Silken Secrets (17 page)

“Ah, good morning, Mr. Vulch.” She smiled. “I’m afraid Uncle’s gone into town this morning.” Hospitality urged her to offer him a glass of wine or a cup of tea, but common sense told her this wasn’t the time to have a caller in the house. She spoke to him at the door.

“Is Mr. Robertson here?” he asked. Worry made his voice tense.

“No, is he missing?”

“He’s been missing since last night,” Vulch said. “He didn’t sleep in his room. I went to have a word with him before retiring, and he was gone. His mount was gone as well.”

“Oh,” she said faintly. It seemed Vulch hadn’t gone to her uncle’s stable, then, thank God. She must tell Fitch to do something with Mr. Robertson’s mount—hide it or set it free. It would find its way back to the inn. “Where—where do you think he could be?” Vulch’s men knew he’d been here last night, of course.

“I made sure he was here. He’s got it in his noggin your uncle knows something about that missing cargo. I begin to fear something has happened to him. He’d never have gone back to London without telling me.” He eyed her suspiciously.

“I shouldn’t think so. But perhaps he got called back—an urgent message...”she said vaguely.

“No, he received no message. I hope to God nothing’s happened to him. It has something to do with the silk. That’s all that would take him away so suddenly.”

Mr. Vulch wouldn’t be that worried about a draper, Mary Anne thought. He knows something about Mr. Robertson’s other occupation. “You seem unduly perturbed, Mr. Vulch,” she said.

“I am. The fact of the matter is—”

There was a clatter of hoofbeats form the road. They both looked out, both hoping it was Lord Edwin. Mary Anne was annoyed to see Joseph Horton’s white mare prancing along. To keep him from the stable, she opened the door and called in a friendly way.

“Good morning, Joseph.” She turned back to Vulch. “He’ll be looking for Uncle as well,” she said. “Shall we go and speak to him outside?”

“Why, I thought it was yourself young Horton would be calling on!” Mr. Vulch exclaimed.

She gave a worried smile and hastened him out the door. “Mr. Vulch was just telling me Mr. Robertson’s disappeared,” she said. “You haven’t seen anything of him along the way?”

“Disappeared? Why, what do you mean?” Joseph asked, staring from one to the other.

Mr. Vulch repeated his story, and the gentlemen exchanged a curious, meaningful look. There was something going on here that she didn’t understand. Whatever Mr. Vulch’s claim to perturbation, Joseph had no reason to be concerned. Vulch had been about to say something when Joseph arrived.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Why are you both looking so—so nervous?”

“It is supposed to be a great secret,” Vulch said in a conspiratorial way, “but as Joseph knows, and with Robertson disappearing on us, no doubt it will soon be plastered on every tree in the parish, so I might as well tell you. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Robertson is not just a draper. No, no, he’s working for the government.” He nodded his head knowingly and put his finger to his lips.

“This is not to be broadcast, mind. I haven’t even told my own family, but he’s actually here on war business.”

“Why, you don’t know the half of it, Mr. Vulch,” Joseph said, and laughed. “That man is not Mr. Robertson. He’s Lord Dicaire. A viscount, the Earl of Pelham’s eldest son. Quite the white-haired lad at Whitehall. I recognized him the minute I laid eyes on him. He was pointed out to me in London when I went to see the F.H.C. off on one of their jaunts. Of course, no one else here in the county would know him. He got me aside at once and asked me not to tell anyone. The sort of work he is presently engaged in is very confidential.”

So that was why Joseph had been toadying up to Robertson! She even remembered Robertson’s following Joseph to the door the first night they met at the Hall. Joseph had half recognized him then, but Robertson’s performance had clouded his memory. Mary Anne felt doom engulf her. Bad enough they had a spy tied up in the cellar. Now he was a noble spy. An eminent aristocrat, the white-haired boy of Whitehall. She had never fainted in her life, but she thought she was going to faint now and almost wished she could.

“A lord! You don’t mean it!” Vulch exclaimed, eyes bulging. “Wait till I tell my wife this. She entertaining a lord and not knowing it. And Bess not having the wits to throw her bonnet at him. I wondered how he got that search warrant for Lord Edwin’s house so quickly. He said he traveled with one because of the sort of work he does. I know all about his work,” he informed Joseph. “So he is Lord Dicaire. Well, well, here are we entertaining angels unaware,” Vulch said in an excess of emotion.

