Page 17 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Seventeen

My optimism was short-lived, while my frustration grew by the hour. When Tuesday morning rolled around, Dalhousie did indeed bestir himself to play the cordial host. He assisted the ladies into my traveling carriage, then offered me a hand.

“Safe journey, my lord, and my thanks for your efforts here.” Misguided though they were.

The qualifier remained unspoken. The hand of civility remained extended. We shook, I bowed, and yet, I hesitated to leave.

“You’ll be careful, Dalhousie?”

He glanced back at Tamerlane, who had joined us on the front terrace despite the early morning hour.

“I will be careful,” Dalhousie said. “I am not without allies, my lord, and now that I am resigned to bide here in the country for the nonce, I wonder how the place ever managed in springtime without me. Much to do this time of year, is there not?”

A gentlemanly nudge to get my arse into the coach and back to Caldicott Hall.

“A busy season, I agree. Please extend my thanks and farewells to the ladies, especially your mother.”

None of the ladies had come down to breakfast, but then, the sun was barely up, and gracious words of parting had been offered by Lady Albert and Susanna the previous evening.

I was reluctant to leave Dalhousie in a situation where he refused to acknowledge who his foe was—or had been—but he was a grown man, and I was no longer welcome. I ducked into the coach, and Dalhousie closed the door firmly behind me. The carriage rocked slightly as Atticus climbed up to the box beside John Coachman.

Lady Ophelia rapped on the roof with the handle of her parasol, and the vehicle lurched away from the steps.

I sat with my back to the horses, facing the ladies. Lady Ophelia’s coach had been sent on ahead to her rural domicile. Our itinerary would take us to the West family seat, where Hyperia could look in on her brother, and then to Lady Ophelia’s country residence, and then I could return to Caldicott Hall, there to resume my feeble impersonation of Arthur in spring.

Planting, plowing, lambing, foaling, calving… brooding, regretting, resenting. I had bungled the investigation even though I’d solved the mystery, and I’d also bungled with my beloved, an intolerable state.

We’d made the first change, and with every mile, I felt more displeased with the situation. Between Hyperia and me an awkward silence stretched that broke my heart, and my best sleuthing efforts had met with scorn.

Beneath both of those failures lay an insidious miasma of self-doubt.

“Your expression,” Lady Ophelia said, “would leave one thinking that your digestion, a gouty toe, and a flock of determined creditors were all troubling you at once, Julian.”

“I am wrestling with the possibility that Dalhousie was right, and I am wrong.”

Hyperia shifted her gaze from the greening countryside to me. “Wrong in what regard?”

“When the matter of the London fire comes up, my tidy theory of Susanna guarding her fortress falls apart. Then I invent facts to support my theory—Tam assisted her, a footman has lost his heart to her, she has the London household wrapped around her finger—despite having no observations to support any of it. I am inventing evidence that does not exist when I should be questioning my pet theory.”

“Julian,” Lady Ophelia said, shaking a finger at me, “let it go. The investigation is concluded. Put it behind you.”

My tenacity was clearly alarming her, perhaps shading into obsession in her eyes. Where, after all, was the line between obsession and honor?

“Questioning your theory how?” Hyperia asked.

“Susanna has options,” I said slowly. “Godmama has pointed out that the lady is well dowered, attractive, and by no means doddering. She could marry a doting swain. She could remove to Tamerlane’s residence and run the whole household indefinitely, without having to mediate between Lady Albert, Lady Dalhousie, Mrs. Northby, and the neighbors. She isn’t powerless.”

Hyperia shifted to sit beside me. “And all this sabotaging of coaches and tampering with saddles is the behavior of somebody who feels powerless, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” I was damned certain, by contrast, that I reasoned more clearly with Hyperia beside me. “Tamerlane also has alternatives. If he wants to move up in the world, he could marry advantageously, he could publish learned treatises, he could circulate in fashionable Society, but he spent less than a week in London just as the Season was launching. Not the behavior of a man determined to displace his powerful cousin.”

