Malia Martin (28 page)

“Well, did you speak with that woman?”

Richard winced.

“He knows, doesn’t he?” Wimsley yelled whacking his chair arm again. “He knows. He’s a crafty one, I’ll give him that. Like his mother.”

His grandfather was speaking in tongues, surely. “I hate to be a bother,” Richard interrupted Wimsley’s incoherent grumbling, “but would you mind keeping me informed of where this conversation is going?”

“You,” Wimsley yelled, pointing a shaking finger in Richard’s direction, “are absolutely worthless.”

“Thank you.”

“How much does he know?” his grandfather asked, grabbing at the cane that stood next to his chair. “How much does he know?” The old man grunted and wheezed as he pulled his gouty foot from its perch and pushed himself to a standing position.

Richard took a calming breath and kept quiet. He had known all his life that his grandfather was crazy, but this was quite a performance. He had to infer that Wimsley was ranting about the captain.

The little comment about Ashley’s mother was a bit perplexing. And the vehemenence of his grandfather’s state was even more so.

With the “Grave Matter,” as his grandfather insisted on calling it, Wimsley was always very businesslike. It was, after all, his main source of income. A tidy income at that.

He usually left his Bedlamite outbursts for more personal matters like Richard’s refusal to marry.

“From what I can deduce,” Richard finally said as he watched his grandfather hobble toward him, “the captain knows about Lady Farnsworth’s clandestine activities. I would say, actually …”

Richard decided it was time to vacate his position by the brandy. His grandfather was making a beeline for the alcohol. Well, beeline was not quite an accurate term. The man was staggering and muttering and, every once in a while, lurching.

Very unappetizing.

“Pour me a glass, boy!” Wimsley bellowed.

Richard grimaced and turned back to appease the man, but kept well away from where his grandfather stood in all of his sweating, rotund glory.

Wimsley grabbed the glass and slugged it back, then held it out for some more.

Richard poured with pleasure. He saw every glass of the stuff as one more step his grandfather made toward his grave.

Wimsley drank the full glass down, and then threw it across the room, where it shattered against the wall.

Impressive strength, actually.

“He’s after me.”

Richard just nodded. He had seen his grandfather only a few days ago. It seemed rather extreme that the man should spend his life as a half-crazy blithering idiot and then complete the circuit in only three days.

Perhaps, though, when it was time for one to lose one’s mind completely, it was just plain time. He definitely hoped his grandfather did not live too much longer in this state. The man would truly be unbearable now.

“Right, well, we all have our ghosts, right, Grandfather?” Richard bowed slightly. “I shall be on my way then.”

“No!”Wimsley’s sausage fingers closed around Richard’s arm. Bile climbed in his throat. He would have to burn his coat.

“I want that spawn of Satan dead!”

Very well. “Grandfather,” Richard said softly, “you are overwrought. I don’t want you contemplating the Grave Matter anymore. I will take care of it completely.”

Wimsley closed his eyes, his entire body shaking. “He knows about it all. He’s trying to drive me to Bedlam.”

“I rather think you’ve gotten yourself there quite nicely,” Richard said through gritted teeth as he watched his grandfather’s fingers digging into his very most favorite velvet jacket.

And then a choking noise made Richard glance up just in time to see Wimsley’s eyes roll back in his head. With drool sliding out of the side of his mouth, the man said something that sounded very much like the word “bastard,” and fell over backward.

Definitely a sight Richard could have done without.

He stood for a moment looking down at his grandfather. Wimsley’s chest moved, and Richard sighed. He glanced at the ceiling wondering if God enjoyed torturing him so much, then smoothed the creases from the arm of his jacket and stepped over Wimsley’s inert form.

“Holmes!” Richard called as he exited the study. “Holmes, your master has ranted himself into a fit.”

Holmes appeared, eyes as round as his little beetle eyes could get.

“I’d suggest you attend him.” Richard gestured toward the room he had just vacated. “Send a messenger if he dies.”

Surely that was too much to hope for.

Richard found his own coat since Holmes was making horrid noises in the study and every maid and footman in the whole damn house seemed to be streaming toward the sound.

He let himself out. Usually when he trotted down the steps from Wimsley’s town house, Richard felt rather like singing. Today, he was just completely flummoxed. And he was also very determined to deal with Lady Farnsworth on his own terms.

Of course, that would be a very easy thing if his grandfather would just give Richard an early birthday present and leave his earthly confines.

P
rudence had been wrong. The Lawrences’ musicale was not on her schedule, and she had had to do quite a bit of wrangling with Jenkins to get the thing added to her itinerary at just the right time.

Fortunately, she had received an invitation. It just had not passed muster with the captain. Jenkins nearly went into an apoplectic fit when Prudence insisted that she wanted to go.

Poor man was probably still prone on his bed with a wet compress on his head.

The musicale had actually been very entertaining. Mrs. Lawrence had invited a German pianist to play, and Prudence had sat enraptured. The man obviously felt his music as well as played it.

