Page 1 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter One

“Somebody is trying to kill me.”

Gordon, Marquess of Dalhousie, drawled this announcement as if he’d been remarking upon the dreary March weather. “Two attempts that I can recognize as such. Surely, Lord Julian, you will agree that reinforcements are appropriate? Poor marksmanship foiled the first effort and a diminished appetite the second. Had I been the least bit peckish, I’d no doubt be strumming a harp by now.”

He took a languid sip of his tea and set the saucer gently on the low table.

I was supposed to murmur assent, politely inform the marquess that I was at his disposal, and upend my life for his convenience. With winter yet in evidence and the Dalhousie seat some fifty miles distant, I was curiously reluctant to follow the expected path.

“Reinforcements, Dalhousie, of the bodyguard variety, perhaps. More tea?” We occupied Caldicott Hall’s formal parlor—marquesses were something of a rarity, numbering a mere few dozen and lurking between dukes and earls in the order of precedence.

“No more tea, thank you. What I need is intelligence, my lord, and His Grace of Waltham has spoken highly of your ability to gather same. Who is doing this to me? Why now? When I know the who and the why, I will be in a position to put a stop to the nonsense.”

Reasoning after my own heart, but if the murder of a peer had been attempted twice, the proceedings had progressed well past the nonsense stage.

I chose a piece of shortbread shaped to resemble a four-leaf clover. “You could remove yourself to the Continent for a time.” Heaven knew I’d blown retreat often enough, both in uniform and after mustering out.

Dalhousie rose and began a circuit of the parlor. He was everything a peer should be—big, blond, handsome in a Viking sort of way, and turned out in the first stare of understated rural fashion. He was also impressed with his own consequence and assumed everybody else should be impressed with it too.

“The Continent does not appeal.” The marquess stopped before an autumn landscape of Caldicott Hall. “I made my obeisance to Paris along with all the other lemmings. Came home after the first of the year, and never was I so glad to see the miasma of London’s coal smoke. I am not now at liberty to resume overseas travel.”

The shortbread was lovely. Buttery, just sweet enough, and fresh. I munched away patiently, though Dalhousie doubtless expected me to importune him for particulars.

“Planting isn’t for several weeks,” I said. “You doubtless have competent stewards and tenants. Lisbon is lovely in spring.” Particularly if one carried no wartime memories of the place. Dalhousie had not served in uniform, which was understandable.

He was not only a peer, he also had no heir of the body. He was unmarried, and… Ah. Well, then. “You are expected in Town this spring.”

“I am expected in Town every spring,” he said. “Have been since I was first sent down from university for the usual excesses. I will turn five-and-thirty in the autumn, and it’s time I tended to the succession.”

To hear him tell it, procreation was the dullest duty ever devised by the mind of man. For some, that might be so, but for the past ten years Dalhousie had reigned at or near the top of Mayfair’s list of eligibles. He was titled, wealthy, and healthy. He could have his pick of the diamonds, originals, and heiresses, and taking a bride would have no impact on his other amusements.

As I was debating another piece of shortbread, it occurred to me that Dalhousie was what I could have become had I not returned from the wars under a cloud of scandal. I was heir to my brother Arthur’s dukedom, single, had all of my teeth, and had yet to take a bride.

Not for lack of trying, let it be said.

“Town might be safer for you than the family seat,” I observed, leaving the remaining shortbread on the plate. “If your detractor is a disgruntled employee or tenant, then distance is your ally.”

“Distance is an ally until I return home, my new marchioness at my side, and the attacks resume. I could not in good conscience ask immediate widowhood of a bride I esteemed, and besides that, the whole business is too tedious for words. I want it to stop.”

Ergo, I must leap onto my horse and gallop to Dalhousie Manor, peer about with my spyglass, mutter knowledgeably over some tracks in the kitchen garden, and deliver an attempted murderer to the king’s man.

“You want me to stop it,” I said, “and while your faith in my abilities is flattering, my lord, my previous investigations have not involved matters of life or death.” Not quite true, in that my life had been threatened once or twice. “I am hesitant to take on the investigation when others might be better suited to the task.”

This, in fact, was the gravamen of my hesitation. A military officer dealt in matters of life and death by design, ordering his subordinates hither and thither into varying degrees of danger. I had both given and taken such orders, and I had fared badly with the whole business. I wanted nobody save myself relying on me to keep them safe ever again.

Dalhousie studied my late brother Harry’s cavalry sword mounted over the sideboard. The weapon had been gathering dust in Harry’s old apartment. I’d moved it down to the first among Caldicott Hall’s public rooms out of respect for my deceased brother. Also because the moment had come to evict his ghost from a perfectly lovely suite in the family wing.

