“Miss West.” I bowed over Hyperia’s hand for the benefit of the lady’s maid hovering in the doorway. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me down to breakfast?”
“I would. I’m famished, and Crumpet can’t get rid of me fast enough. She has designs on the remains of my tea tray.”
Crumpet, a well-rounded, red-haired soul who looked to be of an age with Hyperia, tried to appear affronted. “Miss, I would never.”
The twinkle in her eye said she did, regularly. Crumpet and I would get on famously, should the need ever arise.
“Good food shouldn’t go to waste,” Hyperia said, joining me in the corridor. “I’ll probably have a lie-down after lunch, Crumpy, but the morning is your own. Get off your feet, flirt with the footmen, commiserate with the maids.”
Hyperia moved off down the corridor, and I caught up with her where the east wing joined the central façade.
“Crumpy heard some interesting gossip in the servants’ hall.”
“All the best gossip is belowstairs, according to my mother. You look none the worse for your ordeal.” Hyperia looked a little pale, but composed. Her dark chestnut hair was in a plain bun, and her dress was chocolate brown and hemmed for walking.
“I had nightmares,” she muttered, peering in all directions. “But then, Lord Longacre’s dairyman apparently chose this week to separate the calves from their mamas. I doubt anybody got much rest for all the bovine bawling coming from the home farm.”
“I was more distracted by all the banging bedroom doors.” The house party was off to a lively start in that regard. “I did go back to the summer cottage last night and have a look around. From what I could see, your assailant was one man, good-sized, as you said. He moved off at a steady sprint, suggesting he wasn’t too far into his cups, and he knew exactly where he was going. He had sense enough to dart onto a gravel walkway at the first opportunity, and that put paid to my tracking skills.”
“He wasn’t trying to compromise me,” Hyperia said, starting down the corridor. “That’s something.”
I remained where I was. “Perry, you’re going the wrong direction. The main staircase is the other way.”
She stopped but didn’t rejoin me. “Maybe I want the maids’ stairs.”
Oh, no, she did not. “Repeat after me,” I said, approaching her until she was close enough to grasp by the shoulders if need be. “You were startled by wildlife darting past you on the path, probably a fox out hunting to feed her pups. You felt something brush against your skirts. A stray dog is possible, or a barn cat on the lookout for mice and squirrels. The path is shaded, so even under a full moon you could not see anything but waving foliage.”
She waited for my lecture to end. “I remembered something else.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“A whiff of honey, Jules. It makes no sense.”
I thought back to the previous night’s menu. “Was honey available at the buffet? A honey glaze on the ham or a honey garnish on a fruit compote?”
“I can’t recall, but Crumpy mentioned that Cook set out honey in the servants’ hall along with butter for the morning porridge, and that sparked my recollection.”
I offered my arm, and Hyperia took it, in her tentative, barely touching fashion.
“You don’t have to be so careful with me,” I said. “I can manage an escort’s duties, provided you don’t titter.”
Her touch remained as light as a wish. “I correspond with your sisters, Jules. I know what your gallantry costs you. I wanted to take a breakfast tray in my room, but that would have been more work for the staff and cowardly.”
Ouch. “That would have been understandable. Remember, though, that your attacker wants to take a tray in his room this morning as well. He bungled badly, grabbed the wrong woman, or grabbed a woman he should never have touched. He’ll be nervous, wondering how much you saw clearly, how much you’ve told anybody. He might brace you on the topic himself, all the while oozing concern on your behalf. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you might catch him out.”
“You’ll speak to Maybelle? If he mistook me for her, she might know something relevant.”
“I cannot approach Maybelle directly,” I said as we reached the top of the main staircase. “Her father caught me looking in on Atlas this morning and all but told me to gather up my effects. I am here on sufferance until your dear brother shows up. But for my ducal connection, I’d be sent packing with a flea in my ear. I agreed to slink away to be a disgrace anywhere else as soon as Healy arrives.”
