Page 5 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Five

“We do the shoot at the end of January,” Hugo Northby said, striding along a frozen bridle path. “Been doin’ it since the Flood. Tradition, hospitality, socializing in the winter doldrums. Bag enough to fill the village stewpots and so forth. Gives the ladies an excuse to wear their new habits before spring, catch up on all the gossip.”

While the men stumbled half tipsy through the undergrowth and shot at hapless birds. “Do the women participate?”

“Some do.” He paused at a cross-path though he wasn’t remotely winded. “Cressy is a dead shot. Miss Susanna can give a good account of herself. Her ladyship—Lady Dal, not Lady Al—used to. Lady Albert tromps around with Cressy to be sociable but rarely takes a shot. Makes a racket, does Lady Al, no matter how many times you shush her. Cressy pities her, so we endure as best we can.”

Northby was lean, gray, and vigorous. His looks had something in common with the land—rugged but comfortable. The acres left in woods were by his choice. The acres turned to pasture were by his design as well. The terrain was natural but not wild, and similarly, Northby was a domesticated man, but he’d never be a pet.

I found him instinctively trustworthy, which had probably been said of many a murderer and swindler. “What of beaters?” I asked. “Did you use them to drive the game into the guns?”

“A half dozen or so. I don’t care for the practice myself. Hunting dogs are all well and good. They know what they’re doing. A lot of undergardeners and village boys scaring up the grouse… One has to manage it carefully so the game is driven at an angle toward the guns, and the beaters know precisely where to stop and how to retreat and such. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, a marquess gets a hole in his hat?”

Northby considered the diverging paths, which ran through his sodden, barren wood. Melting ice dripped from curving branches of bracken, and tree bark appeared black against the pervasive mist. The occasional rhododendron still bore shiny green foliage, as did the thorny holly bushes lurking beneath the oaks and maples, but spring was not yet even a whisper in the wood.

I would return to Dalhousie Manor with dampness penetrating every garment, but one could not say the morning was rainy.

Mizzling, more like, and yet, Northby had nearly leaped at an opportunity to show me where the marquess’s mishap had occurred.

“I cannot understand how Dalhousie got into anybody’s gun sights, my lord. He was on the end of the line of shooters—he prefers not to be in the center—and I was on the other end, where I could keep the entire company in sight. The game was on the wing from the eastern woods, and the shots were popping off as will happen. As is supposed to happen. When we finished that round, flasks out, dead birds being collected, Dalhousie came tramping along behind the firing line with his hat in his hands and thunder in his eyes.”

Northby started off down the right-hand path. “I give him credit for not rousing the watch. He pulled me aside, shoved his hat at me, and said he’d be going in early. He accused nobody, and as I am the magistrate, I am the person to whom such complaints should have been made.”

“Explain who was standing where, if you please.”

“Just getting to that part, my lord.” He stopped about twenty yards farther on.

The map in my head said Northby’s manor and surrounding outbuildings were to our back. We’d walked along the crest of a shallow ridge, surrounded on both slopes by old forest that bordered a tamer home wood, open pastures, and on the eastern side, good old English heath. Pushing game from the heath-side into the guns first made sense, there likely being more fowl closer to the open spaces, waterways, and uncultivated ground.

“The shooters were along here,” Northby said, using his arm to designate the firing line. “Ranged around the slight rise. Cressy and the ladies were in the middle, I was on this end, Dalhousie at the far end of the line near that big oak.”

“Can you recall who else was shooting at that point?” The typical shoot was a tiresome affair, with much waiting around while game was driven forward, then some shooting, then more loitering about while the kill was collected, and yet still more chat and tipple while the beaters went around to a different patch of ground and so forth. A reliable folding stool and a full flask were usually of more use than an actual gun.

I found the whole process unsporting, even if the result was a winter feast in a hungry village. In medieval times, when the hunter’s weapon had been a bow and arrow, the practice had some justification. Not so with modern weaponry ranged exclusively on the side of the hunter and heath disappearing apace beneath plows and behind enclosure walls.

