Page 22 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
“You snapped at the tea tray. We should have sent for fresh.” Hyperia treated me to a quick hug and made for the door. “Shall we share that nap you’ve mentioned?”
She did not often offer this degree of intimacy, though we’d passed a few nights in blissfully affectionate slumber, emphasis on the slumber .
What to say? I was out of sorts, genuinely tired, and suffering the inchoate signs of a roaring bout of melancholy. Then too, Dabney Witherspoon had given me much to think about that wasn’t exactly comfortable.
“I am unnerved by the approaching storm,” I said, “and fear I would conduct myself more like a limpet than an affectionate lover, Perry. I also need a bath.”
She smiled. “One refrained from mentioning the obvious, but I did suggest that the water be heated when we saw you trotting up the drive.” She kissed my cheek, patted my arm, and left me in the conservatory, where another gust of wind sent brown-edged rose petals cascading to the flagstones.
My unsettled mood was a variety of battle nerves, I knew that much.
The worry had nowhere to go once weapons were cleaned and gear had been inspected for the tenth time.
Some men paced the night before battle, some drank, some wrote maudlin letters.
I had tried to read, but mostly stared at the pages and wondered what Jacques or Pierre, my counterparts three miles to the west, were thinking on what might be the last night of our lives.
But was the coming conflict a difficult conversation with Hyperia?
A reckoning with Atticus, who showed no inclination to resume book learning as summer approached, or a former captive’s anxiety about Miss Stadler’s fate?
Was instinct telling me that my sole extant brother had come to grief in France?
These thoughts and worse accompanied me as the coach rumbled toward Pleasant View.
“Once we finish at the lending library, we’ll await you in the ladies’ parlor at the Pig and Pickle,” Hyperia said as that worthy enterprise came into view. “Tread lightly, Jules. The viscountess is Hannah’s mama. A daughter gone missing would make any parent fretful.”
I squeezed her hand, while Lady Ophelia remained silent on the forward-facing bench beside Hyperia.
“I will tread as lightly as circumstances allow. My regards to Lady Dewar.” I kissed Perry’s cheek— so there, Step-mama —and left the coach for the sunshine of a bright, warm day. My spectacles helped, but even deep blue glass could not entirely protect me from the late-morning glare.
I hired a sturdy hack from the livery and was soon rapping on Pleasant View’s front door.
An antediluvian butler admitted me, took my card, and asked me to wait in the same sterile formal parlor where I’d last been received. He went off to see if Mr. Stadler was in , setting a pace worthy of an inebriated turtle with a poor sense of direction.
I went on a brief reconnaissance tour, poking my head into a warming pantry now doing service as a linen closet, a formal dining room shrouded in dusty Holland covers, a music room that boasted a spinet, a harp, and one lone fiddle.
The library, by contrast, looked lived in and housed a goodly collection of books.
The library furniture was comfortably worn, the chairs apparently placed to hide carpet stains rather than to catch the natural light.
One pair of faded velvet curtains had been made to do duty for two windows.
I was perusing some pamphlets on the desk—Eve’s Advocate was among the more rational of the semi-seditious authors—when a gentleman bustled into the room.
He was of medium height, graying, a trifle paunchy, and carrying a top hat.
“Beg pardon, must not leave without my… Oh, I say. Has Beekins misplaced you? I do apologize. Formal parlor is two doors down across the corridor. You look familiar.”
“Lord Standish, good day. Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service. I was more concerned that Beekins might have misplaced himself.”
Standish smiled, showing a resemblance to his taller, trimmer son.
“Beeky hasn’t managed that yet, but the day is young.
Please do excuse my rudeness. I wasn’t aware we were to have callers, and I must dash.
Just thought to grab the…” He strode to the desk, opened a drawer, and divested it of more pamphlets, letters, and odd bits of paper.
From the bottom of the drawer, he produced a black velvet drawstring bag, upended a dozen coins into his palm, and replaced the bag in the drawer.
“I’m off to London to catch the last weeks of the annual bacchanal,” he said.
“If dear Strothie is determined to ruralize, no need for both of us to miss all the merriment in Town.” He closed the drawer with a bang and shoved the coins into a pocket.
“You will excuse me? I’m terribly sorry to run, but ‘ever fleeth the time’ and all that. ”
Chaucer, et alia. Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde. “If the viscountess should ask, do I deny any sighting of you?”
He exactly mirrored the expression of a guilty schoolboy deciding whether to wheedle the kindly old tutor or to brazen it out with an awkward lie.
“You never saw me,” Standish said, eyeing the door.
“I am not even a figment of your imagination, young Caldicott, and if fate is just, I will be in Town before her ladyship knows I’m gone.
Kinder to all concerned that way. My womenfolk are feuding.
Haven’t seen my daughter for nigh on a fortnight, and dear Hannah is the only person capable of managing her darling mama.
I esteem my wife greatly, of course. A fine woman, but one better appreciated from a safe distance when she’s in certain moods.
You were a soldier. You know all about a strategic retreat. ”
He winked heavily, patted his pocket, and quick-marched to the door.
“My lord, you have no idea where Miss Stadler might be?”
“I do not, and I am sure that is by design. Hannah is the brains of this operation, my lord. Ask your lovely mother, and she will confirm my words. Strothie is a good boy, but he’s taking his time settling down.
My other girls know to give Pleasant View a wide berth, and the viscountess is not a happy woman.
“Hannah loses patience with us,” he went on, “and I don’t blame her.
One-eyed in the land of the blind and that sort of thing.
Hannah grows weary. Probably eloped with a curate just to spite her mama, not that we have a curate these days.
Strothie will go completely into the ditch without Hannah to rein him in. ”
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Erasmus quoting some old proverb, as best I recalled. “She didn’t elope with Captain MacNamara?”
White brows rose. “A solid fellow, but m’wife doesn’t care for him. If he’s eloped with Hannah, more power to him, and I commend the happy couple to a long and fruitful union in Scotland. I will visit often. Must dash, my lord. Mum’s the word.”
He dashed on particularly quiet feet, leaving the door open in his wake.
He would stay at his club in Town rather than go to the expense of opening up his London residence, and he’d spend his days semi-inebriated over cards and chess, taking the occasional constitutional around St. James’s and accepting pity invitations to dine with his friends.
Raiding the household money to pay the turnpike tolls was not the behavior of a man in possession of a fortune.
I gathered up the rest of the mess he’d left on the blotter—mostly duns, along with meeting notes from some charitable committee for the betterment of the deserving poor, and a trio of radical pamphlets raging against the Corn Laws—and stuffed the lot back on top of the half-empty black velvet bag.