A Fine Caprice - A Regency Romance (14 page)

‘Nobody is expecting me particularly,’ she said,
finding a pan and putting water in it
.
She would have fried the eggs but she could not find any fat to do so and she was rather good at poaching them.
Her limited range of culinary skills came from spending time with Cook in the kitchen when she was young. Fortunately, eggs were one thing she had mastered
rather well
.
‘
And as they’re not
expecting me
at any particular time
,
it doesn’t matter when I get there, I suppose. It’s
more that they know I’m coming. What do you need help with, anyway?’

He wa
s quiet for a moment, clearly
thinking
about the best way to p
hrase what he wished to tell her
and her curiosity
was well and truly piqued.
What was it that was troubling him so?
What would trouble a man like this, a man who so clearly was used to be in control of things? Because, for all his air of lazy amusement, there was something about him that told her
there was very
little that he could not manage, a quiet confidence that seemed to suggest he was used to being in charge.

Abruptly,
he seemed to come to a decision. ‘
I have been here for less than a week, ostensibly to take a look at the household
I’ve been landed with
.
But I’ve also come to Abbey Cross
for quite a dif
ferent reason.’ He paused for a moment
,
then
sighed.
‘
My unc
le was not an
honest ma
n
and took great delight in stepping outside of the law
whenever the opportunity presented itself
.
In these parts, they presented themselves
frequently for the place is
rife with smuggling. Uncle Abel
participated more or less
from the
time
he took up permanent residence here, using it to supplement his income
, which he always considered paltry
.
He was the forth
son and was not as affluent as his brothers.
The family suspected
that he was involved
in the smuggling trade
but we elected to ignore it. What were we going to do? Tell the excise men and have him arrested? Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the local fellows knew what he was up to. There has always been a reciprocal arrangement with these things.
’

‘Your uncle was a smuggler?’
Caprice
was impressed. The m
ost interesting relative she could produce was able to
juggle three boiled eggs without dropping them
,
no
mean feat in her family
.

‘Indeed.
Lamentable, but underst
andable in its own way as he did not have a large fortune
.
He was something of a collector, as well. In the early days he had quite the eye for curios of considerable antiquity. Although
,’ he glanced around the
cluttered
room
with a
grimace
,
‘
his passion seemed to have devolved into a form of insanity.’

‘
But
if your family knew he was smuggling, then what’s the problem? I suppose now that he’s dead all that will stop.’

‘Unfortunately, there appears to be more to my uncle’s activities than that. Lately it has come to my ears
that my uncle may
have been mixed up in something far less palatable
. Something that might have seen him with a noose around his neck if he’d been caught.’

Caprice
paused, breadknife poised to saw a slice of the loaf,
to eye Lord Merridew with wide-eyed astonishment. ‘What was he doing?’

‘I think he was helping the French.’

‘Helping the French to…
o
h!’

‘Oh, indeed.’

Shock rippled through the girl. She knew, of course, that some of the English nobility had sympathy with the French aristos who had suffered during the Revolution. It was understandable – even
heartbreaking
,
as quite a few had family ties across the Chan
n
el. But helping Bonaparte, the arrogant little emperor who had caused
the English
so much trouble for so long went
well
beyond the pale. Her fathe
r had mentioned only last month
as he had read his corresponde
nce over breakfast, that Lord Burnett
had been arrested for treaso
n, caught leaking information about
Britain’s
troupe deployments on the continent
. The discovery had been a dreadful shock
and the man was sure to swing for it.

‘But… but that’s dreadful!’

His
lordship nodded grimly. ‘I couldn’t agree more
.’ He took the bread knife off her –
clearly he had divined that cutting
bread
was not a skill she possessed
– and began to slice it a great de
al more
efficiently than she had been
. ‘Of course, nothing was actually proven agai
nst him and he’s dead
so nothing ever will be
.’

‘How did he die?’
Caprice
demanded.

He grinned at her. ‘Not from the fatal blow of righteous justice, I can assure you. Apparently his black heart finally gave out
of its own accord
.
He was in his seventies so it’s hardly surprising.
’

‘Really? He sounds
just the sort who might be murdered.’

‘I cannot argue against
that. If I had known just how far he had fallen, I might have done the job myself.’

Caprice
went and cracked eggs into the now bubbling water, then searched about for plates and clean cutlery. ‘So you’re here to discover… what?
If your uncle is dead…
’

‘
His misdeeds died with him? If only it were that simple.
I have it on good authority that there is more to it than that. There is the possibility that others are continuing on the work that he started. My cousin, for instance
-’

‘Your cousin might be
spy?’ she demanded, scandalized
all over again
.
One reprobate relative – who happened to be dead –
w
as worrying enough but two seemed downright excessive.

