India Black and the Widow of Windsor (21 page)

“What are you doing down here?” he asked. You could have iced lemonade with his voice.

“The marchioness sent me to look for a book in the library.” I grinned sheepishly. “I heard voices and was just curious about what the gentlemen were doing.”

Vicker gripped my elbow. For a pasty fellow he was devilishly strong. “What they are doing is no concern of yours. Is that understood?”

I tried to disengage my arm, without success. “Yes, Mr. Vicker. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll just go look for that book now.”

He stared into my eyes for a long minute, then nodded stiffly and released his hold on me. He watched as I retreated to the library, where I snatched up my candle and began to peruse the bookshelves. I heard footsteps, and Vicker appeared in the door.

“What book does the marchioness want?” he asked.

Confound it, what
was
the name of that book? Something about prison, but I was hanged if I could remember the rest of it.

“Er, it’s by a woman who was a Confederate spy, and she wrote a book about going to prison,” I babbled. “That’s all I can remember. Oh, and her name is Greenhow.”

Vicker nodded dubiously, no doubt nonplussed at my description of the book (which sounded like a feeble fabrication even to me) or perhaps at the marchioness’s choice of reading material.

“I shall return here in a few minutes,” he said. “See that you have found the book and rejoined the marchioness by then, or I shall have to have a word with Her Ladyship about the situation.” He stalked off silently.

Spurred on by the thought of another encounter with Vicker, I made a rapid search of the books in the library. For a good twenty minutes I pored over the titles, trying to read the letters in the wavering light from my candle, but I could not find the volume the marchioness had requested. Truth to tell, the whole concept of the Queen having a copy of a Confederate spy’s autobiography in her library had sounded far-fetched. I was beginning to think my employer was pulling my leg, and my inability to find the book only confirmed my belief.

I was in a foul temper and covered with dust by the time I’d finished searching. Bugger Rose Greenhow, I thought. The marchioness will have to be satisfied tonight with more stories from the Pentateuch. My candle had burned to a stub, and Vicker was due back any second. I shut the door to the library and climbed the grand staircase again. Halfway up, my candle guttered wildly and the flame died, leaving me in darkness. Damn and blast. I had trouble finding my way around this pile in the daylight; without a candle or lamp, I was all at sea. I crept to the wall, hugging it and feeling my way up the stairs, one halting step at a time. I reached the second floor and turned toward the marchioness’s room. Ahead of me, a candle flame floated down the corridor, illuminating a head of red gold curls. Robbie Munro stole quietly down the hallway, shielding the candle with one hand and searching the wall to his left. As I watched, Robbie’s head turned, and I shrank into the nearest doorway. Then the candle flame wavered, and Robbie disappeared.

 

 

 

By the time I had groped my way back to the marchioness’s room, it was getting on to two o’clock in the morning. The old lady was still upright in bed, and she gave me a murderous glare as I entered the room.

“Where’ve ye been? Ye’ve been gone for hours. I could have walked to Tullibardine and got the book from my own library by now.”

“I’m terribly sorry, my lady. I searched the library carefully and could not locate the volume of which you spoke. Then my candle went out, and I had some difficulty finding my way back here.”

“Hmmph. A likely story, Ingrid. Ye haven’t been consortin’ with the prince again, have ye?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. I can assure you I have not.”

The marchioness shifted irritably. “Bother. I was lookin’ forward to hearin’ Mrs. Greenhow’s story again. I canna believe the Queen doesn’t have a copy of the book here. Did ye search carefully?”

“I did, my lady. I looked at every title. Is the book so very popular that you expected the Queen to have the volume?”

“Mrs. Greenhow once had an audience with the Queen, and she presented her with several copies of the book. Ye know how authors are, always pushin’ ye to read their claptrap. Anyway, I expected the Queen to dump one of the volumes here at Balmoral. It’s quite an excitin’ story, actually. Sit down and I’ll tell ye about it.”

I don’t believe the marchioness heard the whimper that escaped me as I dutifully took a chair.

“Mrs. Greenhow was a prominent member of Washington society at the beginnin’ of the War Between the States. All the politicians and generals, imbeciles to a man, trundled over to her salon, where she milked them of the details about federal forces and Northern war plans. Ye must remember that Washington was full of Southern sympathizers, and Mrs. Greenhow was one.”

