Reluctant Bride (19 page)

I glared at her for revealing our dull schedule, but she was impervious to such hints, and went on to outline to our host the usual manner in which we spent our days—tending the garden, the house, taking an occasional sprint into town or to a neighbor’s house for cards in the evening.

“It sounds cozy,” he told her, when she had finished complaining. “Very much the way I go on myself.”

We drove up Bond Street, thence to the park. “Where would you like to go next?” he asked.

“Let us go home,” I answered. “You are spoiling us. This pampered aunt of mine will be expecting a Season in London, giving her such a taste of the high life.”

“Maybe we had better get home,” he agreed immediately. “We wouldn’t want to miss him.” He pulled the check string and directed the groom to go straight home, where we sat an hour in the saloon waiting for the knocker to sound. It did not. We then had lunch, and waited for another two hours, during which time Edmund’s carpet bore observable traces of a path from his stalking back and forth in front of the window. It is fortunate just looking at a watch and clock doesn’t harm them, or he would have required two replacements.

“It’s not sure he’ll come today at all,” Maisie pointed out.

“He may not come
ever,”
I added.

“He’ll come,” Blount asserted firmly.

Before many more pounces back and forth in front of the window, Edmund darted out of his worn path. “A carriage has stopped—a man is alighting. He’s coming!”

By the time we had elbowed Edmund aside to see for ourselves this interesting sight, the man had proceeded up the walk and was soon hammering on the knocker. I felt a sudden, strong desire to remove myself from the room. I would rather have taken a beating than be present at the scene of Glandower’s imminent disgrace. I was too late. He was even then being shown into the hallway, handing his hat, gloves and cane to the butler. He was at the archway to the saloon, bowing and smiling, but soon widening his eyes in astonishment. So were we all. It was not Glandower Cummings at all, but a quite different tall, fair-haired, handsome young man.

“Colonel Fortescue!” I exclaimed, heartily relieved it was only our old traveling acquaintance, who had somehow or other found out my address.

“Mr. Aberdeen!” Edmund exclaimed, blinking.

“Baron Czarnkow,” the butler announced, looking at us all as if we were candidates for Bedlam.

The gentleman—I was at a loss now to know what name to call him—turned on his heel and made a bolt for the door, leaving behind his hat, gloves and cane in his rush to escape. Edmund hollered to the butler to stop him, then took to his heels to assist his servant. Before I had recovered my wits sufficiently to have made any sense of the appearance or do a thing to help, Edmund was back, holding the man by the collar till only his toes danced along the carpet, with his two arms paddling futilely in the air.

An oath I was surprised Edmund even knew came out of his lips. He was frowning furiously, trying to make sense of this unexpected appearance. “Did I hear you call this creature Colonel Fortescue?” he demanded of me.

“Yes, this is Colonel Fortescue—the gentleman I told you about who had his watch stolen at Devizes. Put him down, Edmund, for goodness’ sake. There is obviously some dreadful mistake. Cobnel, you must forgive . . .”

“Baron Czarnkow is the name he gave me,” the butler inserted, measuring a fierce glare on our caller, daring him to contradict it.

I went on staring too. If this was Baron Czarnkow, the man who offered my necklace to the jeweler . . . The truth floated within my grasp, but I was prevented from latching on to it by Edmund.

“Last night he called himself Mr. Aberdeen, and used a Scottish brogue. What’s your
real
name, sir? Or do you possess one?”

“My friend, Baron Czarnkow, sent me . . .” he started to say, the strain of inventing a new story showing on his face, which was turning an alarming shade of red.

“Edmund,” I implored, “loosen your hold a little. He’s croaking!”

The man was dropped to the floor, with his left arm wrenched tightly behind his back by Blount, who was enjoying the altercation immensely. He looked the way he looks when a raw piece of meat is dangled before his eyes.

“Cut line,” Edmund ordered, giving the arm an extra twist that caused our caller to grunt in pain. “I
should
have recognized you for a con man when I met you last night. You dealt yourself a suspicious number of aces. Glandower Cummings tells me you regularly enjoy this streak of ‘luck.’ This bleater has conned your cousin, Lizzie,” he added, turning to address me over his shoulder. “They were close friends. He learned from Cummings in some way that you were going to Rusholme with that necklace, and met you en route, to relieve you of it. He was at the inn at Devizes, I believe?”