“Keep thinking,” Hyperia said, patting my arm. “The whole business at Dalhousie Manor felt rushed to me. Rush you up there, set you loose with a whole neighborhood potentially involved in the intrigue, then run you off when you spot the first credible pattern that could explain all the trouble. Like a dress rehearsal that’s running much longer than the play was supposed to last.”

“Lady Albert,” Lady Ophelia said, “has alternatives. She could have remarried—she’s quite comfortably fixed. She could bide with the Northbys, establish her own household, and take Susanna with her, travel abroad. She need not remain locked in battle with the marchioness simply to maintain whatever relationship she has with Tamerlane.”

Who, then, was stuck ? Who was cornered by circumstances, unable to maneuver freely? Chained figuratively to the elegantly decorated walls of the Manor? The marchioness to some degree. The staff, probably. Northby was also bound to his situation, though he seemed abundantly content with his lot, and well he should be.

The coach rattled along while a thoughtful silence reigned. With Hyperia at my side, my thoughts ranged freely over what I knew and what questions remained. My mental peregrinations were both unstructured and orderly, much like reconnaissance in good weather.

The second change came up. I donned my blue spectacles and handed the ladies out to stretch their legs in the sunny, cobbled courtyard.

“I’m for the jakes,” Atticus announced, climbing down while the spent team was led off to enjoy their oats.

Out of habit, I accompanied the boy around to the back of the innyard. He used what facilities there were, and finding them thoroughly limed, I did as well.

“How does John Coachman do it?” Atticus asked as we returned to the innyard proper. “My proverbial parts are sore already. That box gets harder with every mile. Hard as rocks,”—he stomped his booted foot on the unforgiving cobbles— “and why his arms don’t fall off is a wonder of the modern world.”

We’d come closer to London in the past twenty-four miles, and the innyard testified to that increased proximity to civilization. The whole space was surrounded by a high wall of golden sandstone, a wrought-iron rendering of the inn’s name—The Wild Geese—arching over both entrance and exit gates.

“Cobbles are noisy,” Atticus observed, “but the yellow stones look bright in the sun.”

“Cobbles are noisy, but they keep us from the mud. The high walls also make the innyard noisy, trapping sound rather than absorbing it. It’s hard to sneak into a cobbled innyard.”

Atticus gave me a measuring look. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you, guv?”

I knew that a horse who’d let me calmly wrap his shod feet in thick leather to muffle his hoofbeats was a horse to treasure.

“Miss Hyperia hates it when you do that,” Atticus said, slapping his cap onto his head.

“Do what?”

“You were thinking about Spain just then. I mention sneaking about, you get a look in your eye that says you’re recalling some particular occasion of sneaking, but you say nothing. She knows when you do that, and it makes her mutter about stubborn jackanapes and masculine vanity.”

Atticus enunciated the last few words carefully, an imitation of Hyperia’s precise diction.

“Why don’t you count all the rocks on that side of the wall?” I suggested.

“Because John Coachman will leave without me. He’s told me so a dozen times.”

“He used to tell me the same thing, and yet, here I am.”

“You leave Miss Hyperia behind,” Atticus said, gaze on the far wall. “She musta knocked ten times to ask how you were managing when you were sick. Is he any better? Any worse? Would he take some ginger tea or ginger biscuits? She had the kitchen send up both, and you disappeared them biscuits when you wouldn’t eat nothin’ else.”

I was being scolded, thoroughly and appropriately. “I had no right to rely on you when I was ill. You have my earnest thanks for your attentiveness.” Admit no one, I’d said, and the lad had for once followed orders to the letter.

“My nose deserves more than your earnest thanks, guv. How many rocks do you think it took to build that wall?”

I seized upon the change of subject and launched into an explanation of the estimation process: measure about one-tenth of the length of the wall, count the rocks, multiply by ten. Not perfect, but a well-informed guess.

