Page 7 of The Elusive Earl (The Bad Heir Day Tales #3)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“The earl is a gifted correspondent,” St. Didier said.

Morna set aside the ninth letter and allowed herself a moment to adjust to the notion that Graham was the earl. Not Grandpapa, not John, Graham . The present Earl of Dunhaven had earned his keep in Sydney as a stable boy and been happy to have the “lighter” work. He’d gained further notice because he’d been capable of training horses, and horses were as necessary to the success of New South Wales as free penal labor.

All the while, Graham had somehow kept his spices thriving.

“I didn’t hear you knock, St. Didier.”

“No doubt because Dunhaven’s epistles are so absorbing. He asked after you in every missive he sent me. ‘I trust the ladies are well.’ When he was particularly worried, he trusted you were ‘thriving.’”

St. Didier struck Morna as a man who seldom lacked a purpose. What was the purpose behind this intrusion?

“Are you ready for tomorrow’s journey?” she asked, gesturing to the chair opposite Grandpapa’s desk.

“I am to remain behind, immersed in ancient manuscripts, learned tomes, and excellent whisky.”

He was handsome in a dark-haired, dark-eyed, watchful way, and his manners were faultless. He nonetheless made Morna uneasy.

“Why are you here, St. Didier? The truth, if you please.”

“To guard Dunhaven’s back.”

“Why does his back need guarding?” Morna had worked at that puzzle, but could not be sure of her conclusions.

“The earl hopes that his grandmother’s death was an accident and that her demise was occasioned by nothing more than one chambermaid fixing the countess a cup of doctored tea, followed by a footman performing the same courtesy thirty minutes later, and then the old earl offering yet a third medicated cup thirty minutes after that. No malicious intent, none of the guilty parties even aware of their culpability.”

Possible. “Go on.”

“I am concerned with a different hypothesis,” St. Didier said in the same detached, even tones. “Somebody deliberately sent the countess to her reward, knew Dunhaven—or some other party—would be blamed and further knew Dunhaven would accept responsibility rather than implicate anybody else.”

“Somebody killed the countess to get at Graham?” A horrible notion, one Morna had shied away from even in the bravest corners of her imagination.

“This possibility haunts Dunhaven, though he hasn’t quite admitted as much to me.”

St. Didier shot his cuffs, which were fastened with discreet gold sleeve buttons. Such an Englishman, and yet, Morna had seen him carry off full Highland kit convincingly too.

What was the point of this little tête-à-tête? St. Didier was trying to pose an argument without being contentious.

What theory justified…? “Graham kept his distance from me,” Morna said slowly, “because if he confided in me, if he recruited me to defend his innocence, I might have been in danger from whoever set him up. He let me believe him to be guilty because I was safer that way.” The wretched, damned, stubborn fool. “He could not trust me to grasp the complications and do a bit of playacting accordingly.”

The pile of letters in nigh pristine condition sat on the old leather blotter. Graham had carried them halfway around the world after somehow preserving them for years in a climate inhospitable to paper, prisoners, and banished peers.

Stubborn, wretched, impossible man.

“The situation,” St. Didier said, “wants facts. The explanation might be as simple as I described initially, with all relevant parties long since off the premises.”

“Or we might have a murderer in our midst, ready to do Graham a fatal injury if he should ask too many questions.”

“In your shoes, I’d lock up all the medicinals for a start,” St. Didier said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the staff, watching the comings and goings, looking for the malcontents or anybody living above their means.”

What had that to do with anything? “The wages we pay are generous.”

“Dunhaven assigned these tasks to me, and they make sense. If the countess was dosed by means of a tea tray, then somebody in the kitchen might have seen that tray being prepared, or noticed a patent remedy sitting on the worktable where it ought not to have been. A scullery maid in possession of that information is in a position to bribe the cook, isn’t she?”

“The cook left. Now you have me wondering why.” The stated reason had been that old women were not safe in their beds at Castle MacNeil.

