Page 6 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
“You took Atticus,” he said, each syllable laden with injured dignity. “You took him with you today. You took him to Berkshire and Hampshire. Was he invited?”
Abruptly, I was in deep, hostile waters.
I had, in fact, ordered Atticus not to accompany me to Hampshire, but he’d stowed away with the luggage and proven useful to that investigation.
The more recent outing to Berkshire had called for eyes and ears in mine host’s stable, and again, Atticus had been the logical resource.
“Invitations don’t generally extend to servants.” An excuse, and we both knew it.
“I want to go with you when you go away,” Leander said. “You are gone for days and days and days. Miss Hunter makes me a calendar when you go, and we strike an X through a square each night, but you are gone forever, and I have told you and told you that I want to go with you.”
He had, and I had changed the subject, assured him of my speedy return, and promptly disappeared for at least a fortnight in each case.
“None of this excuses you putting yourself in danger on the roof, young man.”
“Yes, it does, and we’re not in danger. You don’t listen to me, and I told you—I warned you, Uncle Julian—that if you won’t listen to me, I won’t listen to you.
It’s not fair for you to always go away.
I am a good boy. I do what Miss Hunter tells me, and she says I am very bright.
My sums are correct, and I can say the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and almost in French.
You still just go away and don’t even wave when you canter down the drive.
I’m not listening to you until you listen to me. ”
The little beast delivered these verbal blows calmly, even patiently.
I considered simply plucking him up into my arms, negotiating the downward slope, and chucking him (gently) back through the schoolroom window.
Too dangerous, especially if he squirmed, and Leander Caldicott would squirm mightily.
I considered a solemn promise to wave upon every future departure, but that gambit would likely get me kicked off the roof. Leander was a Caldicott male suffering repeated affronts to his dignity.
“I am traveling up to Town tomorrow,” I said. “Would you like to come with me?”
“ Town ?”
“London, where you used to live. We will stay at Caldicott House and bide for only a couple days, but you are welcome to come with me, if you behave. ”
I expected gleeful crowing, some gloating, or perhaps—I am a pathetic excuse for an uncle—grudging thanks for having finally listened.
“I cannot climb out any windows?”
“Not a single one. No howling like a ghost to frighten the maids and footmen. No running away to the home farm. No scampering naked through the house and claiming you’re playing Garden of Eden.”
“I only did that once. You won’t leave me in London?”
Some of my frustration eased, because the boy’s fears were well founded. He was Harry’s by-blow, the same Lord Harry Caldicott who’d not stuck around long enough to marry Leander’s mother, much less make Leander’s acquaintance.
When the child’s existence had been brought to the attention of the present duke, we’d collected the boy and his mother, intending to provide a home for both.
The mother, Millicent, had sized up the situation at Caldicott Hall and promptly decided that Leander would be better off without her underfoot.
She’d gathered up the sum Arthur had already settled on her, given her good name a convenient repolishing, and retired to her home shire, where, last I’d heard, she was walking out with a childhood sweetheart.
Adults, in Leander’s experience, were a dodgy lot. One had to rely on them when they were forever disappearing and forever leaving him behind.
“I will not leave you in London. You will return with me to the Hall. Understand, Leander, that climbing out on the roof when you simply want to have a talk with me will not be tolerated. You are frustrated because I undertake frequent travel, however briefly, and I doubt I will stop traveling any time soon. My hope is that you will come along with me to Town, be bored witless, and learn to trust me when I say I will always come home.”
“His Grace hasn’t come home.”
Touché. Another abandonment, and Leander and his ducal uncle got along swimmingly. “Uncle Arthur is touring the South of France. Can you show me where that is on a map?”
Leander snorted and scampered down the roof. “I can show you every capital on the map, even Hell-stinky, though Finland is just a Grand Duchy, not a country.”
I navigated the slope much more carefully. “Then your punishment for going absent without leave again will be to list all the European capitals with their countries or duchies. Mind you spell them correctly.”
He climbed through the window as nimbly as a housebreaker’s apprentice. “And you will take me with you to Town, right?”
“I have given you my word, Leander. When have I ever broken my word to you?”
