“They’ve been at it for several hours,” Hyperia muttered. “Turning the house upside down over a stupid pocket watch.”
She’d been reading in the grand Makepeace foyer, the logical place to bide if she’d wanted to accost us upon our return.
“Whose pocket watch?” Ophelia asked as I drew her mantle from her shoulders. No footman or underbutler appeared to take the garment from me.
“The purloined item originally belonged to Mendel Cleary’s grandfather.” Hyperia spoke softly, as if she were imparting state secrets. “Cleary was quite up in the bows about having the guest quarters searched and the maids and footmen questioned.”
“Rude of him,” I muttered, my arms full of Ophelia’s silk wrap and my hat still on my head. “I don’t suppose anybody has had a look through Cleary’s quarters?”
Hyperia took my hat off and set it on the chair she’d been occupying. “Of course not. Cleary claims he left the watch on his vanity when he went to the stable this morning, and by the time he returned to his room after lunch, the heirloom was missing. Lady Longacre agreed to set the staff to searching the public areas.”
The day needed only this.
I thrust Ophelia’s mantle at her and snatched my hat from the chair. “Both of you, listen to me. Search your own rooms. Start with the obvious hiding places, the ones you’d choose if you wanted a cursory examination to bear fruit. Under the mattress, in your jewelry boxes, beneath your pillows, in your Sunday boots. Conduct your searches without witnesses.”
“Jules, have you taken leave—”
“Do it,” I said, “and pray God I can reach my own quarters before—”
Lord Longacre appeared at the top of the steps. “My lord, my lady. I see you’ve returned. Miss West, Lady Ophelia, I need a word with Lord Julian in private, if you will excuse us.”
I passed my hat to Hyperia and mouthed the words, “Search my room first,” then jaunted up the steps with an energy I did not feel.
“Her Grace of Moreland sends greetings,” I said, mustering a smile for mine host when I reached him. “Is something amiss, my lord?”
“You know damned well something is amiss.” He stalked off in the direction of the family wing.
My day had begun with similar accusation from Mendel Cleary, that I knew what was amiss, and was in fact, the instigator of the problem.
I’d had enough of that rubbish, and I was no longer a green lieutenant fearful of provoking a senior officer.
“What I know,” I replied without raising my voice or moving so much as one inch, “is that Lady Ophelia returned from a call on your ducal neighbors and found no footman to assist her from the coach, no butler to take her wrap, no maid to inquire if she’d like a tray to tide her over until supper. She will remark upon the indifferent hospitality at Makepeace unless some plausible explanation for these oversights is provided immediately.”
I could mimic Arthur’s hauteur when attempting to twit him, but I’d never done so previously for any other purpose. Arthur and I bore a resemblance, though he, like the rest of our siblings, was dark-haired, while my own locks had been chestnut brown.
Then too, I was slightly taller than His Grace, and I used that height to stare down at Longacre. My head hurt, I was both hungry and thirsty, and I was not in the mood to be accused of a theft I hadn’t committed.
Another theft, counting my own blasted wayward horse.
Longacre stalked back to me, though a hint of caution had come into his gaze. “I told my wife we were making a tempest in a teapot. If I had tuppence for every time she’s lost an earbob or Maybelle has misplaced a bracelet… but the item in question belongs to Mr. Cleary and is of great sentimental value. He’s insistent that the house be searched from top to bottom.”
We stood outside what appeared to be an informal parlor. Two large, anemic ferns in shiny brass pots took forlorn comfort from an east-facing window. The chairs did not match, though all were upholstered in green, and the carpet showed some wear.
A curate, steward, or impecunious second cousin might be received in such a room. I availed myself of it and waited for Longacre to join me.
When he deigned to do so, I closed the door. “Exactly what has gone missing?”
“A pocket watch said to belong to Cleary’s grandfather. A family legacy, motto inscribed on the inside of the cover. Chased gold, gold chain.”
“I’ve seen him flash it about. The chain is longer than most and not made of gold.”
Longacre sat and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “How could you know the composition of Cleary’s watch chain?”
“By how it swings. The links aren’t heavy enough to be gold, and I can’t see Cleary, who is notably jealous of his coin, indulging in that expense. If he had fit the watch with a genuine gold chain, it would be as short as possible without violating the dictates of fashion.”
Longacre rose and paced to the window, brushing past the ferns and sending a cascade of withered leaves to the carpet. “You are so damned clever. Cleary suggested you are unhappy about the missing horse and sought retribution by nicking his heirloom.”
