Lady in the Stray (14 page)

Fascinated, Lionel stared at his companion. Minette was dressed rather more demurely this day than was her habit, in a three-quarter-length pelisse of lined shot silk, and beneath it a walking dress of palest green muslin bordered with narrow tucks. The flower-wreathed conversation hat covered one dainty ear. “I am?” he said.

“You are.” Minette was arch. “Me, I know these things. Very far gone in infatuation, I should deem you. Quite midsummer moon.”

“Oh.” Lionel’s tone was doubtful. “This is vastly interesting. May one inquire, with whom?”

Minette smoothed her gloves. “With whom what? Ah! With whom are you enraptured, you mean. I daresay you would not believe me if I told you. So I must show you instead,
n’est-çe pas?
If you will embrace me, please. It is quite acceptable, I assure you.
Voyons,
you do not oblige! Most gentlemen would not be so reluctant, M’sieur Heath. Perhaps you aren’t accustomed to embracing ladies? First, you put one hand
here,
and the other arm
there,
and then—”

“And then,” interrupted Lionel, as amused as he was appalled, “I think I should let loose of the dog.”

“Ma foi
! That is very good thinking,
mon cher.
And now, you may kiss me.”

Lionel glanced over his shoulder. They were alone in the ambulatory beneath the chapel. It was hardly the setting in which he would have chosen to embrace a young lady. However, the young lady seemed adamant. What could a poor solicitor do? He obeyed.

“Allez!
I was wrong. You
are
accustomed to embracing ladies.” Minette straightened her beflowered bonnet. “I would not have thought it of you, M’sieur Heath. I don’t complain, you understand. I have myself been embraced a few times— freely I admit it! But you are the first gentleman I have asked.”

Were he prudent, Lionel would have immediately removed from the ambulatory beneath the chapel to some more public place. However, the solicitor was feeling a great deal less prudent than stunned. “Do you mean that I—that you—” He blushed.

“Vraiment!”
Minette stood on tiptoe to pat his rosy cheek. “Cupid’s dart is unpredictable, no? Else you would not be in amours with a frippery creature like myself.”

In amours? Perish the thought. “I have always held you in the highest esteem,” Lionel replied stiffly. “But--”

“ ‘Highest esteem’?” Minette wrinkled her nose. “Dull stuff! You do not believe me, I think. I give you all the time you need to accustom yourself to the notion, m’sieur. We will not speak of it again until you wish! I am not unreasonable, eh? But I did not come here to ask you to kiss me,
mon cher,
delightful as it may have been.”

She had found his kiss delightful? Lionel had enjoyed it himself. Blushing all the harder, he sought to collect his scattered wits.
“Ah,
ça!
Mademoiselle Beaufils disappeared,” prompted Minette, with only the faintest trace of a grin.

Lionel frowned. “You should have immediately sent me word.”

“I thought of it,” allowed Minette, but didn’t explain her additional thought that Vashti had discovered Marmaduke’s treasure, or Edouard’s memorandum, or both, and had summarily decamped. “But then she was found.”

“Found?” Lionel’s rosy cheeks turned pale with relief. “Why didn’t you say so? I was envisioning all manner of dire things—what do you mean, she was
found? Is
she—”

“Reassure yourself,
mon cher;
she has only a sore head.” Minette spared a thought for the highly incensed Delphine. The old bat had lost her secret refuge. Minette derived considerable secret pleasure from the thought of her enemy scrambling through the walls of Mountjoy House in search of another hiding place. “She stumbled into a hidden room and knocked herself senseless trying to escape. At least that is the general opinion. Mademoiselle Beaufils claims she was hit over the head and knocked unconscious.” In point of fact, not only Vashti claimed it; Delphine shared that opinion. Even Minette believed it might be true.

She had no intention of mentioning Delphine. “We have had the doctor; Mademoiselle Beaufils will be fit as a fiddle with a few days’ rest.”

“This is terrible.” Lionel remembered the late Marmaduke’s fatal tumble. Accidents abounded in Mountjoy House. “How did she finally escape?”

Without mentioning Delphine, Minette could hardly explain how the discovery had come about. Grudgingly, she gave Delphine credit for alerting them. Minette wouldn’t have put it past the old woman, to keep Vashti forever in the hidden room. “She didn’t escape; I found her.
Mon cher,
Marmaduke trusted you. I must also, I think.” Having arrived at this decision, she fell silent.

