Page 3 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Three

“You disobeyed a direct order.” I let the enormity of the transgression imbue my words with weight, but the urge to shout, to rant, was nigh overwhelming. “A direct order, Atticus. You were to bide at the Hall, attend your studies, and keep Leander from inspiring Miss Hunter to give notice.”

Atticus disappeared into the dressing closet with my riding boots. “Miss Hunter won’t hand in her notice. She’s sweet on Young Jamison, and I am not Lee’s minder. That’s a paying job, that is, and a thankless one.”

“Not his minder, you young idiot. His ally. His older, wiser friend in a changing and unkind world. He looks up to you, and you… Leave my clothing alone.”

Atticus sent me a pitying glance, a pair of brocade slippers in hand. “You wasn’t—weren’t—honest with me, guv. Isn’t there some sort of order about thou shalt not tell lies?”

“The proscribed behavior is perjury, lying under oath, and I told you no untruths in any case.”

“You lied in what you didn’t tell me. Somebody is trying to kill the marquess. If they’ll kill the title, they will be twice as quick to kill anybody trying to protect the title. I can’t have you dyin’ on me.”

He once again retreated to the dressing closet, leaving me thunderstruck.

“You think to protect me?”

My question was greeted with a short silence. Then Atticus emerged, holding a blue silk dressing gown.

“When the marquess called on you at the Hall, his coachy and groom passed the time in the servants’ hall, and Young Jamison got them talking, which Young Jamison is good at. They explained as how his lordship Dalhousie has took a notion that somebody is trying to kill him. The coachy says the marquess is going batty in the upper story because he has to finally marry, but the groom said a bullet through a man’s hat wasn’t no joke whether he was courting a princess or already had six wives. The groom wasn’t as sure about the trifle, but if I meant to poison a man, I’d put the poison in something sweet that he’s likely to gobble right up. If you take those boots off, I’ll get to cleaning them.”

“You can’t help it,” I said slowly. “You are always on reconnaissance.”

Atticus, perhaps sensing relenting on my part, hung the dressing gown on a hook on the nearest bedpost. “I keep my eyes and ears open. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Not as well as you do.” And what a penance that fate was. “Atticus, you still disobeyed a direct order. I cannot overlook such insubordination.”

“Lee throws his porridge, and nobody makes him go without his nooning.”

Ouch. “You are not Leander. For all we know, you are twice his age.”

“I’m not throwing my porridge neither. Didn’t you ever disobey a direct order?”

“When I followed my brother Harry from camp, I disobeyed several standing orders, and the consequences were lethal to him and nearly so to me.” And to my reputation, my pride, and my sanity.

Atticus dove into the trunk open before the hearth and emerged holding a hatbox. “I ain’t Lord Harry.”

No, Atticus was more like that fool Lord Julian, following his brother officer into the darkness because to sit idly by would be a violation of family loyalty and to blazes with the bleatings of various older, wiser generals.

“Atticus, what am I to do with you?”

He held the hatbox before him, putting me in mind of a drummer boy. “I brought extra copies of your cards, the ones you keep in your pocket. Jamison said you always have extra pairs of specs.”

Blue spectacles to protect my weak eyes from strong sunlight. Cards for my pocket that explained a peculiar intermittent fault with my memory. Atticus was gently, and probably unintentionally, reminding me that I had vulnerabilities.

So, by God, did he. “I’m sending you back to Caldicott Hall, young man. You stowed away on the baggage coach to get here. You can accompany it back to the Hall tomorrow.”

“I did not stow away. I traveled with your trunks like I sometimes do, and nobody asked me nothin’. This ain’t the army, and following Lord Harry wasn’t the first time you disobeyed an order.”

On the one hand, I admired Atticus’s courage. On the other hand, he needed to learn some damned deference. Some subtlety.

“An officer who disobeys orders can be stripped of rank and drummed out of the regiment.”

Atticus took the hatbox to the wardrobe. “He can also live to follow better orders another day. You can’t abide stupid orders. For me to stay at the Hall and watch Lee be a brat was stupid.”

I could not have the boy loose on his own reconnaissance, ignoring my authority and disappearing from the Hall on a whim.

“Atticus, sit down.”

He exercised some prudence and did as he was told. He took the capacious reading chair by the hearth, which made him look small and powerless. Blinking guileless eyes up at me rather overdid the innocent orphan act.

