Her eyes went wide, then narrowed at him. “No. I will not have my reputation called into question because you want to count the silver.”
James met her gaze full on. “And I will not allow the earl’s property to be disturbed.” He stepped back. “However, I will give you a few moments alone to consider your position. I’ll return shortly with my things.”
He turned his back on her scowl and left.
Easy to put her and her so-called servants down as scheming opportunists, but he’d had too much experience with the earl’s machinations. His lordship could readily consign those who defied him to some unsavory penance.
“Eva Faraday,” he mused aloud as he retrieved Majestic’s reins. He didn’t recall hearing the name before. Of course, he hadn’t been invited to London in nearly two years. That was plenty of time for the earl to have acquired himself a ward or two. Strange, though, that his mother had never mentioned her. They exchanged letters monthly. Or had the earl kept Eva away from the rest of the family? Why? Was she a threat of some kind? Or an advantage he didn’t want to share?
The thoughts ran through his mind as he rode back into the village and down Church Street to the residence he had been given. It was an impressive house—the earl would have allowed nothing less to be associated with his name—though nothing on the order of the castle. Built of rough pale stone quarried from the area, Howland Cottage boasted two stories, with attics behind dormer windows in the pitched roof. As if determined to add a dash of formality, the earl had decreed that the front door and trim around the windows be painted black. There was a tiny yard between the house and the black, wrought-iron fence along the street. In his mother’s time, it had been filled with flowers. Now it was mostly evergreen shrubs that tended to scratch against the windows when the wind blew. He had no time or inclination to change the arrangement.
He rode around back to the stables and remanded Majestic to the care of his groom, then went to tell Pym about the change in plans.
“Ooo, a mysterious lady,” his manservant declared with a twinkle in his grey eyes. Short and fine-boned, with a way of looking out from under his heavy brows as if he was up to mischief, Pym had seemed ancient for as long as James could remember. But as his cooking was every bit as good as the inn’s, he navigated the stairs with ease, and his eye for fashion had never failed, James had felt no need to retire him.
“I must pack your best waistcoat,” he declared now, hurrying for the stairs.
“Clothes for five days should suffice,” James called after him. “We should hear from the earl by then. And send for Priestly.”
He turned for his study to the left of the entryway. He had a letter sanded, sealed with wax, and ready before his secretary arrived from his flat above Mr. Carroll’s Curiosities in the village. Samuel Priestly had also followed in his father’s footsteps. The senior Mr. Priestly had been secretary to James’s father for years. Light brown hair carefully combed to hide the growing bald spot at the top of his head, Priestly bowed himself into the room, tugging his coat about him after being hastily summoned.
“Was there something you required, Magistrate?”
James held out the letter. “You’ll be traveling to London first thing in the morning. Arrange for a horse from Mr. Josephs at the livery stable. Ride as fast as is practical. Deliver this note into the earl’s hand, and don’t leave until you have an answer.”
Priestly swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “But what if the earl declines to answer?”
A strong possibility, given his lordship’s capricious nature. If he had learned about the militia James had raised, he could well prefer to keep James waiting for an answer.
“Appeal to Viscount Thorgood,” he told his secretary. “At least he can be counted upon to be reasonable.”
“I’ll pack now, sir.” He bowed himself out.
One last task to accomplish. James glanced at the ornate ormolu clock on the mantel. Half past nine. Most of the village would be abed. A shame his task could not wait until morning, but Eva Faraday was right. They could not share a roof without a suitable chaperone. And he knew where his best hope lay of procuring one.
~~~
“Magistrate.” Jesslyn Chance, the current hostess of the spa, blinked big blue eyes at him when she answered the door of her little stone cottage along the shore. Her nightgown was covered by a voluminous charcoal-colored cloak, but her blond curls clustered around her pretty face as if she was ready for her next dance partner.
“Miss Chance,” he said, inclining his head. “Forgive me for coming so late, but I have urgent need of your services.”
She opened the door wider and stepped aside to let him enter. He hadn’t visited the cottage for years, not since the constable had given it up for better quarters, but he knew it contained only two rooms and a loft. She had added landscape paintings to the white-washed walls, a braided rug near the hearth. He caught the scent of warm stew and lavender, a combination both surprising and welcoming.
“Is it the trolls?”
Her aunt, Mrs. Tully, had come out of the bedchamber on the far side of the hearth. Her grey hair was wrapped in paper curls, and her red flannel nightgown billowed about her figure.
James inclined his head in her direction. “No trolls, alas.”
She put her nose in the air. “You ought to be glad of that. They leave quite a mess. Don’t expect us to clean up after them.”
He managed a smile and leaned closer to her niece. “Is there somewhere we might have a private word?”
Miss Chance spread her hands. “My home is as you see it, Magistrate. I fear there is little opportunity for privacy, especially at this hour of the night.”
