Flowers From The Storm (32 page)

Durham, at least, had no doubts that Jervaulx ought to be protected from his family’s intentions. “”That loathsome old hellcat,“ was his succinct opinion of Lady de Marly, and his comment upon the duke’s mother included words that Maddy had never even heard before.

At best, she found his style of speech difficult to comprehend. She hesitated when he demanded whether she was certain that no one could touch on the drag from the church.

“Drag?” she asked dubiously.

“The scent. No one could find where you went?”

“I shouldn’t think so. We’ve been to Ludgate Hill and back in hackneys.”

“Ludgate Hill!” He gave a bark of laughter. “Good girl.” He grinned at Jervaulx. “Who’d think of you pointing for a lot of drapers, eh?”

The duke turned his head a little, smiling back. He took a sip of his chocolate. Maddy suspected that he understood less than she.

“No one, take my word,” Durham answered himself. “More likely they’d have at… Egad.” He sprang out of his chair, pulling the curtains. “They’ll come here. Mark!” He yelled into the next room. “Onto the stair with you! Keep a watch! I’m not at home. Tell ”em—I’ve gone early to ‘Change.“

The servant bowed over his scarlet potbelly. “Sir. They won’t believe me.”

“Hell’s bells, can’t a man make a purchase in the public funds? I just had—a bequest from my third cousin four times removed, that’s the ticket. Six hundred pounds—but mind you, don’t part with that morsel for less than half a crown.”

“What of the colonel, sir? Should I turn him off?”

“Damn and blast—Fane! He’ll be here any minute.” Durham chewed his lip. “No percentage in it.” He glanced at Maddy. “We can trust Fane. He’d never swallow the tale anyway—think I’d gone batty to put six hundred in funds. He won’t have a noddy notion what to do; he ain’t the thinking sort—but if you want a good sound fellow at your back, Andy Fane’s your man.”

Maddy was pleased to have anyone at all at her back; Durham seemed a little flighty, but he clearly meant to help Jervaulx. She was about to mention her need to return to her papa when Jervaulx and Durham both glanced toward the window at the sound of an off-key whistle.

The duke grinned and set down his cup. “
Friend
,” he said to Maddy.

“Beforehand, for once,” Durham said, as a handsome clock on the mantel rang a set of melodious chimes. He ducked halfway into the entrance hall. “I’ll send Mark down to bring him up quiet. The old General was in on that racket when you came in, wasn’t he? We’ll put it in his ear about the six hundred pounds.” He frowned at Maddy. “You’re my—ah—second cousin five times removed. Orphan. Came with the bequest. Orphan always comes with the bequest. Solicitor brought you, couldn’t wait, had to catch the mail back to—somewhere. All that pounding to wake me up, right? Barking—his imagination.

Dogs ain’t allowed. Lord only knows how I’ve got by with it this long.”

He disappeared into the entryway. All these lies and deceptions made Maddy uncomfortable. Even if she weren’t speaking them herself, she was participating. Richard Gill’s steady, thoughtful gaze haunted her like a conscience—but against it was Jervaulx’s clear joy in his friends, both Durham and the officer with the magnificent golden lace and bright facings on his uniform, who didn’t say a word to the duke—just took him round the shoulders and pounded his back, and then shoved him away.

The officer looked down and pushed Devil off his knee. “Knew he was too tedious to kill,” he said to the dog. “Got a few more papers to write, what?” He gave Maddy a sideways squint. “Brought a girl along, too, wouldn’t you know it?”

“This is Miss—ah—” Durham left an expectant pause.

“Timms,” Maddy said.

The soldier swept a bow, holding his sword back with one white-gloved hand and brushing her skirt with the tall white plume of his military hat. “Colonel Andrew Fane, at your service, my love.”

“Leave off, Fane. She’s a Quaker.”

