The Butler Did It (14 page)

“Me? I'm the one should be asking that. This is you and me, right?”

Sir Edgar nodded. “I feel very badly about this. I mean, his lordship has been financing me for a long time.”

“But he's not here, and I am. I'll not weep buckets for that stick Claypole, I tell you. I've a draft for one thousand pounds in my pocket, man. Do you want it or not?”

“One thousand pounds is a start, Mr. Hatcher. It is not
the finish. I would not wish for you to think that it is. Although the reward? The ability to turn any base metal into gold?” Sir Edgar shrugged, in the Gallic manner, he thought, doing his best to appear merely the nervous inventor, rather than so excited he could barely restrain himself from tossing Hatcher to the floor, then digging in his pockets for the draft. One thousand pounds! If he called it quits tomorrow, he'd be set for years! “You have to be certain you wish to do this.”

Hatcher made another unsuccessful stab at nabbing the velvet bag. “Damn and blast, man, let me see it. I don't care what it costs.”

“Are you quite certain? I would not think of taking your money, Mr. Hatcher. Not without showing you definite proof of all I've told you.”

“Right. Thousand pounds, ten thousand pounds, what does it matter? You'll have it all, all you need. Now give it over,” Hatcher said, making yet another grab for the velvet bag.

Ten thousand pounds? Suddenly one thousand pounds sounded paltry to Sir Edgar. Visions of ten thousand pounds, twenty thousand pounds—more, if he could find other simpletons with money, and he was already convinced he could. He had been thinking too small, wanting one investor; why, he could have a dozen! Luck was on his side, and for once, it was Good Luck. Why, there was no limit to the money he could relieve them of, was there?

This time, Sir Edgar let Hatcher succeed in grabbing the velvet bag, not because the man was, God bless him, as thick as a post, but because the bag actually did contain real gold.

As Sir Edgar knew: nothing and no one has ever been caught with an empty hook.

Hatcher hunched over the table, turned away from any prying eyes in the room and tipped the contents of the bag into his palm.

Sir Edgar watched as Hatcher's jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide. He could already feel the crackle of the bank draft as he slipped it into his own pocket.

Hatcher hefted the small, heavy lump in his hand and grinned. “Heavy, ain't it? What was it before?”

Sir Edgar looked straight into Hatcher's eyes and said solemnly, “My shoe buckles, sir.”

 

E
MMA WAS WAITING
for the marquis to join her, and she wasn't disappointed. Only moments after the King's coach and outriders moved off, he appeared in the doorway, hat in hand, to stand there, looking for her. He did not appear to be a happy man which, in turn, improved her own mood immensely.

She waved from her seat on one of the benches neatly tucked into an oasis of greenery in the Square.

“I've been expecting you, my lord. Gentleman that you are at heart, you've come to apologize for your assault on my person,” she said as he sat down beside her.

“Madam, if I ever wished to assault your person, I would first have to lose complete control over my wits. I was merely keeping the two of us hidden, and for very good reason. I for one don't intend to spend the remainder of this Season ducking out of the way of the King in order to spare both his and my own blushes.”

Emma could have pushed the point, but the marquis had a good deal on his plate already, and she had grown up fully believing that gentlemen—when not fighting wars or otherwise amusing themselves as they supposedly dealt with matters of great import—were fairly dimwitted, easily confused creatures. “Please, don't go on so, as I know this must be quite embarrassing for you. I shall simply accept your apology, my lord, and we'll speak no more about it.”

Morgan sniffed, and shook his head. “You Cliffords are all mad as hatters.”

“I imagine you are referring once more to my grandmother, and the fact that all those desperate men have dragged themselves to your door, hat in hand? And to think, my lord, there were a dozen letters sent out only yesterday. She may be many things, my grandmother, but mad is not one of them. Crafty, perhaps? Yes, she'd like to be considered crafty. Oh, look, here comes another one.”

Morgan shot a quick glance at the ancient landau that had just pulled up, one of his own recently transplanted footmen running to the horse's heads. “I don't recognize
that crest on the door,” he said as a gentleman wearing a very unbecoming bottle-green coat and faded yellow buckskins was helped to the flagway. He would never admit it aloud, but these arrivals were proving to interest him very much.