“I cannot afford a distraction,” I said, drawing up the stool before the vanity. “I wanted to refuse the marquess’s request. Very likely, he’s making too much of unfortunate coincidences. One doesn’t say that to a marquess, but if he’s right, and somebody is trying to kill him, and I turned him away…”

“His death would be your fault. You’d be blamed for laughing at a man honestly in danger.”

“More or less, and I cannot abide the notion of a peer’s death on my conscience.” Of anybody’s death. Of anybody else’s death, though I wasn’t strictly or exclusively responsible for Harry’s demise, or so I told myself. “Society already has a dim view of me, and I can’t help that, but neither do I want more tarnish on my good name.”

“It ain’t tarnished, guv. Just dented a bit.”

“If I investigate, and despite my best efforts, the marquess is killed, my good name won’t be worth the mud on Atlas’s horseshoes.”

Atticus stared at his boots. “Damned if you investigate and damned if you don’t?”

“Precisely, unless the marquess is a fool, and nobody is trying to kill him, in which case, I poke around Hampshire, endure the marchioness’s rudeness, and return to the Hall in time for plowing and planting.”

Atticus took less than a second to follow my reasoning. “You don’t think he’s a fool.”

“I’ve met his heir. I cannot indulge in an abundance of optimism, Atticus.”

“Damn Tam? The staff likes him.”

Fast work, young man. “He’s not at all what he seems. The marchioness has secrets of the sort Lady Ophelia will know, and Dalhousie hasn’t been entirely honest with me. If you are to bide here, you must promise me on the soul of your sainted mother that you will exercise more caution than you have ever exercised in your short and peripatetic life. I cannot consistently guard your back.”

And that drove me nigh to Bedlam.

“Me mam wasn’t no saint, ’cause here I am,” Atticus retorted. “Miss West will be here tomorrow with Lady Ophelia. We all guard each other’s backs. You aren’t on reconnaissance, all on your lonesome, fifty miles from camp, guv. I wish you’d figure that out.”

“I’m still not happy with you, Atticus. I can’t trust you to follow orders.”

He began piling the trunk’s shirts, breeches, and waistcoats on the bed. “You can trust me to ignore stupid orders. That won’t change. You did likewise. I know you did, or you’d be dead three times over.”

I wanted to hug him and swat his insightful little hindquarters. “I interpreted the occasional vague order to suit applicable circumstances.”

“I interpreted orders too. Brought Shakespeare for reading, my copybook for writing, and I will send letters to Lee and Mr. Pringle on the regular. Miss West will help with my penmanship, and you can tell me what all the big words mean.”

“They mean you have a lot more to learn.”

He surveyed the heap of expensive tailoring on the bed. “I already know that. I can stay?”

“For now, but for heaven’s sake, keep your head down, your mouth shut, and your tail tucked. We are in enemy territory and low on powder, shot, rum, and rations.”

The prospect daunted me, given the seriousness of Dalhousie’s situation. Atticus taking matters into his own hands confounded me. Loyalty was a fine quality, disobedience a singular fault, and I knew to my sorrow where the combination could lead.

“I will be in the library until it’s time to change for supper,” I said. “You will sleep on the cot in the dressing closet, get yourself a key to this apartment, and be otherwise the most invisible, unremarkable lad ever to mumble a tired grace before his supper.”

“You looking over his lordship’s book collection? Miss West says you can tell a lot about a man from his books.”

I said that too. “I’m off to write to my mother.”

“Her Grace? You saw her just yesterday.”

“No matter. Some orders, my boy, are not open to any interpretation whatsoever. You’d best learn to discern them when you hear them.”

I left on that admonitory note, dissatisfied with the whole exchange and also a little proud of Atticus’s initiative. Vexed and worried, but proud too.

Miss Morton’s tour of the Dalhousie Manor portrait gallery the next afternoon was both witty and informative, but my mind was on Atticus and the fact that I’d essentially let him off with a warning. To make him copy sonnets or subsist on bread and water would have been foolish. He needed sharp wits and to be seen going about the business of a tiger-cum-boot-boy.

Sonnets were punishment for naughty lordlings, and whatever else Atticus was, lordling did not apply. As Miss Morton maundered on about the current marquess’s grandfather, it occurred to me that Society had no idea what to do with me, and I had no idea what to do with Atticus.

“I do see a resemblance about the eyes,” I said. “A striking blue.”

“Or a flattering blue on the part of the portraitist. My own father was said to be very like my grandpapa, but of course, I knew him later in life.”

