The Pursuit of Pleasure (22 page)

Lizzie’s brain latched on to the distinct noises. Whoever it was—and it was a person—had bumped into a piece of furniture. A person who was unaccustomed to moving about the house with new furniture in place.

A sharp sliver of relief pumped air back into her lungs. Someone was trying to frighten her. And was doing a damnably good job of it, at that. But God damn, she’d have none of it. She’d be damned before she hid sniveling with fear in her own home.

Lizzie darted across to the dressing room and quickly found the long rectangular leather case that held her fowling piece. Technically, it was her father’s fowling piece, but since she had pinched it, as Jamie had said, more than ten years ago, and had kept possession of it ever since, it was now hers. She felt better once she had her hands around the reassuring, smooth metal barrel and polished stock. No one was going to frighten her out of her own home. No one.

Her hands moved through the well-practiced motions of loading with easy efficiency even though her fingers shook from nerves.

She slipped out of her chamber and out into the hallway quietly, staying along the wall, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, trying not to broadcast her movements by casting shadows. She stopped at the end of the corridor, just at the turn of the corner to the balustrade. Her hands still shook a little with tension where she gripped the gun, but she clamped her jaw down hard to steady herself.

Lizzie crouched down and peered over the edge of the balustrade. She searched, squinting hard into every dark corner, reaching out with her ears into the silence, ready for any flicker of movement, any vestige of sound.

And it came again. She wasn’t sure whether she had sensed it or heard it first, but the effect was the same; her ears pricked and distinguished both a stronger moan and the swish of clothing from directly below her.

Moonlight filtered fitfully through the windows, dappling the stairwell with the shifting shadows of the trees outside. And there he was.

The hooded figure was all in black, covered head to toe in a long, flowing robe. A ghostly form rather than a defined shape. But the man was too tall for Mr. Tupper, as tall as Jamie, and he had two very long and very large arms. At the end of which, the barrels of two very old pistols gleamed in the moonlight.

Sweat broke out along her lip and down her the back of her neck. She swallowed the dry knot of panic and reminded herself—it was only a man. She had not imagined him. He had grunted in pain. She had heard him. And it was a him. She drew another slow breath, to try and quiet the horrible hammering of her heart and let the panic recede.

Yes, a man. It could not have been Mrs. Tupper. Too large. More likely that other one, McAlden, the rude, antagonistic undergroundsman. The mole. He and Tupper were up to something. And she was going to God-damned well find out what it was.

The footsteps continued across the entry hall and began to tread up the stairs. She let him take another ten or eleven steps upward, until he was in the middle of the curving stairway. Until she had a clear shot.

Her heart pounded riotously against her rib cage. She stilled it with her anger. Damn their interference. This was her house! And no sea boot-wearing, smuggling excuse for a groundsman was going to cheat her out of her independence. No one.

In the space between two heartbeats, Lizzie stepped out clear of the corner, raised the fowling piece to her shoulder, sighted, and squeezed the trigger. The gun spat its thunder and retribution straight into the tall figure on the stair.

The heat and flash from the pan blinded her for a moment, but Lizzie could see the figure crumple backwards and fall in noisy thumps back down the turning length of the stairs, his pistols clattering down along with him.

He moaned again, this time from pain. He was real. He was only human, and he could not hurt her now. But she stayed where she was, safely hidden behind the corner and reloaded as swiftly as her shaking hands would allow before she crept cautiously down the steps towards him. He was a big, brawny lad, even peppered with shot, and she was taking no chances.

He lay at the bottom, a long dark smear of blood marking the trail of his passage down the steps. As she approached, she kept the fowling piece raised, ready to fire again should the damned mole attempt to rise.

He didn’t move, so she took another cautious step closer.

The sudden sound of a heavy fist pounding against the wide front door made her jump back. Lizzie realigned her aim on the door when she recognized Mr. Tupper’s voice. “Mrs. Marlowe? Ma’am, are you all right?”

And then the clatter of keys working the lock. Lizzie kept sighted on the door and waited.

The front door burst open and banged against the wall behind with a loud crash. Dark figures spilled moonlight into the foyer. Mr. Tupper rushed across the threshold, brandishing a saber or cutlass of some kind with a wicked smile of a blade that grinned in the moonlight.

