A Christmas Charade (27 page)

The door opened. Stewart, a cue stick under the stump of his arm and a hard glint in his eye, sketched a bow.

“You’re quite right, Miss Amelia. I am indeed playing. A few more practice sessions, and I shall be in excellent trim.” He glanced at Flora. “Miss Rowland, would you care to watch?”

“Thank you, dear boy.” Flora fluttered her shawls. “I’m honored. But some other time, perhaps? Juliette was wanting a word with you and George.”

The sisters walked on, past the estate offices, and disappeared into the muniment room.

Stewart finally met Juliette’s eyes. “I don’t want to seem disobliging, but George was called away. Some emergency, I believe, with the treasure hunt.”

“I don’t care about George,” Juliette blurted out.

Her heart hammered. She knew her unruly tongue would most likely play her false, but she could not stop herself.

“Stewart, I am so proud of you! And if there were time, I’d like very much to watch you play billiards.”

His mouth tightened. “You’re too kind. But don’t worry, I was not about to ask you to miss your dinner for the sake of watching my clumsy attempts.”

“Dinner … what are you talking about? Oh, I see! That there is no time.”

She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. “Stewart, I could shake you! But there’s no time even for that. I cannot find Elizabeth, and I’m very much afraid she may have gone out at dusk and … and something must have happened because she is nowhere in the castle!”

As the hardness left his eyes, she caught a glimpse of the old Stewart, the man who had captured her heart.

“I shan’t ask you the obvious, whether she is with Mother or one of the other ladies. But the castle is huge. Are you sure you’ve looked everywhere, Juliette? What about the second floor?”

“I haven’t made a conscious search,” she admitted. “But, Stewart! I was playing hide-and-seek with the twins this past hour. Believe me, we were
everywhere
.”

Frowning, he took the cue stick he still held clutched under the stump of his arm and returned it to the rack on the wall.

“I suppose you want to go looking for her? Well, I’m game.” The hint of a smile softened his mouth as he rejoined her. “This has been a devilish dull afternoon and evening.”

“Thank you!”

She felt like skipping or dancing. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and give him a hug. But for once, mind prevailed over heart. She walked sedately at his side, determined to do nothing that would bring back his coldness.

“I don’t know where to look for her if she’s not in the yard or garden,” she said. “I ventured out the Great North Gate this morning and followed the road. It forks three ways after just a little bit.”

“We’ll go about this methodically.”

He let his gaze linger on her. How beautiful she was with the candlelight dancing in her hair. It looked like spun gold.

“How do we do that?”

Sharply, he recalled his wandering mind. “First we’ll find out if anyone saw Elizabeth leave. For all we know, she may have told the butler or one of the footmen where she was going. If not, I’ll appropriate lanterns and Clive’s curricle, and you and I will search the road to West Dean. Some of the stable lads can follow the lanes to East Dean and to Seaford.”

“That’s a capital plan. I’m afraid I would have simply rushed off. And, most likely,” she added pensively, “it would have turned out that Elizabeth wasn’t lost at all, so everyone would have had to come looking for me.”

They stopped at her door.

Gently, he ran a fingertip along her cheek and jaw line. “You always were impulsive.”

“And you always had the orderly mind. I daresay that’s why you rose so quickly to brigade major.”

She caught his hand and held it captive against her face. Taking courage when he did not try to withdraw it, she said, “And I wish you would wear your uniform.”

“Why? I’ll resign as soon as I return to town. What difference does it make whether I wear the uniform a few more days?”

A certain stiffness of tone warned her that he was pokering up again. But now that she had said this much, she might as well speak her mind. Slowly, she released his hand. Better give it up voluntarily than have it snatched from her.

“For one thing, it would please your parents if you wore regimentals. You cannot deny that your father was just a little disconcerted when he arrived and saw you in civilian clothes. Stewart, he is so very proud of you. Could you not indulge him?”

“And you, Juliette? Do you want to see me in uniform again?” His voice turned harsh. “A reminder of the days that used to be?”

“A reminder wouldn’t hurt. I have begun to wonder if those days of courtship and the honeymoon happened only in my imagination.”

“It wasn’t imagination. But I am no longer the man who courted you.”

