A Suspicious Affair (13 page)

And Marisol tried to hold back her tears some more, until Lord Kimbrough quietly handed her a handkerchief.

“Those better be tears of happiness,” he commanded, but turning her so that his broad back shielded her from curious eyes.

“Yes, thank you. And thank you for coming. It was a wonderful day.”

“I am happy for you,” he told her, and meant it. This woman could send him into a rage with the curl of her lip, and her tears could turn his knees to
blanc mange
, but he truly was happy to see her on terms with her in-laws, accepted in the local society, and content. Yes, it was a good day, a happy occasion. Carlinn would have been more than satisfied, had it not been for the sight of his baby sister hanging on Foster Laughton’s sleeve.

Blast! It was even more important that he get to Bath. If Bettina fell for the first scarlet uniform she saw, it was time and past to see her Out. Why, he could even take her to Bath for a month or two, to get her feet wet in those smaller circles where enough of the Quality congregated for the winter. That’s the ticket! He could go first to find accommodations and look things over, so to speak. That way it wouldn’t be so obvious that he was looking over Miss Sherville. He needed a wife, he told himself. Bettina needed the example of a mature, responsible lady like Miss Edelia Sherville. He’d do it. As soon as the highwayman was caught.

Chapter Thirteen

The apprehension of the robber became even more crucial. One of Boynton’s friends was set upon after leaving the christening party. The thief got away, and Sir Oswald returned to Denning Castle late that night, shaken and considerably lighter in the purse. Sir Oswald accepted Marisol’s offer of a guest chamber for the night and her assurance that, since he was a guest of the Castle, the Castle would make good his loss. Sir Oswald did not protest as much as he ought, Foster felt, but there was no escaping the evidence of a bullet hole through the man’s curly-brimmed beaver. While Rebecca, Nolly’s nursemaid, offered to brew a special tisane for Sir Oswald, Marisol and Foster waited downstairs for the constable from the village, Dimm from the inn, and the magistrate from Kimbrough Hall.

Carlinn had just gone to bed, so he threw on his shirt and breeches and an old pair of boots and followed the messenger back to the Castle.

Sir Oswald’s profile of the highwayman matched the previous description, but still did not match any of the known local miscreants: for the most part poachers, inebriates, and dealers in goods without excise stamps. This little section of Berkshire countryside was not known as a hotbed of crime, Lord Kimbrough tried to reassure the duchess.

“At least not until we Londoners arrived,” Marisol replied, offering the earl sherry in the parlor after his interview with Sir Oswald and his later conference with Dimm and the constable. They had decided the night was too advanced to look for clues in the dark; they’d meet in the morning where Sir Oswald had been waylaid, but without much hope of success.

“I could see it on the faces of those ladies today,” Marisol went on, “underneath their politeness. Thank goodness Foster will be on his way Tuesday. No one can accuse him of anything untoward.”

Foster was pouring the drinks. He still wore his uniform, unbuttoned, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Dash it, I’m sorry to be going. I’d like to help in the hunt, find the dastard, and stop this infernal gabble-grinding.”

“You’d do better to concentrate on stopping the Corsican, bantling,” Kimbrough told the younger man, which brought a grin to Foster’s lips.

Marisol could not be so easily diverted. She lay awake fretting after the earl left and the house had settled down, and that was how she came to hear the noise next door, in Nolly’s room.

Marisol reached for a light, and knocked a book off the night table in her fumbling. She heard a muttered curse, then a cry from Rebecca, and a door closing. To hell with a candle, Marisol thought, flying to her son, calling his name loudly enough to wake everyone but Aunt Tess and the dowager in the far tower.

By the time the duchess reached the makeshift nursery, Rebecca was sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes. Nolly was wailing, the nursery lamp was still glowing, and no one was in sight.

“I thought, that is, I couldn’t be sure, Your Grace. I thought someone shook my shoulder, but I could have been dreaming, and then there was a noise.”

Then there was a lot of noise, as Foster and servants came running. No one had seen anything. They sent for Lord Kimbrough and Dimm.

The earl had been dreaming, and not pleasantly. Even in his sleep he knew he should be dreaming of Edelia Sherville. Life with her would be a sailboat ride on a tranquil day, everything smooth and peaceful, nothing to disturb the proper course. Instead his dreams found him tangled in the sails of a sinking ship in the middle of a raging gale, with a full-bodied siren with flowing gold locks beckoning him onto the rocky shoals. “Damn it,” he cursed, waking in a sweat with his sheets strangling him, “that blasted woman has even invaded my dreams.”

But it wasn’t any blue-eyed siren calling him to his doom: it was his valet, with another urgent message from the Castle.

The shirt, the breeches, the boots, the same sleepy groom saddling a horse.

