Page 17 of The Tart’s Final Noel (Gravesyde Village Mysteries #3)

Fifteen

Verity

Brydie’s nephew returned from the postmaster to say there had been no letter from Cooper’s family.

Verity hoped they might eventually find who owned the bakery, but the deceased nanny and the difficulties the Uptons had described in Beanblossom worried her more.

As a precaution, she warned the staff not to talk about the children.

No one needed to know their whereabouts until they learned more of their family.

Brydie sold out her bread by noon and returned to report that people knew about Willa, but they didn’t know her, even though she’d spent most of her life here.

Verity thought that horribly sad but it didn’t relieve her escalating anxiety. “Did anyone recognize the sketch of the nanny?”

Brydie shook her head and prepared to head back to Willa’s, where the men were apparently scouring the house for clues and waiting for suspects to knock on the door. Or perhaps they were making suspect lists. Verity didn’t pay attention.

“Other than one saying the sketch was ‘right ugly,’ no one recognized that poor woman,” Brydie admitted.

“You didn’t tell anyone about the children?” Verity had specifically asked that no one mention them.

“Not a word, although I think that would be the best way to identify her. Do you really think they were being kidnapped?” Brydie finished drawing on her gloves.

“Nothing else makes sense.” Verity didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that the nanny hadn’t been identified, especially if she had been taking the children to an orphanage.

But they’d said she was taking them to family.

. . Lying to keep them quiet? As far as she was aware, no one in the village was expecting the arrival of children.

She wished Rafe would come home and tell her what he’d learned from the mercantile owner, but he was back at Willa’s. He worked hard, and she needed to support him as best as her limited skills allowed.

As a welcome distraction, the ladies strolled down from the manor that afternoon for tea and to discuss holiday festivities. Verity greeted them with Rafe’s scones and some sweet buns he’d been testing.

“Mrs. Upton tells us the village once had a Thomasing tradition on St. Thomas’s Day, but her husband—our previous curate—persuaded the beggars to go to the manor and sing for their supper on Christmas Eve, instead,” Clare Huntley announced, sipping her hot tea.

“Since this is our first Christmas here, we wondered if we might establish a new tradition. We might direct the singers to the inn, rather than have them climbing the icy hill. We would, of course, provide the supper.”

Verity enjoyed the late earl’s great-granddaughter and her managing ways.

The lady had never asked to be put in charge of Priory Manor.

Clare had married the irascible American before he’d become magistrate and had more or less inherited her duties as family descended.

She’d simply grown into the role. Verity prayed she might do the same as Rafe’s wife, but she was so ignorant of inns, that she feared she was failing him badly.

“We could decorate the pub with evergreens and provide a wassail bowl, as well,” Lady Elsa suggested. “I’m preparing small bundles of fudge and biscuits for the children, and Jack thought we might hand out apples with a coin in them for the adults to take away.”

Patience, the curate’s statuesque stepsister, leaned forward eagerly. “I have been teaching a few old carols to the ladies at church and they are teaching their children. We hope the men will join in eventually. It will be such fun!”

“Will Rafe mind?” Descendant of the late earl, daughter of another, Lady Elsa had been raised in wealth, but she wrapped her plump figure in kitchen attire and riding habits more often than silks.

“I know nothing of the tradition,” Verity admitted, hiding her anticipation with a shrug.

She hadn’t celebrated a Christmas since her mother died, and that had been ten years ago and a very meager one at that.

To be part of restoring a beloved tradition.

. . It made her feel as if she might belong.

“Rafe loves entertaining. I’m sure he’d be delighted to contribute.

” She glanced at the enormous chimney that served pub and kitchen. “Might we decorate a Yule log?”

After agreeing to direct her gardeners to cut greenery and hunt a suitable log, Patience asked eagerly, “May we meet the children?” She was growing round with the child she carried, but she still enthusiastically shared her lovely voice in her husband's tavern as well as the church. Verity would like to know her better.

Of course news of the orphans had made its way to the manor.

Rafe would have had to make inquiries. And the nanny’s body was stored in the crypt until she could be buried.

Verity mentally called up a few of Rafe’s swear words.

Telling the manor ladies to keep a secret when it was already out.

. . Perhaps she was fretting too much. The ladies would help her keep the children if their family wasn’t found.

“Lynly has the children helping sew her mother's Christmas gift,” Verity acknowledged in amusement at the highhandedness of Brydie’s niece. “I will just ask them in to give their courtesies. I don't want them to feel stared at.” She didn’t want them seen at all. . .

“Do you think it might help if we had Arnaud sketch their likeness and send it around to our families?” An heiress, Thea Talbott was slowly redecorating the crumbling manor as time and money allowed.

She and the impoverished artist, Comte Arnaud, had not announced their banns yet, but they were almost always together.

Her family moved in London society, which might be why the impoverished émigré was so slow in his courtship.

Verity panicked at the suggestion and explained all Minerva had told her about the children’s home.

Before she fetched them, she added to discourage the drawing, “Their mother seemed to be very isolated, with only neighbors visiting.

I don't think she had a family or visited Town, so the children are unlikely to be recognized.”

She couldn’t help preening like a proud mother when she brought them out and the ladies exclaimed over how well the towheaded pair performed their courtesies.