I did not blame Lord Longacre for repelling boarders, but being an outcast was tiresome. No insult society could deal me compared with the burden of shame and bewilderment I dragged with me everywhere.
What had I told the French? I had no recollection of telling them anything. The memories I did have made less sense the longer I considered them. The French capitaine pouring me a glass of wine and consoling me on the loss of my so-brave brother. The postern gate ever so casually left unlocked… An opportunity intended to justify shooting me as I escaped, surely, but then, why not simply execute me for the fool I was? None of it made any sense.
“How do you stand it?” Hyperia murmured as we rounded the landing. “Everybody staring, everybody thinking they know something about you.”
“All they know, Hyperia, is that you were startled, and that much is certainly true. Tell me about the other guests.”
“Lady Ophelia is the better source for that information. She knows all of polite society and is related to half the peerage. She’s great friends with Mrs. Pickton-Thyme and the third of their trio—Miss Maria Cleary—is also among the guests, though I’ve yet to see her.”
Lady Ophelia was related to me, as it happened, a cousin at several removes on the wrong side of the blanket, a variety of cavorting that had apparently been all the rage in her day.
“I am angry with Ophelia,” I said. “She did not warn me you’d be here.”
We reached the bottom of the steps and were in the soaring front foyer. Ancestors variously scowled or smiled down at us from life-size portraits, potted ferns bobbed gently in an unseen breeze, and even a whisper would echo off the marble and plaster surfaces.
Hyperia leaned close. “Ophelia did not warn me either, but perhaps she did us a favor. It’s good to see you, Jules.”
What was I to say to that? To be confronted with Hyperia in person confused me. The sight of her was pleasing—she looked well, I was fond of her, I wished her every happiness—but also disconcerting. She was of my past, a happier past that I should have appreciated when it had been my present.
What came out of my mouth? “Let’s find the breakfast parlor, and if you can invite Miss Longacre for a stroll in the kitchen garden, I will contrive to join you.” I walked off in the opposite direction from where I knew the library to be.
Hyperia fell in step beside me. “The kitchen garden?”
I’d scouted the terrain in the misty dawn, old instincts prompting my reconnaissance. “Behind and attached to the orangery. I’d put it at about four acres enclosed by eight-foot walls. Out of sight of the house, free of guests. You can get to it from a door in the orangery as well as through several doors in the garden walls. Please contrive to stroll the orangery about ten of the clock with Miss Longacre and duck into the kitchen garden when nobody’s watching. Stick to the east wall if possible, where there will still be shade.”
A burst of laughter from down the corridor and the scent of bacon and toast suggested our destination lay just ahead.
“You were very good at reconnaissance, weren’t you, Jules?”
“I was born to observe and report. One develops the skills of necessity as a younger sibling.” A younger sibling who’d known from a tender age that he was different from his brothers and sisters, and not in a good way. I still did not know who my father was, though I had my suspicions.
“Do you miss it?”
We were just outside the door of the breakfast parlor, and like Hyperia, I wasn’t looking forward to the meal. Everybody staring, everybody thinking they know something about you. Because I was focused on girding my mental loins for another gauntlet of stares and whispers, Hyperia’s question took me unaware.
“Miss the military?” I asked slowly.
“The military, and the task—gather intelligence on the enemy without him knowing you’re about it. Give the generals any edge you can find, be alert to every opportunity. I abhor all the risks you took, but it must have been exciting.”
With her, I could be honest. “I have never felt so alive, Hyperia. I suspect the same is true for most soldiers. Many of us were destined for quiet, ordinary lives, but for a few years, we made a difference. Because I could ride like hell, and because Harry had chosen reconnaissance, I slipped into a role where I could make a substantial contribution. To have failed in that role… To say I am ashamed is the monarch of all understatements.”
