“You shouldn’t go alone.” Atticus, exuding the indignation of an offended rooster, glowered up at me, his hands fisted on his skinny hips. “What if you have one o’ them spells?”
The boy voiced my own chronic fear, did he but know it. “Then I have a spell, but they never seem to come in close succession.” I spread a laundered saddle blanket on my bed. “Watch what I’m packing, because you might well be expected to do likewise for me in future.”
“In future.” He made those two words into a curse and perched on the nearest windowsill.
I tossed clean linen, spare socks and cravat, an extra knife, and two spare shirts onto the saddle blanket.
“What’s the knife for?”
“In case I need it. You put the clothing and whatnot in the middle half, fold the sides over, and roll it all as tightly as you can. The horse’s saddle blanket serves as the pallet, and this one will be my blanket, should I need it.”
I demonstrated while Atticus impersonated a gargoyle.
“What about a spare flask?” he asked. “Weather has turned hotter than perdition.”
“I’ll take a proper canteen in addition to my pocket flask. I’ll also bring a spare pair of tinted spectacles and keep them on my person. Toiletries go in the saddlebags, along with another knife.”
Atticus drew up his legs to sit tailor-fashion on the windowsill. “Why all the knives? You only have two hands.”
“Because one knife—good, sharp, and serviceable—saved my life when I was wandering the slopes of the Pyrenees during a cold and miserable spring. I speared fish with it, fashioned snares, dressed game, and defended myself, all with that one blade.”
More significantly, that knife had given me hope. If I could eat, I could survive. If I could defend myself, I could survive. If I could mark the passage of days on a stout walking stick, I might even survive with some of my wits intact.
“You ain’t going to no Pyrenees, whatever they are.”
“They are nasty big mountains straddling the border between Spain and France. A small army could never prevail in that terrain, and a large army could not survive there for long. Wellington had his hands full.”
“Bad business.”
“Bloody bad business.” Seventy different passes through those mountains, and the French had been ready to defend them all. “Hand me a couple more cravats.”
Atticus hopped off the windowsill and opened the wardrobe. “You’ll bind that thing up with cravats?”
“Plain ones, no starch. A cravat makes a passable bandage, or it can be pressed into service as a sling.”
Atticus produced the required articles and another scowl. “The duke oughta be goin’ after this fella. You ain’t the magistrate.”
I secured the left side of my bedroll. “The duke ain’t much of a tracker, and he’s asked me to do what I can.” I held out my hand for the second cravat.
Atticus tossed it to me. “Isn’t. You should say, ‘The duke isn’t much of a tracker.’”
“Then you do know proper speech, but you simply can’t be bothered to use it?”
“I’m not a toff. Why should I talk like one?”
“Because you deserve more from life than an endless procession of muddy boots that the toffs expect you to clean late at night, when a growing boy ought to be abed, and speaking of which, don’t wait up for me.”
He would, the little blighter.
“You’re not coming back here?” Atticus tried for a casual tone, but the studied diffidence with which he pushed his hair from his eyes told another different story.
I gathered up an old jacket and collected my saddlebags, which I’d packed before my pint-sized governess had arrived.
“I will be in pursuit of Lord Reardon, possibly for the next few days, but I’ll send reports back to the duke each day.”
“And I’m supposed to beat any news outta the duke?”
He probably could, or he’d die trying. “The duke will inform Miss West of pertinent developments, and she will inform you.”
Some of Atticus’s ire seemed to deflate. “You still shouldn’t go alone.”
I sat on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. “I have instructed my brother that if anything happens to me, you are to be raised as his ward. You will be given a trade, at least. You might enjoy being a gamekeeper.” Rambling around outside, his own dwelling, his own man for much of each day.
“Nah. I don’t like killin’ things. Birds especially.”
“We have that in common. Made military life something of a challenge.”
“Is that why you were a scout? No killing?”
“Less killing. While I’m on patrol for the duke, you think about what interests you, what you’d like to learn more about. You’ve watched kitchen work at close range and might make a good cook. Maybe the stable appeals, though it’s hard work in all weather. Think about it, and for God’s sake, don’t pike off while I’m gone.”