“I looked down the guest list,” Northby said. “Cressy and I noted who was shooting, and it was most of the party, because this was early in the outing. Some of the ladies present didn’t bother taking a shot, of course, and some of the gents were too busy arguing over the race meets to bother. I bagged a few grouse and had the gamekeeper send them on to Vicar.”

“Can you assure me that Tamerlane Dandridge was accounted for?”

Northby studied the distant oak, a towering, gnarled specimen that would have done Birnam forest and its weird sisters proud.

“Tam was on the line when I looked. Cressy says the same, and believe me, Mrs. Northby does not agree with me for the sake of my pride. She speaks her own mind.”

Northby respected her for it, which suggested that perhaps Cressy hadn’t been all that enamored of her lordly intended all those years ago.

“I’d like to meet Mrs. Northby.”

“She was accounted for as well, my lord, if you don’t mind some plain speaking. Lady Al along with her.”

Very plain speaking. “Several parties who might wish Dalhousie ill are in a position to hire their mischief done, Northby. The guests we can account for are relieved of immediate guilt, but not of all suspicion.”

Northby considered me down the length of an undainty nose. “It ain’t Tam, I can tell you that. The mischief you refer to is attempted murder, my lord. He lacks the stomach for it. He’s bone-lazy and not as smart as he thinks he is—Susanna Morton runs circles around him and makes him think he’s in charge—but Tam is singularly deficient in ambition. He has adopted the role of tolerated and not-quite-poor relation, and it suits him.”

Northby echoed Susanna’s assessment of her cousin—simply not interested in the title—in gruffer terms.

“A rattlesnake can appear harmless when enjoying a nap in the sun.” Why did I want so badly to blame Tamerlane?

Northby resumed walking, taking us back in the direction we’d come. “The boot is rather on the other foot, my lord. Tam is among those who would genuinely lament Dalhousie’s death. They get on. They understand each other. Tam no more wants to be marquess than I want to wear one of Cressy’s bonnets. They’re very fetching—on her. On me… You take my point?”

“You’re saying Dalhousie is not well-liked?”

Northby stopped where the paths intersected. “He’s a charming devil, and mind you, we are family of a sort, not that he’d see it that way. I’m sure in his clubs, with his cronies in the Lords, bidding at Tatts, he’s the soul of bonhomie. He’s polite to all and remembers to grace the village fete and so forth. Rides in the first flight, sees to Vicar’s salary. The locals have fond memories of him as a boy. He tends to all the usual obligations.”

“But none of the warmth?” Arthur wasn’t warm to appearances, but he cared deeply about his responsibilities and the people in his employ. Wages alone did not earn him the sort of loyalty Caldicott Hall enjoyed.

“Dalhousie was and is spoiled,” Northby said, striking off in the direction of his tidy manor. “Only son, heir, strapping handsome lad. His mother spoiled him, his tutors, his governors… He’s put an enclosure bill before Parliament, and by God, he will get what he wants in even that.”

“How many acres?”

“Half the damned heath. The other part is mine, and I haven’t the means or the mean-spiritedness to build a wall around it. Most of the village depends on the open land to run a few ewes and heifers. The other half scrape up a patch of potatoes or turn their pigs loose on the heath in autumn. They need those common acres to survive, my lord, and Dalhousie merely wants them for himself.”

In the situation Northby described, the marquess owned the common land, while the commoners retained various rights in it. A commoner was often entitled to graze livestock on such ground, to gather up building or walling stones from its surface, traverse the land freely, harvest its peat or sod, and fish its waters. In most cases, the commoners could also collect gorse for under-thatching, dyes, or mattresses and, provided they moved their temporary gardens regularly, grow the occasional patch of potatoes or turnips without drawing any notice.

“Are you telling me the whole village has a motive to kill Dalhousie?” I asked as we tramped along.

“Tam wouldn’t pursue enclosure. He sees the harm in it and, more to the point, sees the effort and expense of building miles of wall just to make full coffers overflow. I’ve half a mind to oppose the whole project, but our MP is Dalhousie’s man, and the courts take forever to waste a lot of money.”

“You’ve let your views be known?” Northby certainly wasn’t being coy with me.

