Chapter 13

R upert spent the next four days doing his best imitation of Oliver Baxter’s shadow.

Rupert wasn’t much for stalking, but Baxter was, so Rupert borrowed one of Lord Helmsley’s guns and put on a cheerful face as he wandered through the snow pretending to look for deer.

The good news was that there were no additional attempts on Baxter’s life. It was enough to make Rupert wonder if he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up.

But the bad news was, Rupert couldn’t seem to find so much as a minute to confer with Clarissa Weatherby. He needed to let her know that they were partners, but he needed to do it in private, and private conversations with Clarissa were suddenly hard to come by. Now that word was out that she was something of an heiress, the party guests who were of the single male persuasion were buzzing around her like flies.

Richard Garroway was particularly persistent. He was on the list of suspects Sir Henry had discussed with Rupert, so he assumed Clarissa was also aware of him. Rupert had noticed him flirting with her during their first dinner at Helmsley Castle, the one where Clarissa had worn that stunner of a red dress. But now that he knew she was plump in the pocket, he seemed to be pursuing her seriously.

Rupert wanted to protest that he had wanted to marry Clarissa Weatherby long before she was wealthy and well-dressed. But it didn’t matter. She hadn’t wanted to marry him then and she gave no sign of wanting anything to do with him now.

He was here to do a job, and he meant to do it well. His work for the Home Office had given him direction at the lowest moment of his life.

At the time he had been recruited by Sir Henry, his Aunt Imogen had been dead for two months, and Clarissa had just rejected their proposed union. He’d been on the road back to London and had stopped at an inn in Olney for the night. He had been alone, adrift, and feeling rather lousy about himself.

He had been sitting at one of the long tables in the common room of the Bull Hotel, attempting to drown his sorrows in a dozen or so pints, when a familiar face strode into the room. It was Godfrey Marsden, who’d been a couple of years ahead of him at school.

Rupert would normally have stood and offered a greeting, even though Godfrey wasn’t what you would call an old chum. He hadn’t been friends with Rupert’s brother, but he seemed to share Francis’s opinion that Rupert was worthless. Still, as a general rule, Rupert tried to do the right thing and observe the social niceties. But on that particular night, he was feeling so low that he couldn’t bear the prospect of a conversation with a man who would more than likely sneer at him.

And so, Rupert did something he’d never done before—he gave an exaggerated yawn, stretched out across the table, and pretended to fall asleep.

It was a good thing Rupert had feigned sleep because Godfrey sat right next to him! After a few minutes, he felt someone prod him in the shoulder.

He responded with a snore.

He must’ve done a convincing job of it because Godfrey spoke to the man who’d been sitting diagonally across from Rupert for most of the night. “I have information for you.”

He said it in a low voice, but as Rupert was sitting right next to him, he heard it all easily enough.

The man across the table responded in a working man’s accent. “Is it worth my time?”

Godfrey chuckled. “It certainly is. But before we proceed, I want a fifty percent cut.”

“Fifty?” The man sounded outraged. “I ain’t paying more than five.”

A round of haggling ensued, at the conclusion of which the two men agreed to a twenty percent cut to Godfrey of… whatever it was they were discussing.

“Go on then,” Godfrey’s companion said once negotiations had concluded. “What’ve ye got?”

“Lord Olney’s house party concludes tomorrow,” Godfrey said. “These are the carriages that will be of the most interest to you. Lady Hastings brought the Hastings emeralds with her. She and her husband will be traveling in a burgundy carriage picked out in gold. Their crest has a pair of bulls, and their servants will be dressed in dark blue livery. They’ll be on the road south toward London. They’re both late risers, so don’t expect to see them before noon…”

Godfrey proceeded to detail every guest attending Lord and Lady Olney’s house party, whether they were worth robbing or not, how to identify them, and which direction they would be headed.

Rupert knew he wasn’t what you would call a clever fellow. But unless he was very much mistaken, the man who’d been sitting across from him for the better part of the night was a highwayman, and Godfrey was conspiring to help him rob a large number of people.

The prospect made him feel far queasier than the eleven pints of ale he’d consumed. Bad enough that this fellow was looking to part innocent people from their possessions. But things had a way of going wrong during a robbery. What if someone got hurt, or even killed?

Rupert could never live with himself if he just let it happen.

After they’d discussed seventeen different guests, Rupert heard the scrape of Godfrey’s chair beside him. “Twenty percent. I expect it in cash.”

