The Scandal of Lady Eleanor (37 page)

“Why not tonight?”

Crowden leaned back in the chair, a mischievous smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “Too easy.” He propped the heels of
his Hessians on the corner of Fowler's desk. “No one there tonight but the servants. Lexford says Levering plans a little card party tomorrow evening with his friends. I prefer a challenge.”

“I just want the diary; I do not personally care about the
thrill
you receive when you invade the place.”

“You will take possession of the diary,Your Grace; I will warrant it. I just hate that no one will know until much later.”

Fowler handed Crowden a package. “The Viscount made a guess on the appearance of the second book. The black one is what he believes Lady Levering used for the one he saw in Sir Louis's possession. We have written
creative
passages in place of the ones Kimbolt observed. It should be amusing anyway.”

“I shall place these inside the box Levering used.” The marquis took the package from Fowler's outstretched hands. “As soon as we have the original diary, are we still off to Derbyshire?”

“Eleanor and Worthing will marry on Friday. I want to give her the diaries before then.”

Crowden thumbed through the counterfeit books, needing something to do with his hands. “How do you feel about their marriage?”

“I am having some difficulty in picturing my baby sister as old enough to be the mistress of her own house, although I know she is more than capable.” Fowler traced his finger around the glass's rim.

“I thought you were going to say something about picturing her with child, knowing how she got that way.”

Fowler frowned, pursing his lips. “I could have gone all day without the image of the Captain in bed with my sister. That is certainly not fair, Godown.”

The Marquis laughed when his friend blushed. “Worthing is the first of us. Who do you suppose is next?”

The Duke paused, debating on whether to answer. “I suspected you and my cousin might be considering a joining.”

Crowden lowered his heels and prepared to stand. “I was thinking, Your Grace, about retiring to Gossling Hill.”

Fowler swallowed hard. “Alone?”

“Alone,Your Grace.” Crowden stood and adjusted his clothing. “I thought I might leave from Derbyshire.”

“You must wait until after Prinny's party. It would be a shame to miss what happens with Levering.”

“Then after the Prince Regent's little soiree. I need the wildness of Staffordshire. London is too constraining.”

Dressed completely in black, Gabriel “The Ghost” Crowden climbed through an open window on Huntingborne Abbey's second floor, having traversed a vine-covered trellis. The window, used to cross-ventilate the upper level, opened onto a long hallway, which led to the main staircase. Crowden stood in the shadows and listened for whether anyone had sounded the alarm with his presence. According to Kimbolt, Levering kept a bare-bones staff of only five in the house. Near midnight, Crowden did not expect to find any servants, although it was possible, as Levering and his friends played cards in one of the downstairs drawing rooms.

Crowden watched the game in progress from a patio window for some time, assuring himself of the condition of each of the house's occupants. Kimbolt had joined the group to help him if something were to go wrong with the heist. The party shared three women—local village whores who allowed themselves to be touched intimately by each and all. Aidan Kimbolt chose not to partake, although none of the other carders noticed, as the viscount occasionally slipped his arm around one of the women, purely for show. But he did not participate in the profligacy, nor did he drink beyond the occasional sip. Both Crowden and the viscount needed a clear head to stay alert to danger.

Crowden stayed in the shadows and worked his way along the wall. Kimbolt had drawn very detailed diagrams, which the Marquis had committed to memory. Now, he moved cautiously. It was a quiet night—no wind, and even the crickets were silent. Luckily, the moon made an appearance, providing a shaft of light the length of the hallway.
He had earned the nickname of
The Ghost
after convincing one not-so-magnanimous French comte that he had imagined the dark stranger when the man awoke to find Gabriel Crowden going through the safe in the comte's bedroom. With his French better than that of many Frenchmen, Crowden assured the man that he had dreamed the theft and then waltzed from the room—a ghost—without anyone else in the household even waking.

Reaching the described stairway, the Marquis lit a stub of a candle. Being far enough away from the card room, the players would not see the light. No one had cleaned the stairway, and Crowden needed to step into Levering's footprints. The idea was for the baronet not to realize the exchange of books until it was too late. Crowden found he had to tiptoe at times because Levering wore so small a boot. “A boy's feet,” he thought sarcastically.

He eased the room's door open. Kimbolt had guessed correctly: Someone had designed the room for drying clothes. Rope lines ran between metal hooks on the wall. Although the windows remained closed, they polluted two walls, providing light enough to see the room's layout.

Lord Lexford had counted the steps Levering had taken and had noted the sound of metal on wood, but the room was totally empty except for the drying lines. There was not one piece of furniture.

“All right—no chest or safe,” he told himself. Immediately, he squatted to see if there were dusty tracks he could follow, but nothing showed in the subdued candlelight. “Eight steps,” he silently mouthed.

Keeping Levering's height in mind, Crowden adjusted his stride, shortening it. He marked off eight steps toward the room's center, which proved fruitless—not even a loose floorboard. Dutifully, he returned to the doorway and went off at an angle to his right. Still nothing. He tried the same thing on the left with the same results. Feeling the frustration of retracing his steps over and over again, Crowden nearly missed the obvious. A second turn, at a different angle, offered no possibilities, but the same angle on the left revealed
a shadow in the wall, which the marquis cursed himself for not seeing immediately. He began at the room's closed door again and went toward the darkened aberration. Eight steps exactly.