“In no uncertain terms.” Northby moved aside a heavy branch fallen across the path and resumed marching. “Dalhousie smiles at me patiently, says I must accustom myself to the notion of progress, and assures me he will employ many of the village lads as hod carriers when the wall goes up. Hod carriers. You cannot eat hod, my lord. You cannot spin wool from hod. You cannot make your roof snug and dry with it.”

Vast disgust filled that recitation. A few years’ work carrying bricks, mortar, and rocks for Dalhousie’s masons would be no compensation for the destruction of a lifestyle that had served the local families for centuries.

Would Northby kill Dalhousie to stop the enclosure from happening? “If you took a notion to do Dalhousie a mortal injury, a local jury would acquit you, Northby, or at least see that you got transportation rather than the noose.”

His smile was fierce and merry. “But then Cressy would be wroth with me, wouldn’t she? You do not cross that woman lightly, my lord, and while she would hesitate to put a bullet through Dalhousie, she might take him on in court, or have me do it. She’s biding her time and probably devising some whispering campaign that will attack Dalhousie’s vanity.”

I was getting winded, so brisk was Northby’s pace. “I trust finding a bride will keep Dalhousie occupied for the immediate future?”

“Oh, probably, and pity the poor lady who speaks her vows with him. Spoiled, I tell you, and spoiled brats do not make good husbands, according to the leading authority on the matter.”

His own dear Cressy, no doubt. I liked her sight unseen. “Do you still have Dalhousie’s ruined hat?”

Northby’s rambling slowed as we topped the rise that gave us a view of his lovely home. North Abbey was fashioned of mellow gray granite with plenty of white shutters and trim and a bright red double door. The day itself was dreary, while Northby’s dwelling looked like the snug refuge he likely found it.

“I kept the hat,” he said. “Possible evidence, and also… I like looking at it. Somebody was inches from doing us all a favor, and yes, my soul is eternally damned for uttering such sentiments. As if Dalhousie will go straight to heaven for putting Tom Davey’s eleven children on the parish when that wretched wall goes up.”

I wished desperately that Arthur had been available to consult. The whole business of an enclosure was politically fraught, extremely expensive, and complicated. Dalhousie’s project might not have a prayer of parliamentary support, or it might be mere weeks from gaining final approval. Arthur would know, and he’d have the particulars.

“Half the heath is still a lot of open land,” I said. “Dalhousie might be amenable to compromise.”

“Why?” Northby stomped off across the cold, wet ground. “Why would a marquess compromise when he technically owns half the common ground as well as the land under every building in the village?”

“He might modify his enclosure ambitions to save his own life.”

Northby kept walking. “The idea bears consideration, my lord. You raise a good point. I will have to take this up with Cressy to see what she thinks. I’ve a Baker rifle, you know. Damned thing can shoot the halo off an angel at six hundred yards, when I’m feeling accurate.”

“I will pray your accuracy deserts you, should we ever disagree on a significant matter.”

We made the rest of the journey to the house in silence, and when Northby showed me the hat—a fashionably tall exponent of the species—I came to two conclusions. First, the firearm involved had been a pistol, not a rifle. The bore of the shot was too small for a long-barreled weapon.

Pistols were easier to hide than fowling pieces, drat the luck.

Second, the marquess had been damned lucky. Even assuming he’d cocked his hat far to the side to facilitate aiming his own weapon, a bullet that passed through only his hat brim was traveling at a very odd angle. The ball had likely ricocheted off a rock or grazed a tree limb. Pistols had to be fired at close range to ensure any sort of accuracy, but this shot had gone astray, and thank heavens for that.

The marquess had missed an appointment with Saint Peter by mere inches.

“May I keep this?” I asked, examining the hat’s interior for a label.

“I don’t see the harm in letting you borrow it, but don’t lose the evidence, my lord. Cressy says third time’s the charm, and we’ve heard all about the poisoned trifle.”

“I will take better care of this hat than your wife takes of you.”

