A Suspicious Affair (9 page)

“And humble, too. But you said yourself that a boy needs a man’s influence.”

His wayward tongue be double damned! Rolled up horse, foot, and gun. “I can see I’ll have to weigh my every word around you, Duchess. But yes, if it will set your mind at ease, I will see what I can do. Might even put him to work exercising my old cavalry charger to shake the fidgets out of both of them. Old Beau is eating his head off, wondering what we’re doing chasing foxes when we’re supposed to be chasing Frenchies.”

“Thank you. I know Foster will be thrilled, and I would appreciate it. And perhaps your sister might like to call while you are off drilling your new troops. I’d enjoy the company.” She didn’t say that the loneliness was almost unbearable, what with the dowager turning all the local women against her. She’d not had one visitor in the entire week since the funeral.

Carlinn picked a speck of lint off his sleeve. “I am afraid my sister is taking her new duties as chatelaine very seriously now that she is home from school. She is busy with menus and such, since she’ll be having friends come to stay for the holidays.”

“I see. Later, then, after the baby.” Marisol saw, all right. She saw that this lummox didn’t want his precious sister associating with the Coach Widow. The prig. So much for being her friend. “I doubt I’ll feel like entertaining company anyway, so do not feel obliged to call, my lord. But thank you for coming. I am sure you will be notified if and when your services as guardian will be needed. Good day.”

She had dismissed him! The Earl of Kimbrough found himself cooling his heels in the drafty hall of Denning Castle, his mouth hanging open. First she used dimples to soften him up, then tears to manipulate him into nursemaiding her scapegrace brother, then she showed him the door! That arrogant bitch!

*

Dimm was worried about the thunderclouds. Not the ones obscuring the sun, but the ones on Lord Kimbrough’s face. The earl was driving the horses like all the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels, putting distance between him and Denning Castle. Or Denning’s widow.

“If it’s the dowager’s words what has you so blue-deviled, pay them no never mind. I didn’t take them to heart, so there’s no reason for you to. The idea of you plotting with the duchess don’t hold water.”

“The idea of me throttling her does! She’s the most infuriating female I’ve ever met, looking down her nose at anyone who doesn’t take snuff with one hand. Hah!”

“Seems down to earth to me, for a gentry moll. Puts out a nice tea. Watch that there hay wagon, guv.”

Kimbrough paid no attention to Dimm’s words, either about Her Grace or the lumbering cart they passed with a scant inch to spare. “I don’t know how I’m to maintain any degree of civility with her for minutes on end,” the earl fumed, “and I’m looking at twenty-one years till the boy is grown. It’s a life sentence!”

“But think of all the good you can do for the folks hereabouts if you get to manage that property. You said yourself Denning didn’t take care of his people. Didn’t even have a sawbones to look after them. Which reminds me, I have a nevvy at home what set out to medical school in Edinburgh. One year left of studies, he’s got, but the money’s run out. I’d wager he’d be willing to pledge his services for, say, five years, in exchange for his tuition. What do you think?”

“Done.” The earl took the next corner on two wheels. “Hell and damnation, I’d almost rather the child be a girl. I’m sure I could buy that piece of land from the home for unwed mothers. Blast! If she lets a bunch of lightskirts come to Pennington, I’ll murder her for sure.”

“It’s not as if Her Grace has any say in the matter, my lord. You might try praying though. By the bye, that brother-in-law of mine we talked of, the one in collars, is ready to move into that vicarage you mentioned. His wife and young ’uns is that excited to be getting out of the city.” And out of Dimm’s house.

His lordship grunted and flicked his whip over the horses’ backs for more speed. Dimm held on with both hands. “What you need is a wife, milord.”

“Why, do you just happen to have one of those stashed in your attics, too?”

“Not ’zactly, and you’d do better to keep your eyes on the road than sending me black looks like that.”

“Oh, did you mean I need a woman’s refining touch? Hah! That’s just what I need on top of everything else, someone to nag about the polish on my boots or the smell of my cigar or the way I drive my cattle. I mean, a scandal and a murder charge and that aggravating female aren’t enough? You’d saddle me with a prunes-and-prisms wife besides?”

“Devil a bit, guv. But you ain’t thinking clearly, milord. Women die in childbirth all the time. Then there’s always milk fever. What happens if Her Grace sticks her spoon in the wall any time these next five or ten years? You’re stuck with a infant, your lordship, all on your own.”