Ah, a smile. The devilish smile of a boy pleased to contemplate mischief. “I might do that. I might go have a look at them Pyrenees.”
I rose. Time was of the essence, though Atticus’s fears were justified, and Atticus’s wellbeing was of the essence too.
“Very well, off to the Pyrenees with you, my lad. You’ll need to speak French or Spanish, if not Basque, and seeing as you disdain to use proper English, you’ll find the journey challenging.”
“Can you speak French and Spanish and that other?”
“I have only a few words of Basque, but French was my first language, Spanish not a long leap from there, and I can get by in Italian. My German is serviceable as long as we’re talking about military subjects, horses, or women, and now I really must be going.”
Atticus nodded, but I could see him struggling with the impulse to keep me from walking out the door.
I gave him my best impersonation of Arthur in all his ducal froideur. “I shall return. Get Miss West to start you on your letters. A fellow must be able to write his signature.”
Atticus closed the wardrobe doors and mumbled something.
I had good hearing—the French hadn’t stolen that from me. “You have two names, you little ass.”
“Just Atticus ain’t—isn’t—two names.”
This poor child. This poor brave, stubborn, wonderful child. “Atticus Caldicott has a nice ring to it, but I leave the challenge of choosing middle names up to you. One or two good ones should suffice.”
I’d stumped him, an inordinately gratifying victory. I tousled his hair—as much affection as I dared impose on him—and made my escape.
Luck was with me for a change, and I had Touchstone the Hound to thank for much of it. A large dog traveling on the roof had made Reardon’s progress easy to follow. That I’d taken a sketch of Touchstone with me made the task even simpler.
The journey to London was a good fifty or sixty miles, depending on the route, and for public coaches, that meant four or five changes of horses.
The coach Lord Reardon had taken had apparently hit a rut and broken a wheel at the midpoint between our village and the first change—more good luck for me. His lordship and the other passengers had chosen to walk those five miles in darkness rather than wait for good fortune to tool along in the middle of the night.
Reardon had thus arrived at the first change shortly after two a.m. He was apparently reluctant to travel by day, because he’d taken a room at the Belle and Boar and not decamped until last night’s northbound coach had come through.
Fortunately for me, my brother kept teams at all the coaching inns between Caldicott Hall and Town, and thus I made good time in the duke’s curricle. A packed hamper sat at my feet and were it not for the heat, the wretched dust, and the traffic, the outing might have been pleasant.
For Lord Reardon, traveling with a sizable hound in the short hours of a summer night, progress had not been as impressive. I had to stop and ask questions at each possible change, but Touchstone’s likeness kept my conversations short. Nightfall saw me at The King’s Man, still twenty miles shy of London. The inn occupied a crossroads and was joined by a cluster of modest houses. The location barely deserved the appellation village.
“With a hound, you say?” the proprietress asked, running a thick finger down her guest ledger. “Big hound, too, and bred for sport, not some mongrel. I recall the dog because he did not fit with his master.”
“How so?”
“That is a nice dog. Good manners, good breeding. The fellow, though, he ain’t so fine. Dusty, like he’d been riding up top since May. Short-tempered, took the best rooms despite having only a battered knapsack. Expected us to allow the dog upstairs. Wouldn’t eat in the common, but must have a tray when half the world has taken a notion to travel and my cooks are nigh run off their feet. Uppish and twitchy, though he were in want of a bath and dressed like a shepherd.”
“Might I see the room he took?” With luck, the waste bin hadn’t been emptied, and Reardon might have sketched me a clue or two.
“Can’t allow that.” She swiped a graying wisp of hair back from her temple and tucked it under a dust-streaked mobcap.
“What if I hired the room myself?”
Her smile was tired. “Can’t allow that neither, sir. He still has it booked.”
Yet still more wonderful luck—Reardon was either lounging about in his quarters, or he’d return to there eventually—and yet so much good fortune made me cautious about confronting him.
