The Marquess (48 page)

She prayed those shadows represented rescue or she placed
herself in a world of danger, but she couldn’t stand here vacillating.
She would have to lend a hand from inside.

Pulling Gavin’s coat over her arms, Dillian tucked her
newly loaded pistol into the pocket and picked up the sword she’d removed
from the library. She preferred the lighter rapiers, but she could wield a
sword sufficiently well to slash and wound. She had no great fondness for
blood, hers or anyone else’s. She’d never tried explaining that to
her father’s friends when they taught her weaponry.

Dismouth had claimed the newly refurbished master chamber,
of course. She’d heard the servants on the stairs complaining,
threatening to quit if the “lady” appeared at this trespass.
Dismouth had laughed at their fears. He wouldn’t laugh quite so hard if
the ghost actually put in an appearance.

Dillian grinned for the first time this day. Slipping to the
farthest wing of the house and taking the servants’ stairs down, she
found the chamber where Blanche had stayed not so long ago. The soldiers
wouldn’t have discovered the secret passage yet.

* * * * *

Gavin found his point of entry. Concealed by the branches of
the overgrown evergreens, he awaited only the opportunity. The shouts as the
first fire took hold alerted him to his chance.

The soldier nearest him swung his musket as he searched the darkness
for the source of the commotion. The first blaze of orange against the night
sky brought more shouts. Without another thought to his post, the soldier
rushed to the aid of his comrades.

Quite content with that state of affairs, Gavin closed his
cloak, concealing his shirt and waistcoat. He strode past the shabby shrubbery
to an old oak that always rubbed annoyingly outside his study window. Hidden
beneath its shadows, Gavin flung a rope over the lowest branch, knotted it, and
began climbing.

He preferred avoiding the guards Dismouth had left on the
bottom floor. He couldn’t imagine the earl lowering himself to sleep in
the study for the servants’ sake as Gavin had done. No, Dismouth would
have taken the one decent bedchamber in the whole damned ruin. Gavin gritted
his teeth at the image of the bastard in the bed Dillian had prepared. He would
slaughter the scoundrel for that crassness alone.

The secret passage wing overlooked the stable, so he’d
had to enter elsewhere. It didn’t matter. If Dismouth had posted a guard
outside his chamber door, Gavin figured he could remove him. He had a great
deal more incentive than the soldier did.

As he crept closer to the central part of the manor, Gavin
noted no lights or guards. Checking down the stairwell, he saw a soldier
leaning over the baluster, apparently trying to determine the source of
excitement outside. The screams and yells were faint inside the sprawling house,
but enough to cause alarm.

Grateful he didn’t have to waste time on a man only
following orders, Gavin turned to the master chamber.

He found the door locked but knew from experience that it
had no bolt. Without a qualm to the destruction he might cause, Gavin slammed
his boot heel into the crumbling old lock. The door sagged open without resistance.
Knowing he had only seconds before the guard rushed up the stairs, Gavin pulled
the brace of pistols concealed beneath his cloak and shoved past the sagging
panels into the unlit chamber.

Outlined against the uncurtained window, Dismouth leapt for
his sword as the door crashed in.

Cloaked in black, Gavin did his best to blend in with the shadows
along the wood paneling.

“Who’s there?” Dismouth cried, bracing his
sword.

“Colonel Whitnell’s ghost,” Gavin answered
dryly, comprehending the other man’s plight. One couldn’t strike
what one couldn’t see.

The guard from the stairs rushed in with musket upraised.
Gavin held out his foot and let the other man run into it. The soldier slammed
nose first to the floor, his musket roaring into the ceiling overhead as it hit
the floor with him.

From down the stairs a woman’s scream echoed. Janet.
He’d recognize her screams anywhere.

“Effingham, is that you?” the earl demanded as
the soldier scrambled to his feet.

Gavin grabbed the musket. With a mutter of apology, he slammed
the stock against the soldier’s head, sending him crashing to the floor
again.

The earl didn’t wait to ask more. Brandishing his
sword, he leapt in the direction of Gavin’s movement.

