The Sinner (28 page)

Dante made gestures that Luke understood better than Fleur did. His soaked straw hair moved along the back of the house surreptitiously as he peeked into windows.

He came back more quickly. “None in these chambers back here that I can see.” He spoke just loudly enough to be barely heard. “What are you doing up there, sir? When you did not return I thought it odd, but Hill said you most likely got caught by the storm and found shelter, but I—”

“Whatever you thought, we are grateful you are here. Mrs. Duclairc is with me, and Farthingstone is up to no good. Go and get help, Luke. It has to be someone who can stand up to Farthingstone and who listens to what you say with interest.”

“I don’t know people in these parts, and they don’t know me. Who will—”

“Find the justice of the peace or another man of position. Use my brother’s name. Go now.”

Luke did not wait for another command. He dashed through the rain to his bushes, then aimed away from the house.

Fleur threw her arms around Dante as soon as all of him was back in the chamber. “Thank God for Luke. If we had waited for Hill to sit out the storm . . .”

He held her, grateful that she had found reason not to be fearful. He wanted her to stay that way and not be too conscious of time passing. He led her over to the bed and pulled her down to sit beside him on it. “We have some time until Luke returns. Tell me all about your school and your railroad, from the day you first conceived the mad scheme.”

She nestled against him and told her story. He asked for details to lengthen the tale, so that hours passed before it was done.

“It is an impressive plan that you conceived and followed, Fleur. I do not think any man could have done better.”

“Do you really think so? Do you think it could have worked if I had not been betrayed by Mr. Siddel?”

“I think so, yes.”

“It makes me very proud that you say that, Dante. Your good opinion is worth more than actually succeeding with the plan itself.”

He thought that a very flattering thing for her to say, but also a little odd. Since he was hardly famous for financial judgment, his opinion on such things wasn’t worth much at all. Her conviction touched him, like all of her trust had. It was one more example of the unwarranted optimism she had about him.

He pulled her closer and kissed her, to let her know he was grateful that she had been addled enough to think Dante Duclairc was worthy of her trust and love.

A sound interrupted their embrace. Boot steps sounded outside their chamber. They both looked toward the door.

A key turned in the lock.

chapter
26

T
he voice demanding entry between wheezes and coughs was Farthingstone’s.

“I’ve some food here, Duclairc. Don’t you want it?”

“If I can convince him to take me down below, do not object,” Dante whispered to Fleur. “Once we leave, block the door with whatever you can move.”

She did not like the plan, but she helped move the chest away from the door, then scurried to the farthest corner.

Dante threw the bolt. He opened the door on a very flushed and breathless Gregory Farthingstone.

Who carried a pistol.

His other hand, which had been holding his chest, pointed down to a tray of ham and bread on the floor. “Pick it up and bring it in. Only a bit of ham. None to do for me right now.”

Dante lifted the tray and placed it on the bed. “Of course not. You could not host a man such as Smith with servants about. Nor would he want you to. Of course, I doubt his name is Smith, don’t you?”

Farthingstone got redder. He continued catching his breath and pretended to examine the chamber to hide his physical discomfort.

“He is not coming back,” Dante said. “If he has not returned by now, he will not.”

Farthingstone scowled. “He will be here soon.”

“He rightly concluded that his odds were better if he ran. He will disappear into the world from which he emerged.” Dante stepped toward Farthingstone. “I am sure that there is a way out for you as well. Let us go below and think it through.”

Farthingstone backed up and pointed the pistol more directly. “Stand back, sir. I am not without allies even if he has run.”

“Since you are the one with a pistol, you are safe from me. Allow me to come down so my wife can have some privacy without my disturbance. She is weak from this ordeal as well as an accident she suffered last week, and these close quarters have become a burden to her delicate sensibilities.”

Fleur managed to appear faint on cue.

“A few minutes, Farthingstone, at least,” Dante whispered. “So she can have privacy for personal matters.”

Farthingstone flushed a deep red, from embarrassment this time. He eyed Dante skeptically. “You stay a good distance from me or I will shoot. I am well versed in firearms, and I will not miss.”

“Certainly. I am not a man famous for courage, nor do I welcome a demise that is any earlier than necessary.”

Descending the stairs left Farthingstone as breathless as mounting them had. He sank into a chair in the drawing room and gestured Dante into another some twenty feet away.

“You appear most unwell, Farthingstone. Perhaps you should have a physician see to you.”

