibyl would not let it rest, Adelia knew.

  The carriage lurched forwards, and they were on their way.

  THEY HAD NOT GONE A mile before they were joined by Kit Greenacre of the Romani, riding alongside them on a neat little skewbald horse with a heavy head but light, feathery steps. He greeted every single one of them with the same barely-there respect, and managed to balance and steer his horse well enough that he could ride close and speak to them through the window.

  “Thursza has sent me out to find you, and I am glad to meet you before you get too far,” he told them.

  Adelia leaned across Theodore and smiled at him. Smith, opposite her, was a rigid pole thrumming with disapproval but she had to hold her tongue.

  “Thank you for all you have done,” Adelia said.

  Theodore said, “Are you absolutely sure she has gone to Lancaster?”

  Kit shook his head. “No, of course not. I can only tell you what she told us – no more and no less. She might have lied to me but I am not lying to you.”

  Smith muttered something which included the words “fortune telling” and “thieves” and “I ask you, no good will...” until Adelia quite deliberated pressed her own foot onto her maidservant’s toes. Kit caught the gist of it, and shook his head.

  “If we could really tell the future like people say, we’d never be as persecuted as we are.”

  Smith could not help herself. “There’s no smoke without fire.”

  “Smith! You are to hold your tongue,” Adelia said in shock.

  “She’s right,” Kit said. “We aren’t all saints and don’t be thinking that we are. Some of us are bad ones and some are good. To my mind that is what proves we are the same as anyone else, more than any amount of preaching this and preaching that. Don’t you think?”

  Smith glowered and looked away through the other window.

  Kit reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper with a torn edge, as if it had been pulled from a book. “There’s a few folk I know in Lancaster, religious types and charitable sorts, who might notice a rich woman coming in, a woman like Lady Beaconberg. Seek them out and ask them and you can say Thursza sent you if you need any introduction.” He passed it through to Theodore who slipped the paper to Adelia.

  “Thank you again!” she said. “If there’s anything I can do...”

  “You’ve helped our children,” he replied. “We’re forever in your debt. Go well!” With a kick to his horse’s flanks, he wheeled around and was gone before she could continue with her thanks.

  “I feel a bit off-kilter,” she said. “He has given us more than we have given him, surely?”

  “I did heal that lad of theirs,” Theodore reminded her.

  And then it came to her. “No,” she said. “You could have failed at it and the outcome would have been the same; they would have treated you with the same respect. It was only really important that you tried. You tried as if they were any other family.”

  Nineteen

  If they had used the carriage to get from York to Lancaster, the journey would have taken around three days, even with changing horses at coaching inns. But with the railway network now infiltrating its tendrils into every corner of the British Isles, the main problem they faced was how to work out their journey and make the right connections using the huge books of timetables that were frequently published and updated. Theodore left a large sum of money with Adelia so that they could travel in relative comfort, though the footman Roberts was uncomfortable being with Adelia and Smith and insisted on travelling in a second class railway carriage instead. Starting their trip so late in the day meant that they did not reach Lancaster until mid-afternoon the day after they had left. Yet if Lady Beaconberg was intending to ride all the way, then now Adelia and her group were ahead of her.

  But Adelia doubted that Lady Beaconberg would do that. Such a journey, undertaken on horseback and alone, would be hazardous, uncomfortable and deeply unlikely for any single woman and for Lady Beaconberg it was almost impossible. Adelia put herself in Lady Beaconberg’s rather expensive shoes, and imagined that she would have ridden away in disguise on the travellers’ horse until she was in a town where she would not be recognised. There, surely, she would revert to her true persona or perhaps something very close but with an assumed name, and continue her journey in more comfort. She was likely to have taken the train herself; she’d have been silly not to. And that meant she could already be in Lancaster. Adelia kept alert as they stood on the station platform, and instructed Roberts and Smith to be likewise ready at all times.

  While the two servants supervised the loading of the baggage onto a hand-cart, Adelia consulted her lists of contacts. She decided to use Grace’s names first, as being more likely to welcome them in, but she would use Kit Greenacre’s scribbled list as a way to begin looking specifically for Lady Beaconberg. Grace had written down everyone she knew in Lancaster, along with a few notes about their family, situation, and status. One had an asterisk by their name and the details were underlined. Adelia steered them all out of the station and into the busy streets of Lancaster, found the first respectable inn that she could, and gave Smith and Roberts some money so they could buy themselves food. She herself engaged a small private room in the inn, ordered a meal, and set about penning a letter of introduction to the Right Honourable Mrs Cholmondeley.

  OH, THE NETWORK OF the great and the good folk of England – more importantly, the network of their wives – was a wondrous thing when it worked, and Adelia gave thanks to a higher power that things were indeed working in her favour. Mrs Cholmondeley was the same age as the Dowager C
ountess and in much more frail health, but she was firmly insistent in her genuine offer of help. Within hours, all three of the travellers were ensconced in rooms in the Cholmondeley’s large house in the very centre of Lancaster, and Adelia had told the older woman absolutely everything. Mrs Cholmondeley was not as thrilled by the idea of adventure as Grace had been, but she was happy to help in any way that she could.

  “I myself have heard nothing of this Lady Beaconberg but there is a dinner party tomorrow night, being held by my good friend Lady Cooper, and I can certainly inveigle you an invitation; my son will escort you. He is a man of the cloth and perfectly respectable, and widowed, and welcome anywhere. Lady Cooper’s parties are large and relatively informal.” Here, Mrs Cholmondeley gave the barest hint of a disapproving sniff. “Very modern, in fact, but that will surely work to your advantage in this case. I shall write immediately on your behalf.”

  “Thank you.” While Adelia poured out her gratitude, Mrs Cholmondeley dashed off a note to her friend and had it sent via a footman. They were barely on their third cup of tea when a reply came in the affirmative, and all was set.

  Adelia sat up late that night, and wondered how to go about the city the next morning, and what she was going to say to Lady Beaconberg when she did find her. She imagined a scenario where Roberts had to restrain her and Smith had to run for the police, and all eyes would be upon them as a public scene played out, and she cringed and bit her lip, and did not get a restful night of sleep at all.

  SHE MADE UP HER MIND to start with the list of names that had come to her from Thursza via Kit Greenacre, and to her relief both Smith and Roberts agreed with her decision. She was not sure what she would have done if they had disagreed, and she had had her doubts about Smith letting her take advice from a Romani, but evidently the maid saw sense at last. She was glad because she needed them both.

  Mrs Cholmondeley was less inclined to agree, which Adelia saw at once before she had gone very far in outlining her day’s plans; there was a distinct curl to Mrs Cholmondeley’s lip as she listened to Adelia. Adelia obscured the rest of her designs with polite small talk and left the house as soon as she could.