She was also careful of her reputation, and he was trespassing.
“Of course.” He straightened. “You recall the light that has been seen in the castle recently.”
She paled. “Yes, but we caught the smugglers who put it there.”
“So I’d hoped. But I have been checking every day, just in case. Tonight, I found someone.” He went on to explain the claims Miss Faraday had made.
“So, I have no choice but to keep an eye on them until I hear from the earl,” he concluded. “Therefore, I must have a chaperone.”
She nodded, and he nearly sagged in relief. But then, he’d always admired her practical nature. And after the way she’d rallied the villagers to confront a gang of smugglers a week ago, he could only admire her ingenuity and courage as well.
“Of course,” she agreed in her sweet voice. “I’ll help my aunt gather her things.”
“It will only take a moment,” Mrs. Tully said, bustling back the way she had come.
James started after her, then glanced at her niece. “I had hoped you…”
She held up her hand as if to stop him. “I have only a week to finish setting the spa to rights for the new physician, and I must prepare to vacate this cottage. I cannot be spared from those duties. Maudie can.”
He’d already had words with Mr. Greer, the president of the Spa Corporation, about the decision to release Miss Chance from her post. The first Chance in the area had decided to make use of the mineral waters for their healing properties, and there had been a Chance in charge of the spa ever since. The previous host had been Miss Chance’s father, a physician, until he’d passed away last year. She had taken over then.
And she’d done a magnificent job of running not only the day-to-day operations but monthly events that the visitors so loved. Just yesterday had seen the annual midsummer masquerade at the assembly rooms at the top of the hill, an event enjoyed by all. But, no matter her skills, she wasn’t a physician, and her brother was too young to take up the role, so the corporation had located a replacement. Apparently, Doctor Bennett had insisted he needed no hostess. Another time James might have appealed to the earl to fund her salary anyway, but he’d already used up any collateral he might have had.
“And may I say again how much I abhor the decision to discharge you,” he said as something thumped from the other room. “But, because of that decision, you owe the corporation no loyalty now.”
“I owe our guests only the most pleasant of times,” she countered. “My aunt is an experienced chaperone, sir. She knows her duty as well.”
“Where did you put my pixie trap?” Mrs. Tully called.
“Excuse me.” Miss Chance went to help her aunt.
James paced from the stone hearth past the rocking chair toward the door. Could he trust Maudlyn Tully to do the job? Most of the people in Grace-by-the-Sea understood about her whimsical nature. The older widow claimed mermaids inhabited the cove, trolls the headland. She’d even whispered about French spies invading. Well, that story at least was more real than she could know, though James wasn’t about to confirm it. Still, the last time she’d visited the castle with him, she’d horrified his other guests with tales of gruesome murders, chilling hauntings, and a hound with glowing red eyes. He could just imagine what Miss Faraday would think.
James stopped and smiled. Perhaps Mrs. Tully would make the perfect chaperone, at least until she scared his uninvited guest right out of the castle.
~~~
“Then are we to leave, miss?” Patsy asked, straightening in the act of removing Eva’s gowns from one of the hastily packed trunks.
Eva had asked Yeager to join her and her maid, Patsy, in the bedchamber she’d chosen so she could explain the situation to them. Though the holland covers had been removed from the great box bed and walnut wardrobe, carved chest, and dressing table, the room still felt oddly empty, as if it were waiting for someone other than her to occupy it.
“No,” she said, glancing between the maid and her man-of-all-work. “Here we were banished, and here we stay until the fortune is mine.”
Yeager drew up his lanky frame. “Right you are, Miss Eva. His lordship sent us off. He’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
“Not him,” Patsy said with a sniff, straight brown hair beginning to fall from her bun to frame her round face. “He’ll find a way to wiggle out of any trouble. That’s what snakes do.”
“Now, now,” Eva said, “I will not have you calling the earl such names.”
Patsy hung her head, until Eva added, “After all, you malign the poor snake.”
Patsy straightened with a chuckle.
“And what about his watchdog?” Yeager persisted. “Are we to fetch and carry for him as well?”
She had been trying so hard to find an ounce of sympathy for James Howland, until he’d declared his intent to move in with her. Why did he obey the earl’s least command? Was he so fawning that the earl treated him better than most? Or was he so far away from the rest of his family that he did not know he served a corrupt master? She’d seen how his lordship worked to hide his plans from his heir, Viscount Thorgood. Perhaps James Howland really did think he was only doing his duty.
“If he requests your help, oblige him,” she said, “unless you think it would harm us in some way. If you have any doubts, speak to me first.”
They both nodded.
“There’s no food in the house,” Yeager reported. “We can eat what we brought in the hamper, but we’ll have to see what can be had in the morning. How close is that village, do you think?”