Raising the candle, he examined the area. A three-foot square cut into the wooden panels displayed a hinged door—the metal on wood that Kimbolt had heard. Crowden used a knife to get a finger hold and began to edge the hinged door open. After the first squeak, he lifted the door enough to ease the weight of it and managed to swing it wide open without any other sound.

A gaping black hole appeared before Crowden raised the candle to look inside.
Of all the absurd places!
Inside the opening stood the house's locked dumbwaiter, a knotted rope keeping it from moving. Crowden peered in, and lying on the flat plane of the small bucket was a book.

“Bloody hell!” he cursed silently, as he realized that only one book lay in the compartment. Quickly, he opened the package he carried under his shirt and placed the replica they had created as a replacement for the original.
The dummy in the dumbwaiter
, he kept repeating in his head as he closed the hinged opening. He would share the irony of the phrase with Kerrington and Fowler.

Now, he had to find the other book. Hurrying back the way he had come, Gabriel retraced the baronet's steps once more.The man's bedchamber seemed the most likely place, so he rushed toward the family quarters. He peered into several empty rooms before finding one strewn with remnants of leftover food and rumpled clothing. Evidently, Levering's small staff let the work lapse around the house.

“Pig.” Crowden commented as he closed the door behind him. The chamber pot's stench filled the room with a strong urine odor. Unable to tolerate the smell, Crowden cracked one of the windows. “The arse will thank me later,” he mumbled.

Lighting a single candle, he did a complete search of the room. He found dirty clothes and bed linens, but nothing even resembling a book. He searched the dresser, the mattresses, the wardrobe, and even managed to open a locked safe box. “Now where?” He
began to reason. He could not search the whole house in one night. He had to think like a madman. “His study,” Crowden decided.

This was more challenging than he had expected. He needed to traverse the stairs without being seen. Leaving the baronet's bedroom, Crowden turned toward the service stairway he had passed on the right hallway. Crossing the landing on the main stairway for the third time, he paused to hear a woman's squeal emanating from the open doorway before he slipped into the service passage.

Although he did not know the house, all English country estates followed certain principles in their constructions, and he made only two wrong turns before he stood in the hallway that held the baronet's study. Unfortunately, he needed to cross the drawing room's open doorway, as well as a footman snoozing in a chair beside the house's entrance door. This was a real problem. He needed a distraction: He needed Aidan Kimbolt's help. In the past, he and Kimbolt had staged similar forays. Easing along the wall and using a crossover step to keep in the shadows, Crowden reached the open doorway. Unfortunately, the marquis could not see Kimbolt to know whether his friend might respond.
I hope this works.
He reached up to the wall sconce and lit the candle he carried. Crowden brought it before him where Kimbolt might see it in the door's crack, and then blew it out, letting a whiff of smoke sneak through the opening. Then he held his breath and prayed his partner would see the brief change in the hallway.

“Is there another chamber pot?” Crowden heard the viscount ask a bit louder than necessary.

“What is wrong with the one in the corner?” One of Kimbolt's fellow players, who sounded a bit irritated, inquired.

Through the crack, Crowden saw Kimbolt shove his chair back. “I need some privacy.”

“Use the one in my study,” Levering mumbled without looking up.

Kimbolt stood and swayed in place, giving the impression of being inebriated to anyone who might have looked up. Crowden
thought that Kimbolt deserved his reputation for dramatics. “Deal me out this hand.” Then he stumbled toward the open doorway. When he reached it, he caught the doorframe and pretended to steady himself before calling over his shoulder. “To the right or the left?” As he made an exaggerated gesture, he pulled the door to him, closing it part of the way, allowing Crowden to slip past.

“Left.” Levering and Montford called out in unison, without raising their heads, engrossed in the game.

“Right.” The viscount took two steps. “I mean left. Right—it is left. That is funny.” Kimbolt cackled with his own attempt at humor—a drunken cackle, which one of the women mimicked. The viscount stumbled out and turned to the room where the door stood ajar.

Entering the study, he locked the door before lighting a candle. When Crowden stepped from the wall's darkness, he asked, “What is wrong?”

“There was only one book in the drying room. Its mate is not in the baronet's bedchamber. I thought it might be here.”

With no further discussion, both men began to silently search. Kimbolt took the desk and Crowden the stacks of paper piled in every corner. Slowly, the viscount eased a bottom drawer open. “Here,” he whispered with urgency. He pulled the tome from the sliding receptacle in the desk.

Crowden moved quickly to make the exchange. “You have to make sure the baronet locks up the copy before he reads it again. He will know something is wrong, and Fowler says he cannot know until Prinny's party.”

“I will take care of it,” Kimbolt hissed. “Now, get out of here.”

Crowden simply nodded and strode to the window.“I will be at Briar House tomorrow.”

Kimbolt did not get a chance to answer: The door rattled from the outside. “Hey, Collins, what is going on?”

Kimbolt hurriedly loosened the top buttons of his front placket. “Nothing is going on,” he barked as he jerked the door
open. “Sometimes I like to take a piss in private.” He rebuttoned his breeches.

“I think we have all had it for tonight.” Montford walked toward the staircase. “We are staying here. Take any of the empty rooms you want.” Heath Montford climbed the stairs slowly; one of the village women supported his weight. Danver Clayton followed with another of the women. Gavin Bradley had passed out on the chaise some time ago.

Returning to the card room, the viscount told the third woman, “You should find your way to Sir Louis's room.” She looked at him with disappointment, after having vied for his attention all evening.

“The third room on the left from the second landing.” Levering stacked the cards in the table's middle.