A Regency Christmas Pact Collection (22 page)

“It’s worth five thousand pounds at the very least. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were to fetch a great deal more than that at auction.”

Lady Frederica Bexley-Smythe felt her heart do a little flip within her chest upon hearing Lord Upton Grey’s words, coming from inside a room in the otherwise abandoned blue corridor she’d been exploring. The flipping irked her to no end because, as her thoughts focused upon so often of late, the reaction was caused by nothing less than the oh-so-vulgar subject of money of all things.

All right, so it was more than just a little flip that her heart had done. It was a great, large, enormous flip that nearly caused her to trip over her own feet as she stumbled to a stop in the corridor.

Five thousand pounds?
The very thought of what five thousand pounds could do for Mama and her youngest sister Edie, the only other Bexley-Smythe sister who remained unmarried, was almost more than her mind could add up at the moment.

That was saying something.

If there was one thing which Freddie, as she was known to all her siblings, never had difficulty with it was sums—or anything with numbers really. But then, this didn’t actually involve real numbers,—only the exceedingly remote possibility of highly unlikely numbers and nothing more.

But
five thousand pounds
. If only she could somehow secure such a sum for her mother and sister—and at the same time keep any knowledge of it from her troublesome-of-late brother Percy—the constant fear she’d been living with for quite some time now would be appeased.

But if she did obtain that sort of money and he were to ever get his hands on it…

Still, if they had five thousand pounds it wouldn’t matter what her elder brother Percy had done with the Stalbridge fortune, or how many creditors sought him out, or how many gambling debts he had accumulated. All that would matter was that Mama and Edie wouldn’t have to worry.

At least not for a while. Their futures could be secure at least until they could somehow secure a match for her sister, and maybe Mama too. Even if Mama didn’t someday remarry, she could live with Georgie and Monty if she wanted. Georgie had already promised as much. Or if not them, then perhaps she could live with their other sister Mattie and Thomas Goddard.

Any way Freddie looked at it, though, five thousand pounds would be more than enough to support the three of them until such a time, as long as they could keep it from Percy.

Yet therein lay the problem. How could she, as an unmarried female, obtain such a sum and keep all knowledge of it from her brother? It sounded even more absurd a thought with each passing moment.

This wasn’t the sort of thing she really could talk to anyone about, though. She’d debated writing to her sister Georgie to see if perhaps her husband Lord Montague would be willing to help. But Monty had already cleaned up far too many of Percy’s messes. No, it wouldn’t be fair to ask him for assistance.

Mattie’s husband, while he was doing rather well for himself, was not exactly a gentleman of means. He had what his grandfather, the Duke of Danby, had granted him…and what he’d made of himself in the time which had passed since then. But that was all. Freddie really couldn’t ask anything of Thomas Goddard. Besides, she still hadn’t even met the man!

Blast, but she didn’t know who she could turn to.

For months, now, Freddie had been noticing how various valuables were disappearing from Bexley Court. First it had been random paintings from the drawing room. Then a tapestry, which had been in the family for over a century, had gone missing from the dining room. When she noticed the lack of a particular marble bust in the entryway a week ago, she’d gone straight to the housekeeper Mrs. Kelly to enquire about what she knew.

“I’m so terribly sorry, my lady,” Mrs. Kelly had said solemnly. “His lordship took them. I thought you and the other ladies of the house were aware, or I would have been certain to inform you.”

They hadn’t been aware, however.

For all Freddie knew, Mama and Edie were still blissfully ignorant of it all.

Well, not quite
all
of it. Percy had already sold two of his estates. Mama and Edie knew about those. There could potentially be more that they just hadn’t learned of yet, but Freddie didn’t want to let herself think of such things.

Not only that, but Percy had cut back on the staff at Bexley Court to the point that those servants who remained were working from dawn to dusk and beyond. Those sorts of changes weren’t easily missed. But now he was selling off everything he could from within the house, it would seem.

There was also the matter of one of the men Percy owed attempting to entrap Mattie into marriage last summer in order to obtain her dowry. Freddie knew, without a doubt, that Mama and Edie weren’t privy to that bit. Mattie had written about that to Freddie only, and solely or the purpose of warning her to be wary of others who might try such a tactic.

If Percy’s debts were already that extreme, there might not be much longer before she, Mama, and Edie were tossed out of their home!

Good heavens. Her thoughts had run away with her again.

Right up until the moment she’d nearly fallen over in shock from what she’d overheard, she had been intent upon exploring Padmore Glen and taking a few blessed moments away from her mother and sister. She’d been hoping to find somewhere comfortable and quiet where she could escape during those moments over the course of this holiday when she simply needed to be alone to think. It wasn’t as though money would appear in the walls or beneath the rugs at Bexley Court when they returned. For that matter, the rugs might be missing upon their return. They needed a plan, and it looked to be falling upon Freddie’s shoulders to devise it, as so much had since Papa died.

How could she have possibly kept walking past this remote room when her insatiable curiosity about this magnificently valuable item, whatever it may be, threatened to overwhelm her?

Freddie took a moment to make certain her breathing was slow and even before mincing closer to the open door from which Lord Upton Grey’s voice had come. She cast her eyes around her, hopeful no one would come upon her unawares and reveal her attempt at stealthy eavesdropping to her host.

For once in her life, she wished she’d spent more time when she was younger in learning proper eavesdropping techniques from Georgie.