For the first time in twelve years, Carlinn put the curricle in the ditch.

Chapter Nine

Kimbrough kept his promise about Foster. He was a man of his word, Marisol conceded, whatever else she might think of his stiff-rumped earlship. And she thought of him more than was good for her or the baby, since his very name made her blood boil. Every enthusiastic encomium pouring from her brother’s mouth grated against her nerves when she remembered how Kimbrough had denied her his sister’s acquaintance. As if she’d contaminate the girl, for heaven’s sake! He’d behaved like a doyenne pulling her skirts away from a mud puddle. And that sanctimonious snob was to be in charge of her son? No wonder she was in the doldrums.

The weather did not help, being raw and gray when it wasn’t raw and rainy. Walks were more torture than pleasure. The wintery chill outside was nothing to the dowager’s attitude inside, and the lack of congenial company was driving Marisol to distraction. She tried to keep busy renovating an apartment in the north tower, with Mr. Stenross’s approval. The historic ducal suite was no place for a child and too drafty for its mother. But even that work was proceeding for the most part without the duchess, since the smell of paint made her queasy and the hammering of paneling gave her the headache. She only had to approve swatches of fabric from books and choose desks and chairs brought down from the attics for her inspection, there being no way she could navigate those steep steps and narrow aisles.

After that, there were only so many books she could read, letters she could write, little caps she could sew, comments about the weather she could shout to Aunt Tess to fill her days. She was reduced to playing with Max, for pity’s sake!

For all that she was bored to flinders without his company, Marisol did not begrudge her brother his new interest. Kimbrough kept Foster busy and excited, sending him home physically exhausted, enough so that Boynton’s acerbic comments at dinner fell on ears suddenly as deaf as Aunt Tess’s, to Marisol’s relief.

She was also relieved that the earl had taken her hint and not called, the high-handed, pompous prude. He was so worried about what people would say, it was laughable. Why, he fled the London social scene to avoid the gabble-grinders, she’d heard, burying himself in the country like a turnip putting down roots, the noddy. As if anyone’s opinion mattered, not even his high-and-mighty lordship’s. She did not care a bit that he didn’t call for weeks after the reading of the will; it just showed what a rude, boorish clodpole he was. Of course, she heard about the carriage accident from her maid, but Foster assured her it was nothing.

Foster was too impressed by his hero to mention that Carlinn—they were on a first-name basis now—was suffering from abrasions and cracked ribs. Real men didn’t whimper about their injuries. Besides, Foster would never let it be known that Carlinn was anything less than a top-of-the-trees whip. There had to have been ice on the road that evening. All Marisol knew was that the earl was letting Foster tool his curricle and pair—and bang-up bits of blood they were, too, according to her brother—and exercise his Thoroughbreds.

“And he’s even writing his old commander about me. Cavalry, don’t you know,” Foster chattered happily. “Carlinn says that’s the only way to go, especially for a chap hoping to win advancement in the field. Carlinn says I might hear shortly if there’s an aide-de-camp position open.”

Marisol was sick unto death of hearing what Carlinn said, but she smiled for Foster’s sake. The rustic earl might be stiff and dull, without an ounce of cultured refinement in him, but at least he was steady. He wouldn’t lead Foster into bad habits, like Boynton kept trying to do, daring the younger man into rash wagers. Since they were all pockets to let until the final disbursement of funds, nothing came of it, but Marisol could only be that much more appreciative of the earl’s influence.

Boynton kept to his rooms for the most part…and to the bottle. When he wasn’t in the stables trying to fleece the grooms of their wages, Arvid’s brother and his shifty-eyed valet experimented with new ways of tying neckcloths. Occasionally he challenged Marisol to a hand of piquet for imaginary sums. They gave up on billiards when Marisol couldn’t get close enough to the table.

The dowager, meanwhile, was suffering pangs of indecision. On the one hand, her daughter-in-law was a fallen woman, a pariah, and a murderess, deserving only of the cut direct. That’s what she’d convinced her friends, so none of her cronies called. On the other hand, Marisol might be the mother of the next duke, controlling Denning Castle and all of its inhabitants. What to do? The dowager’s decision was made easier by the lack of company she also felt. She couldn’t accept invitations for dinner parties and cards, not after making a to-do about the trollop’s lack of proper mourning, and the local matrons were hesitant about calling. They didn’t want to get in the middle of the two duchesses either. So the dowager was forced to give Marisol grudging acceptance, to have a fourth at whist.

