Barbara Metzger (14 page)

“And if they didn’t, they’d remember him,” she agreed. Uncle Albert certainly made an impression.

“Terwent claims no one here could tell him who drove the baron away or who saddled a horse for him. He even suggested the man might never have left the Manor.”

“Oh, he left, all right.” Graydon wiped a crumb from his breeches.

Daphne said, “You know what Uncle Albert was like. Why would we keep him?”

“‘Was’? What do you mean, ‘was’?”

Graydon jumped in. “She means the day you brought him here. He was castaway and in a snit. We were all of us glad to see him leave.” Not as glad as Graydon’d be to see this parsonlike Pomeroy leave.

“Then who took him, and where?” Miles demanded.

“Oh dear.” Daphne just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t weave a story out of whole cloth, not to poor Miles, who never swerved from the truth, no matter how unpalatable. “I think we have to talk.”

“Devil take it, Miss Daphne, we are talking.”

“No, I mean really talk.”

Graydon was frowning and shaking his head. “It’s not at all necessary.”

But it was, to Daphne. She couldn’t lie to the man she was thinking of marrying. “Excuse us a moment please, Miles.” She pulled on the major’s coat sleeve until he rose with her and walked over to the window alcove. “We have to tell him. He’s going to be looking for Uncle Albert anyway. Now he’ll help us find him.”

“But then what? He’ll blast his find from the church steps.”

“No, he won’t. Miles is loyal and trustworthy and helpful,” she insisted.

“Devil a bit, Daffy, if that’s what you want, get a dog, for goodness’ sake! Don’t get porridge-head Pomeroy involved in this.”

“Don’t call him names, don’t call me Daffy, and don’t tell me what to do! You haven’t been a whole lot of help in this situation, Major Missing-bodies, and Miles is my friend.”

“Then go ahead and tell him, and wait for your friend to clap us all in gaol.”

While Graydon was still seething, Daphne did just that; she told Miles about Uncle Albert. She didn’t have long to wait.

“You did what?” Miles shouted.

Daphne tried to shush him, looking toward her mother, while Major Howell grinned. Pomeroy’s face had gone all red, and his cheeks puffed out. “That’s criminal,” he screamed, but in a hoarse whisper. “It’s against the law!”

“What law?” Graydon wanted to know.

“There must be a hundred statutes about reporting dead bodies! I’d have to check my books. Lud, people’d be burying their grandmothers in the backyard rather than pay funeral costs.” He took a deep swallow of tea. “Tarnation, Daphne, Miss Whilton, how the deuce could you think to keep it a secret?”

“Graydon and I thought it was more important to hold the wedding, for our parents’ sakes.” She nodded again toward the older couple, sitting closer together than they had been.

Miles didn’t like that partnership, not the earl and Lady Whilton, but that “Graydon and I.” He didn’t like to think of his future bride—for so he was wont to think of Daphne—intriguing with that hey-go-mad Howell. “Well, you can’t do it,” he therefore stated. “As an officer of the law, I insist you declare him legally dead. I can fill out the forms. Then you must see him properly buried.”

“That’s just the problem, Miles. We can’t bury him. We can’t even find him.”

Miles spilled his tea. Graydon helpfully handed over his own napkin. “Yes, someone stole the corpse on us,” he offered. “Likely for ransom.”

Pomeroy ignored him and glared at Daphne. “You see? Do you see what your interfering with the law has done? Lies only lead to more lies, crimes to more crimes.” He angrily swiped at the damp patch in his lap. “And you never did say what the baron died of.”

Daphne was taken aback. “What, do you think I killed him?”

Now Miles turned his ire on Graydon. “I honestly don’t know what to think anymore. That you could be involved in such hugger-mugger…and an ex-soldier. Everyone knows how cheap they hold life.”

“No, everyone knows how precious they consider it, having been so close to death,” Graydon responded furiously, restrained from contradicting his own words only by the lack of his sword at his side. “And that old makebait died because his heart finally shriveled up out of meanness.”

“No, Gray, he died because he couldn’t breathe right. He was wheezing something terrible when I went to see him. I do think I may have killed him after all.”

“Don’t be a goose, Daffy. You heard how many powders and prescriptions he took. He stuck his spoon in the wall after fifty or sixty years of dissolution. And last night he was as drunk as a—”

“Lord?” Miles put in, from his position in the landed gentry, and from seeing this handsome titled devil rush to Miss Whilton’s defense.

