Her Beguiling Butler (16 page)

She did not blink an eye. Though she did descend to the larder which lay next to the laundry room. And he wondered what might be down there to draw the butler.

Sweeting never left her kitchen during the dinner preparation. He ground his teeth, foiled in his efforts. He’d sneak down tonight after all were abed.

But when Grimes returned two hours later with a sealed letter in his hand, Finnley had more to concern him. Winston wrote that he had done a quick check of the magistrate’s records and found that Mrs. Sweeting had been arrested nine years ago for theft of silver from her employer’s house. She’d gone to trial, been found guilty and sentenced to six months in Newgate. She was released within three months after Lord Ranford paid a fine to have her freed.

Finnley sat in his chair and wondered at the reasons Ranford had done that for Sweeting. Whatever the cause, shouldn’t the cook be indebted to her master for his kindness?

The next morning, a special messenger arrived at the front door. Finnley took the sealed envelope from the young man, noted the fine parchment and wax seal. “Wait here, please.”

When he entered the morning room, Alicia sat at her escritoire writing correspondence.

“My lady,” he addressed her with the formality that they had resumed with each other. “A man at the door brings this with the Chancery seal.”

She shot to her feet, her quill dangling from her fingertips. Her deep purple eyes wide in expectation, her hand to the wooden back to keep the chair from toppling over, she struggled to find voice.

“Yes, yes. Of course. Word, isn’t it?”

He stepped to her and handed over the envelope.

She stared at him and swallowed. “Oh, dear. I don’t know if I can open it.” She raised her hands in the air and they shook.

He melted at her sweetness. All the misery he’d experienced these past few days drained from him. “Open it,” he whispered.

She swayed, her eyes closing. “I’ve told myself I don’t need this barony. I have enough money and staff to manage. My only wish in life is to have one house I can make my home. I can do that now with what means I have. Why would I want more?”

“Because this is yours by rights.”

“Yes.” She licked her lips. “No one else. Oh, but what if I’ve been denied?”

He gave her a watery smile. “It matters not. You will still be the marvelous Lady Ranford.”

She stared at him then for long lingering moments, her gaze a caress to his hair, his brow, his lips.

He moved forward, bent close to her, his mouth a breath away from hers.

And she took a step back.

The moment of reunion was gone. He clenched his jaw, focusing on his duty. He had to press her on the matter of her servants. “My lady, is your maid still to your liking?”

She glared at him. “Preston, of course she is. How dare you.”

“I do dare. Tell me do you have headaches?”

She put a hand to her throat. “What?”

“Are you tired? Irritable? Anxious?”

“Yes. You make me so.”

“No. Please I am quite serious.”

“Mr. Finnley, I am healthy as the day I was born.”

“Thank god.”

“Now give me that letter.” She reached out for it.

He handed it to her and trained his eyes on the corner sconce while she tore open the paper.

“Oh,” she said, a hand going to her cheek. “Oh. Oh.”

From her face he could not divine what she read.

And then she let her eyes go here and there, all around the room, landing on him. “Wallace. Oh, my dear Wallace.”

For one mad minute, he rejoiced at her fond tone, but then he saw as she truly looked at him that her words were said in the haze of joy.

“I am proclaimed the Baroness Bentham with all lands, rights and incomes ascribed to that title.”

It was he now who struggled for words. “Congratulations. I know you will be a kind and gentle benefactor to your tenants.”

Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “You are so sweet, Wallace. So—”

She turned aside and collected herself. “Give the messenger a bob, please, Finnley. And do summon the staff. Five minutes. Here. Thank you. You may go.”

He headed below stairs at a crisp walk, rebuffed and smarting. But he would call for the servants and watch their reactions.

One by one, he called found them and gave the orders.

“Has she got the new title?” each one asked in so many words.

“In the front drawing room in five minutes. You will hear first hand the answer,” he said.

And when they all were assembled, lined up neat as could be in a straight line, fidgeting and smiling in expectation, Alicia surveyed them like many a general Finnley had seen reviewing his troops.

Alicia grinned at them. “This morning I received notification from the Lords of Chancery that I am designated the new baroness of Bentham.”

“Oh, ma’am,” Sweeting declared, her hands clasped together. “That’s wonderful.”

