The Birth of Blue Satan (19 page)

Not knowing what to do to console him, Tom merely entered and set about making the parlour more comfortable. He had not been trained to indoor service, but certainly he knew how to stoke a fire. He knelt in front of the smallish fireplace and poked the dwindling coals with faggots until a blaze roared.

He cleared his throat.

“Them scratches is nothing much. Just a few licks from some thorns in the thicket. Beau’ll be right as rain come morning.”

Gideon raised his head and gave him a grateful smile. “That is good news. Thank you, Tom.” He lowered his gaze once again and continued soberly, “I have much to thank you for, but it has occurred to me that you should return to the Abbey. You must get there as soon as possible to avoid the appearance of being in league with me. You were wise to cover your face when you stopped Sir Joshua’s carriage. No one will ever be the wiser.

“I doubt you’ve been missed in all the confusion,” he continued, “but it would be better for you to seek your bed, so you can leave before dawn. If anyone sees you returning with the horse, you can simply say that you rose early to exer—”

To Gideon’s astonishment, Tom crossed the room towards him in one desperate stride and, as Gideon broke off, fell to one knee.

 “Please, Master Gideon, don’t send me away! I know it was my fault as got your lordship in this fix, but I swear it’ll never happen again. Please, my lord!”

Gideon was stunned. “Whatever do you mean? How can it possibly have been your fault?”

“When you were wounded there in the street. I should have gone after the devil—like you said—but I was worritin’ about your shoulder and what Lord Hawkhurst would’ve wanted. I should have obeyed you, and none of this would ever have happened.”

As the moment came back to Gideon, weariness made him shrug. Then, as he recalled two distinct instances in the past few days when Tom had obeyed him without his usual grumbling, he smiled instead. “So
that
  is why you’ve been so docile. You’ve been blaming yourself for letting him get away?”

“It was due to me, my lord. If I had gone after him, Sir Joshua would never have been able to insult you like this.”

At the mention of the justice of the peace, Gideon gave a wry grimace. “So, in order to atone for this sin, you would attach yourself to a fugitive like me? I can’t let you do it, Tom.”

Tom stiffened. With terrible dignity, he stood and glared stubbornly down into his master’s face. “You can send me away, my lord, but I won’t go back to the Abbey—not without you do. I’ll sleep in them woods if I have to, but I
will
stay.”

Despite a glimmer of amusement, Gideon was genuinely touched. Although he had been raised to expect it, he felt he had no right to exact such loyalty from a servant. The class that ought to have rallied behind him was his own, but it had not. It had scattered like a flock of geese seeking cover from a hunter’s gun. The only true friend he could count on was this one man. Thomas Barnes.

A lump began to form in his throat. “That will not be necessary, Tom. You are more than welcome to remain, believe me. Call me selfish if you like, but after all that has occurred, I would hate to see you go.”

He saw a hint of tears in the hazel eyes staring down at him, before Tom sealed their bargain with a bow as full of grace as any Gideon had ever seen.

Just then, Lade entered with a large wooden tray of meat and some plain loaves of bread, which he plunked on the table. He was helped by a fair, buxom lass—in her late twenties Gideon guessed—who gave Tom an interested look when she set his tankard down. He scowled at her, but his gaze seemed drawn against his will to her glowing cheeks and the ample curves of her bosom. When, with what seemed like a Herculean effort, he removed his gaze, Gideon teased him with a lift of his brow, then grinned at his answering flush.

Taking up his knife, Gideon thanked the woman for pouring his wine. As she leaned forward to serve him, he flicked her carelessly under the chin. She smiled politely, but clearly it was Tom who had caught her fancy. She glanced at him repeatedly, but he had turned his shoulder to the fire.

After Lade and the girl departed, Gideon said, “A charming wench, that. She seemed to take a liking to you, too. You ought to see if she won’t keep you company tonight.”

“Master Gideon!”

Gideon laughed, and rankled as he was, Tom seemed moderately relieved by the sound.

“Have I offended you?” Gideon asked. “I thought I detected a glimmer of interest.”

Tom moved closer to the table, but he kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “I keep no company with whores, sir. You ought to know that.”