He shook his head with mock amusement. ‘What can I tell you? Mine is a shocking family. Fortunately
Hadley is not actually related to me by blood and I myself
am a pillar of respectability
,
so we may yet come about
.’

‘No, but really.
That man I met last night.
That… that gentleman in the… colourful dressing gown.
A spy?’

‘
It
was
a hideous robe, was
it
not?
Almost enough to condemn the fellow without another shred of evidence.
And
let us not forget Maria.’

‘
Also
a spy?
No!
’

‘She would be a far better candidate than my cousin. And i
t seems far more plausible that she’s a spy than that she’s his fiancé
e
.’

‘So… t
hey are not really engaged?’
Caprice
breathed.

‘I think it highly unlikely. My cousin is not interested in marriage
,’ his lordship observed dryly.
‘
Well… not until he has to be.’

Caprice
shook her head yet again. For a girl who had been largely sheltered in t
he comfortable environs of Warwickshire, such goings on were
astonishing. She knew that
the ongoing war in Europe was taki
ng its toll for who did not? Even so,
it was a world away from the genteel life she had always enjoyed and truly, it did not even seem to be much discussed in London for Angelique had only made passing references to it in her letters and that was more to deplore the lack of decent dressmaking materials from the Continent. So the realization that things – big, important things – were going on behind the every day lives that people lived
was profoundly disturbing. The war, it appeared, was not
just abroad but here in England
as well
…

She lifted the eggs neatly out of the water and laid them on the bread, slipping a plate in front of Lord Merridew. Then she topped up their cups with tea before sitting down to her own meal. She was starving but manners dictated that she wait until he had begun.

‘So what do you want me to help with? Searching? S
hall
I
follow your cousin or the grand d
uchess?’
She could do that. In fact, she found herself
wanting
to do that. If they were spies then she would very much like to catch them out
and it could not be denied there was something rather appealing in sneaking about
.

‘Eat, for God’s sake,’ he recommended, starting on his own plate. ‘You look famished.’ She picked up her knif
e and fork and sawed off an eggie
hunk. ‘You’re manners are very good,’ he continued on, watching her eat. ‘Am I to assume that you were actually raised with the family?’

Caprice
bought herself some time by finishing her mouthful, wondering how to
go about explaining her pretty manners to his satisfaction
.
Delicately, and with a great deal of care seemed to be the best approach. She had known that
he would ask her more questions about her ‘family’. The story that she had hastily produced the night before would have guaranteed
that
and she had mentally rehearsed what she was going to say.

Swallowing her
well-masticated
food,
she
spoke calmly. ‘I was granted liberties that most other bastards would
no
t have been. I ate with the family much of the time although the mistress didn’t like it in the least. She thought I should be in the kitchen. I’m afraid it caused a lot of bad feeling.’

‘I’m sure it did. It must have been awkward for you.’

Caprice
conside
red how she would have
felt if the situation had been real and decided that it would have cau
sed her considerable unhappiness and not a little awkwardness
if it were act
ually true. She nodded
sadly. ‘It was not very comfortable.’

‘You learned the manners of the gentry, thanks to your father.
He must have educated you for a reason. What were his plans
for you?’

What had he
r mythological father
planned
for her
? Good question. Presumably the man would have had something in mind if he had insisted on having his bastard son join the family. ‘I think he thought to provide a living for me of some kind,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If I had been legitimate, I would have probably joined the church for I was, in a manner of speaking, the third son.’

‘But that would have hardly been possible, given the circumstances of your birth,’ he pointed out delicately, ‘although I believe such things have been done before. The monarchy has always promoted offspring born on the wrong side of the blanket.’

So
Caprice
had always heard. She was basing her own story on snippets of tales that she had read over the years.
It all sounded rather romantic
really, especially now she had been forced from her home to seek her fortune in the wider
, far from
forgiving,
world.

‘He probably wanted me as the estate manager,’ she sighed. ‘
Somebody he could depend on.
I would have been very trustworthy.’

‘Did your father die unexpectedly?’

‘P
neumonia. It was very quick
.’ Really,
Caprice
was warming more and more to her story as she went. She could almost see the family back home, the place she had left behind and
her father, gruff but good-humo
red, determined
to do something for his illegitimate
son.
Last nigh
t, when she had considered the problem
she had tended to make the man a bit of a monster but her
storybook
father had undergone a character change over night and she found herself increasingly fond of him. Well, she would h
ave been if the poor fellow had actually
existed.