Lady in the Stray (18 page)

She felt as though she were suffocating, and angrily wrenched her hand away. “No!” she snapped. “Not tonight, or any other night, sir! I did not mean-—” He was laughing. “Damn you, Yves!”

“You should not issue
carte blanche
if you do not mean it, my innocent.” Irregardless of who might observe them, Lord Stirling raised his hand and brushed the angry tears off her cheeks. “But should you change your mind, remember that I should like very much to accept your invitation. Tonight or any other night. Even if you don’t see fit to acquaint me with your name.”

In point of fact, Vashti would have liked nothing better than to accept her own invitation. Naturally, she could not. Therefore she was strongly tempted to box his lordship’s ears instead. “You are the
most
outrageous man!”

“Oh, yes.” Yves released her. “And unlike you, mademoiselle, I mean precisely what I say. But I am forgetting yet again to point out the sights.” For the remainder of the carriage ride, he confined his comments to that unexceptionable topic, blandly discoursing upon St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Holborn Viaduct, the Strand and Piccadilly and Hyde Park. When the phaeton drew at last to a stop before Mountjoy House, he assisted Vashti to alight, and stood frowning down on her.

“I am not the most perceptive of men,” his lordship admitted, “but it’s apparent even to me that something is worrying you to death. I wish you would let me help you.”

“You are very generous.” Vashti sought to free her hands. “Especially since you’ve just finished telling me that you hold me in exceedingly low esteem.”

“That stung, did it?” Lord Stirling inquired with interest. “In point of fact, I said nothing of the sort. I have not yet told you in what degree of esteem I hold you, my girl—nor will I, until you have told me what the devil you are about! Do you expect I will censure you for it? I doubt I shall.” As he swung up into the carriage seat, he grinned. “But then, we are agreed that you do
not
have the advantage of prior acquaintance, are we not? And so you may not know that I myself am something of a rogue!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Even as Vashti Beaufils was enjoying a rather uncomfortable prose with Lord Stirling, her younger brother was also essaying a journey through the London streets. Charlot’s journey led him not past such venerable edifices as St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Mansion House, however, but to the charming gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, in Chancery Lane. Through the square he passed, with difficulty dissuading Mohammed from bestowing his approval upon the handsome sundial yet once again, and to the chamber occupied by Lionel Heath and two barrister friends.

All three were present this particular afternoon, Messrs. Appleby and Thorpe engaged in an animated discussion of an obscure point of law while Lionel stared gloomily into space. Upon Charlot’s entry, Messrs. Appleby and Thorpe broke off their argument to stare at him. “Oh, I say!” said Mr. Appleby, a somewhat rotund young gentleman whose wig was prone to slip askew. “Upon my word!” Mr. Thorpe said nothing at all, being his colleague’s antithesis, spare of person and sparse of speech.

“Beg pardon for bursting in on you like this.” Charlot fidgeted from foot to foot, made uncomfortable by the combined attention of these two legal gentlemen in their black robes and powdered wigs. “I wished particularly to speak with Mr. Heath!”

“Ummf!” said that individual, roused from his glum reverie by Mohammed’s wet tongue, application of which to his cheek so startled Lionel that he leapt up abruptly and knocked over his chair. “What the deuce—I mean, hallo, young Charlot! Pray call off your beast.”

Charlot did not immediately obey, for fear that the solicitor would once more lapse into gloomy abstraction were Mohammed persuaded to cease washing his face. “Mohammed
likes
you, sir!” he protested. “Please may I speak to you? It’s very important!”

The amiable Mr. Appleby cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should leave.”

Thus recalled to the amenities, Lionel introduced his friends, meantime trying to hold the affectionate Mohammed at arm’s length, without appreciable success. “You needn’t leave on my account!” Charlot said generously. “Maybe
you
can help me make sense of the queer goings-on at Mountjoy House!”

“I wish someone might!” Lionel said bitterly as he ceased to struggle and allowed Mohammed to have his way.

“Mountjoy House?” His attention firmly caught, Mr. Appleby pulled up a chair. “Open your budget, lad!”

Charlot hesitated, glanced at Lionel; but the solicitor was attending more closely to Mohammed, whose head was resting in his lap. “It’s about the memorandum—at least, I
think
it is—but you must promise me you will keep it a secret, sir!”

“Upon my word of honor!” averred Mr. Appleby, who possessed a lively sense of curiosity.