“Is the hound up there?” In a hand-to-hand scuffle, a loyal hound tipped the odds in favor of his owner. More than one Spanish farmer had defended his land by setting his dogs on any intruder—French, English, or Spanish. That hounds did not climb trees had preserved me from several bad maulings.
“Hound is in the stable. Mr. Reynolds left him there when he went out at midday. Poor thing looked so bereft I had Cook give him a hambone.”
This development was not on the list of possibilities I’d anticipated. “Mrs. Clark, I realize you cannot allow me to have a look around Mr. Reynolds’s rooms, but might you take a peek? I’m concerned that Reynolds has abandoned his dog, and if ever a canine was beloved by his owner, Touchstone is that lucky pet.”
Had Reardon gone off to meet somebody in the humble environs of The King’s Man? Was he off sketching of all the outlandish notions? Squire Huber’s observation, that all young men get to despairing from time to time, also rang in my ears. What the hell was Reardon about now?
“Aye,” Mrs. Clark said. “I can have a look. What am I looking for?”
“The general state of affairs. Did Reardon—Reynolds, I mean—eat his breakfast? Did he use his shaving water? Was the bed slept in? I’m sure you have a keen eye for the difference between a room that’s ready for the next guest and a room that’s occupied. Focus on those differences.”
“Avoiding his creditors, was he? We get a lot of those, though they’re usually heading on down to Portsmouth because the beadles keep a watch for ’em in Dover. Such doings…”
She bustled up the steps and left me fretting by the front door. The King’s Man was busy, but not as the London coaching inns were busy. An air of good cheer prevailed. The maids were well fed and sturdy, the hostlers quick with a change, but relaxed about it.
If Reardon had been intent on abandoning his dog, this inn was a good choice. Not so close to London that Touchstone could end up in the bear pits, not so busy that he’d be forgotten altogether.
Mrs. Clark lumbered down the steps, a piece of paper in her hand. “I don’t like this, sir. I don’t like this one bit.”
She passed over a single page of good-quality paper bearing a sketch of Touchstone.
Please see the noble hound conveyed into the keeping of Lady Clarissa Valmond. Valmond House, West Waltham, Sussex. My thanks for your assistance. R.
“He left a sovereign on the pillow.” Mrs. Clark shook her head. “A sovereign.”
Until that moment, I’d considered the possibility of Reardon committing a rash act of self-harm minuscule. One scintilla away from impossible. But the sovereign, the touching concern for the dog, the soul-deep sorrow of that young soldier in Reardon’s battlefield painting…
Perhaps weak lungs had been the family’s polite label applied to a propensity for melancholia. “What else did he leave?”
Mrs. Clark glanced up the steps. “His dusty old knapsack. Should I send that to the lady too?”
Rubbishing hell. “I can get the knapsack and the hound to her ladyship. Might I have a look at the room now? He’s apparently left the premises on foot and paid his shot.”
“He’d paid a sight more than he should have.” In Mrs. Clark’s weary eyes, that generosity was clearly suspect rather than cause for rejoicing. “Who does that? Mayhap he were famous, like them kings that disguised theirselves as paupers. Or maybe he was dicked in the nob.”
She turned a speculative gaze on me. “Suppose there’s no harm in you having a look. Keep the door open. If anybody asks, you mistook his room for yours. Happens all the time when the guests linger at the bar. His room is all the way back, has a view of the river.”
I left her muttering about sovereigns and, “What is the world coming to?” and "How was I to get a dog to some almighty ladyship in blooming Sussex?” I jogged up the steps, dreading what I’d find in Reardon’s abandoned room and cursing my luck.
The image I beheld in Reardon’s sketchbook disturbed me: Lady Clarissa, looking winsome and sweet, was embraced by her loving brother. Both siblings were smiling. Their expressions suggested a string quartet gamboling through a Vivaldi allegro in the background, genteel laughter, and good company just beyond the borders of the sketch.
I had never seen Clarissa look that genuinely happy. As for Reardon… His gaze was affectionate, and sad. The remaining pages were blank.
“A farewell,” I murmured, putting the sketchbook back into the knapsack and pulling the drawstring closed. “A beautifully executed farewell.” Would Clarissa smile or cry at that image?