*

The Bow Street Runner was recovering from his concussion nicely. Just the occasional headache now, thank you, but a chap couldn’t be too careful with head wounds, don’t you know. He was staying on at the inn at the earl’s expense, naturally, with two pretty chambermaids at his beck and call. This left the proprietor of the Three Feathers a shade shorthanded, so he agreed to give Dimm’s niece a trial. Changing sheets at a country inn mightn’t be precisely what Dimm would have chosen for the girl, but Suky was a pretty little thing with a head on her shoulders. If she didn’t nab herself a handsome young farmer or such, his name wasn’t Jeremiah Dimm. ’Sides, he told himself, it wasn’t like she’d have any chance of getting into trouble, not with her strapping big cousin working in Lord Kimbrough’s stables, another cousin fixed as the duchess’s abigail, and her other uncle right now setting up as vicar one town over.

Dimm was doing just fine, keeping to his bed. A nice, slow recovery suited him to a cow’s thumb. It didn’t suit his nibs in London. Not by half. One week later Dimm’s boss sent for the Runner and demanded results.

“I don’t care who you arrest, just arrest someone. Charge the wife, by George—she had the most to gain just getting rid of that dastard. She’ll never hang for it anyway, so there’ll be no harm done.”

“’Cept the real killer will have got off easy. I can’t do it, sir, sorry.”

“Then somebody else! Surely you must have a prime suspect in mind. They are up in arms over this at Whitehall, that a nobleman can be gunned down in broad daylight and we cannot find the killer. Doesn’t look good on our record, does it, Dimm?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Then what shall I tell the reporters?”

“Well, they all has alibis so thin you can poke a stick through them, but that Lord Armbruster won’t name his. Man has something to hide, or I miss my guess.”

“No, no, it couldn’t have been Lord Armbruster. In fact, those men you had watching his flat in Half Moon Street have been reassigned. Waste of taxpayers’ money, don’t you know.” His nibs shuffled some papers, without meeting Dimm’s eyes.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but who gave that there order?”

“The prime minister himself, if you must know. So go find another suspect. Get on with it, man.”

Jeremiah got on with it. He parked his son Gabriel in a carriage across the way from Armbruster’s love nest. The boy had to learn surveillance work, didn’t he?

“Facts is like rocks, my boy. The deeper they try to hide, the harder you got to dig.”

*

The earl was licking his wounds. My word, he kept berating himself, how had he ever come to do such a corkbrained thing? Tipping over his carriage like the merest whipster. He deserved to suffer!

It was that woman’s fault. Marisol Pendenning brought out the worst in him, that was all. He despised the way she put on airs, looking down on him as though he were lower than that foolish dog Max. She even talked to the mutt in warmer tones than she used to him. And no matter that she was the spoiled pet of a superficial society, she usually succeeded in making him feel like an unmannerly lout. Hell and tarnation, how was he going to face her now, with half his face rubbed raw from the accident? With his ribs strapped tight, he couldn’t even make her a proper bow. Oh, how the witch would laugh at his comeuppance.

Unless he didn’t come to call. Carlinn decided he’d rather she think him a craven than a clunch. Let her highness believe he stayed away because she’d disdained his company. That was better than the truth.

If he couldn’t stop by to see how she did in that mausoleum of a castle, which he’d do for any neighbor in difficulty, at least he could keep his word about seeing to the brother. The boy was downright handy, in fact, cheerfully playing the role of carriage driver so the earl could get around the countryside on his estate business. Of course, young Laughton handled the ribbons like a novice, jolting Carlinn’s aching ribs over every rut and ridge in the road.

Staying home was worse, for then he had to put up with Cousin Winifred’s fussing over him. What the hell did Cousin Winifred—his father’s cousin, actually—think lavender water was going to do for a busted rib? Or a posset? Or a mustard plaster, or any of the hundred other nostrums she tried to press on him?

