My Sweet Folly (42 page)

“You cannot arrest him?” Folie asked.

“We can, ma’am, but we do not. Inman is vicious, but no more useful to us than the butcher’s dog, if we wish to catch the butcher out red-handed.”

“What do you mean?” Folie exclaimed. “You have not taken this man up on purpose? When he was poisoning Robert’s food? When he was murdering housemaids and selling people onto prison ships?”

“Hush,” Robert said, touching Folie’s hand. “I understand you,” he said to Lander. “Go on.”

“We wish to flush out his master, ma’am,” Lander explained apologetically. “For that we must give him a bit of leash.”

“Humpf,” Folie said. Then she gripped Robert’s hand. “Melinda! Will he go after Melinda now?”

Lander frowned. “I will keep Miss Melinda safe. I swear to you, ma’am; I swear on my life—I will make certain she is safe.”

The intensity in his voice made Robert study him with a new attention. But Folie was already talking anxiously of taking Melinda away from London, back to Toot, where she would be unharmed.

“Ma’am—” Lander said. “If you and Mr. Cambourne will put your trust in me—I believe I know a place where you may go with Miss Melinda that will be secure. Indeed, safer than Toot-above-the-Batch or anywhere else you might take her.”

“Where?” Robert slid his fingers between hers, closing his hand against her palm.

“A few hours from town, in the direction of Norwich—it’s a sheltered property where a proper guard may be placed. I am quite familiar with it. The ladies would be comfortable there, with a walled garden close by to the village, and every amenity.”

Folie looked up at Robert. He nodded. “I agree that they must leave London. Solinger is too large, and already penetrated. Herefordshire is too far away. I know nothing of it.”

“But Toot is—” Folie began.

“I don’t want you so far away as that.” He found that his hold was tightening on her hand. “Lander’s notion is better.”

As she teased her lower lip in thought, Robert had to look away, distracted by a precipitous rise of desire. He drew his fingers from hers and picked up his mug, taking a deep, quick swallow.

“I suppose you are right,” she said reluctantly. “But—what will you do?”

“We must flush out the ringleader,” Robert said. “I don’t think we can breathe easy until we have him. Just how highly-placed do you suppose this fellow might be?’’

“I will not mislead you,” Lander said soberly. “Very high.”

“I’ll hunt down the prime minister himself to put a stop to this nonsense,” Robert said, scowling.

Folie watched him silently. He did not say it, but he vowed to himself to take a black revenge on whoever had put those bruises on her face. First he would make sure they swallowed plenty of the same maddening drug they had given him, and when they were out of their minds with the fearsome apparitions, he would practice on them a few of those clever tortures favored by the Indian princes. He toyed pleasurably with a vision of it in his mind, staring into the shadows of the taproom.

“You frighten me when you look so,” Folie said. “Robert—you will not be foolish!”

He came back to reality. With a distorted smile, he said, “Merely daydreaming.”

“Unless you can see into the master’s head, sir, I don’t know how you’re to pursue him,” Lander said. “I’ve cudgeled my brain for some plan, but we don’t know who he is, nor what he intends. ‘Tis certain he’s collected a fine pack of revolutionaries and rogues to do his bidding. There are disaffected Whigs aplenty, after the prince refused them office in his regency.”

“With colleagues in India,” Robert said. “This began in Delhi.”

“Might it concern the East India Company?”

“The charter is to be renewed next year—or not,” Robert said. “The Company always has enemies among the Whigs.”

“Robert thinks someone means to make the regent appear to be mad like his father,” Folie said.

“Well, it’s merely one possible theory—” Robert began.

But Lander looked up at her abruptly. He had such an arrested expression that Robert’s voice trailed away.

“My God,” he breathed. He put his hand over his chin, rubbing his thumb, visibly reckoning. A long moment later, he exclaimed, “This poison that they gave you! It could be done. It could be done, and reason enough. They hate the Prince Regent with a passion, the Whigs. If they supposed they could put him out of his head like his father...force a change in the regency and the cabinet...Good God, that is altogether ingenious. It’s a brilliant notion, sir.”

“Robert is amazing,” Folie said smugly. “He can tell what is in people’s minds.”

Robert snorted. “Of course I cannot. Not in truth.”

“Srí Ramanu said that you had a gift for it.”

“Why do you remember me saying that sort of rubbish, and can’t recall if you wrote a note about Vauxhall?”

“But you did it! With the superintendent of the prison ship.” She looked at Lander. “It was extraordinary. Robert knew precisely what the man was thinking.”

“Several fortunate guesses,” Robert said, “and a little observation. He had a tarot deck in his bookcase. A man such as that wants to believe.”

“But it was more than that,” Folie said. “I was there.”

Lander was watching them with interest.
 
“You are gifted for that sort of deception, sir?”

“No. No, not really. I learned a few tricks in India, pickpockets’ and charlatans’ work. Nothing very helpful in this case, I assure you.”

“I wonder,” Lander said thoughtfully. “I wonder.”

At four in the afternoon the next day, Folie and Robert waited on the east side of the ancient Bow bridge, overlooking the River Lea. She sat on a bench beside the parapets, watching ducks pick along the river’s edge beneath the pretty bow-shaped arch of the bridge.

It was not quite a teeming spot, well outside the city bustle, but the traffic of hay carts, farm horses, and country squires driving their ladies to London in the dogcart created a steady ring of steel against stone as they crossed the bridge. Folie inspected every vehicle coming from the direction of London anxiously, watching for Lander and Melinda.

“It will be growing dark soon,” she said. “Do you suppose they will arrive before dark?”

Robert crumbled the crust of his supper loaf and tossed a few bits to the ducks, who rushed to do quacking battle for it. “We’ll wait inside the inn if they don’t.”

