Page 6 of A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (The Lord Julian Mysteries #8)

Chapter Six

“What do you make of this?” Dalhousie thrust a single sheet of foolscap at me.

I’d found him at his desk in his private study. At Caldicott Hall, I’d learned to my dismay that a conscientious peer was in the ordinary course held hostage by mountains of correspondence. I’d taken months to develop a system for dealing with Arthur’s vast piles of mail, and only a battalion of well-trained clerks made my absence from the Hall possible at all.

A single sentence in tidy black script adorned the page: Hampshire’s woods might be dangerous, but for you, London’s streets shall be deadly.

“Do you recognize the handwriting?” I asked, holding the paper up to the window.

“No, I do not. Looks like schoolboy penmanship to me. Tidy, unembellished, no flourishes. And before you ask, Tam scrawls. I’d expect that sort of precision from Northby or any clerk. I employ at least a dozen.”

The marquess remained seated at his desk, and adherence to strictest decorum dictated that I should not sit until he’d given me permission to do so. I took the wing chair opposite the desk anyhow. My presence at Dalhousie Manor hadn’t deterred the marquess’s detractor one bit, and that was both alarming and satisfying.

“Do you buy all of your paper from Reading Stationers?” The watermark was clear and simple, the paper pristine. New, in other words. Not a specimen that had been moldering in some traveling desk for years.

“For the London residence, I buy from a shop in Bloomsbury. For the Manor, Reading is cheaper and more convenient.”

I considered the precise, legible script. “Does everybody in this shire patronize the Reading shops?”

Dalhousie lounged back behind a desk that was built in proportion to the marquess himself and doubtless six times his age. “What are you getting at?”

“Who wrote this note?” I set the page on the desk blotter. “Somebody dwelling at the Manor, or somebody who does not dwell at the Manor? If the Manor alone uses the Reading stationer, then we are more likely dealing with somebody who dwells at the Manor.”

“Not definitely?”

I leaned forward and tapped the paper safe sitting on the corner of the desk. “Not definitely. How many callers have you had in the past two weeks? Any one of them could have ducked in here and helped themselves to some of that paper. Was the note mailed?”

Dalhousie shook his head. “Stashed in with the usual lot. We pick it up from the posting inn before noon each day. Anybody could have dropped this into the innkeeper’s mailbag. By courtesy, he’ll handle mail locally without bothering to see to the postage.”

Well, no. Postage was usually paid by the receiving party, but Dalhousie, as a peer, had the privilege of franking mail with a simple signature in lieu of paying postage. He ought to reserve that privilege for official parliamentary mail, but most peers extended franking to any correspondence passing through their households.

The innkeeper’s system wasn’t courteous so much as it acknowledged the practical realities. Northby was doubtless charged for even local mail. Dalhousie could not be—reason number three hundred and seventeen for the locals to resent him.

“This note should reassure you,” I said, wondering how soon I could show it to Hyperia. “You are instructed to avoid London. The implication is that you are safer in Hampshire.”

Dalhousie rose, and because he was superior to me in rank, I should have been on my feet as well. I remained seated, and he didn’t seem to mind.

“The reality is that I came close to death twice in Hampshire. I might well be easier to kill here at the Manor, and I can’t very well court the proper heiresses if I’m cowering behind the hedges in Hampshire.”

“Are you doomed to court an heiress?” Most peers were.

“Not doomed, but Mama favors unions that blend affection with practicality.”

Meaning the previous marquess had not married money—had, in fact, stepped off that path after a willing and well-heeled bride had been found in Lady Albert, lest Dahlia create a gargantuan scandal. The present marquess was apparently solvent, but if he married a woman of modest settlements, his son might be forced to take a more mercenary path to the altar.

Assuming Dalhousie lived long enough to marry and have a son. “Have you made those lists I requested? Liaisons, social enemies, debtors?”

He opened a drawer and thrust another sheet of paper at me. “I had the same mistress in Town for eight years. Paid her off in the autumn, and we parted friends. She should be in a position to become one of the grander ladies in her home village, given the terms of parting.”

A common enough arrangement. The paper bore fewer than a dozen names, half of them women.

“Explain the ladies to me.”

Dalhousie found it necessary to straighten up the perfectly aligned decanters on his sideboard. “I can’t call them broken hearts, but those are women who might have developed hopes in my direction. I played the gallant to each of them for a handful of weeks here or there, but only that. Most women grasp that an escort is merely a friendly companion for an outing, but a few… I took a while to learn which women were reconciled to the realities and which were more fanciful.”

