Carola Dunn (18 page)

Still more addlepated, why try to protect Lady Wiston at home when all she need do to be perfectly, if temporarily, safe was to leave the house?

* * * *

Peter gazed gloomily through the window at the house opposite. He was going to miss Bassett damnably. Almost as badly as he already missed the easy comradeship of Miss Miranda Carmichael.

He could not let that estrangement continue, even if she had called him a liar. Even if it meant apologizing for what he had said of Lord Snell. It seemed he was wrong there anyway, or perhaps his refusal to cooperate had forced Snell to give up his detestable scheme. At any rate, nothing had come of it.

The loss of Miranda’s friendship left a great hole in his life. True his manuscript was in a mighty mess, but Aunt Artemis would not quibble at hiring some penniless clerk to sort things out for him. Miranda need never pore over his scribbles again if she chose not to, if only she would discuss the book with him, laugh at his tales, quiz him about his wild fancies.

Sighing, he dipped his pen and reached for a fresh sheet.

“Mr. Daviot, sir!”

Two or three heads turned to glare at the page boy. He scuttled over to Peter, who dropped his pen and demanded, “What is it?”

“There’s summun downstairs for you, sir,” said the boy in an urgent whisper. “A dowdy sort o’ female, upper servant, likely, ‘cording to Porter. She says Miss Carmichael’s in desperate case and you’re to come at once.”

“Oh God!” Peter sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. Miranda ill, hurt, maybe dying? He raced down the stairs. A dowdy female—Baxter or Mrs. Lowenstein? Both footmen out, sent running for physicians, surgeons, apothecaries?

No one but the porter in the hall.

“Where is she?”

“Out on the step, sir. No ladies—”

Brushing the man aside, Peter flung open the door. “Miranda! Ye gods, what’s wrong?”

Beneath a hideous bonnet, her face was very pale. “Come.” Her voice quavered. “Come quickly.”

He reached for her arm. They were half way across Green Street by the time the hall porter called after them, “Your hat, sir! Your gloves!”

Peter scarcely heard him. “Miss Carmichael, what is it? I understood you were in desperate.... Is it Aunt Artemis?”

“You were right,” she said wretchedly. “I should have known. Lord Snell has obtained an order to commit Lady Wiston to a lunatic asylum.”

Explanations could wait. “He’s at the house now?”

“Not when I left, but any minute he may arrive.”

“Then I must run. Forgive me for leaving you.”

“Go, go! It’s all my fault.”

He turned to face her, clasping both her hands in one of his and raising her chin with the other, forcing her to look up at him. Her brown eyes swam with tears and her lips were pressed together in an unsuccessful effort to stop them trembling.

“It is not your fault,” he said decidedly. “If anyone is to blame, I am. I knew and did nothing.”

“But—”

He touched the trembling lips and forced a smile. “Not now. We’ll argue the case when Aunt Artemis is safe. I’m off.”

A third of a mile, half at most. No distance to stroll homeward on a pleasant evening. No distance to run six months ago, when he was accustomed to loping along tortuous forest trails with the Iroquois braves—in moccasins, not fashionable Hessians. Now it seemed endless.

How long had it taken Miranda to walk it? How long had it taken the porter to send the page boy after Peter at the behest of a dowdy, unimportant-looking female? Surely not long enough for Snell or his minions to present the order and persuade the servants to let him carry off their mistress?

At Oxford Street Peter was delayed by an unruly herd of bullocks on their way to Smithfield Market. He circled the rear of the herd, in his haste almost falling over one of the drover’s dogs. Saving himself he twisted his ankle. The pain was acute, but after hobbling a few steps he decided it was only a crick and would wear off. He ran on.

He would smuggle Aunt Artemis out the back way, he decided; take her to an inn where Snell could not find her, and consult a lawyer about rescinding the committal order.

At last he reached the square. His heels pounding the pavement were the only sound in the summer-midday quiet—the only sound except for a dog’s mournful plaint. From half way down the side of the square, Peter could see his aunt’s house. The front door stood ajar. On the threshold sat Mudge, his short neck outstretched, his mouth open wide in a howl of despair.

Peter lengthened his stride, but he already knew he was too late.

Automatically dodging Mudge’s automatic nip, he pushed open the door. Chaos met his eyes.

Twitchell sat on a chair, staring down at his splintered peg-leg. A stream of naval profanity issued from lips that had not pronounced an unbutlerian word in a decade. Seeing Peter, he said helplessly, “Shattered it with one kick, he did, sir. A bloody great bruiser none of us could stand up to. We did our best, but they took her ladyship.”