“Good. The more questions we ask, the more answers we’ll uncover, until Dunhaven knows where he stands.”

“But Graham himself cannot be seen asking the questions.”

St. Didier’s smile was mostly in his eyes. Lanie might have heard it in his voice. “He’s just returned after being away for years. He can ask a lot of questions, and he’s asking them. You mentioned playacting, and Dunhaven is doing a very credible impression of a peer new to his honors and not quite sure what the job entails.”

Graham arrived at meals looking tired and distracted, though he was usually out on the property by the time Morna came down to breakfast, and he missed lunch frequently. His first appearance at divine services had caused a minor riot, quelled only by the news that the earl would be journeying to Edinburgh and would be happy to entertain callers upon his return.

“He’s contending with a lot,” Morna said. Had Graham found time to read her journal? “And he may never know what caused the countess’s death.”

“Somebody knows,” St. Didier said, rising.

“Graham wants to question Dr. Ramsey.” Morna stood as well, making a note to put a new cushion on Grandpapa’s old chair. “I will suggest that we meet the physician someplace out of the way, where we are unlikely to be disturbed.”

“ We ?”

“You have just implied that Graham MacNeil went to hell and back at least in part to protect me , St. Didier. The very least he can do, the least he must do, is allow me to do my best to protect him.”

“Your decision is not up for debate?”

Even Morna could hear the genuine curiosity in St. Didier’s question. “Is not now up for debate and never has been. Graham told me that his reasons for ignoring me during the worst summer of his life were honorable, and apparently they were, also blindingly wrong.”

“I’m sure you will persuade him of his error.”

“At length, in detail, and I will also explain to his lordship that the path to forgiveness lies in never making the same mistake with me again.” None of which was St. Didier’s perishing business.

“I’m off to lurk in the library,” St. Didier said, bowing. “Enjoy the letters.”

He closed the door silently in his wake, and Morna sank into the more comfortable embrace of a wing chair next to the hearth.

St. Didier’s purpose had been to explain to her why Graham had distanced himself from her all those years ago. Graham himself should have offered the explanation, but hadn’t. Why not? He could prose on for half a page about parrots and orchids, but he hadn’t found a way to say, I was trying to keep you safe.

Morna reread the first letter, the one that began, You might never read this … and ended with All my love… Every letter ended that way, which was nearly enough to make Morna cry, if she were inclined to allow herself that degree of foolishness.

“You did take Edinburgh by storm.” Graham tried to make his words a neutral statement of fact, neither accusation nor inquiry. The reality, though—that Morna had braved the high seas of polite society without him and managed easily —was both reassuring and daunting.

Morna went right on perusing the titles in the biographical section of the bookshop. The proprietor offered both bound and unbound versions, in keeping with the eclectic nature of Edinburgh society. The average Edinburgh brewer tended to be astute on the topic of universal suffrage, just as the city’s aspiring physicians might be knowledgeable about the impact of excise taxes on Lowland agriculture. Debate was a public pastime, and ideas were offered up for intellectual delectation from pub to ballroom to coffee shop, all perspectives welcome to join the affray.

The Athens of the North took marketplace discourse very much to heart.

“I did the pretty,” Morna said, choosing a volume bound in red leather. “Lady Dunkeld would not relent. She claimed that the old marquess expected her to turn a medieval castle into a fashionable country house, and such a miracle required serious shopping. I went along with her, thinking to help her choose fabrics and lampshades. The next thing I knew, I was taking tea with some French countess who wrote treatises on ancient Roman winemaking.”

That Morna had had the opportunity to inspect Edinburgh’s polite society at close range was… wonderful. Lovely. Nothing less than her right.

“I wish I’d seen you standing up with all the lordlings and poets.”

Morna shoved the book back between other volumes. “I wish you had too. At least you eventually learned to dance. I thought the waltz would be the death of my toes.”

“I’m not familiar with the waltz,” Graham said. “Came along after I departed.”