“No.” She met his gaze squarely. “The man who courted me would not have discarded uniform and wife as though he blamed them for the loss of his arm.”

“Julie, I don’t blame you. Never have!”

She went on as though he had not spoken. “Something happened to that man I fell in love with, and I wish I knew what it was. It is damned difficult having to go to battle when you don’t know what you’re fighting.”

“It is impossible. I should know.”

“It is also unfair.”

When he made no reply, she turned abruptly and opened the door to her chamber. “I had better fetch my cloak.”

He watched her go inside and fling open the wardrobe. Deep in thought, he went to his own room for his driving coat and gloves.

Unfair. Unfair.

The accusation still rang in his ears when he rejoined Juliette. In silence, they descended to the Great Hall, where he spoke briefly with the footman on duty. But James could not help. He had not seen Miss Gore-Langton leave.

Stewart turned to Juliette. He saw that she had not closed the frogging at the neck of her cloak and reached out to fasten it. She held quite still, but her pulse was agitated and fluttered against his fingers.

“The shortest way to the stables is through the kitchens,” he said while his mind once more grappled with the concept of fairness. Or unfairness. “On our way out we can question the rest of the staff.”

She did not answer. In fact, she could not. She hardly dared breathe until he was done and she no longer felt the touch of his fingers against her throat.

She took a deep breath then, but before she could speak, one wing of the great front door crashed open, admitting an icy blast of air and three disheveled, windblown figures, their faces red with cold.

“You there, James!” Nicholas, whom Juliette almost did not recognize in his homespun smock and knitted cap, grinned at the footman. “Don’t stand there gaping. Fetch the housekeeper. We need chambers prepared. And have someone take care of the horses.”

“Horses?” gasped James.

“Yes. Outside. Now be a good fellow and run along.”

Juliette cast a quick look at the cloaked woman with Nicholas—not Elizabeth—and at the stout man, whose right hand was wrapped in a bloodstained handkerchief.

Stewart said, “Nicholas, I thought you were with Clive.”

“Where is Elizabeth?” demanded Juliette. “And who are these people?”

“Elizabeth will be along,” Nicholas said cheerfully. “So will Clive. And a French spy.”

“The devil you say!” Stewart looked grim. In a reflex motion, his right hand reached for the sword he no longer carried at his side.

Juliette could only mutter weakly, “Gracious! Whatever does Clive want with a spy?”

The Great Hall was crowded with Clive’s guests and as many of the staff as could invent an errand that would take them into the vast chamber where they might take a peek at the French spy.

Chamberlain had ordered Duval to sit on a straight-backed chair near the western fireplace, had bandaged his left shoulder and, finally, tied his right wrist to the chair back. Sylvester Throckmorton and Gabrielle de Tournier received their share of curious looks, while Clive and Nicholas were peppered with questions about the spy’s capture. Even Elizabeth was interrogated about her part in the affair.

It was well past the dinner hour, but none of the company had a thought to spare for the meal spoiling in the kitchens or for the chef, whose heart was breaking as he dismembered and deboned the roasted pheasants, done to a turn. With an expression of utter disgust, Monsieur Maurice tossed the scraps of meat into a sauce.

“A
fricassée!
” He glared at the most junior of kitchen maids, who started to tremble and wished she had dared sneak off with the others to take a look at the spy. “If his grace is content to eat
fricassée
, he need not have engaged me, the best chef in all of England and the Continent.”

And while Monsieur Maurice grumbled and swore he would give notice if his grace did not sit down to dinner within the hour, Annie flitted around excitedly.

From the strip of second-floor landing below the oriel window above the great front door, she gazed down into the crowded hall and was reminded of the days when the fourth duke and his wife—his first wife—entertained at Stenton. For a moment her gaze lingered on Miss Juliette and the major. She was glad to see they were still together.

Earlier, when the major fastened the frogging on Miss Juliette’s cloak, Annie had been sorely tempted to try her hand at peacemaking. But she had hesitated too long, and when she was about to give Miss Juliette a little push, Lord Nicholas and his companions had burst into the hall.

Annie moved among the company, turning up her nose at Lady Harry’s sensible wool gown, touching the velvet of Lady Fanny’s elegant dinner gown, and thinking wistfully of the glittering, stiff brocades that prevailed in the olden days. But, overall, this night was the best, the most lively, she had seen in many a year.