The gentlemen were so intent on discussing this interesting secret that they failed to observe Miss Judson looked close to asphyxiation. When she regained her wits, she listened to what the gentlemen were saying.

“What you must do is get up a party of searchers,” Joseph suggested. “It’s pretty clear he’s come to harm. French spies, I expect. I hope they haven’t spirited him off to France.”

“But how did the French discover who he is?” Vulch asked.

“You may be sure there are villagers in their pay.”

“Damme, the villagers didn’t know.”

“Perhaps some spies followed him from London. Yes, I rather expect that’s the way of it,” Joseph decided. “And that’s what happened to your cargo, Vulch. I never thought Lord Edwin had a thing to do with it. Why, it’s infamous, accusing my cousin of thievery. He wouldn’t have the wits...”

He intercepted a killing glare from Mary Anne and fell silent.

“I did think the project a bit beyond him,” Vulch said. He didn’t happen to notice Mary Anne’s expression.

“What is to be done, then?” Joseph demanded.

“Let us get our heads together and make up a plan. We might as well use the Hall—I’m sure Miss Judson won’t mind?”

“Oh—would it not be better to go into town and get the constable’s help?” she asked nervously.

“Help? Ha, it’s news to me if old Duff Evans has a sane thought in his head,” Vulch told her, and strode briskly into the house.

They hadn’t been seated in the saloon a moment when Mary Anne heard an earsplitting shriek from the kitchen. In her heart she knew what had caused it. Mr. Robertson, no, Lord Dicaire, had escaped and was coming to arrest her. She froze to the floor.

Chapter Fourteen

“Plummer having a fit of the vapors. She probably saw a mouse,” Joseph said.

As no sounds of violence followed the one shriek, Mary Anne had some hope he was correct. Mr. Robertson—she still thought of him as Mr. Robertson—wouldn’t have wasted an instant. He would be in the saloon by now, demanding justice, if he had contrived to escape. But her nerves were raw from her ordeal and she had to be sure.

“I’d best just see if Mrs. Plummer is all right,” she said, and excused herself. “Would you gentlemen care for some coffee?” she asked before leaving.

“That would be fine, my dear.” Vulch nodded.

She got no farther than the top of the kitchen stairs when Mrs. Plummer’s head peered up through the door. “Sorry if I disturbed you, Miss Judson. ‘Twas only the mouse,” she said.

“Good. Could we have coffee for three, please, in the saloon? And if Fitch comes back, tell him Vulch and Joseph are here.” She ran back to the saloon to overhear plans for finding the prisoner who was tied up in the basement of the very house that was headquarters for the search.

Mrs. Plummer closed the staircase door and turned back to face Mr. Robertson, who stood across the room with a pistol aimed at her. “I done what you told me, may God forgive me for a coward. You scared the daylights out of me when you popped up them stairs. They never told me you were there.” Her eyes slid to her butcher knife, which, unfortunately, rested six inches from the erstwhile prisoner’s hand, six feet from her own.

“It won’t be necessary to carve me up, Mrs.—Plummer, is it, that Miss Judson called you?” He stuck the pistol in his pocket.

“That’s my name, always has been,” she allowed. The fellow didn’t look such a bloodthirsty customer at close range. He was polite and all.

“I just want to ask you a few questions, then I’ll leave. Perhaps you could brush my jacket while we talk?” he suggested.

Having a service to perform settled Mrs. Plummer’s nerves and put her a little at her ease. A man would hardly stab you when you were brushing his jacket for him. She might turn him up sweet and save that old ruin of a Lord Eddie from the gallows.

“Miss Judson is very close to her uncle, I think?”

“Close as inkleweavers. He’s been father and mother and best friend to the girl since he brought her here twenty years ago. She worships him like a hero,” she said, and went on to relate Mary Anne’s oft-told tale of her rescue.

Mr. Robertson nodded and asked a few questions.

“What she sees to love in the old sinner is above and beyond me,” she griped. “He doesn’t remember she’s here half the time. Why, for her past two birthdays he didn’t even remember to get her a gift, and she must make do with what Fitch and myself can afford—which isn’t much, with dog’s years of wages due to us. But he has a kind streak in him, when the humor takes him. Her latest birthday, for instance, he gave her a dandy shawl and took her to Folkestone for the day and dinner at the inn, after I had Fitch kill a chicken and baked her favorite raisin cake and all.” As she chatted, she attacked the coat with a stiff brush.

“Dinner at the inn—was that, by any chance, the first of May?”