Lionel was silent also, his experiences with the late Marmaduke not being such as to render him eager to receive additional trust. He glanced down at the young lady strolling beside him. Her brow was wrinkled with thought. In truth, Lionel wasn’t certain he trusted Minette.

In silence, they strolled along the ambulatory, which was paved with broad stones and had once been used as a place of interment for the benchers, and at length back out into the pale sunlight. Minette gazed blindly upon the Gothic chapel. Abruptly she said: “Marmaduke mentioned no treasure to you, eh?”

Deep in his own thoughts, which dealt largely with Minette’s assertion that he was
épris,
Lionel returned to the present with a start. “Treasure? No. Marmaduke did not—but Mademoiselle Beaufils mentioned it. I thought she was mistaken. If you know of this ‘treasure’ also, perhaps she was not.”

“And perhaps Marmaduke played another of his odious jokes on us all! I wouldn’t put it past him.” Minette sighed. “If so, it is very bad of him, and if ever I see him again, I shall tell him so!
Not
that I expect to encounter Marmaduke again, because when I turn my toes up, I shall surely go to a different place.” Surely visits to screevers and forged documents and the sale of a few items not her own were only minor sins?

“I’m certain you will.” Lionel was hard-pressed to conceal a smile. “I believe there was something you wished to speak to me about?”

“I do not wish to, precisely.” Minette scuffed the toe of one cordova leather half-boot against the ground.
“Ma foi,
I do not want a shawl embroidered in gold and silver acorns either! I don’t even want to go back to France. But every barrel has a bad apple, and
I
have Edouard.”

Minette was hardly more straightforward than her late benefactor had been, Lionel thought, but she was infinitely more appealing, even with her opulent little person drooping and her mischievous countenance downcast. “Who is this Edouard? Surely it cannot be so bad as all
that?”

Could it not? But who would believe Minette detested her own kinsman? Edouard was among the matters Minette did
not
intend to confide to Lionel, matters which also included forged letters and various items missing from Mountjoy House. She sighed. 
“
I believe that there is a memorandum hidden somewhere in Mountjoy House.”

So different was this from what Lionel had expected that he frankly stared. “A what?”

“A memorandum!” Minette was impatient. “I know no more about it than that, I swear it on my mother’s grave! Except that whoever finds it may hope to be clasped to Bonaparte’s bosom, so you understand the situation is grave!”

“Bonaparte—” Lionel recalled Lord Stirling’s sudden interest in Mountjoy House. Could he be in search of the memorandum? “Good God!”

“Me, I do
not
wish to be clasped to Bonaparte’s bosom, you comprehend!” Minette peeped up at Lionel from beneath the brim of her absurd hat, looking so enchanting that the solicitor was tempted to do some more clasping of his own. “Any number of people want this memorandum, it seems.”

“So they might.” Lest he succumb to wayward impulse, Lionel dropped his gaze to Mohammed, who had fallen asleep leaning against his knee. Lionel’s knee was on the verge of doing likewise. “If this memorandum contains information so vital to the French.”

“I’m not even certain there
is
a memorandum,” admitted Minette, “but the way Stirling haunts us, I think it must be true. And I’ll wager anything I own that Marmaduke was mixed up in this dreadful affair somehow—or I would, had I anything to wager! So here we are, with a hidden memorandum of the most vital nature, and because of the gaming rooms all manner of people are constantly in and out of the house. There is no telling who may find the thing! Do not tell me we must close the gaming rooms,
mon cher,
because without them none of us will have a feather to fly with.”

Lionel remembered Stirling’s pointed questions about Vashti; might they pertain? His lordship had seemed to think Marmaduke’s heiress might not be whom she claimed. Though Lionel understood those reservations, he knew beyond doubt that Vashti Beaufils was the genuine article. In any case, what connection could a young woman who had for many years been living secluded in Brighton have with missing memorandums? Minette was watching him. “What would you have me do?”

She shrugged, an intriguing action despite the concealing pelisse. “First, we must discover if there
is
a missing memorandum. You will manage that. I feel better already for having told you about it! Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“No.” Because his companion’s confidences had not left Lionel feeling better also, but considerably worse, his tone was sharp. “If I do discover that there is such a memorandum, then what? It would hardly be in the best interests of my late client—or Mademoiselle Beaufils!—to make the matter public knowledge.”