“A ruddy lot of rocks,” Atticus said. “And they have to be the right kind of rocks. Dalhousie’s head lad explained it to me. The commoners can take the rocks from the fen, but they have to take the right kind and the right shapes for making byres and walls and cottages, and the rocks have to be lying in plain sight. No digging allowed, though people do. Masons know a lot about rocks, but I’m glad I’m not a mason. Rocks are hard and heavy.”

Ten times Hyperia had knocked. Ten times she’d been turned away on my orders.

I took off my spectacles and welcomed the familiar stab of pain in my eyes. Hyperia felt exactly as slighted and dismissed by me as I felt slighted and dismissed by the marquess: She’d had skills and abilities necessary for dealing with my situation, as I had skills and abilities Dalhousie had needed.

She’d been willing to help when help was needed, and she’d been rejected repeatedly, her suggestions never reaching me. She’d nonetheless succeeded in providing me some relief, even though I’d never acknowledged her right to care for me.

Worse yet, I had faulted Dalhousie for being unwilling to confront his womenfolk regarding thorny topics. I had shut Hyperia out of my past for essentially the same reason: I lacked the fortitude to grapple with a particular set of difficult issues. My hypocrisy was all the more spectacular because Hyperia was not a prickly, self-centered besom, but the most sensible and compassionate of ladies.

If she’d fallen ill, I would not have been content to pace outside her door, making suggestions to a worried lady’s maid. I’d have broken down the door and flattened anybody who stopped me from keeping guard at her bedside.

I was in serious trouble.

Atticus remained beside me, silently counting rocks, his finger shifting minutely from left to right while he moved his lips without sound. The fresh team was backed into the traces and fidgeting restlessly. John Coachman ascended to the box and took up the reins.

“I give up,” Atticus said, jogging off toward the coach. “Too many rocks to count. Tons of rocks, and this is just an innyard. The thought of a castle boggles the mind.”

“Ride inside if you like,” I called after him. “The benches are cushioned, and the company is excellent.”

Lady Ophelia emerged from the inn, a brown paper parcel in her hand. Hyperia, walking beside her, had never looked more dear to me. The bright sun caught every fiery highlight in her hair, the perfect texture of her skin, the pride in her bearing, and the ferocious intelligence in her eyes.

I cannot lose her. I considered going down on bended knee, but as Atticus had pointed out, cobbles were hard. Besides that, my sentiments were for her alone, not for echoing from one wall of the innyard to the other.

I handed the ladies up, took one last look around the sunny expanse of activity and bustle, and in the next moment, felt as if the Hammer of Truth had smacked me over the head.

“About-face, John Coachman,” I called up to the box. “We’re returning to Dalhousie Manor.”

John Coachman, whose name was Luke Cameron, like his father and grandfather before him, touched a finger to his hat brim. “Forgot something, did you, milord?”

“Overlooked a matter of significance. We’ll not be staying the night, but to Dalhousie Manor, we must go.”

I sprang into the coach and took my backward-facing seat. “Sorry, ladies, but we’re for a slight detour.”

Lady Ophelia passed Atticus a hot cross bun. “A slight, fifty-mile detour, Julian? In the name of all that is sensible, why?”

“Forty-eight miles round trip, and we can spend the night at this very inn, if you like. The Wild Geese looks commodious in the extreme. We’re turning around because Dalhousie hasn’t bought a single, ruddy rock when he means to build miles of stone wall. A bit inconsistent, wouldn’t you say?”

“No rocks?” Hyperia said, accepting a bun.

“No rocks, no mules, no masons, no rope, no wagons, no shovels. No correspondence to procure same, no surveyors scheduled, no letters to other peers seeking their support for a bill in the Lords. Not one shred of evidence to support the possibility of enclosure walls, other than a lot of talk originating with Dalhousie himself. I thus conclude no enclosure was ever seriously intended.”

I plucked a bun from Godmama’s hoard and munched with quiet satisfaction. Means, motive, opportunity, and evidence all began to assemble themselves in a logical fashion.