My nephew looked up at me with a solemn little countenance that put me strongly in mind of his father in a serious moment.
He wrapped a skinny arm around my waist, mashed his face against my middle, then twirled away. “Never. You never have broken your word to me, Uncle Julian, and we are going to Town.”
I explained to Miss Hunter that she would be coming along with us, which considerably doused Leander’s enthusiasm, and then set the boy to work listing capitals.
I did not know what to do with him, but trying his nerves with my repeated absences was surely the wrong course. He might, eventually, learn to trust that absence was not inchoate abandonment, but he was a small boy, and that lesson would take time.
“I’ll consult the solicitors as briefly as possible. Certain information should not be entrusted to the mail.” I offered that explanation to MacNamara as a footman handed Miss Hunter into the traveling coach.
MacNamara eyed the team stomping and swishing their tails. “I thought you’d confront Strother before you did anything else.”
“I’ve set one of our gamekeepers to quietly nosing about the surrounds of Pleasant View.
If I’m to cross paths with Strother on his morning hack, I need to know his usual routes.
Ten thousand acres is a lot of ground. Meanwhile, the London solicitors can arm me with specific information regarding Miss Hannah’s, the Stadlers’, and Strother’s personal finances. ”
My excuses were growing more credible, though in this case, I was also telling the truth. A gamekeeper could also discern whether the Stadlers were discreetly tolerating some lucrative poaching and if the help was grumbling about late wages or vacancies going unfilled.
“Then Godspeed to you,” MacNamara said, stepping back and leaning heavily on a cane. “I will contain my frustration for a few more days.”
“Regale the duchess with the usual reminiscences about Spain. She will appreciate your gift with a yarn.”
“I’ll tell her all the tales I know about you and Lord Harry.”
“Not all the tales, please. Her good opinion matters to me. As for Harry, nil nisi bonum is the best course . ”
“ De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est . Of the dead, only good is to be spoken. Attributed by Diogenes to Chilon of Sparta.”
“In Harry’s case, a bit of a challenge, I grant you.” We shook hands, and I climbed in, feeling more than a little guilty.
I could be making the same inquiries the gamekeeper was about.
Even fifteen miles’ distance between the properties meant that in disguise, I would not be recognized by the sort frequenting the local coaching inn’s rathskeller.
Pleasant View patronized a different market town from Caldicott Hall, and only the largest gatherings—a formal ball, for example—would see Caldicotts and Stadlers socializing.
I hadn’t been through one of those ordeals since before I’d bought my colors. I’d be expected to wear my regimentals, and such a prospect sat very ill with me indeed.
We made good time up to Town, and Miss Hunter had packed a number of books in Leander’s traveling satchel. She and the boy read to each other, while I pondered Miss Stadler’s situation.
According to every Gothic novel ever written and more than a few Mayfair scandals, money, revenge, and passion were the usual reasons for a young lady’s disappearance.
MacNamara had not described Miss Hannah as given to wild romantic impulses, which left money and revenge.
The Stadlers apparently lacked means, as measured by aristocratic standards, so upon whom…
Well, damn. I nearly told John Coachman to turn right back around. I needed to ask MacNamara who his enemies were. Remiss of me not to do so sooner, but I could send a pigeon to the Hall with the requisite inquiry once we arrived in Town.
“Are you forgetting your name, Uncle Julian?”
Leander asked his question quietly, his governess having drifted off against the bench’s cushioned squab.
I had yielded the forward-facing seat to the woman and child, and Miss Hunter had accepted with undue relief.
Many people found the backward-facing perch a recipe for nausea, but I wasn’t usually among them.
“Forgetting my name?”
“Atticus says you have forgetting spells, when you don’t know who you are or where you are or who Good King George is, but you always remember after a rest.”
Thank you, Atticus, for giving a little boy one more thing to worry about. “He speaks the truth. I am prone to short spells of memory lapse, and thus far they have always passed.” The possibility of another outcome—memories that never returned—haunted me.
“Will you forget me?”
This was why children were to be confined to the nursery. They asked the most confounding questions under circumstances that allowed little to no prevarication.