The Genuine Article (17 page)

He turned to see her standing there as he mounted, and she waved as he rode off. It didn't seem very practical to attempt saddling a carriage horse even if a saddle happened to be lying about. She would have to content herself with waiting for Darley's efforts.

Surely a thief on foot could not long escape a pack of hounds and a man on horseback.

"Did you see him? Is the thief out there?" Behind her, Jessica excitedly wrung her hands. "Isn't Lord Darley just the bravest person you've ever known?"

Marian would wait and pass judgment on that later. What she wanted to know was the precise location of Mr. Montague while all this was happening. It seemed highly suspicious that the noise hadn't aroused him.

But she was left to wonder as her mother and Lily wandered down, followed by Darley's valet. There were fires to be stirred and water to be heated and breakfast to be made. Chasing thieves had become men's work, apparently.

By the time a breakfast of sorts had been put together, Darley was back with two hares and a quail, but no thief. He slung the game sheepishly on a pantry table, set the shotgun against the wall, and cleansed his hands in the basin Jessica brought for him.

"What happened?" she asked eagerly. "Did he dash over a cliff?"

Marian raised her eyebrows at her sister's sudden boldness, but Lord Darley was answering Jessica and not looking in her direction, so she held her tongue.

"The hounds were just out for a romp. They weren't on anybody's trail. I don't know where the thief got to." His disappointment was so evident that no one could chastise him, not even Marian.

"That means he could still be on the grounds," Marian said. It wouldn't do to worry her mother, but she wished to get her hands on O'Toole and personally wring his neck. She set down her pitcher and glanced at the door that Darley had just entered. Perhaps she should hunt for O'Toole.

"Step one foot further in that direction. Lady Marian, and I will personally haul you back to London so fast your head will spin."

The voice roared from the doorway behind her, and she spun around to glare at Montague. "How dare you speak to me that way!"

Having achieved next to no sleep and spent the past hour attempting to locate some semblance of a magistrate only to be told he was away, Reginald wasn't in any humor for argument. He slapped his hat and riding crop down on a cabinet and glared back. "He's my bloody valet and if anybody goes after him, it will be me. You're a damned sight better off not witnessing his capture if he's still around."

He strode through the kitchen and out the door, leaving his audience open-mouthed behind him.

Lady Grace was the first to recover her aplomb. Reaching for a heavy frying pan, she said, "He must be a bit peckish without breakfast. Jessica, do you think you could find the ingredients for those little muffins we used to make?"

Flushing, apparently unable to excuse his friend's behavior, Darley gave Marian a tight smile and followed in Montague's path.

When he was gone, Marian threw a pewter sugar bowl at the door. She was tired of holding her tongue. One of these days she would let them all have it, bound and gift-wrapped.

Chapter 14

The men returned some time later, muddy, hungry, covered with straw, and irritated beyond speaking. Lily hurried to pour their tea while Darley's valet relieved them of their filthy coats.

Lady Grace attempted to send her daughters out of the room while the gentlemen were in their shirtsleeves, but even quiet Jessica would have none of it. Without waiting to serve in the formality of the dining room, they set plates and cutlery on the trestle table in the kitchen and began setting out the meal while demanding to know what happened.

Darley looked disgusted. "If I did not know better, I'd say there was an army troop out there this morning. After all that rain, there shouldn't have been so many footprints."

Reginald drained his teacup first, then began folding his bacon into his toast. He was all but certain there was more than one person hiding on these grounds. The boot prints looked to be of different sizes to him, and the one appeared to have an incipient hole in the sole. He bit savagely into his toast and ignored the speculations running rampant. O'Toole wouldn't be caught dead with a hole in his sole.

"You are being awfully quiet, Mr. Montague. What is your theory?" Marian asked, sipping at her tea. The dark circles beneath her eyes reflected her sleepless night.

He tried not to look at her. Generally, he didn't see women until well into the afternoon, when they were elegantly gowned and coiffed and prepared for the day. Lady Marian had not taken the time to do more than tie her hair back in a ribbon, and its dark waves seemed strangely thick and luxuriant for one so slender.

She was gowned only in some frail muslin that had little beneath it to conceal her natural shape. He was having a devil of a time keeping his eyes from straying to discover just how natural that shape was. Instead, he focused on his breakfast.

"I have no theory. The magistrate is not here to order the roads searched. I have sent someone back to London to fetch a Runner, and another with O'Toole's description to the toll keepers. I suggest we search the house one more time in daylight. If your cousin does not put in an appearance soon, I also suggest that the ladies return to town while I remain to deal with the authorities. Short of burning the whole damned manor down, I don't know what else we can do."

"I say, Reginald, your language," Darley reminded him. He threw a worried look to Marian, but she seemed not in the least offended. Jessica was blushing, however. Darley patted her hand, and she offered a shy smile of gratitude.

"We will have to organize the search better this time," Marian suggested. "If the thief is still here, he could just stay one step ahead of us and never be found. We must start at the ground floor and drive him upward until there is nowhere else for him to escape."

Darley gave her a look of amazement. "That is a capital idea. I wish I had thought of that earlier."