And it was getting livelier, since Mr. Symes, the dignified butler who would never admit to vulgar curiosity, had struck upon the notion to serve brandy and Madeira to the gentlemen, ratafia and sherry to the ladies. It was a masterful stroke to keep him and the footmen occupied in the Great Hall.

Annie stopped behind a settle, where Lord Decimus sat with the Misses Rowland.

“Isn’t it grand?” she said gleefully. “Better than a raree show.”

For once, Decimus paid her no attention. His myopic gaze was fixed with painful intensity on Sylvester Throckmorton, who stood not too far away talking with Clive, Sir John Astley, Lord Wilmott, and Elizabeth.

It was Miss Flora who turned around, saying, “But that man, the spy, he doesn’t look at all dangerous. I am quite disappointed. I remember, when I was a child, my parents took me to the hanging of a highwayman….”

Her voice trailing, Flora blinked at the emptiness behind the settle.

Annie looked the plump, elderly lady over, assessing the blond-turned-gray crimped curls, the complexion that owed some of its rosiness to the rouge pot.

“You may no longer be in your salad days, Miss Flora, but you’re not old enough to have known Dick Turpin. And that’s who my da saw hanged. He said Dick Turpin was the fiercest, meanest-looking highwayman he ever clapped eyes on.”

Flora’s rouge spots flamed in her suddenly pale face. “Amelia,” she whispered. “Who is that talking to me?”

Amelia broke off her conversation with Grace’s governess.

“For goodness’ sake, Flora. Are you turning blind?” She looked over her shoulder. “Well, whoever it was, she’s gone. And what can you have been thinking of, comparing a spy to a highwayman! This Frenchman may look harmless—that, I’m sure, is his stock-in-trade—but he’s far more dangerous than Dick Turpin ever was.”

Flora was about to protest that it wasn’t she who mentioned Dick Turpin, when Decimus muttered something under his breath. He set his brandy glass on the floor and rose lumberingly to his feet.

“What I want to know,” he said loudly as he made his way toward Throckmorton, his old gaming companion of Watier’s Club, “is how
you
came to be mixed up in this spying business, Sylvester.”

A hush fell over the Great Hall. Heads turned, and more than a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on the two stout gentlemen.

“Decimus, my dear fellow! Don’t look at me as though you’ve already convicted me of high treason.” Throckmorton drew a wheezing breath. “I did nothing I need be ashamed of—save for missing that cad Duval when I finally had him at firing distance.”

Gabrielle de Tournier, standing nearby and yet not a part of the group surrounding Throckmorton since she had been talking exclusively with Nicholas, swung around.

She said sharply, “But that was altogether the fault of Miss Gore-Langton, and I still think we should have been permitted to shoot Duval later.”

Most of those who heard Gabrielle looked startled by her vehemence, and Decimus voiced the sentiments of many. “My dear young lady! Can’t shoot a man who’s down. It’s not done. And he
was
down. Shot by Chamberlain. I distinctly heard Clive say so.”

“Ah, bah! You English have so much phlegm. All you can say is, ‘It is not done!’ ” In a dramatic gesture, Gabrielle pointed at Elizabeth. “Then
you
should
not
have meddled. That also is not done. It was, in fact, a great piece of impertinence.”

Elizabeth merely smiled. There was something about the raven-haired young Frenchwoman that appealed to her. Perhaps it was Gabrielle’s liveliness, a trait Elizabeth lacked. Rosalind, however, had possessed that same spirited quality….

Clive said coldly, “Mademoiselle, if you’re quite done venting your spleen, perhaps you will allow Mr. Throckmorton to speak.”

Throckmorton nodded. “I am willing, nay, eager to say my piece. And if everyone would draw a little closer so that I won’t have to exert myself?”

While others drew near, Elizabeth retreated to a chair flanked by suits of armor at the back of the Great Hall. She was beginning to feel a little dizzy, perhaps a result of the sherry Stenton had pressed on her as soon as Symes appeared with a drink tray. Or, perhaps, it was merely the warmth from the fireplaces penetrating her chilled body. Whatever the cause of the light-headedness, she was quite content to stay in the background.