“In these clothes?” Folie asked, casting a glance at the elegant building of white stucco that graced the street beside the bridge. It appeared very genteel, and they looked like a farm couple, Robert in his baggy coat and a low-crowned hat belonging to Tucker Moloney; Folie in an apron, a scarf knotted under her chin, and the leftovers from Mrs. Moloney’s pork pie tied in a bundle on her lap.

“Must you have a private parlor, madam?” he asked in amusement. “We’ll sit in the back of the tap room like Mr. and Mrs. John Bull.”

“But have we any money left?”

“Lander brought me plenty,” he said. “We have no worries there.”

Folie turned again to watch the bridge. It was very strange to be with him, alone and on the road, far from any whiff of a respectable female companion. As long as they had been at the Highflyer, she had not thought of it, for Mrs. Moloney had added an air of honest country propriety—and in the hulk, modesty and decorum had been the last thing on her mind. But now it struck her that she was quite alone in the company of a gentleman, looking naturally to him for direction, something that had not occurred to her since her marriage. Although when she considered it, she was not sure she had ever really looked even to Charles for guidance; he had hardly paid her enough mind to offer it.

But since the prison ship, it seemed that she had placed her whole dependence on Robert. It felt odd and yet perfectly natural, as if she had been used to do it forever, instead of heading her own independent household for six years. There had been moments in the past few days when she felt as uncertain as Lady Dingley, and she had simply turned to Robert to make the decision. She supposed it was a woman’s customary inclination, to lean upon a man, until she tried to imagine placing her unquestioning reliance on Colonel Cox. Abruptly, she thought perhaps it was not such a strong female instinct after all.

“I wish I knew where Dingley has got to,” Robert murmured darkly.

Sir Howard had been gone from the Highflyer before the sun came up, without leaving any note. Once again, something seemed to flit through Folie’s mind, but she could not catch it before it disappeared. She blinked at the late sun sparkles as a breeze rippled the water.

“You don’t think he went to his family?”

“I hope he has the common sense to stay away from them, but I fear not. The faster Lander packs them all up to go home to Dingley, the better.”

Folie sighed. “What a dismal end to our season,” she said sadly. “It was to be so lovely.”

He sat down on the brick beside her. “I’m sorry, Folly. To ruin all your pleasure.”

“Oh, well.” She shrugged. “To be perfectly truthful, I’ve found Society to be rather dull. Nothing so diverting as breaking prison and swimming the Thames.”

“No doubt,” Robert said ironically. “I am a guardian of surpassing excellence.”

She gave him a sidelong smile. “But at least you are
interesting.”
She took a crust from his hands and cast it to the ducks. “I am obliged to say that, if you had not written to Charles, I don’t think I would have had a modicum of excitement in my whole humdrum existence!” She looked into the distance down the river. “For all that I hid in the greenhouse and wept my eyes out afterward.”

A small herd of sheep trotted briskly onto the bridge, their hooves on the stone like a cascade of pebbles. Folie watched a fat old ewe pause to grab a few bites of the new grass peeking up beside the stone bridge. The shepherd trilled and goaded his shaggy flock forward with a crook.

“Did you weep, my sweet Folly?” Robert asked softly.

“Oh yes,” she said, folding her hands. The shadows of the town’s buildings were beginning to creep down the riverbanks. The ducks paddled in and out of the bright arc of water beneath the bridge. She lifted her chin proudly. “Well, you would not understand. I suppose gentlemen never weep over their foolishness.”

“Perhaps not,” he said.

Folie bit her lower lip. She reached down and pulled a dry reed that had found its way up through the bricking.

“I think we walk ourselves to exhaustion, and if that does not suffice, then we drink ourselves into a stupor, and if that does not serve—then we take a pistol and put it to our heads,” he said.

Folie looked at him aside. He was staring across the river, but his bleak gaze saw a thousand miles beyond. She bent her head over her lap, splitting the reed carefully with her thumbnail.

“There are things locked so deep that tears cannot reach them, Folly,” he said quietly.

She pressed her lips hard together, working the reed until it bent into a circle in her fingers. She tied a bow in it.

“I am glad that I did not lose my shawl,” she said.

“So am I,” he said. He caught one end of her reed between his thumb and forefinger and tugged at it. Folie allowed him to draw the reed and her hand into his lap. He stroked his fingertips lightly over the back of her palm. “Folly—”

Iron-shod hooves clattered on the bridge. The heavy wheels of a laden carriage thundered onto the stone. Folie looked up as a fresh team of four galloped across, drawing a coach with window blinds drawn to conceal the occupants. But even before the vehicle turned off toward the inn yard, she knew who it must be.

“Melinda,” she whispered, and stood up.

“Not too fast,” Robert said, without rising. “Sit down. Let us make sure no one is following them.”

Folie sat down. She twisted the reed around and around her finger. But though they waited for what seemed an eternity, no one but a milkmaid swinging her empty pail crossed over the bridge after the carriage.

“Should I go now?” she asked in an undertone.

He took her arm and stood. “Folly—”

She was turning, but at the tone in his voice, she looked directly up at him. Suddenly it came into her mind that he would be parting from them here, returning to London to take up residence at Cambourne House and execute the plan they had concocted. It had seemed bizarre and clever when she and Lander and Robert had sat safely at the Highflyer and contrived the scheme, just daft enough to work, but now the strategy seemed wildly dangerous. He would be living openly at Cambourne House, going into Society on purpose, trying to draw the attention of his enemies to him in the most flamboyant way. They might betray themselves, as the plan enticed them to do, or they might as easily find a way to murder him, or destroy his mind. Lander was taking Folie and Melinda to safety—Robert was not coming with them.