“After you confessed to a crime you did not commit. When are we meeting with Dr. Ramsey?”

Morna had been adamant that she be present at that interview, and Graham had been pleased with her insistence, also a little puzzled by it. His default state of mind lately seemed to be bewilderment and fatigue leavened by dashes of hope, much like life in a penal colony.

“We meet with Ramsey tomorrow morning. He suggested a quiet tea shop in the Grassmarket.” Graham had not consulted Brodie regarding the doctor’s whereabouts, but had instead relied on the good offices of an underfootman at the MacNeil town house. Brodie would have asked questions and, worse, delivered lectures, admonitions, and tiresome exhortations.

“I’ve been thinking.” Morna moved along the shelves until she halted before the bound volumes of poetry. Burns, of course, everywhere and always Burns, but also Ramsay and Fergusson, along with a few of the more popular English talents, the rare American, and some French verse.

“One suspected you were ruminating.” Graham manfully ignored how her gloved finger caressed the spine of the book. They were shopping, for pity’s sake, and having a substantive discussion of the difficult matters.

“St. Didier suggested that Grandmama might have died as the result of several well-meaning individuals topping up her tea, one after the other, none of them aware that she was being repeatedly medicated.”

Morna chose another volume of poetry and opened it to a random page. The curve of her neck, echoing in the line of her cheek and brow, begged for the attentions of a gifted portraitist.

“Successive, well-meant errors is one possibility,” Graham said. “One benign possibility.”

“No,”—Morna snapped the volume closed—“it is not.” She shoved the poems at Graham’s chest. “The teapot used for her medicinal tea was blue jasperware. We didn’t use it for anything else, and we always prepared it for her evening dose. The whole kitchen knew those rules, and they were enforced without exception.”

Graham thought back to the many nights he’d fetched the tray from the kitchen and taken it up to Grandmama’s apartment.

“I knew that,” he said slowly. “I always knew to take the tray with the blue pot, if several were in readiness. Black tea, but on the weak side. Enough flavor to hide the poppy when taken with some honey and cream.”

“Precisely. You added a tablespoon of medication to the cup of tea. Dosing the whole pot would have been wasteful and uncertain, but a green tea or a tisane would not have done. You took the blue pot every time.”

“The lady’s maid or footman might still have fixed a second doctored cup of tea.”

Morna shook her head. “Graham, they knew how fussy Dr. Ramsey was about the patent remedies. Peter brought up the nightly posset. You were responsible for the evening dose of medication, I was responsible for the afternoon, and Grandpapa was on hand for the morning. If I was out of an afternoon, I might have asked you or Peter to substitute for me, but the staff was forbidden to dispense medication.”

Morna would know this. She’d been all but running the castle since the day she’d put up her hair, and Grandmama had been grateful for the assistance.

“The accidental theory becomes less and less credible,” Graham said. “Am I to buy this volume of poetry for you?” Scottish Verses of Love and Courting.

“Buy them for Peter to read to Lanie.”

I could read them to you. Graham leaned close to whisper that suggestion just as Morna strode off to the next set of floor-to-ceiling shelves.

“Were these selections popular when you and the marchioness were gracing Edinburgh Society?” Graham asked, thumbing through the pages . An’ I’ll kiss thee o’er again; An’ I’ll kiss thee yet, yet…

“Very likely. Burns never goes out of style. How much longer do we let Peter and Lanie linger among the novels?”

“Morna, tell me about Edinburgh Society and swanning around with the Marchioness of Dunkeld. Did you enjoy yourself?” Were you tempted? Did you give your heart away?

She regarded him with a cross expression. “I went through the whole nonsense for Lanie’s sake. One has to know the terrain, you see. If some fool thought to court me, the marchioness would have let me plead a retiring nature or domestic responsibilities, but if her ladyship got it into her head that she must launch Lanie, then I wanted to know what I was up against.”

“You scouted the terrain?”