I sat on the bed in the middle of an airy, tidy room. A balcony gave on to a pleasant view of paddocks, the stable proper being on the other side of the inn. Between lush green hills, a distant silvery ribbon of water gleamed in the fading sunset.
From that direction, a low rumble of thunder sent further foreboding rippling down my spine.
Storms were all too reminiscent of Waterloo.
Wellington had known that Napoleon was intent on attacking Brussels, but he hadn’t known the exact route, so he’d waited and watched until the damned empereur had marched right across the border from France. The allied forces had been left to take up their positions in the middle of the night in a pounding downpour, which had made maneuvering artillery a bloody awful job indeed.
Not nearly as bloody awful as what had followed.
Though now was not the time to wallow in nightmares. I removed the pillowcase from the topmost pillow and collected Reardon’s knapsack. When I returned to the common, Mrs. Clark was nowhere to be seen, so I stopped a passing maid and explained my situation.
She summoned another maid, the one responsible for the better rooms, and that good woman had noticed Reardon’s direction when he’d left the premises.
“That is very helpful,” I said, “and now I need to find the hound in the stable, the one who arrived with Mr. Reynolds.”
“Follow your ears,” the chambermaid replied. “Through the yard, around the back, and you can hear him whimpering and wailing. Not used to being tied is my guess.”
“Thank you. I’m off to find him.” I turned to go, but the maid’s voice called me back.
“Your man was carrying something. Not a satchel, but something dark like an old satchel. He was too far away for me to make out what he had with him. Could have been a sack of food, could have been an extra hat.”
“All I need is the direction he went, and you’ve given me that.” I sprinted for the stable, taking the pillowcase and the knapsack with me.
The dog was in a miserable heap by the barn door, gazing woefully across the paddocks and occasionally baying at nothing.
“Touchstone.”
His floppy ears twitched, and he stopped howling long enough to look at me. I wasn’t his beloved owner, but I had his attention.
No water bowl lay within sight, so I purloined a bucket from down the aisle, filled it at a trough, and set it before the dog. He slurped greedily, coughed, and sat back on his haunches. I produced the pillowcase.
“He’s out there,” I said, holding the pillowcase up to the dog’s nose. “The chambermaid saw your viscount ambling off between those paddocks shortly before noon. Your job is to track him down faster than I ever could.”
Lord Reardon had not asked for some sandwiches to take with him. He’d not told anybody his destination, if he’d even had one. Nobody knew if he’d brought a pistol with him, or a rope, or poison…
I untied the rope securing Touchstone and led him to the path where Reardon had last been seen. The dog began sniffing and whuffling, his tail low. Compared to a sight hound, who had to keep game in view, scent hounds tended to work more slowly.
Not Touchstone. He caught the trail of his errant owner and nigh hauled me off my feet as we followed the track. Down past the paddocks, out into the grassy fields newly shorn at haying. We wended our way closer to the river, then veered off and began to climb one of the rolling hills that would eventually join up with the South Downs.
The dog, having been tied all day and eager to find his master, had far more energy than I. I let him half tow me up the path, the inn in the distance below us a dark shape against the gathering night. Another rumble of thunder sounded, closer and louder, and I was tempted to turn back.
I was on a steep path of increasing elevation as night descended, far from any dwelling, and in unknown terrain. A bad fall here could end in disaster for me and for the hapless dog. When the weather reached us, the downpour would be tremendous and might keep up for hours.
And yet, a hound could track on damp soil as easily as dry, even more easily, according to some foxhunting enthusiasts. How well Touchstone could find his master’s scent after a drenching rain was another question.
“Let me rest,” I panted, giving the makeshift leash a stout tug. “Sit, damn you.”
The dog’s expression turned reproachful, but he sat, sides working, tail thumping restlessly against the earth.
I breathed deeply, resenting my lack of condition. In Spain, I’d become tireless.
“We’re not in Spain, old boy,” I muttered, “and God be thanked for that.” I trudged onward, the dog snuffling the ground and straining at the leash.