And just beneath the shame was incredulity. I had loved the whole business, the danger and daring, the disguises and details, and the hard riding and the hope. How could I, who’d excelled for the first time in my life, have made such a hash of the one job I was born to do?
“Come in, you two!” Lady Ophelia called. “Stop lurking in the corridor, or the locusts will consume all the chocolate.”
Hyperia took me by the arm quite firmly. “I do not care for chocolate, my lady,” she said, politely hauling me through the doorway. “And the last I heard, when it comes to chocolate, you will go to any lengths for first crack at the pot. My lord, I am in the mood for eggs, if you’d fix me a plate?”
She beamed gracious good cheer at the guests seated at the table, bobbed a curtsey at Lady Longacre sitting at the end, and parted from me at the groaning sideboard. The footman Canny had drawn guard duty, and while he did not exactly smile at me, he gave me the barest nod in greeting.
A breach of protocol, that, and I liked him for it.
Ever one to follow orders, I bowed to my hostess, took up a plate, and heaped it with fluffy eggs redolent of cheese and chives. I added a fat slice of bacon and two croissants before setting those offerings before Hyperia.
“Perfect. Fetch the same for yourself,” she said, whisking a table napkin across her lap. “And a fresh pot of tea as well. Fine weather always puts an appetite on me. Somebody remind me—when is the archery tournament?”
Though I felt all eyes upon me as I filled my own plate, I knew that impression to be my overactive imagination at work. Yes, I was a curiosity, but less so with each passing hour, and Hyperia’s brush with a fox—it must have been a fox, Lady Longacre opined, such sly creatures, foxes—had diverted attention from me. I collected a full teapot from those swaddled in linen on the sideboard and bent low to place it before Hyperia’s plate.
“Thank you, my lord. Do have a seat. Your eggs will get cold.”
I obeyed, but first I lingered a moment to whisper in her ear, “I’ve missed you too.” Then I took my assigned seat at her side and set to work on breakfast.
After Hyperia demolished a breakfast that would have done a gunnery sergeant proud, she prevailed upon Miss Longacre to serve as her guide on an exploration of the grounds. Miss Longacre acquiesced graciously and declared a need to change into boots the better to fulfill her assigned office.
I finished my tea and wrestled with the realization that Mayfair could effect as great a change on a person as the military could. When had darling little Perry grown devious? Why had she learned the same deceptive arts that I had relied upon in Spain?
She had chatted up Miss Ellison on her right and the notably vague and elderly Miss Cleary on her left. Miss Cleary, a contemporary of Ophelia’s, might have been twenty years Godmama’s senior. Her face was that lined, her voice that whispery.
Hyperia had coaxed a smile from the old dear, and that had clearly pleased Ophelia as well.
“You up for a stroll?” Ormstead asked as I took my leave of the breakfast parlor. “I don’t suggest we impose ourselves on the ladies, but I always like to have a look at the particulars of a well-run estate.”
“I appreciate the invitation, but the day is proving fantastically bright. I’d best limit my outdoor activities to shady places admired from behind my tinted spectacles.” I took said specs out of my pocket and affixed them to my nose.
“So wear your eyeglasses, and we’ll find a bridle path to wander.” Ormstead’s pace down the corridor was leisurely, while I needed to march quick time. “If I don’t move about, I will fall asleep. Summer nights are too short by half when a fellow is up playing cards until all hours. I don’t suppose you box.”
“I have—had—two older brothers. Of course I learned a few basics, but I don’t fancy appearing at lunch with a shiner. I’m for the kitchen.”
Ormstead pretended to admire a gilt-framed landscape that was probably Makepeace before Capability Brown had hacked down ancient hedgerows and diverted the stream so it flowed through the park and brought the deer along with it.
“We just had breakfast,” Ormstead said. “Why the kitchen?”
“Because I want to know if honey was on last night’s menu.”
Ormstead scowled at me. “Word is you left a few of your wits in France. Whyever this interest in honey?”