“I learned to waltz, and I trotted out my French and laughed at all the witty gentlemen, some of whom were genuinely amusing. It’s all in the journal, Graham.”

Well, no. The journal had been sparse going there for a few months. References to sore feet, fatigue, the occasional aching head, and missing home had filled most of the pages. Those months were in contrast to the section where Morna had described old John MacIver bidding farewell to his only daughter on the occasion of her taking ship with her husband and children for Nova Scotia.

Every detail of the scene had been minutely described, right down to the tears MacIver had refused to wipe away. Mind you write to me, Pa. I’ll worry.

Graham had wanted to say the same thing to Grandpapa and to Morna, but hadn’t been able to form the words for fear he’d lose his composure.

“I don’t see Peter or Lanie,” Morna said. “They were here a minute ago.”

A cursory search of the shop revealed no sign of either the young lady or her escort.

“Graham, we must find them.” Morna, typically so composed, was clutching his sleeve. “Lanie thinks her nose and her ears are compensation enough for her poor sight, but this is Edinburgh . The smells and sounds are all too much and too unfamiliar.”

“She’s with Peter,” Graham said, taking Morna by the hand. “Peter would lay down his life for her, and we’re not three streets from the town house. They can’t have gone far.”

“Find her,” Morna said. “Please, Graham, just find her. I can’t lose her too.”

A hint of panic infused those words. “I’ll take you back to the town house and rouse the staff. Lanie is distinctively pretty, and Peter knows his way around the city.”

“No,” Morna said, giving his hand a fierce jerk. “You will not deposit me in some wing chair at home to stitch a rubbishing sampler while my sister is unaccounted for. You will not leave me behind again.”

“I didn’t leave you behind . I was transported .”

Morna dropped his hand. “I would have gone with you, but you never gave me the chance, did you?”

She glowered at him, then exited the shop without a backward glance. Graham followed, barely remembering to leave the volume of poetry with the clerk before pushing through the door.

I would have gone with you.

No, she would not. She would not have left Lanie and Grandpapa to travel as the wife of a disgraced man to a foreign and ferocious land. That wasn’t the point.

The point was: He hadn’t asked her to . Hadn’t asked for her insights or assistance when charged with a crime he hadn’t committed. Hadn’t asked her to accompany him on the transport ship. Hadn’t asked her if she’d teach him to waltz now that he’d be expected to know how.

He could remedy one of those oversights, just as soon as he found Peter and Lanie and lectured them for all eternity on the foolishness of ever again disappearing without notice.

“What was I to do?” Peter asked, sounding to Morna a bit like Uncle Brodie in a peevish mood. “I mentioned that a yarn shop stood directly opposite the bookshop, and the next thing I knew, Lanie was pulling me bodily through the door. Was I to leave her to cross the street alone while I went to ask permission of you and Morna?”

“Not to ask our permission,” Graham said patiently. “To let us know your plans had changed, as in future, we will let you know if a similar circumstance arises.”

Morning light caught Peter in profile, showing Morna his resemblance to both Graham and John. Peter was the in-between model, not as tall or broad-shouldered as Graham, but more muscular and robust than John. Some would say Peter was the ideal, but to Morna’s eye, Graham was the more attractive specimen.

He was tall enough for her, which ought to be a detail, but wasn’t. Dancing with a man who addressed one’s chin looked and felt ridiculous. Graham was also…

Morna cast about for the right word as she topped up her tea. Graham was the earl now. When Lanie and Peter had gone missing yesterday afternoon, and Morna had been nigh levitating with worry, Graham had made the logical suggestion: look in the nearest dozen shops, starting with the sweet shop—Peter would have been drawn there—and the yarn shop, an irresistible lure to Lanie. Five minutes later, they’d found Lanie exclaiming over a skein of wool spun from goat hair.

Nothing had been said to Lanie at the time, but supper last night had been somewhat wanting in conviviality. Lanie had taken a tray for breakfast.

