Barbara Metzger (24 page)

"I say, that's not much of a bargain!"

"On the other hand, I could have you thrown in debtors’ prison for the rest of your short life, claim the house in lieu of my payment, and have you charged with any number of felonies, including the disappearance of your solicitor, Nigel Gordon. Or I could just hand you to Byrd."

None of those sounded too inviting either. “But ... but how am I to live?"

Lesley didn't care. To expedite the transaction, however, he was willing to make a concession or two. “I'll arrange passage for you to America, where I have an interest in a stud farm in Virginia. They are always needing help with the horses.” Lesley didn't say they needed assistance in the stables, shoveling manure, which was as close as this clunch was going to get to any decent horseflesh.

Parkhurst was wise enough to take the deal, after another look at Byrd. Lesley wrote out the documents and Broderick managed to sign them, with Byrd as witness. They left while Parkhurst was on his knees, trying to start a fire to burn the IOUs.

"You might want to help your employer with his packing,” Lesley told Mason on their way out. “And ask him for a reference. I can guarantee Mrs. Kane will not be keeping you on.” He'd made Parkhurst swear not to reveal the incriminating confession, so the magistrate could arrest the butler and search his rooms before he escaped.

Byrd wanted to make sure Cook was managing the painting crew, and Lesley wanted to send a message to Bow Street, telling them he had the proof they needed to get a warrant, so they headed toward Hartleigh's town house.

They could hear the shouting as they crossed the street.

Parkhurst came flying out of the house in his white nightshirt. Mason was close behind him, brandishing a stiletto in one hand, a pistol in the other. Parkhurst ran down the path and into the street, bumping into the Misses Applegate on their way back from the park, the trembling terrier looking both ways from its perch against the elder sister's bony chest.

Parkhurst wove through carriages and wagons in the thoroughfare, Mason on his heels. Broderick, full white bedgown flapping against skinny, hairy legs, leaped in front of a passing horseman. The startled horse reared and the startled rider slid off its back, using words the Applegates had never heard, in all their years of teaching.

Parkhurst grabbed the reins with his one good arm and jumped aboard the crow-hopping horse. Mason stopped his mad pursuit and tried to take aim around the unhorsed rider, the walkers, the wagons, the girl selling violets on the corner, and the neighborhood brats throwing a ball. His first shot hit the streetlamp, which sent glass flying in every direction. The rider kept swearing, the girl tossed her flowers in the air, the children shrieked, one wagon overturned, the Applegates screamed, the terrier yapped—and Glad, covered in dirt, came bounding out of the bushes behind Parkhurst's house, right into the path of Parkhurst on his stolen steed.

The gudgeon's neck was not broken, Byrd declared, though he'd likely have a decided crick to it when he woke up, if he woke up. Mason was not among the crowd gathered around the inert body or huddled along the edge of the road. In all the confusion of the street, Mason had disappeared. Bow Street had his address, though, Lesley knew, so the murderous man-servant could wait. Meanwhile, the viscount was checking to see who else was injured, who merely affronted. He sent for the watch, a physician, the magistrate, and someone to sweep up the glass, shouting to be heard over the melee.

Byrd picked up Parkhurst's unconscious body and was carrying him into Hartleigh's house. “Can't leave him lying in the street, Cap'n. Might cause another accident. Don't think he'd last long at his own place, either, with no help or Mason's. A’ course, I don't blame that Mason for wanting to pop him none, public service, like."

So Hartleigh invited the others in for a restorative and for Cook to extract glass splinters until the sawbones arrived. Before following, Lesley bought up the violets—he offered a bunch to the Applegates and was refused—helped soothe the nervous horses, helped right the tinker's wagon, and chased off the ragamuffins who thought they could help themselves to the toppled tinware.

Finally pouring himself a drink, and incidentally noticing that his hand was cut, Lesley smelled smoke. This was not the usual coal smoke, nor wood-stove smoke, nor London's habitual stink. And it was thick enough to be casting a shadow on Hartleigh's newly painted walls.

He rushed outside again with Byrd right behind him, and Cook with her rolling pin. Everyone else poured out of the little house too, except for Parkhurst, of course, who hadn't regained consciousness.