Gavin really didn’t want to shoot the man. Each pistol
carried one ball. He’d rather save them for more dire circumstances than
this. He wanted the earl alive and well in a dark, dank dungeon somewhere. He
dodged the sword blade and brought one of his pistols down hard against the
earl’s arm.

Dismouth roared with rage. From below, Janet screamed again.
Other voices joined her, obviously wondering if they should brave the ghosts on
the second floor to rescue the earl. Gavin longed to howl with laughter, but
the earl hadn’t realized he was outgunned yet. Swinging his sword, the
older man damned near disemboweled him.

“You’re going to regret that,” Gavin
growled, kicking high with his boot.

The sword flew from the earl’s hand with the blow. Gavin
plowed his fist into Dismouth’s midsection, and he bent, doubled in
anguish.

At the earl’s cry, a slender figure garbed all in
white and wielding a splendid silver sword emerged from the wardrobe. Gavin had
to blink twice to make certain the apparition of the “lady”
hadn’t just materialized.

The earl, on the other hand, could only see a white blur
walking through a wall. He screamed in terror and stumbled toward the door.

“Very good,” Gavin said approvingly, admiring
the way the apparition drifted toward him, sword gleaming. “It sounds as
if Matilda is about to brave the stairs. Don’t give her heart failure,
please. It’s hard to find good cooks.”

The sword glimmering in the lady’s hand dropped
abruptly to her side. “The damned thing’s too heavy to hold up long
anyway,” she grumbled. “He’s getting away.” She nodded
toward the earl staggering into the corridor.

Leaving Dillian guarding the fallen soldier on the floor,
Gavin dashed after the earl, knocking him sidelong to the floor with a blow
from behind. Gallantry didn’t come into play with traitors and
kidnappers, he reasoned.

A pounding on the front door joined the voices of the
servants amassing on the stairs, and he raised his eyebrows. Why would anyone
bother
knocking
?

Removing another piece of rope from around his waist, Gavin
wrapped Dismouth’s hands behind his back while the earl struggled for
consciousness. The man apparently had a harder head than the soldier’s.

“Gavin, this one’s coming ’round,”
Dillian called from the bedroom.

Cursing, Gavin knotted the earl’s bonds and rose to
look for something to use on the guard. Familiar voices below halted him.

“Dismouth, are you up there?”
Neville
.

Gavin clenched his fingers into fists. He had no reason to
trust the duke.

“Why isn’t anyone dousing the fire?” Lady
Blanche’s imperious demand followed the duke’s call. “Reardon,
have those soldiers fetch some buckets. Someone could get hurt.”

Janet’s hysterical screams from the stairs interrupted
this voice of reason. “The lady! The lady’s walking! I told you.
Didn’t I tell you? We’ll all die in our beds!”

At a sound from behind him, Gavin swung around to protect
his back—only to see Dillian dragging the sword behind the long train of
her over-large gown. With her hair covered in some translucent concoction of
white gauze, she possessed a decidedly ethereal appearance.

At the sight, Janet turned and fled from the stairs below.

“Get dressed before they all run up here hunting
ghosts,” he growled, jerking the half-conscious earl to his feet.

“Why is Blanche down there?” Dillian asked with
more curiosity than fear.

“I daresay you can ask my brother that, whenever he
deigns to put in an appearance. What happened to the guard?”

Dillian looked guiltily down at her sword. “I meant to
hit him, but as soon as I raised it, he fainted dead away again. People seem to
do that regularly around here.”

Gavin couldn’t help it. A chuckle rumbled deep in his
throat. By the time Blanche and Neville pushed past the hysterical servants on
the stairs, he held the earl with one hand and the stair rail with the other, helpless
with laughter.

* * * *

Dillian watched with amusement as Neville screeched to a
halt at the sight of her ghostly self. Obviously not believing his eyes, he
turned to the laughing marquess and his prisoner instead.

Amused, Dillian lifted her sword and flailed it through the
darkness. “Dare to touch the hair on the head of an Effingham, and I
shall strike you dead!” she wailed with what she considered quite
dramatic flair.

Below stairs, Janet screamed and fainted. In the light of
the lantern he carried, Neville paled. Gavin laughed harder.

