The Marquess (4 page)

His Grace clenched his fingers and stopped before they
reached the carriage. The older statesman presented an expressionless visage as
he studied the intruder.

“If you know that,” Neville said, “then you
know the magistrate is a sapskulled idiot who thinks an unhappy employee set
it. Blanche’s servants are never unhappy. The house was nearly two
centuries old. It was a firetrap.”

“The magistrate arrived in time to observe that the
fire came out all the downstairs windows before moving up. A fire started in
one place goes directly up before spreading out. I have enough experience to
have observed that on any number of occasions myself. That fire must have
started in several downstairs locations at once to spread in that manner.”

The duke stared over O’Toole’s shoulder at the
narrow village town houses leaning up against one another. Had Blanche’s
house not been separated from the village by a narrow park, the whole town
could have gone up in flames. He gritted his teeth and returned his glare to
the stranger whose face now disappeared in shadow beneath the wide brim of his
hat.

“What in hell kind of business are you in that you
have such wide experience with fires?”

“Military, Your Grace,” O’Toole answered snappily.
“Until the end of the late war, I was an officer on the Continent as well
as the Americas. You have heard, of course, of how we burned the capital of
that country to the ground? I learned a great deal from that event which I
found useful when Napoleon emerged from hiding later. But that is not my
specialty.”

“I suppose your specialty is finding runaway
heiresses?” Neville asked snidely.

O’Toole shrugged. “I would not say offhand that
she ran away. She could have been stolen. As injured as she was, I would say
that the more likely answer. My specialty is finding people who are considered
unreachable.”

Neville strode impatiently toward the carriage. “That
is faradiddle. The military does not run a lost and found.”

O’Toole made a polite cough as he unhurriedly kept up
with the duke’s longer strides. “I did not say people who are lost.
I said people who are considered unreachable.”

The duke stopped and stared. Growing impatient, the earl
continued on down the hill to yell at the coach driver.

“You’re saying you were a spy. Do you have
references?”

O’Toole gave a deprecating smile. “I could give
the name of my commanding officer, but he only handed me my orders. You
don’t really think anyone in the ministry would willingly admit to my
existence, would you? You need only pay my daily expenses if I fail. Such a sum
is trifling if I have a chance of succeeding, and I can assure you, I have a
very good chance of succeeding. I have already told you more than you knew
before.” O’Toole removed a card from a gold carrying case and
handed it over.

At this point Neville was prepared to pay the devil himself
if he offered to find Blanche. He glanced at the card, scowled at the Mayfair
address, and reached for his purse. “How could a scoundrel like you have
a nobleman’s address?”

O’Toole turned his face up to the sun and smiled. “I
live a charmed life, I suppose.”

Neville didn’t have time to ask more. The damned earl
had set the coach in motion. He had to return to London. With an air of
resignation, he handed over a hundred-pound note. “This should be
sufficient to set the entire countryside on fire. I want her found, do you
understand me? If you don’t, I’ll have your head on a platter. If
you do, I’ll see you amply rewarded.”

O’Toole whistled as he tucked the note into his pocket
and watched the duke hurry down the hill toward the waiting carriage. A hundred
pounds was a hundred pounds. The duke could spare it. He knew others who could
use it more.

Smiling cheerfully, Michael strolled back up the hill in the
direction of the now cold ashes of a once lovely Elizabethan cottage.

* * * *

Exhaustion finally overcoming her need for exploring their
new circumstances further, Dillian slipped through the secret passage at dawn
to check on Blanche. She tripped on a misplaced piece of lumber and caught
herself on the filthy wall, cursing lightly under her breath. She
wouldn’t remain a secret for long if she kept this up.

A distant female squeal made her grimace. Someone had heard
her. Now they would send a squadron of servants to flush her out.

Dashing to the end of the passage, she listened at the
wardrobe door. Hearing only Blanche’s rustlings, she stepped into the
early morning light. Apparently, gathering an army of servants took a while.
She heard none rushing up the stairs.