“Your parents are still extant?”

“Papa went to his reward four years ago, and I came to live with my step-aunt in the Dalhousie dower house.” Miss Morton nodded in the direction of a couple done up in the magnificent plumage of the previous century. “Quite a coupe, for Aunt to marry a Dandridge spare. By rights, Tamerlane’s mama should not have looked so high, but she was pretty and charming, and they were said to be a love match.”

They certainly looked to be in love, but perhaps that was more artistic license. “What of you?” I asked. “Have you no interest in matrimony?”

Her smile lost some of its warmth. “If I’m to look after a man to earn my keep, my lord, I’d prefer to look after the devils I know. Tam appreciates me, and I’m not sure a husband would. I have a competence, not as generous as Tam’s, but earning its modest way in the cent-per-cents. Dalhousie gives us the run of the family seat and assures me he always will, so I’m content.”

Miss Morton was dishonest, at least in this detail. Busy, useful, independent, and cheerful she might be, but I doubted she was content.

“If you could marry without the threat of children, would the institution hold more appeal for you?”

“The threat of children?” Her graciousness faltered further. “An odd word choice, my lord.”

“The threat of childbed, then, if I might be so indelicate.”

She moved along to a portrait of the current marquess as a youth. The artist had tried to imbue the stripling with a dignity foreign to his years. The result was serious, stiff, and a little sad. Dalhousie probably wished the portrait hung in a more obscure location.

“One doesn’t regard childbed as a threat,” Miss Morton said. “To be fruitful and multiply is biblically ordained, a privilege, a divine honor. Marriage without a thought for procreation would be like buying an officer’s commission with no intention of serving on the battlefield. A costume parade for cowards.”

My question had touched a nerve, clearly, because that was direct speech from a woman who likely chose every word carefully.

“Is that what marriage is for the husband? A cowardly costume parade?” Certainly, the Regent’s military honors qualified as such, and so fashionably too.

“A husband risks losing his esteemed wife in childbed, my lord, and surely we have wandered far afield from any topic the marchioness would consider appropriate in present company.”

Present company being the ancestors, who, according to every elder I’d consulted, had been a rollicking, blasphemous, lusty lot in their most decorous moments. I had read some of my grandfather’s memoirs, which dated from before the days of the present, mentally afflicted, king. The royal court had been a procession of scandals and intrigues, leavened by adultery, fornication, graft, and inebriation, while the king and queen tried in vain to set an example of decorum and devotion.

One had to give poor Mad George credit for attempting to break with previous royal tradition.

“If Dalhousie’s wife dies in childbed, he’ll marry again,” I said. “And again and again. He’ll have as many marchionesses as he pleases and likely grow richer with each wedding. You will forgive my choice of topic, but I’m only recently engaged, and thus the institution of marriage is much on my mind.”

Miss Morton sent me one of those exactly-how-peculiar-is-Lord Julian? looks.

Somewhere among the beruffed and hose-clad earls, a sense of relief settled over me. Hyperia had arrived. I had heard no carriage wheels clattering on the cobbles. No swift passage of feet in the corridor, signaling footmen hustling along in anticipation of luggage to be unloaded.

I simply knew. My beloved was near, and my heart was lighter.

I’d had a similar, though less pleasant, experience when Arthur had taken ship for France. I’d been miles from the coast, we’d said our good-byes hours earlier, and yet, in the middle of an otherwise busy day, I’d been engulfed by a hollow ache. I had known to a moral certainty that my only surviving brother had left England’s shores.

Miss Morton prattled gamely on, alluding to royal favors granted by King Charles II in exchange for personal favors extended by a countess-elevated-to-marchioness of the day. When the poacher wore a crown, his thievery became a matter of family pride in a mere century and a half.

“Miss Morton, while we’ve turned our attention to the general topic of mischief, what do you make of Dalhousie’s concerns regarding his safety?”

She stopped before the blazing hearth, the only source of warmth in a large room with an abundance of windows.

“I have considered what to say in answer to that question, my lord, and decided that only blatant, unflattering honesty will serve. You must take the marquess’s concerns seriously. He is a wealthy, powerful peer who has doubtless acquired enemies and detractors over the years. I realize that Tam must come under suspicion for form’s sake, if nothing else, and I am confident whoever means Dalhousie ill is counting on Tam taking the blame.”

“That theory has occurred to me, though it is lamentably true that Tamerlane will benefit enormously from Dalhousie dying without issue.”

