Lady in the Stray (10 page)

“No time, is it?” Daintily, Delphine wiped her mouth on her ruffled sleeve. “Fizgig! You’d time enough to have a bit of frolic with that man-milliner.”

Had Delphine been amid the gargoyles perched upon the tall roof-pinnacles overlooking the garden? This irreverent speculation brought forth Minette’s mischievous grin. “I wasn’t frolicking. Edouard is a connection of mine.”

Delphine wrested away the claret from Orphanstrange and lifted the bottle to her lips. “Diddle-daddle! You were openly intriguing with the fellow.” She set aside the bottle and belched. “Adzooks, but I was sharp-set!”

Minette had spent the larger portion of the evening pondering the various unpleasant means by which Edouard might seek to take his revenge once he realized her determination to play him false. “I’ll thank you, Delphine, to be a little less busy about my affairs.”

“What’s that you say?” Delphine cupped a somewhat grimy hand behind one ear, and with the opposing elbow nudged Orphanstrange, causing him to choke on a swallow of claret. “Would someone care to tell me why the slyboots is squinting at me like a bag of nails?”

Already a little out of sorts, Minette was rendered no more merry by the chapel’s arctic temperatures, which caused her to shiver in her semitransparent gown. “At least I’m not a basket scrambler who lives on someone else’s charity!
Tout de même,
I will not get to dagger-drawing with you, Delphine. We must pool our resources. You have been skulking about all the evening. What did you learn?”

Delphine thrust out her lower lip in a very pouting manner, settled herself on a canopied seat. “Skulking, was I? Did you know how to go about it, gel, you’d see nothing objectionable in creeping through the walls. As for basket scramblers, what the devil do you think
you
are? A pasty-faced tatterdemalion whom Marmaduke brought home for no good reason I could find—and one who doubtless hastened his departure to Beelzebub’s Paradise! You can’t deny the old reprobate was chasing you down the stairs.”

Lest Minette hasten yet another departure to the nether regions, Orphanstrange intervened. “Mademoiselle Beaufils was asking me some very pointed questions about Lord Stirling earlier this evening.”

Minette relaxed her white-knuckled grip on the pulpit, which she had been strongly tempted to break over Delphine’s head. “Stirling,” she echoed thoughtfully; “I wonder—”

Delphine cackled. “Well she may ask questions! Meself, I’ve always admired an arrogant rogue.”

“You may hope the rogue doesn’t break our faro bank!” snapped Minette. “It seems to be his intention. How do
you
know about Stirling, Delphine?”

But Delphine made no answer. Her head fallen forward so that her chin rested on her chest, and her towering feathered hat threatening to topple off her head, she emitted a gentle snore. “It was the claret, miss,” said Orphanstrange, anticipating that Minette was about to fly off the hooks. “I oughtn’t to have let her have it. You know how she gets.”

Minette’s glance, as it rested on the old woman, was savage. “To my regret. Go on, Orphanstrange; what else did Mademoiselle Beaufils ask you?”

The valet frowned and tried to remember, a feat made all the more difficult by the throbbing of his abused elbow. “I don’t rightly recall, miss—nothing to signify. But she’d turned the library right topsy-turvy, she had. It looked to me like she’d been shaking out the books. Could Master Marmaduke’s treasure be hidden
there,
do you think?”

“If not Marmaduke’s treasure,” Minette responded slowly, “then a piece of paper might.” She fell silent, pondering whether she should tell Orphanstrange about the missing memorandum which Edouard sought to claim.
If
such a memorandum existed. Among Edouard’s virtues was no strict adherence to the truth. She drew closer to Orphanstrange.

Each deep in his or her own reflections, the conspirators were as yet unaware that they were not alone in the cold chapel. Silently, the intruder padded forward, paused to look curiously around. No fear or shadows or dark corners smote this worthy, whose keen eyes were accustomed to penetrating deeper gloom. Of even less interest were the people clustered around the pulpit. Calliope, that intrepid hunter, was in search of a late-night snack.

A faint rustling sound from beneath the carved canopy caught the cat’s keen ear. She slunk forward, belly practically dragging on the stone floor.

“A piece of paper, ecod!” ventured Delphine, who had not for a single instant been asleep. “Such as a—” The remainder of her comment was lost in a shrill scream. Before Orphanstrange and Minette had time to react, she erupted from beneath the canopy, with a speed and agility that belied her advanced years. Minette could not repress a nervous giggle. Clinging to Delphine’s towering befeathered hat was a very startled-looking cat.