That was the second slight to my mental faculties in the space of two hours. Those barbs bit deeper than either Longacre or Ormstead could know.
“I left a brother in France,” I said, “but my wits remain generally accounted for. Miss West recalled the scent of honey about her attacker.”
Ormstead turned in the direction of the conservatory. “Honey? Are there fragrances blended to evoke the aroma of honey?”
“Honey evokes the aroma of honey. If there was a fruit compote swimming in honey, a honey glaze on the ham, I want to know who consumed those items, who might have ended up with a smear of honey on his cuff.” Besides any and every footman.
“The grilled fowl was marinaded in honey,” Ormstead said, opening the door to the conservatory and letting out a humid, earthy breeze. “Very good it was too. Honey tenderizes meat, apparently, and keeps it moist. A camp cook told me that.”
“Do you recall any other honey on the buffet?”
“No, but I wouldn’t. I made a flying pass before Lady Ophelia could dragoon me into playing her cicisbeo, or Lady Longacre could match me up with her spinster cousin. I snatched what looked good and ducked behind the potted lemons, where I found you.”
“Lady Ophelia can be good company.” Self-absorbed, but good company. Sometimes.
“Lady Ophelia can be very friendly,” Ormstead retorted. “One doesn’t know whether to admire such stamina at her age or light out for Bristol before she imposes on one’s gallant nature. A footman told me this is the best place to nap during the day. I was up a bit too late losing my shirt at whist.”
“I noticed that Mendel Cleary is among the guests. Try not to oppose him at cards.” I’d crossed paths in Spain with his younger brother, a jolly, stout fellow, who had held a poor opinion of the oldest sibling kicking his heels back in Merry Olde.
Ormstead bounced onto the sofa and promptly stretched out. “Mr. Mendel Cleary? Funny you should mention his name. I’m down two pounds six to him. Remind me to go easy on the brandy when the hour grows late. I deserve to lose if I’m trying to play cards when sozzled.”
And Cleary had no doubt refilled Ormstead’s glass generously and often. “Set yourself a budget and stick to it,” I said. “Once you’ve lost your limit, get up, plead a headache, fatigue, a pressing need to water the hydrangeas, but do not sit down at the table again. Once you sit and the cards are dealt, it’s nearly impossible to get free, and then you are kicking your heels in Rome with the rest of the remittance men.”
Harry had delivered that sermon to me upon the occasion of my going up to university, and he’d been right.
“Yes, Auntie Julian. Good luck with your honey inquiry. That fowl was delicious. You will be hard-pressed to find a guest who didn’t enjoy a few bites of it. Now that I’ve spared you a trip belowstairs, where are you off to?”
To fetch my hat, because I wasn’t about to venture forth with merely my spectacles for protection.
“I need to send a note to Town. If I’m to tarry here for a day or two, I’ll want some fresh clothes.” I’d brought sufficient clothing with me for a few days, but Ormstead didn’t need to know that. I had yet to see my luggage, and was managing on what I’d stashed in my saddlebags.
“Borrow from me if needs must,” Ormstead said, cramming a pillow behind his head and crossing his arms. “We’re of a height, though you could use more meat on your bones. Any particular reason I should avoid Cleary?”
“Instinct and experience. I’m none too fond of Lord Brimstock either.”
“Fucking popinjay, that one, and I do mean fucking.” Ormstead sat up and pulled off his boots, then resumed his supine posture. “Maybe Lady Ophelia should sort him out.”
“Don’t be distasteful. Lady Ophelia has standards.” Though what they were, I could never be too sure. Her ladyship had assisted with the guest list, after all, and there sat Cleary and Brimstock among the bachelors, and rather near the top of the list as eligible fellows went. Both were comely enough and of adequate pedigree and means. So was Sir Thomas, come to that.
And popular opinion hadn’t convicted any of them of treason, always a point in a fellow’s favor. “I’ll leave you to your beauty sleep.”