“I'm going to put a stop to it, you know. Writing her memoirs, that is.” Emma shook her head. “As if she really would.”

“You're right, she won't do it,” Morgan said, to soothe himself as well as agree with her, as he was the one with Mad Harry hanging from the family tree. “But only because the threat seems to be working nicely. Buck up, Miss Clifford. Any time now a vehicle will approach carrying something other than an octogenarian, and you can rush over there and pounce on him.”

Emma lowered her parasol and turned to glare at him. “Make light of it, my lord, but gaining the correct introductions is invaluable to a woman seeking marriage.”

“The correct introductions? Oh, that's rich. What you Cliffords are doing is indulging in a form of blackmail, pure and simple.”

“Grandmama would say you're splitting hairs, my lord. Split them far enough, and you could even say this is just another form of an arranged marriage, which is done all the time in the
ton.
But, in this case, no one is demanding a marriage, merely that I should be put in a position to meet eligible gentlemen. I'm actually be
coming comfortable with the idea. Marginally,” Emma ended, putting up her parasol once more and unfurling it with a snap.

“Naturally you are, Miss Clifford. Women are always able to bend the worst possible scenarios to suit themselves and their sensibilities. You, by the by, should fit into Society quite well, as you appear to have the sensibilities of a cardsharp.”

Mention of cardsharps brought Emma back to a worry she'd been fretting over while awaiting the earl's appearance. “I can't seem to locate Cliff, my lord, nor can Mama find her pin money. He may have gone off to sulk, which means he has yet to learn that we have not been evicted. If he doesn't return soon, my lord, where should I look for him?”

Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The boy was going to be trouble, he'd known that the minute he'd clapped eyes on him. Barely a bit of peach fuzz on his face, and rigged out like a mummer in those red heels, his cravat dripping lace. If the idiot had money in his pocket, it wouldn't be there for long.

“You will not look for him anywhere, Miss Clifford,” Morgan told her, realizing that, damn it all, he was rapidly taking on all the less wonderful traits of a guardian. Or a keeper. With Fanny and the unfortunately named Clifford Clifford, at least, his job would be more of keeper. Was it too late to have Thornley transported?

Emma dropped her attempt at sophisticated disdain and turned on the bench to say, “Oh, but I must find him. He's only a boy. There's no knowing the trouble he could land himself in out there, with Riley.”

“Riley?” Morgan frowned. That name was familiar. “Oh, my most ambitious footman. I remember now. Well, then, Miss Clifford, as he's not alone, I should imagine he'll be fine.”

“Then you'd imagine incorrectly, my lord.” Emma's chin dropped and she spoke into the neckline of her pelisse. “The other…the other night we think Riley took Cliff to a…a domicile of not quite a healthy reputation.”

Morgan's mouth lifted on one side as he translated those last few words in his mind. “A house of ill repute, perhaps?”

“I didn't want to say the words, thank you so much for saying them for me,” Emma said, wanting nothing more than to close her parasol, then bang it, repeatedly, around the marquis's head and shoulders. “Cliff could be taken advantage of, that's all I meant to say. He's an innocent.”

“Not anymore he's not, if your assumptions are correct,” Morgan told her, not bothering to hide his delight in shocking her. “Leave him be, Miss Clifford. Either he'll wander back here, his tail between his legs and minus your mother's pin money, or Riley will get word to us from the local guardhouse as to the nature of the boy's crimes.”

“Oh!” Emma blinked back quick tears. “The guardhouse? Do you really think…?”

“Miss Clifford, unless a raw country youth has been dragged off to the guardhouse at least once, his education in town life will remain sadly lacking. Give your brother his head, he'll find his way home.”

“Did you? Find your way home, that is? Or were you locked in the guardhouse?”

Morgan had a quick flash of Perry Shepherd and himself, both at least three-quarters in their cups, being prodded in the spine with a watchman's truncheon as they stood on the minuscule portico of the Lord High Mayor of London's domicile, propping a coffin holding a fully dressed straw corpse against the door…and just preparing to bang on the knocker. It would have been the guardhouse for the pair of them, had Morgan not had a heavy purse with him, a purse made much lighter once the watchman had pocketed several coins.