“Cleary also claims I stole my own horse, though I couldn’t have picked the beast out of a herd at the relevant time and still have no idea how to identify Trafalgar’s saddle or bridle. I’ll be curious to hear what he has to say when I tell him that the missing horse is swishing flies in a paddock over at Morelands.”
Longacre cracked open the window. “Please God, not Morelands. The last thing we need is His Grace of Meddling riding roughshod over my wife’s social gathering, and he’ll do it too. Moreland means well, but he’s rubbishing officious when he gets to playing magistrate. Lord Lieutenant of the Universe at Large.”
Moreland was former military, the father of ten, and did not suffer fools. “Stealing a gold watch is a hanging offense. The situation calls for thoroughness, if a crime has been committed.”
As I made that staunch declaration on behalf of law and order, I desperately hoped Hyperia and Ophelia were ransacking my room. My objective was to keep Longacre talking until they’d had time to recover the watch.
“Has it occurred to you,” I went on, “that Cleary is unhappy about losing the horse and seeks to make a fool of me with this missing watch?”
“Yes,” Longacre said, his back to me in a spectacular display of rudeness. He braced his hands on the windowsill and leaned out into the afternoon sunshine. “Yes, it has. Or perhaps the footmen, who have taken Cleary into dislike, are getting into the spirit of gathering and moving precious objects about on a lark. With your permission, I’d nonetheless like to have your quarters searched.”
That I was for once shown proper consideration made me wary. “I was gone for most of the day. Why not search first and spare me this interview?”
Longacre turned and braced his hips against the windowsill. The slanting sunbeams revealed thinning hair and the start of jowls, though he was still an attractive man.
“You would know if your effects had been searched, my lord. My wife tells me you are doing without a valet and, unlike Cleary, managing well enough on your own. If I had sent Brimstock or Ormstead to search your effects, you’d see that a boot was moved half an inch or that your pillows were not exactly where you’d left them. Any other guest would attribute the disturbance to the passing efforts of staff, but Lady Longacre says you haven’t had so much as a footman in your room to build up a fire.”
Meaning her ladyship’s rudeness was deliberate and not some miscalculation on the housekeeper’s part.
“You would still be within your rights to search any room in your own home, sir.” What had made him cautious, when we both knew the watch might well turn up in the drawer of my night table?
Longacre ran a hand over the drooping fronds of the nearest fern, creating yet another mess.
“Maybelle has barely come out of her rooms all day,” he said. “She joined the company for luncheon, ate enough to feed a sparrow, said a total of two words, and returned to her apartment. I love my daughter, but…”
He did. I had to grant him that much. “But?”
“But I do not understand the female of the species, my lord. Maybelle is loath to leap into matrimony. Her two best friends, her cousins, the girls she was closest to in the whole world, were snatched away from her, and she mourns their loss. I told Lady Longacre that Maybelle needs time, and Lady Longacre countered that we need a sensible, solvent son-in-law and then grandsons. One would think I am at my last prayers.”
Or that one’s prospective widow hadn’t much in the way of a jointure. “What has this to do with Cleary’s watch?”
“If I took the liberty of searching your room without your permission, then you’d hear of it, or worse, Lady Ophelia would hear of it. She and my wife are already hissing and growling at one another over your presence here. We’re to banish Lady Ophelia from all guest lists going forward, et cetera and so forth.”
“And should you offend my dear godmama,” I said slowly, “she will at some opportune moment deliver the cut sublime to Lady Longacre or, worse yet, to Maybelle. Maybelle’s chances of a good match plunge yet further, and then Maybelle and her mother start feuding—all over a stupid watch that probably keeps bad time.”
Was Lady Longacre sufficiently determined to get rid of me that she’d risk offending Lady Ophelia?
“The watch isn’t the point,” Longacre said. “I simply want to find the damned thing and get on with this house party. We’re to have country dancing this evening, of all the inanities.”
“You’ve searched the public rooms?”
“To no avail.”
“The staff quarters?”
“Had the butler and housekeeper undertake that distasteful task. If the footmen disliked Cleary before, they’ll spike his tea with wormwood when they learn he suggested they’d perpetrate a theft.”
Longacre was, in a roundabout way, asking for my help. But at what price? “If the watch is found in my room, what will you do?”
“Quietly ask you to leave.”
“Because then, Lady Ophelia has no excuse for escalating the war with Lady Longacre?”
He made a face as if the milk had gone off. “Lady Ophelia won’t have the excuse that I insulted you directly if you give me permission to undertake the search—or if you leave of your own volition in the next hour.”
Leaving camp of my own volition was how I’d started down a road that had led to allegations of dereliction of duty, treason, and moral turpitude. Leaving of my own volition—buying my officer’s colors without consulting even Arthur—had been another ill-informed decision.