The ground rose and rose, and had the clouds not been obscuring the moon, I would have had a better sense of how steep the drop was to the left of our path. The river below gleamed dully, and a raindrop smacked me on the cheek.
The track led to the summit of a sizable hill. From the inn, the landscape had looked to roll alongside the river, but the hill was, in fact, sliced flat by the river. The inn side sloped down to the little cluster of buildings, while the river side was a long and precipitous drop.
“Keep walking,” I said to an absent and possibly no longer extant Lord Reardon. “Keep walking right down the other side of this hill.”
Touchstone paused at the highest elevation and snuffled back the way we’d come, then forward a few yards. He looked to be casting for Reardon’s trail and repeated his efforts three times without success. He then took to sniffing the edge of the drop, then hunkered onto his haunches and howled into the abyss.
God, no. The rain was picking up, and a flash of lightning illuminated the scene for an instant.
I stood on the very lip of the precipice, and the river roiled along some fifty feet below. A pretty view on a fine day—also a fatal drop onto a rocky rapids washed by a strong current. I waited, growing increasingly cold while the hound whimpered and paced, until another flash of lightning obliged.
I could not be sure—the rain was coming down hard—but as I peered into the depths swirling far below, I thought I saw the shape of a boot being carried away by the storm waters.
“You bloody fool.”
Touchstone looked at me anxiously.
“Not you. Well, perhaps you too. Why did he bring you all this way only to abandon life while you were tied in a barn a mile away?”
The dog whined, then settled on all fours, and put his chin on the toe of my boot.
“We can’t wait for him,” I said. “He won’t be back this way.”
I tugged on the leash, and Touchstone, good soul that he was, padded along at my side. I hadn’t the heart to tie him in the stable again when we reached the inn, so I piled straw in an empty stall, made myself a makeshift bed, and spent the night in the barn with the malodorous, grieving dog.
The day dawned with the bright, refreshing quality that so often follows a hard summer storm. The air was cooler and less humid, the dust had been put to rout, the sky arched above in a dazzling blue rather than leaden white.
I’d donned my tinted spectacles while yet indoors, so piercing was the sunshine—and so piercing was my sense of failure.
I gathered up Lord Reardon’s knapsack—a pitifully light testament to his life—collected the dog, and prepared to journey back to Sussex. My last task before departing was to prevail on Mrs. Clark to contact me if anybody came by inquiring for Lord Reardon or Mr. Reynolds, or offered to take in the orphaned hound.
“He’s a good beast,” Mrs. Clark said as Touchstone panted gently at my feet. “A dog that ought not to have been left behind like that. You say Mr. Reynolds was a lord?”
“A courtesy lord, but yes. He had a title, and now I am off to inform his family that he’s… gone missing.”
“Been years since anybody jumped off yonder leap. Sad business. Very sad business indeed.”
I didn’t know that his lordship had leaped to his death, but his hound had been unable to track him past the clifftop.
The trip back to Sussex went quickly. No need to stop at each coaching inn, no need to ask questions of the hostlers or have a look around the commons. I debated whether to travel straight to Valmond House or stop at Caldicott Hall. The Hall won in the end—call me a coward—in part because I wanted to report to Arthur in his informal capacity as acting justice of the peace and in part because I needed a damned bath.
Then too, Atticus—and Hyperia—would worry. Not so much for Lord Reardon, but for me.
I climbed the steps of the north portico at the Hall, feeling about eighty years old. A night in the straw with five stone of bereaved hound at my side had yielded little in the way of slumber. I stank of the stable and of a bungled mission.
“Lord Reardon apparently jumped,” I said when Arthur and Hyperia were assembled in the family parlor. I did not dare risk befouling the furniture in my untidy condition, so I stood near the open windows. “He made arrangements for Touchstone to be returned to Lady Clarissa, amply paid for all services rendered, and on a fine summer day… seems to have put period to his own existence.”
“You’re sure?” Arthur asked, pouring two glasses of lemonade and passing one to Hyperia and one to me. “No other explanation?”