Daphne was oblivious to them both. “But he mightn’t have died right then if I hadn’t argued with him again about the twenty thousand pounds.”

Pomeroy’s ears perked up. “What twenty thousand pounds?”

“The money Papa set aside for my mother, in case she married and her widow’s annuity ended. Mama’s dowry, I suppose. Lord Hollister didn’t approve, but Mama wanted the money for me, it seems.”

“For you?” That widow’s wedding was growing more important to Pomeroy by the minute. The major groaned as he saw the light of greed shine in Pomeroy’s eyes. Poor Daphne, and she thought the dastard loved her. At least maybe Pomeroy would be more cooperative about keeping Whilton’s death quiet now.

“So what will you do?” Graydon asked, bringing Pomeroy’s attention back to the present and away from a town house in London, a racing phaeton, a box at the opera, and a yacht.

“Do? Oh, yes. I’ll have to look for the baron, of course, as that Terwent character requested.” He tried to make light of his defection. “Can’t leave a body littering the countryside, don’t you know. I suppose I’ll have to look for the extortionists, too, once you get a ransom notice. If I find him, the corpse, I mean, have to make the death public. But if I don’t, there’s no one else to say if he’s dead or alive, right?”

“Ohlman knows,” Daphne told him, ever truthful. “But he won’t tell anyone.”

“Then it’s a matter of
habeas corpus.
No body, no, ah, need for a death certificate and all that.”

Daphne smiled. “Thank you, Miles; I knew I could count on you to understand.”

Graydon almost choked on his tea. Love might be blind, but was Daffy so enamored that she was deaf and dumb besides? He couldn’t believe she’d lost all her wits—to this puff-guts.

Then she reached over and patted Pomeroy’s hand and put the last raspberry tart on his plate. Hell and damnation!

Chapter Fourteen

Jake woke with a smile on his face. His pants were damp; his youth was coming back. No, he was just wet. He looked up through the holes in the cottage roof and saw stars. It wasn’t even raining. He remembered a tree falling on him, or near enough as made no difference, the way he felt. Those nimwit nevvies of his must have dragged him through a streambed before taking him home, if the abandoned shack could be so called. It was a wonder he didn’t catch his death from the dowsing, whatever the dunderheads had done to him. Then he sneezed, coughed, shivered, and stopped wondering.

One good thing about the country: when the furniture was gone, you could still find something to burn. Jake hobbled to the stack of kindling he’d made the boys find yesterday, and threw some on the crumbling stone hearth. The fireplace might give off more smoke than heat, but it was something. He hobbled back to his pile of wet blankets to drag them closer to the miserly flames. Damn if both his legs didn’t feel broke. One was wrapped in something, the other wasn’t, and his cloth-head kin were nowhere in sight. He coughed some more. The smoke was worse than usual.

When his eyes cleared, he spotted a bundle of something in the corner, so he lurched in that direction. His eyes filled with tears of joy—or smoke. The boys had managed to steal something after all. On their own, after years of his lessons and lectures, they’d made a haul. Not a big haul, true, and they might even now be rotting in gaol for their crimes, but they’d done just right: they’d brought the booty to Uncle Jake. They were finally as smart as the dog Sal.

The satchel was of good quality, he could tell even in the dim light. Leather, with brass catches. Someone would pay something for it. Next to it was a silver flask, engraved, but with no initials, thank goodness. It would fetch a handsome penny, too. Too bad it was empty. And too bad he wasn’t in London.

The rotten thing about the country was, there was so much of it, with nothing in between. Jake knew he couldn’t try fencing this stuff in the local village so close to the crime, even if there was a pawnshop, which he doubted, and the next town was a good five miles away. He couldn’t just walk to the corner and hail a hackney, either. In London he’d have traded these items for a heavy wet, a hearty meal, and a bit of jingle that could keep him till the next opportunity. Now all he could do was try to inhale fumes from the flask and keep looking.

Behind the suitcase was a cane, one whose carved bone handle Jake recognized well. He should. There was a matching indentation in his head. So his gang of geniuses had managed to lift that old bastard’s poke. Well, well, well. Jake hoped they bashed his head in while they were doing it, but his confidence in Sailor and Handy was not quite that high.