After a period of convalescence—if staying up all night wandering the family seat could be called that—I’d left Caldicott Hall of my own volition to bide in London and wander a far smaller domicile.
I’d been leaving of my own volition with disastrous results for years.
The hour had come to eschew that tactic. “I understand that my departure would solve a problem for you and several others. Nonetheless, the time has passed when I could quit this gathering as a travel escort having done his duty. I’m now here arguably to make up numbers that have grown less balanced since my arrival. If I’m shown the door in disgrace, or if I leave with my tail between my legs, then I have a problem.”
“What problem? You go back to lurking in London, which idleness has apparently contented you for months.”
Idleness—my days and nights refusing to abide by any rhythm, my powers of concentration not half what they should be, my family coming around timidly to make awkward conversation for the duration of two cups of tea, my head alternately pounding and swimming with disembodied memories…
Idleness of that variety could eventually lead to madness, did his lordship but know it.
“Consider matters from my perspective, Longacre. If, after attempting a short outing in the countryside, I resume my lurking under a cloud of gossip—another cloud of gossip—then my family will be concerned. My mother and brother will interest themselves in my affairs, and I might well be taken up by the sororal press-gangs for another tour at the family seat. That plan will not serve. The next time I repair to Caldicott Hall, I will do so on my own terms and without the taint of further scandal riding pillion.”
I wanted to leave, but I wanted even more to guard what little remained of my good name—to say nothing of keeping an eye on Hyperia, who was too willing to dismiss an assault as a stolen kiss gone awry.
“You were mentioned in the dispatches once or twice,” Longacre said, apropos of nothing. “Cool head, quick thinking. Nothing too profuse, but to be mentioned at all says Wellington took note of you. You aren’t stupid.”
Wellington had been punctilious about giving credit to subordinates where due, and Britain had loved him for it. We’d needed heroes, needed reasons to preen and rejoice between defeats and casualty lists. His elegant, precise dispatches had provided that.
What I needed was a nap in a dark room, a tall glass of lemonade, and to find the blasted watch. “Are you asking my opinion, my lord?”
“Of necessity, I am.”
“Then I suggest that you and you alone search my room with no witness save myself. Make the search without fanfare.”
Longacre appeared to consider my proposal. “Do I find the watch or not?”
“That depends on whether you believe I stole it. I met Cleary in the stable this morning, at a time when he claims that watch was sitting in his room. I then went for a hack and had some difficulty with my horse. By the time I was ready to come in to breakfast, Lady Ophelia had determined that I was to escort her to Morelands. I had no opportunity to steal the watch, unless I moved very quickly. But then, I don’t know which room Cleary occupies—I am housed in staff quarters rather than in the guest wing—and more to the point, I have no motive for taking the watch.”
“What of the horse?”
To blazes with the blasted horse. “I do not need or want another riding horse, my lord. Cleary should never have offered the wager he did, and stealing a watch would in no way return the horse to me. Cleary should never have fleeced the other fellows at cards and should never have played so recklessly at battledore, and yet, nobody is asking him to leave.”
“Much more of this nonsense,” Longacre said, starting for the door, “and I will be the one lighting out for parts distant. No time like the present, my lord. If Cleary knows what we’re about, he’ll demand to witness the search, and that rather defeats the purpose of the exercise.”
Damnably valid point.
We met Hyperia and Ophelia all of two yards from the door to my room.
“There you are!” Hyperia said, all smiles. “I was hoping for your escort in the garden before supper, Lord Julian. Will you oblige me?”
While Hyperia spoke, Lady Ophelia caught my eye and gave a slight shake of her head.
Cleary had apparently hidden the watch a bit too well. “I will be happy to walk with you before supper, Miss West. Shall we say about eight?” Assuming I wasn’t shackled in the wine cellar in the next hour.
“Splendid.”
“Until then.” I bowed, she curtseyed, Ophelia and Longacre ignored us, and then the moment was at hand to see me labeled a thief, a liar, and a fool.
Though after diligently searching my quarters, Longacre could not find the watch. I continued to rifle my effects for half an hour after his puzzled departure, and I didn’t find the blasted thing either.
“I could send a note to one of your sisters,” Hyperia said as we ambled along a rhododendron walk. “Have them summon you back to Town on pain of ducal disapproval. Nobody could blame you for heeding a family writ.”
“Arthur already disapproves of me. If he had a couple of sons in the nursery, I might well be racketing about the Continent with all the other remittance men.”
“I hear Rome is fascinating.”