“He could have climbed down the cliff face,” Hyperia said. “He arrived there in full daylight. He apparently knew the area, and he could take his time with the descent.”
“Reardon was fit,” Arthur observed. “Rambled the countryside by the hour. He might have been able to negotiate such a feat.”
I wished now that I’d tarried at The King’s Man and assessed the terrain more carefully, but a torrential downpour would have obliterated much of the relevant evidence supporting Hyperia’s theory.
“If he did negotiate a safe descent,” I said, “then somebody else lost a boot attempting to do likewise and did not retrieve that item upon reaching the riverbank.”
“You saw a boot?” Arthur asked.
“A man’s boot, as best I could make out. Probably landed in the shallows, and as the rain moved in upstream, the rising current caught it.”
“Clarissa will be devastated.” Hyperia said softly. “But she won’t be any more or less devasted if you take an hour to eat and put yourself to rights, Jules.”
I agreed, but I still appreciated that Hyperia would tell me so. “Somebody needs to see to the dog. I left him in the stable…” Looking heartbroken and confused. “Maybe Huber can add him to his kennel.”
“Huber is more likely to shoot that beast,” Arthur said. “Touchstone was a babbler, giving tongue when he couldn’t stay on the line of scent, running riot, ignoring commands when the huntsman lifted the pack, backtracking to the confusion of his fellows. As a foxhound, he was a complete disaster one day and then brilliant the next.”
Arthur did not ride to hounds. He claimed he hadn’t time to indulge in all-day meets, but the reality, I suspected, was that he felt for the fox.
“How do you know Touchstone’s dubious past?” The dog had been eager to work when I had asked him to trail his owner.
“I’ve crossed paths with Lord Reardon on many a hack and hike about the property. I asked why such a handsome animal was relegated to pet status.”
“Touchstone is more than a pet,” Hyperia observed. “That dog was in the nature of a familiar for Lord Reardon. A creature with whom he could communicate without speaking. Poor wretch. Clarissa won’t want to deal with a bereft hound, so let’s sort him out another day. Jules, I’ve ordered a bath for you, and if we’re making a call, I must change as well.”
She could think rationally, while I was too preoccupied with what had happened on the hill behind The King’s Man. I nonetheless sought my bath and was nearly startled out of my skin when Arthur let himself into my sitting room.
“No need to get up on my account,” he drawled as I reposed in a tub full of tepid bliss. “I’ve brought the knapsack, because it might be considered evidence in the event of an inquest.” He helped himself to a sandwich from the tray on the stool beside the tub.
“You’ll hold an inquest?”
“If there’s been a death, it’s certainly suspicious. The question is not whether to hold an inquest, but when.” He settled into a wing chair. “This whole business doesn’t feel right.”
Arthur must be very troubled indeed to seek me out at my ablutions.
I swirled a hand through the water. “I agree. The exhibition looming in London, the day spent pretending to sketch in the neighborhood, that vague warning to Eunice Huber… I can’t make sense of it. Reardon was on the verge of launching an artistic career, he’s heir to a title and means, he’s reasonably likable… Suicide is scandalous, a sin, a tragedy…”
“The coroner won’t rule suicide,” Arthur said, finishing his sandwich and reaching for another. “He’ll rule death by misadventure.”
“Because you will tell him to?”
“Because it serves no purpose to rule otherwise, and for all we know, Reardon slipped.”
“Reardon spent eternities navigating outdoors, Your Grace. You noted as much yourself. I found no evidence at the inn that he’d been imbibing. He was well rested and fit. He did not slip.”
“Was he pushed?”
“No sign at any point on the trail of a companion. No sign he met somebody at the summit. And who had cause to push him?”
“Huber, Mrs. Probinger, some other artist who resents Reardon’s talent—he is very talented—or roving brigands. Plenty of those about in recent years. Or maybe he did slip.” Arthur tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Reardon might have had weak lungs after all, and you describe a steep climb in excessive heat. He grew light-headed, lost his balance, and a tragic mishap ensued.”