“Others will bungle about,” Dalhousie said, caressing the sword’s pommel. “You are discreet. I must go courting next month—absolutely must—and I cannot have talk, my lord. This year of all years, I require latitude to maneuver in Town. I’ll not be matched with some mercer’s horse-faced daughter because the gossips have decided I’m doomed.”

In my mind, the mercer’s daughters, horse-faced or otherwise, breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Why not put off the courting for another year, Dalhousie? You’ve waited this long.”

He turned a brooding eye on me. “I promised my mother that before the end of the year, I will wed. Her ladyship expects me to honor my word. I expect me to honor my word, and if you’d met my cousin Tam, you’d expect me to as well.”

“Your heir?”

“My heir, my cousin, and some days, my penance. Tamerlane Dandridge pretends to scholarship while, in fact, the only subjects he studies with any assiduity are willing women and fine spirits. His step-cousin Susanna indulges his bookish inclinations, and bless her for that, or he’d likely already be dead of a pickled liver. He’s also a passable violinist and basically a decent sort, though we do thank the heavenly intercessors that he’s through his brilliant-composer phase.”

“Could he be threatening your life?” If the relevant question was who benefited from the marquess’s demise, Tamerlane surely would.

“Tam’s not ambitious enough, not truly mean enough. He poses a threat to every decanter in sight and any friendly females, but he’s otherwise harmless. Don’t take my word for it. Make up your own mind about him when you come to Dalhousie Manor.”

“Have I been invited?”

That Dalhousie sought my aid told me two things: First, he was annoyed by these threats on his life, perhaps even unnerved. One did not describe a peer in his prime as afraid, but Dalhousie could not persuade himself to ignore or deny the reality of the threats.

Second, he expected me to assist him. He’d presented himself in person at Caldicott Hall as a courtesy to my brother’s title, not because he anticipated that I’d need convincing. I should leap at the opportunity to be useful to the marquess, and in this, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

I had served under Wellington in the capacity of reconnaissance officer, gathering such intelligence as I was ordered to gather. My late brother Harry had served in the same capacity, though I had preferred to work in the villages and countryside, while Harry had been better suited to the cities and towns. As Wellington had begun to push north out of central Spain, Harry and I had found ourselves attached to the same camp.

He’d taken a stealthy leave one night against orders. Inspired by both curiosity and concern, I had followed him, and the pair of us had ended up prisoners in a certain notorious French chateau. I had survived captivity. Harry had not.

The conclusion reached by every military gossip in every allied army was that I’d betrayed my brother and my command. As best I could recall—I was interrogated repeatedly, at length, to the detriment of my cognitive and physical faculties—I had done no such thing. In fact, once Harry and I had been marched through the gates of the chateau, I hadn’t seen him again, dead or alive.

I had learned of his demise from the polite French colonel responsible for my periodic misery and been subjected to the colonel’s condolences on my loss.

Dalhousie reckoned that I would be eager to rehabilitate my reputation by spending time as the guest of a marquess. I might have been flattered had his motivation been social. Nothing less than threats on his handsome life had compelled him to extend hospitality to me. I was just irritated enough, just contrary enough, to be as insulted as I was intrigued.

Attempted murder of a marquess did not come along every day.

“I am inviting you to come to Dalhousie as my guest,” the marquess said evenly. “To bide at your leisure while we await the arrival of spring, whereupon I will have no choice but to remove to Town. Somebody tried to put a bullet through my back, my lord, and somebody tried to send me to my Maker with poison. I haven’t the luxury of drawing out a cat-and-mouse game, not with Tam as my heir. I’m sure you understand my concern.”

The marquess was being genteelly snide. I was Arthur’s sole heir, and neither Arthur nor I were married. I was engaged, true, and to the dearest, most lovely, insightful, darling woman God ever created, but engagements and secure successions were worlds apart, especially the engagement between me and Miss Hyperia West.

The thought of my dear Perry, and her calm, compassionate good sense, brought me up short.

She would tell me that Dalhousie needed my help, and if he didn’t fear for his life, he ought to. I was in a position to look into his circumstances, and to refuse him aid would be petty.

Besides all that, I thrived on complicated, vexatious investigations.

“If I’m to involve myself in your situation, Dalhousie, you must understand that you will not control the course of my activities. I will poke my nose where you wish I wouldn’t. I will question your staff and your neighbors. I will hare off for a morning without asking your permission, and I will expect your support and cooperation at every turn.”

He had sense enough not to assume victory. “What sort of support?”