You too, Hyperia? “Rome and the Italian states generally are a mess.” Most of the Continent was a mess, for that matter, and Britain at least qualified for muddled status. “The Corsican left the Italians with a taste for republicanism while appointing his infant son King of Rome. Napoleon forced the Austrians out of the north of Italy, but now the Austrians are back. Half of Italy’s national treasures are gracing foreign capitals and private collections, and poverty has returned with a vengeance. I have no wish to go to Rome.”
Or back to London, not yet.
“What do you wish for?”
The rhododendrons formed a majestic border twenty feet high on either side of the path. The flowers were enormous, and the bushes had been pruned such that Hyperia and I wandered between walls of green, bold pink, white, and rose. Along with the tangy scent of woods and earth, the air held a hint of the clove-carnation fragrance of the blooms.
“I want this,” I said. “A peaceful stroll with a lovely lady, the natural beauty of my homeland all around me, the robins at their evensong, and a good meal in the offing. What of you?”
“I want to find that watch in Sir Thomas’s jewelry box.”
How fierce she was. “He’d claim I put it there. What does Ormstead think has become of the watch?”
“He says you’d be a fool to have taken it, and Cleary would be a fool to feign its theft.”
“Cleary has argued with a footman, sown ill will among the bachelors, and lost a fine horse in a stupid wager. I’d say his credentials as a fool are well established. When you are not defending my honor, Hyperia, what do you want?”
Out in the garden, the guests were assembling for a meal al fresco. The falling dew brought their chattering and laughter to us as if from a great distance. The company would move indoors for dancing when full darkness fell, though our capering would be limited to country dances. At the conclusion of the gathering—assuming we did not descend into an outright melee in the next ten days—we’d be treated to the stifling, interminable spectacle of a formal ball.
“Let’s sit,” Hyperia said, leading me by the arm to a bench on a shadowed bend in the path.
When I took my place a decorous foot away from her, she scooted closer. “Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t be gentlemanly?” I expected Ormstead to come trotting from the undergrowth at any moment. A lapse of manners on my part would not sit well with him.
“Don’t be formal. For so long, Jules, what I wanted was for you to come safely home. Then you did, and what I wanted wasn’t what you wanted. Now…”
I owed her this opportunity to air her disappointment in me. England’s grounds for judging me were questionable, but Hyperia had every right.
“Perry, I’m sorry. I am not the same man who went off to war. You must believe that marriage to an alleged traitor is much less than you deserve. Half this gathering thinks me capable of thievery. The other half thinks I’m daft.”
“You are neither. Which opinion offends you more?”
I considered her question while birds flitted overhead and a lone bovine bawled in the distance.
“Either a loss of honor or a loss of my wits could see me again deprived of my freedom. The criminal is put to death or sentenced to penal servitude for a time certain. In a few cases, he’s transported for life, but those are rare. The man judged mentally defective, on the other hand, is never given a reprieve from bondage. His liberties are stolen from him, and getting them back is nearly impossible. Of the two, I’d rather be a criminal and have hope, than be declared insane and condemned to eternal despair.”
Hardly a cheering topic. I wasn’t about to tell Hyperia just how intimately I’d become acquainted with mental instability while in France. Those experiences came for me in nightmares that left me screaming into the darkness.
Then too, there was that little problem with my memory.
“You ask what I want,” Hyperia said. “I have what I want—you are home safe and well, more or less—though now I am left to convince myself that what I wanted was simply marriage to a good fellow, some healthy children, and a happy dotage.”
“Those are worthy dreams, Hyperia.”
“No,” she said, “they are not. Maybelle has the right of it. To marry and have babies is no great plan for happiness or meaning, Jules. Society tries to tell the ladies it is, but society tells men a very different story. For a lady, wifehood and motherhood are a privilege, a literal consummation devoutly to be wished, despite the fact that wedding vows render a woman’s personhood forfeit and put her life at risk. Many men chose war over domesticity. Is war such a merry undertaking, I wonder?”
“The Corsican would have had us all speaking French, Hyperia.”
“Not after we wrecked his navy, he wouldn’t.”
She was right—up to a point. The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 had put period to Napoleon’s navy and thus to his ability to invade England. Within a few years, though, he’d been rebuilding, and the decision was made to ally ourselves with Portugal and attack France by battling our way across Spain.
I verbally fell back and regrouped. “War is no sort of merriment at all.”
“And neither is matrimony for most women, but what choices do we have?” She fell silent, and so, thank heavens, did the distant cow. I was prepared to let the conversation die and cast about for some topic other than war, thievery, and our broken understanding.
“Ormstead kissed me, Jules.”
A flare of rage lit up inside me, quickly doused by self-derision. Clearly, Ormstead hadn’t made a proper job of the undertaking, but who was I to judge him?