This conversation ought to have been awkward, but Harry and I had enjoyed exactly the same informality. I had the sense Arthur had sought me out precisely because he wanted a discussion he could never have had with me in any public drawing room or salon.
“Is that what I’m to tell Clarissa even though we know Reardon’s lungs were in excellent working order? A tragic mishap? She’ll be in mourning for at least a year now, possibly two.”
“Six months for a sibling,” Arthur said. “She’ll be back in good form by next Season. She might even go ahead with the exhibition.”
“She’d call it a tribute to his memory, the least she owed him, devoted sister that she is.” I submerged myself and got my hair thoroughly wet, then availed myself of the tinned lavender-scented soap made by the Hall’s laundresses. “I always associate this fragrance with home.”
“I associate it with the old man,” Arthur said, referring to the late duke. “Brisk, unfussy, hard to ignore. Close your eyes, and I’ll rinse you off.”
I obliged, the cooler water a lavish pleasure when sluiced over my head. Arthur handed me a towel and took the last sandwich save one.
“I won’t ask for an inquest just yet,” he said. “No rush when we don’t have a body.”
In the usual case, the remains would be on display at the inquest, which was often held at the largest local inn. The proprietor would do a grand business in drink and gossip, and the whole town would witness the proceedings.
“Can you have an inquest without a body?” I asked, scrubbing at my hair with the towel.
“It’s done, particularly in cases of drowning if the deceased isn’t recovered, or when the deceased has been burned beyond recognition. Lord Valloise and his countess deserve time to receive the sad news and make the journey home, if they so desire.”
I rose, and Arthur tossed the bath sheet to me.
“One feels reluctant pity for Clarissa,” I said. “She’ll have to manage this—this too. She might not want her parents to come home.”
“She will want them to make the effort, though I suspect Valloise forgets half the time that he has progeny of any kind.”
I wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped from the tub. “Inbreeding,” I said, quoting the late duke. “The aristocracy is too damned inbred.”
“Not as inbred as the monarchy,” Arthur replied, which surprised me. “I’ll have the coach brought around. Your errand to Valmond House requires all the dignities.”
“Not the coach, please. An open conveyance if I’m to take Hyperia. If we use a closed carriage, Lady Ophelia will have to chaperone, and I’m not up to that.”
“She’s still off haranguing the vicar. Divine justice, to subject him to sermons for a change.” Arthur held out the sandwich tray. “You’re still too damned skinny, and good food shouldn’t go to waste.”
I took the sandwich and wondered how often Arthur had been teasing me with humor so subtle I’d missed it entirely.
“Where were you really going the morning Reardon disappeared, Your Grace? The grooms say you do hack out regularly, but that day you were on foot.”
“Would you like to be the justice of the peace, Julian? I can have that arranged, you know. You can snoop about as Huber did, lurking between lines of laundry, listening at keyholes, wreaking ill humor on all you survey.”
“Get out, or I will have to report a crime. A thief has stolen my sandwiches. Takes the very bread from my tray. Bold fellow, and he must be stopped before I toss him in yonder tub.”
Arthur looked about with all the hauteur he was capable of. “I see no thief. You are imagining things.”
“Away with you. I have sad news to break to my neighbor.” Though, as Arthur had said, the whole business didn’t feel right, didn’t follow any logical pattern. Reardon wasn’t Young Werther, thwarted in love and wallowing in sentimental excesses.
Arthur paused by the door, his back half to me. “When the kitchen sends me a tray of sandwiches, they are the size of tea cakes. A dab of butter, a few leaves of watercress. If Cook is feeling generous, I get a slice of cheese or ham so thin you can see through it. The parsley is arranged into some damned Christmas wreath, and a vase of flowers always accompanies the tray. I ask for food and get kitchen art.”
“And you want to dash that tray against the wall, because you will be hungrier after you eat what’s on it than when you rang for it.”
“Cook is trying to be respectful of my station, serving food to suit my supposedly refined palate. Such respect can leave a man starving.” He slipped out the door, and I dressed in solitude.
Not until I was tying my cravat did I realize the duke still had not answered my question about the true purpose for his early morning ramble.