Joan Smith (16 page)

“I’ll lift
you
up. I’m bigger.”

“You are not bigger than I am.”

“I’m taller.”

“We are the same height when you are wearing high heels. I don’t see why ladies wear such uncomfortable things.”

“Come, hop on my shoulders, Welland. I can bear the weight.” I certainly had no intention of letting him bear mine. The occasional time does crop up when I could wish I were a trifle smaller. This was one of them.

“I’ll get a chair,” he said, after mentally weighing me, and deciding he was not eager to embarrass himself by failing to get me off the floor, or worse, dropping me.

Even with a chair, he could scarcely reach the area suspected of being a door. He poked at it, and decided it was only a crack in the wooden planks. He was careful to take the chair back to the table himself, instead of asking me to do it.

“So we know the Franconis are a pair of frauds; we know how they do it, but we really still do not know that they are the ones getting large sums from Lady Sinclair. It may be only the guinea a sitting they are making. That’s all I pay them. They have not even hinted for more. They don’t live in a high style either—no carriage, nothing of that sort. This may be a total irrelevance to the major mystery going forth here.”

“Will you be going to Suffolk to see what you can discover anyway?”

“Not till my reluctant assistant gets her nose into the scriptorium.”

“You don’t have an
assistant,
Welland. You have an equal partner.”

“It is time for the sherries,” he decreed, brushing the dust from his hands and jacket.

“I’ll try to examine the records this afternoon, if I can find a chance.”

“My sweet idiot partner, I shall
make
a chance for you this afternoon. I shall beguile your aunt to come out for a drive, to allow you the opportunity.”

“I don’t expect she’ll go with you. She does not care much for you.”

“We shall see. I can
usually
persuade a lady to do as I wish. Not all of them are so headstrong as some parties, who shall be nameless.”

“Hill is coming for lunch. She may go out with him,” I mentioned, for I really had grave doubts that Auntie would prove biddable to his persuasions.

“Excellent. I too shall accept an invitation to lunch, if it is offered. Thank you, Miss Ford. I would be delighted to take my mutton with you. I
do
hope it is not actually mutton. Better tell someone I am staying. At your leisure of course,” he added quickly.

“I believe I hear Pierre lumbering toward us,” I cautioned, as slow footfalls were heard in the hallway beyond.

“No exit. We’re caught.”

“I don’t mind. He is coming to seem less annoying lately. I wonder what can account for it.”

“Simple bad taste on your part,” he opined as he strolled from the room, leaving me standing alone, trying to think of a setdown.

We were all—Aunt Loo, Dr. Hill, Pierre and I—subjected to a disgusting display of servility over luncheon. My aunt was the butt of it. I expect it is the manner in which Mr. Sinclair butters up his patron when he is at Tanglewood. Aunt Loo was praised for everything from her latest wisp of a chiffon tent to her mutton. At least it
was
mutton, which gave me some satisfaction. Initially, Aunt Loo’s brows rose in astonishment at the compliments, but as we progressed to the dessert, astonishment ascended to pleasure, and eventually to girlish titters, tinged with coyness. Before coffee was poured, she had accepted to drive out with Welland. He cocked a triumphant brow at me and relayed a tacit command to get to the scriptorium.

“I ought not to take you away from your work,” Loo mentioned, but in no resolute manner.

“My work nears completion. In such weather as this, no man with blood in his veins can stay cooped up all day.”

“I also have got bloods in the veins,” Pierre said, with an adoring smile in my direction.

“Hot blood,” Welland warned.

“I
must wash my hair this afternoon,” I said quickly, grasping at the first excuse that offered.

After a few glowers and as many comments that the hairs did not look soiled, Pierre eventually decided he would drive into the village, where he would doubtlessly annoy every chaperone on the streets with his marked ogling of their charges.

“Would you mind dropping in at the bank for me, Peter?” Welland asked. “I have got a draft from St. Regis that I am eager to cash.”

“I do not go to the bank,” was Pierre’s sulky reply. There were not likely to be any young ladies in that establishment of course.

“Pity I had not known. I was there this morning,” Dr. Hill said. “How much is your draft for, Mr. Sinclair? Perhaps I can oblige you.”

“Only five pounds. It would save Lady Sinclair and me the bother of trotting into the village before our drive, if you could.”

“I can manage five,” Hill said.

When Loo went to prepare herself for the outing, I followed her upstairs. “Rather sweet of Mr. Sinclair to offer to drive me out,” she said, still smiling. “I never cared for the young fellow above half, but I know he is reporting to St. Regis, and I must be nice to him. He could be a helpful friend.”

I had not come to twit her about her change of heart. I got right down to it. “Are you worried he will tell St. Regis about your selling off the family heirlooms, Auntie? You have known all along what I saw in his room that night was the jewels you sold.”

I half hoped she would deny it. “I felt it must be the case,” she admitted. “He will have told St. Regis. No question of that. What I hope to do is explain to him
why
I did it.”

“I trust you will think of some other explanation than giving the money to Papa.”

