The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (65 page)

"About a half-mile from The Hall," Amanda confessed candidly. "We picnicked on that hill over there and watched all the carrying-on you went through today. That's when we got our idea. Actually Gilly did—I must give her all the credit for her simply
famous
plan."

"Not all," interrupted Gilly honestly. "We were at a loss as to whether to use Malaba black pepper or Tchilecherry but, after discussing it with Miss Whitebread and Hattie Kemp, decided on the Malaba. So you see, we had some help."

While Bo and Jared only seemed capable of seeing the humor of the thing, it was left to Kevin to point out that the two women could have come to harm with such a harum-scarum scheme.

"Harm?" Gilly scoffed, still drunk with her success. "Nonsense, Kevin. It was all the greatest good fun. Wasn't it, Amanda?"

"Oh my, yes," confirmed her co-conspirator. "Just give it a moment's thought, please. Why should we ladies always be forced to stand by and watch while you all beat each other into a jelly in some dangerous melee or some such thing, if we could see a better way to help you?"

"True to form," Jared muttered facetiously, sweeping Amanda an elegant leg. "My darling wife, your constant solicitude for my welfare bids fair to unman me."

While all this bantering back and forth was in progress, Rory was otherwise occupied giving full vent to his feeling that he had been sorely used. An out-of-work actor when Glynis had found him, it had been mere child's play for that scheming woman to enlist him into her little company of overlanders, playing gentleman to an audience that took in a whole section of Sussex.

It had been a fine time too, playing at tutor, going to bed at night on dry sheets and with a full belly, lording it over the villagers, hobnobbing with the gentry he aped so wondrously well. So why did Glynis have to get so greedy and ruin it all? If only she'd been content to take her cut from the local smugglers and her pay from that Froggie, Duval. But no, she had to try to have it all. Now look at them (not that he much cared what happened to that cold witch Glynis, who had for months shared the same roof with him but that's all), about to be marched off to London to be tried as traitors.

"Oh, the agony of it all," Rory groaned audibly. "It's hardly fair. All I did was act. Why should that be such a crime? I am, after all, an actor. A
Thespian.
Would they have tied Kean to a ghastly fake Greek temple as a reward for merely playing a role? No, I say. A thousand times no!"

Glynis, who was tied to that same pillar, whispered in his ear, "Oh, stow yer clack," revealing more clearly than ever her somewhat less-than-genteel background. "These ropes are loose. There, that does it. Now—quickly—slip your hands free, and we'll make a run for it."

Rory was nothing if not a quick study. "Like Bonnie Prince Charlie—we'll be away before they know we're gone," he improvised quickly, if not especially accurately.

"Huh? Er, yes, sure," Glynis returned vaguely. "Now move a step in front of me until I can free my own hands, and wait until I give you the word. Then we'll run for it."

Stupid clod
, Glynis thought, rubbing her sore wrists while standing half behind Rory,
as if I give a tinker's curse for his worthless hide.
Then, taking a deep breath, she placed her hands fully on Rory's back—and gave him a mighty shove.

Rory cannoned into the small, celebrating throng, who were still trading quips back and forth in congratulation for a fine night's work. In the resulting confusion, Glynis, nearly invisible in her dark clothing, ran hot-foot for one of the openings in the maze.

She might have made a clean break of it, too, if it hadn't been for the rusty length of metal lying half-hidden in the grass, an impediment to her progress that, when it came into contact with her dainty, booted foot, put a speedy period to her escape attempt.

"S'faith, Kevin," Bo complained as his friend bodily picked up Glynis and easily held her tucked under his arm as she kicked and cursed. "Make her stop. Shameful language. Just shameful!"

Glynis's near-escape seemed to at last bring some semblance of sobriety to Gilly and the rest, and they all retired to their own rooms shortly afterwards, Glynis and Rory safely tucked up in a locked storeroom behind the stables until they and the spy could be removed to London on the morrow.

While the men shared a last victory drink, the ladies climbed the stairs, only to be met on the half-landing by a rare sight indeed—a thoroughly discomposed Bernice Roseberry.