“Why such haste to return to the scene of the crime?” Lady Ophelia asked, tearing off a small bite of sweet. “One grows weary of racketing about in even the most commodious coaches with even the best company.”

“No, one don’t,” Atticus muttered, mouth full.

“We make haste because a great tragedy will take place if I don’t put matters right at Dalhousie Manor. A life wasted, years spent in lonely yearning. Bitterness, regret, the whole sad works, and we cannot have that on our conscience, can we, Godmama?”

She looked puzzled. “I suppose not. Though I do wish you’d gift us with the particulars, Julian. One wants to ride into battle properly armed.”

We demolished our buns, and I aired my revised conclusions. No matter how we questioned, tested, and challenged my latest theory, the whole hung together, and with the aid of my trusted associates, we planned our march upon Dalhousie Manor.

Five miles from the marquess’s demesne, we changed not only horses but coaches, arriving at the Dalhousie village as just another conveyance full of weary travelers. The ladies wore their veiled bonnets, and I, who had not made the acquaintance of the innkeeper’s wife, arranged a private parlor for my party.

I also ordered a generous midday meal, the hot cross buns being but a distant and fond memory.

Atticus, by means into which I did not inquire, had a note written by Hyperia delivered to the Manor. After the last of our dishes had been taken to the kitchen and a pot of daffodils placed on the center of the table, Dalhousie himself rapped on the parlor door.

“Miss West.” He bowed formally, though his consternation was evident in his eyes, despite a carefully polite expression. “I came as soon as I could.”

“Then get in here,” I said, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling the door closed behind him. “You, my lord, have a great deal of explaining to do.”

He glowered at me down the length of his patrician beak. “Caldicott, have you taken leave of your senses? I put you in your coach this very morning and sent you on your way. I owe you no explanations.”

“Tiresome attacks on my sanity will get you nowhere with me and might annoy the ladies. You owe me no explanations, I quite agree, but you’d best rehearse what you’ll say to Susanna.”

He took a visual inventory of the room’s occupants—Hyperia and Lady Ophelia, veils drawn back to reveal patiently encouraging gazes, and myself, feeling anything but patient.

“I have nothing to say. I wish you all a safe journey back to your respective domiciles. Now, if you will excuse me—”

I stood in front of the door, and though Dalhousie had me for brawn and height, he would not be as fast or as determined.

“Have a seat,” I suggested. “The time has come to own your feelings, Dalhousie, in all their messy, inconvenient glory. You are besotted with Susanna, but you don’t dare court her. Of all the women in the world, she is the one your mother would never, ever accept, or so you’ve convinced yourself. You are the one prospective husband Lady Albert would never, ever grant permission to court Susanna. You have assured yourself that your love is doomed, and yet, you have resorted to drastic and highly inventive measures to avoid marrying where your Mama would approve.”

Dalhousie sank into a chair on the side of the table opposite the ladies. We allowed him a moment to rearrange his defenses, to accept that retreat would be his best option. Once we’d begun considering possibilities, we’d realized that Dalhousie had no alibis . Dalhousie was an affectionately tolerated interloper belowstairs—witness, those apples he daily pinched from the larders for dear old Blenny. Dalhousie had shot a hole in his own hat and dosed himself with medicinals, he was so determined to thwart his mother’s matrimonial schemes.

A man in love would pursue measures more desperate than any sensible criminal might consider. This explanation had the very satisfying quality of being obvious in hindsight and only in hindsight.

The marquess stared morosely across the table. “Mama will make Susanna’s life hell if I so much as mention a passing fondness. I know that.”

“You don’t know that,” Hyperia said. “You fear it, and with good reason.”