"There are many things we should have thought of earlier," Montague argued. "I fear it is too late for any of them now. The thief has gone outside these walls. What reason is there to think that he will return?"

Lady Grace poured another cup of tea. "He will need to eat sometime," she said. "He has already devoured most of our nuncheon."

They all turned to stare at her. Blithely unaware of her audience's astonishment, she smeared a bit of jam they had found in the larder onto her toast.

"Mama, do you mean to say that the chickens we cooked last night are gone?" Marian asked.

Lady Grace looked up with surprise. "Isn't that what I just said, dear?"

Reginald scraped his chair back and went to investigate the cold cellar. When he returned, his expression was carefully neutral. "There is naught but the bones of one fowl left. The other is gone entirely."

"Ghosts don't eat, do they?" Jessica asked fearfully.

Reginald didn't bother to give this inanity a reply, but Darley reassured her as Marian set her cup down and stood up.

"I think we need to observe a few precautions. Do you think we could hire some help from the village?" Marian turned to Mr. Montague for an answer.

"I have already looked into that. Most of the men have been hired out for the planting, but there were a couple of old fellows willing to come out for the day. We can station them with the horses. And the innkeeper thought he knew a couple of women who might help for as long as we need them. No one seems to know anything of the marquess's whereabouts, but they're all curious to look the place over. I suspect we'll have a fair company here shortly."

Both Marian and Montague waited expectantly for some sound from beyond the walls, but only Lady Grace responded.

"I suppose my Gwen has long gone to another household. She used to make the most delicious pastries," she said wistfully.

There was nothing much that could be said to that. The gentlemen went off to see to the horses while the ladies cleared away the remains of their repast. Before they were done, a wagon rolled into the stable yard. Mr. Montague's new employees had arrived.

Lady Grace fell into raptures over a stout old lady who was apparently the amazing Gwen come back for the sake of old times. Marian she took charge of the bevy of women come to help out, setting them to scrubbing the kitchen and preparing the game. As she did so, she marveled over Montague's audacity. This wasn't even his home, and he was hiring servants. If the marquess actually existed, he must think all this bustle distinctly odd when he returned.

But the new troops were swiftly organized under Mr. Montague's direction. The village men were assigned to clean the stables and keep guard over the horses. A pistol was left in their care to shoot as warning should anyone attempt to escape.

A few giggling girls were sent with dusters and mops and brooms into the various downstairs chambers with the instructions not to leave their assigned rooms without permission. If anyone entered their domains, they were to pound their buckets and yell at the top of their lungs, and everyone was to come running.

The rest of the party trudged upward in hopes the thief would attempt to escape the activity below. Reginald stationed Lady Grace at the stairs with a hunting horn and the sewing basket she insisted on. He only hesitated when it came to divide the party to search the two long wings. The ladies could not be sent off by themselves, but it would not only be improper for them to break up into pairs, but the decision as to who would go with whom was beyond his capacity.

Marian caught his dilemma at once. "It seems wasteful, but perhaps we ought all to search each wing together. Mother said she thought there might be a hidden passage on this floor. We will need to be looking for that as well as watching to see no one escapes."

Darley beamed. "Capital idea. If you will allow me?" He offered his arm for her escort.

Forcing herself to smile sweetly instead of impatiently, Marian accepted his arm and proceeded at a dignified pace to the first chamber. The task of searching for a thief or his hiding place would be tedious if she had to do it at this snail's pace, but she needed Lord Darley's approval more than ever. Without that ruby, they would soon have no home to go to when their London lease was done. She bit her lip to hide her anxiety as the others pounded walls and doors.

Reginald sent Marian's strained expression a look of concern, but his mind was on locating the monster of ingratitude who had stolen his pride and integrity, not to mention his fortune. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that he would have to find some way of repaying Lady Marian for her missing necklace if it should not be found. He just hadn't found any opportunity to tell her so. Perhaps after the noon meal he could separate her from the others long enough to reassure her.

The rattle of a bucket below sent the gentlemen careening down the stairs twice before the maids learned not to knock them with their mops. After the second false alarm, the search began to degenerate into a game of hide-and-seek, with the contents of the manor being "it."

Jessica discovered that some of the wardrobes still contained clothes from an earlier generation. Forgetting her fear of ghosts, she ran from room to room searching out more and more miraculous creations of hoops and petticoats and ostrich feathers.

Darley became engrossed in searching the paneling for more concealed cracks to match his earlier success, and he was soon left behind.

Reginald mentally catalogued the value of the artwork and bibelots ornamenting the various chambers and wondering if they could all be included on the entailment inventory.

And Marian discovered a lady's library with first editions and illustrated pages that she had difficulty leaving behind. If there were a thief to be found, he had not begun to steal all the treasures waiting to be taken.

When Reginald discovered her curled in a chair scanning an illustrated version of
Gulliver's Travels,
he dropped into a matching chair and scowled. "This is not working," he announced.

Marian reluctantly drew herself from the adventures in Lilliput back to the present. She looked around, discovering they were in a sitting room adjoining the bed chamber where her father's portrait hung, and there was no one else about. In all propriety, the situation should make her uneasy, but Mr. Montague's harassed expression did not lead her to believe she was in danger from anything except his temper.