“Yes, well, let’s see if your information is any good,” the highwayman countered. “Then you’ll get your cash.”

There was no more conversation after that. Rupert’s heart was thundering like a stampede of young bucks charging toward the dance card of an heiress. Crikey! He knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just stand around and let all those people get robbed! The trick was figuring out what, exactly, he should do.

He started by pretending to sleep for another hour or so. Only when he heard the scrape of the highwayman’s chair, followed by a long stretch of silence, did he dare to yawn and pretend to awaken.

Rupert did the only thing he could think of. He sidled up to the bar and asked the barmaid for the name and direction of the local magistrate. She gave him a strange look but told him where to go.

That was how Rupert found himself banging on the door of Mr. Cyrus Johnson at three in the morning. Mr. Johnson was about as pleased to see him as you’d expect, but when Rupert explained the urgency of the situation, he ushered him into a parlor.

Rupert proceeded to list out the seventeen carriages that would be departing Lord and Lady Olney’s residence tomorrow, which ones were going to be robbed, where, and at what time. Mr. Johnson looked baldly skeptical. “You really expect me to believe that you remembered all that? With all due respect, Mr. Dupree, you smell like you’ve had quite a few pints. Are you certain this conversation you overheard wasn’t a dream?”

“Sorry,” Rupert said, because he probably did smell like a brewery. “But yes, I’m sure. Absolutely sure.” Because that was the way Rupert’s brain worked. He couldn’t read or write worth a darn.

But if you told him something, it stuck.

“Oh, please, Mr. Johnson,” Rupert continued, “I couldn’t bear it if anyone was to get hurt. The first target will be on the road north bright and early. Send a party of men out to intercept these highwaymen, and you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

Mr. Johnson sighed, looking exceptionally put out.

But he sent word to the Olney estate about the possible danger. The next morning, the departing carriages were full not of rich jewels but the magistrate’s hand-picked men. And more men were stationed in position to surround the highwaymen.

In the end, it happened just as Rupert had said it was going to happen. Three bands of highwaymen were arrested, as was Godfrey Marsden.

And when Rupert returned to speak with Mr. Johnson the following day, the magistrate regarded him with something resembling respect. “I would like to apologize, Mr. Dupree, for my earlier insinuation that you were making this whole thing up. Your information turned out to be accurate. Remarkably accurate.” He peered at Rupert. “May I ask how you remembered all of those details?”

“I can’t explain it.” Rupert gave a self-deprecating smile as he tapped his temple. “The old noggin’s always been this way. I guess it came in handy today.”

Mr. Johnson studied Rupert for a beat. “It certainly did.” He pulled out a piece of paper and began writing something down. “When you get to London, I would like for you to speak with a colleague of mine. If you are interested, I believe he may have use for your unusual talents.”

Mr. Johnson slid the sheet across the desk. It looked about the right length for an address, although deuced if Rupert could read it. He’d been wound up in knots ever since he overheard Godfrey Marsden plotting highway robbery.

He made a show of patting his pockets. “Dash my wig, I seem to have forgotten my spectacles. Any chance you could read it to me?”

That was how he had come to make Sir Henry’s acquaintance. As Mr. Johnson predicted, Sir Henry had use for him. He’d gone through a month of training, and then it was off to the Continent.

Working for the Home Office made Rupert feel useful. Which didn’t sound like much, but prior to that, Rupert had never felt useful, not once in his life! It was heady stuff for a fellow like him.

The point was, he was here at Helmsley Castle to do a job. He wasn’t looking to bother Clarissa Weatherby, even if she was everything Lady Milthorpe had promised him and more.

Whenever he finally got to speak with her, he was going to be professional.

He was already enough of a fool without making an idiot of himself over Clarissa.

The three days following the assassination attempt were amongst the strangest of Clarissa’s life.

She was popular . She, Clarissa Weatherby, the most notorious wallflower in all of England, had suitors ! A good half-dozen of them, and they hovered around her from the moment she came down to breakfast until she locked the door to her room each night. Frankly, it was inconvenient. She had a murderer to track down. She didn’t have time to humor every second son in the North Riding.

Even more perplexing, most of her newfound suitors seemed convinced that the path to her heart could be forged through flowery compliments and romantic gestures. She couldn’t turn around without someone presenting her with a posy of flowers collected from the hothouse or plying her with eggnog. When one man declared that he would die if Clarissa did not save a dance for him at the upcoming Christmas ball, she snorted out loud and only barely managed to convince him that she had something caught in her throat.

