Curse of the Gypsy (16 page)

“The gypsy mother seems to be recovering,” he said, schooling his tone to be neutral.

“I’m encouraged. I hope to find the same of Mrs. Jackson at Farfield Farm.”

“I interfered back there, Anne, and I apologize.”

“I realize that you don’t know the ways of gypsies. But our family has been dealing with them for many years. They are good workers, when they work, honorable by their own view, but have been known to steal, though they never would from their own people. Information is to be sold, not given away, and so for an offering of silver, I get what I want, and they do, too. I try my best not to judge them too harshly, though I question their ways ofttimes.”

“I bow to your superior knowledge.”

“Good.” She gazed up at him. “Now, admit that you were humiliated by being taken unawares by those two hefty gypsy men, and I’ll think you a true man, able to admit your shortcomings.”

He shook his head, but couldn’t help it; a laugh burst out from his lips. “All right, all right! It was not that, though, just so you know I am not so weak as to pin all sense of my masculine power on my ability to defeat untold numbers of assailants. It was the smile on your lips when you saw me helpless. I suppose I care more than I dare admit what you think of me.”

She leaned against his chest and said softly, “Tony, you must know, I may be entranced by the physical aspects of our … our friendship, but I do not account bodily strength as of more than moderately a part of manhood. Even if you lost the use of your limbs, that would not send me away from you.”

His heart thudded and he hoarsely said, holding her tight against his chest, “Anne, we must talk.”

“I know, Tony, I know; but not right now. This tangle of troubles—the illness, Hiram Grover, Julius—it is all stealing my thoughts. What shall we do?”

“I know nothing of the illness. But as for the other, I would say that we must begin some kind of systematic search for Hiram Grover. The gypsies have seen him, we suspect he has stolen clothes and food from villagers, so he must be hiding somewhere close by. But where?”

“I will have Sanderson gather some of the men and begin with a search of every corner of every building on Harecross Hall property, as well as that of Wroth Farm.”

“Put out the word to others, too, even villagers, to check their barns, stables, sheds, any place he might keep concealed and moderately comfortable. Even if they don’t find him, they may find some sign he has been there.”

“I don’t understand at all, Tony,” she said, looking up at him. “Why would Hiram not just leave the country? Why stay just to avenge himself against us in this foolish manner?”

Darkefell pondered that. “As long as I have known Hiram Grover, he has always tried to force upon the world at large a vision of himself as more than he is. He was never satisfied with being Hiram Grover, gentleman farmer. He could have done well for himself if he had settled for modest success as a vintner or wine merchant. There are many things that would have suited him, but instead, the moment he inherited he began a concerted effort to raise himself up in a world intent on keeping him in his place.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wanted not only great wealth, thus the attempt to make a fortune in the slave trade, but he wanted status. For years he spent foolishly on attendance at court, gifts to courtiers, trying to flatter the king with addresses, all in the hopes of securing a knighthood. He wanted to be Sir Hiram. He curried favor with my father, who could not abide him, and then with my mother when my father was gone.”

“None of that explains why he stayed in England and why he plagues us now. It just makes no sense.”

“Killing Cecilia Wainwright made no sense,” Darkefell said grimly. “Hiring William Spottiswode to slaughter sheep to make it look like we had a werewolf at Darkefell Castle made no sense. He is beyond any kind of
sense
we can understand, and I can only think deep resentment has driven him mad. Perhaps his sanity was always precarious.”

They rode in silence for a while, the sparkling sunshine bathing the meadow with golden light as larks swooped overhead, their liquid song more exquisite than any opera singer’s soprano. Kent was a lovely place and Harecross more beautiful than most corners of it. Darkefell worried that Anne was so deeply entrenched she would never want to leave her home. “Anne, when this is over, will you talk to me about marriage? We need to—”

“Look,” she said, pulling away from him and pointing toward a green valley ahead of them, “that’s Farfield Farm!”

He choked back all he wanted to say, the flood of words that jumbled in his mind. How could he be so self-assured in every other area of his life, but to her he couldn’t say all that he felt? Sometimes he seemed to find just the right words, and at other times, he struggled.

He focused on the farm, a small cottage constructed of pale stone outlined with red brick, with several outbuildings. A powerful-looking young woman was hanging linens on the line in the laundry yard to one side, while a thin elderly man split wood. Darkefell raised Golden to a canter again, and they approached. Both man and woman looked up.