“Naturally not,” Morgan said, wishing that particular piece of his misspent youth to remain his own secret. “I was merely stating what I've often heard said about young gentlemen and their follies. Now, if we might return to the subject of your grandmother?”

Emma shrugged. “There is nothing more to say, my lord. She has done what she has done, and I have condoned it because I am a terrible person who is desperately assuaging her conscience with the promise that Grandmama's memoirs will never be written, let alone
published. I know you cannot like any of us, my lord, but you have promised to house us for the Season, so I will promise that we will be no trouble to you.”

“Do not promise what you cannot possibly deliver, Miss Clifford. You and your family are already a world of trouble to me. God's teeth, woman, I've got a gaggle of old men cluttering up my drawing room, begging for their youthful transgressions to be forgotten if they offer up a grandson or nephew to you on a silver platter, apples stuck in their mouths. Do you really think none of them has noticed where they are? They are in
my
house, madam, which makes me either woefully ignorant of what goes on there, or a part of the conspiracy.”

Emma swallowed down the word “oops” and averted her eyes. She hadn't thought about it exactly that way, that her grandmother's scheme could stain the marquis's escutcheon. “I'm sorry, my lord,” she said at last, truly meaning every word. “I didn't realize.”

“Neither did I, Miss Clifford, until a few minutes ago, or I would have never bowed to your grandmother's threats. Better Mad Harry be dug up for another airing than that the Westham name be damned forever.”

Emma recovered herself from her momentary bout of conscience. “Damned forever? Oh, cut line, my lord, it isn't anything quite so dramatic. It's only twelve old men, eleven, if we don't count the King, and none of them will be racing about Mayfair, cursing your name. Why, they probably think you are yet another one of
Grandmama's victims, which you are in a way, and you are not only offering us shelter for the Season in return for Grandmama's silence, but you are one of my suitors. My first, and quite eager, as you also are escorting us to Almack's this evening.”

She looked up at him, as he had fairly leaped from the bench. “My lord? Are you all right? You're looking pale. Where are you going?”

He took three steps away from her, then remembered himself enough to turn and bow. “Where am I going? Why, Miss Clifford, I'm off to murder my butler. I thought that would be obvious.”

 

S
IX
. S
EVEN
, with Florizel, but he'd only been there to frighten the boys.

All in all, a successful day, if Fanny didn't linger overmuch on the particulars of the thing. Unfortunately, she couldn't seem to shut off her brainbox, which insisted on digging at her. Her conscience had departed for the south of France decades ago, was much calmer for being at a distance from her, and wasn't expected to return any time soon.

She sat back and rested her head against the cushions, looking up at the stuccoed ceiling of the drawing room. Ah, the memories. Although Bosey Boswick had been much more appealing with all his teeth, and poor Willie would never see the sunny side of seventy again.

How had they all gotten so old?
She
wasn't old. Not
in her mind, she wasn't. In her mind, she was still a young girl; beautiful, adventurous, eager for any flight of fancy. Although the years after Geoffrey died had seemed like two very boring lifetimes, stuck as she was in the country and forced to be responsible; raising Samuel, marrying Samuel off, attempting to feed everyone on her very limited allowance while her son gambled the rest away once he'd reached his majority.

Almost forty years she'd been gone from Society, locked in the back of beyond, where the successful passage of any day could be claimed by the person who got through it without setting fire to her shoes simply out of boredom.

Had she really hoped that London would not have changed in her absence? That the men she had danced with, laughed with, tarried with, would not age?

She'd kept up-to-date with the goings-on in Society through newspaper accounts and by milking the rare traveler for all she was worth, but nothing could have prepared her for the sight of her once daring, darling young beaux.

Why, Freddie and Bosey had spent half their time today comparing the separate, and quite depressing, states of their health. Aching joints, spotty livers, gout—the men seemed to be holding a small contest as to which of them was falling apart faster.