She kept her piece up as he ran forward.

“Madame! Are you all right?” His eyes ran over her and then he turned to search the room.

Lizzie never let her grip waver. “Yes, thank you, Mr. Tupper. I appear to have an uninvited guest.”

And then a circle of light from a lantern was carried through the door. It was held in the firm grasp of the big blond groundsman. The mole held the light.

Oh, Lord. Lizzie cut her glance back to the man in the widening puddle of blood on the step at her feet. Holy Christ Jesus.

Tupper thrust his blade in the direction of the man’s throat, straight to business. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is.” Her voice had gone all thready and weak. She was not going to be ill. She was not. Even if the cavernous room began to move around her.

Mr. Tupper made a descriptive little flick with his sword. “Is he dead?”

Lizzie took refuge again in anger. “No, damn it. I only winged him. I must be out of practice.” She only said it for show, of course. It was pure bravado, but she couldn’t be shaking like a palsied old woman in front of the servants, who still might be smugglers, especially the sharp-eyed and quietly sneering mole, McAlden. Lizzie lowered the muzzle of the gun, but still held it carefully at the ready. “Bring the lantern closer.”

Mrs. Tupper, armed with a wicked kitchen knife, and another figure crowded behind into the doorway. So much for all her self-pitying thoughts of being alone. She had her own little army of defenders clustered around, bristling with anger and outrage. At least Mr. and Mrs. Tupper were. Big blond McAlden stood back, keeping a respectfully watchful eye on her gun. Good.

Another servant, who she supposed must be the missing gardener or groundsman, or whatever it was they were calling him this day, lurked with his guns in the doorway, just beyond the circle of lantern light.

Tupper knelt down on the stair next to the injured man and stripped back the hood and cloth mask.

“Do you recognize him?” Tupper asked the assembly in general.

Lizzie answered. “Lord, I think he might be Dicky Pike’s brother.” She bent down to take a closer look. “I think he must be Dan. Dan Pike. Dicky’s the barman at the Heart of Oak Tavern down on Warfleet Row. We need another lamp.”

Mrs. Tupper bustled forward from the door to light tapers, but the other lad shifted backwards into the gloom, away from the bloody body.

“Our stalwart lads.” It was so much easier to replace the shock and horror with anger, especially aimed at someone else. “If you can’t stomach the blood, then go fetch the doctor and the magistrate. Though God knows it won’t do much good.”

“You don’t think he’ll live?” Mrs. Tupper brought another lantern, and a fully lit candle branch closer to the prone figure.

“Oh, no. I mean, yes, he should live. It’s just a fowling piece.” She handed the gun down to Mr. Tupper, while she peered down to have a second look and muster her bravado. The mole was still standing there, silent as the grave, listening. She’d give him an earful. “It’s meant for felling ducks, not a great, big slab of stupidity like Dan Pike. I reckon he’s taken lead balls aplenty that weigh more than I do. He’ll live, damn it. Which is rather infuriating after all the trouble I’ve been toto shoot the poxy big bastard, but there you have it.” She looked back at the tall lad still hanging back in the doorway. “See if you can get Dr. Craig from Stoke Flemming.”

McAlden spoke up. “Isn’t that the other way from the magistrate? Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he added as an afterthought.

“An extra hour or so won’t matter to the magistrate. Not for Dan Pike. And with luck he might come around before then, so I might get at least some of my questions answered. Like why in the hell has the likes of Dan Pike resorted to housebreaking?”

The big slab of stupidity never did come round, though they did him a kindness and poured whisky down his throat to dull the pain. Or at least he was canny enough to pretend he was still out cold, even when the doctor pressed and probed and fetched birdshot out of his great big, dirty hide. Good Lord, how could someone live so close to water and be so vastly unwashed?

The magistrate’s carriage fetched up in the stable yard right after ten.

Sir Ralston Cawdier slid his girth to the ground with a hearty sigh.
Sir
Ralston. Lizzie could feel the sneer build behind her lips. He’d only been elevated to his baronetcy on the strength of his excellent cellar. All smuggled brandy and claret.

Portly, florid, and easing comfortably into his middle age, Sir Ralston had the well-fed, complacent look of a man who was pleased with where he was in life. A rich, country fellow like him was bound to be up to his neck in the smuggling. He’d be absolutely no use to her.