“Dillian! Stop that,” Blanche scolded, coming up
behind the duke. “You have the servants in hysterics, not to mention
Effingham. Is that Dismouth you have there?”

“It is, indeed.” She regarded the
half-conscious, moaning earl with murderous intent.

“Put the sword down, woman,” Gavin warned,
reading her much too well. “I want him moldering in a dungeon for the
rest of his miserable life.”

That seemed fair enough. Leaving the men to sort out
justice, Dillian led the villagers in a water brigade to douse the stable fire.

Since Michael was conspicuously absent, Dillian suspected he
occupied himself elsewhere rather than watch the duke and Blanche together.

As the stables smoldered, she ached at the realization that
Gavin had deliberately destroyed part of his heritage in saving her. She
didn’t know what she could offer him in return.

Blanche brought the terrified staff under control and soon
gallons of ale and hot tea poured from the kitchen. Gavin, the duke, and his
men disappeared into the study to confer. Dillian wanted to hear what they
would do with Dismouth, but garbed in a nightrail, she didn’t have the audacity
to join them.

By dawn, the house was once more under control, and Blanche
suggested that they take her coach back to London, Dillian didn’t know
how to refuse.

To all intents and purposes, the adventure had ended.

Gavin didn’t emerge to say farewell.

For probably the hundred thousandth time in this past month,
Dillian sat before the desk in the Grange study, poring over the antique script
of dozens of legal papers that the family solicitor had kept from her.

She studied the dates and lined them up in order. She
struggled over the legal descriptions, but the terminology meant nothing to
her. She’d been told what they meant, but the knowledge wouldn’t
sink in. It didn’t make a great deal of sense when laid against her
knowledge of her father.

She supposed if dead men could speak, one of them would come
back and explain about the games of chance or the dissipation or the just plain
incompetence that had led to the original owner parting with these deeds.

She would like someone to explain how her father had
acquired them, but her father wasn’t the only gambler in the kingdom. Or
perhaps he’d used his military prizes to buy them cheaply from someone in
desperate need of funds. She just couldn’t imagine her father doing
anything so sensible as sinking his money into land, even if he had any funds,
which he seldom did.

She sighed and stared blankly at the polished panel wall in
front of her. The Grange was such a lovely, peaceful household, she could
disappear for hours with no one the wiser. The place practically ran itself.
With Blanche in residence, it needed no one else. Dillian was bored out of her
mind.

She wouldn’t think about Gavin. He’d taken all
the responsibility of turning Dismouth into the authorities. He had also taken
responsibility for seeing that the original journals never saw the light of
day. The government had only Michael’s decryptions of the code and her
father’s lists of evidence.

Michael’s decryptions did not name Neville’s
father as Dismouth’s partner in crime. Michael had made certain no stain
besmirched the name of Anglesey or Perceval. She thought he protected Blanche
more than Neville, but the result was the same.

Actually, with Neville leading the soldiers who arrested
Dismouth, the duke came out smelling more like a hero than anyone else. The
newspapers had scarcely mentioned the American marquess. Even Winfrey somehow
escaped the wrath of government.

Gavin hadn’t bothered explaining anything at all once
he’d seen her safe and well at the Grange. He’d disappeared into
the murky halls of government, never to be seen again. Dillian didn’t
even know if he’d returned to Arinmede.

The last she’d seen of him, they’d stood in the
salon of Blanche’s townhouse. He’d brought the Earl of Mellon with
him, since Gavin’s cousin Marian had just given birth to the earl’s
latest grandchild. Gavin and the earl had exchanged polite pleasantries with
Dillian and Blanche, wished them a good journey, and left on their own
business. It wasn’t precisely the parting Dillian had anticipated.

She didn’t know what she should have anticipated from
a monster like Gavin Lawrence. He had no heart. She’d known that. He
couldn’t bed her in front of Blanche and the earl, so he’d shrugged
her off just like an old coat. Or cloak. She wanted to run a silver sword
through the place where his heart ought to be. Or lower.

She ignored the knocking at the front door. This was too
early in the morning for normal visiting hours. The neighbors could gossip with
someone else. She should find something useful to do to keep her mind off the
impossible. If she would live at the Grange for the rest of her life, she must
find some place in it for herself.