Either way, that old bugger was a flash cove with a carriage of his own and a valet, so there must be a fortune in the bag. There wasn’t. Jake dumped the contents on the floor. No wallet, no jewels, no bank books or important papers. Nothing but linen. His addlepated relatives had robbed a well-heeled toff, and come up with his underwear!

Unless, Jake mused, there had indeed been a roll of soft that the boys had made off with, abandoning him here. He knew that’s what
he
would have done. Jake rubbed his sweaty brow, thinking. He thought that he was too cold to sweat. The fire wasn’t that hot; he was feverish. If they didn’t come back, he was like to die here. Then again, with their level of competence, he was like to die if they did come back, only quicker.

Meanwhile he pawed through the stuff from the satchel. Shirts, hose—and a white flannel nightshirt that was the softest thing he’d touched since that French whore when the dibs were in tune, a long, long time ago. He quickly shed his damp garments and put on the long, flowing gown, marveling at its warmth and clean smell and feel of luxury. He used the cane to limp closer to the fire, almost crying with the pleasure.

That’s how the boys found him when they returned from restoring the barrel: a white-robed figure standing in the smoke, moaning and waving the dead man’s cane around.

“He’s back!” Handy shrieked. “I knew he’d come back to haunt us!” He fainted again, this time missing his uncle.

Sailor didn’t, when he keeled over.

*

“He’s back,” Ohlman whispered into Graydon’s ear as the butler poured his coffee at breakfast the following morning.

“Who, that nincompoop Pomeroy?”

“No, the baron.”

Graydon took a quick swallow, burning his tongue. “Well,” he said loudly enough for the others present, “it looks like I’ll be off for London after all. The horses are fine.”

Neither his father nor Lady Whilton was down for breakfast yet, although it was Sunday and the banns were to be read in church today unless Lady Whilton sent word to cancel them. Major Howell’s announcement was received with disinterest from his aunt and Cousin Harriet, but Daphne sat up straighter. She looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept well for worrying, but pleased now.

“Do you have to leave before church? I know you don’t care about not traveling on a Sunday, but Mama would be happier.”

“I thought I might wait until dusk again, since it bids to be a clear night.” And since he’d rather not be seen with an ale keg instead of a tiger up behind him.

Ohlman cleared his throat. “If I might suggest an earlier departure, my lord. The, ah, barometer is falling. I’m
afraid there will be some,
ah, deterioration in the, ah, weather.”

Agh. Graydon made a face at the butler’s none too subtle hints about the baron’s condition. He pushed his plate away, having lost all appetite.

Daphne was anxious enough to see him gone now that she understood. “Yes, the sooner you leave, the less traffic there will be. You’ll make better time. Unfortunately you’ll miss Mr. Pomeroy”—please, Lord—“for he usually takes luncheon with us on Sundays.”

“And any other day,” Cousin Harriet added, making Graydon smile again. He even took a bite of salmon.

Daphne was impatient with him to finish his breakfast and leave. “Miles will soon be out looking for—”

“His breakfast? I’m surprised the chap isn’t here now, or are we not in good odor with him?” Graydon teased, knowing she’d understand how some of them were not in good odor at all. Devil a bit, if he was going to drive the hearse, he may as well get the pleasure of seeing Daffy’s dimples one last time. And if he could make Pomeroy appear the glutton, so much the better.

Daphne was starting to give him a setdown when Cousin Harriet pokered up. “What’s that? The Whiltons not good enough for a mere country squire?”

“No, no, Cousin, that’s not what Major Howell meant to imply. It better not be,” she muttered under her breath. If she weren’t ages out of the schoolroom, she’d stick her tongue out at him, insufferable man, teasing at a time like this. And picking on poor Miles, who was only trying to do his job. “Miles is just busy these days. There seems to be a rash of crimes.”

Cousin Harriet went back to her hearty meal. “That figures, with Awful Albert in the vicinity. Rashes, fluxes, the pox. I wouldn’t be surprised if that man brought plagues and locusts to the neighborhood.’’

Flies, perhaps, Graydon thought. “Yes, well, I had better be going.”

They met again at the icehouse for a hasty conference. Daphne felt somewhat like one of Macbeth’s witches out in the mist plotting their spells, eye of newt, tongue of bat, potted peer. Graydon had to be on his way before the family left for church and before the sun was much higher in the sky, but they had to rethink their plans.