Midnight Masquerade (17 page)

“Do you suppose Bertie is in on it? It was she who sent Bidwell to round up another player.”

He looked around the room. “There are several groups of people he might have approached. I doubt that Mama suggested he get Bessler. And she knows I don’t like cards above half. Not for the chicken stakes we play for here.”

“Have you considered I might have been the object of his solicitation?” she suggested with a sly smile. “He is at the same table himself. Is that too far beyond credulity to consider?”

“Digging for compliments, Deirdre? What a slow top I am, to make such digging and delving necessary. He did put the question directly to Bessler, however. A good way to keep an eye on him and to keep the conversation off such topics as mesmerism.”

“You’re obsessed with it. The only person Bessler could have mesmerized is Aunt Charney, and she is not the thief. She was perfectly wide awake and aware she was robbed. Unless he mesmerized Bidwell into doing it. Is that what you think?” she asked, feeling clever at this new idea.

“It hadn’t occurred to me, to tell the truth. No, that’s not what I’ve been thinking at all. But I do think Bidwell has more idea of animal magnetism than to suggest rubbing two cats together.”

“You think Bidwell knows how to perform these trance things? That he went to Bartholomew Fair and talked to the Indian?”

“Good God, I thought my theories were bizarre till I heard yours. Still, there could be something in it,” he added thoughtfully.

She observed the planes of his face, quiet now in contemplation, with only the eyes revealing the activity below the skull, while his fingers beat a tattoo on his knees. In a moment that mobile brow would lift, lending a satirical edge to his expression. She admired his visage in all its guises. “You really enjoy this, don’t you?” she asked.

“Very much. It’s like a breath of fresh air, to have something intriguing to puzzle over. I’m like a dog with a bone, unable to let it go. It’s good for the brain, keeping it active. It’s like armed combat in a way, pitting yourself against another man, only doing it mentally. The mind is really man’s better half. What difference what manner of flesh carries it? I would be happy to have Voltaire’s unlovely body, if only I could have his mind to go with it.”

“I never thought you would be interested in—in objective, purely intellectual matters like this.”

“This time it’s not purely objective. I take a subjective interest, as the crime was executed at my own house. I see it as a challenge, as though I’d been slapped in the face, but I do like the disinterested challenge nearly as well.”

“Your laboratory too, and your scientific work—I didn’t know you were keen on science.”

“What did you think interested me, other than horses and women?” he asked, and looked with interest to hear her answer.

“Jackets, haircuts, waistcoats.”

“You mistook me for a
dandy
?” he asked, staring. “You might at least have said Corinthian.”

“Oh, no, not a dandy. I knew your greater interest was in women,” she told him, lifting her fan.

“It used to be,” he answered lazily. “I am restricting myself now.”

“To solving crimes?”

“No, to one woman was my meaning,
ac
-tually,” he answered with an intimate smile. He reached out for the fan and took it from her. Leaning forward, he unfurled it to its full size, placed it to shield their profiles from the rest of the room, and placed one quick, electrifying kiss on her lips. Then he folded the fan and returned it.

“We wouldn’t want to expose the company to the rare spectacle of Belami making a jackass of himself,” he explained, resuming his former position.

“Rare spectacle?” she asked with an impish smile. “I hear these spectacles occur with monotonous regularity.”

“I am deeply offended . . . that you choose to use the word monotonous,” he parried.

She silently agreed it was the wrong word. Monotony did not cause so delicious a churning inside.

Chapter 12

The morning dawned bright and crisp and very cold. Long wisps of tattered clouds hung in the azure sky, reminding Belami of Switzerland, and Deirdre of Mechlin lace. They both arose early, though not by prearrangement, and met in the breakfast parlor. The only other person there was Pronto, who was plodding his way through a large plate of Irish potatoes, laced with eggs, and a stack of gammon.

“That looks good. I’ll have the same,” Belami said to the servant.

“Just toast and coffee for me,” Deirdre added.

“No, you must take more than that,” Belami told her. “You are going to have an active morning. Take something to sustain yourself. Eggs and gammon for Miss Gower.”

“And toast,” she said, planning to eat only what she had asked for herself. “What activity have you got planned, Belami?” she asked. With Pronto present, she was reluctant to call him Dick.

Belami gave her a piercing glance at this reversion to the more formal name. It softened to a smile as he observed that shyness was the cause.