The fanciful ones skewed toward ladies, meaning the daughters of earls, marquesses, and dukes, or widows of peers. Dalhousie had also chosen women of noted beauty, and not a one qualified as an heiress. Hyperia’s name was not on the list. Was that tact on the marquess’s part, arrogance, or a simple oversight?

“Ladies,” I said gently, “tend to expect marriage from lords, Dalhousie.” I debated telling him that he’d become a laughingstock in the women’s retiring room, but why add to the man’s misery? “What about these men?”

Dalhousie’s relief at the change of subject was sad to behold. “I dueled with Lord Stanbridge. He said I’d toyed with his sister’s affections. I deloped, he missed, and that can leave a man resentful. He snubs me in public, not a cut direct, just moves away when I approach. Silly business. His sister is happily married to some earl. They have two sons.”

And Dalhousie had a raging case of envy toward the earl over the sons if not the countess. Live and learn. “Clarence Tenneby?”

“I still hold vowels he signed two years ago. Made a thousand-pound bet on the St. Leger, and his horse barely made it around the course. He claims the colt was somehow interfered with, but has no proof. The beast hadn’t been properly trained for flat racing. Plenty of speed, no stamina. A common error when an owner won’t listen to his horse trainer.”

We went on down the list, Dalhousie pacing while I made notes. The exercise was depressing—why did people cling so tenaciously to slights and hurts?—and enlightening. In each case, Dalhousie had tried to mend the breach. With the ladies, he’d made it a point to congratulate them on subsequent unions. With the men, he’d trotted out the put-the-past-behind-us speech and had thought it effective in about half the cases.

“This gets us nowhere,” he said, resuming his seat. “Fallow ground. Somebody is trying to kill me, but most of that lot haven’t motive anymore, or they bide in the shires at this time of year, or they lack the sort of bitterness that turns deadly.”

I put down my pencil. “You have a lot of experience with deadly bitterness?”

Dalhousie offered me a lopsided smile. “Lady Albert is bitter, though she hides it behind fluttery airs and eccentric behavior. Cousin Cressy isn’t bitter. She simply regards my mother as lower than vermin, and local opinion tacitly did not disagree with Cousin Cressy. My younger cousins are fortunately less interested in old feuds.”

“Tell me about the enclosure project.”

The smile winked out. “Northby’s been nattering on, hasn’t he? Let’s go for a hack. I’ll show you the land in question, and you can make up your own mind about my plans.”

“You’ve just been given a written reminder that the out of doors is dangerous for you, Dalhousie. Northby told me himself that he counts a Baker rifle in his arsenal, and those are deadly over a very great distance.”

“Now you imply that I should remove to London on the instant. Make up your mind, my lord.”

What decided me was the rising wind. The morning had been still. As the afternoon had progressed, the clouds had broken up, and damp sunshine was now accompanied by a chilly breeze. Over any distance, that breeze would affect the trajectory of a bullet, even one dispatched by an expert marksman.

“I’ll introduce you to my horse,” I said. “Don’t bother trying to buy him from me. Atlas saved my life more than once, and he will live to a contented old age in my care.”

Dalhousie all but galloped for the stable, and that more than anything told me the marquess was feeling the strain of the day’s developments. A stray shot in the woods and a passing stomach ailment had innocent explanations, however improbable.

A note delivered to a man’s own home was a different order of threat and, in its way, more unsettling. I accompanied Dalhousie from the house, more than a little unsettled myself, and the day was far from over.

“So this is the famous Atlas,” Dalhousie said, visually caressing my horse’s shoulders and chest. “He’s in the betting books, you know.”

“My horse is in the betting books? I haven’t raced him, not since we mustered out.”

A groom led Atlas to the stable yard, where another groom was already preparing Dalhousie’s majestic bay gelding for our outing. The bay had pronounced withers, which put him an inch or so taller than Atlas, with the neck set on higher, which also resulted in a taller presence.

“Your Atlas isn’t the subject of racing wagers.” Dalhousie watched the undulating muscles of Atlas’s quarters and the perfect motion of his gait at the walk. “One wager says he’ll outlive you. Another says you’ll provide for him specifically in your will.”

I had, of course. Arthur was to inherit Atlas, just as I was to inherit Beowulf, Arthur’s personal mount. Though why tell me this?

Not exactly kind, to bet that a man not yet thirty years old would be lucky to make it to forty.

Dalhousie ambled down the barn aisle, away from the grooms in the yard. His stable was the same blend of repose and industry that characterized any well-run equine establishment. Horses munched piles of hay or dozed contentedly while a lanky youth raked the dirt floor. Another junior groom had collected a half-dozen wooden buckets and was scrubbing them out at the pump in the yard.