His sister Bettina was worse, going into strong hysterics every time she saw his battered and bruised face. She was already nervous over her first house party, even if her guests were only three schoolmates and their mamas interrupting their journeys home for the holidays for a fortnight’s visit. Those three matrons were crucial to her Season next year, Tina had confided, for without a mother of her own, and Cousin Winifred having lived in the country so long, she quite depended on the patronage of her friends’ mamas to make the right connections.

In other words, an advantageous marriage. Gads, Carlinn asked himself, when had his sweet little sister turned into a conniving manipulator? When she approached womanhood, he answered his own question. Hair up, skirts down, gentlemen beware.

And her friends were worse, when they finally arrived. Giggling, simpering, batting their eyelashes and waving their fans around hard enough to make the candles flicker—and for him, a battered hulk of a gentleman farmer! He could see the calculating gleams in the mothers’ eyes, too, assessing the furnishings at the Hall, the number of bedrooms, the quality of the food. They must have researched his income down to the last shilling; now they were calculating their chicks’ chances. Carlinn was titled, wealthy, and unmarried, ergo he was fair game! Blast it, he felt like the fox with the hounds on his heels, and in his own house.

And Dimm thought he ought to get married! What, should he pick a bride from one of these chattering schoolgirls? He’d rather have four more broken ribs. The chits were as silly as peahens, his sister included, with more hair than wit. Blushes, yes, giggles aplenty. They possessed the usual insufficient talent to entertain but not enough sense to know it, and not a jot of intelligent conversation between the four of them. Gowns and beaux and next year’s parties: that was the extent of their interests, and their mothers’, their older sisters’, and their ape-leader aunts’ interests.

Jeremiah, when he went to bring the Runner some oranges from the hothouse, was sure they’d ripen with age. The chits, not the oranges. Carlinn was of the opinion that the town bronze they’d get next year would just add a superficial covering to superficial minds. Instead of being unspoiled schoolgirls, they’d have all the affectations of acknowledged beauties. He couldn’t even think of picking a bride from the ranks of those…those incipient Coach Widows!

Mantraps in training, Foster’s cow-handed driving, Aunt Winifred’s coddling, Dimm’s knowing chuckles, and a face that could scare birds out of trees—they were all too much to bear. Besides, he had another problem.

It was one thing to have young Laughton driving his curricle and running tame in his stable; it was quite another thing to invite him inside the house when there was a gaggle of susceptible young females in residence. Carlinn felt for the lad, really he did, and a wealthy wife could ease his way immeasurably. But these ninnyhammers were Kimbrough’s guests. Their families trusted him to see they were not introduced to any scandal-ridden young scapegrace without a feather to fly with. Carlinn found himself making excuses to see less of the boy, steeling himself against Foster’s wounded-pup expression.

Then Dimm announced he was being called back to London. Still feeling guilty over the older man’s injury, Carlinn had the knacky idea of conveying the Runner into Town in style, in his own well-sprung traveling carriage. Of course, he and Foster would have to go along to make sure Mr. Dimm did not suffer any relapse. Carlinn could do some shopping—Christmas was just around the corner—and take the opportunity to introduce the young marquis to friends at the War Office.

A brilliant idea, the earl congratulated himself. He should have had it a sennight ago before the first of those plaguey females arrived. Of course, a week ago he couldn’t have managed the stairs at the Pulteney, much less the carriage ride to Town. Still, it was a capital notion, if it was all right with Foster’s sister.

Foster was so excited Marisol couldn’t help but agree to the plan. He swore they’d be back in a week.

“Carlinn has to be back to see off his sister’s houseguests. Bunch of hoydenish little schoolgirls, I gather. That’s why he’s running away. All the more lucky for me. I mean, Kimbrough putting in a good word for me will assure I get a quick posting and a crack regiment!”

So she kissed him goodbye, made sure he had her list of Christmas shopping commissions in his pocket, and wished him Godspeed. Then she went back inside and told herself how happy she was for Foster. Her beloved brother had a friend, he could get away from this oppressive atmosphere for a week, he was getting to go shopping, and he could go bounding down the steps so Lord Kimbrough didn’t have to leave his cattle standing. If Foster weren’t her brother, she would have hated him.

*

The little party arrived back at Denning Castle two days early. Foster did not bound up the stairs; he was half-carried into the hall between Lord Kimbrough and a young man in uniform. When Marisol got to the entry hall, the earl was helping Foster out of his greatcoat.