Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

The elusive Jean had not returned from Caldicott Hall by the time I finished conferring with Mrs. Whittington, but then, the roads had been miserable, and his mission had had no assurance of success.

I'd tasked Lady Ophelia with an investigation within an investigation, and her efforts might never yield the evidence I sought. Like any good reconnaissance officer in unfamiliar terrain, I would forge ahead on the strength of logic, determination, and what information I had in hand.

I returned the gloves and the letters to their respective owners. The box reposed in its previous location, awaiting MacFadden's efforts to retrieve it. I had confirmed with both my blushing mother and an equally self-conscious Lady Barrington that their involvement with John-Hans-Ian had been flirtatious rather than carnal, and I'd explained to them that their former gallant was Gideon Marchant's valet.

"His valet?" Lady Barrington said. "I don't think I've seen the man. Gideon sang his praises, agreed to lend him to you if needed, and that… Gideon did that on purpose, didn't he? Does MacFadden tell Gideon what to do, or the other way around?"

A fair question, one I hadn't a definite answer for. Lady Barrington had bustled off to confer with her husband. I had counseled against destroying the gloves quite yet, as much as she wished to see them tossed into the flames.

The duchess, whom I'd found once again at her correspondence, similarly threatened to burn the letters.

"These letters are evidence of gross folly, my lord. Foolishness of a magnitude I hope never to repeat."

She wore an afternoon dress, though we had yet to enjoy the noon meal. Her spectacles were perched upon the Fennington nose, making her look scholarly and severe.

"You claim you kept them as a reminder of how close to disaster you sailed," I said, taking the chair opposite her escritoire. "You also kept them because you were fond of John Pickering." I was apparently comfortable taking a seat without Her Grace's permission, and I hoped that was a sign of progress in our dealings.

The duchess removed her eyeglasses and folded the earpieces. "He was a good flute teacher. Very talented."

"He was a friend when you needed one."

"What is this defense of the accused in aid of, my lord? He deceived me, Hellie, and Carola. If he didn't exactly play us false at the time, he's stolen from us and very likely colluded with one of the worst gossips in Mayfair to put us under his thumb."

"That might be the case. All I'm asking is that you don't destroy the letters just yet. Come Monday, you can start a bonfire with them, but until we've confronted the thief, please guard the evidence of his perfidy well."

"I haven't even seen this valet you claim Gideon is towing about."

"I'm sure MacFadden has been least in sight by design."

She tucked her spectacles into the little box where she kept them. "What are you planning, my lord?"

"To deceive the deceiver, if I must, and for that, I will need your trust."

"You already have it." She closed the box with a decisive snap. "Hasn't this whole exercise demanded that I repose my entire confidence in you? You need not ask your own mother to trust you, for pity's sake, and you will insult us both if you repeat the request."

Who had noted that reassurances could take the form of a scold? "My apologies, Your Grace. The last thing I want is to quarrel with you, and I do appreciate that you've been bearing up under a great strain."

She balled up a page of foolscap and pitched it at my chest. "Cut line, sir. Families bicker. You found my letters. If you want me to hold on to them for a bit, I'll ask Wisherd to secure them among her effects."

"Good thought." I explained the rest of the situation as I saw it and how, exactly, I hoped to turn the tables on MacFadden and Marchant. Her Grace wrinkled her nose once or twice and frowned frequently, but I had her trust and, by the end of the discussion, her consent as well.

And yet, that wasn't quite enough either.

"I've been meaning to broach a topic with you," I said, rising to collect the crumpled foolscap and toss it into the dustbin. "Feel free to ponder your response or decline my request."

"If you must travel on the Continent, please wait until Arthur is home. One son racketing around France is one too many, in my maternal opinion."

"I hope never to set foot in France again," I said. "This has to do with more immediate concerns."

She tapped a nail on her blotter. "Out with it, sir. I can certainly offer relief if you are short of coin—"

I help up a hand. "I am short one mother." Not what I'd planned to say. "For the Yuletide holidays, I mean. They will be upon us before we know it, and in Arthur's absence, I know there are traditions to uphold and so forth, and…"

My mother stared at the fading letters folded by her wax jack. She saw her past, no doubt, her regrets, and a time when fate had seemed to provide an unlooked-for comfort, only to turn comfort into woe.