“Nor mine,” Minette said drily, thinking of Edouard. Did her kinsman discover she had confided in Lionel, he would most likely break her neck. “Nor yours,
mon cher!
Solicitors do not mix themselves up with missing memorandums, as a rule. It must be our secret. We must try and find the memorandum before anyone else.”

“Wonderful.” Lionel was not cheered by the reflection that, within the nooks and crannies of Mountjoy House, hundreds of memorandums might be hid. “How will we explain this search of ours?”

Considering the large number of people similarly occupied, Minette doubted that occasion for explanations would arise. “We will say that I misplaced a—a
billet-doux!
And anyway, you need not search so much yourself as watch to see that our visitors do not. I cannot be always popping in and out of the gaming rooms, and there is the possibility that Mademoiselle Beaufils is not mistaken, and someone
did
hit her over the head.” Again, Minette thought of Edouard. The possibility was very good.

“Mademoiselle Beaufils may have encountered someone in search of the memorandum?” Irritably, Lionel shoved the slumbering Mohammed aside. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

“Merde!
You think I do?” Minette clutched his arm, peered beseechingly up into his face. “You are angry, I can tell, and I wish you would not be. I did not hide the memorandum, and I have been trying very hard to find it, and in general fretting myself to fiddlestrings!”

She did look very weary, Lionel realized. His hand rose of its own accord to gently touch one of the dark bruises beneath her green eyes. Minette grasped his hand, pressed it to her cheek. “My dear, dear Lionel! You
will
help me!” she gasped.

Perhaps he was indeed
épris,
mused Lionel as he looked down into her mischievous little face. Any sane solicitor would refuse to involve himself in a situation so highly fraught with possibilities of disaster and disgrace. Minette pouted, fluttered her long lashes. “Oh, very well!” he groaned.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I did not knock myself senseless,” protested Vashti once again; since the accident, it seemed she did nothing but profess her innocence. Alas, no one believed her. Even her brother looked skeptical. “Good gracious, Charlot! How do you propose I went about knocking myself over the head? I fell, I suppose. And in the process I managed to arrange myself very comfortably upon that couch? Moonshine! Next you will try and tell me pigs may fly.”

Charlot, who was not about to say anything so inflammatory, cast his sister an exasperated glance. Since her mishap, Vashti was prone to go into high fidgets upon the slightest provocation; “Clunch!” he replied.

“I surprised an intruder,” Vashti insisted stubbornly, “and he struck me from behind. Everyone is being monstrous calm about it, moreover. I might have died!”

“But you didn’t, sis.” Methodically, Charlot continued to examine the secret room. “So why make a piece of work of it? The house, has been searched from top to bottom, and no trace of an intruder has been found.”

“Of course it hasn’t.” Vashti picked up and shook the mahogany-and-gilt table clock. “The fiend had ample time to make his escape. You don’t believe me, either; I can tell. When my own brother accuses me of having windmills in my head, things have come to a very pretty pass.”

“I didn’t say you had windmills, Vashti.” Charlot’s tone was soothing. How could he coax his sister out of the mopes? Since only the more portable members of his menagerie accompanied them on this expedition, he offered her Bacchus, the rat.

Irritably, Vashti declined. Perhaps she had suffered a brainstorm. Certainly everyone thought so, even Charlot. As for Lord Stirling’s opinion, so emphatically delivered—but if she dwelt on
that,
she would indeed succumb to a fever of the brain.

Wearily, she sank down upon the couch. “I don’t know what to think! At any rate, the house couldn’t have been searched from top to bottom, because no one knows all the secret passageways.”

Charlot brightened: “Isn’t it
grand?
I have been exploring, Vashti. There is a hide thirty feet long behind the main chimney—you can reach it through the ceiling of a ground-floor cupboard—and I found a tunnel under a flagstone in the hearth of the main hall. It led down beneath the kitchens. It’s the size of a cathedral down there! Lionel says they must have been state rooms in Tudor times, and that nobody’s used them for hundreds of years. Just fancy, Vashti! We have a house with rooms in it that everyone’s forgot.”