September Awakening

by Merry Farmer

  “I’m never going to be able to keep all these names straight,” Marigold sighed.

  Lavinia kept silent. Her suspicions had only mounted since Lord Shayles’s team—or rather, Dr. Maqsood’s team—had begun to bat. She’d only seen three of their players face the best bowlers Mr. Croydon had been able to find in the village, but it was plain to see that every one of the Indian sailors was good. Very good.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured as Mr. Pusuluri smacked another ball out into the field. It hit the ground short of the boundary, but rolled swiftly over the rope before Rupert could chase after it.

  “Four,” Mr. Bondar called from the wicket, waving his arm in the gesture indicating the runs. Miss Pennington raised a hand to acknowledge the signal, then scribbled in her scorebook.

  “What doesn’t make sense?” Lady Stanhope asked, her face set in a scowl.

  “How good they are,” Lavinia answered. “How easily Lord Shayles was able to find such skilled players.” And how Dr. Maqsood was involved.

  “Cheating, that’s how Shayles found them,” Lady Stanhope grumbled. “Clearly he had this match in mind before he even showed up at Broadclyft Hall.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Lavinia whispered.

  The final ball of the over was thrown with no runs, and Mr. Bondar called, “Over.” The players on the field mulled around as a new bowler was selected and the umpires switched sides.

  “No wonder Shayles was so confident about the game from the start,” Marigold said with a sigh. “He’s going to win.”

  “We have to do something before it’s too late,” Lady Stanhope said. “I’m going to find a way to steal that letter.”

  Marigold reached out a hand to stop her. “There’s no point. Shayles has the letter with him.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Lavinia said. She blinked as her thoughts began to spin. “He gave the letter to Miss Pennington for safe keeping before the match started.” Lady Stanhope and Marigold stared at her. Lavinia nodded to the scorer’s table. “See? It’s sitting right out in the open, next to Miss Pennington’s pencils.”

  They all turned to look. Sure enough, the incriminating letter sat near the corner of the table, the sunlight shining off the whiteness of the stationery.

  Lady Stanhope hummed. “The best place to keep something you don’t want to be stolen is in plain sight with a crowd of witnesses, I suppose.”

  “Shayles will notice if it’s suddenly missing,” Marigold agreed with a frown.

  “Still, Bianca and Natalia keep pestering Miss Pennington about the score,” Lady Stanhope went on. “I suppose I could have one of them snatch it.”

  “But Shayles would still notice it’s missing,” Marigold said. “And it’s not as though there are many people around who would be motivated to take it.”

  The only sign that Lady Stanhope agreed with Marigold was her frustrated grunt. “What on earth possessed those men to write their sins in a letter that could be stolen?”

  “Gladstone, if I remember correctly,” Marigold said. “I wish I’d never penned the thing for them.”

  Lavinia’s eyes popped open. She’d forgotten Marigold was the one who physically wrote the letter, but as her memory was jogged, an idea took hold in her. “I know how we can get the letter,” she said, shocked that the plan forming in her brain was so simple.

  Lady Stanhope and Marigold turned to her. “How?” Lady Stanhope asked.

  Lavinia stopped herself from answering. There were too many people around for her to blurt out such a sensitive plan. It didn’t help that part of her was still convinced the letter itself was just a decoy for something much bigger and more sinister.

  “I have to run up to the house for a moment,” she said, turning and starting off.

  “Could I fetch something for you, my lady?” Les asked, stepping over to join her and proving that someone was listening to the entire conversation at the same time.

  Lavinia nearly told the young man that she didn’t need his help, but her sense that everything was wrong had grown too strong. “I’d appreciate someone to accompany me back to the house, since no one is there,” she said in the end.

  “Yes, my lady.” Les nodded.

  “Lavinia, what’s this all about?” Marigold asked as Lavinia walked away.

  “You’ll see,” she called over her shoulder.

  As she hurried away from the cricket pitch, she spotted Armand watching her from the field. His look was full of questions, but there wasn’t time for him to do anything about it. A ball came sailing his way, forcing him to concentrate on the game. It was all for the best. If he’d realized what she was about to do, he would probably have tried to stop her.