Charlot glanced at the other barrister, who, as was his habit, was looking dour. “And Mr. Thorpe, too, sir?”

Mr. Appleby waved a plump hand. “Don’t regard old Sobersides!
He
won’t ride grub. Now what’s this about a memorandum, halfling?”

Charlot hesitated. He had to confide in someone, and Mr. Appleby appeared blessedly free of the skitter-wittedness that afflicted the inmates of Mountjoy House. “I think that Edouard fellow is after it,” Charlot said. “And I also think Minette is trying to humbug us all by betrothing herself to a loose fish—if she
did
betroth herself to him, which is also very queer, because she doesn’t seem to like him above half!”

Upon receipt of these confidences, even Mr. Thorpe appeared intrigued. He settled himself, with careful attention to his black robes, on the edge of a desk.

It was left to Mr. Appleby to voice their combined interest. “Who is Minette?”

Charlot was pleased to be asked an intelligent question, the first he’d heard in several days. “I
think
she was Cousin Marmaduke’s ward.”

Lionel roused himself from abstraction. “Minette is a minx!” he volunteered.

“Oho!” Mr. Appleby was not only amiable, but also most acute. “Sits the wind in that quarter, old chap? I knew a filly figured in it somewhere! A filly always does, when a fellow takes to pulling long faces, and brooding, and wishing his friends to Hades when they inquire what’s cast him into the dismals. Taken your fancy, has she, Lionel?”

Lionel cast his friend an irritated glance. “So she
says.”

“By Jove!” Mr. Appleby was all set to pursue this fascinating topic, but Mr. Thorpe intervened.

“Take a damper!” Mr. Thorpe dourly advised. “What about this female?”

“I’m not sure, precisely.” Charlot frowned. “Except that I don’t think she wants to be betrothed to Edouard, because every time he goes near her she looks like she wishes he
wouldn’t.
Though I don’t understand this cuddling stuff, I don’t know why a lady should wish to marry a gentleman who is always putting her in a tweak. Although Vashti is always getting in a pucker over Lord Stirling, and I’ll go bail she wishes to marry him, which just goes to show how paper-skulled females are, because she’s not sure he didn’t hit her over the head.”

“Jupiter!” Mr. Appleby was entranced.

Mr. Thorpe cast his colleague a quelling glance. “What memorandum? Suppose you begin at the beginning, young man!”

Charlot was impressed by this example of the shrewd workings of the legal mind. Begin at the beginning he therefore did, with their arrival in a fishing boat from France. His Aunt Adder he dealt with succinctly, if unkindly, and then explained Marmaduke’s legacy and their arrival at Mountjoy House. “Papa always said Cousin Marmaduke had a treasure, and Vashti thought if we could find it, we might contrive to rescue Papa from France. We couldn’t do so before, because we hadn’t a feather to fly with!” He went on to describe, with colorful detail, the recent occurrences at Mountjoy House.

By the time Charlot’s account wound down to a conclusion, his audience—with the exception of Lionel, who had relapsed into melancholia—was rapt. All had settled themselves more comfortably during Charlot’s narration, Bacchus nesting in Mr. Appleby’s untidy wig, and Greensleeves perching upon Mr. Thorpe’s foot.

As if he was not certain how it had got there, Mr. Thorpe contemplated the frog. “Harumph!” he said.

Mr. Appleby was more outspoken, and less severe. “Your sister saw a
ghost?”
he queried. “Dashed if I ever heard of such a thing. Did it wear a winding-sheet? Moan and groan and suchlike? Clank its chains?”

“No.” Charlot had himself been disappointed in these details. “It called her a hoity-toity little twit.”

“Oh, I say!” said Mr. Appleby, severely. “That ain’t at all the way to speak of a lady.”

“You might feel differently, had you met my sister.” Charlot felt obliged to come to the ghost’s defense. “Vashti has become a clunch. Look at the way she allows Lord Stirling to haunt Mountjoy House, even though she swears she doesn’t trust him an inch. Although in my opinion, she
should.”
Charlot seemed uncertain. “I think.”

“Trust the fellow who knocked her over the head?” Mr. Appleby looked astonished. He also looked somewhat absurd, with Bacchus sitting up, whiskers atwitch, atop his powdered wig. “By Jove, this is a rum business! And to think Lionel never breathed a word of it to us! You know what
I
think, Thorpe? He’s all about in the head!”