Gideon would have teased him, but a suggestion of something serious in Tom’s face warned him not to. “Well, you’re a better man than I,” was all he said.

He started to slice a piece of beef just as his stomach gave a loud rumble. It was the first glimmer of life he had felt since Sir Joshua had arrested him. Now he felt like lighting into the meat, but the thought of eating alone from this meal forward threatened to rob him of his appetite.

“I don’t suppose you would agree to sharing this meal with me?” he asked Tom.

The horror of the suggestion dyed Tom’s face a ghastly colour. “I couldn’t never do that, my lord!”

Gideon gave a sigh. “Well, I wish you would. I have no taste for eating alone. And I tell you again frankly, unless you wish to see me hanging from the gallows, you had better drop that mode of address. Lade’s suspicions are already aroused. He thinks he’s taken in a desperate pair of scoundrels, and he seems perfectly delighted by the notion.”

“I think we should leave this place.”

“We will do that
if
we can find a better one. For the moment, however, I don’t find either it or its staff so uncongenial as to make me wish to seek another retreat. I stopped in many a worse place during my three years on the Continent. The meat is good, and if the ale is decent, I propose to make this our headquarters until we find my father’s killer.”

Tom started up. “Is that what you mean to do? Find the man and clear yourself?”

“It is what I had intended to do before Sir Joshua paid his disagreeable visit. Are you with me?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then, let’s eat.”

In the end, Tom condescended to take a trencher of meat into a corner, where he gratefully wolfed it down, but he would not sit at the table with his master. Gideon did not mind so long as he wasn’t alone.

When he had finished, Tom insisted on standing by Gideon’s chair to serve as his footman. Then he went to rouse Lade and demanded to be shown the rooms. When he asked for clean sheets, Lade grumbled about the unnecessary work involved and would not comply, despite Tom’s attempts to bully him, until Tom advised him that he had better deliver them if he wanted to keep his well-heeled guest. He said that his master was used to all the comforts—and to paying for them neatly—so Lade had better act fast.

As if by a miracle, then, two surprisingly clean sheets appeared. Tom’s liberal pledges of Gideon’s money had served far better than his threats. As the maid from downstairs—Katy her name was—said, as she leaned across the bed to make it up, Mr. Lade had lost a good piece of business when Mr. Jack had been taken up by the law. When Tom uttered a disapproving growl, she hastily assured him that no harm would come to his master at the Fox and Goose. Mr. Jack had been taken when a hue and cry had been set up after him on the “Lunnon road.”

Tom listened in a fuming silence that would not be assuaged. The tempting sight of Katy’s round bottom as she bent to her work exacerbated his temper. He did not want to be in a place where his very soul was threatened, and it hurt him to see his master in such a low house.

Later, as, feeling clumsy, he tried to arrange Gideon’s effects in the room, he told his master that a highwayman had been its previous tenant. “And that bed isn’t fit for nobody better. I make no doubt you’ll pass a sleepless night on them lumps.”

“I doubt it.” Yawning, Gideon had already collapsed onto the bed with his boots still on. “It will take more than a few lumps to keep me awake tonight. If we remain for a while, I’ll send you into Maidstone to buy a better one.”

Tom pulled off his master’s boots and set them aside to clean. Then he finished unpacking St. Mars’s portmanteau.

“Master Gideon,” he said, after a few minutes’ thought, “how can you prove you’re innocent?”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning.” St. Mars’s voice was hardly a mumble. “But for now you’ll have to wish me goodnight, Tom.”

“Goodnight, my lord.”

Tom waited in the chamber until St. Mars’s breathing seemed even. Then he covered him with a sheet and a pair of coarse woolen blankets. He didn’t have long to wait before Gideon was snoring as deeply as a man without a care in the world.

Tom settled himself on his bed, leaving his own door ajar. He would hear if anyone tried to enter St. Mars’s room unawares. Nearly every night of his life since he’d become a groom, he had easily been awakened by sounds in the stables. Part of his job had been to see that no harm came to Lord Hawkhurst’s horses during the night. He had no fear that he would lose that watchfulness now.

Not when he had so many things to worry about.