Peter laid a consolatory hand on the butler’s shoulder and took in the rest of the scene. In the middle of the hall, Eustace lay flat on his back, unconscious. The little housemaid, Dilly, knelt beside him waving a vinaigrette under his nose. The other two housemaids huddled together farther back, at the foot of the stairs. On the stairs sat Mrs. Lowenstein, her apron over her head, rocking and wailing. Baxter, the abigail, with tears pouring down her dour face, stood beside the housekeeper patting her shoulder.

Along the passage from the back stairs, Cook lumbered forward waving a cleaver with reckless abandon, the scullery maid clinging to her skirts. “If they’d’ve just told me sooner, sir,” she lamented, “if they’d’ve just called me right away, I’d’ve split their skulls for ‘em like a pig’s head.”

The domestic disarray daunted Peter. He would quite frankly rather have faced a charging bull moose in the rutting season with nothing but a bow and arrow in his hands. To his relief Miranda arrived.

“He has taken her?” she asked breathlessly, then cast a glance around the hall and took charge. “Cook, stop flourishing that knife about before you hurt someone, and go and make tea for everyone. Baxter, my medicine chest from the study if you please. Mrs. Lowenstein!” Marching across to the stairs, she shook the woman. “Hysterics are quite fruitless. Ask Mr. Twitchell for his keys and bring some port and brandy. Dilly, pray help Mr. Daviot carry poor Eustace to a sofa in the drawing room.”

Peter jumped to her implied command as fast as any of the servants. He and Dilly deposited the footman on an elegant blue-and-white satin sofa, while Miranda threw off her bonnet and supported Twitchell as he hopped after them.

Baxter arrived with the medicine chest. Miranda sent her for linen and Dilly for cold water for a compress for Eustace’s swelling jaw. “Comfrey and arnica,” she said, kneeling beside the prostrate victim and feeling his head. “There is a bump on the back, too.” She unlocked the chest.

Eustace groaned and opened his eyes. “What’s them, miss?” he asked with muzzy apprehension.

“Just herbs to soothe the bruising. How do you feel?”

“Sore!”

“Mr. Daviot, will you help him to sit up? I must know if he is dizzy.”

Eustace was not dizzy, so Miranda allowed him a glass of the port Mrs. Lowenstein brought in. Peter poured it, and also took a glass to Twitchell, who looked alarmingly old and shaky.

“Tell us what happened,” he said to the butler.

“Truth to tell, sir, it all went so fast I hardly know. Just after Miss Carmichael left to fetch you, his lordship came in with a fellow as might have been Mr. Daylight Danny Potts’s twin.”

“Bigger,” said Eustace. “I tried to stop him, sir, but he floored me with a wisty castor and that was the last I knowed of it.”

“He bust my leg,” mourned Twitchell.

“You shall have a new one,” Miranda promised.

“They came upstairs,” said Baxter, by now helping Miranda to bandage the footman’s head. “Her ladyship had come up to her chamber not a moment before. Marched right in they did, his lordship spouting a lot of rubbish about medical certificates and what-not. He soon stopped when Mudge bit him.”

“Mudge bit him?” Miranda crowed. “Oh, splendid! At least our side got in one blow.”

Peter took a biscuit from the tea-tray which Cook herself had carried up, and fed it to the pug. He sniffed it with disdain—no aniseed flavouring—but accepted it.

“It didn’t help, miss,” Baxter pointed out sorrowfully, tears beginning to flow again. “The pugilist simply brushed me aside. He slung her ladyship over his shoulder as if she weighed no more than a feather bolster, and off they went.”

“They had two carriages, miss,” Dilly put in. She was distributing cups of tea to all and sundry as Mrs. Lowenstein poured. “I seen ‘em. His lordship druv that new curricle o’ hisn, and there were a trav’lin’ carriage wi’ closed blinds and bars across what the bruiser bundled her la’ship into like she was a parcel. Not but what she were hittin’ him over the lugs hard as she could, but he di’n’t even seem to feel it.”

“Did you see which way they went, Dilly?” Peter asked sharply.

“I di’n’t watch, sir,” said the maid, dismayed. “There were Eustace lyin’ on the floor senseless, and I thought for sure they’d be goin’ to St. Luke’s or the New Bethlem.”

“The New Bethlem?” Daylight Danny charged into the drawing room, Alfred panting at his heels. “They’ve tooken m’lady to Bethlem?” he roared. “Don’t fret, miss. Never fear, sir. Daylight Danny’ll bust down them doors be they never so stout and get your auntie out again.”