“I have a marvelous groom,” was his oblique answer. “He has a way with snow. He has plowed off the pond for us to skate. He also has some snowshoes he’s going to allow us to try. Great, unwieldy things that look like battledore racquets. In fact, one of us must use makeshift shoes that are battledore racquets. The youngsters of our party—we and perhaps Bidwell—shall spend a healthy day in the great outdoors.”

“Hate snow,” Pronto told him. “Ain’t going to spend no day out freezing my toes off. Neither will Bidwell, I can tell you. Foolishness. Don’t do it, Deirdre.”

“Pay no heed to the slug,” Belami remarked. “Pronto prefers to hibernate like a bear at the first flake of snow.”

“Something to be said for it,” Pronto replied.

“What about the necklace? Are you abandoning the search for it?” she asked, surprised.

“Not at all. There’s nothing more I can do till after dinner.”

While they talked, Deirdre forgot her intention of fasting and ate up the whole breakfast, and still no one else had come down.

After breakfast, Belami and Deirdre bundled up in warm coats and boots and went to the stable, where Pierre Réal was busy polishing the curricle.

“How are we to return to London?” was his greeting to his employer. “A foot of snow, an open carriage. I told him ‘the closed carriage,’” he added, turning to Deirdre with accents of abuse. “But he—”

“
Tais-toi
,” his master ordered. “Where are the snowshoes, Pierre?”

“I’ll get them.”

“You did as I asked last night?”

“
Certainement
. I strolled over to Boltons’ and spoke with monsieur.”

“Boltons’! Dick, that’s quite far away,” Deirdre exclaimed.

“Non, ten miles, and in this balmy weather, the little walk is good for a man,” Réal said casually. “Everything, she is all set,” he added aside to Belami.

The snowshoes and battledore racquets were brought forth. The groom first lashed the snowshoes to his own boots and strolled into the yard to instruct them in the proper placement of the feet for this mode of ambulation.

“Well apart, you see,” he said severely, straddling his legs and shuffling at a rapid gait. “Don’t try to lift the shoes. Slide them softly forward, one at a time. By lifting the feet, you sink into the snow. If you could call this little dusting a snow,” he added, to mitigate the impression that he considered twelve inches anything to be reckoned with. “This is not transportation for a lady,” he added with another injured glance at his employer.

Turning to Deirdre, he continued his complaints. “I tell him so this morning, when he comes to see me. The skirt, she will impede the progress. It will be best to walk behind the stables away from the wind, for you
anglais
.”

“What do you say,
anglaise
, shall we show him what stern stuff we’re made of?” Belami asked her.

They struck out for the main road as soon as they were accoutered in the uncomfortable aids to walking in snow. Progress was slow and cumbersome at first, but after a few false starts, they got the rhythm of shuffling glide that gave the best progress with the least effort.

“You’re not too cold?” Dick asked solicitously.

“I’m roasting to death. It’s hard work,” she said, breathing heavily.

“We shan’t go too far. This is straining muscles I didn’t even know I had. Can you make it to the road, or will you wait here while I go on down?”

“I’ll go with you.”

They completed the trek to the main road, to see drifts of snow as high as their waists in some places, with as yet no effort to clear the track. Dick thought a mounted rider could get through and pointed out that at spots the road was blown clear completely, and even the drifting was toward the banks of the road. A carriage would have trouble, but his own Diablo, he insisted, could make it.

“I’d say we’ve got a few days before our suspects can run off on us in their carriages,” he concluded.

“Is that why we came?” she asked.

“And here you thought I had taken the day off, didn’t you?”

“Guilty as charged. You really are like a bulldog with this investigating business.”

“I can be tenacious as a barnacle when I decide to do something. You’ll see what I mean,” he added with a flirtatious smile that told her he had ceased speaking of the case.

They plodded back to the stable, to see Bidwell in the doorway speaking to Réal. “He is eager to get away,” Belami mentioned.

Gliding forward, he greeted Bidwell. “The road is still blocked,” he said cheerfully. “Have you come to try the famous snowshoes, Bidwell?”

“Your groom has been extolling their virtue. He tells me he once walked forty miles in them, in the teeth of a wild storm too. Amazing.”

“
Oui
, in Canada, where we get real snow. Many times I have had to tunnel out from my front door,” Réal told them.

