Chasing the Heiress (34 page)

Chapter Forty-One

“Explain to me why we are still doing business with him. He lies to us, does not pay us, and tries to leave us the trouble of a body—then, when I finally find the girl, he once again takes matters into his own hands and once again loses her,” Flute growled

“He has something I want. A small piece of land, not more than a few acres, but located perfectly for a plan I have in mind.”

“But is it hers or his?”

“His. A bequest from an uncle. It's bottom land, not valuable, on a canal. He has owned it for most of his life and ignored it. Ignored the possibilities of that one little piece of land. And I want it. Outright.”

“So all of this? The girl, the asylum, the . . .”

“Just a means to an end. I could have bought the land, but then someone could have wondered why I wanted it. This way, the line of ownership is muddled, and no one will think a thing about a piece of property lost in a gambling hell, or who ends up with it in the end.” Charters sat down at his desk, prepared to play the devil if necessary. He set his favorite knife—a Damascus blade—and Georges' pumice stone in plain sight on the desk.

“Bring him in, Flute.”

The door opened, and Flute shoved Marner into the room. The man recoiled at the sight of Charters behind his desk.

“It was not wise to try to hide from us, Lord Marner. Now tell me: why should I let you live? Have you anything at all that I might find valuable?”

Marner stood, silently defiant.

“No, I didn't think so. Just a defunct title that dies with you.”

“If you kill me, I can't pay you.” Marner shuddered.

“Other methods of payment also suit me. Like a slow, painful death, after which no one will ever be able to identify your body. Pieces of you strewn all over the city, an ear here, an eye there. Or perhaps all fed to the hogs on your cousin's estate. Missing but dead. Very dead. Your death will serve as a caution to others who think to take advantage of my . . . good nature.”

He took out the knife, played with it in the light, and held it out to Flute. “Would you like to do the honors, Mr. Flute? But slowly—I want him to regret his actions.”

“I have a piece of land,” Marner blurted out. “It's a prime piece, good for grazing, water adjacent, near the coast.”

“Does it have a house?

He looked away. “No. It's a ruin, not habitable. But there's a cottage, small but livable. You could rent it out. There's a tenant there already. . . . You could let her stay, though she pays almost nothing.”

“Her?”

“The ward of my uncle who left me the land. I'm not supposed to dislodge her, but if you own the land, there's no violation of the will.”

“Let me understand you: you expect me to take a piece of land with a disputed ownership instead of a nice handy pile of money? Is there at least a barn?”

“No . . . a shed, but that's all.”

“Then why would I want it?”

“It's worth more than I owe you,” Marner argued. “It might be the only way I can ever pay you.”

“Fine. I'll take the land.”

Marner's hands fumbled about. “If you will give me a piece of paper, I'll write a transfer of deed now.”

“No, you will go to the gaming hell below. Mr. Flute will show you to a table. When a white-haired man comes to the table and invites you to play, you will play. And you will lose. You will bet this piece of land, and you will lose. Do you understand?” Charters let the light fall on the decorations in the blade of his knife.

“Yes,” Marner stammered in fear.

“Good.” Charters picked up the pumice stone and walked toward Marner. He recoiled in fear. “Ah, I see you remember my friend Georges's toy . . . scrapes the skin off so nicely and from such sensitive places. If you think to walk out without playing, Mr. Flute will stop you. If you think to play and win”—Charters tilted his head—“well, that would be foolish. Don't you agree?”

Marner's eyes never left the pumice. “Yes, yes, I agree. I will lose to a white-haired man who invites me to play.”

“Excellent. I see we have an agreement.”

Marner grew bolder. “After that, you will leave me alone.” “Of course. I will have no use for you.”

“I'll be destitute.”

Charters turned. “For five years you lived on the largesse of your aunt, waiting for her to die, giving her a little bit of poison every day, watching her grow weaker, spending the estate accounts for your own purposes. But you never set anything aside—no, you expected to inherit, so you were spendthrift and foolish. Then, when your cousin returned from the Continent, you could have dispatched her quickly—you called on me, confided all you had done, then decided you didn't want to spend the money. And now you have nothing. If you are to be destitute, it is not by my hand. Show him to the tables, Flute.”

* * *

“Have you read the paper yet today?” Aidan held out a barely mussed copy of the
Times
.

Colin looked up from his coffee. “Should I?”

“You might find it interesting. At least, your lady might.”

Colin held out his hand. “Any particular page . . . ?”

“Three. Under ‘Police.'”

“The magistrate determines that the man threw himself into the river, or fell in a state of intoxication. Nothing was found at the time, the man having no items on his person that would provide his identity. But in recent days, the absence of Lord Marner from his county seat . . .”

“Marner's dead?”

“I viewed the body this morning to be sure. Apparently he lost what few possessions he had left at a gaming hell near London Bridge.”

“Then she's safe. Well and truly safe.”

Epilogue

“Sir, it's time to return home.” Joseph Pastin stood at the doorway of the office, looking in. No one would have been surprised to hear that the man at the desk had very nearly died in battle. One long scar ran from his temple down his cheek and to his chin, a reminder of the sword's tip that had sliced open the once-handsome features. It had missed his eye, but not the edge of his mouth, and the parts had knit together unevenly, joined by a thick, raised scar.

“You never stop watching out for me.” When the man smiled, as now, the whole plane of his cheek, from the edge of his mouth to his ear, remained motionless, making him appear either clownish or terrifying, depending on the light.

“No, sir. The prince regent has made it quite clear that I am to take good care of the hero, who died for his country and now spends his afterlife in a hidden office suite, poring over information the way Wellington used to pore over maps. The others left hours ago.”