Chapter 15

Miranda held out both hands to Daylight Danny and he engulfed them in his huge paws. “Don’t you fret, miss,” he repeated. “I’m on me way, and Old Nick hisself won’t stop me.”

“Daniel Potts!” said a breathless voice severely. “You mind your tongue.” Mrs. Potts appeared on the threshold. “Beg pardon for intruding, miss, only I thought I better come too and see is there anything I can do to help.”

“They’ve took her, Mary,” said Danny, “but I’m off to the ‘sylum to fetch her back.” He took a step towards the door as his wife nodded approval.

“Wait!” Mr. Daviot beat Miranda by a fraction of a second. Grateful as she was for Danny’s resolute enthusiasm, an outright attack on the New Bethlem or St. Luke’s Hospital was more likely to lead to trouble for him than release for Lady Wiston. “Don’t go off half-cocked, Danny,” Mr. Daviot went on. “It’s not so simple. I rather doubt my aunt has been taken to an asylum.”

“What?” Miranda turned to him. “But it was you who said Lord Snell wanted to commit her as a lunatic.”

“He did. He does. He has. But he swore to me she would be cared for privately. That could mean a private hospital. However, the blackguard would have less control over her fate and her fortune than if he keeps her confined in his own house.”

“He or one of his cousins,” said Miranda.

“His cousins?” Mr. Daviot asked in surprise. “What have they to do with this?”

Miranda realized she had had no chance to explain how she found out about Lord Snell’s plot. She did not want to waste time on it now, when every minute might be carrying Lady Wiston farther away from her friends. “They all came up to Town to give evidence against her,” she said briefly. “I believe you are right, though. Lord Snell would prefer to have her under his own thumb.”

“We can’t count on it. She might be with any of them. Let’s see, Brighton, Winchester, Ipswich, none more than a day’s journey from London. Where is Snell’s country seat?”

“Derbyshire, near Chesterfield.”

“The best part of three days, sir,” Baxter volunteered, “taking it comfortably. We stayed at Northwaite Hall two or three times in the old baron’s day, when the Admiral was alive, God rest his soul.”

“The others are more likely, then.”

“Lord Snell would not trust any of them.” Miranda was convinced that Lady Wiston was on her involuntary way into Derbyshire. “Besides, I doubt a country lawyer or a clergyman would have a large enough house for convenience, nor isolated enough to conceal her from neighbours.”

“A good point. What about Redpath Manor?” Mr. Daviot asked Baxter. “Do you know it?”

“It’s a great sprawling manor, sir, a mile from the nearest village. Mr. Redpath could keep her ladyship hid all right.”

“And it’s closest to London. I’ll go there first.”

“I am sure Lord Snell is taking her to Northwaite Hall,” Miranda insisted. “Trying Brighton first will just lengthen her suffering.”

“Far more time will be wasted in going to Derbyshire if she is in Brighton,” he pointed out.

Helpless in the face of this logic, Miranda said, “Very well, we shall go to Redpath Manor first, but—”

“We! I shall travel much faster alone on horseback.”

“And what will you do when you find her? You will need Danny, at least, to help rescue her.”

Mr. Daviot turned to Danny, who shook his head lugubriously. “Can’t ride, sir.”

“Alfred, go and order the carriage.”

“On my way, sir!” Alfred vanished.

“I am going too,” Miranda said. “Baxter, pray pack me up a change of linen, quickly, and a nightgown, too, and the same for her ladyship.”

“At once, miss.” The abigail hurried out.

“Victuals!” Cook exclaimed, and followed.

“Be reasonable, Miss Carmichael,” Mr. Daviot pleaded. “They won’t stop on the way—too much risk of Aunt Artemis creating a to-do. If she is not at Redpath Manor, if I have to go all the way to Derbyshire, I shall want to travel day and night—”

“Beg pardon, sir,” Mrs. Potts interrupted, “but if you was to ask me, miss is in the right of it. Her ladyship’ll want a woman’s support when you find her. ‘Sides, if so be she’s in anyways hurt, miss is good as a ‘pothecary any day.”

Her hulking husband gave her an admiring look. “‘Sright, sir. My Mary’s allus right,” he rumbled. “We best take Miss Carmichael.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Daviot conceded, then ruefully smiled at Miranda. “Oh, very well. Can you be ready to leave when the carriage gets here?”

“Of course. I shall not hold you up, I promise, neither now nor on the way. I must just explain to Mrs. Lowenstein how to care for Eustace.”