She found Blanche sitting up in bed, her singed hair
tumbling across a wealth of pillows in the early morning light.

“I must look for a place to sleep,” Dillian
whispered. “I don’t know when I can come back to you, but I
won’t be far. Just scream if you really need me.”

It made her heart ache watching Blanche’s proud head
nod sadly, but she could do nothing about their predicament now. Blanche had
more courage than ten people. She would hold up for a few hours more.

Examining the burns on Blanche’s palms, applying the
unguent Michael had apparently stolen, Dillian did all she could to make
Blanche comfortable before leaving. Then slipping into the hall, she headed for
the servants’ stairs to the upper stories before the hounds could catch
her.

On second thought she needed food to fortify her for the day
ahead. Instead of taking the stairs up, she hurried down them. She’d
already discovered from the layers of dust that no one used these back stairs.
If they sent an army looking for her, they’d have to climb up stairs
wider than these. She hadn’t grown up in a military family without
learning the meaning of outflanking the enemy.

She heard two women murmuring to each other in the kitchen
but no more shrieks of alarm. She had located the pantries and cellars in her earlier
explorations. Dillian knew how to reach them without walking into enemy
territory.

Capturing one of the pastries that she hadn’t seen in
the pre-dawn darkness, she almost made it back to the stairs when she heard the
sound of someone coming down the passage. Obviously not their host, she thought
dryly as she slipped into the dumbwaiter and pulled the door. This intruder
wore shoes.

“Ach, no, child, ye’ll not find one to deliver
anything here. The cowardly lot of them would see us starve first. Now, go and
ask Mac to go down to the village for ye. I’ve not heard of one objecting
to taking the master’s money yet.”

Dillian’s sleepiness faded beneath this more
interesting topic. She listened eagerly as the voices drew closer.

“I heard the lady walking last night,” a faint
voice whispered. “They say she walks before disaster strikes. Perhaps
we’d best do like the others and leave this place.”

The voice of the older woman scoffed. “And where would
ye go, then? Enough with the foolishness, child. Leave the ghosties to
theirselves and go about yer business. The master doesna’ ask ye to go
about where ye dinna want, does he, now? My lady says he is a good man, and
I’ve seen naught to say otherwise. It’s a good position, and
ye’re lucky to have it. Now, go away with ye.”

Dillian held her breath as the steps approached. She had
thought the dumbwaiter unused, but perhaps the master even now waited in the
deserted dining hall for his breakfast. Remembering the mess in the formal
dining room, she shook her head. No one in their right mind would eat there.

The steps passed on by. Dillian settled down to eat her
pastry as she heard the sound of the “master’s” voice
rumbling through the wall on her other side. The monster kept early hours.

* * * *

“My lord, ye should have knocked me up if ye wanted
something to help tide ye over the night. It’s my duty to see that
ye’re proper fed,” the cook remonstrated as she set out platters of
eggs and toast on the billiard table that had been converted to breakfast table
with the simple expedient of throwing some boards and a cloth over it.

Gavin had sold the Queen Anne breakfast table months ago,
but the billiard table had warped to worthlessness for its original purpose.

At the cook’s words he turned his gaze with apparent
interest to the crack sifting plaster dust over the linen, hiding his laughter
at the British expression that would have had his American friends howling.
Considering the cook was fifty if she was a day, and round as she was tall,
knocking her up in the American way would have been extremely difficult, if not
outright unnatural. Besides, he would never take advantage of a woman so blind
she couldn’t see his face. He grimaced at the image that raised.

“I will remember that in the future, Matilda.”
Gavin refrained from mentioning that he hadn’t raided the larder. No
doubt Michael had stolen a pasty before taking the carriage out for its long
ride.

“Young Janet said she heard the lady walking last
night. The lady always walks in time of trouble. Is there aught I should be
telling the others?” the old woman asked wisely, her eyes narrowing with
concern.

Startled, Gavin brought his gaze back down from the ceiling.
“The lady?”

