A Fine Caprice - A Regency Romance (11 page)

Then she paused, listening.
Was that a creak of floorboards in the hallway?
Probably not.
The old place was noisy, thanks to the wind rattling its gables. But she wasn’t sure and a sense of uneasiness settled in the pit of her stomach.

So,
while her eyelids desperately wished to close
and her body get on with the delightful business of sleeping
, she
flung
th
e blankets to one side and
regained her
feet. Fetching a
high backed wooden
chair
from beside the window
,
Caprice
wedged
it
firmly beneath the doorhandle before
climbing
back into bed.
She had learned that chairs could be used for purposes other th
an sitting during her journey
and had employed them to good effect if she had managed to secure a room and wanted to be sure not to be disturbed during the night.

She might be grateful to find herself with a bed for the night, after all, but in a household that seemed to full bursting with the most extraordinary characters, she was taking no chances of a rude awakening.
And that
might
just possibly have been a footstep in the hallway beyond her door.
Unlikely, but possible.

Having dealt with
all that she could for the moment
,
she snuggled down beneath the blankets and finally
allowed herself to fall wholeheartedly
and completely
into
welcoming
slumber.

And if anybody
did
try to get through the door, she certainly did not hear anything for her dreams remained undisturbed.

Merridew returned to his bedchamber –
his
damp
, slightly smoky
bedchamber
, for of course the chimney could do with a clean
– in a thoughtful frame of mind. Upon hearing the unmistakable sounds of an intruder downstairs, he had investigated with caution, half expecting… well, he was not sure what he had been expecting. Anthony Fenshaw’s suspicions had alerted him to the
prospect of something occurring
, but ju
st what
that might be
was unclear.
While he had initially dismissed the idea that his uncle had been mixed up in anything other than smuggling – all the family knew that he was involved in
that
– he was coming around to the idea that he was mistaken for instinct told hi
m something was happening
at Abbey Cross.
Even so… he had been here for four days and apart from the arrival of Hadley and his exotic companion
, had seen no one but the shopkeepers he had bought supplies off. If there were smugglers or spies about, they were keeping a very low profile
while Fenshaw’s agents had not approached him
.

He
aring a noise downstairs, his hopes had risen that something was finally happening. He
had been surprised to discover a lad who, unless he was very much mistaken,
was telling the truth about wandering in to the wrong place
despite the fact that his arrival in the middle of the nigh
t was decidedly odd
.
As unlikely as it might seem, there was an unmistakable ring
of truth in what he’d said
. The one thing that hadn’t sat so easily was the story of young Jem Morris’ antecedents,
but who could say what the boy’s
circumstances were?
Certainly, a great many men got their servants pregnant; it was one of the more unpalatable facts of life so the probability that Jem’s father had been some lusty nobleman was high. But there was something, a note that
had been a little off key. Not that it mattered.
S
tableboys
did
take up new positions and they probably got lost and arrived l
ate upon occasion, more frequently than most people probably realized.

Besides, t
here had been something ingenuous about those clear green eyes that had convinced Cass that, whatever the reasons the
boy had for
wandering around in the middle of the night
, malicious intent did not come into it. And while the French – and no do
ubt the English as well, for
he was no
t
naïve –
might sometimes employ
young
lads
as spi
es,
Jem Morris was not a cont
ender. Not that the boy was unintelligent. He was certainly bright, t
hat had been obvious from the moment he had opened his mouth. What had
really
convinced Cass that the lad’s story was true was his obvious confusion about finding himself where he had not expected to be. That
confusion
had been entirely genuine.

Cass grinned, touching the small lu
mp where plate had met skull
. He couldn’t remember the last time somebody had broken crockery over his head but it had likely been back at Oxford when he and his friends were in their cups, a relatively frequent occurrence
when they’d been
up to no good
. H
e had to admire the boy’s spunk; he’d certainly decided to act first and ask questions later.

Cass sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. His
sud
den decision to enlist Jem Morris’
aid had been an impulsive one
but upon reflection, he could see no harm in it. It would be damned useful to have eyes in the back of his head
at the moment
and that was exactly wh
at he intended to use the
boy for.
Since his arrival he
had ach
ieved practically nothing
apart from a renewed distaste for spiders and an increasing dislike of useless clutter
.
He had never seen so much rubbish in one place. God along knows how his uncle had managed, an old man negotiating his way
around the mountains of
debris that infested the place.