The place smelled clean—for a stable. Of horses, manure, hay, grain, and straw rather than musty damp, rotten bedding, or mold. This wing included a dozen loose-boxes, with what I presumed were mounts for Tam, Miss Morton, Lady Dalhousie, guests, possibly Lady Albert, and the grooms when ferrying messages about the neighborhood. A chubby pony likely pulled the market cart for the cook, and a couple of gray-muzzled pensioners suggested a sentimental attachment on Dalhousie’s part to equine retirees.

A more compact version of the bay—still grand, though going swaybacked—whuffled as we approached.

“This was my father’s last mount,” Dalhousie said, “though Papa seldom took him far. Blenny expects his tithes.” The marquess withdrew an apple quarter from the pocket of his riding jacket. “Proper name Blenheim. Papa won him from Marlborough in a card game. I poach on Blenny’s behalf from Cook’s larders almost every morning.”

Marlborough, as in the Duke of, whose ancestral seat was Blenheim Palace. The horse crunched the apple into oblivion and would not be satisfied until he’d eaten all four quarters. Only then did he return to his pile of hay.

Dalhousie’s gaze became wistful. “Papa told me to take good care of the beast in the same breath that he admonished me to be patient with my mother and cousins.”

“And for the most part,” I said, “the horse is better company.”

Somebody was angry enough at Dalhousie to kill him, and yet, the more time I spent with the marquess, the more I could see him in a positive light. He was a decent sort, if inclined to think well of himself. Not exactly humble, but dutiful, generous with family, and pleasant company.

“Tell me about the enclosure,” I said as we returned to weak sunshine and dripping eaves. The marquess had avoided the question previously, and that made me more determined to have an answer from him.

The groom at the water trough gave me a dirty look, collected all six buckets, and marched off.

“That’s the usual reaction,” Dalhousie said, running a hand down Atlas’s glossy neck. “Unfortunate and understandable. How is your steed over fences?”

“Honest to a fault, powerful. Unbelievable stamina, in part because he doesn’t waste energy on nervous fidgets. He’ll overjump rather than risk misjudging an obstacle. He takes care of his rider, but you must do your part, or he grows rambunctious.”

“Rambunctious.” Dalhousie sent me a sideways glance. “One barely recalls the concept. This horse looks as nimble as he is fit. I don’t know when I’ve seen a more handsome specimen.”

“Would you like to try his paces?” I was protective of Atlas generally. I also knew he was capable of looking out for himself. If Dalhousie and I switched mounts, even a marksman at closer range would have difficult discerning that the tall bay carried me instead of the marquess.

“I would like to ride him,” Dalhousie said, thumping Atlas on the shoulder. “I most assuredly would. Very kind of you. You’ll find my Dover is a perfect gentleman on a grand scale.”

I was being pragmatic rather than kind. If Northby, for example, took a notion to attempt some target practice while Dalhousie and I trotted along the bridle paths, Altas could be counted on to get the marquess to safety.

We chatted about bloodlines and equine personalities as we rode from the stable yard at the walk. For all his height, I found that Dover had comfortable gaits. Atlas was on his best behavior with the marquess, and the marquess was acquitting himself well.

When we no longer had an audience, I circled back to the possible source of the enmity Dalhousie faced.

“The enclosure bill,” the marquess said, on the same sort of sigh reserved for mischievous children and dotty aunts. “It’s not even a bill yet, but I intend to see it pass. Our common land is mostly fen, my lord, and fen is worthless.”

“Fen as in peat bogs and marshes?”

“Exactly. Sodden most of the year. Fit only for birds and briars. Drain soil like that, and you have excellent farmland. Leave it wild, and it yields an occasional trapped ewe and a fine crop of bugs.”

We debated as we rode the perimeter of the marshy ground. I pointed out that waterfowl made good eating, peat made for free heat, reeds were good thatch, and blackberry briars grew bountiful harvests of fruit. Dalhousie countered that land under cultivation could produce more than an occasional bucket of berries and that draining land and enclosing it would provide many jobs. With coin in hand, the commoner could buy all the berries and reeds and coal he pleased.

“You’ll pay generous wages, then?” I asked, even knowing that most of the jobs Dalhousie offered would be temporary and unskilled.

“Good wages,” he replied, frowning. “The village is not a charity to be supported by generosity alone. If I’m to install steam pumps instead of windmills—”

“Steam pumps! Great heavens, Dalhousie, you blaspheme.”

He grinned. “That’s what Northby says. He has no vision whatsoever. I’ve been to the true fenland east of Cambridge, my lord. The modest little project I envision here is nothing compared to what’s been accomplished there. London would starve without all that acreage under cultivation.”