Mr. Thorpe elevated his gaze from the frog perched upon his foot to Lionel, who appeared to have disassociated himself altogether not only from the conversation but also from the hound, which had clambered into his lap. “Close as oysters!” Mr. Thorpe adjudged disapprovingly. “But then, he always was.”

Under the weight of their critical gazes, Lionel stirred. Obviously, some comment was expected of him. “You really think she doesn’t want to be betrothed?” he inquired.

“Betrothed?” Mr. Appleby had trouble following this conversation, which hopped about as if it were being conducted by the frog perched upon his colleague’s foot. “Is Mademoiselle Beaufils betrothed to this Edouard fellow also? I though you said she wanted Stirling. I’ll tell you what it is, Lionel; if the fellow’s betrothed himself to
two
females, then you needn’t hesitate to try and cut him out!”

Lionel’s attention was largely for Mohammed, who had interpreted his host’s emergence from the dismals as an invitation to resume affectionate salutes. “I have not the most distant reason to suppose that I am at all favorite in that quarter,” he said stiffly, his dignity greatly ruffled by the dog’s damp tongue. “Minette told me I was é
pris,
not that
she
was—and I’ll thank all of you to be a little less meddlesome!”

“Somebody had better meddle, old chap!” retorted Mr. Appleby. “It’s plain as a pikestaff that you’re making a rare mull of it.”

“Vashti isn’t betrothed to Edouard.” Charlot wondered if all adults were addlepated on the subject of romance. “Vashti isn’t betrothed to anyone. She doesn’t even like Edouard.”

Mr. Appleby was not one to hold a grudge. “I’ll tell you what it is: this Edouard fellow sounds like a curst rum touch! Your sister should be
glad
she ain’t betrothed to him.”

“I daresay she is glad,” Charlot returned wryly. “Because if it wasn’t Stirling, then Edouard very likely knocked her over the head. All
I
know is that they both want the memorandum. And what with the pair of them always underfoot, and Vashti in a taking lest I go exploring alone, I don’t know how I am ever to find anything.”

Amidst all this confused speculation, Mr. Thorpe sought a solid fact. “You are certain it is a memorandum that these gentlemen seek?” he inquired.

“Not certain, exactly,” Charlot answered. “Edouard is always popping up where he shouldn’t, and Stirling is always plaguing us.”

“I think you should ask the fellow his intentions,” inserted Mr. Appleby, straightening his wig. “If it was
my
sister, I would!”

Charlot tried to envision himself indulging in such impertinence, and failed. “Lord Stirling offered to buy Mountjoy House from Vashti; I forgot to tell you that. He says he’s developed a passion for the old place, and is attempting to persuade her to sell. Anyway, Stirling believes she is an impostor, so he can’t really
like
her, do you think?”

Mr. Appleby shook his head, thereby very nearly dislodging both wig and rat. “Sounds deuced smokey to me. If it was my sister—”

“But it’s not your sister!” interrupted Mr. Thorpe, a confirmed misogynist. “About this Edouard fellow—”

“Yes, about Edouard!” Despairing of reaching an agreement with Mohammed by polite measures, Lionel shoved the hound off his lap. “Why don’t you think Minette wishes to be betrothed to him, Charlot?”

“Because they never cuddle!” Charlot retorted, testily.

Briefly, the legal gentlemen pondered this remark. Mr. Thorpe did not find it bizarre, having never been inclined to cuddle anyone himself, while Mr. Appleby, being of the opposite temperament, found it remarkable indeed. As for Lionel, his spirits soared—then plummeted again to earth upon the reflection that Charlot was rather too young to know whereof he spoke.

Mr. Thorpe was first to break the silence. “I think we may accept it as fact that a memorandum
is
missing; and that the memorandum might do our country irreparable damage if it falls into the hands of the French. It also seems fairly clear that the memorandum is hidden somewhere in Mountjoy House. The question now is, what are we to do about it?”

Mr. Appleby’s eye brightened. “I have it! We’ll join the search. All hands to the pump!”

“Oh, capital!” Lionel interjected scathingly. “As if there are not enough people already poking through Mountjoy House! You have not stopped to consider that if Edouard grows suspicious he’ll blame Minette.”

“He’ll think she let the cat out of the bag?” Mr. Appleby’s bright eye fixed itself on his friend. “Why should she think that, I wonder?”

Lionel would not make so damning an admission as that Minette, too, knew about the missing memorandum. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean!” he protested, and blushed.