“You will invite Lady Ophelia Oliphant and Miss Hyperia West to join me at Dalhousie Manor. If you’d like to collect a few other guests for appearances’ sake, feel free, but the ladies are my eyes and ears in places where a gentleman cannot intrude. They have been integral to the success of previous investigations, and I dare not take on such a serious matter without their assistance.”

“ Miss West assists you?” I’d surprised him.

“And at Yuletide, we became engaged, so Society should find nothing remarkable about inviting us both. Lady Ophelia is my godmother and serves as a chaperone when needed, though I trust your mother will be on hand as well.”

“She will, and you must promise me—”

“No,” I said gently. “I will not deceive your lady mother by supporting the pretense that my visit is merely social. Before the staff and neighbors, we can keep to that farce, but before your own mother, we will be honest.”

Dalhousie opened his mouth, then shut it. He resumed his place on the sofa, shot his lacy cuffs, and took a piece of shortbread.

“Her ladyship knows everything that goes on in that house,” he said. “Probably best to do as you say and explain matters to her honestly.” He considered his sweet. “Congratulations on your engagement. Miss West is an estimable lady.”

“She is also very sensible, so you must spare me any manly vapors when I tell you that before this investigation is over, I will know the names and present whereabouts of your every flirt, jilt, mistress, and amour, Dalhousie, and so will Miss West.”

He stopped chewing. “That will be quite a list.” Said without a hint of remorse.

“We will also know the names of anybody with whom you’ve dueled or declined to duel. Your creditors, be the debts commercial, personal, or debts of honor. Women scorned, jealous papas, angry neighbors, peers whose bills you refused to support in the Lords… anybody who might, in their darkest thoughts, wish you dead.”

He rose again and simply stood before the sofa, as if in his busy, important life, he had somewhere else to be but had for the moment forgotten precisely where that was.

Then he looked at the half a piece of shortbread in his hand and sat back down. “Very well. I can make those lists on my way back to Hampshire. I trust you will follow posthaste?”

“You may trust that I will set out in three days. I have arrangements to make. My stewards will want written directions, as will the solicitors, and at the very least, I’ll need some homing pigeons crated up to take along with me, to say nothing of packing a wardrobe that must allow for fickle weather. I should arrive by midday on Tuesday.” I was capable of covering ground far more quickly than that, but I had learned to avoid forced marches if at all possible. “That schedule allows you time to invite the ladies and to explain the situation to your mother.”

His lordship made a face as if he’d smelled a dead mouse behind the wainscoting. “The marchioness won’t like it.”

“She will like even less that you’ve been keeping the truth from her. I have a mother. One sympathizes, but you must be honest with her. Present the situation to her as a mere troubling possibility about which you seek her counsel, but don’t be too fawning.”

“Mother doesn’t tolerate fawning.” The admission of a man who spoke from experience.

“Until Tuesday, then. I’ll see you out.”

Five minutes later, we stood in the cavernous white marble foyer designed to impress visitors—also to chill them to the bone in winter—and waited for Dalhousie’s coach to be brought around.

“When do you expect His Grace back from his travels?” Dalhousie asked.

“No definite date of return yet, but the general plan isn’t until late spring or summer.”

“You’re managing?”

The question took me aback because it conveyed a hint of sympathy, and thus I answered honestly. “Barely. His Grace accomplishes more in a typical day than I do in a week, and he does it all without seeming to do much of anything. He’s never hurried or harried, and he cannot get home soon enough to please me.”

“He’s the same way in the Lords. Has lunch at the club with this old viscount, hacks out with some uppish earl, and a bill has twenty more sponsors than it did a fortnight ago, but nobody quite knows how Waltham does it. He is proud of you. Says you’ve always been the cleverest sibling. Waltham does not make idle boasts.”

The coach and four clattered up from the stable, a heavy traveling vehicle that would be comfortable in the cold weather, but hardly speedy.

“Safe journey, Dalhousie. Mind your back until reinforcements arrive.”

“Until Tuesday.” He sketched a bow and hopped into his coach.

I stood on the steps of the portico as the carriage lumbered around the empty fountain and on down the drive across the bleak winter landscape. Dirty snow remained along the hedges and stone walls. Gray-bellied clouds hung over the horizon. Inopportune weather for traveling.

What had I got myself into? Dalhousie was no retiring squire content to trot around his acres. His life had public, private, and financial spheres, and in any one of them, a deadly enemy might lurk. He was no boy just down from university either. His enemy might well have been nursing a grudge that went back fifteen years.

An icy wind swept dead leaves about my boots, my cue to return to the Hall and make my way to my apartment. All the while, I pondered another question:

Was Arthur truly proud of me? Truly? What an extraordinary notion.