  The minutes seemed to speed by, filling Lavinia with a sense that she was moving too slowly, as she and Les hurried back to the house.

  “Is there something I can get for you?” Les asked as he held the front door open for Lavinia to speed through.

  “No, I just need to fetch something from my dressing room,” she answered.

  She picked up her skirts and bolted up the stairs. By the time she made it to her dressing room, she was flushed and winded with sweat trickling down her back, but she knew exactly what she needed. She rushed to the small writing desk that had been in her dressing room before the maids had unpacked her things. Tucked away in one of the slots was a letter she’d received from Marigold the day everyone had arrived at Broadclyft Hall. Marigold had written the letter the day Lavinia and Armand had left Winterberry Park, apologizing for the madness that had led to her marriage. But it wasn’t the content of the letter that mattered, it was the stationery. It was exactly the same as what the incriminating letter was written on.

  “Do you have what you need, my lady?” Les asked when Lavinia rushed back out into the hall.

  “Yes, I think I do. We need to hurry back to the pitch,” she answered.

  Lavinia clasped Marigold’s letter to her stomach, cursing the fact that she didn’t have a pocket to hide it in. The jog back to the cricket pitch was ten times more stressful than the one up to the house, especially when they returned to the pitch only to find that the game had just broken for tea. Instead of having a field full of distracted men and all the spectators watching the game, everyone was milling about, helping themselves to the finger sandwiches she’d had Mrs. Piper make up. Worse still, a cluster of Shayles’s players huddled around the scorer’s table, glancing over Miss Pennington’s shoulder to check the score.

  “Wait for me to add everything up,” Miss Pennington was in the middle of scolding them as Lavinia approached the table. “I can’t do the arithmetic with you lot hanging over my shoulder. Back up, please.”

  Lavinia squeezed her way along the table to the corner where the incriminating letter was. Her hands shook around her own letter. She pretended to be interested in the scorebook while madly searching for a way to switch the two letters.

  “I said back up, please,” Miss Pennington said in an irritated voice. “Give me just a moment.”

  “Do you need assistance?”

  At first, Lavinia thought the question was directed to Miss Pennington. But it was spoken in far too soft a tone and right by her side. She peeked to the side, then gasped and nearly jumped out of her skin when she found Lord Gatwick standing almost flush beside her. His eyes didn’t hold the usual vacant look of disinterest he usually wore. Instead, he stared hard at her with deadly seriousness.

  “I…um…I was just….” Lavinia’s voice shook.

  Without blinking, Lord Gatwick reached for the letter on the table, drawing it to the side. The letter slipped off the table and fell into the grass. “Oh, I do beg your pardon.” He squatted, tugging Lavinia’s skirt.

  Working on instinct alone, Lavinia squatted with him. Her voluminous skirt and the crush of eager players hid them from view. Without words, Lord Gatwick plucked the letter from Lavinia’s hands, opened the envelope to remove the contents, then did the same with the incrimina
ting letter. He stuffed Marigold’s letter of apology into the envelope addressed to Gladstone and Gladstone’s letter into Marigold’s envelope. Then he stood and placed the envelope addressed to Gladstone back on the table. Lavinia jerked straight along with him, her eyes wide.

  “Please forgive my carelessness, cousin,” he said once they were both standing straight, the switched letter sitting on the table exactly as it had been before. “We are cousins now, I believe?”

  Lavinia was well beyond speech. She simply gaped at Lord Gatwick, desperate to figure out whose side he was on.

  “Keep a close eye on your husband during the second innings,” Lord Gatwick went on. “I hear Dr. Maqsood has some devilishly clever tactics he wishes to employ on the field. I’ve heard his fielding skills are as sharp as a knife, and attempting to score against them is murder.”

  Lavinia gasped, crushing Marigold’s letter against her stomach.

  “I should like to become better acquainted with you at some point, cousin,” Lord Gatwick said, resuming his bored tone. “Though I have no wish to return to Broadclyft Hall in any capacity any time soon, no matter what my friends might want me to do.”