Blind to the falling plaster, Matilda stepped back from the
table and wrapped her plump hands in her apron. “The ghost of the fifth
marquess’s wife, my lord. She died in the master chamber, before the
sixth marquess added those new rooms. She only haunts the old part, I
understand. They say she walked the nights the seventh marquess suffered with
the toothache that killed him.”

Gavin glanced suspiciously at the wall, which sounded as if
it had emitted a muffled giggle. He must see about getting another cat if the
rats had entered this far into the house.

Returning his attention to the subject his cook had
introduced, he rather suspected if any ghost walked these floors, it was the
last marquess. In the year since his arrival, he had found his female cousin
and her mother, the marchioness. He felt sympathy for the seventh
marquess’s young widow and daughter, but any man who would die of an
abscess rather than have a tooth drawn deserved his fate.

He didn’t mention his opinion to the loyal cook.
Matilda still considered the marchioness the lady of the house, and he was more
than grateful for the lady’s influence in persuading her personal chefs
back to this rotting mansion. He didn’t much care about dust and
disorder, but he had gone hungry too many times in his life to like doing so
again. He saw nothing extraordinary in employing both cook and pastry chef since
both were willing to work in this reportedly haunted mansion when others would
not.

“I’ll look into the matter, Matilda. No doubt
one of the sashes has come loose up there. I’ll not have Janet’s
sleep disturbed again. She has trouble rising as it is.”

Matilda snorted in mixed reproof and agreement. When she
left, Gavin gazed at his breakfast with less than interest. How could he
transport it upstairs to the invalid without inviting all sorts of interesting
questions? His conversation with Matilda made it evident that the servants knew
everything that went on in this house even when they slept. But Michael had
insisted on keeping their guest hidden.

Maybe he should encourage the superstitious fear of “the
lady.” Of a certainty that would keep the servants out of the upper
story. They seldom strayed up there as it was since he didn’t use those
rooms. Janet had all she could do to keep the library, study, and billiard room
clean. He could sleep on his couch in the study as well as anywhere, and he certainly
had no need for salons and drawing rooms. He only employed Janet, the maid, and
a man of all trades, in any event—outside the eccentricity of employing
both a cook and a pastry chef.

Deciding he was master of this household and could do
anything he liked, Gavin lifted a tarnished silver tray from the liquor
cabinet, which served as sideboard, and slid his morning fare onto it. The
invalid should be ready for some company about now.

When he stopped in his study to don what remained of his
shoes, he noticed the book on family history had moved from its usual place. He
wouldn’t have noticed such a small thing anywhere else in the house, but
that particular moth-eaten volume rested on a high pedestal in a place of
honor. Janet had removed the cobwebs at some point, but disregarded the dust
that had gathered since. He hadn’t complained of the neglect. Family
history meant little to him under the circumstances.

Apparently, it meant a little more to someone else. The dust
had been disturbed, and he could see a clean square of wood where the book had
originally rested. It had changed angles over night.

He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. He didn’t believe
in ghosts. He didn’t believe “the lady” had chosen last night
to walk and examine her ancestor’s lineage. But he also found it
difficult believing that a seriously burned and possibly blind invalid could
find her way down here. That led one to question the extent of the
invalid’s actual injuries.

With less compassion than he’d originally intended,
Gavin carried his breakfast tray up the stairs.

He found Miss Perceval sitting on the edge of the bed,
fiddling with the bandage over her eyes again. He’d deliberately left off
his shoes after his discovery. He had entered softly, but she looked up at him
with expectation.

“Mr. Lawrence?” she asked eagerly, blindly
turning her face from side to side in hopes of pinpointing his presence.

He didn’t want to believe it an act. With the heavy
draperies still drawn, the morning sun lent only a vague golden aura to the
room. The filtered light enhanced the highlights of his patient’s hair
and made her slender figure in the bulky nightgown look very young and
helpless. Maybe Michael had disturbed the volume for one of his many mysterious
projects.