Parkhurst's house was on fire, with black smoke billowing out the door. Either the nodcock had not placed his mounds of canceled debts in the hearth properly or he had not opened the damper. Or else Mason had decided that if he couldn't have the house, no one could. The antique carpets, the old wood paneling, the brocaded draperies, all went up like tinder while a crowd gathered on the lawn.

But where was Mason?

Lesley handed his coat to Byrd, who shouted, “You can't be thinking of risking your life for the likes of him, Cap'n! He ain't worth it. The bastard will roast now or in hell later, makes no never mind."

But it mattered to the viscount. Holding his handkerchief over his nose, he raced into the house while Byrd kept shouting and Cook cried.

The stair rail was starting to scorch, but the stairs appeared untouched so far. Lord Hartleigh found his way through the thick smoke up to the attics, calling Mason's name. He went down the service stairs to the kitchens, still shouting although his throat was raw. He could hardly breathe through the smoke, or see where he was going. The fire seemed to be spreading outward from three places, leaving Lesley with few escape routes. He could hear bells and whistles from the fire brigade, but they would not be in time to save anything but the brick shell.

Giving up, Lesley staggered out the back door, the one Mason had always thought he should use anyway. Coughing, wiping his eyes, he almost stumbled on Mason's body, half in a freshly dug hole, half in the pile of loose dirt with Gladiator's wide paw prints in it. A dug-up azalea bush lay next to Mason, and the pistol. He'd evidently gone out the back, tripped in one of Gladiator's holes, and accidentally pulled the trigger, killing himself.

Good dog, Glad.

"That's it. Pippa and I are leaving. London is too dangerous. Guns and fires and knives and madmen everywhere.” And lots of violets in her lap.

Lesley had a cut on his hand, a burn on his cheek, and a cough. Byrd had a bruised jaw from urging the fire brigade—all fifteen members at once—to enter the house when he thought the viscount might still be inside. Cook was near hysterics, Parkhurst had been hauled away to hospital, and Glad needed another bath. They were in the kitchen of the viscount's Kensington property, where everything was spattered, sooted, and in disarray. One of the messengers had had enough sense to send for Mrs. Kane, along with the authorities.

"It's all my fault,” she declared. “None of this would have happened if you hadn't tried to help me!"

"You?” Lesley lifted the damp towel off his aching eyes. “I was the one who let Mason and the muttonhead burn down your house. Can you forgive me?"

"It wasn't my house, you fool!” Carissa cried. “It wasn't my house."

"Yes, it was. Here's the deed.” He rumbled in his coat, which Byrd had thrown around his shoulders. “I don't think it got near the fire or the water. I'm not sure about the glass or Parkhurst's blood."

Carissa looked at the piece of paper that gave her free and clear title to a burned-out shell of a building, a piece of paper that this impossible man could have died for. “You did that for me?"

He tried to give her the old rakish, raffish smile that had turned women up sweet since he was in short pants. She hit him with Cook's skillet.

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They were going to Hart's Rest, the Hartleigh country seat in Norfolk. They were all going: Cook and Byrd and all the new maids and footmen, half of Bow Street's Runners (the half that wasn't searching for Cantwell in London), a bunch of youngsters from the foundling home, and two girl children big with child, with no husbands.

Pippa's pony was going, as was Blackie, Aunt Mattie and her canary, Carissa's vast new wardrobe, the baby's crib, cradle, and carriage, in case there was nothing suitable in all of Norfolk, and Lesley's dueling pistols.

They were a cavalcade of four carriages, three wagons, and scores of outriders. They might as well send Phillip Kane an invitation, Carissa crossly thought. She resented it all, especially how she had to ride in the stuffy, closed carriage with Aunt Mattie and her canary, who could not be subject to drafts. Cleo was furious at being kept in her basket, and Pippa was back to sucking her thumb. The baby was fussy and Maisie was getting motion sickness. Lord Hartleigh, meanwhile, got to ride in his shiny curricle, driving his shiny team, while everyone else followed in his dust. The viscount and his man got to be in the open air, happy as larks, with the loutish dog between them.

Carissa wanted to be going home to her father, not going to another of Lord Hartleigh's holdings. She knew it was foolish, to be wishing to return to the security of childhood, but she knew the neighborhood, knew the neighbors. Her father would have to let her stay.