“I doubt you or I could go a tenth of that distance,” Belami said, rubbing his cramped muscles. “Do you want to try them?” he repeated.

“I think not. It’s chilly. I’m not dressed for this weather. I’ll go back inside and have breakfast.” He turned aside and spoke to Deirdre before leaving. “I expect your aunt is chirping merry this morning, with her diamond back in place.”

“I haven’t seen her this morning, but she was in alt last night,” Deirdre replied.

Belami noted his sly smile and was on thorns to learn its cause. He noticed Bidwell’s eagerness to discover a way out of Beaulac, but didn’t think he’d tackle a forty-mile trek to London on snowshoe. Already he was shivering and darting back into the house.

Dick turned to his groom and said, “I want you to tramp down to the inn and disappear for a few days.”

“What I am to do at the inn?” Pierre asked.

“Enjoy yourself. Play in the snow. Take your snowshoes with you, if you like. They will provide an excellent introduction to the serving girls. Thanks for the loan of the shoes. I’ll redesign them for you. A narrower and longer shoe would buoy the weight up as well, and not require such an ungainly gait. Some sort of cane or walking stick would be a help too.”

“The shoe, he is perfect, made for me by an Indian guide from Montreal.”

“Fine, then I’ll design one for me, and race you.” Réal gave him a withering look and strolled back into the stables, while Dick and Deirdre returned to the house to warm up and rest from their exertions.

This was done in his mother’s dressing room, where Bertie sat with a pot of cocoa and plate of toast fingers. Deirdre noticed the elegant dressing gown her hostess wore, all embroidered in roses down the front. Her gray curls were carefully dressed in a basket style, and her cheeks, if Deirdre guessed right, were tinted with rouge. How different from her Aunt Charney, who was ascetic in her private moments, and whose habits Deirdre followed to a large extent. She sat imagining herself in such a fashionable outfit as Bertie wore. In her mind, Dick sat with her, taking cocoa, being every bit as gallant and loving to her as he was with his mama.

This too surprised her. She would not have thought him a man to admire and love his mother.

“Can we rob you of some of that cocoa, Mama?” he asked cheerfully after he had wished her a good morning, kissed her cheek noisily, and found a seat. “I’ll ring for another pot and some cups,” he added when he lifted the lid and discovered the pot to be empty. He stuck his head into the hallway and asked the upstairs maid to attend to it.

“Well, old girl, how are you bearing up under the strain of this damnable party?” was his next question.

Bertie gave a quick, guilty glance at Deirdre and said, “Really, Dickie, I don’t think you should . . .”

“Deirdre is becoming accustomed to my plain speaking. She, of all people, must agree with us that it is a damnable, boring party. It isn’t even possible to call in the neighbors, or hire decent musicians, or ride or hunt or anything.”

“It is a pity it has fallen so flat,” Bertie had to agree. “Snippe can fiddle better than you might think, and someone must be able to play the piano. All the young ladies hammer away at it nowadays till your head is throbbing. Couldn’t we get up a dancing party at least?”

“I hammer a little,” Deirdre confessed.

“You hammer divinely,” Belami objected. To his mama’s utter amazement, he reached out and grasped Deirdre’s hand. She stared, unable to conceal her astonishment, but at least she got a rein on her tongue.

“I didn’t mean you, Miss Gower. I’m sure you don’t hammer in the least,” she said. “Oh, dear, why can I never open my mouth without putting my foot in it?”

“A family failing,” Belami told her. “Have you seen the duchess yet this morning?”

“No, she sleeps late, thank God. Oh, dear—I didn’t mean that, Miss Gower. It is only that I am a late sleeper myself, and . . .”

“I understand,” Deirdre said, unoffended. “I’ve often thanked God for my aunt’s late sleeping myself, ma’am. What a charming room you have,” she added, glancing around at the flower-covered walls, the dressing table with dainty crystal pots ranged over the top.

“Life is too short to be miserable. I try to make my house attractive. I don’t know why any lady who doesn’t have to decks herself out in gray gowns and . . . They suit the duchess admirably. I didn’t mean her! Yours is lovely too, my dear. Such a pretty shade of dove gray. I’ve done it again. Terribly sorry, Dickie. I wished the demmed cocoa would come.” After this hapless speech, Bertie drew a deep, resigned sigh and looked impatiently to the door.