“And you clearly judge London to be a public good.” Arthur would enjoy this discussion, which balanced conserving the old with taking advantage of the new. The topic made me uncomfortable.

The Creator had fashioned man a little lower than the angels, according to man’s account of his own rank, and the same hand had made the briars and birds. Who was the Marquess of Dalhousie to displace those residents from their God-given patch of earth?

The whole business left me with a sense of foreboding. “Talk to Miss West,” I said as we turned onto a bridle path bordering some mature woods. “Her father managed an enclosure without too much resistance from the commoners. He developed a scheme whereby he essentially pays rent to them for obliterating their rights in the land. I don’t believe drainage was involved, but the same principles apply.”

Dalhousie patted Atlas’s neck. “You and she are engaged to be married?”

“We are.”

“Congratulations. She’s a fine woman.”

Did a hint of regret lace that observation? A hint of missed opportunity? More than a hint?

Well, it should, and yet, Hyperia would want me to be gracious. “Miss West speaks highly of you as well, my lord. Shall we let the horses stretch their legs?” Atlas was being a pattern card of equine deportment, and the marquess’s bay was a polite soul as well, but both horses were keen to run.

So was I. Too much chat, too few answers.

“If you’d like to hop a stile or two, this path leads to the village, and then another will take us back to the Manor.”

“Lead on, and please recall that Atlas can overjump if he’s feeling mischievous.” My boy was capable of great leaps that could heave an unsuspecting rider right up out of the saddle.

“Dover doesn’t have to overjump, as tall as he is.” Dalhousie tugged down his hat brim, touched a heel to Atlas’s side, and cantered off.

I held Dover back enough to ensure we followed at a safe distance and prepared to enjoy the first decent riding I’d had in days. The bay tended to sprawl onto his forehand, but he was fit and took direction willingly enough. We were soon organized into a canter that covered ground like an equine version of the seven-league boots.

Up ahead, Dalhousie yelled, “Ware, stile!” just as Atlas gathered himself for a mighty bound over a weathered stile. His landing was foot perfect, and away he went, truly enjoying himself.

Dover knew the path well and came straight at the stile in excellent form. As he, too, soared over the obstacle, I heard a muted sound like a book smacking into a pillow. The horse landed well, then swerved hard to the right. The popping sound had become an erratic jingling, and my seat confirmed what my ears were telling me.

The girth had sprung loose on the offside, the double buckles dangling around Dover’s hooves.

“Dover, halt,” I said, hauling back stoutly on the reins and minding my balance as if my life depended on it. “For the love of God, boy, stand .”

We came to an awkward, sidling stop, every iota of my equestrian ability challenged by the process. The horse was unhappy to be parted from his trail mate, while the rider was considerably unnerved.

I hopped to the ground as Atlas’s hoofbeats faded to silence. “If you were not so well trained,” I muttered, patting Dover’s neck. “If I had not lived in the saddle for several years in Spain…” Dover and I were both breathing heavily, the horse still discontent to be denied his gallop home.

I unbuckled the nearside of the girth, draped it over the saddle, studied the saddle in some detail, and led the horse back to the bridle path along the trees. I could make my way to the Manor through the woods, but I had no guarantee that I’d find gates to lead Dover through along that path. Stiles did the work of gates, for two-legged traffic anyway, and I was unwilling to leave the saddle in the woods and do the riding bareback.

Dalhousie eventually found us when we were within a quarter mile of the lane leading to the stable.

“Atlas is absolutely splendid. We were a good mile on before I realized you’d gone missing. Did you take a tumble?”

“Nearly, but Dover’s good manners got us through what could have been a bad moment. The girth came undone.”

Dalhousie swung down. “Undone? The buckles somehow came undone ? That makes no sense. Do you mean the girth wasn’t tight enough and the saddle slipped to the side? I suppose that can happen, but you checked the snugness before you mounted.”

The marquess had completed his hearty gallop, Atlas had made the experience delightful, and his lordship’s mind was free of worries. I hesitated to end his respite from anxiety, but the obvious had to be stated.

“Dalhousie, Dover is your personal mount. Who else rides him?”

The marquess walked along beside me, Atlas and Dover following us on loose reins. “Nobody else rides him. There’s been no need. I’m here. I hack out regularly. The grooms could, I suppose, and in the past, they have if I’m from home for any length of time, but in this season of the year… oh rubbishing hell.”

Too rubbishing right. “The damage was done to the saddle,” I said. “The girth itself is fine, the buckles all securely stitched to the leather. The billets the buckles fasten to on the saddle all look fine as well, but high up under the skirt, near the tree, somebody worked at the stitching.”