“You’ve seen Mama,” Dalhousie retorted, setting his hat on the table, an odd counterpoint to the cheerful daffodils. “She’s relentless, a force of nature. Mama will turn all of her spite on Susanna if I show any marked favor in Suze’s direction. Lady Albert will return fire, of course, though she won’t aim her guns at me. She will blame Susanna for attracting my notice, much less for accepting my suit. I’ve had years to watch those two maneuver, and as much as I do esteem Susanna—abundantly, lavishly—I cannot ask her to be my wife.”

“Yes,” Lady Ophelia said, rapping on the table, “you can, and you must.”

Dalhousie touched the brim of his hat, a modest, brown affair, the brim only slightly curled. “For the sake of others and even for my sake, Susanna will reject my suit.”

He had thought through all the possibilities and come to a logical—if wrongheaded—conclusion. So easy to do.

“Why would she reject your suit?” I asked.

“Because if we marry, the marchioness and Lady Albert will make our lives hellish. The hostesses will be poisoned against Susanna. Her presentation at court will be awkward. There will be talk. The loyalties belowstairs will be divided, and the staff at each of my properties will feel bound to take sides. You’ve seen pitched battle up close, my lord. I will have the domestic equivalent on my hands if I try to court Susanna, and she will preserve all of us from that fate by simply refusing me.”

Love might not be blind, but it could certainly be gloomy. “She will accept you if you sort out the besoms. Did your dear papa formally grant Lady Albert a life estate in the dower house, or have you simply indulged her claim for the sake of your mother?”

“The solicitors can find no record of such a claim.”

Meaning he’d looked for one. An encouraging sign. “The marchioness wants Lady Albert in the dower house because as long as her ladyship bides there, your mother is left to run the Manor, at least to appearances. You would never expect the two beldames to bide together, and thus Lady Albert’s claim suits the marchioness’s purposes.”

“Tam suggested something like that over chess a few weeks ago. Said I should boot his dear mama from the dower house under the guise of making extended repairs to the roof. He offered to ensconce her at his house.”

“Let the repairs begin,” Lady Ophelia declared. “Lady Albert has wrought enough discord to last several lifetimes. You managed to send Julian packing when he was only trying to help, and he is not a man easily dismissed. Banish Lady Albert.”

I’d left without a fight, but here I was, back amid the affray. Perhaps I wasn’t so easily dismissed .

“That still leaves my mother,” Dalhousie said. “I could not ask Susanna to embark on married life with my own mother determined to sabotage Susanna’s happiness. Mama means well, most of the time, but she takes a notion and won’t let go of it. I’m to marry one of her handpicked ninnyhammers, a biddable, sweet ornament, and the very notion… I cannot contemplate such a fate. I’ve tried, and though I love my mother, I simply cannot. Not when I am in love with another.”

Saying the words seemed to settle something in him. His posture on the hard chair became more relaxed, his features less severe.

“You should tell Susanna that,” I said, moving away from the door to prop an elbow on the mantel. “Tell her often and show her. Not just flowers on her pillow, but her favorite flowers.”

“Give her your trust,” Hyperia said, glowering at me. “Give her that, and you won’t have to spend half a week interrogating her friends, her lady’s maid, and her acquaintances to determine what her favorite flower is.”

“Give her both,” Lady Ophelia said, “and for pity’s sake, do it soon. You’ve managed to dodge this Season, but then you gave back most of the ground you’d won by agreeing to a summer house party.”

Dalhousie was not a weak or indecisive man, but he was torn between competing demands of the heart. His mother was owed every respect, but he longed to give Susanna the rest of his life.

What a coil.

“How did you deduce that I was bent on avoiding the Season?” Dalhousie asked.

I took the chair beside him. “I nearly didn’t. The whole thing has to do with rocks. You haven’t bought any. Haven’t asked for estimates, haven’t corresponded with any quarries, and yet, you wanted me to believe you were dead set on building an enclosure and that that project had put your life at risk. I also wondered why somebody close enough to pot your hat didn’t discharge the second bullet more lethally. Nearly every pistol has two barrels, and firing only the one made little sense. Then too, the angle was peculiar. To put a bullet through only the brim suggested a stray bullet, a ricochet, or a very odd firing angle.”