“It will pass. It always does.”

Dante let the time tick by. Despite his distress, Farthingstone kept a surprisingly steady hand on that pistol.

“A man who brings food to the condemned is not a man likely to play the executioner,” Dante finally said. “If I am correct, and Smith has run, what are you going to do?”

“He will be here soon.”

“He was willing to attack me and Fleur in return for money, but the outcome of this is not secure and your silence if you are caught not guaranteed.”

“He never caused
you
harm. I have been cursing myself that I did not deal with matters that way, I assure you.”

Dante was inclined to believe him. That meant someone else had set those men on him outside the Union Club. Or it had just been an attempt at theft after all.

“What do you intend to do with us?”

“You will learn soon enough.”

“Are you expecting one of your allies? Is that why you told Smith to send you an express rider? I saw the rider from the window above. It was generous of Smith to accommodate you before he disappeared. A criminal’s loyalty does not amount to much, but that was something.”

Farthingstone’s expression fell.

Dante leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “If you sent for Siddel, I do not think he will come either. That is your ally, is it not? He is the man whom you think can do what you lack the stomach or heart to complete.”

“I do not know what you refer to. I barely know Sid—”

“He owes you nothing in this and would not risk his neck for you. Unless what you have been paying him is so high that he cannot live without it.”

Farthingstone’s eyes widened. “You do not know—”

“I know that he may be a blackmailer. I think that he has been blackmailing you.”

“What do you mean, you know he is a blackmailer? If anyone knew such a thing, he could not do it. Unless—” His eyes bulged in astonishment. “Has he bled you too?”

“Not me. Others whom I knew. It was a clever scheme, unearthed ten years ago. The people responsible were stopped, or so it was thought. Siddel knows what they did. I think he was one of them. As for you, I think that he kept you for himself and did not share with them. When he escaped detection, you kept paying.”

Farthingstone’s disquiet was visible, and it now had nothing to do with climbing stairs. His eyes misted. He appeared on the edge of his composure.

“It has been hell, sir. Hell, I tell you. To be at another’s mercy . . .”

“What did he have on you? The secret buried in that cottage?”

Farthingstone glanced over sharply and suspiciously. “It was
not my fault.
”

“How did he learn of it?”

“His uncle. My
friend
. He told him while on his deathbed. That is the legacy he left for his nephew, and the only one of value. The means to bleed
me
of
my
legacy.”

“How much did you pay?”

“All of it.” He gestured furiously around the drawing room. “The rents from this estate. Every pound, for thirteen years now.”

That was not good news. If Siddel was receiving that much while the secret remained buried, he had good cause to want it to remain undetected.

He might come after all. And he could do what Farthingstone needed done. Dante did not doubt that Siddel had it in him to kill in cold blood.

“It is a hell of a thing,” Farthingstone said dolefully. “If I do not solve this dilemma, I will swing. If I do, I will go on bleeding.”

And the man bleeding him was his only hope of not swinging.

The day still was gray, and the drawing room grayer. Farthingstone’s body slumped and his fleshy face sagged too. His eyes glazed in contemplation of his situation.

Dante watched the barrel of the pistol, waiting for it to move so he could lunge.

The time passed. Farthingstone appeared quite dazed. Still the pistol did not waver.

“If he does not come, I have seen that he will go down with me,” Farthingstone said into the silence. “He will be very sorry that he left me on this precipice.” He patted his chest again, but not because of any exertions this time.

Dante let Farthingstone drift back into his daze. With any luck, the man might fall asleep or drop his guard. He had probably been up the whole night, and the hours were taking their toll.

A half hour later, a sound intruded on their mourn-ful silence, half-drowned by the relentless patter of rain. Distant and vague, it reminded Dante of nothing he had ever heard before.

It grew louder bit by bit, sounding off the hills and ground outside, finally defeating the rhythm of the rain. It began sounding like the noise of a festival.

Farthingstone finally noticed. It pulled him out of his thoughts. He cocked his head and his brow creased in perplexity.

Keeping one eye on Dante, he went to a window and opened it to the rain. The noise poured in, not far away at all now.

Farthingstone squinted. His body straightened in alarm. He slammed the window shut. “Gypsies! What in the name of Zeus—”

Dante went over to the window. The scene outside amazed him as much as it did Farthingstone.

“Not gypsies, Farthingstone. Gypsies do not arrive on a coach and four.”

