Barbara Metzger (18 page)

Those eyes
were
the color of sapphires, he mused, glad he’d had the jeweler put the set aside. He tried to picture Daffy in his sapphires, necklace, bracelet, and earbobs, and nothing else. The temperature in the room went up about ten degrees. Deuce take it, she was more luscious than a bonbon, half of which that pig Pomeroy was gobbling from the box Graydon had brought back from London.

Chapter Eighteen

“Don’t get in my way, old man. I demand to see the magistrate. It’s my right as a citizen.” Terwent shoved past Ohlman into the parlor.

The valet was only partly subdued by all the faces turned to stare at him. He made a hasty bow, but his agitation was so great that he ignored the presence of earls and officers, ladies and the two lackeys Ohlman sent for, to toss him out. He went right up to Miles and shouted in his face, “Now you’ve got to do your dooty.”

Miles flushed and told the man, “Stop your caterwauling. You’re in a gentleman’s house.”

“I’m in
my
gentleman’s house and he might right now be a-lying dead. In the village they’re saying there’s a spirit loose, some boggart moaning in the woods ’cause he ain’t had proper burial.”

“It’s a dog, by Jupiter!”

“Did you go see it for yourself, then, Mr. Magistrate?”

Before Miles could answer, Graydon spoke up: “Did you, Mr., ah, Terwent?”

“Why no, I…ah, I…”

“Waited for the official inquiry. Highly commendable, I’m sure. As is this loyalty, this dedication. But to Whilton? My word, it beggars the imagination.” Graydon helped himself to a bonbon.

Terwent didn’t even try to bluster through his employer’s good points; the baron had none. “He owes me my salary. And if he’s gone and stuck his spoon in the wall, I want the pension he promised.”

“Ah, such altruism. It makes more sense, at least. So what say you, Pomeroy? Shall we go take a look at this, ah, boggart in the woods?”

“It’s a dog, blast it!” Miles looked regretfully at the remains of the tea, but got to his feet. “I suppose I’ll have to, to stop all the yammering about haunted woods.”

Howell thought he’d ride along, just out of curiosity, although he’d been driving since early morning.

“If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll change into my habit,” Daphne said, and got up to leave.

“What’s that, Miss Whilton? Oh, no, you mustn’t come along. Highly unsuitable.”

Daphne paused at the doorway. “What’s unsuitable about my going for a ride, Miles? The woods are on Whilton property, after all.”

Miles persisted. “But there’s no saying what we might find. It’s not the place for a lady.”

“Nonsense, especially if you’re looking for the lady’s uncle!” She knew they wouldn’t find Uncle Albert, but that didn’t satisfy her curiosity either. “I’m going.”

“I for—” She was gone. Miles sat down again, shaking his head.

Graydon gave him a pat on the shoulder and a complacent grin. “Not yours to order around yet, old boy. No saying but that Daffy’d listen anyway. Stubborn female, Miss Whilton, don’t you know?”

Miles hadn’t known, actually.

“Oh yes, needs a light hand on the bridle, else she digs her feet in and won’t budge. I should know.” Graydon also knew how much Daffy would hate being likened to a fractious filly, but he couldn’t help needling his rival. “But why don’t you go on; I’ll wait here to escort her.”

Miles wouldn’t budge, mulish female or not.

*

They followed the eerie keening toward the old woodsman’s cottage in the home woods. Daphne hadn’t been there in years, her father having declared it off-limits since the place was in such dangerous disrepair. She made a note to have it torn down before someone got hurt. The noise was loud enough now to send chills down her spine. Daphne automatically turned to Graydon, riding beside her, for reassurance. He winked. It was all right then.

As they’d all suspected, there was a dog in the clearing, head back and howling. It didn’t seem hurt, so Daphne left the old blankets tied on her saddle. She dismounted and started toward the scruffy tan cur.

Miles had his pistol out. “Stand back, Miss Whilton. It might be rabid.”

“Nonsense, it’s a she and she’s just frightened. What happened, girl, did you lose your way?”

Then Terwent, who was riding pillion behind Daphne’s groom, jumped down and shouted, “I knew it! I knew it! There’s his cane.”

And indeed, there was Uncle Albert’s unmistakable bone-headed cane, sticking out of the ground. Graydon kicked some leaves and clutter aside to reveal freshly turned earth.

Miles was livid. “If this is some kind of joke, if you’ve been lying to me all along, leading me on, expecting me to be bought off like one of your lackeys when the—”

“Stubble it,” Graydon ordered in his officer’s voice. “You still have no idea who is buried here. You’d do better to send for some lads with shovels than stand around and rant.”