Over eggs and toast, Graham had gently suggested to Peter that yesterday’s detour to the yarn shop had given him a bad turn. Morna had been ready to… She did not know what. Stand in the middle of the street shouting like a madwoman.

The same way she’d felt when Graham and Grandpapa had ridden through the castle gates bound for Glasgow all those years ago. Furious, but also bereft, panicked, helpless. The same way she’d felt when the countess had died, and then Grandpapa had expired soon after. The same way she’d felt when her own parents had succumbed to influenza.

Shrieking mad and unable to utter a sound.

Peter slathered raspberry jam on his toast. “Then you won’t mind telling me where you and Morna are off to this morning.”

“As an attempt to change the topic,” Graham replied, “I commend your tactics. Morna and I are doing more shopping. Uncle Brodie must not run out of cigars, and I have been personally charged with replenishing his inventory.”

Peter made a face. “Damned smelly habit. He claims it’s his sole vice, but then one watches him at the brandy and the whisky as he polishes those dozens of snuffboxes. He scares me.”

That observation had Morna looking up from her tea. “Brodie? He’s the next thing to a potted fern, if you can ignore his blather.” Seldom left the estate except to attend services and blessed with only infrequent letters from his old cronies in London or Edinburgh.

Peter put the cork lid back on the jam pot with a decisive thump of his fist. “I could be him in twenty years, and well I know it. If Graham hadn’t come home, I’d have done right by the castle as the de facto steward or tenant or whatever, but Graham is here now.” He set the jam pot in the center of the table. “Sorry. I was at the brandy last night after I read to Lanie. I’m a bit sore-headed.”

“At your age,” Graham said, requisitioning the jam pot, “Brodie was a sot, worse than he is now. He had engaged in three duels that Grandpapa was willing to tell me about. Brodie’s worst offense was gambling beyond his means, which he did frequently. When some lordling or Honorable came around to collect his vowels, Brodie would retreat behind his sister’s skirts in Perthshire and expect Grandpapa to settle the matter.

“When Brodie got some lady’s maid with child,” Graham went on, “Grandpapa delivered an ultimatum: bide at the castle with a modicum of self-restraint or take ship on remittance. To Brodie’s credit, he developed some self-restraint. In later years, he could be trusted to jaunt into Glasgow or Edinburgh without supervision, but as a younger man, he was a walking scandal.”

Peter frankly stared at his brother. “Brodie has a child?”

“The poor mite didn’t survive past thirty days. Grandmama had her planted in the family plot. Her grave is the little stone nearest the corner.”

“Wee Mary,” Peter said. “I did wonder.”

“Cease tormenting yourself,” Graham said, prying loose the cork lid. “You could never be like Brodie, and if you want the stewardship of the castle, it’s yours. You are my heir, though. Stewarding is a bit beneath your station.”

“No,” Peter said, brandishing his toast, “it’s not. We have the wrong sort of sheep, Graham. Did you hear Lanie rhapsodizing about goat hair? You can make an even finer wool from rabbit fur, if you have the right sort of rabbits, and we do have them. Every other schoolgirl in polite society has an Angora bunny, and the little beasts shed the most luxurious fur imaginable.”

Graham applied an even layer of jam to his toast. “First, you’re on about steam. Now, it’s furry rabbits. Grandpapa had your sort of mind. Passionately interested in everything all the time. Wears a lowly convict out. Think about which direction you’d like to go, Peter. Settle on two or three ventures that will hold your interest for the next five years, and I will support the undertakings any way I can.”

Peter stared at his empty plate. “Do you mean that?”

Graham smacked him on the arm. “You have been the de facto steward at the castle since finishing up at university. Uncompensated, too, I might add, which is not exactly fair to you. St. Didier speaks highly of you. The tenants trust you and like you—I’ve been hearing your praises incessantly for the past week. ‘Such a fine young man,’ ‘not afraid of hard work,’ ‘a good head on his shoulders,’ ‘a credit to the castle.’ Monotonous, all those compliments from people who are supposed to be dour and critical.”