“Well, if no one is here, then you must stop calling me ‘sir.' If any man has a right to my name, it's you.”

“Then,
Benjamin
, it's time to return home.” Pastin had already turned down the lights in the outer offices.

“You won't ever get used to my new name, will you? I thought we picked Mr. James because you liked the sound of it.”

“No, we picked it because it was my grandfather's name, and I thought it would be easy to remember. But I've found I'm too old to change. I've known you as Benjamin for my whole life. Or at least all of my life that's worth remembering.”

“I suppose I must get up, but my leg is objecting to this change in weather.” Benjamin rose with difficulty, his good leg stiff from lack of exertion. He reached for the cane to steady himself, but began to falter. Joseph reacted quickly. Sliding his arm under Benjamin's, the adjutant pulled his old commander against his body, helping the man to stand until he regained his own feet.

“It was a good day that I recruited you to join my regiment.”

“How could I not follow the fair-haired officer who promised to show me the world?”

Joseph helped Benjamin into his greatcoat, then offered him his arm. Benjamin took it. “Have you discovered anything else about Princess Marietta's murder? Anything that might indicate who was behind the assassination or the Levellers' riots?

“No, but I'm certain they are related. I just don't know how yet. I simply hope we can sort it out before one or more of my brothers find themselves in a trouble from which I cannot extricate them. But at the same time, I certainly put Colin in the eye of danger.”

“Yet it turned out quite well—I met Lady Fairbourne several years ago when we were still on the Peninsula.”

“Her father was a good man. I suppose had I known she was in distress, Colin is exactly the brother I would have sent.”

“Are you still sure you are doing the right thing? Letting them believe you are dead?”

“If they know I'm alive, Aidan will refuse to remain lord. And I'll be obligated to marry and provide an heir. And we both know I cannot take that chance. No, it's better this way. And besides, spending my time in this office ensures that I don't scare any children.”

Joseph extinguished the lights one by one behind them as they made their way slowly, arm in arm, out of the office and down the hall.

“At least you were able to intervene for Lady Wilmot. Your brother and Walgrave were able to find the planted papers before the magistrates arrived.”

“Yes, but I worry. What if that request hadn't come to me, to this office? Would Lady Wilmot be in the Tower even now awaiting execution as a spy and forger?”

“But it didn't happen, sir. All the information that has to do with the security of His Majesty's kingdom comes across your desk. As long as it does, you can look out for them.”

“As long as it does, Joe, as long as it does.”

Dear Reader,

I thought you might like a little more information on the background to Lucy and Colin's story. I love history and words, and, when I'm not writing, I enjoy mucking around in nineteenth-century magazines to see what I can discover.

 

 

In 1818, a parliamentary committee visited all of the asylums in England, and the details about Matron's house come from the report of that committee published in 1819. By the standards of that report, Matron's house would actually have been one of the better facilities for the care of the mentally ill, providing fresh straw, flannel in winter, glass in windows, and fresh air (even if that air was accompanied by a strait waistcoat).

 

 

A staple from the late eighteenth-century through the end of the nineteenth, word games were a common feature of women's magazines and books for women and girls. I have used actual enigmas from nineteenth-century books, though not from the 1819
Lady's Magazine
itself. Though that periodical had for many years devoted a section of pages to various sorts of games and their solutions, by 1819 it no longer did so.

The question game that Colin attributes to an overly zealous matchmaking mother is drawn from
The Querist's Album
, published by David Bryce in Glasgow between the late 1860s and 1890. The
Querist's Album
asked players to offer their ‘confessions' to thirty-six questions on personal topics, and the questions Colin recounts to Lucy are from that book. My favorite question of the whole list is this: “Is it acceptable for a woman to pop the question?” Until I read the
Querist's Album
, I had no idea that the phrase (“pop the question”) or the practice (women asking for men's hand in marriage) dated back so far as the late nineteenth-century.

 

 

I have extrapolated the possible presence of dawamesk in England from various sources. Hemp was praised in botanical and medical books from the sixteenth-century, including William Turner's
New Herball
(1538) and Nicolas Culpeper's
The English Physician
(1652). Further, Robert Burton in his
Anatomy of Melancholy
(1621) recommended marijuana as a treatment for depression.

Additionally, a number of counties in England grew hops during the early nineteenth-century, though the hallucinogenic present in that strain was relatively weak. British trade with African countries that produced the drug was well established; and Napoleon himself—who had brought the plant back to Paris for study in the 1790s—had trouble with his troops experimenting with hashish in Egypt. Given these factors, it's not inconceivable that forms of marijuana, such as dawamesk, made their way into England before the 1840s.

Lucy's symptoms—the vivid colors, the synesthesia, the perception of shapes bending around other objects—all were recorded in Jacques-Joseph Moreau's memoir of using marijuana, published in France in the 1840s.

I hope you enjoyed Lucy and Colin's story, and that you are looking forward to the next book in the Muses' Salon series:
Tempting the Earl
. There, Harrison Walgrave and his estranged wife Olivia must work together to solve the mystery behind some coded letters before Charters kills again.

I'm happy to hear from readers—you can email me at [email protected]. For more historical notes on
The Muses' Salon
, or to connect with me on social media, go to my website—rachaelmiles.com—which provides links to Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etcetera. While you're there, sign up for my mailing list, and I'll send you an announcement when the next book is coming out.

I'm happy to talk to book clubs and community groups, and my website provides a list of possible topics I could discuss. Drop me a line to set something up.

 

Happy reading!
Rachael Miles