The coach rolled up the lane at a good speed. Luke held the reins. Beside him sat a substantial woman of middle years with a pinched face and straw hair, wrapped in a simple woolen shawl that also shielded her head. Her resemblance to the young man beside her was unmistakable.

Other women peered out the coach windows. Four more sat on its roof, clinging to the wood. Two more took the place of footmen.

They all carried pots that they pounded and beat with spoons and ladles, making a noise that rang through the countryside.

Luke’s mother climbed down as soon as the coach stopped. She spoke to a young matron, who ran to the back of the house.

Farthingstone just stared out the window, speechless and confused.

The young woman came back and nodded. From his place where he still held the horses, Luke called for Dante.

Alarmed, Farthingstone backed away from the window and aimed the pistol right at Dante’s chest. “Do not respond. They will go and—”

“They know I am still here, Farthingstone. That woman just called for Fleur at our chamber window and knows she is above.”

Farthingstone’s face flushed again. The red just kept coming. He looked frantically to the window.

A woman’s voice called from the drive. “My son says you’ve Miss Monley in there. We don’t leave until she comes out and them that knows what to do with the likes of you arrive.” Pots clanged in cacophony to punctuate the announcement.

“Good God,” Farthingstone mumbled. “It is not to be borne! To have such rabble trespassing—”

“I sent Luke for help. He must have gone to his collier village up north.”

“Colliers! What have they to do with me?”

“Fleur’s charity kept the children of those women from starving when their men withheld labor last year. I expect they would kill for her.” Dante gazed out the window. “They certainly look prepared to if necessary.”

Luke’s mother called again. “All the farmers we passed saw us coming. No way to hide we were here. There’s them back at the village that know we came, and why. Our men will learn of it once they leave the pits.”

The other women began calling for Miss Monley too. The pots and pans sounded louder.

“Tell them to stop that hideous noise,” Farthingstone groaned, moving farther back into the room.

“It sounds like the harps of angels to me.”

“I will shoot them all. I will—”

“You will have to shoot me first, and by the time you reload they will have you on the ground.”

“Good God. This is an outrage! To be besieged in my own home by a horde of mad women! I will—I will—!”

Dante surveyed the little troop. Luke’s mother had placed herself front and center of a phalanx of colliers’ wives. Proud and brave, she faced the house with her hands on her wide hips, full of the determined strength that hard living bred in such women. She did not look like someone a sane man would want to cross.

“Good God.” The mumble came lower this time, and with a much different tone. A heavy thud punctuated the last word.

Dante turned. The pistol had fallen to the floor. Farthingstone’s face had turned unnaturally pale. Holding his chest, he stared at the rug with unseeing eyes.

He looked up at Dante with an expression of horrible comprehension. His legs folded.

His body fell.

“Get them all warm. Find them food,” Fleur instructed Hill as the women climbed off the coach and filed into the house. “Build up the fire in the drawing room and—”

“Don’t need such a fine fire,” Luke’s mother said as she passed. “The kitchen will do for us.”

“Make yourselves comfortable, wherever that is,” Dante said. He stood beside Fleur at the door, welcoming their unusual party.

The ride from Gregory’s house had been quite an event. Fleur imagined how odd it would have appeared to anyone who saw them, with women hanging off the coach and those pans clanging, now with excitement and heady victory.

Jubilation when Dante freed her from the attic chamber had crashed into shock when she saw Gregory’s body. It still lay in that house, covered with a blanket, awaiting removal.

Luke sat at the reins as the women disembarked their ship. Fleur squeezed past them and went over to him. He was bent down and angled, peering back at the coach with a deep frown.

“You have my gratitude, Luke,” she said.

“Please don’t blame my mother and the others that the coach is badly scratched. I had a few scrapes with cottages in the village. The lanes are narrow and not fit for a coach like this, and my handling of the horses—”

“Luke, you may have saved our lives. I do not think that a few scratches on the coach signify much, do you?”

He blushed. “I didn’t know where to go here. Then I figured if I took the mail road north, even in the rain I would get there in an hour or so. I knew there would be those who would believe me and know what to do.”

“Your plan was unusual, but effective. You brought an army back.”

“Was my mum’s idea. She said it would be a sin to allow ill to befall you after you had helped them.”

“She has my gratitude as well. All of these women do.”

Dante came out to join them as the last cotton skirt entered the house. “Luke, tomorrow morning hitch two of the horses to Hill’s wagon and he and I will go get Mr. Farthingstone.”