“Save me!” shrieked Delphine, and flung herself at the astonished Orphanstrange. “'Tis a demon from hell!”

Minette nudged the valet with her elbow. “Certainly we will save you—and in return you will tell us what you have found out, eh, Delphine?”

Even Delphine’s innate perversity was not proof against her fear of felines. “Anything!”

Grinning, Minette reached up for Calliope, who refused to part company with Delphine’s hat. A brief tussle ensued. A few short moments later, Delphine’s powdered hair was considerably disheveled and Minette’s arms were filled with befeathered hat and irate feline. The cat, she hastily set down. Calliope stalked off into the darkness, all offended dignity. “Faith, but I’ve a palpitation!” moaned Delphine.

With the hand that didn’t clutch a bedraggled hat, Minette twitched the claret bottle out of Delphine’s grasp. “After you have confided in us, you may refresh yourself. What about a piece of paper, eh?”

Lower lip protruding, Delphine looked very much like a recalcitrant—and very elderly—child. “Demned if I should tell you that! You and your clever letters— better I should tell this Vashti twit that you’ve pulled the wool over her eyes.”

From this hostile statement, Minette concluded that the old woman’s feelings had been stung. Amazing! Minette had not thought Delphine capable of any emotion other than spite. “You are angry that I have been more clever than you,
hein?”

“Clever!” Delphine’s sharp nose twitched. “If you was so clever, gel, you wouldn’t be barking at the moon.”

Again Orphanstrange felt constrained to prevent his companions coming to fisticuffs. “You had already said you meant to take up residence in your secret room, Madame Delphine. Miss Minette saw no reason to charge Master Marmaduke’s heiress with your upkeep also, especially since Mademoiselle Beaufils has no notion you exist.”

Thus reminded of her own cleverness, Delphine retracted her outthrust lip. All in all, it was not proving so easy as she had anticipated to move undetected around an occupied house. “We struck a bargain,” Minette reminded her. “You’ll keep your part of it if you want your hat back.”

Delphine wasn’t certain she wished to reclaim that item, so bedraggled had it become. Still, a bonnet was a bonnet, and she was unlikely to soon come by more. “'Tis only a memorandum,” she muttered, and snatched at her hat.

“A memorandum.” So Delphine
had
overheard Minette’s conversation with Edouard. “But how?”

“How do you
think
I heard of it, pea-brain?” Delphine’s thoughts were largely occupied with the reclamation of her bonnet. “Stirling accused the upstart of something to do with a memorandum, and you needn’t ask me what! He also made a violent attack on her virtue, and proper betwattled she was—or so she made out!”

Without comment, Minette handed Delphine the battered hat. Although at some other time Minette might have been very interested to hear of the startling goings-on in the library, her thoughts were currently all for the memorandum that her kinsman was so eager to claim. Lord Stirling was also interested in that memorandum, Edouard had informed her—but what had Vashti to do with this affair? Could she know the memorandum’s whereabouts?

“
Au contraire,”
Minette murmured aloud. “Did she know, she would not search, I think.”

Delphine deposited her hat at a rakish angle atop her head. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know, since you were so good as to rescue me from that accursed beast—though I’ll warrant it went against the grain! Marmaduke’s heiress
does
know about his treasure, because she mentioned it to Stirling.”

Orphanstrange ceased to clutch his injured shin long enough to comment. “An uncommon number of people know about Master Marmaduke’s treasure, it seems to me!”

Delphine snatched up the claret and drank. “Ecod! 'Tis my opinion the twit ain’t what she seems!” she remarked when the bottle was quite dry. The effect of this comment upon her companions was all she might have wished. Cackling, feathers swaying, Delphine withdrew into the shadows, slipped back into the cupboard and through the trapdoor hidden there.

Minette and Orphanstrange exchanged a very speaking glance. “I don’t like this above half, miss,” said the valet.

“Nor do I!” sighed Minette as once more she retrieved the claret bottle and placed it on the tray. Missing memorandums and unspecified treasures— at this rate, soon half of London would be surreptitiously tapping the walls of Mountjoy House. And precious little time there was for searching, owing to the exigencies of operating a gaming house.