"Now, now, Bunny," Gilly soothed the agitated dresser, clapping one reassuring arm about the woman's bony shoulders. "There's no need to fall into a twitter."

"You stay out unchaperoned half the night doing Lord knows what, dressed only in a nightgown—not that it doesn't cover you decently—and with white flour all over your face like some sort of ghoul. Then, when you finally return, you're barefoot and the hem of your gown is drenched in dew. You'll probably catch your death. And you say I'm not to worry? Oh no, missy," poor Miss Roseberry objected heatedly. "I have every reason to worry. It appears to me that I am become increasingly nervous as each new day spent in this house dawns. Never have I had such problems! Perhaps it's because I cannot recall ever before feeling any affection for my charges. However, I warn you, much more of these mad goings-on and I shall dissolve into a quivering wreck, a mere shadow of my former self."

Miss Roseberry's young mistress then further disconcerted the usually stiff-backed woman by drawing her into a tight embrace and planting a kiss on one flinty cheek. "I'm prodigiously sorry, Bunny, truly I am, and terribly ashamed," Gilly said with no little remorse. "Is it so very bad then, running herd on such a shameless scapegrace as I? I fear I've little practice thinking about how my actions might affect others. You see, for these last eight years and more there's been such a scarcity of people who cared enough to worry. There, there, Bunny," she ended, patting the woman's trembling shoulders, "don't cry. Please don't cry."

While Gilly stood consoling the now softly weeping dresser, Amanda silently stole off to her chamber and her own worried servant, but not before she wiped a tear or two from her own eyes caused by the touching scene she had just witnessed.

#

Before Rory was put into the wagon that would transport the prisoners to Hastings and then on to London, he obliged Kevin by speaking loud and long on the subject of his leader, the woman known as Glynis O'Keefe.

He told how Glynis, then known as Mae Wood, had grown up within sight of The Hall, and how her father had been one of the men to help the late Earl dig the tunnels. The girl had always envied the people at The Hall and, once grown, had devised a way to gain for herself some of the riches she believed hidden there by the old recluse.

A bit of hair dye and some stylish clothes, combined with a new name and a hastily acquired brother, was all the camouflage she needed. She'd set them up in the village and went about making her fortune—through smuggling, the transportation of French spies, and, she hoped, the midnight looting of The Hall.

Poor Rory. He was only a helpless pawn in the hands of an evil mistress. Or so he said. Kevin was buying none of it, but he was glad to at last have the mystery of the tunnels set to rest. At least he could breathe easy that it was only Glynis, and not the French, who had discovered their existence.

Indeed, so relieved was he, Kevin found it in his heart to promise he could be counted on to write his friend Peters at the Admiralty, asking that man to put in a good word for the unfortunate Thespian.

Now, he thought as he lay alone once more in his empty bed, if someone would only put in a good word to Gilly about her husband.

The Delaneys and the Chevingtons were all packed and ready to depart. As Jared had told Kevin, "You'll settle down with Gilly much better if the place isn't stiff with your friends."

Glynis and Rory and the Frenchman had been dispatched to London the day before under the guard of some soldiers from Hastings; the smugglers had regained their cargo, leaving behind three fine casks of French brandy for their great friend the Earl of Lockport; and the robbers were languishing in the Hastings lockup.

Amanda missed her children, and although her hands still itched to knock Gilly's and Kevin's heads together and make them admit they loved each other, she knew they could not be made to fall into each other's arms at her command.

Bo and Anne had made their farewells to the gardens they had performed their special brand of miracle upon in only a few short weeks, and were extremely touched when Lyle and Fitch, flushed and stammering wildly, presented them with a parting present—a small, sickly potted palm.

Everything was in readiness for the departure of the entourage when Nature intervened in the form of an unexpected and heavy summer thunderstorm, and there was nothing for it but to put off leaving until the weather cleared.

The restlessness of being cooped up indoors when there were places to go was being manifested in Jared's agitated pacing of the large saloon and the sound of Bo's rat-tat-tatting fingers endlessly drumming on an end table.

Amanda stood it as long as she could—which was no great length of time—before inspiration struck.