When he brought the horse to a halt in the bare yard near the cottage gate, Anne slipped down and called out, “Mr. Jackson, is your wife any better?”

He bowed, as he eyed Darkefell and removed his hat, saying, “She’s a mite bit better, milady.”

“Good. This is his lordship, the Marquess of Darkefell, a guest at Harecross Hall.”

The man bowed low as Darkefell looped the gelding’s reins over a post.

“We’re going in to see Jamey, but I’ll check on Mrs. Jackson first.” She strode through the gate, down a path toward the front door, and entered, Darkefell following.

Once inside, Darkefell let Anne go ahead to the woman’s chamber, and heard murmuring. Evidently the lady was awake. He looked around at the small dim kitchen, rush seats by the hearth, a pot bubbling over the fire. On the windowsill were numerous glass pots filled with strange (to him) ingredients. He had been in his tenants’ cottage before, but perhaps because of his status, never in the kitchen. It seemed so gloomy and small to him. How did they stand it in winter, when the weather confined them indoors much of the time? The door opened, and the woman he had seen hanging laundry, a strongly built girl with a colorful kerchief over her blonde hair, came in, ducking her head in embarrassment when she saw him standing in the middle of the room.

“’Scuse me, milord. Can I get you aught, milord? Draught of ale, p’raps?”

“No. I’m waiting for Lady Anne. Please feel free to go about your business.”

She curtseyed and stirred the pot over the fire. To try to put her at her ease, he asked, “What are you cooking? It smells very good.”

“Broth, milord, fer Mrs. Jackson.”

“She’s recovering?”

“Yers.”

She seemed ill at ease. He sighed and paced, thinking that if there had been a sitting room of sorts, he would have gone through to it, but the layout of the cottage seemed unusual, to say the least. And he did not want to run into Anne’s brother without an introduction from her. As little as he liked to admit it, he was concerned about the meeting, uncomfortable with infirmity of any kind. He didn’t know what to expect.

“What are in those glass jars along the sill?” he asked, stooping and peering into the murky depths.

The maid made a face and said, “Stuff as what Mrs. Noonan ’as sent down to the cottage, milord. She messes about the kitchen at t’Hall. Sez she’s makin’ summat fer her ladyship.”

“Like what?”

“Milady is fond o’ mushroom catsup. Mrs. Noonan were tryin’ to make some, but she said as how it never turned out right, so she’s bin givin’ the failures away. Sent some of it down here. Mrs. Jackson said as how it weren’t no good for mushroom catsup, but cooked it made a lovely broth. Mr. Jackson, ’e didn’t like it, but the missus did.”

“Is that what you have been giving her?”

“Oh, no, milord, this was afore she got sick.”

Darkefell congratulated himself on bringing the woman out of her shell. Feeling a little more relaxed, he said, “I’ve never been one for condiments or relishes. Good food, well prepared, should need no sauce.” But that was about all he could think of to say, and luckily Anne appeared just then.

“She seems much better. Perhaps we’ll never know what it was that made her so ill.”

“Aye, milady,” the maid said.

“Come, Darkefell, meet Jamey. Is he in his room, Dorcas?”

“He’s in his garden room, milady. Lookin’ at some kind o’ insect with his lens, ’e said.”

“Thank you, Dorcas. You’ve done an excellent job. Have you been getting along with my brother all right?” she asked, examining the young woman’s broad, cheerful face.

“Yers, milady. Lord Jamey seems to like me.”

“Perhaps, if you are not averse, we may make this arrangement permanent. I would like to give Mr. and Mrs. Jackson some help, now that they are getting older. It would mean living here.”

The woman nodded, but her expression dimmed.

Anne watched her for a moment. She thought of a snippet of gossip relayed to her by Mary about Dorcas and a certain young groom in the earl’s stable. “If you had a sweetheart,” she added, “it might even allow you to marry.”

The woman’s cheeks turned pink and her pale blue eyes widened. “I’d be obliged, milady, if’n you’d consider it, then.”

“We’ll speak about it another day.”

The maid curtseyed.