“That it was—the very night you first came here yourself, sir. I mind I served the raisin cake.”

“And a very fine cake it was, too.” He smiled. The lad had a very civil smile for a draper. “They were in Folkestone that day, you said?”

“In every drapery shop in town, and for all their shopping, he couldn’t find gloves to go with the shawl. Mind you, the shawl was more than she ever expected. Such a pretty piece, all embroidered like a picture.”

Mr. Robertson’s blood quickened with this tale. “In every drapery shop in town” indicated Lord Edwin’s efforts to sell the cargo and was of little importance. It was the embroidered shawl that intrigued him. The shawl would, presumably, be in Mary Anne’s chamber.

“Here you go,” Mrs. Plummer said, and handed him the coat. He slid into it and picked up his wrinkled cravat.

“I’d run upstairs and get you one of Lord Edwin’s, but I’ve got to make coffee for the visitors. If you’d care to wait a minute...”

“I shan’t put you to so much trouble, Mrs. Plummer. You have been very kind. I know where Lord Edwin’s bedchamber is. I’ll help myself to a clean cravat. Could you spare a little of that hot water to allow me to shave?”

Her tactic was to treat Mr. Robertson like a guest, to reinforce her innocence of any havey-cavey goings-on, and by this time she had almost forgotten he wasn’t. She poured out a basin of hot water, and Mr. Robertson went up the servants’ stairs to avoid the company. Mrs. Plummer wanted to warn Mary Anne, but knew she couldn’t do it with Vulch in the house.

Before going for his shave, Mr. Robertson went into Mary Anne’s room and looked all round.

He smiled thoughtfully at its pretty innocence. She and Mrs. Plummer had contrived some thrifty efforts at beautification. There was a dimity canopy on her bed, dyed blue to match the curtains and edged with eyelet. A braided rug was between the bed and the window. He walked to her dresser, noticing its lack of any cosmetics. A somewhat garish gilt dresser set, the gilt worn away to show the white metal beneath, he rightly assigned as an inheritance from her mama. On the dresser sat two miniatures, one of a dark-haired lady who rather resembled Mary Anne, the other of Lord Edwin. Her new diary was on the bedside table. He damped down the urge to open it and read her outpourings. Morals aside, he had to get on to see the shawl.

It hung in the clothespress, carefully arrayed over the shoulders of a blue silk gown. He laid it flat on the bed and studied the pattern. Unthinkingly he reached for pen and paper. A patent pen sat beside the diary, which was the only writing paper easily available. He removed a blank page and studied the embroidery for several minutes, noting stitch and color, and jotted down notes. When he was satisfied that he had interpreted it properly, he took the shawl and folded it into a small square, which he took to Lord Edwin’s room while he shaved.

When he bore some resemblance to the elegant gentleman who had first called at Horton Hall, he returned to Plummer’s kitchen and asked for wrapping paper. From the corner of her eye, Plummer saw what it was he was wrapping.

“What are you taking that for?” she demanded suspiciously.

“I’m afraid it’s part of the stolen cargo of silk, ma’am. I’ll need it for evidence.”

Plummer’s heart went into nervous palpitations. Evidence—he was gathering evidence against them, after grinning as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Then Mr. Robertson took up his parcel and left, after politely thanking her for her help. He left by the back door. Mrs. Plummer, uncertain what she should do, knew that informing missie of the man’s escape was her top priority. She scribbled up a note and put it on the tray under the coffeepot. She hoped missie didn’t scald herself when she saw it. “Robertson’s escaped” was all she took time to write.

Lord Dicaire went immediately to the stable and saddled up the mount hired from the inn, safely stowed his parcel in the saddlebag, and left. As he went toward the road, he noticed the mounts tethered under the copper beech in front of the Hall. Vulch’s gelding was recognized at once, and while he didn’t recognize Joseph’s white mare, he knew Miss Judson was sustaining an unwelcome visit from two callers. The poor girl must be on nettles, fearing her fate. It would be cruel to make her wait and wonder all day. With a smile not totally devoid of mischief, he tethered his mount with the others and strode to the Hall.

“Another caller! Who can that be?” Mary Anne exclaimed when the knocker sounded ten seconds later.

She fully expected it would be some officials from London, asking unanswerable questions. They would have been quite welcome as a replacement for who was there— Lord Dicaire. She stared, unable to speak for the dryness of her throat. He had not only escaped, he had managed to make a fresh toilette.