“Yes. That is, Colonel Fortescue . . .” I stumbled to a stop. “But his watch! He surely didn’t steal his own watch?”

“Steal it? He probably never owned one. He let on it was stolen, to ensure no suspicion fell on himself. The victim is always the last to be considered in the light of wrongdoer.”

The man had been making some sounds of protestation. “I know nothing of this,” he shouted earnestly. His memory was prodded by another twist of the arm. “My watch was stolen. I know nothing about the necklace, I tell you.”

“Search him, Ford,” Edmund commanded the butler. The servant came forward warily and started going through the man’s pockets. The necklace was inside his inner breast pocket, the second one searched. It was loose, not wrapped in anything. Ford lifted it out, dangled it before us.

“My necklace!” I screeched, rushing forward to claim it. I looked at it in the light from the window, confirming that it was indeed my own, and not, somehow, another forgery.

“That settles it,” Edmund said with satisfaction. “I’ll drag this vermin down to Bow Street. Better come with me, Ford. He’s weasel enough to slip away on me. I’11 need you ladies to press charges.”

“Miss Braden,” Fortescue began, in a beseeching, outraged, and withal, cowardly fashion, “tell this gentleman . . .”

“Handle him with care, Edmund,” I said, in a tone of heavy sarcasm. “The Colonel has a wound stolen in the Peninsula that bothers him, when necessary.”

Maisie had jumped to her feet like everyone else when the man first entered. She had said nothing, being as confused as myself. When she did speak, she only added to the mystery. “What about Greenie, the little valet who sold the copied necklace at Winchester? That was not Colonel Fortescue. He was Cummings’s man.”

“I
told
you I had nothing to do with it,” Fortescue said at once, jumping on this possible bit of uncertainty.

“You had plenty to do with it!” Edmund assured him, with no lessening of his conviction. “I don’t know what Greenie or the copy have to do with it. Nothing, probably, but this is the fellow who nabbed the diamonds. He fits Anthony’s description perfectly. He had himself announced as Baron Czarnkow; he carried the loot on him. What do we need, a signed confession? We’ll stop at Downing Street along the way, and see what Cummings can tell us about the wretch.”

“He’s not at home,” Fortescue told him. “His uncle arrived in town. They went out for lunch. I was there before I came here, and they were just leaving.”

“Lies won’t save you,” Edmund told him. “I’ll drop this fellow at Bow Street first,
then
go to Downing Street and pick up Cummings.”

I was still concerned for Glandower, wondering if he were involved in the plot in some manner. Greenie’s unexplained behavior looked like it. “Let us discuss it a little first, Edmund,” I said, trying to convey by my tone the wish for a private chat, before he went bounding to the Law.

I believe he was beginning to entertain a doubt similar to my own. “Lock him in the study, Ford, and stand outside the door with a pistol. We want to talk.”

He went with Ford to incarcerate the crook, and to find a gun, then returned, wiping his hands and smiling. “So there is your gallant Colonel Fortescue, Lizzie,” he told me, his smile triumphant.

“I want to speak to you before you drag him off. What if Cummings is mixed up in it with him? He might have been, for all we know. He
did
introduce you to the man last night, and we know Greenie is implicated.”

“Greenie’s being involved doesn’t mean Cummings is,” he replied. This sounded more hopeful than reasonable to me.

“I want to talk to Glandower before we do anything rash. I have got my necklace back, and that is the main thing.”

“If Glandower Cummings had anything to do with it, he ought to be behind bars, the grinner!” Maisie told us, an angry light in her eyes. She would have second thoughts later, however, after her primeval blood lust had quietened down.

“It won’t do any harm to talk to him,” Edmund agreed. “I’ll send a footboy around to Downing Street with an urgent message.”

“Don’t mention his friend Aberdeen, or he won’t come,” Maisie advised him, shaking her red head in astonishment at our concern for a grinner.

“I’ll set a guard on the window of the study as well, just to be sure the colonel don’t bolt on us,” Edmund said, as he strode quickly to a desk to dash off the note to Cummings. It was dispatched immediately.

I was surprised when Cummings came escorted by Uncle Weston. Fortescue had one truthful speech in him. He had been to Downing Street, and the gentlemen had gone to luncheon, but had returned and came at once to us.