Together, Darkefell and Anne headed back in the cottage along a wide passage to a large oak door, shiny from a century or more of polish. She rapped on it. “Jamey?” she called, leaning her ear close. “May I come in?” There was no answer. “He probably can’t hear me,” she said, glancing back at Darkefell. “If he is involved in his studies, he is deaf to the world.”

“Studies?” The marquess appeared perplexed. “I thought you said he is slow; what ‘studies’ do you mean?”

Anne turned the latch, saying, “I don’t know how to explain it, Tony, other than to say that which he is passionate about, he knows all. He can relate Linnaeus’s Latin names of every creature near and far, and most of the plants, too. That for which he cares nothing, he won’t remember for a single second. Unfortunately most of the common everyday things fall into the second grouping.” She opened the door. “Jamey?”

It was a large room and two walls were completely glass, showing a view of a tropical garden, or what appeared to be so in his eyes. He followed her as she called her brother, and gazed around at the bed in the corner, the clothes neatly folded. The garden was accessed by a glass door set in an oak frame. It was open, and humid air and sunshine flooded the bedchamber.

“I don’t see him,” Anne said with a frown. “Wait here, and I’ll look the whole breadth of the garden room. He could be down on his knees in some corner, not paying attention to aught but the insect world.”

Darkefell dallied while Anne went in search of her brother. There was a bookcase, but the books were all dry tomes of plant culture, insect encyclopedia, and calf-bound notebooks. An enormous wardrobe took up one wall, the other of the two that were solid. But the wardrobe had a note stuck to it with a penknife. Desultorily, the marquess read it, not meaning to interfere.

But even a cursory scan proved horrifying, as the meaning sank in. “Anne,
Anne
!” he yelled. “Jamey is gone! He’s been kidnapped!”

Eleven

Anne scrambled back through rows of potted plants and flowers at Darkefell’s hoarse cry and scanned the page he held out to her, rambling paragraph after rambling paragraph. She began to think that it could not possibly be a threatening note. It began with the salutation “To Whomever Should Peruse this Missive,” and went on and on, accusations, recriminations, complaints of heinous deeds done to him, clearly Hiram Grover. But where was the threat? Where … oh! She choked back a cry of dismay and read aloud the last line:
If You wish to see this Young Man, Lord James Addison, again Pay Heed! He meats with a Terrible Fate, but for the Lady Anne and her infamous Escort meat us at the Oat House Beyond the Dell
.

The note was signed, simply, “H. G. esq.,” but from the content of the letter it had been obvious who wrote it from the first line.

Darkefell put his arms around her. “We’ll get him, Anne.”

“Jamey!” she cried out, turning around in his arms and bowing her head against his chest. “Oh, my poor Jamey,” she cried, her voice muffled. “That I have brought this terror down upon his poor innocent head.”

Mr. Jackson came to the door and peered in. “Milady, we heard you scream,” he said, gazing at the marquess with suspicion, and at Anne clutched closely to his breast. “Are you well?”

“No, Mr. Jackson, no! When did you or Dorcas last see my brother?”

Mr. Jackson stared at her. “The young master?”

“Yes, yes,” Anne said impatiently, tearing herself from Darkefell’s grasp. She flew to the door and waved the note in his face. “Mr. Jackson, Jamey is
gone
! I don’t have time to explain, but someone has kidnapped him. Now attend me closely; when did you last see him?”

Mr. Jackson’s thin face squinted in alarm and he cried out, “Master Jamey? Where is he?”

Anne bit back her impatience and the earnest desire to shake him. “Dorcas! Come here, this minute.”

The young woman came to the door, wiping her broad hands on a cloth. “What is it, milady? Is aught wrong?”

Anne explained and Dorcas immediately said, “He were in his garden, milady, lookin’ at a bug in his lens, as I tole you, not an arf hour ago, give or take a few minutes.” She frowned, still wiping her fingers, but her gaze turned inward. “Lessee … I was out in the yard doin’ the laundering and I did think I heard somethin’. I looked up and around, but saw naught. I looked toward the glass room, and saw Lord Jamey in there, though I couldn’t see what he was about.” She shrugged. “That were it.”

“It must have happened within the last short while, then,” Anne said, turning to Darkefell. “We have to find him! Oh, poor Jamey!” Terror clawed at her at the thought of her naïve brother begin lured away by such a man as Hiram Grover.