Northby laughed at that notion, and five minutes later, he bowed me genially on my way, hat in hand, so to speak. By the time I returned to Dalhousie Manor, I was cold, wet, tired, and also very, very perplexed.

Lunch was an improvement over previous meals. The marchioness, so unwelcoming to me at first, had subsided into chilly civility since Lady Ophelia’s arrival. Lady Albert was her usual chattery self, and both Susanna and Tamerlane encouraged her.

Dalhousie presided over the meal with the occasional gentle tease in Susanna’s direction or quasi-flirtation aimed at Hyperia or Godmama. They reciprocated in good humor, and somewhere between the chowder and the hot apple dumplings, I realized how socially backward I had become.

Once upon a time, I’d been able to hold my own in the gallant-banter department. My grasp of chivalry had included small courtesies in addition to risking my neck in the line of duty. Now, I was like the oaks wintering in Northby’s woods. Still standing, but unadorned by the vitality of social badinage, my capabilities as a cheerful companion withering even while I held imposing social status.

Hyperia was looking at me as I roused myself from that brown study. Her eyes held not concern, but rather, curiosity.

“Lord Julian has grown contemplative on us,” Tamerlane remarked. “I grant you, old Northby is not the most stimulating company, but he’s a good egg. He settles many a local squabble with a private chat over the brandy. A soul with less wisdom would escalate a lot of that nonsense into legal wrangling.”

“We do like Hugo,” Lady Albert added. “Cressy is more than passing fond of him, and that speaks well for anybody.”

“Uncle Hugo is sensible,” Miss Morton observed, “and devoted to Aunt Cressy. I don’t suppose I might have another half serving of dumpling?”

“I’ll share with you,” Dalhousie said from the end of the table. “On a day like this, apple dumplings in cinnamon sauce are inspired. My compliments to the kitchen.”

Miss Morton would doubtless ensure that Cook heard the accolade. Dalhousie made a silly game out of giving Miss Morton a much larger share of the divided dumpling. She predictably demurred, then refused the smaller half, while the whole table smiled patiently.

Tamerlane was deficient in ambition, according to the squire.

I was deficient in… nonsense. The same shortcoming had set me apart at university, where wagering, inebriation, and composing dog-Latin sonnets to barmaids had figured heavily on the curriculum. My puella loves another fella…

I’d suffered more than one prank from my brother officers as well—tent flaps sewn shut when I’d been napping, boots rendered filthy on the morning of a dress inspection—but I’d never bothered to retaliate.

I’d instead ridden into the countryside and attached myself to the nearest available troupe of bandits, considering the company an improvement. Bandits were seldom idle for long, and they took their banditry seriously enough that sewing a man’s tent flaps closed didn’t figure on their agendas.

“I applaud sense in anybody,” I said, trying to find a toehold in the conversation, “but kindness and a bit of jollity matter too.” I had just described my brother Arthur, whom I much admired. Harry had been short on sense sometimes, but gifted in terms of strategy and charm.

“I agree,” Miss Morton said, saluting me with a spoonful of dumpling. “We need sweetness to go with the sense.”

“And in you, dear cousin,” the marquess said, “the two could not be more agreeably blended.”

Gallant of him, to acknowledge what was more a courtesy connection than true cousinship.

“Hear, hear.” Tam raised his wineglass. “A toast to dear Suze, the best of us.”

Even the marchioness condescended to sip her wine, though she also was the first to leave the table.

“You have reached the pondering phase of the inquiry,” Hyperia said, taking my arm as the gathering broke up. “Anything in particular on your mind?”

Too much, of course, and I would have gone cogitating on my way without Hyperia’s patient prompting.

“Let’s collect Godmama, and I’ll report to both of my resident generals at once.” We moved down the corridor past lit sconces. Even the middle of the day was that gloomy, and the meal had left me physically lethargic. Mentally, Hyperia had the right of it. I was ruminating, which was not always a productive use of my mind.

We stopped at the foot of the steps that led up to the guest wing, and Hyperia nodded in the direction of an alcove several yards farther on.

Dalhousie shared the space with Miss Morton, and they were in close conversation. I could not make out the words, but clearly, Susanna was worried, and Dalhousie was offering reassurance. She wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her back, patted her shoulder, then kissed her forehead and resumed his soothing patter.