“Somebody wanted me dead. Again.”

Northby’s profane humor— third time’s the charm —came to mind. Had he known a third attempt was in the offing? Had Northby arranged it?

“Somebody wanted you to take a fall, in any case.” From a very tall horse. “The billets held as long as we were toddling around, but as soon as Dover began to breathe deeply and move more quickly, the stitching was stressed enough to give. This little mishap tells us your detractor is a knowledgeable equestrian.”

“How do you figure that? Anybody can take a knife to leather stitching.”

A few years spent in the intermittent company of cavalry officers—to a man, experts on all matters equine—had taught me a thing or two.

“What was wanted was the right degree of stress on the stitching,” I said. “A horse’s lungs are huge, capable of holding roughly ten times the amount of air a man’s lungs can hold. When working hard—galloping over a distance, for example—the horse can take in as much as ten times the amount of air he’ll use at rest. He can also breathe much faster during exertion than we can if we take a notion to sprint. Somebody had to know how forcefully Dover’s barrel would expand and contract, how hard and how often, when he was given his head and put to the jumps.”

“He likes to jump,” Dalhousie murmured. “He’s good at it, being so tall. How the hell did you stay on?”

“Blind luck.” For years in Spain, I’d all but lived in the saddle. Those years had turned a competent equestrian into a horseman. I was nowhere near as fit as I’d been then, but the reflexes remained, thank the heavenly powers. “His high withers helped. Hard to get a saddle off conformation like his if the rider stays centered.”

“Bloody hell.” Dalhousie stopped as we came within sight of the stable. “The grooms might well be scheming to end my life. I’ve known those men since I bounced around on my first pony. I knew their fathers and uncles. The head lad scolds me if I neglect to poach Blenny’s apple of a morning. They hate the enclosure idea, but their jobs aren’t jeopardized by it. I don’t know what to say.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. The next part was too hard to put into words: Dalhousie also did not know what to do . For a man of Dalhousie’s standing, that admission was too difficult to even think.

“Mishaps occur.” I walked on, Dover in step with me. “We look after saddles and bridles because we know mishaps occur, despite our every effort to prevent them. No harm done.”

Dalhousie got moving and swung his gaze from the handsome stable to me. “No harm done? You could have been killed.”

“Not likely. The ground is soft with incessant dampness, the bridle paths free of rocks and boulders. If this is the part where you nobly send me home in an effort to keep the noncombatants safe, might I remind you that I wore a uniform for years and was often at large behind enemy lines while wearing civilian attire, a far more dangerous state of affairs for a British officer. The French did get hold of me. The torments of the damned did befall me. Whatever my shortcomings, and they are legion, I am hard to kill. A little tumble from the saddle would not have signified.”

I half expected the hand of God to come down from the winter sky and spank my lordly bum for those lofty pronouncements, but I also spoke the truth. Spend enough hours on enough horses, particularly traveling at speed over rough terrain, and one made an unscheduled departure from the saddle sooner or later.

Usually without lasting ill effects. Usually.

“A mishap,” Dalhousie muttered, trudging onward. “Very well, a mishap. A shooting accident, a stomach ailment, a nasty note, and now a mishap. At this rate, I should qualify for honorary cat status, assuming I survive the next few months. I will name my firstborn son Leo.” He babbled on, half to himself, while I considered the day’s events.

Dalhousie’s enemy knew horses, had access to firearms, had access to the very food in Dalhousie’s dining room—unless the stomach ailment had truly been a stomach ailment—and knew that Dover was an avid jumper.

That all sounded like Tam Dandridge to me, but then, perhaps it was supposed to.

I had handed Dover off to the groom and was accompanying Dalhousie back to the Manor when his lordship put another question to me.

“Do I make plans to remove to deadly London, my lord, or prepare for more dangerous mishaps here at home?”

“That is up to you. We simply take different precautions depending on where you bide.”

He looked puzzled, so I spelled it out for him. “Who knows your personal mount and knows that he’s a keen jumper? Who knows your favorite dessert? Who knows which saddle goes on your personal mount, of the dozen or so I saw in the stable? Who can tell which shooter you are from the back, out of a line of gentry all similarly attired and similarly engaged?”

Even applying himself to the riddle, the marquess still needed a moment to admit where the evidence led. “It’s not Northby, is it? Somebody in my family wishes me dead.”

“Not quite. Somebody in your household wishes you dead. Could be the head footman, the gardener, or Lady Albert. The point is, your enemy might well be among those who will remove to London with you.”

We made the rest of the journey to the Manor in silence, and when I had changed out of riding attire, I crossed directly to Hyperia’s apartment and rapped stoutly on her door.