“And I can have it to auction for Darlingshire House?” This was a different man—a voice Freddie didn’t recognize.

Was it Lady Upton Grey’s brother? They’d said he was due to arrive sometime in the next few days, but he hadn’t been present when her family was welcomed. His deep voice was rich and gravelly, the roughness of it causing her to tingle from head to toe.

“Of course,” Lord Upton Grey said. “The servants found it in a room upstairs which it seems has been used primarily for storage for a century, or perhaps more. Lord only knows what else they might find, now that Goddard is taking the task to hand. I have no need for it, and I certainly have no sentimental attachment to it, but if it could help you…”

Goddard
? Freddie’s ears perked up upon hearing that, since her sister had only this past summer married a man with that very surname. Could Mattie’s husband Thomas Goddard be in some way related to Lord Upton Grey’s butler?

Though Mr. Goddard was a grandson of the Duke of Danby, the family did somehow hail from the servant class. Blast, but she wished she could have traveled to Scarborough to meet him and get to know him, but there’d been no money for that. And now, Mattie and Thomas Goddard were spending the Christmas holiday at the duke’s castle in Yorkshire instead of traveling south to be with the Bexley-Smythe sisters.

Freddie was starting to realize just how terribly little she knew of her new brother-in-law and his family.

“It could. It will. Thank you, Mark.”

But what
was
it? Freddie’s curiosity had always been one of her greatest weaknesses, so she saw no reason for today to prove the exception. She inched closer still, craning her neck to peek around the corner. Thank goodness she hadn’t already dressed for supper. Feathers and bobs adorning her hair would be easy to spot if they appeared suddenly in an otherwise empty doorway.

The open door creaked, and she pulled back quickly as though she’d been burned. Freddie’s heart was racing like it rarely did without putting forth a supreme physical effort.

“Of course,” Upton Grey said. He didn’t sound suspicious or like anything had been out of the ordinary. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed her. “I’m sure there’s more, as well. God only knows what Father and Grandfather have stowed away upstairs. It’s been quite the chore I’ve settled upon Goddard, but he’s proven himself up to the task.”

“He seems capable of a great deal more than merely managing the running of an estate,” the other man replied.

Chair legs scraped against the floor, and then a stack of papers shuffled, the fluttering sound matching Freddie’s breathing as she inched closer to the door again.

“I still can’t believe my fortune in finding him. Danby suggested him, you know. He’s some sort of relation…I’m not certain of the precise connection, but the duke seemed sure no one would be better suited to the task.”

Danby! This butler
must
be related to Thomas. Good heavens.

“Interesting,” the other man murmured, though his attention seemed to have been drawn to something else.

Once more, Freddie scanned the corridor to make certain no one had come upon her. It was still blissfully empty of anything but possessions—tables, portraits, other sorts of wall hangings. Not a living, breathing soul was there but her.

“I thought this was to be a family holiday,” the unidentified man said. “Yet your home is filled to the brim with young ladies.” He sounded tense, his words clipped and short.

“Stalbridge’s sisters,” Upton Grey said. “There are only two of them here, you know—Lady Frederica and Lady Edwina. The other two are married and with their husbands. I wouldn’t quite call that ‘filled to the brim.’” The last was delivered with a bit of a chuckle.

Hearing her name, and Edie’s, on her host’s lips sent Freddie into a panic…but nothing could have caused her to panic as much as hearing them talk about Percy. Did they know she was out here listening? She pressed her back firmly against the wall, holding the palms of her hands against the smooth silk wall coverings.

“He hasn’t just neglected his duties to the Lords. He’s apparently been neglectful of his mother and sisters. Rachel couldn’t bear the thought of them spending Christmas at Bexley Court when she wasn’t sure they would have a proper holiday.”

She allowed herself to breathe again. They hadn’t discovered her presence. Not yet. She couldn’t waste any more time floundering in the hallway, though. Freddie bit down upon her lower lip and inched closer, craning her neck around the corner.

What she saw when she finally got her head far enough around the corner to see in the room literally took her breath away.
Too
literally. As soon as she heard her own gasp, she pulled her head back and dashed away.

A chair scraped against the floor again as she ran, but she didn’t slow or look back.

“What was that?” the strange man asked, his voice fading in the distance.

As she raced through the long corridors, hating the loud clicking sounds of her half-boots against the marble floors, the image of a golden cross kept flitting through her mind. The dimension was quite inconsiderable—only the size of her hand and arm, at most—but the detail and structure had been exquisite.

Freddie was so caught up in thought that she nearly ran headlong into a wall, turning just in time to avoid a very sore, quite red, and potentially bloodied nose. She darted up the stairs to return to her chamber, the glimmer and glint of gold seemingly seared into her mind.

A golden cross? Was it solid gold all the way through? It would have to be terribly heavy if it was, even though it was rather small. But no…now that she took a moment to think, it had been lying upon a spindly-looking occasional table, a table whose legs seemed incapable of supporting any sort of great weight. Surely it wasn’t solid all the way through.

Was it hollow, then? A box of some sort? Freddie recalled a golden bust Papa had called a reliquary (which, now that she thought of it, was no longer situated in Percy’s library as it had been since Papa placed it there). The top of the head had opened up, allowing storage of ancient relics. That bust hadn’t been very heavy at all.