Page 31 of A Lesson in Propriety (Merriweather Academy for Young Ladies #1)
Thirty-One
The sound of her door creaking open had Drusilla waking with a start, but before she could do more than swing her legs over the side of the four-poster bed and jump to the ground, Annaliese was stealing into her room, candle in hand and a finger to her lips.
“What is it?” Drusilla whispered.
“There’s a suit of armor strolling around the great hall.”
“What?”
“Shhh ... you heard me. A suit of armor is moseying around the castle.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just saw it after hearing the ferrets’ bells tinkling. I thought my little darlings were back to chasing one another around the armor, so I went to shush them so they wouldn’t wake anyone else up and ... that’s when I saw it, right in the great hall, swinging a mace as it walked about.”
“Please tell me you only saw one suit of armor down there.”
“That’s all I saw, but I wasn’t going to investigate the matter by myself, so I might be mistaken about that.”
“Let’s hope you’re not,” Drusilla said as she slipped a robe over her nightgown, stuffed her feet into slippers, and headed for the door. “We should probably arm ourselves.”
“Already have that covered,” Seraphina whispered as she edged into the room, handing Drusilla a pistol, Annaliese a sword, and keeping the blunderbuss for herself. She nodded toward the door. “Shall we?”
It didn’t take long to make it down the hallway and tiptoe down the stairs, the sound of the ferrets’ hisses and squeals reaching Drusilla’s ears the moment she stepped off the last stair.
“They’re not happy,” Annaliese murmured right before another squeal rang out, followed by a thud, which seemed to suggest the suit of armor might have given one of the ferrets a kick and sent it flying into...
Before Drusilla could finish the thought, Annaliese was in motion, racing down the hallway and roaring quite like one would expect a mama bear to roar when protecting its cubs.
Drusilla was running after her sister a second later, with Seraphina by her side, skidding to a stop once she reached the great hall and discovered Annaliese already faced off with the suit of armor, and one that was currently swinging the mace it was carrying and advancing on her sister.
Knowing she couldn’t very well shoot at whoever was underneath the armor—and there was no question it was human, given the heavy breathing that was coming out of the helmet—because there was a good chance she’d end up hitting Annaliese, Drusilla glanced around, spotted a mace that was, thankfully, on the smaller side, and dashed over to it.
After thrusting her pistol into the pocket of her robe, she snatched up the mace and sprinted toward her sister, having to use both hands to lift the weapon, as it was still far heavier than she’d anticipated, before she swung it at the suit of armor, a resounding thud reverberating around the room when it made contact with the breastplate.
For the briefest of seconds, nothing happened, but then the suit of armor began listing forward, quite like a falling tree, hitting the hard floor a heartbeat later, where it bounced ever so slightly, and then there was silence—until Wiggles and Pippin came charging out from underneath the table.
A bit of chattering erupted between the ferrets, quite as if they were coordinating an attack before Wiggles pounced on the breastplate and squeezed herself through the crack that separated the helmet from the rest of the suit while Pippin slipped underneath the chainmail.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected when the person underneath the suit began yelling a second later.
“Get ’em off me,” a distinctly male voice boomed out of the helmet.
“Ferrets aren’t like dogs,” Annaliese said, moving up to the man and doing not a thing to retrieve her ferrets. “They don’t respond well to commands, although they do seem to have quite the mean streak, especially when someone harms one of their own, which I believe you did to their sister. Unfortunately for you, Fidget, the ferret you kicked, appears to be coming out of her stupor, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that you made a grave error by kicking her, as she’s the most vicious of my little darlings.”
A bit of wiggling was the man’s first response to that, probably because he was wearing a suit of armor that didn’t allow him much mobility and that also seemed to have rendered him rather helpless on the floor. Deciding she might as well take advantage of his less-than-threatening state, Drusilla leaned over and yanked up the visor on the helmet, revealing a man she’d never seen before.
“And who do we have here?” she asked right as Wiggles poked her head out from the armor on the man’s sleeve while Pippin slithered out from the bottom of the breastplate.
“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.”
“Which is too bad, as it seems as if Fidget now has you in her sights, and it’s only a matter of time until she attacks.”