Hyperia and I retreated up the steps silently—thank heavens for thick carpets—and kept moving until we reached Lady Ophelia’s sitting room.

“What do you suppose that was about?” Hyperia asked, going to the window.

“Susanna, along with half the shire apparently, is concerned that Tamerlane will be blamed for Dalhousie’s difficulties, and their worries have some basis in fact.” I poked up the fire and added another square of peat to the flames. Apologies to the maids, footmen, and Atticus for my presumption.

“Tam would benefit from Dalhousie’s, demise” Hyperia said. “That solution seems much too easy.”

I admired the picture she made by the window, self-contained, mentally absorbed. “And yet, sometimes the French are truly retreating because they’ve been given a sound drubbing, and defeat is their only real option.”

“You think Tam did it?”

“I resent Tam,” I said slowly. “He’s the heir, and the expectation sits so lightly on him, he probably forgets it himself from time to time.”

Hyperia offered me the slightest smile. “Ah, jealousy is a cruel master. Everything sits lightly with Mr. Tamerlane Dandridge. If not for his pretensions to scholarship, he might just float away.”

“You don’t care for him?” Must I sound so pleased?

“I don’t trust him. I like Dalhousie, and I wish I didn’t.”

“Because?”

“You mustn’t start muttering, Jules. My dealings with the marquess are very old, boring business.”

My meal abruptly sat uneasily. “I promise not to mutter, curse, fume, or sigh. Well, I might curse quietly. Was he your lover?” Her handsome, wealthy, titled, robust, mentally sound, ambitious, self-confident…

Heaven defend me. I made myself wait for her reply.

Hyperia and I had agreed to a certain protocol when it came to the past. We would inquire directly of each other if a matter had stirred our curiosity. The answering party could put forth facts or keep particulars private, as they so chose. All very direct and abysmally sensible.

Hyperia had discreetly sampled the wares of enough willing partners that the questions thus far had been mine to ask and the answers hers to give. I did not see that pattern changing. I hadn’t been a monk, precisely, but I’d dallied rarely and never let a liaison turn into an affair.

“We were not lovers,” she said. “Not even close. You were off in Spain, I was getting comfortably ensconced on the shelf, and Dalhousie decided I’d make a suitable bodyguard for about a month one spring. We were assumed to be in the pre-courtship phase of the dance. I suspect he started the rumors in the clubs, or allowed them to start, but they didn’t reach my ears until after his lordship had moved on to another spinster-in-waiting.”

A gratifying hint of disgust laced her words. “You were tempted?”

She shook her head. “I was certain of his objectives from the start, and I think that’s why he preferred to escort the noncombatants. A plain miss, no matter her fortune, does not set her cap for a marquess in his prime. Lord Westhaven and I embarked on the same sort of campaign, but as a pleasant, expressly agreed upon undertaking from the start.”

“Whereas Dalhousie thought he could dazzle you for a few weeks while the matchmakers looked on in puzzlement and then leave you to sigh over fond memories?”

“Something like that. Five minutes in the ladies’ retiring room would have brought him down a peg. He’d used the same tactic so often that his eventual abandonment of me should have been the subject of wagers. And mind you, he was careful. He never led me to think we were courting in truth, and I would have warned him off if he’d put even a toe over that line.”

Because of me, I hoped.

I ought to have resented Dalhousie’s bumbling. He’d used—that was the word, used —the kind offices of unattached women to guard his bachelorhood. The arrogance of it, the if-I-shut-my-eyes-nobody-can-see-me reasoning limned his almighty consequence in human fallibility.

Spoiled he might be, but brilliance eluded him just as it eluded most of us. “Are you still angry with him?”

“I try to be, but I can also see that his dilemma is real to him. He did not want to marry. Society and the marchioness want him to marry above all else. He’s haunted and doomed and struggling against a fate he cannot control.”

“So he controls the fates of others, manipulating them as a consolation for his own titled, wealthy, vigorous powerlessness. What a coil.”