“Mmph.”
I hadn’t gone two yards from the conservatory door when Lady Ophelia sang out from the direction of the breakfast parlor.
“Halloo! Julian, my boy! Help an old lady up the steps, if you please.”
“I happen to be going that direction myself. My lady, good morning.” I did not offer my arm, but instead gestured toward the stairs. “I trust you slept well?”
“With all those poor calves calling for their mamas the livelong night? Lady Longacre was tempted to send his lordship to sleep in the hayloft for that bit of folly. It’s even odds whether the under-steward or farmer will be sacked for terrible timing.”
“Tonight might not be much quieter, and tomorrow night only a marginal improvement. If Longacre bred some fall calves, he would not have to be as precipitous about weaning his spring heifers.”
“You should tell him that,” Ophelia said, pausing on the landing to pat my lapel. “Or perhaps not.”
“I vote not. Why are Cleary and Brimstock here, Godmama? They both have tiresome bad habits.”
“Now, now. Mustn’t be jealous. They are easy on the eye, solvent, and from good family. Cleary just needs a wife to settle him down. Then too, I so wanted Maria to have a little outing. She was least in sight during the Season, and she does not look well to me. Not well at all. Breakfast exhausted her, and she hardly ate a thing. Brimstock is mostly flirtation.”
Aunt preferred Saxon coloring, and Brimstock—Broomstick to his familiars, for exceedingly vulgar reasons—and Cleary were both about six feet tall, blond, and muscular. In another life and with less social standing, they’d have been in demand as footmen.
“Cleary cheats at cards,” I said. “Brimstock will cheat on his wife and his mistress both.”
“One cannot cheat on a mistress, Julian. Don’t be absurd.”
The fair courtesans of Mayfair likely saw the matter differently. “So you added Brimstock and Cleary to the guest list for aesthetic reasons?”
“I added Cleary because I could not expect Maria to get here without her nephew’s assistance. She never did marry, and of her three nephews, Mendel is devoted to her.”
Ophelia stopped at the top of the steps, hand on the newel post in a posture that was to evoke my concern for a frail, aging woman struggling valiantly to guard her dignity.
Hah. “Mendel would do well to marry a viscount’s daughter,” I said. “The ancient gentry like to pretend that theirs is the bluest blood, but I’d bet Mendel covets a title as desperately as any cit ever did.”
“Maybelle Longacre did not acquit herself well in Town,” Ophelia said, moving off down the corridor. “She didn’t exert herself to be charming. She’s a bit too headstrong, too… plainspoken. Not in words, but she’d fail to smile at a gentleman’s on dit and forget to thank him for standing up with her. I don’t judge the girl for being unimpressed with the Town whirl, but her unwillingness to play the game limits her options.”
There was the godmother who’d told me to apply myself to my Latin studies, but to leave expertise in Greek to Harry. The godmother who’d explained to me that even if I didn’t care for strong drink, I had to learn how to appear as if I did. Her gems of wisdom had been hidden among much prattle and self-indulgence, but she’d been an asset to my younger self.
“Then you are looking for a crooked lid to fit Miss Longacre’s crooked pot?”
“Dreadful boy.” She continued briskly along the corridor. “No wonder your mother chose me to take a hand in your upbringing. You have the old duke’s ability to deliver the truth in its least appealing guise, but yes. The more dubious characters on the guest list are my attempt to either dangle semi-forbidden fruit before dear Maybelle, or to show her where marriage to some scoundrel will lead. Mendel Cleary is a paragon, if somewhat inclined to pinch pennies. Sir Thomas would be easy to manage. They aren’t all that dubious by today’s standards.”
Of course not, when measured by a woman who decried the modern emphasis on marital fidelity and referred to London’s most dedicated rakes as a lot of overly fragrant, hymn-singing peacocks.
“If Maybelle is bent on rebellion,” I observed, “she can simply run off with a footman. It’s been done.”