"I have a marvelous idea!" she announced to the room at large as she returned from a quick trip to the Long Library waving a piece of parchment in her hand. "Let's have some fun. Come on all you Friday-faced groaners, what say you to one last treasure hunt!"

From her position reclining daintily on a small sofa, her hands folded lovingly about the slight mound of her enlarging abdomen, Anne eagerly voiced her agreement to such a plan. Bo was a dear, she told herself bracingly, but his incessant tapping could be said to grate a bit on one's nerves. Silently she wished upon her lucky star that he would be nowhere near when she was birthing their baby. She didn't think she could bear to have the poor, dear, nervous soul within sight (or sound) at such a delicate time.

The host and hostess of the soon-to-be disbanded house party, who were seated across a desk from each other discussing the advisability of sealing Sylvester's tunnelways forevermore (Kevin pro, Gilly con), were reluctantly brought to attention by their guests, who, seemingly bored to flinders just moments before, were now clamoring for a last all-out assault on that perplexing, unsolved puzzle.

Kevin, sensing this was a good way to entertain his friends, although he seriously doubted the late Earl ever meant his cryptic poem to be solved, quickly acquiesced to the scheme.

But Gilly was another matter entirely.

She pooh-poohed the idea at first, hinting that it was all a sham, some twisted trick of Sylvester's equally twisted mind. When she was contradicted, however, she became openly opposed to the search, stating firmly that she had no need for the so-called fortune everyone was sure was hidden somewhere in The Hall. Kevin might have said it was hers, but she didn't want it, didn't need it and, frankly, found the whole thing downright boring.

Finally, declaring rather mulishly that she would not participate in any "damn fool treasure hunt," she departed from the room in a huff.

"Well, goodness sakes, whatever brought that on?" Amanda exclaimed, her eyes still on the door Gilly had slammed shut on her way out. "She almost seems afraid."

"Panda box," Bo said flatly.

"That's Pandora's Box, Bo," Jared corrected. "But you may have something there. Perhaps Gilly believes solving the puzzle will only bring her more trouble."

"She knew my late uncle better than anyone else," Kevin supplied thoughtfully, wishing he could understand his wife better—understand her, and somehow get back into her good graces. She had barely spoken two words to him since that night in the maze, unless their conversation concerned the estate, and he was just about at his wit's end to understand how to approach her on a more personal level. "On reflection, she might be right, you know."

Bo nodded his agreement. "Sleeping dogs."

"How's that, Bo?" Amanda asked.

"Don't bite. Can't, you know. Asleep and all that."

Anne slipped her arm around her husband's ample waist. "You mean we should leave sleeping dogs alone, don't you dearest?"

"Certainly. Said that. Don't bite then. Sleeping. Stands to reason. Don't bark either, come to think of it." Bo searched his friends faces, trying to understand the reason for their sudden laughter. "Fail to see the humor. Just simple logic. Dashed queer, you all carrying on. Not funny. Not funny a'tal."

Kevin wiped at his eyes with the corner of his handkerchief. "Sorry, old friend. No one meant any harm. And you're right, sleeping dogs don't bite. Nor," he added, only a bit more seriously, "do they solve puzzles in their dreams. That being so, shall we, daredevil adventurers that we are, risk it—nipping dogs, dark predictions, as well as other numerous and sundry evils included—and give it one last go anyway? After all, ladies and gentlemen, we are English you know."

Jared took another look outside at the steady downpour that showed no signs of easing, shrugged, and drawled, "We've captured a spy, routed some thieves, exposed two traitors, and given aid and comfort to a gang of smugglers. All this entertainment and more our congenial host has provided for us. The least, the very least, we can do in return is solve his cursed puzzle for him. It's only fitting, dearest, don't you agree?"

His wife, whose idea it was in in the first place, reminded her husband of that fact and that, in the second place, she was not one to take her leave when there was yet something unfinished. As her husband knew, "don't you, darling," she dearly loved to tie up "loose ends."

And so, while Bo muttered dire warnings about dozing dogs and locked boxes and things best left alone, and while Gilly was off somewhere sulking like a child who, when the rest of the children refused to play by her rules, took up her toys and went home, the small group in the large saloon took turns at being Bow Street Runners out to solve an interesting case.