Oddly enough,
Abbey Cross
had been desert
ed when he
had
arrived, with no
t a
servant to be found. He had searc
hed the place
but there had been no sign of
his uncle’s valet Priss.
Having established that he was alone,
Cass had been unclear as to what he was supposed to do but had decided
to
begin by
search
ing
his uncle’s papers
in the hope that they might give him an
idea of the state of Abel Merridew’s
affairs
.
It had to be done anyway,
as he owned the place
.
It had been an admirable idea
but di
fficult to execute as Uncle Abel
eschewed the dr
eary necessity of keeping
his pa
pers in any kind of order
. On the contrary, a cursory look through things had made Cass
realize that his uncle
had mixed bills
and correspondence,
idle s
cribblings with invitations
,
all
of which
were st
rewn about
in the most haphazard manner imaginable. Cass
hoped that
Mr.
Farris, his uncle’s
solicitor
, would be able to clarify matters
with some kind of legal document
. The man
was due to ar
rive on Frida
y to elucidate the contents of the
wil
l
.

Cass glanced around
the
room and g
rimaced. When he had claimed his uncle’s
bedchamber he had collected up a dozen or so of the
boxes
that had been piled about the room, removing them into the dressing room next door because the clutter was making him claustrophobic. The state of Abbey Cross was incredible, stifling beneath
fifty years of collected detritus
.
Abel
had always been a hoarder but Cass
had not realized the old man had gotten so bad
in his latter years
.
The old man seemed to have
taken to dumping things anywhere he fancied, which meant that almost every
room
seemed to be choked
with rubbish
. At least, Cass assumed it was rubbish. How he was to find anything of
significance
in amongst the mountain of madness was hard to envision
, especially as he had no real idea wha
t he was looking for. The mess was probably deliberate for Abel
might have been
utterly unpleasant and alarmingly eccentric but he
always
possessed a streak of lo
w cunning that meant there very well might
be nothing
to
find. Not without a great deal of work, anyway.

The condition of Abbey Cross
– both the house itself and the grounds -
had come as an unpleasant shock for it appear
ed no maintenance had been done
for years.
Cass had been told in the village that a
t
the end of his days,
his uncle had
only
ret
ained the services of
Priss
, an ins
crutable man who had been entirely
devoted to his master. Where the hell had the man gotten to? Unless he had fal
len on his sword when Uncle Abel
had passed away,
unable to face life without his detestable employer,
then by rights the man
should still be o
n the premises but
an air of aba
ndonment hung
over it
like a fetid
stink. Or perhaps that was
the drains. Like everything else, they needed attention.

Although
initially
Cass
had
half believed he was on a wild goose chase, the arrival of his cousin Ravener the day after his own had seemed to suggest that there was
something in Fenshaw’s story
for Ravener never went anywhere without a purpose
and that purpose inevitably benefited himself
.
Not that
Cass hadn’t been
expecting
Hadley
to turn up
at some stage, him being U
ncle Abel
’s favorite
in as far
as the man had possessed one.
He would be hopin
g that he would profit from Abel
’s death, no doubt.
His cousin
had been accompanied by his fiancée, the Grand Duchess
that Fenshaw had alluded to and Cass had taken
the opportunity to observe
the woman
, wondering if she truly was a spy and, if so, wondering
just
who it was she was spying
for
.
A Prussian by birth, Maria was beautiful, sophisticated and
possessed an acute intelligence that seemed to suggest her business at Abbey Cross had nothing to do with a patently absurd engagement to Hadley.
Upon arrival, b
oth
of the new arrivals
– in the company of their servants –
had turned their noses up at the accommodation, declaring that the place was unfit for habitation. But neither had departed again, instead going off in se
arch of the most agreeable
rooms
to be found
. It was
all very curious
for he could not imagine a more unlikely setting for the beautiful Maria
von Kassel
,
while his cousin had always professed
a distaste
for Abb
ey Cross and
was a
creature far more comfortable sitting i
n
the bow window of White’s
than in the wilds of Dorset.

Since their arriva
l, Cass had caught
them
tapping at wal
ls in the various rooms
. Ravener had been
extremely
disconcerted to discover that Cass had taken his uncle’s bedchamber for his own. It must, Cass thought with some amusement, be irksome when one wanted
to make a thorough search of a
place to be hampered by the
presence of an inconvenient
occupant. Hadley
had been so annoyed that he h
ad lost his usual suave
.