  In a flash, everything came together in Lavinia’s mind. She’d been right all along. Lord Shayles didn’t want the letter, he wanted Broadclyft Hall, or at least he wanted Lord Gatwick to inherit it. But the only way he could do that was if Armand was dead. And if her interpretation of Lord Gatwick’s message was accurate, Dr. Maqsood could be involved not in a plot to take Armand away to India, but to murder him, something that would have been easy to do once Armand was on a ship bound for foreign shores.

  “Thank you, Lord Gatwick,” she whispered, her throat hoarse. “I must return to my friends now.”

  Lord Gatwick nodded once, then turned and marched toward the table where tea was being served. Lavinia darted instantly away from the table, looking for Lady Stanhope and Marigold. She stuffed Marigold’s envelope with the letter to Gladstone into the waistband of her skirt, praying that would be enough to conceal it until she could destroy it. She looked for Armand as well. He had to be warned that Dr. Maqsood was in league with Lord Shayles and that his life was potentially in danger.

  But she stopped short halfway to the benches where Armand’s team was preparing for their innings at bat. Lord Malcolm sat on one bench, his face contorted into a grimace as Armand knelt in front of him, testing his knee. From where she stood, Lavinia could barely make out his question of, “Does that hurt?” as he manipulated Lord Malcolm’s knee in a variety of ways.

  “Like bloody hell,” Lord Malcolm grumbled in reply. “I shouldn’t have stretched for that catch.”

  “What catch?” Armand said. “As I recall, you dropped the ball.”

  Lord Malcolm muttered a string of expletives that had Lavinia’s brows racing toward her hairline, but Armand merely laughed and said, “I’ll bind this, but you’ll have to have a runner when it’s your turn at bat.”

  He reached for a small medical kit that Lavinia hadn’t noticed sitting in the grass, took out a rolled bandage, and began to wrap it around Lord Malcolm’s knee. The way Armand worked, with such care and expertise, left Lavinia’s heart aching. India might have been a ruse on Lord Shayles’s part to do away with Armand so that the Helm title would pass to Lord Gatwick, but that was irrelevant. Armand was a doctor. He was meant to practice medicine, no matter what.

  “Lady Helm, can I help you?”

  Lavinia snapped out of her thoughts as Mr. Croydon walked up beside her, a cup of tea in each hand. He was heading toward Armand and Lord Malcolm, so Lavinia walked with him.

  “Yes, actually,” she said, keeping her voice down and darting a glance from side to side to make sure they weren’t overheard. “In fact, I believe I need your help desperately. Or at least Armand does.”

  They’d drawn close enough to Armand and Lord Malcolm that both men heard her statement. Armand finished with Lord Malcolm’s bandage and stood. “Lavinia, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  Lavinia glanced back over her shoulder, looking for Lord Gatwick. He stood in a group with Lord Shayles, Dr. Maqsood, and a few others. They looked as though they were plotting strategy for the second half of the game, but Lavinia suspected they were planning much more. She turned her attention back to her husband and his friends.

  “Armand, I believe your life is in danger,” she said, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard.

  “In danger?” Armand shook his head. “If I’ve avoided injury while out on the field, I’ll hardly be in danger while batting.”

  “No.” Lavinia started to reach out, intending to lay a hand on his arm, but stopped. The confused frown on her husband’s face said that he wouldn’t believe what she had to say. Regardless, she pushed on. “I don’t know how or why, exactly, but I have reason to believe Dr. Maqsood intends to kill you.”

  Lord Malcolm snorted and shook his head. “His team may clobber ours, but we’ve got far more to worry about where that letter is concerned.”

  “You don’t understand,” Lavinia said, her voice a desperate hiss. “He’s working with Lord Shayles somehow. I…I think they’ve known each other longer than Lord Shayles told me they did.”

  “When did you speak to Shayles?” Armand asked, alarmed. “Were you alone with him? Did he try to hurt you?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past the bastard,” Lord Malcolm growled.

  “No, listen to me.” Lavinia’s exasperation was growing by the second. “Lord Gatwick hinted to me that Dr. Maqsood has murderous intent where you are concerned, Armand. He suggested that Lord Shayles wants you dead so that he will inherit Broadclyft Hall and presumably use it to finance Lord Shayles.”

