Gather Ye Rosebuds (12 page)

I had a horrible premonition who Mr. Welland would be. And indeed it was none other than Lord Weylin. It would be hard to say which of us was more shocked and embarrassed. We exchanged a long, silent look as Mr. Folyot introduced us.

“How do you do, Miss Smith,” Lord Weylin said in perfectly wooden accents.

“Good day, Mr. Welland,” I replied, and dashed out the door, with Folyot hollering after me that he would be happy to have the boards taken down to give me a better look, if I thought the house would suit me.

“Thank you. I shall let you know,” I said, and ran to the carriage. “Spring ‘em,” I called to Rafferty.

“Back to the hotel, Miss Barron?”

“Yes, as fast as you can go.”

The whip snapped, and I was tossed around the seat like a pig in a poke all the way to Tunbridge Wells.

Chapter Twelve

In the depths of my embarrassment, the only thing I could think of was running away and hiding. Mama would have to sell Hernefield and move back to Ireland, where we would never have to face Lord Weylin again. He knew my uncle was a thief, that he had stolen Lady Margaret’s necklace and a great deal more. When I emptied my budget to Mama back at the hotel, she was no more optimistic than myself, but more curious.

“What on earth was Lady Margaret doing at Lindfield?” she kept asking. “And with a young fellow, you say?”

“A Mr. Jones. She was calling herself Mrs. Langtree. Barry must have tumbled to it that she was up to something, and been holding her to ransom. As his thievery was never reported, at least to our knowledge, it stands to reason he was not only a thief, but worse. He ferreted out his victims’ secrets and made them pay him to keep mum. I daresay Mr. Jones was the secret.”

“Do you think he was Lady Margaret’s... paramour?” she said, blurting the last word out in an explosion of distaste.

A little smile seized my lips at having found some disrepute in Weylin’s family to dilute the shame of my own. “Mrs. Sangster did say Mrs. Langtree was ever so fond of Mr. Jones. The name sounds like an alias.”

“And she left him the cottage as well. She would not do that for no reason. The old fool took a lover half her age. Well, there is no accounting for taste.”

“That was certainly foolish, but it is not indictable. We are in the worse pickle, Mama. What should we do?”

“Go home.”

I wanted to, but that was a craven impulse. “If we could find Barry’s money, we could pay Weylin for the necklace without mortgaging Hernefield. We must stay and try to find where he lived. Bradford said he had a cottage near Ashdown Forest. There are dozens of little villages tucked away there.”

“I wager Steptoe knows more than he is telling,” Mama said. “I think it is time to bargain with him, Zoie. Oh, did I tell you he is here, in Tunbridge? I spotted him on the Pantiles this afternoon. I tried to follow him, but he moved like greased lightning. I think he was looking for us, for he popped into half a dozen hotels, and right back out again.”

“He did not see you, then?”

“No, but he probably knows by now where we are staying.”

“Then we have only to sit tight and he will call.”

At that precise moment, a sharp rap came at our door. We both jumped an inch from our seats. I rose and strode to the door, wearing my sternest face to frighten Steptoe, flung the door open, and found myself staring at Lord Weylin.

“May I come in?” he asked, and walked past me into the room, before I had the wits to bar the door.

“Oh, you are still here, Lord Weylin,” Mama said. Her face was cherry red with shame.

“Did your daughter not tell you we met at Lindfield?” he replied mildly.

There was something very much amiss with this visit. Weylin should have come in like a lion, snarling and gnashing his teeth. His manner had a definite aroma of the sheep.

“Pray be seated, milord,” I said, but as I looked about the room, it became clear that if he took the other chair, I must either stand or stretch myself out on the bed.

“I came to invite you ladies to join me for tea, as we have all decided to remain another day and continue looking for our shameless relatives. Not that I mean to cast aspersions on Mr. McShane’s character,” he added hastily.

This became stranger by the moment. “Mama?” I said.

“I could do with a cup of tea,” she replied.

Weylin accompanied us to the same parlor as before, leaving no opportunity for private discussion between Mama and myself, but mother and daughter do not necessarily require words to communicate. We both realized that Weylin was on the hot seat, and were on nettles to discover why.