"What is it you seek from me, Julian?"

I hadn't the words, or perhaps the courage, to answer simply. "There's a boy at the Hall, a small boy, and his world has become daunting. He's without allies, or so he thinks, but for an uncle or two who always seem to be charging off on mysterious adult business. He doesn't understand why his situation has become so isolated and odd, he hasn't made many new friends yet, and he'll lose heart if I can't… if we can't be family to him. He doesn't deserve the cards fate has handed him, and I am asking you to be family with him… with him and with me."

The duchess rose and faced the window. A weak sun was trying to chase off the clouds, with indifferent success. "Leander?"

I managed a nod. "Leander and… I. Please join us for the holidays, Your Grace. He's illegitimate, I know, and I am not good ton , and I am well aware that you have many other options over the Yuletide season, but I'd appreciate it if you could spend it at the Hall."

She turned, her arms crossed, her gaze speculative. "With the boy Leander?"

"And with me." To reiterate the request had cost me, but trust went both ways, if it was the genuine article.

"Yes," the duchess said, blinking at the carpet. "I will be pleased to join you fellows at the Hall for the holidays. We will make Arthur regret his desertion and spoil the lad to the very best of our ability. He will have a legendary tummy ache, and be Lord of Misrule, and sneak hens into the house, and enjoy a proper Christmas."

"You'd tell Leander about Lady Biddy?" I'd smuggled my favorite laying hen into the house to protect her from the stewpot. She'd lived to a grand old age, though at my mother's insistence, her ladyship's earthly span had been served in the henhouse rather than in my dressing closet.

Her Grace's smile would have illuminated the seventh heaven. "For starts. You will invite Miss West so she gets all the best stories as well, and I think perhaps Ginny should provide the necessary dash of mayhem. Her Declan is of an age with Leander, and the two of them will be polishing the banisters within a quarter hour of meeting."

Sliding down the long, smooth railing on the grand staircase in the time-honored Caldicott tradition.

"I will look forward to ineffectually scolding them both. My thanks, Your Grace."

Her smile dimmed. "Might you cease with the honorifics? I am your mother, after all. I understand proper address in company and will afford you the same if you've become such a stickler, but really, Julian, we are family."

I had yet to eliminate the threat of looming scandal, but I had found Her Grace's letters, and I had found the start of a path back to the pleasure we'd taken in each other's company earlier in life.

"We are family," I said. "And I will look very much forward to your company later in the year, Mama."

"See that you do."

She extracted her spectacles from their box, and I went upon my way, my step lighter and my heart lighter too.

The grand ball came and went, complete with skirling pipes to add to the din and vast quantities of Lady Barrington's infernal punch. The latter generosity ensured a very thin turnout for divine services on Sunday morning. Convention forbade most entertainments on the Sabbath—cards, theatricals, charades, glees, and choruses of a secular nature—and blustery weather deterred those inclined to hack out or stroll the grounds in aid of recovering their health.

Even the Sunday feast—industry belowstairs benefiting little from biblical proscriptions—was sparsely attended.

And yet, Tweed House was full of activity. Maids and footmen scurried up and down their respective stairways. Porters wrangled trunks to the porte cochere. Valets, grooms, boot-boys, and gardeners paraded steadily between house, stables, gardens, and laundry.

The kitchen staff was kept busy preparing hampers to the extent those could be filled a day before anticipated travel, and in the carriage house, harness was cleaned, organized, and rehung in order of expected departures.

I remained in my sitting room throughout the day, claiming fatigue and a sore head. The fatigue was sincere, as was my determination to catch MacFadden in the act of retrieving his contraband from my chimney.

I had given up hope that young Jean would return from Caldicott Hall. Perhaps he'd never aspired to reach his destination, in which case the lad might well have committed horse thievery. I hadn't read him as inclined to felony offenses, but then, I'd taken MacFadden for a friendly, philosophical sort of valet rather than a consummate deceiver.

"Best get some sleep, guv," Atticus said, setting a tray on the low table before the sofa. "Going to be a long night, and me arms will fall off if I have to drive us the whole way back to the Hall tomorrow."