This time the duchess was in her own dishabille, a blue dressing gown buttoned over a lace-collared white lawn nightgown and a silly lace bonnet tied under her chin. And this time she was not merely fretful; she was frantic.

“The highwayman was in Nolly’s room, I tell you! You have to do something!”

“Perhaps you had too much champagne this afternoon, Duchess, and that sherry on top of it led your dreams—” Since his own dreams had been farfetched but all too vivid, he could well believe hers might be, too.

“I was not dreaming, I tell you. Someone was in my son’s room! And no, I do not believe in ghosts, before you ask me that absurdity.”

“But the servants found no one, you said, and the maid wasn’t certain. Your nerves have been overset and—”

“I am not a hysterical woman, so do not patronize me, my lord. There is a gunman loose, maybe two counting Arvid’s murderer, and I want him found. Them. Whichever one was in Nolly’s room. This is your province, Lord Kimbrough, so I demand you do something!”

Foster was upset, too. “Can’t like to think about going off like this, leaving my sister all unprotected, with no man in the house unless you count that caper-merchant Boynton. I mean, what if the fellow is a madman?”

“Boynton? Are you accusing Boynton of being a Bedlamite?” He turned to Marisol. “Do you still consider your brother-in-law a suspect in Arvid’s murder, trying to do away with his nephew now so he might succeed to the title?”

Marisol twitched at the belt of her robe. “I don’t know what to think anymore. Boynton seemed thrilled with a raise in his allowance and a fresh start. I’d rather suspect your highwayman.”

Kimbrough was pacing. He stopped and pounded on the mantel. “Begging your pardon, Duchess, and I swear I am not being patronizing, but what in bloody hell do you think a cove on the bridle lay was doing in the nipper’s room?”

“Excuse me?”

“I apologize. Let me rephrase that. Why, if someone was in your son’s room, do you think it was the highwayman?”

“Someone
was
in my son’s room, and your highwayman has been going around robbing and shooting, that’s why.”

What kind of logic was that? He tried again. “But wouldn’t the robber have gone after the silver plate or your jewels?”

Foster nodded. “He’s got a point there, sis.”

“There are white slavers and things. Gypsies steal children all the time.”

“Not in Berkshire, they don’t, Duchess. And if anyone wanted a child that badly, he could go to a hundred orphanages and poorhouses. No, I cannot believe this was the same man at all.”

“He could have been trying to kidnap Nolly to hold him for ransom. I’d have paid anything to get him back. Everyone must have known that!” Marisol was starting to look damp-eyed, and her voice was quivering. Foster patted her hand.

“Please, Duchess, try not to get hys—ah, upset.” Kimbrough might as well have asked the sun not to rise, which he could see it doing out the window just now.

“Don’t get upset? What kind of unfeeling brute are you?”

“Now, sis, coming it too strong. His lordship’s trying to be helpful.”

“No, he’s trying to shut me up so he can go back to sleep in his nice, warm,
safe
bed. How can I not be upset, I ask you, when someone might hurt my son? With Foster going off to war, he’s the only thing I’ve got, the only child I’m likely ever to have.”

“Don’t make this a Cheltenham tragedy, ma’am,” Carlinn said in exasperation. “Nothing is going to happen to your son, and you’re bound to have a whole houseful of kiddies if you want.”

She sniffed. “What, do you think any decent man would marry me now, after Arvid’s scandal?”

Well, Carlinn wouldn’t, but…“Of course, Duchess. You’re young, well bred, wealthy.”

“Of course, we mustn’t forget the fortune,” she snapped, having read his answer on Kimbrough’s face, the puffed-up, prudish peer. “As if I would wed some down-at-heels fortune hunter. But none of this is pertinent to the matter, my lord. What are you going to do about the intruder in Nolly’s room?”

First he suggested she have that yappy little dog Max sleep in the room to act as a warning device. Then he sent a message to Dimm, asking him if he knew an experienced bodyguard who would patrol the house and grounds. Those measures seemed to relieve Foster some, enabling him to resume packing while Kimbrough interviewed the servants again.

They all seemed genuinely distressed that anyone might think of harming the young master or upsetting the mistress, but they had no clues to offer. So he went to speak to Sir Oswald once more before the other’s departure, in case the robbery victim recalled any helpful details. He did.

“About that little taradiddle last night… Didn’t mean to frighten the girl, don’t you know.”

The girl?”

“The nursemaid, the one who brought me the tisane. Thought she was extending an invite, don’t you know. Didn’t mean to set the house on its ear.”

“You didn’t mean to—? Why, you—!”