He ordered a lavish tea, with enough sandwiches and sweets to feed a parish. He could not have been more attentive to our comfort if we had been a pair of duchesses. Chairs were drawn, and discarded due to an imaginary draft. Shawls were arranged, and at one point he even suggested we remove to a larger parlor. During these ludicrous goings-on, he kept flashing quick looks at me, as if to see whether I meant to attack him.

When he tried to change my chair for the second time, my curiosity could endure no more. “For God’s sake, Weylin, what have you discovered?” I demanded. It was the first time I had dispensed with his title when speaking to him. I felt a little forward, but if he noticed, he was too shaken to show it.

His brows rose in a question. “Why, exactly what you discovered yourself, I should think. My foolish aunt had taken herself a young lover, and handed her diamond necklace over to him. Not only her necklace, but whatever monies she had. You are not privy to all the details of her will, ladies. The fact is, Macintosh left her a hefty fortune, which I understood was destined for myself. At her death, it was completely gone. Vanished—along with the necklace.”

Mama and I executed one of those tacit communications. I nodded my consent, and she said, “We were wondering if Mr. Jones might be her paramour.” Mama disliked to use the word “lover,” but I think “paramour” was no better. It has a shady sound to it.

“I do not see what else he could be.” Weylin scowled. “The postmistress was quite forthcoming about how fond she was of the fellow. Buying him a gig and watches and I don’t know what all. I am sorry I implied your uncle was involved in the theft of the necklace—but it is odd he ended up with the copy.”

“What led you to Lindfield, Lord Weylin?” I asked.

“I assume it is the same thing that led you there. I noted your question, at lunch, as to whether I had visited any jewelry shops. I also noticed you did not believe me when I told a bald lie. I hope you can forgive me. It is extremely distasteful to admit one’s aunt was such a fool, and a lecher, too, at her age. I hoped to keep it from you. I learned in Krupps Jewelry Shop that my aunt had sold her necklace. I told the jeweler my cousin had married, and I was unaware of her married name, but he recognized your sketch, Miss Barron. She used the name Mrs. Langtree. The address she gave was Lindfield. The postmistress there directed me to the house.”

I wondered at her selling the necklace herself, and soon figured out that Barry had demanded cash, which occasioned the sale.

“Perhaps you are too hard on her, milord,” Mama said. “She might have married Jones, for all we know to the contrary.”

“That is hardly an improvement, in my opinion!” he said.

We sat with our tongues between our teeth, not revealing by so much as a blink that we were already aware of this story, and certainly not intimating that Barry had been up to tricks of his own. But we were keenly aware of it, and it was this that softened our condemnation of Lady Margaret. She may have been a fool, but at least she was not a thief.

“There is really nothing to keep me in Tunbridge Wells now,” Weylin said. “I got the address of Jones’s man of business from Folyot, the estate agent at Lindfield. I mean to find out Jones’s address and call on him in London to rattle a few sabers. If he actually married my aunt, of course, there is little that can be done to recover her fortune, but if he was only her lover... well, her will left her entire estate to me.”

“Then how did Jones get his hands on it?” I asked. “Mrs. Sangster said Mr. Jones had inherited the house.”

“Yes, from Mrs. Langtree,” Weylin pointed out, with a tight smile. “She was
not
Mrs. Langtree, but Lady Margaret Macintosh. Any lawyer worth his salt could undo such a will with one hand behind his back. Much depends on what sort of fellow Jones is. If he is an out-and-out rotter—and really I do not see how he can be anything else—then I shall set the law after him. When a fellow in his twenties marries a lady nudging sixty, you may be sure it is not her
beaux yeux
he is after.”

“He was passing as her nephew,” I said. “Is there such a relative in the family, even one with a different name?”

“No. I thought of that, of course. There is no nephew except myself. There is her stepson, Macintosh’s son by his first wife, but he is a carrot top. No one ever accused him of being handsome, and besides, he has his estate in Scotland. He has not been dashing off to Lindfield four times a year for the past five years. Old Macintosh had no nephews. No, it is some scoundrel who preyed on Aunt Margaret’s susceptibility for romance. She was always a fool for a handsome young man. But enough of my problems,” Weylin said. “You have not had any luck in following Mr. McShane’s trail, I take it?”