“What others?”

“He’s put an enclosure bill before—”

Lady Ophelia did not tap on the door before joining us—why should she?—but Hyperia and I were hardly in a torrid embrace when she interrupted us. That said a lot about the way we cared for each other and pleased me in the face of Godmama’s obvious disappointment.

“You two are supposed to be engaged,” she snapped. “I find you in a perfectly private situation, behind a solidly closed door, and one of you is staring out the window, the other frowning at the carpet. Must I draw you pictures?”

“Jules was about to report on his morning expedition to North Abbey,” Hyperia said, smiling blandly. “I’m interested in what he has to say.”

“Hugo Northby is nobody’s fool.” Lady Ophelia settled herself into a wing chair before the fire like a queen assuming her throne. “Cressida MacAllister was an heiress, just as her sister was. That’s why Tamerlane and Susanna are reasonably well-fixed. Those women were well set up. I’m not sure Dahlia could say the same, but she got her title, so perhaps her attractions lay in another quarter. Julian, stop looming. You’ll give me a crick in my swanlike neck.”

I handed Hyperia onto the sofa and remained on my feet. “Dalhousie is intent on enclosing half the heath. The village hates him. Northby and his dear Cressida joke about the third time being a charm, and I doubt even the local vicar will offer more than platitudes in Dalhousie’s favor.”

“Enclosure.” Lady Ophelia spat the word. “Plundering by any other name.”

“Progress,” Hyperia countered. “Papa enclosed about twenty acres at the family seat. Turned it into a market garden, and that produce makes a very pretty penny when sold in London. Healy is paying the commoners a sort of annual rent in exchange for their rights, or forgiving the rent they owe him. By agreement, he will never enclose another parcel of common land, and every person working the market garden must be a commoner.”

“Legal plundering,” Lady Ophelia retorted, “is the worst plundering of all.”

Or plundering was in the eye of the rights holder, depending on the financial arrangements. “Who thought up that scheme?”

“My mother, apparently. She said we all cooperated at haying, planting, and harvest. Why not cooperate when it came to gardening?”

“You should suggest that scheme to Dalhousie.” I leaned an elbow on the mantel. “You might save his life.” I went on to explain that he’d been shot at from behind, probably at close range, and almost certainly using a pistol. “Luck alone has preserved his life.”

“And you don’t share the general disdain for him?” Hyperia asked.

I thought of Harry, so glib and socially agile, but also so frustratingly self-absorbed. Or Arthur, the kindest of men, laced up in the most uncompromising dignity. Me, preferring the company of serious bandits to that of officers needing a bit of a lark.

“He’s doing the best he can,” I said. “He’s patient and kind with his family, and they would vex a saint. He holds his cousins in genuine affection. Northby says that Tam and Dalhousie get on, that they understand each other. We saw him reassuring Miss Morton at some length, and a less decent man would not have bothered. His mother is hardly a comfort and Lady Albert even worse. If Dalhousie is reluctant to bring a bride and children into this milieu, one cannot entirely blame him.”

My words surprised even me. My sympathy for Dalhousie had to do with Northby joking about the marquess’s chances of survival. I was also unable to look past the matchmakers turning Dalhousie’s evasive maneuvers into grist for amused female gossip.

Dalhousie would hate to be laughed at. He’d hate to think that his funeral would be an occasion for jocular gloating.

“The man needs allies, and he hasn’t the knack of making them,” I said. “Just the opposite.”

“Gets it from his mother,” Lady Ophelia replied. “Though, in her, the gift is more for making enemies. I have a few more letters to write, by the by.”

A subtle hint to take our leave. I assisted Hyperia to her feet and parted from her outside her door.

“You have allies, Jules,” she said when I would have gone in search of the marquess. “We aren’t the usual glittering exponents of St. James’s clubs or Mayfair’s ballrooms, but you can count on us.”

What had prompted her to issue that reminder? “Thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. Dalhousie was a fool for letting you slip through his fingers. My very luckiest of days when he did. I shall tell him that.” I kissed her cheek and departed, happy to note that I had both pleased and puzzled her.