“Congratulations, my lady,” Preston said.

The others offered their own expressions of joy.

Each one appeared delighted at their mistress’s news.

He was the first to turn on his heel, pride of her and despair that he’d lost her a poisonous mix.

He fled down the servants’ stairs and out into the mews, the snow falling again, the air freezing his lungs. Inside his chest a part of him broke in two. If it was his heart, which for many years he had assumed did not exist, he had little time to ponder it let alone repair it.

He headed for the kitchen, but found no one. Then he strode into the servants’ parlor. But it was empty.

Where was everyone?

He’d thought that all of them would have wanted to discuss Lady Ranford’s new titles and their elevated positions. Because Alicia would now have more income, more land and duties, staff would assume that she would also require more services—and additional staff. They would hope for promotions and higher wages. But no one was here.

Detecting voices—angry ones at that—he whirled toward the stairs to the laundry and the larder.

Yet, on the landing to the larder, he heard footsteps and rattling. Someone was in the laundry. Or was it the larder?

He took a step toward the door but halted.

“You’re following me?” asked Preston with indignation.

Finnley heard only a chuckle—and it was a woman’s voice.

“I tasted the powder in that dish of yours,” the lady’s maid said. “I know where you got it.”

Finnley sucked in a breath.

“You stole it from me,” said Preston.

“You’re mad, you old fart.”

Sweeting!

“I’ve no idea what’s in there,” the cook said to Preston.

“I saw you sneak into my room the other morning and take some,” Preston snarled. “You didn’t know I watched you.”

“What if I ‘ave it, eh?”

“It’s mine. You take money from my me”

“Like you need it,” Sweeting scoffed.

“I saw you mix it in Finnley’s tea,” Preston said with smugness.

“Is that so?” The cook’s tone was uncertain.

“I did and I’m telling Finnley and Lady—“ Preston stopped short. “Hey, hey. No need for that!”

They scuffled. Preston yelled.

Finnley spun toward the stairs.

Sweeting was pushing the maid off the landing down the steps a knife pointed at Preston’s face. “You witch.”

She slashed at her and the maid ducked, but Preston stumbled.

Finnley leapt in the air to grab Sweeting from behind.

“What? Ho!” She spun toward Finnley, slicing her hand this way and that across the front of his face.

She cut him. Once, twice.

He winced, his cheek smarting. “Enough!”

Preston caught her from behind, but the cook lurched and the two of them fell backward down the stairs.

The maid landed to one side in front of the laundry.

Sweeting fell to the left. But she stumbled to her feet.

Finnley was upon her. Seizing the knife by the damn blade. Gashing his fingers. Throwing the thing to the earthen floor. And forcing her arm backward so she could do no more harm.

“Leave off,” she shouted, her legs thrashing.

“You’re done for, Sweeting. Preston caught you at your game.” He held her with a hand that bled like water from a spout.

Sweeting snarled and made a face at his blood upon her white apron. “I won’t go to gaol. Can’t make me.”

“I will,” he told her with vengeance, hauling her up and forcing her considerable girth up the steps.

Preston was close behind.

At the top of the stairs stood the rest of the staff, wide-eyed.

“Someone get me rope, twine, something to tie her up, please.” He pressed Sweeting to a chair.

“Preston,” he told Alicia’s maid, “please request her ladyship to come to the kitchen.”

“What is this, Finnley?”Alicia stood frozen in the entrance to the servants’ quarters minutes later, her hands up to the frame. “Why do you have Mrs. Sweeting trussed up, sir?”

“She’s got a cache of poison she tends in the cellar,” he said.

Alicia’s face screwed up in disbelief.

“I saw her dip into it, my lady,” Preston told her with pride.

“I—I’m not certain I understand.” She walked further into the servants’ parlor.

Finnley attempted a brief explanation. “Mrs. Sweeting has a bowl of opium in the cellar which she used to poison your husband, Lady Ranford. And she’s attempted to poison me as well.”

The staff gasped. That is, Preston didn’t. Finnley didn’t. And neither did Dora, Sweeting’s scullery maid.

Finnley indicated Dora’s stoic expression with a lift of his chin to her and a nod to Grimes. “Get her.”