Instead she was traveling into uncharted territory with an attics-to-let champion. With a misguided sense of honor, in her opinion. Lord Hartleigh had developed the nonsensical notion that he was responsible for her well-being. She knew Lesley could not wish to continue her acquaintance, not with the mess she'd landed him in, the scandal, the danger, the destruction. He could not wish to marry her, she was positive, not after she'd lied to him. Carissa knew she could never marry anyone she thought might be less than truthful, not a second time.

"If I were connected to that loose screw,” he told her when she tried again at the first stop to convince him to let her go on alone, “I'd lie about it too. Why, if anyone asks me about Agatha and the Spillhammer sisters, I deny any relation. I do it all the time, without a bit of guilt.” He touched her cheek with one gloved hand. “It's going to be all right, Carissa. You'll see."

"You wouldn't lie to me?” She was asking a lot. He answered a little: “Why should I? You already know about Agatha."

When they arrived at the country house, which had twenty bedrooms in the guest wing, Carissa was too busy with today to worry about tomorrow. The house had been in the Hartleigh family for generations; so had the staff. The housekeeper wasn't the least offended by Carissa's offer to help, taking the opportunity instead to nurse her rheumatics. The equally ancient butler was happy to share his door-keeping duties with Byrd, what with all the comings and goings. The place had not seen so much activity since Lesley's father's funeral. After that solemn event, the new widow had taken herself to London and had never been back.

Master Lesley had been away at school, then on his travels. The servants were not used to babies, children, or pets, to say nothing of armed guards. Three of the oldest, including the house steward and the cook, opted to accept their retirement pensions and moved into one of the numerous cottages scattered about the vast estate. The head gardener took one look at Gladiator and joined them.

Carissa had to find rooms for everyone, see that the children were settled comfortably, and divide up the work to be done among the old servants and the new. The house hadn't had a good cleaning in years, and the linens were in disrepair. She was so busy she did not have time to realize that she was a virtual prisoner at the estate, never allowed out of doors without a guard or the viscount at her side. She was also so busy that she never noticed that the kitchen cat was a tom. Cleopatra noticed.

Lesley, meanwhile, was organizing his troops to defend his castle, as it were. He also rode over the whole estate, visiting with the tenant families he'd grown up among, asking them to keep an eye out for strangers. Sometimes he took Carissa along in the curricle, sometimes he invited her and Pippa both to accompany him on his rounds on horseback. In all instances, Byrd or Nesbitt or another of the Bow Street gentlemen rode behind. Sometimes Jem, the head groom, followed too.

Pippa had the run of the kitchen garden, the knot garden, and the walled garden, when one of her guards was present. In no time she was berry-brown and her hair was sun-streaked. Aunt Mattie made the acquaintance of the vicar and his wife, who returned her calls. Soon other neighbors, the squire and his family, a retired general's widow, Lord Halbersham and his lady, who was breeding and so missing the Season, all started leaving cards and sending invitations. There were dinner parties, evenings of whist, dances at the local assembly, lawn picnics, and boating parties.

Carissa was accepted as Lesley's guest. If anyone speculated further, they did it amongst themselves, not in her hearing. Everyone commended Hartleigh for taking in his “foundling” ward, so even the presence of his by-blow was not dampening their welcome.

The tenants were pleased to see their landlord take up residence, for improvements got planned, investments got made in stock and tools, and problems were listened to, without waiting for the estate manager to contact his lordship in London. They would have been happy to see him if he'd brought his opera dancer to Norfolk. A well-bred, lovely lady had them hoping that Lord Heartless would settle at long last.

Soon the farm wives were asking Carissa's opinions on recipes and roses, rearing children and reading lessons for their own daughters. With Lesley's approval and endowment, she set up a school for girls to match the boys’ classes.

Everyone was kind, everything was blossoming. Life was good, better than Carissa felt she deserved, except for the ever-present threat of Phillip Kane. Like a nagging toothache, he could not be forgotten. There were no reports from Bow Street yet, no sightings, no arrests. Carissa watched Pippa exercise her pony on the front lawn, under Jem's tutelage, while Aunt Mattie napped on a chaise longue and Maisie rocked the baby in her carriage. She wished she could be as carefree as the others. Even her cat was getting fat and lazy.