Again, that memory of Edouard’s fingers clasped painfully around her neck. Minette picked up the tray and thrust it at Orphanstrange. Not only must they discover whatever the deuce it was that everyone else wished to discover, but they must do it first. “There will be precious little rest for us this night,
mon ami
.”

CHAPTER TEN

The late Marmaduke’s solicitor paused within the entrance vestibule of Mountjoy House, frowned at his companion. “Why, no,” he allowed. “I have no doubt of Mademoiselle Beaufils’ credentials—quite the opposite, in fact! If
you
have some question, Stirling, you must tell me so.”

Lord Stirling merely grunted. His lordship was feeling excessively annoyed, with his godpapa for plunging him into a wretched imbroglio, with the deceased Marmaduke Mountjoy for playing some deep game—and especially with Vashti Beaufils, for being either a damsel with a sadly dilatory memory or a clever adventuress who would sell out her own country for personal gain. Discreet interrogation of the solicitor had left Yves no nearer to a solution of the puzzle. He gazed in a forbidding manner around the vestibule.

Lionel, meanwhile, addressed the footman who had admitted them, and elicited the information that Mademoiselle Beaufils was in the dining room. He waved aside the servant. “We’ll find our own way.” The gentlemen proceeded through the entrance vestibule and hall, past the carved apes and dogs and monkeys on the stairway. A profound hush lay over Mountjoy House, the majority of its occupants still recuperating from the revels of the previous night.

The dining room was a tall, lofty, fan-vaulted chamber. Drawn up to the table were a number of pseudo-Gothic chairs. One of the chairs was missing from its place, drawn up instead before the hearth. Upon that chair stood Mademoiselle Beaufils, intent upon the chimneypiece, patting and prodding at the stones.

Gesturing the astonished solicitor to silence, Yves strode forward. “Dusting again, Vashti?” he genially inquired. She started violently, spun around, lost her balance, grabbed for chimneypiece and chair back. Both eluded her. She fell. Lord Stirling caught her in mid-tumble, leaving Lionel to deal with the overturned chair.

Vashti stared up into Lord Stirling’s handsome countenance, memory of which had kept her awake a large portion of the night. Doubtless he thought she had been searching for his accursed memorandum. “You startled me, sir!”

“Did I?” murmured Yves. “You were not on guard. I already issued you warning, did I not?” She winced. The jade—if she
was
a jade—deserved to receive her comeuppance, he thought. And then he mused, quite irrevelantly, that she fit as snugly as ever into his embrace.

Lionel, having dealt with the chair, and by so doing having earned from Calliope a snarl, was at a loss as to what he should do next. Lord Stirling and Mademoiselle Beaufils were staring at each other in a manner that left the solicitor feeling distinctly
de trop.
He cleared his throat. “The two of you are acquainted?” he ventured.

Thus made aware that he had clasped Vashti’s narrow waist a great deal longer that was seemly, Yves abruptly released her. “We are very old acquaintances.” He looked very narrowly at Vashti. “Are we not?”

“Hm? Oh, yes!” Recalling her speculations upon the supposed manner of their acquaintance, Vashti blushed. What would Valérie have done in a situation such as this? Vashti could not imagine. She took refuge behind the long table and offered the gentlemen coffee.

“Thank you, no!” Lionel eyed the remnants of Vashti’s breakfast with a certain wistfulness. Sparse as that repast seemed—consisting of cold oatmeal pudding, sliced and toasted and buttered—it was more ample than his own had been, Lord Stirling having appeared on his doorstep at a very early hour. “We have come on a matter of business. Lord Stirling has made a very handsome offer that I must advise you to consider.”

“An offer?” Vashti’s hands clenched around her coffee cup, her wide amber eyes fixed on the solicitor’s face. Had Stirling engaged Lionel to act in his behalf concerning the memorandum? An odd way to go about the thing, surely. “Has he, indeed?”

“You find it hard to believe in your good fortune.” Ignoring Calliope’s hostile demeanor, Yves drew up a chair. Vashti looked doubtfully at him. He smiled, and availed himself of the coffeepot. “Old acquaintances such as ourselves need not stand on ceremony. But Mr. Heath looks confused. Perhaps you would like to tell him how we come to know each other, Vashti.”

What Vashti would have liked to do was end this charade—however, there was the missing memorandum to think of, and the possible loss of her inheritance, and what little Valérie might have left of her good name. Through lowered lashes, she studied Lord Stirling. His blue eyes were fixed on her fingers, clenched so tightly on the cup.