Glandower was forgivably confused to learn that Mr. Haskins was also Sir Edmund Blount, my fiancé, as Weston introduced him. It took several moments to go back to the beginning of our trip and explain all our doings over the past several days.

“Why on earth did you not
tell
me the necklace had been stolen?” Uncle asked.

“Why did you not tell
me
any of it?” Glandower asked, his head turning from one of us to the other, as the story unfolded in three jumbled parts.

“It was Edmund’s idea. He’s a genius,” I answered, dumping the explanations in his lap.

“Finally admitting it, are you?” he asked.

Maisie, still eager to drag Cummings into the thick of the evil, demanded an explanation for his valet’s doings.

“I can explain that,” Cummings answered easily. “Uncle gave the necklace to his aunt.”

“We know how he came by it. Why did he sell it in Winchester?” Edmund asked.

“He took it to give his girlfriend, but the two of them had a ripping fight, and have broken up. She gave it back. He was short of blunt and pawned it. Did it on our way from Fareham to London. He often pawns things at Reuben’s place. Some of my mama’s gimcrack old costume jewelry and bits of furnishings from her home—stuff that is not wanted at Rusholme. I have to change teams at Winchester, and my valet has struck up an arrangement with Reubens, as his place is handy to the inn.”

“I saw the man with my own eyes at Devizes,” Maisie said in a darkly accusing way. “What was he doing at Devizes, eh?”

“His home, and his girl, are in Bath,” Cummings said. “After his fight with her, he wrote me and I wrote back I would meet him at Winchester, to save him the extra fare down to Fareham. The stage stops at Devizes en route from Bath to Winchester. He must have gone to the inn for an ale or something. Lots of people take advantage of the stop. He had already pawned the necklace when I met him at Winchester. We set out immediately for London. It all
fits.”

“You never mean that nice Aberdeen lad you had home with you is the criminal you’re speaking of?” Weston asked.

“He did
seem
a nice gentlemanly fellow,” Glandower said, with an apologetic look toward us victims. “I took him home with me last time I went, for a visit. We were to stay a week, but when Aberdeen heard some friends were going to London, he expressed the desire to leave earlier. It happened the very day Mr. Braden received your letter telling him you would bring the necklace, Lizzie, but I never made any connection between the two things. How should I? I had no idea he was a thief. I thought he made his living at gambling. He is very lucky at cards,” he added innocently. Risking a look to Edmund, I saw him roll up his eyes in dismay at the boy’s naiveté.

“So he rushed off to Devizes to meet you,” Edmund said, directing his words to myself but for the edification of us all. “It was the logical place for you to stop for a change of team—just one stage from Westgate. Had no opportunity occurred there, he would have trotted after you till he found, or made, the chance to lift your necklace.”

“He was very particular, too, to discover my name, and where I was from, to be positive he had the right victim fingered. Like a ninnyhammer, I told him even my destination,” I admitted. “He is extremely dexterous. I still don’t know when he got into my reticule to steal the diamonds.”

“He diverted your attention a dozen times by different ruses,” Maisie reminded me. “Maybe he did it while you were destroying my bonnet by removing the feathers and burning them.”

“Then he pretended his own watch had been stolen, so no one would think of him as the thief,” Edmund added. “He has more than his share of gall, to give the devil his due.”

“I wish he might have selected someone other than my valet as his scapegoat,” Glandower commented.

 “I expect he wanted someone highly visible—someone with a physical peculiarity I mean, that everyone would remember having seen at the scene. He was likely seen talking to the valet, as they knew each other from their association with Glandower, and it was easy to believe his watch might have been taken during their conversation,” Edmund hypothesized.

“I believe you have your match in ingenuity,” I told him.

Again Uncle Weston demanded why we had not told him the truth, why we had gone to such extraordinary rounds as having a bad imitation made up.

Edmund, I learned, was a more accomplished liar than I had imagined. Without blinking, he answered, “The police suggested it. We went straight off to a constable, of course. It was his suggestion we not broadcast the theft. He felt it would increase our chance of getting it back if we kept it close. He suggested we continue on our way to you, Mr. Braden, as he thought the thief might try to sell it to you. He was aware of your reputation as a connoisseur of antique things, and thought the thief might also be, but hoped he would
not
be aware you were so intimately acquainted with that one specific piece.”