Had those men known her at all, they would have realized that they would have fared far better by making acerbic remarks or pointing out an interesting article in the newspaper. It was jarring to realize how closely her treatment was tied to her appearance. She had been thought dowdy in her dirt-colored dresses, and men had mostly ignored her. But those men who did bother to speak with her had quickly recognized her keen intelligence, which was usually not seen as a mark in her favor.

But put her in a pretty dress, and most men seemed to assume she didn’t have a thought in her head beyond fashion and fripperies. It apparently did not matter what words emerged from her mouth. The same sardonic retort that before would have marked her as the worst sort of bluestocking was now glossed over with a chuckle, and the conversation would promptly revert to the same set of banal topics that were apparently of interest to most young, unmarried women.

Only Richard Garroway seemed to appreciate that Clarissa was anything other than a pretty shell. If she had thought the young M.P. was flirting with her during her first dinner at Helmsley Castle, he was really pouring on the charm now. But she did not form the impression that his heart was in any way engaged. It seemed to be more a matter of, I have to marry someone, and you’re pretty enough and come with twenty thousand pounds, so why not ?

The same applied to Clarissa’s other suitors. From what she could tell, they could find uses enough for her dowry, and they certainly wouldn’t mind having her in their beds. But they didn’t even see the real her, much less love her.

Clarissa did find one advantage to her newfound appearance, and that was amongst the women. She could no longer hide on the room’s fringes, but she didn’t need to. She was accepted readily by the other ladies.

And so it was one afternoon, when the women had gathered in an upstairs parlor to sew and gossip, that Clarissa casually took a seat on the sofa next to Arabella Anstruther, the Dowager Duchess of Kimbolton, whom Lady Winnifred had identified as a potential suspect.

Clarissa introduced herself and pulled out the unembellished handkerchief Lady Emily had provided her. It was convenient that her trunks had been lost, so she had an excuse for not having brought any needlework. In truth, Clarissa had little patience for embroidery and possessed only a basic competence with a needle and thread.

She tried to make neat stitches for once in her life as she considered how to initiate a conversation with the duchess, but there was no need. Clarissa was the juiciest on dit at the house party, and the duchess was eager to have some firsthand gossip to spread when she returned to London.

“You’ve become quite popular, haven’t you, Miss Weatherby?”

Clarissa attempted a self-deprecating smile. “I’m not sure about quite popular. But even having one man interested in speaking with me is more popularity than I’ve ever enjoyed before.”

The duchess cackled. “Oh, you’re popular, all right. And you’ll have even more suitors come spring, should you go to London.”

Clarissa shook her head. “It’s all so new to me. I’ve never mixed in such high society.” She dropped her voice low. “If it’s not too forward of me, could I ask Your Grace to advise me?”

If the gleam in her eye was any indication, this request was not too forward at all. In fact, Arabella Anstruther probably would have offered her opinion whether Clarissa had requested it or not. “Don’t even think of accepting any of the men sniffing around you now. Believe me, you’ll be able to attract better options.” She laughed. “I’m tempted to throw one of my sons across your path. Goodness knows they need sensible wives, and with your dowry and connections, they couldn’t do much better. Although I suspect you could.”

This was the opening Clarissa had been looking for. Lady Winnifred had written that the duchess’s possible motive stemmed from her sons, who were reportedly having difficulty finding lucrative church livings and sinecures, thanks to Oliver Baxter’s campaign that these positions should be granted based on merit rather than connections.

Clarissa tried to look interested as she made a crooked stitch. “Do you have many sons, Your Grace?”

“Eleven of them, if you can countenance it.”

“Eleven!” Clarissa feigned a startled laugh, as if she had not read this very piece of information in Lady Winnifred’s note. “Are they all unmarried, then?”

“Not all of them. Joseph is married, and Charles. And William will have no trouble—he is the duke, you see. But the other eight…”

She launched into a lament about how difficult it was to see her eleven sons respectably settled. If she was hoping to convince Clarissa to take one of them on as husband, she had a curious way of showing it, for she described a variety of indecorous behaviors and spendthrift tendencies that did not render Clarissa eager to request an introduction. But Clarissa was starting to suspect that the duchess tended to be indiscreet in her conversation.

“I had been certain my cousin, Lord Draper, would award the bishopry to my third-eldest son, Cropley.” The duchess shook her head. “But then, he went and granted it to some nobody, just because he had been made a Doctor of Divinity by Cambridge!”