“I’m not ranting!” But he directed the groom to ride back to Woodhill for a work crew and a cart, with Daphne’s permission.

Daphne was still petting the dog. She hissed at Graydon while Pomeroy’s back was turned. “You don’t suppose…?”

Howell shrugged. “I never checked the barrel when I got to London. But if Albert is here”—he jerked his head toward where Miles was using the cane to sweep the debris away from the grave site—“then who the hell are we having cremated?”

The men came, with extra shovels. Miles looked to Graydon, who just grinned. “Not my job.”

Terwent crossed his bony arms. “Never.”

So Miles Pomeroy took up one of the shovels and began digging. No one paid any attention to the tall stable hand next to him, the one who was sweating so badly, the boot polish was running from his hair down to his chin. If anyone did notice, they assumed it was dirt, from the grave.
Sailor pulled
his hat down lower over his hair and kept digging, and sweating.

Daphne had untied one of the blankets and sat down, the dog beside her. “Was this a friend of yours? Are you lonely? Hungry?” She crumpled a roll she’d stuffed in her pocket at the last minute, and fed it to the yellowish mongrel. “I bet you don’t even know how to find food. Don’t worry, someone in the stables will feed you, I’m sure, and give you a warm place to sleep.”

So the Gypsy was right again: Sailor’d be sharing his bed with a golden-haired female. He kept digging.

When the body was nearly unearthed and Daphne would have stepped closer, Graydon put his arms on her shoulders and gently turned her away. “There’s no need. You stay here.”

It wasn’t the baron, whoever he was. And he wasn’t pretty. “Stay there,” Graydon told Daphne, and for once she listened, to Pomeroy’s chagrin.

Terwent had gone white, but he shouted, “I know him! It’s that cutpurse from the tavern!” He turned, long nose twitching. “And that’s the bloody, thieving dog!”

Daphne took her hand back from the hound’s head.

“It must have been a falling out among crooks,” Miles said, “though I don’t see any bullet holes or knife wounds.”

Graydon had been exploring while the men were digging. “More like a falling roof than a falling out.” He pointed to the piles of rotten timbers, the roofless cottage. “That would explain why he looks so…battered.”

“Yes, yes, I would have come to the same conclusion if I hadn’t been busy digging.” Miles was hot and sweaty from being out of shape, and filthy, while Howell was neat as a pin and impressing Miss Whilton with solving the case. Damn. “Yes, it appears that there was no foul play, just a criminal getting his just deserts. Unfortunately now the parish will have to pay to rebury the thatchgallows. I suppose it’s cheaper than a trial and a hanging, but—” He had to pause to lift one of the stable-hands-turned-digger out of the hole where he’d suddenly fallen in. Big fellow, even dirtier than Miles felt. Miles took out his handkerchief to wipe his face, hoping he did not look like such a fool in front of Miss Whilton.

“But it should end your crime wave, Pomeroy. The man’s accomplices must be long gone by now. They’ve cleaned the place out and moved on, at any rate. They didn’t leave anything but the dead man.”

“And the dog,” Daphne added, coming closer now that the body had been wrapped in a blanket and loaded onto the cart. “They left the dog out here and alone, the heartless savages.”

“The dog is a thief, Miss Whilton. I had more complaints about this animal stealing chickens and laundry than about the highwaymen. They seem to have stolen nothing.”

“Perhaps you ought to arrest the hound then,” Graydon said, “to show the local citizenry how conscientious you are.”

Before Miles could respond, in kind or with a handful of dirt, Terwent spoke up: “They did, too, heist something. They got the baron’s cane, didn’t they? So where is he?”

“Yes, Howell, where is the baron, and how did his cane come to be marking a felon’s grave? I’d like to hear your explanation for that myself,” Miles said.

“Obviously the gang held him up when he left the Manor.” When they rolled Albert out of the icehouse, to be exact, but Graydon didn’t say that. Daphne was nodding her agreement.

Terwent was clutching the cane, polishing it with his sleeve as his beady eyes darted from one to the other. “They killed him, I know it!”

“No, I don’t think so. We’d have found the body by now. What I bet happened was that some traveler chancing by saw the baron in distress and came to his aid, then took him up with them.”

Daphne elaborated: “If he was unconscious, the baron couldn’t have given his address, so perhaps the good Samaritan took Uncle Albert to his own house.”