I stifled a yawn and thought I heard a cock crowing from the castle farm.

“The lady turned over everything she learned to contacts in the Confederate government. She was exposed, eventually, as a Southern spy and was sent to prison, along with her young daughter. Are ye listenin’, Ingrid?”

I must have dozed off. “Yes, ma’am.”

“She was released after several months and wrote a book about her imprisonment. It was published in England in 1864, and Mrs. Greenhow visited the country then. That’s when she had her audience with the Queen.”

Fascinating stuff. My eyes felt as though they had been branded into my skull.

“What happened to Mrs. Greenhow?” I asked. Damned if I cared, really, but if I talked, I could stay awake.

The marchioness cackled. “Got her comeuppance, she did. Drowned on her way back to the States from England, tryin’ to run the Northern blockade.”

“What a shame,” I said. If I didn’t get to bed soon, I was going to fall out of my chair.

“Not really,” said the marchioness, settling back into her pillow. “She took a risk and paid the consequences. If ye’re going to do something daft and dangerous like betray yer country, ye can’t expect any quarter to be given.” She yawned, her gums pink in the candlelight.

“Well, I’m ready for a kip. Draw the curtains, will ye, Ingrid? And don’t slam the door when ye leave.”

I did as instructed. Then I blundered down the stairs and out through the kitchen into the bracing air of a Scottish winter morning, heading for the stables.

 

 

 

By the time I tumbled into my bed, dawn was breaking. You would think I’d have fallen to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow, but I was nagged by the image of Robbie Munro in the corridor. He had seemed to vanish into thin air. What was he doing up at that hour? And where had he been going when I had seen him? It wasn’t impossible that the handsome Robbie had made such an impression on one of the Queen’s female guests that he had been invited to her room (and for that matter, I supposed, the Queen’s visitors might include an aristocratic Mary Ann who had singled out Robbie for attention). Hard to credit, but who knows? The nights are long and cold in Scotland. A third possibility presented itself, and that was that Munro was up to his eyeballs in the plot against the Queen and had been meeting one or more of his co-conspirators. I suppose there might be an innocent explanation: one of the guests had required a hot water bottle or a sandwich or a bedtime story read aloud. I would have to eliminate that possibility as well. I resolved to inspect the hall in the light of day, to ferret out which of Her Majesty’s lodgers had entertained the footman last night.

The marchioness’s behavior also disturbed me (not the explosions and floods that followed her ingestion of the evil weed—God knows the old pussy needed some consolation at her age), but her decided interest in tales of female deception. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I was beginning to think Her Ladyship had smoked me out. But how on earth had she done so? Granted, when it came to pressing skirts and brushing on powder, I could manage, but no doubt I was a bit rough around the edges when it came to acting the servant. I was more used to barking orders at my whores than anticipating when to produce a handkerchief. The marchioness, however, had the eyesight of a bat who’d never left the cave; she probably hadn’t a clue whether her bodice was starched or not. Even if she had rumbled me, she didn’t seem in any hurry to terminate my employment (not that a Bible-reading insomniac who could do hair could be found on short notice in the local village). Had someone let slip my real role at the castle? It could only have been Dizzy or French, or Sir Horace Wickersham, the poor devil who had forged my letter of recommendation, but to what purpose?

As you can see, I had a lot to ponder, so I tossed and turned while Flora snored, until I fell asleep just as the sun rose over the horizon. Predictably, the skirl of the Great Highland War Pipe followed shortly thereafter, jolting me awake with another tuneless ululation that passed for song here in the north. No doubt the Scots found it stirring, but the only thing I felt inclined to do was close the window.

“Lord,” I moaned from beneath my covers.

Flora laughed and bounced out of bed. “Don’t you ever wake up in a good mood, India?”

“Not since I started work for the marchioness. If I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to collapse.” I struggled upright and regarded the world through bleary eyes. A look in the mirror confirmed my fears: I was looking deuced haggard.