“And what have you got here?” Sir Ralston cast a rheumy eye around the place.

“Dan Pike, full of birdshot.”

The magistrate pulled a face as he looked skeptically at Mr. Tupper, his gaze resting on the empty sleeve.

“I shot him,” Lizzie clarified. “He was in my upper hallway. Near two o’clock this morning.”

“Ah, Miss Paxton.”

Since he didn’t bow, she didn’t bother to curtsey. “Mrs. Marlowe, sir. I am lately married.”

“Mrs. Marlowe.” And now he made a handsome enough bow. “My congratulations on your recent marriage. No idea you’d taken this house.”

“It has been my husband’s property these four years. We have but lately set up housekeeping.”

“I had not heard, but that would account for it. Four years you say? And your husband, madam?” He looked around the yard at the various occupants.

“Captain Marlowe is deceased.” And suddenly she could feel the hot, useless tears prickle behind her eyes.

“Lately married and deceased?” Sir Ralston’s hoary eyebrows flew up with unabashed curiosity. “My condolences, of course. Sorry business, this. His Majesty’s Royal Navy, did you say?”

She hadn’t. But Sir Ralston had had his ears to the ground, it seemed. Such an embarrassment of rogues to choose from.

“Yes, now I recall,” he answered for himself. “Marlowe. Rector’s son. Wasn’t he friends with that other Navy fellow, what was his name? Palmer?”

The heat of tears was instantly banished as Lizzie felt cold creep along the ladder of her spine. Francis Palmer. Jamie had mentioned Frankie that first night, and said he was dead.

“I am not acquainted.”

“Ah. Yes.” He exhaled another heavy sigh and scratched his head through his wiry, gray wig. “Well then.” He cast an assessing glance at Dan Pike’s prone form. “Sorry you were troubled for a lark.”

Lizzie’s eyebrow rose all by itself. Lark? But such obvious flummery hardly mattered—let him spout his bouncers. She was quite determined to find the truth in the puddle of liesand half-truths pooling wherever Sir Ralston, and the rest of her staff for that matter, walked. But she couldn’t let such a bold-faced piece of bluster pass without remark.

“Lark?” She couldn’t have made her tone any more sarcastically incredulous.

“Nothing more than a lark, I’m sure.” He gave her a smile meant to be reassuring. “A harmless prank by high-spirited boys.”

Boys? In a hen’s eye. Dan and Dicky Pike would never see the sunny side of thirty again.

“Not exactly harmless, sir. I might have killed the man. As I said, he was found standing in my home in the small hours of the morning armed with a brace of pistols.”

“Hmph,” Ralston grunted away her application of logic. “Ain’t you got locks?”

Patronizing bastard. Thought she was an imbecile.

“As a matter of fact I do—they are new. But come to think of it, the locks had not been disturbed. My steward needed his key to come to my assistance. The doors were locked, and still Pike got in. That’s no lark.”

“Yes, but as you say, you’re the one that shot at him, not the other way round. He’s harmless enough.”

“He was carrying pistols, sir. And masked. And robed. A masked, robed man doesn’t housebreak in the dead of night unless he is bearing more than a load of mischief.”

“Yes, well…” Sir Ralston’s voice trailed off for a moment before he resumed in an overly cheerful, avuncular tone. “You leave it to me then. I’ll see to everything. No need to bother you again. You can put it from your mind.”

He wouldn’t have been so infuriatingly condescending if Jamie were the one standing before him, but then again, would the whole incident have even happened if Jamie were here? It was something to think about.

A quarter of an hour later, Sir Ralston’s carriage trailed the farm cart bearing the restless figure of Dan Pike up the lane and out of sight.

Lizzie was pleased to note, in the moment that came after, everyone turned to her. Everyone being the three of them, the Tuppers and the mole. Who still exuded antagonism the way a flower continuously gave off scent. Lizzie wasn’t sure whether she was glad she hadn’t shot him or not. Another thing to think about.

“Well, that’s the end of that. Breakfast, I think, Mrs. Tupper. It will be all the satisfaction we’ll get for this morning’s work.”

They retreated into the house. At least the women did. The two men disappeared somewhere together the moment Lizzie’s back was turned. Just as well. It would give her what Jamie would have called “sea room” to maneuver.