"You wish. I see your coat has been returned to you."

Atticus executed a graceful pirouette. "MacFadden pinched it from Murray's trunk. Said Murray also has a pair of lady's Sunday gloves among his effects and another set of loaded dice."

The tray included a tower of sandwiches—ham and cheddar, may Cook and all her kin perpetually prosper—a dish of fried pickles, two small pints of ale, and a half-dozen cinnamon biscuits.

"What have you learned from going temporarily coatless, Atticus?" I passed him one of the pints and took a seat on the sofa. Arthur preferred simple fare, and in this, he and I agreed.

"I won't be dicing with no more scoundrels." Atticus took a sip of his ale and went to the French doors. Night fell earlier and earlier, and all beyond the windows was darkness and damp. "But how do you tell who's a scoundrel?"

"You can't be sure in most instances, and the logical precaution is to avoid the dice altogether."

"Murray was a scoundrel, cheatin' like that," Atticus said, "but whyn't anybody tell me what he was about?"

Thus did the budding philosopher begin to parse degrees of evil. "Would you have listened?"

"Maybe, or I mighta hung about, watching long enough to see how Murray always won in the end. He let you get in a few good throws first, but he always won. We came late to the party. The other lads and footmen knew what Murray was about."

"Eat something. Don't just stand over there pondering the foibles of human nature."

"What's foibles?"

"Failings, shortcomings, like finding humor in a boy losing his only coat to a crooked valet who doesn't need a coat."

"Winter's coming," Atticus said, swiping a sandwich and returning to his brooding by the French doors. "Nothing funny about a lad without a coat when the snows start."

"I would not let you face the elements unprotected, Atticus, and the poor treatment you endured probably had to do with the low regard the staff feels toward me."

He glowered over his shoulder. "Your ma's a duchess. You fought Boney and nigh lost your wits doing it. Your horse follows you around like a dog. Nobody got any call to look down on you."

A touching endorsement. "But I came to find missing letters, and the staff likely thought I'd accuse one of them of the theft. Then the locket and gloves went missing, and I began snooping about the entire premises. Murray doubtless resented my very presence, and you were tarred with the brush of his ill will toward me."

"Tarred him right back, dint we?" Atticus saluted with his mug and nearly sloshed ale on the carpet.

"MacFadden retrieved your coat. I hope you thanked him."

"Offered him all my pennies, and he wouldn't take 'em. Said I was to look out for the next hapless laddie I came across. I don't know any hapless laddies 'cept me."

I was a hapless lad, in some corner of my soul. The duchess and I—Mama and I—had come to a new and better understanding, and for that I was grateful, but we still had difficult terrain to cover. Perhaps at Yuletide we could make more progress.

"Find your cot when you've finished eating," I said. "I'll take the first watch."

My parlor door was unlocked, though the chimney flue had been crisscrossed with strings of bells. MacFadden could not retrieve his little box without creating a din worthy of a Morris dancer in full regalia.

Atticus and I finished our cold supper, the boy sought his bed, and still I waited. MacFadden must even now feel the passing of every hour, as I'd felt time growing short while I searched in vain. Marchant ought to be half mad with worry and frustration, and that notion cheered me considerably.

Heaven knew, the ladies had suffered undue worry thanks to Marchant and his minion.

I nonetheless also had frustrations. I still wasn't convinced that the various mementos had been stolen to support a blackmail scheme. First, no demands for money had been received, and second, I could not see MacFadden allowing Mrs. Whittington in particular to be victimized like that. From a pragmatic perspective, she hadn't much in the way of means or social influence, she had no daughters to launch, she wasn't a fashionable hostess, she wasn't on the verge of making a splendid match herself and, in fact, did not seek to remarry…

The thought struck my imagination like a candle flaring in pitch darkness. Mrs. Whittington was emphatically not in search of another spouse. True enough, but perhaps the boot belonged on the other foot.

Well, well, well and eureka .

With yet another set of possibilities to ponder, I found myself a semicomfortable position recumbent in a dark corner of the parlor and blew out the last candle. Let MacFadden come, and he and I would have a long and very interesting discussion.