Peter was blinking at nothing. “I was the only one left.”

“Aye,” Graham said. “Grandpapa gone, me sent to perdition, Brodie worthless, and John in a fog between Robert the Bruce and inebriation. You have been the last man standing, and you’ve done well. Your sentence is served, your banishment over. You are free now, and God pity the person who attempts to come between you and your dreams.”

Morna was blinking too. Before her eyes, Peter shed the last vestiges of adolescent uncertainty, sat taller, and picked up his tea cup in a different, more assured grip.

“Wool,” he said. “Lanie knows wool like old MacIver knows the game in the woods. She loves everything about it—the smell, the feel, the softness, the durability, the warmth. Wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet. Few other fabrics can do that. Whatever ventures I choose next, wool will be part of them.”

“Very Scottish,” Graham said, munching his toast. “Plaid is all the rage in Mayfair these days, and those people spend obscene amounts of money on fashion. Mad, the lot of them.”

“Excuse me,” Peter said, rising so quickly he nearly knocked his chair over. “Enjoy your shopping.” He sketched a bow to Morna and plucked another sweet bun from the sideboard before leaving the breakfast parlor at a lope.

Graham rose and closed the door. “Would you be offended if I indulged at such an early hour?”

“Of course not.”

He produced a flask, tipped it up, and sipped. “I just found him, Morna. My baby brother, all grown up, a braw, bonnie laddie with a good head on his shoulders. I just found him again, and…”

“…and he’s not afraid of hard work, a credit to the castle.”

“A fine young man.” Graham saluted with his flask and tucked it away. “And he is all of that, but if Peter emigrates to Nova Scotia, Morna, I will lose my damned wits.”

And yet, Graham had opened that door and invited Peter to consider stepping through it, to follow his dreams, as young people ought, as Graham never had .

Morna rose, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms around Graham’s waist. “If he takes Lanie with him, I’ll lose mine too.”

Graham draped his arms around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “He’ll not leave without her. She’ll be reluctant to leave you. Perhaps we won’t lose them after all.”

I love you. Morna had never given him the words. They would have been true for most of her life, but they were true in a different way now. She loved him because he’d left in disgrace to protect the people he cared for, because he’d come through loss and hardship without bitterness, because he was honorable to his bones, even to sending his only sibling adventuring out into the big, exciting, dangerous world.

The last man standing. Peter had nearly collapsed under the weight of Graham’s praise and understanding.

She kissed Graham’s cheek. “We’d best move on if we’re to be punctual to our meeting with Dr. Ramsey. Peter and Lanie will be here when we get back, or they will leave us word where to find them.”

Graham gave her another squeeze, this one gentler. “Peter should be the earl. He can’t see that.”

“You are a fine earl,” Morna said, stepping back. “I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”

He managed a crooked, bashful smile. “I’ll lose him to a lot of damned hopping rabbits and stinking steam engines. Grandpapa would be proud of him.”

“You are proud of him, and now he knows it, so he can be proud of himself. Don’t keep me waiting, Dunhaven. Dr. Ramsey has answers, and I have questions.”

“Ten minutes.” Graham bowed. “And, Morna?”

“Your lordship?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She left to fetch her cloak, to settle her nerves—a hopeless undertaking when Graham was being so noble—and to pause outside Lanie’s door. Peter was already holding forth within, where he ought not to be and where he absolutely belonged.

Morna belonged in Graham’s embrace. He’d taken her in his arms as naturally as breathing, and everything, from the muscular fit of his body to the heathery scent he wore, to the warmth he exuded, had felt exquisitely right. Like coming home and being set free and a pardon for all transgressions past, present, and future.

She gave herself two minutes at the top of the steps to savor that wonder, then descended to find Graham waiting for her, precisely ten minutes after she’d left him in the breakfast parlor, and there it was again—the conviction that she was coming home just because she was once again coming to him.