But Dora squealed and bolted toward the kitchen door.

Grimes had her in a second and wrestled her to a chair.

Connor, the coachman, stepped toward Finnley, smiled and lifted a length of rope from the mews. “Let me help you, sir.”

“Certainly. Let’s do both of them up like hens for the stuffing.”

Sweeting spit on Finnley’s shoes.

“Sweeting! Do stop!” Alicia shouted at her. “Tell me again what is amiss here, Mr. Finnley.”

“Sweeting not only has opium, she has used it.” He met Alicia’s outraged violet gaze with a similar emotion of his own. “To be precise, she used it on Lord Ranford. She attempted to use it on me.”

“How?” Alicia glanced from her cook to her footman to Finnley.

Preston said, “She stirred bits into his tea. And Finnley’s tea.”

“She caused Lord Ranford’s irritability and headaches. His bouts of temper, too,” Finnley said. “If she also laced his food with nightshade we will not ever know.“

Alicia put a hand to her throat. “Why would you do that, Mrs. Sweeting?”

The woman stuck her nose in the air and turned her face to one side.

“Tell me!” Alicia insisted of the woman.

“I hated him,” the cook said with bitter gall.

Alicia grimaced, as if struck. “
Why?”

Finnley wanted to know that, too. “You might as well tell us now. We will learn at the trial. Or perhaps you’d like to confess at your hanging?”

Sweeting turned round to him, sneering. “High and mighty Mr. Finnley. Can’t take me to a magistrate.”

“But I can.” He dug a few shillings from his pocket and said to the footman, “Grimes, get me a neighborhood footman or go to Bow Street for a Runner.”

Sweeting’s eyes went wide.

“Is that why you went to the Home Office?” Preston asked him, her expression one of awe.

Finnley smiled wryly at her. Had he missed her spying on him? If so, he ought to quit this investigative work for Winston and do it quickly. His methods were failing. “Yes.”

A triumphant look spread across Preston’s face.

Sweeting squirmed, petulant but subdued. “I don’t care what you do or who you are, I won’t go to prison.”

He stared down at her. “I say you will.”

“And who are you to say?” This came from Alicia who sidled near him, her violet eyes searching his.

He’d be honest with her now. This was not the way he had wanted her to learn his identity, but he had no choice. “I work for the Home Office to solve crimes.”

Her mouth fell open. “And you are here because you were to solve a suspected crime?”

He inhaled and nodded. “Murder. Lord Ranford’s symptoms and death worried a friend of his at his club. He went to an official in the Home Office and asked that I be assigned.”

Exclamations and murmurs came from the servants gathered.

Alicia looked at her staff, one by one. “And you suspected he’d been killed by one of my servants?”

“There seemed to be no other explanation,” he said. “When your husband’s valet disappeared the next day it seemed an odd occurrence. In December, your butler Norden came to us at the Home Office with suspicions of some wrongdoing. And when he died of a broken neck soon after, we had to investigate.”

She nodded, her eyes haunted. “Of course you did.”

“I had to pursue the facts,” he said in explanation.

“Yes.” She met his gaze head on. “I see you did.”

“Ranford’s valet was an odd duck,” Preston said. “I was glad to see the back of him. But our Norden was a good man.”

Alicia smiled weakly at her maid. But turned to Finnley. “And how did Norden die?”

Finnley looked at Sweeting. “Tell Lady Ranford how it occurred.”

Sweeting sniffed.

Dora wiggled in her chair. “He were a snoop. Tasting our powder, ‘e was.”

“Did Norden ask you what it was?” Finnley asked the cook.

“He did. The old fool.” Sweeting turned up her nose.

Alicia glared at the cook. “You disliked him?”

“He was always muckin’ about in my kitchen. In my larder. I told ‘im to stick to the wines. I knew ‘e were drinking the master’s fine La Feet claret. Old sod.”

Finnley shook his head. If Norden was nipping from Ranford’s impressive collection of French Lafitte wine, at least he had died a happy man.

“I spied ‘im in me larder. He told me he knew what my powder was. Preston had given him some for the pain in his back.”

Finnley shot a glance at Preston. “Is this so?”

She nodded.

“What happened to Norden?” Alicia demanded of the cook.