“The situation had to be dire,” Dalhousie said. “I needed a substantial reason to haul you up from Caldicott Hall, a reason why somebody would wish me ill enough to threaten my life. Mama could brush off a stray bullet as an accident, but not when Lord Julian Caldicott was taking it seriously.

“Then,” the marquess went on, “all I had to do was mention an enclosure scheme, and my reception in the churchyard dimmed considerably. My plan worked too. You caused quite a stir, the ‘threats’ continued, Mama accepted that this was not the year for me to go courting in Mayfair.”

“You bought yourself one Season,” Hyperia said, “and to do that, you had to poison a man who was only trying to help you. You put him at risk for a lethal fall from a very tall horse. Bad form, my lord.”

Hyperia’s ire was all the more devastating for being stated quietly, and yet, I felt a mild defense of the marquess was in order.

“Dalhousie knew I was a capable horseman and ensured we stayed off rocky ground when mounted. I did not, in fact, take any sort of tumble from the saddle. Please recall as well that he poisoned himself, too, and that’s how he knew I would come through the same regimen unscathed.”

My darling was not amused. “If you were unscathed, then Napoleon is enjoying a holiday by the sea.”

“I am sorry,” Dalhousie said. “Very sorry, but his lordship was growing too persistent, and Mama had capitulated to the notion of sitting out the Season. It was time to persuade you to leave, and I reasoned that if you were imperiled, the ladies would talk you into quitting the field.”

Lady Ophelia’s harrumph to the contrary could have been heard halfway to Town.

“I am glad for a chance to express my remorse,” Dalhousie said, taking his hat from the table, “but I don’t see what has changed just because you’ve exposed my scheme. I have wasted your time, put you at risk for a bad fall from my horse—that was supposed to be my fall, but the point was made even with you in the saddle—and subjected you to a trying afternoon. I have much to atone for. You have only to indicate how, and I will exert myself on your behalf.”

“Save your honorable speeches for Susanna,” I said. “You can atone for your considerable mischief by marrying Susanna, if she’ll have you.”

“She will have you,” Hyperia said, a touch of humor in her words. “She looks at you the same way Atticus regards his hot cross buns.”

“Who?”

“My general factotum, conscience, and the king of spontaneous good advice. He’s a mere lad, but you don’t dare come between him and his well-earned sweets.”

Dalhousie rose. “Susanna is fond of me. Beyond that, I dare not hope…”

The poor sod hoped, prayed, and begged the Celestial Matchmaker for a scintilla of encouragement. When it came his way, he was delirious with unspoken joy.

One knew the look. “You are right, Dalhousie,” I said, getting to my feet as well, “that significant aspects of your situation have not changed. The marchioness will bitterly resent your choice of a wife, or pretend to. I suspect her objections will mostly be a matter of form in the ongoing battle with Lady Albert.”

“Tam will support dislodging his mother from the dower house,” Dalhousie said. “He’ll go with her to his own property if I ask it of him.”

“Ask it of him,” I said. “You and your bride deserve peace and quiet as you embark on the splendors of married life.”

“Splendors, my lord?”

Had he no imagination? “Splendors, by heaven, such as quiet mornings cuddling in the library, peaceful strolls holding hands in the garden, and lively arguments over politics, to say nothing of boundless affection and the comfort of a true ally.”

I did not dare look at Hyperia as I held forth. Where trust fit in that medley of blessings, I wasn’t sure, but Hyperia had the right of it—one needed trust to truly share a lifetime with one’s beloved.

“How do I deal with my mother?” Dalhousie asked, circling his hat in his hands. “She will not relent. I’ve tested her resolve, and she’s the sort who takes strength from being thwarted. She digs in her heels and gains purchase the harder you try to tug her away from her fixed notions.”

The ladies and I had considered this aspect of the situation at length on our return journey. They had provided the critical insight and the solution.