I washed and dressed and went downstairs for breakfast, where fried eggs and toast and a cup of strong tea revived my spirits somewhat. The rest of the servants tucked into their porridge with the appetites of Arctic explorers, but I declined to join them. I don’t much care for warm, soggy oats in the morning, or at any time for that matter, and the thought of stuffing them into a sheep’s stomach along with bits and bobs of internal organs and boiling the mess up for luncheon is a stomach-turner. After the meal I wearily climbed the stairs and stopped by the marchioness’s room to see if I was needed, but my employer was asleep over her breakfast tray, with her stiff white braid dangling in the milk jug. I considered extracting it, but if the marchioness woke up while I was performing the operation, I might be stuck for hours. I closed the door quietly and crept away.

After only a few false starts, I found my way back to the main corridor that housed the guest rooms, where Robbie Munro had apparently dematerialized last night. I walked slowly along the hall, trying to visualize the scene in my mind and identify the room into which Robbie had vanished. I paced up and down, measuring my steps and estimating distances for a good while, keeping a wary eye out for the Prince of Wales and planning an escape route in the event he wandered down the hall. After several minutes of hanging about, I had narrowed my search to three rooms on the left side of corridor, one of which I knew to be occupied by French. The second and third were separated by a dusty, threadbare tapestry depicting a few bare-legged Scots routing an unidentified enemy. Well, I suppose a wall hanging showing the English victories at Bannockburn or Culloden would have been deemed tasteless by the locals.

I struck lucky at the first room; the door was cracked and a housemaid was stripping the bed, humming under her breath as she did so. I knocked softly and she started like a spurred colt, spinning round with a look of terror on her face. Her face sagged with relief when she saw me.

“Lord almighty, I thought you were the Prince of Wales.”

We shared a laugh at that and introduced ourselves, though I promptly forgot the girl’s name. There were dozens of servants at Balmoral; why waste valuable memory on one name?

“I know you. You’re the marchioness’s maid. I’ve seen you at tea in the kitchen. She’s a funny old sort, isn’t she?”

I bristled at this description of my employer, then gave myself a mental thump on the head. I rarely gave a tinker’s damn about anyone but myself, and it was inconceivable that I had developed any affection for a snuff-spraying, slack-jawed crone who suffered from the curse of Hypnos. The lack of sleep I had endured was beginning to play tricks on mind.

“She’s a character,” I said neutrally. “Actually, I was just looking for her, and I thought I saw her come into this room.”

The maid shook her head. “She’s not in here and likely wouldn’t be, unless she got awfully confused. This is the Earl of Kinnoncairn’s room. They haven’t spoken in twenty years.”

“Right,” I said, nodding sagely as if I knew of the long-running feud between the two. “Perhaps the marchioness is next door,” I said. “Do you know who occupies the room?”

“Oh, that’s the prime minister’s room. And his secretary is next door.” The maid cocked her head and smiled dreamily. “That handsome Mr. French. Have you seen him?”

“The chap with the black hair and the vacant smile?”

My sarcasm didn’t make a dent in the maid’s ardor. She nodded happily. I thanked her for her time and made my exit. In the hallway, I hung about, thinking over the information I’d learned. Lord Kinnoncairn had a chestful of medals from various actions in Afghanistan, the Sudan and the Gold Coast, and was a distant cousin of the Queen and a member of the Cabinet. He might be the Marischal, but if he was, his disguise as war hero, royal relative and loyal member of the government was a good one. That left Dizzy’s room and that of French as potential destinations for Robbie’s midnight ramble. Surely the PM had been asleep in the wee hours of the morning. A chill ran through me; what if Robbie had visited the old man’s room with the intention of eliminating one of the hated Englishmen on the premises? But if something had happened to Dizzy, the news would have permeated the castle by now. That left French’s room as a possible destination for Robbie, which made some sense as I had seen French downstairs in the billiard room not half an hour before I’d seen Robbie skulking through the hall. Robbie could easily have known French was not in his room; the footman might even have been up late attending to the gentlemen at their games and drinks. I mulled over the possibilities. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for Robbie entering French’s room. French might have sent Robbie to fetch something, or Robbie might have been instructed to prepare the room for French’s retirement. Or Robbie might have tumbled to French’s masquerade as Dizzy’s secretary and learned of French’s real purpose in visiting Balmoral.