“There, you would be wrong, my lord.” Miss Morton held slender hands out to the fire’s heat. “Tam has all the freedom in the world now, to study, to ponder, to wander the estate, and to pass the time with anybody he pleases. He can marry anybody he likes, or never marry at all. If you hang the title around his neck, then he loses what he values most. He’ll be expected to vote his seat, order a lot of lackeys about, and marry the heiress of his mama’s choosing. He’d be miserable. If we think he’s difficult now, I cannot imagine what he’d become if he inherits the title.”

An interestingly fierce speech. Would the title cost Tam what he valued most—his freedom, ostensibly—or cost Miss Morton the post of manager and supporter-in-chief of her frivolous cousin?

I was spared the effort of a polite reply by one of the handsome footmen stepping through the open door.

“A carriage, Miss Morton, my lord. The marquess’s other guests have arrived.”

“Delightful,” Miss Morton said, all smiles. “Please let the kitchen know, Shinley. Fancy trays in the formal parlor, braziers to heat the guest bedrooms if the hearths aren’t sufficing. You’ll inform the marchioness?”

“I’m on my way to her parlor next, miss.”

“Excellent. To have some lively ladies on hand will be just the thing for the whole family. Thank you, Shinley.”

She beamed at the footman as if he personally had conjured the miracle of good company, and he went smartly on his way.

“Will you greet your Miss West now, my lord? I cannot wait to renew my acquaintance with her, and Lady Ophelia is always a font of the most interesting news.”

The best gossip, in other words. “I will most assuredly greet my intended with you. We spent the Yuletide holidays together, and I have limited myself to three letters a week ever since she left Caldicott Hall.”

Hyperia had sent me three replies, and thus we did our part to keep the express riders in coin. Sometimes her epistles were brief, recounting a tiresome day of duty calls and at homes. Other times, she admitted to missing me. I treasured every jotting and intended that our grandchildren would as well… except that Hyperia did not want children.

With the marchioness and Dalhousie looking on, I limited my greeting to bowing over Hyperia’s hand. A lavish, silent joy hummed between us nonetheless. I was likewise correct with Lady Ophelia, who presented her cheek for a kiss. The gesture was not lost on the marchioness, and I appreciated Godmama’s display of support.

After tea, sandwiches, cakes, and more discussion of the insufferable winter roads, Hyperia asked me to accompany her to her room. She declared that she’d brought me some books from Town and would forget to pass them along if she did not see to this detail immediately.

I graciously assented to accompany her. We were engaged to be married, and such nonsense was both our right and expected of us.

“Jules,” she said, leaning close as we gained the first landing. “Lady Ophelia says we’re not to trust Lady Dalhousie any farther than you could throw the Regent.”

His Royal Highness was a delicate flower of nearly twenty stone. “Did she say why?”

“Details to follow when she can explain them to us both.”

“Don’t trust Tamerlane either,” I said as we reached the first floor. “He professes to be an eccentric scholar but forgot that Pliny the Younger was nephew to the Elder rather than his son.”

“He might have been testing your own attention to detail. Did you correct him?”

“Of course not. Let him think I’m as dim as a newel post. God above, I have missed you.”

She squeezed my arm. “I’ve missed you too. Is Dalhousie truly in danger?”

“I believe he is. I will elaborate when you and I can be private with Lady Ophelia.”

We reached the apartment designated for Hyperia’s use, which happened to be next to my own. Miss Morton’s doing, no doubt. The door was open, suggesting Hyperia’s trunks were within and perhaps a maid or two as well.

“We’ll have our hands full here, Perry, and whoever has made attempts on Dalhousie’s life won’t quibble at staging accidents for those intent on keeping the marquess safe.”

“Precisely why this cannot be a solo investigation, Jules. Or do I mistake the matter?”

Such sternness. I kissed her cheek. “You mistake nothing. I’d best retrieve those books, or people might think you told a falsehood merely to find a moment alone with me.”

She kissed me back. “Join Lady Ophelia and me for a nightcap in her sitting room after supper. I did bring books for Atticus.”

My hopes for an exchange of more personal greetings were dashed by the presence of a maid and a footman ostensibly unpacking Hyperia’s trunks while, in fact, flirting their eyelashes off. I took myself along to my own apartment, though waiting until the end of the day to report developments thus far would be frustrating.

I had my hand on the latch of my sitting room door when a piercing scream issued from within.