Eva shrugged. “The earl made it sound like the closest habitation was leagues away. I have no idea where Mr. Howland normally lives. But he has to eat as well. He can point us in the right direction, at least.”
“I’ll call when I have the table set,” Yeager said before bowing and leaving.
If only the Howlands were as easy to deal with. Eva couldn’t help her sigh as she helped Patsy put away the rest of her things. Some she’d had to leave behind, but Patsy had thrown most of what she owned into the trunks they had brought with them. Fine lawn nightgowns reminded her of her bedchamber in London, done in pinks and blues, unlike this brown and white room that felt so cold. A riding habit in cerulean blue made her think of the times she’d ridden through Hyde Park in the early morning. But of course, the only horses she had here were the ones that had pulled her carriage. The earl had refused to release her riding horse, Blaze, from his stables.
The fancy gowns wrapped in tissue brought tears to her eyes. How many times had she worn them to events with her father? The theatre, the opera, balls and routs and soirees. And the dinner parties! Her father had found it endlessly amusing how he had seldom been welcomed at the tables of the ton until she’d reached marriageable age.
“Amazing what a daughter with an impressive dowry does for a fellow’s standing,” he’d joked more than once.
The positioning and maneuvering had amused her as well while he was alive. Papa had had no qualms about her choosing her own husband, and he had always been able to spot a charlatan. It was one of the traits that had allowed him to make the savviest of investments. Yet he had mistaken the earl’s interest entirely.
“You needn’t worry,” he’d wheezed on his deathbed, robust frame shrunken, voice a whisper of its usual strength. “Lord Howland will see to your future. I know you will do me proud.”
Would he be proud of her, refusing the one thing the earl demanded of her?
Far below, she thought she heard a bang, as if someone had slammed a door. Could Mr. Howland be back so soon? And why did that thought make her eager to rush downstairs?
Patsy must have heard the noise too, for she shivered. “I don’t like this place, miss. It’s too big and too dark. Who knows what’s hiding in the shadows?”
“Dust,” Eva told her. “Mr. Howland said the place hadn’t been lived in for years.”
“Mighty loud for dust,” Patsy muttered, returning to the unpacking.
“Perhaps I’ll just check,” Eva said, straightening and heading for the door.
She had taken the bedchamber closest to the stairs, so it was only a moment before she reached the landing. She pitied anyone housed farther down the corridor in either direction. It was just like a Howland to make a castle out of what should have been a simple hunting lodge. Fine carpets graced every floor. Paintings hung on every wall. At least, she assumed they were paintings. Why else drape so much linen about?
She’d only explored a little so far, but if the other wings were anything like this one, the place could easily sleep two dozen, not counting the servants. Patsy was right. There were many ways to hide. She fought a shiver herself.
At least it wasn’t easy to hide in the entry hall below. It had been designed to resemble the great hall of a real castle, with soaring ceilings veined in plaster and a stone fireplace big enough to roast an ox. The three people by the massive front door looked like dolls. She recognized James Howland. Who was the older couple with him?
As if he felt her scrutiny, he looked up, and something inside her fluttered like a startled dove. Eva raised her head. “Well, at least you know how to keep a promise.”
He sketched her a bow. “Miss Faraday.” Straightening, he turned to the woman at his elbow. “Mrs. Tully, may I present Miss Eva Faraday? You will be serving as her chaperone.”
A chaperone? Oh, he really was doing it up right. Eva started down the stairs. “Mrs. Tully, how kind of you to come and at such a late hour.”
“This is Mr. Pym, my manservant,” Mr. Howland continued before the woman with the curly grey hair could answer. “He will assist with staffing.”
The other fellow, who looked a little like the leprechauns her father had told her stories about, bowed to her.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she realized her perspective hadn’t been so far off. Both Mrs. Tully and Mr. Pym were short; the top of their heads came only to Eva’s chin. Mrs. Tully’s black gown made her look even smaller, more fragile. Two bright blue eyes regarded her with interest from a round face that was beginning to show wrinkles.
“Have you seen the Lady yet?” she asked.
Eva glanced to Mr. Howland, but he merely offered her a smile. The set of his lips told her he was expecting a great deal from the exchange.
“The lady?” Eva asked her new chaperone politely.
She took a step closer and lowered her voice. “The Lady of the Tower. She wails for her love lost at sea. She was imprisoned here too, you know. Some say she haunts these halls to this day, seeking another to take her place.”
Eva stared at her, chills running down her back.
“Mrs. Tully knows any number of tales about the castle,” Mr. Howland put in.
She nodded, grey curls trembling. “Indeed I do. And you would be wise to heed them, before it’s too late.”
Eva grinned. “How delightful. I love a good ghost story.” She linked arms with her new chaperone. “You must tell me more.”