They admired Lynly's quilt as well. The girl beamed when Clare told her she had learned to sew almost as well as her mother, who was one of the best seamstresses in the sewing room.

Elsa produced a package of sweets, and Verity sent the beaming children back to their room.

“Mistress or not, their mother did a fine job of raising them,” Clare Huntly declared as the others gathered hats and gloves and said their farewells. “Despite what Meera tells us, I cannot believe anyone meant to kill such lovely children,” she whispered to Verity alone.

Verity slapped her hand over her mouth to smother an inappropriate exclamation. Perhaps she had misunderstood? “Meera thinks what?”

Clare lingered behind while the others clattered out. “I shouldn’t have said that, but. . . if there’s any possibility she might be right, you and Rafe need to know.”

“What did Meera say?” Verity asked in terror. She had complete confidence in the apothecary-physician’s knowledge. Meera’s advice had been invaluable too many times.

“She only had a few candies to test,” Clare warned. “She needs to examine the. . . nanny. . . further. But she thinks those little pills contained opium.”

Opium. Verity tried to remember what she knew of opium but it only had to do with laudanum and Chinese pirates. “For putting people to sleep?”

“One candy might have done that,” Clare acknowledged.

“But a whole tin? Opium overdoses kill. We have no way of knowing if the tin contained three candies or thirty or if all of them contained the drug. We might be scaring ourselves for nothing. They could simply be an apothecary’s formula to put distraught children to sleep and meant to be taken only one at a time. ”

But in Gravesyde, they had learned to look for the worst of human nature.

Trying not to shiver, Verity watched the ladies depart, then raced back to be certain the children were safe.

If they hadn’t already eaten their sweets, she might have taken them away, terrified they’d been poisoned—by Lady Elsa!

She was losing her mind. How did mothers do this?

If the children had been the target of those pills. . . she definitely needed to keep strangers away from them. Her instincts had been right from the first.

But the news about the children must be all over the village by now.

In a panic, she sent Rob in search of Rafe and began securing the inn against intruders. Rafe had just strengthened the outside shutters. She’d grown up in a dangerous area of London. She knew how to lock shutters and prevent windows from opening.

Once she had done all she could, she stayed with the children, hiding her fear while helping the girls sew and cut quilt squares while Daniel read to them from his favorite book.

In her waistband under her bodice, Verity tucked a knife from the kitchen.

She’d brought in a poker from the pub hearth.

She pulled her chair in front of the bedchamber door—until Rafe attempted to open it, and she had to move away.

Being the understanding man he was, he admired the quilt, congratulated Daniel on his reading abilities, and left Rob in charge of whittling pegs for clothes hooks, before steering Verity into the hall and closing the door.

“What?” he instantly demanded.

When Verity explained about the opium, he understood at once. Cursing, he pulled her into his embrace, hugging her close until they both calmed to some degree of sensibility.

“I will not believe anyone would deliberately poison young ones too innocent to harm a soul,” he stated, as if reassuring himself as well as her.

Verity had had more time to think, and her own experience drove her thoughts down dark pathways.

“Daphne has stopped talking for a reason,” she reminded him.

“Minerva says she was most likely frightened by someone or something, so she has already been harmed. It sounds as if the nanny was ordered to take them to an orphanage, where they’d be lost forever to any family they might have.

No one has come looking for any of them. They were meant to disappear.”

They were meant to die—by opium poisoning and a carriage accident in the dead of night, that no one would investigate.

Someone wanted those two precious children dead. Verity had tried and tried to think of any better outcome to all they’d been through, and she couldn’t see it. She read a lot. She had a good imagination. She might just be conjuring bogeymen out of whole cloth. But even Clare had assumed the worst.

Rafe rocked her back and forth while he worked through her horrible conclusions. “If you are right, or if it’s even one of many possibilities, we need to take them to the manor. We can’t guard them here, with strangers going in and out at will.”

“I can’t abandon them!” she cried, tears crowding her eyes as she thought of sending them away. “They’ve lost their mother, their home. . . We’re all they know.”

“I can’t take chances with you, either,” he said firmly. “You’ll go with them. Pack your trunk. Let’s settle you at the manor, then I’ll figure out how to keep the inn running without you. If scoundrels come looking, I want to be prepared. Where are our guests right now?”

She’d been with the ladies and the children and had no idea. Which was his point. She couldn’t be everywhere at once. He waited for her to accept it. A whole host of men roamed the inn and grounds and any one of them could be a killer.

Verity wiped hastily at her tears, her mind racing over all the things she must leave behind and undone. This was to be her first Christmas in her new home, with her new husband. She didn’t want to leave them.

She hadn’t left her old home when she should have, she knew, but she hated being disrupted from the comfortable routine that made her feel safe in a world gone mad. Rafe shouldn’t have to manage everything all on his own. She had staff who needed orders, Kate’s children who needed care. . .

“Will anyone really come looking?” she asked in desperation.

Grimly, Rafe shook his head, destroying her hopes. “Minerva and Paul told everyone in Stratford that the children are alive. If we are right about the opium—if anyone wanted them dead—they will know their plans failed and come after them.”

Verity wept into Rafe’s broad shoulder.