If Sir Oswald was shaken by the robbery, it was nothing to being shaken by the Earl of Kimbrough. The earl had the man off the ground and dangling by his shirt collar. Sir Oswald swore to leave the Castle, Berkshire, England, anything the earl wanted.

Kimbrough wanted all that plus an apology to the nursemaid and to Duchess Denning, and he wore a complacent grin while he watched the man grovel. Foster grinned, too, after he planted the man a facer and tossed him out the door. But the duchess didn’t grin. She didn’t even thank the earl. She merely took one look at his smirk of self-satisfaction and reminded him that the sun was up and there was still a murderous highwayman loose in his lordship’s domain. Then she went back to bed.

*

Thunderation! Must he always appear no-account to the blasted female? And what should he care if the duchess thought him rude, arrogant, and incompetent? He cared. And so what if she nonsensically feared for her child’s safety and even more foolishly feared him? So he’d do his damnedest to wipe that look of terror from her face, that’s what. No woman should be afraid, Kimbrough told himself, not of her husband, not of strangers, certainly not of a bumbling blockhead like himself. Why, the code of chivalry honoring womankind ran so deep in his blood he might have been one of those wretched knights strewn around Denning Castle, clanking along in metal inexpressibles.

Obviously, what he had to do to restore a bit of luster to his armor was capture that thatchgallows on the high toby. There were no usable tracks to follow, no new directions to pursue, which only left setting a trap as a viable course. The makebait liked to prey on gentlemen traveling alone after dark, so the earl and Dimm decided that that’s what he’d get.

They planned the trap for that very evening. Since the moon would be full, the highwayman was sure to be at his craft. Before going home for some much-needed rest in anticipation of a long night, Lord Kimbrough returned to Denning Castle. He only thought to relieve Her Grace’s mind, he told himself. She would be happy to know that a plan was under way to capture the thief, and pleased that Dimm’s son Gabriel, the one in training to be a Runner, was already on his way to safeguard the little duke. Dimm thought it would be good training for the lad, who was familiar with infants, and good for the baby to hear a deep voice now and again.

“Gor’blimey, little chap’s being fawned on by five women at least. With that brother of Her Grace’s gone, he’ll need someone to teach him how to toss a ball and spin a hoop.”

When the earl had last seen His Grace at the christening, Master Noel had needed nothing more than sour milk mopped off his chin. But if it eased the duchess’s mind, one more Dimm on hand made no difference to Lord Kimbrough.

Marisol was indeed pleased that Nolly would have an armed guard by the end of the week. She was not quite as pleased with the earl’s plan to act as bait for the robber. In fact, the approval, trust, and respect Carlinn thought to see in her eyes for once was missing altogether. In her eyes instead were enough fireworks to light up Vauxhall Gardens.

“No, not even you can be so chowderheaded, my lord,” she said, fists clenched at her side. She didn’t even offer him tea, she was so angry. “Then again, you must have been the gudgeon, for Mr. Dimm would never have devised such a reckless scheme. I am surprised he agreed to go along with it at all.”

Dimm’s agreement was hard-won, but Lord Kimbrough was not about to give the irate duchess more ammunition. “I thought you wanted me to apprehend the felon,” he noted instead.

“Yes, to capture him, not offer him your head on a silver platter!” she shouted. “It’s too dangerous, you jackanapes! Can’t you see that, or are you so puffed up in your own conceit that you cannot comprehend an armed and desperate man winning out over the Earl of Kimbrough?”

“What, never say you are worried over me? And here I thought you’d be happy to see me gone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, puncturing what vanity the earl had left. “I am concerned for Nolly’s sake only. What, pray, happens to him if the gentleman of the road does not behave in a gentlemanly fashion? What if he shoots you first, for instance, and then asks for your purse? What good is Dimm hiding in some bushes going to be then? And what good to my son are you going to be dead? The court will appoint another guardian, most likely Boynton. He is the Prince’s friend, for heaven’s sake. And you know what he is, what he’d do to Nolly’s estate.” She crossed her arms over her now-heaving chest and pronounced, “You cannot do it.”

Carlinn tore his eyes from that same generous bosom. “Dash it, Duchess, you cannot tell me what to do. You are not my wife, b’God.”

“Heaven be praised for that mercy! And I pity the poor woman who takes on that thankless task. Of course, a wife might remind you of your responsibilities more.”

Carlinn crossed his arms, too, more so he wouldn’t be tempted to shake her than anything else. “You go too far, Duchess. I have made allowances for your sex, for your condition, even for the uncomfortable position you found yourself in with a virtual stranger thrust into your affairs. I have even tried to make excuses for your shrewish tongue. But I have
never
needed to be reminded of my duties, which is why I will not permit you to dictate my behavior, and why I will not permit a criminal to prey at will on my neighbors.”