“He kissed you with your permission, or I’ll sort him out, Hyperia.”
“With my assent,” she said, “and he didn’t take undue liberties.”
No groping, then. No fumbling, no trying to lift her skirts less than a week after some fool had assaulted her. Prudent of him, and yet…
“His kiss failed to move you.”
“Oh, worse than that. I did not particularly care one way or another if he sought to do more than kiss me. I simply waited for him to finish.”
Was I to pity Ormstead? Because I nearly did. “Why tell me this?”
“Because you all but threw me at him this morning. Such maneuvers are neither necessary nor appreciated. I like William, but I don’t… That is, allowing him to develop aspirations in my direction when I cannot return his enthusiasm would be unkind.”
Liking can grow into attraction. Give it time. He’s a good man.
I was clearly not a good man, because I kept those platitudes to myself, though they were all probably true. I wanted Ormstead to be a good man for Hyperia’s sake and for my own.
“I nonetheless want you to dance with Ormstead tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you delivered a solid stomp to the foot of the fellow who accosted you barely forty-eight hours ago. If the culprit is among the guests, he might sit out the dancing.”
“Or dance only the sedate figures.”
“I doubt we’ll be permitted many of those, and pray God we’re not expected to remain up until all hours promenading, stomping, and chasséing.” My eyes no longer ached—bless the approaching darkness—but my head was still throbbing.
“I am to watch for any gentleman who sits out all the dances?”
“Or dances until his gait goes off, or he limps from the dance floor.” A distinctive trill of laughter drifted through the hedges. “Maybelle is apparently feeling more the thing.”
“She has no choice, Jules. A poor showing at luncheon, followed by a lie-down that lasted all afternoon… Gossip will soon attach to her ill health, and she cannot afford to risk that.”
Hyperia was in a determinedly gloomy mood, though I could not blame her. I rose and offered her my hand. She stood without assistance, then slipped her fingers around my arm.
“I had not realized the extent to which ladies must comport themselves like reconnaissance officers,” I said. “Set one foot outside camp, and assume you are in enemy territory. Every shed, tavern, and livery stable is the scene of a potential ambush, and you can’t water your horse without first drawing a weapon.”
“More or less.”
Perhaps that watchfulness might bear fruit. “Please do what you can to get the various bachelors on their feet, Hyperia. Whoever took liberties with you might not have realized I was in Ormstead’s company. He and I were on a darkened terrace, apart from the other guests. Any varmint who wants to see me accused of assaulting you is my enemy.”
“Jules, it’s not worth—” A particularly loud rustling in the bushes silenced her, and her grip on my arm became firmer. “What was that?”
An odd attempt at a birdcall followed, a cross between an owl and a drunken nightingale.
“Atticus, show yourself.”
“I daren’t.” Very softly. “Meet me in the kitchen garden in a quarter hour, milord. I’ll be by the pea vines.”
“Go,” Hyperia said, “though if I’m to dance myself to exhaustion, I will expect a full report.”
“I’ll see you back to the other guests like a proper escort, and Atticus can eat his fill of peas while he’s waiting for me.”
“I don’t fancy peas.” A hissed whisper. “A quarter hour, no more, or Cook will swat me silly.”
The bushes rustled again, and I wondered how much Atticus had overheard. I returned Hyperia to the milling guests, and a scrubbed and smiling Ormstead asked her for a turn along the roses. She went with convincing good grace, and I made a discreet progress to the pea vines.
“She loves ya,” Atticus said. “Fair gone on ya.”
“Miss West pities me, and being tenderhearted, she mistakes long association for fondness. Do you have the watch?”
In the gathering shadows, Atticus’s teeth gleamed white. “That would be this watch?” He held up a golden orb, and I snatched it out of his hand.
“A watch like that could be pressed into use as a signal beacon. Don’t flash it about.”
I opened the lid and made out an inscription on the inside. The chain was overly long and light for its length. I tried to hand it back.
“I don’t want it,” Atticus said, paws in the air as he stepped two feet from me.
“So where and when did you find it?” I asked, relieved beyond measure that he had.
“Not here,” Atticus said. “The footmen like to smoke out here.”
I tucked the watch into my breast pocket and followed him into the dim, humid interior of the glass structures along the south wall. He opened a door, and we were once again in the cool night air and outside the garden. The only sounds were crickets and nightbirds, and had the terrain rolled just a bit more, I might have been back in Spain, meeting with an informant and watching for certain death behind every bush and tree.
Instead, I was in Merry Olde and wondering why in the hell anybody would bother to ruin what little remained of my reputation.