  All three men exchanged doubtful glances. Mr. Croydon looked embarrassed by the situation, and Lord Malcolm was doing a poor job of hiding his condescension. Armand rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Lord Gatwick may be my cousin, but he’s Shayles’s friend. You can’t believe a word he says.”

  “And you certainly can’t believe anything Shayles says,” Lord Malcolm added.

  “Exactly.” Lavinia was close to stomping her foot over the stubbornness of the men around her. “Which is why you can’t believe him when he says he only met Dr. Maqsood last night.”

  “Lavinia,” Armand sighed, his frown etched deep. “I don’t doubt every word that has come out of Shayles’s mouth since he got here is a lie. I would be willing to believe there is a connection between him and Dr. Maqsood as well, given the right evidence. But you can’t simply murder someone at a cricket match and get away scot-free.”

  “You think I’m making this all up,” she said, beyond hurt. Try though she did to find a way to hold her own and be close to her stranger of a husband at the same time, she was beginning to feel as though she would never succeed. He would always be a stranger to her.

  “I don’t think you’re making it up, sweeting,” he said, resting a hand on her arm. “But I do think you may have mistaken things. Gatwick can’t be trusted any more than Shayles.”

  “Dr. Maqsood is trying to kill you, and he’s involved with Lord Shayles,” Lavinia said, no longer caring how far-fetched the story sounded. Good sense told her she should bring up the letter and specifics of how Lord Gatwick had helped her, but simple, sharp hurt destroyed any faith she had that Armand would believe her. “You need to be on guard. If you won’t listen to me, then at least be vigilant.”

  “Of course I will, but—”

  Lavinia didn’t stay to listen to his excuses. She turned and marched off. If Armand and his friends wouldn’t heed her for their own good, then she had to find her friends. They, at least, would believe her. They would be up against impossible odds, as women and as mere spectators to the game, but they had to do something to foil Lord Shayles for good.

  * * *

  Armand watched Lavinia storm off, feeling worse than ever. Once again, he’d said all the wrong things and flubbed the situation beyond measure. At the same time, he cou
ldn’t shake the possibility that she might have been right. He turned away from where Lavinia was marching toward Katya and Marigold to look for Dr. Maqsood and Shayles. When he spotted them chatting away, not at all like strangers, he rubbed a hand over his face.

  “Did you bring that for me?” Malcolm asked, taking the spare cup of tea Alex held.

  “I brought it for Armand, actually, but by all means, help yourself,” Alex grumbled. He, too, had turned to stare at Shayles, Maqsood, and Gatwick. “Do you think there could be any truth in what Lavinia said?” he asked.

  Armand answered, “I don’t see how it would be possible to kill someone during a cricket match with a crowd looking on.”

  Alex glanced sideways at him. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t believe her.”

  Armand didn’t know how to answer. He kept an eye on Dr. Maqsood as Bondar announced that there were five minutes left for tea before the second innings would begin. Maqsood eventually noticed him staring, and as a result, stepped away from Shayles and Gatwick to make his way around the edge of the pitch.

  Armand steadied himself, no idea what to make of Dr. Maqsood’s approach. Was he the assassin Lavinia seemed to think he could be or was he a colleague intent on helping him pursue his dreams?

  “Strange, isn’t it?” Maqsood asked once he was close.

  “Strange?” Armand asked, on his guard.

  Maqsood was all smiles, completely at ease. Not at all like a murderer. “That the first time we meet in person, it should be on opposite sides.”

  Armand forced himself into a friendly laugh. “It is strange indeed.” His mind went blank. There had to be something he could say, some way to assess Maqsood’s true intent.

  “Mayo Hospital is so looking forward to having you,” Dr. Maqsood went on before Armand could think. “The situation in India is dire. Cholera and malaria do so much damage, and that’s without the ravages of poverty. A man like you could do so much.”

  “That’s the thing, sir,” Armand began, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s been impressed upon me that I could do much here as well. And I’m newly married.”