“He always had his calling cards in his pocket, for when he was, ah, temporarily disoriented.”

“Drunk as a wheelbarrow, more like.” Miles grumbled his disapproval, for the baron’s drinking habits and for this whole unsavory mess. Good Samaritan, in a pig’s eye.

“If he did have identification, this unknown benefactor must have driven him straight on to London, where the poor bastard might be lying in pain, waiting for his loyal valet. It would be just like Whilton to change his will when you don’t show up. Don’t you think so, Daffy?”

Terwent was already headed out of the woods when Daphne softly asked, “But what if he died on the way? You know Uncle Albert was not a healthy man. The shock…”

Miles snorted, but Graydon stroked his chin. “That’s always a possibility. And it’s also possible the thieves stole his card case. You know what, Terwent, if the baron is not at home when you get to London, you better check the morgues. And Bow Street. And don’t worry about your salary. I’m sure Lady Whilton will take care of your expenses. Don’t you think so, Daffy?”

“Of course, Terwent. You’d be doing a, um, service to the family if you find my uncle.”

So the valet got into the cart for the ride back to the village where the baron’s own coach and driver were waiting. He sat up by the driver, not in the rear with Jake.

Pomeroy mounted and turned to follow. He wasn’t even sorry to leave Miss Whilton alone with that glib-tongued Howell. Why, he felt like Adam, caught between Eve and the serpent. Too bad her dowry, and that twenty thousand pounds, was such a tempting apple. He left with a curt farewell.

Graydon tossed Daphne up onto her horse, and waited while she arranged the brown velvet of her habit. “Don’t worry,” he told her when she seemed distracted, her eyes following her stocky suitor. “He’ll get over it.”

Daphne wasn’t so certain. That complete honesty that made Miles so strong and sure demanded nothing less in return. Everything that Miles was, everything he stood for, had just been belittled.

“He’s not the man for you anyway, Daff. He’ll never make you happy in the long run.”

She looked down at the handsome face from her dreams, that laughing mouth that lied so easily. No, Miles might not be perfect, but he would never play her false, he would never break her heart.

*

Sailor and Handy had a bare half hour after dinner to escape Mrs. Binder’s eagle eye and compare notes while they restored Sailor’s hair coloring.

“They’re puttin’ Jake in a pauper’s grave, no marker.”

“But he’s gettin’ to the churchyard after all.”

“And we’re gettin’ nowhere.”

Mrs. Binder hardly let Handy out of her sight, and the head stableman kept Sailor busy from before dawn to after dusk, when Sailor collapsed onto his straw pallet. Neither one of them was ever permitted near anything worth stealing, unless you needed some manure or a chamber pot. Worse, Handy found out that a footman was on duty all night in the house. He used to drowse some, the maids’ gossip went, but with that earl switching bedchambers at all hours, he didn’t dare. Mrs. Binder would have the girls’ hides for gossiping about their betters, but she didn’t sleep with them, three to a bed.

“Maybe we should leave?”

It was a very warm bed. “Not yet, Sailor.”

“Fine for you, you get to share with the maids. I get Sal in the straw. And she’s got fleas.”

“The food’s good.”

“An’ no one’s beatin’ us on the head with his cane.”

So they decided they may as well stay until the wedding. With more guests coming, there were bound to be more opportunities…and more manure to manhandle, more commodes to clean.

Chapter Nineteen

“What
can I do to help?” With only ten days or so before the wedding, there had to be something Graydon could do to relieve those little lines of concentration from Daphne’s brow. She was so busy with her lists and errands and consultations with the gardeners, the cook, and the housekeeper, he hardly saw her at all, and never alone. They’d scraped through the highwayman business well together, but how was he to build on that friendship if he never spoke to her except at dinner, where she continued to wear that abstracted frown? He could only hope she wasn’t pining because her cabbage-head of a country courtier hadn’t been coming round so often.

By sheer luck and a rainy day, he’d tracked her down in the estate office room this morning. The library was receiving a thorough dusting, the billiards room was under renovation by carpenters, the music room was in the hands of the piano tuner, and the morning room had been taken over by a squad of seamstresses. The small parlor was being used by the older ladies to put the finishing touches on the new altar cloth for the church service, and the drawing room, all the vast expanse of Aubusson carpet, gilded chairbacks, and chinoiserie, was off-limits. The earl and Lady Whilton were “making plans.” More like making cakes of themselves, Graydon thought, but fondly. He wasn’t worried over the servants’ gossip, only about the governor’s heart. At this rate…