Colonel Fane looked startled. He stiffened his spine and put his heels together in a military manner, going quite red in the face. “I beg your pardon, ma’am! Miss? Then it’s your fellow waiting out by the street, is it? One who wanted to know if—damn—asked about you, Shev—that was it! Didn’t understand what the devil he was getting at, but I see it now. Wanted to know where to find the duke. What duke, says I, Got dukes by the score—”

“Richard!” Maddy clapped her hand to her breast. “It will be Richard Gill.”

“Oh,” said Colonel Fane.

“However did he—” She bit her lip and turned to Durham. “He’ll have followed us. I spoke to him—I asked him to help, and he said that he would… but—I’m not certain that he doesn’t think I should take the duke back to his family.”

“He knows about it?” Durham demanded. “And he’s out there now? Here? Lud, miss—why didn’t you say?”

“I didn’t know. I never thought he could follow, or would. But—he’s made it a Concern. I should have known that he wouldn’t cast it off easily.”

“What the devil is going on?” the colonel demanded.

“Get rid of that ridiculous thing you wear on your head and sit down.” Durham yanked a chair from the table. “We’re all gone to cover for Shev. Those harpies he’s pleased to call a family want to put him away in a madhouse.”

“Say
what
?”

“Tell him, Miss Timms. Shev needs us. You tell him what you told me.”

“Can’t talk?” Colonel Fane gave Jervaulx a look of comical incredulity.

The duke returned a wintry smile. He stroked the black dog Cass. His mouth curled and hardened with brutal effort; his fingers dug into the black ruff. “Dumb…
you
.”

The officer appeared to comprehend this comment instantly. “I’m not dumb!” he protested.

“Come along, Fane.” Durham poured him coffee. “Everybody knows you’re a block.”

“I am not dumb! Listen—who thought of selling Shev to the resurrection jarvey? Me.”

“And who had to go and pay his bail?”

Colonel Fane grinned. “Kill him—” He smirked theatrically. “I say—” His lips puckered. “Kill him when—” He began to snicker.

“Take a damper, you lobcock.” Durham’s face was a pink combination of disgust and pent-up amusement. “This is serious.”

“Kill him—” The colonel could no longer speak through wheezes of laughter. “I say, kill him—”

“Kill him when you
want
him,” Jervaulx said clearly. He grinned, leaning his chair back on two legs.

Durham’s smile faded in surprise—but Maddy caught his eye. He made no comment on the duke’s speech. The colonel seemed to think nothing of it; he was chortling, banging one fist into his other palm.

“Bless me, what a row that was, Miss Timms! Shev was right bosky, do you see—he was used up.

Corned, pickled and salted—”

“Comatose, Miss Timms,” Durham explained gravely. “In strong drink.”

“Oh, yes, good Oxford word. Comatose!” The colonel seemed to find that description an uplifting one.

“Perfectly senseless. And we was having to carry him home, y’see, between the two of us, and he weighs—”S blood, he must weigh fourteen stone! And who might drive by at the very moment but the one they call the resurrection jarvey—“

“Night coachman. Sells bodies to the surgeons,” Durham interpreted. “For anatomy lectures.”

“Right! So what should I think—and it was my idea entirely, I promise you, Miss—and the fellow took him, and—” Colonel Fane made an expressive revolution with his forefinger. “And, y’know—his clothes, we got those, and the fellow took him in a sheet to old Brooks! In Blenheim Street! Took him there, to the lecturer’s door!” He leaned back his head and thumped the table. “And offered—and offered… him for… f…
sale
!”

The colonel lost the power of coherent utterance in his hilarity. Maddy had lost hers, too. She stared at the officer in scandalized shock.

Colonel Fane spluttered into speech again. “An” the doctor ‘xamines “im—’n says—he says… ”You scoundrel— this fellow ain’t—
dead
!“”

She looked around at the others. Jervaulx and Durham were both watching Colonel Fane, grinning broadly in anticipation.

“ ”N the jarvey says, “Not
dead
?”“ The colonel drew himself up in a semblance of affront. ” ‘Not
dead
?

Why then— sir… then, I say, sir… you must just… k—k—“”

The other two joined in, harmonizing in sonorous unison, “
”Kill
him when you
want
him!“”—a chorus of deep masculine timbre, Jervaulx as fluent as the rest. He was chuckling, rocking back again with his legs outstretched.