In the morning, Tom went down to check on the horses before rousing St. Mars. He was pleasantly surprised to find Avis already tossing them hay. Tom unbent so far as to ruffle the boy’s blond hair and express his approval, before a near slip of his tongue sent him frowning back upstairs to find his master. He had almost been careless enough to suggest that the boy come to Rotherham Abbey if he ever wanted a position in one of the country’s best stables. A mistake like that could have cost St. Mars his life.

He found Gideon dressed in a fresh lawn shirt and a pair of breeches, with his long, fair hair combed back into a queue and tied with a black ribbon. Someone, probably Katy, had delivered a bowl and pitcher to the room for his use. Tom breathed a sigh. He had feared Gideon might need him to act as his valet. Undoubtedly something would have to be done with his clothes, but Tom was grateful not to have to dress him.

Finding himself in the inn this morning must have caused St. Mars a rude awakening, for he wore a grim look on his face. At the sound of Tom’s entry, he purposely squared his shoulders and wished him a good morning before leading him downstairs for his morning pint.

Lade brought in the food and drink, obviously in a garrulous humour.

As he set the tray down, he said, “Mornin’, gents. Mind if I asks ye, what’s the difference between an Orange and a Turnip?”

Tom would have chased him off, but Gideon shook his head. “I’ll have to give up. I’m not much in the mood for riddles this morning,” he said.

“Like is to like—as the devil said to the collier. Both are pernicious to England.” With a hearty guffaw at his joke, he left Tom to serve the meal.

Gideon barely touched his meat or his beer. He remained lost in thought until Tom, uttering grumbles under his breath, threatened to clear his trencher away.

Gideon gave a quick grimace into his tankard. “I wonder if any chocolate is to be found in this village. It would be more conducive to thought of a morning than my host’s fine ale. You must tell him to get me some from London.”

“Yessir.”

Tom was dismayed to see him sink into his musings again. Clearly, something was bothering him deeply.

After a few more minutes of this, Tom grew frustrated and said loudly, “Sir, you said you would tell me this morning what we needed to do.”

“I am afraid I have done quite enough already, Tom.”

His shameful speech startled Tom. “You cannot blame yourself, Master Gideon. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Gideon threw him a grateful glance, but the corners of his mouth turned down. “You are wrong—though nothing can be altered by regret. There is no doubt in my mind that the argument I had with my father gave his killer the chance to assault him and to cover his crime.”

“How do you mean?”

Gideon pushed his chair back and, with characteristic impatience, started pacing the floor. “Whoever it was must have heard our row and decided to wait until I had left before using the fact of it to murder my father.”

“Who could it have been?”

As Gideon came to a halt in front of him, the furrow on his forehead deepened. “I don’t know, but I have an idea. I have been wondering why James Henry would be so willing to set Sir Joshua on me. I have asked myself what he stood to gain by killing my father and doing his best to implicate me. And the only thing I can conjecture is that he feared being discovered in an irregularity with his accounts.

“He might have been stealing from the estate. My father trusted him implicitly. He was getting old. He might not have examined Henry’s ledger for some time.”

“Do you truly think so?” Tom himself had never had an uncivil word from Mr. Henry, but it was true that Lord Hawkhurst had placed an unusual degree of confidence in him. “How will you find out if it’s true?”

“By having a look at his ledger myself.”

Tom felt an uneasiness stealing over him. “Have you taken leave of your senses . . . sir? Sir Joshua’ll have his men all over the Abbey. If you try to go back, he’ll have you took up before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Normally Tom would have been glad to hear St. Mars laugh, but not when his laughter came with that reckless gleam in his eye.

“You were well named, most doubting Thomas. You might, however,
not
suspect me of being a complete fool. We will go after dark, and I know a safe way to get inside. If Sir Joshua has his men posted there, they will none of them be in my father’s closet where the money chest is kept, or in the chamber upstairs where my entry will be.”

They went that night, long after sunset, and rode at a trot, weaving their way through the dark, hilly Weald on paths that drovers had made, cutting past fields of hops with their long wooden poles standing like soldiers with pikes, until the woods and the night enveloped them again in its ghostly air. Coming on Rotherham Abbey near midnight, they left their horses under the cover of a thick grove of trees and approached the ruins on foot.