“Footmen cannot pay the milliner’s bills. Maybelle is headstrong, she’s not stupid, somewhat like you. Lady Longacre does have good taste in footmen, though. All very well trained too.”
“You are attempting to corrupt my morals again, Godmama. I am still angry with you for ambushing me and Hyperia. Shame upon you.”
Ophelia paused outside a carved door, Zeus and Leda cavorting eternally in a single panel of oak. “I noticed how wroth Hyperia was at breakfast, Julian. Towering with rage to find herself thrust into your company again. Fuming, fit to be tied. Do come in.”
I was aware of time fleeing—I had to secret myself in the kitchen garden in the next twenty-five minutes, and I’d spend fifteen of those minutes making a discreet progress around the park’s perimeter to keep to the shade and avoid being seen.
“I really cannot tarry,” I said, stepping into her parlor.
“Right. You are in demand to captain the soon-to-be-winning team at bowls, no doubt. Who accosted Hyperia, Jules?”
The comment about captaining a bowls team was nearly mean. Longacre had been mean to me, and Ormstead’s remarks—leaving my wits in France, et cetera—had been inconsiderate. Not yet ten of the clock, and I was tired of being disrespected.
The sooner I returned to London, the safer I would be. Much more casual insult and sneering condescension, and my temper might slip its leash.
“I don’t know who accosted Hyperia,” I said, “and neither does she. She didn’t get a good look at his face, but he wore good-quality wool and Hoby boots, he spoke as if somewhat educated, and he was tallish and strong.”
“To Hyperia, every man would seem tallish. The Hoby boots don’t tell you much. Lady Longacre uses the London agencies when hiring, and they have mostly London fellows on offer. A used pair of Hoby boots probably graces the feet of half her indoor male staff.”
“I doubt the underbutler has designs on Miss Longacre’s person. I’m more tempted to think Cleary and Brimstock got up to some sort of bet, though that would be fast work even for them.”
And that bet might well have related to Hyperia, who approached old-maid status, rather than to Miss Longacre or one of the other tender beauties. Hyperia had noted herself that the objective had not been to compromise her.
Which left… what? A stupid bet, a half-blind guest intent on bothering a maid. Neither explanation satisfied me.
“Leave it, Julian,” Lady Ophelia said, passing me a shawl, which I obligingly draped around her shoulders. “In my day, mauling young ladies wasn’t considered a prank, but young people today have no taste. If it was foolishness, then it’s best ignored.”
Her sitting room was ten times more commodious than the bedchamber I’d been assigned. Another insult.
“And if it wasn’t foolishness?”
“Then nobody will appreciate you pointing fingers. Young ladies know to be cautious, and I am on hand to deal with the randy bachelors.”
She’d been no use at all when Hyperia had been in the clutches of a bounder. “You all but hoodwinked me into coming here, and now you are trying to run me off. What do you know that you are trying to keep from me?”
She arranged her shawl so it came just under her chin, obscuring the effects of age obvious about her neck. She really did have extraordinary eyes.
“I know Sir Thomas tried to call you out, and I hadn’t counted on him being such an ass. A miscalculation on my part, I admit it. You and Hyperia have been seen in a public rapprochement, and that’s sufficient progress for the nonce. I will understand if you remove to London later today.”
Perhaps she was telling the truth, and perhaps she was again trying to hoodwink me.
“At Hyperia’s request,” I said, “I will not leave until Healy West is on the premises. I’m off to have a discreet chat with Miss Longacre.”
“Be careful, Julian. These people hold themselves in very high esteem.” She didn’t say the rest of it, but then, she didn’t have to: They held me, by contrast, in contempt.
I bowed and withdrew and made my slow, quiet way to the kitchen garden’s shaded east wall. Five minutes into my conversation with Miss Longacre, it became clear I didn’t have much standing in her eyes either.
And thus, my grasp on my temper became yet more tenuous.