“Damn you,” he said to the colonel. “
Rob
.”

“Oh, right—that was the upshot of it—poor old Shev, the doctor thinks ”tis a burglary attempt, a shot’t‘

get into his house, and cries thief. The jarvey got clean away, but they tied up Shev and sent “im to Marlborough Street, an’ he laid there all night in a sheet, and half the morning, ”til Durham could get a solicitor out of the Old Bailey—to argue not to commit him. Duke of—“ He began to lose his composure again. ”Duke of… of Jervaulx, y’see—for attempt to rob a… a…
bonehouse
!“

They all grew absurd at that, wiping eyes and sighing when the waves of mirth finally died down. Devil jumped up, his forelegs on the duke’s lap. Jervaulx rubbed the dog’s head vigorously between his hands.

He slanted his pirate smile on Maddy, midnight blue and mischief.

“So there you are, Miss Timms,” the colonel said, with a self-satisfied groan. “It was all hushed up, but you have it from the horse’s mouth.”

“I see,” she said, unable to add more.

“What a lark. I’m not dumb. No indeed. Lord bless us, what a lark.”

“Perhaps—thou might return to the duke’s situation,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Right ho. The duke’s situation. Got himself into another scrape, has he?”

“Bear with us, Miss Timms,” Durham said. “We keep Fane about for his muscle, not his brains. Do you think we ought to speak to this man Richard Gill? How much does he know of it? Could he bring the pursuit down on us here?”

“I told him all that I’ve told thee.”

Durham poured another round, coffee for himself and the colonel, chocolate for Jervaulx and Maddy.

“I’ve been considering. I think we’ve got a little time before they draw our cover. With no one likely to have seen you get away, it might be all morning before they decide to look beyond the streets about the chapel. Even if they think of me so soon, they’ll do no more than send a query round, I’ll wager—and Mark can fob that off all right. But for the long run, we must smuggle you both out of town.”

“Out of town? The duke—yes, I think that’s excellently sensible. But I must return to my father.”

“Do you think it wise?”

“It matters not if it’s wise—I must.”

“Well. We’ll think of a story then. You tried to keep up with the duke, but lost him.”

“But—”

“That should satisfy even this Gill fellow, eh? Pressed upon by the horses and overran the scent. St.

James’s was his point, but you lost him among the thickets in Picadilly. Leave the rest to us—and a rare great lady you are, Miss Timms, for bringing him out of that fix, if I may be allowed the compliment.”

“I thank thee, but—I can’t say those things,” Maddy protested.

“Why not?”

“They are not true.”

“Of course they aren’t true. Where would we be if you were to tell them the truth?”

“I can’t tell them falsehoods.”

Durham gave her a queer look. “You must, my dear. Just a small falsehood. A very white lie.”

“I can’t. I can’t lie.”

“You can’t lie?” Colonel Fane echoed. He and Durham were gazing at her as if she were a disturbing illusion that had just crystallized out of the mist in front of them.

“No,” she said. She might have thought, wickedly, of deceiving Lady de Marly, perhaps even Cousin Edward—but she couldn’t imagine lying to her father—or to Richard Gill, whose whole demeanor was a public testimony to walking in the Life. “It’s not our way,” she said helplessly. “I cannot do it.”

“But—what will you say, then?”

She bit her lip. “If they ask me—I must answer truth.”

“You can’t lie.” Durham fixed her with a hard look. “Not even in this one case—to save a man’s neck?”

“It should be—what God wills. To lie is to make it my will. But… after I leave—thou canst take him away, and I can say truthfully that I don’t know where he is.”

“Why, thank you. That leaves you quite in the clear, don’t it? And when they ask you where you last saw him, I’ll find myself hauled up before a magistrate.”

She lowered her eyes.

“All right. Just… give me time to think. Let me think.” He steepled his hands over his coffee cup. “You must go back directly. Why must you go back directly?”