“No. No, we have not,” Mama said warily.

Weylin said, “I spotted Steptoe as I drove into the yard. As he was leaving this hotel, I assumed he had called on you.”

“He was here?” I asked, starting up from my chair.

Mama clutched her heart. “It is odd he did not call on us,” she said. “I wager we shall hear from him e’er long.”

Weylin drew out his watch and frowned at it. “Since he bothered to follow you here, why did he not call? I begin to wonder if Steptoe knows as much as you think. His sly behavior suggests he is only trying to discover what is afoot himself.”

“He came to the wrong place then,” Mama said, “for we do not know what is going on.”

Weylin kept his watch in the palm of his hand, glancing at it from time to time.

“Are you in a hurry to get to London, Lord Weylin? Pray, do not let us detain you,” I said.

“I was trying to decide whether to leave at once and make it before dark, or to remain overnight and leave first thing in the morning.” He returned the watch to his pocket and said, “I shall stick around until morning. Mr. Jones is not likely to disappear. He has no idea I am on to him. I could not get much of a look around my aunt’s love nest with Folyot at my elbow. I mean to return after dark and break in.”

“What on earth for?” Mama demanded.

“My aunt’s last illness came on suddenly. She had planned to return to the love nest. It stands to reason she must have left some personal items there. I shall root through the drawers to see if I can find anything to incriminate Jones.”

“Surely he would have checked himself before putting the house up for sale,” I said.

“He had no reason to fear I would tumble to his trick. Folyot said a local woman had tidied the place up, but she would not take on herself to throw out letters and such things. I shall make a thorough search tonight.”

Mama cleared her throat and said, “That would be against the law, would it not, Lord Weylin?”

“Yes, it would. I hope you are not planning to report me?”

“No indeed.”

We spoke of other things. Weylin kept returning to the riddle of how Barry came to have the copy of his aunt’s necklace. His fear was that she had conned him into believing it was the original, and sold it to him at a criminally high price. At one point he even said he would repay us, if this turned out to be the case.

We parted the best of friends. We were all to regroup at the private parlor at seven-thirty for dinner, before Weylin left to break in to his late aunt’s love nest. When Mama and I were back in our room, we agreed we would begin scouring the countryside around Ashdown Forest for Barry’s cottage as soon as Weylin left for London in the morning. Meanwhile we had that dinner to look forward to. Weylin was in such a penitential mood that it promised to be an enjoyable repast.

Chapter Thirteen

Since the shroud had been such a success the evening before, I wore it again, with a different shawl to vary the look. Instead of my Grecian coiffure, I pulled my hair all to one side, fastened it with a clip, and let a cluster of curls hang flirtatiously down to my shoulder. The do had looked well in
La Belle Assemblée,
but when I examined myself in the mirror, I felt I should be simpering. There was something coy in that teasing curl on my shoulder. It looked feminine, however, and I wished to remind Weylin that I was a woman, as well as a lady. We were about to go down to the parlor when there was a discreet tap at the door.

“Weylin is early,” I said, hastening toward the door.

There stood Steptoe, with the slyest look you ever saw on his face. “May I have a word with you, madam?” he asked.

“Why are you not at Hernefield, Steptoe?” I demanded.

“I thought you might require my services here, madam.”

“You are mistaken.”

“You are not looking for Mr. McShane’s residence in this neighborhood then, madam?” he asked, bold as brass.

I opened the door and let the wretched creature come in. Mama had recognized his voice and came forward, staring like a moonling. She did not say a word. I could not let him know we were scared to death of what he might say. I said nonchalantly, while arranging my shawl, “What do you have to tell us, Steptoe? Pray hurry. Lord Weylin is expecting us for dinner.”

“About my increase in salary, madam...”

“About Mr. McShane’s residence, Steptoe—” I replied.

“An increase of five pounds a quarter would suit me.”

“No doubt, but you are not earning it by vacating your post without permission, are you?”

“Five pounds, and I give you the name of the village,” he said, peering at me with his bold, snuff brown eyes.

“For five pounds I will require not only the village, but the house.”