Clarissa clucked sympathetically, but privately, she found the duchess’s assumption that Lord Cropley would receive a bishopry astonishing. Had she not just complained that he had recently spent the night in gaol, having been arrested along with his friends after a drunken evening spent tipping night watchmen over in their boxes? And, gracious, if he was the third-oldest son, he must be at least thirty, meaning that this vile behavior could not be written off as a youthful folly.

He did not sound like an attractive candidate to be either a bishop or Clarissa’s future husband.

But she bit her tart tongue for once in her life and said, “I had not realized it was so difficult for men of good family to find a decent living these days.”

The duchess shook her head. “It didn’t used to be this way. But in the past few years, there has been this furor that appointments should be made based on merit ”—she said this last word in the same tone one might use for the word depravity —“and family connections are no longer worth so much as a farthing.”

Clarissa very much doubted that was the case, but again, she made sympathetic sounds. “I do believe I read something about the movement you’re describing. Did it not originate in political circles?”

“It did,” the duchess confirmed. “It all started with Lord Liverpool, if you can countenance it. But several young whippersnappers in the House of Commons have turned it into an initiative, and now only three of my sons have any sort of living at all—and one of those ‘livings’ is a rectory with an income of just five hundred a year— not enough to live on in anything resembling a decent style. It will be even worse in five years when the last three are out of school.” The duchess shook her head woefully. “It is quite a drain on the ducal estate to have to support them all.”

Clarissa leaned in, dropping her voice low. “I might be misremembering, but isn’t one of those young whippersnappers to whom you referred a guest at this very house party?”

She watched the duchess carefully, looking for any sign that the question made her uncomfortable.

Her expression was one of wounded dignity, but she did not hesitate to reply. “He is. Mr. Oliver Baxter. He is perhaps the most dreadful one of all. I would be quite put out with Lady Helmsley for having invited him, except I know he is married to her niece, and obviously, I cannot expect her to do without Rosalind at Christmastime.” She retrieved her handkerchief and dabbed theatrically at her forehead. “Oh, but I can scarcely bear the sight of that dreadful man! Do you know what I did?”

“What?” Clarissa asked eagerly, although surely the duchess was not about to disclose that she tried to kill him by pushing a stone off the roof.

“I heard him mention that mincemeat pies were his absolute favorite. I happened to be seated near him yesterday at teatime, and the servants came around to our table last. There were three mince pies on the platter. I asked the footman if there were any more, and he said this was the last of them.” The duchess lifted her chin, eyes gleaming. “I looked him square in the face as I took all three! That showed him, don’t you think?”

“It certainly did!” Clarissa cried.

The duchess prattled on for the rest of the afternoon, sharing her opinions, asked for or not, on topics ranging from the latest fashions to parliamentary reform.

Clarissa didn’t think she seemed like a murderess. If she had designs on Oliver Baxter’s life, wouldn’t she have taken more pains to conceal her disdain for the man?

Unless she was lying. Clarissa didn’t think she was, but it was so hard to be sure! She was still so new at this. How she wished Lady Winnifred was here, or the additional agent Sir Henry had promised was en route. She could use an experienced agent to confer with.

She had been turning the matter over in her mind, trying to determine if her fellow agent might already be in residence. It seemed likely that Sir Henry would have told them to look for Lady Winnifred, rather than herself. That would explain why no one had approached her.

The only possibility she had been able to come up with was almost too absurd to contemplate. But it seemed a bit odd that Rupert Dupree had insisted on accompanying her onto the roof when she went in search of the assassin. She could not help but observe that, while he was usually everything that was accommodating, in that instance, he had been mulishly determined to go with her.

It was a ridiculous notion. Really, Rupert Dupree!

And yet, Sir Henry had said that the man he would send had been on a lengthy assignment on the Continent. And Rupert Dupree had just returned from Switzerland. Sir Henry had also said that he would have this agent on the first carriage north. Had Rupert not told her that he had come straight through from London?

Sir Henry’s words from their solitary face-to-face meeting echoed in her head. The ideal spy is the last person anyone would ever suspect .

Clarissa had to own that by this standard, Rupert might be the best spy in the world.

In a strange way, it fit. Still, she was unsure, and it seemed too risky to come straight out and ask him. For now, Clarissa would just have to wonder.

After another hour, the gathering concluded, and Clarissa headed up to her room, head aswirl with contradictory thoughts, feeling no closer to solving this case than she had on the day she’d begun.