She had also felt a bit melancholy as she sat listening to the lovely music the man was able to draw out of the small piano. She wished James could be with her, for she knew instinctively that he would enjoy himself.

Prudence thought of their brief conversation about music on their way to Brighton, which seemed now to have been a hundred years before.

The memory saddened her soul.

Prudence sighed as she wound her way through the crush of people and searched for the front door. It was nearly ten, and Prudence had already taken leave of her hostess. She had said her good-byes to the dozen or so people that she knew.

She was hoping to meet Mr. Watson face-to-face that very night, and so her mind raced with what exactly she ought to say to him. Perhaps the man could send someone to oversee the smuggling in Gravesly until she could persuade her husband to allow her to go back.

Surely he could not keep her away from her duties forever.

It was as if her thoughts had conjured him up, for he appeared through the front door just as she started into the foyer. Prudence retreated quickly and ducked into the room she had just vacated. She hoped he had not seen her.

She darted among the throngs of people and went through a pair of French doors to the garden behind the house. She would have to find the back gate and leave that way, or her husband would thwart her meeting with Mr. Watson.

Prudence ran out into the wet garden, hunching against the rain that must have started as she sat listening to beautiful piano music. Fortunately, it was really just a fine mist, so it took her a bit longer to get soaked right through to her chemise than it would have if the rain had been coming down in buckets.

By the time she realized that she would never find a gate in the dark, though, she was shivering, and the jaunty feather she had sported on her hat was a dripping mess hanging limply in her face.

Prudence yanked the feather out of her cap and threw it aside. How did Captain James Ashley always manage to ruin even the most basic of plans?

With a glance back at the welcoming light of the Lawrences’ house, Prudence realized that she was going to have to climb over the wall. She leaned her head back and stared at the stone edifice. It was a good ten feet high, but it sported lovely handholds in the chinks between the stones.

The only problem she could see was the rain. It would make the going rather slippery. Pru shrugged and started to climb. That was when she discovered the other problem.

She was decked out for a party, not a clandestine mission. Prudence winced when she heard a fearfully loud and long rip. Another dress ruined most probably. She glanced down at herself when she reached the top.

Oh yes, definitely ruined, but it had nothing to do with the hole where the skirt had become detached from the bodice. The beautiful filmy material was matted to her body and bore the dark stains of dirt along the front.

With a shake of her head, Pru glanced at the alley below. She could not detect anyone, but it was quite dark. She turned, climbed down a couple feet, then pushed away and jumped the last few feet to the ground.

“Really, Mrs. Ashley, do I scare you so much that you have to run away from me?”

At the unmistakable sound of her husband’s baritone, Prudence screamed. So much for priding herself on being the best at going undetected in the dark of night. The scream was quite blood-curdling, and reverberated down the alley like a shot from a cannon.

James did not even flinch.

Pru stood with her hand against her hammering heart and just tried to breathe.

“My coach is at the end of the street,” her husband informed her. “Shall we go?”

“Where … why?” she managed to sputter.

“I have dispatched Lord Leighton,” James said sharply. “Saw him skulking about in the alley before I even entered the Lawrences’.”

Prudence let out a disgusted huff of breath. “He is the worst of skulkers.”

“Yes. I spied him out here and told him that I was going to pick you up so there was no need for him to wait for you.”

“But how did you …”

“Know? I didn’t.” James took her arm and started down the alley. “I deduced it from the fact that you were in the house, and he was hiding in the alley obviously waiting for someone. You would be the only person in London, I’m sure, who would find it necessary to sneak away with Lord Leighton from one of your engagements.”

They had reached James’s coach, and he opened the door himself, yanked a blanket from the seat, and wrapped it tightly around her, and then he picked her up as if she were some trifling piece of luggage and deposited her in the carriage.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Think nothing of it, Mrs. Ashley.”

How very civil they had become.

“Home, Clark,” James yelled, then pulled the door closed behind him. “Anyway, dear wife, I told Lord Leighton that he should not wait another minute since I was going to go into the Lawrences’ musicale and whisk you away myself.”

“Oh?”

“And so he left.” James reached down and tucked the tail of the blanket around Pru’s feet. “And then I entered the Lawrences’ and watched you depart toward the back. Now, I guess I shall just have to accompany you everywhere you go until you learn to behave.”

“You could have caught me before I went over the wall,” she said. “It would have made things ever so much more civilized.”

“Ah, and that would mean that you have decided to act civilized?”

Pru frowned. “I am nothing if not civilized, Captain Ashley.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Beg all you want, Captain. Just because I found a different way to help my people than winning battles against the French doesn’t mean my intentions are any less civil or heroic than yours.”

“The end justifies the means?”

“Exactly,” she agreed.

“I have always believed that philosophy to be a pile of horse dung, if you’ll excuse my crude expression.” James leaned forward in his seat so that their faces were only inches apart. She noticed that his hair was very wet, and there were raindrops shimmering in his lashes. Her husband looked absolutely devastating.

She probably resembled a sewer rat. Was there no justice in the world?

“You know, dear wife, you do have choices here. There are legal ways in which you can help the people of Gravesly.”