It was rather telling when the man immediately changed his mind and muttered that he’d tell her who he was, but only after she got rid of the ferrets.
Less than five minutes later, and after Irma, Mr. Grimsby, and Mrs. O’Sullivan rushed into the great hall to help, Drusilla stepped back from the man who’d now been relieved of his armor and was sitting on the floor with his hands tied behind his back, taking a moment to consider him.
There was no question that he was a man who was accustomed to living it rough, what with how his reddish-brown hair was shaggy and looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. His face was weathered and lined, and his build was on the wiry side, while the clothing he’d been wearing underneath the armor was well-worn and patched in places.
“Now that we’ve gotten you out of all that armor, and my sister has taken the ferrets a safe distance away from you,” Drusilla began, “what say we start with the basics, such as your name.”
“Name’s Blackeye Bailey.”
“And why are you in the castle, Blackeye Bailey?”
“I used to live here when I, ah, was a boatswain for Captain Thurgood Harvey, until he sold the place to Miss Ottilie and moved himself down to Florida.”
Given the way the man’s eyes had taken to darting around the room, looking at everything but Drusilla, it wasn’t much of a stretch to conclude he wasn’t exactly being truthful.
“That doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Maybe I was just missin’ the place and wanted to come back and mosey around the great hall.”
“And you also wanted to don a suit of armor because, what? You made a habit of doing that when you worked for the captain?”
Blackeye Bailey nodded. “All of Captain Harvey’s staff liked wearing the armor. We found it amusing.”
Drusilla wrinkled her nose. “I don’t buy that, so how about you try again, and the truth this time, if you please.”
“That was the truth.”
She took a second to pull her pistol out of her pocket, which had the immediate result of his gaze locking onto it. “While I might believe men would take to dressing in armor once their workday was through, perhaps to engage in mock battles, you and I both know that’s not why you donned armor tonight, nor did you do it because you were feeling nostalgic.”
A bead of sweat began trailing from his forehead and down the side of his face. “There ain’t no reason for you to keep that pistol out because I have no desire to suffer a bullet. How about I just tell you that I work for someone who has their eye on this property. I was asked by that someone to do what I could to encourage you to go on back to where you came from.”
“May I assume this isn’t your first time wandering around this castle impersonating a knight? And no, I’m not talking about when you were still working for Captain Harvey.”
“Could be I’ve put on a suit of armor once after I left Captain Harvey’s employ.”
“When you were asked to scare my aunt’s staff away a year and a half ago?”
“That would be the time,” he muttered.
Drusilla shifted the pistol to her other hand as she tried to get her thoughts in order before she frowned. “Have you been working with Norbert to continue making it appear that the castle is haunted?”
He blinked, blinked again, then gave a shrug, although it wasn’t much of a shrug since his hands were tied behind his back. “I ain’t no snitch.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, but who are you and Norbert working for?”
“I ain’t gonna snitch about that either.”
Realizing she was getting nowhere, she decided a change of tactics was in order. “Why didn’t you and Norbert continue on in Captain Harvey’s employ when he headed for warmer shores?”
“I have family in this area.” He smiled, revealing a few missing teeth. “Besides that, me and Norbert decided, since Captain Harvey was going off to Florida, we’d miss the snow.”
“Because pirates have such a fondness for snow.”
“I never said nothin’ about me being a pirate.”
“With a name like Blackeye Bailey, you didn’t need to, but speaking of names, I doubt that’s really yours.”
“’Course it is.”
“No, it’s not, and I know this because Norbert told me that everyone who was a longtime employee of Captain Harvey left Chicago with him, save one man—Sneaky Pete Smythe, to be exact.”
It wasn’t much of a stretch to realize she was on the right track about him being Sneaky Pete when he took a marked interest in the new chandelier Rhenick’s crew had recently hung in the great hall.
“May I suggest,” she began, “since we’ve established your true identity, that we turn once again to the person who hired you?”
Sneaky Pete’s lips thinned. “I don’t see how telling you that would benefit me at all, and again, I ain’t no snitch.”
“But it would benefit you because, if you were to cooperate, I might feel compelled to make certain my sister keeps a tight hold on Fidget instead of encouraging her to set the ferret down and aim her in your direction.”