“Oh, dear, he told you! I was hoping he would not.”

“He told me. What I am curious to discover is what you
did
do with it.”

“Money just dribbles away, Valerie. If you ever had any real quantity of it, you would realize how it happens. Edward left debts to be paid off. There are the servants’ salaries, food, the house to maintain, the barn St. Regis made me repair.”

“There is ten thousand from which to cover those ordinary expenses. Papa manages a larger family on a tenth of that sum.”

“To be sure, he was always a clever manager, but the tenants don’t always pay their rents, you must know. I don’t
always
get ten thousand. Do you think this blue bonnet, Valerie, or the black?”

“I think you are evading the issue.”

“Yes, my dear, I am, for it is really not your business, is it?”

There was obviously no decent reply to her question. I hoped Welland would have better luck than I. He had sweet-talked her into the drive; anything was possible.

Welland was just stuffing the money into his wallet when we came downstairs. Dr. Hill took his leave, Pierre tried one more time to discourage me from washing my hair, then he too left, and I finally got into the scriptorium. It took several minutes to find that portion of the cupboards where old accounts were kept. I flipped through them quickly, my eyes alert for the single word “Suffolk.” It was a thoroughly dull afternoon’s work I can tell you. How had I let him stick
me
with this job, while
he
jauntered down the pretty country lanes behind a pair of high steppers? My aunt had no recognizable manner of keeping accounts. There was a bootbox full of loose bills, none of them bearing the address looked for. I dug deeper, drawing out hard-covered account books from the days of Sir Edward, but still the magical word did not occur. It was in a metal box at the back of the cupboard that I made the discovery, and really I did not see it as being particularly helpful.

What I refer to is the fact that Sir Edward’s first wife, Alice Sedgely, came from Suffolk, not far from Blaxhall. Little Glenham was the name of the village. The last box held personal papers, letters from her father and her father’s solicitors arranging the marriage settlement, even the marriage certificate, but nothing seemed of particular significance. His wife had been dead for two decades. I read the letters without any feeling of guilt or shame. The two main characters were dead, which made their story seem more like history or fiction than prying on my part. The first Lady Sinclair had brought a few servants with her, providing some hope for a contemporary representative of Suffolk in the house, but the names were not familiar. I knew the servants’ names from Pinny, an incurable chatterer. Alice had brought her own woman, a dresser cum companion, and a maid to help in the kitchen, but this had been nearly thirty years ago. The names were no longer heard at Troy Fenners.

I could make nothing of it, but decided to let Welland peruse the contents, to which end I would smuggle them out of Auntie’s scriptorium. In passing, I took a look at her story, spread in an awful jumble on her desk. Gloria was just saddling up her mount at the end of chapter seventeen. The first sentence of chapter eighteen revealed that she was off on her mad gallop down the turnpike road. Before the sun set, or at least before Loo took up pen again, she would want details about how it felt to fly over a six-foot house, mounted on horseback. I could tell her the very anticipation of it sent my heart to wild beating, but this would not be enough to satisfy her. Maybe I could
pretend
I had done it.

As I did not have time to wash my hair, I was amused at Pierre’s heavy complimenting on how brightly it shone “with all the soils gone from it.” Of course he did not really have a very good view of my hair from his low height. I sat with him in the saloon, passing the time and busying his hands by playing piquet, till Welland and Loo returned. She was still smiling when they entered, but the wearing pastime was beginning to show on her companion, who looked nagged from the necessary show of good spirits.

It was while we were having our sherries that Mr. Sinclair surprised us all by inviting us to dinner at the gatehouse. He wished to have us that same evening, with a man’s simple ignorance of the fact that cook had been at work already for a few hours making her preparations here.

“It would be more than my life is worth to give cook such a message at four-thirty in the afternoon,” Loo told him.

“Tomorrow, then. Make it lunch tomorrow,” he pressed on.

“We shall ask Dr. Hill to join us as well, and have a little party.”

“Walter mentioned he is going to visit his friend at Southampton tomorrow,” Lady Sinclair told him. “He will not be back till evening. He has a medical friend from London who retired at the same time as he, and opened a nursing home near Southampton. They usually get together once a month or so to talk over old times. Walter goes there, since Dr. Bentz has trouble getting away from his sanatorium.”

“That is only twenty miles away. He can be back in time for dinner. We’ll eat late to accommodate him,” Welland insisted, with some curious excitement indicated by his manner of speech.

“You had best let him know today, then,” Loo advised. “He leaves early in the morning, to be there for luncheon with his friend, and have time for a chat.”

“I’ll take a run down to his cottage now in my curricle and invite him,” he answered. “Come with me, Valerie. You have not been out today. The fresh air will do you good.”

“Yes, I’ll tag along.” I was eager to impart my meager findings to him.

“I also like to be going,” Pierre said at once.

“What a pity my curricle only holds two comfortably,” Welland said, with every show, of regret.

“We shall be squeezing in,” Pierre suggested.

“No, thank you. I have had enough of your squeezing, Peter,” I said, and arose up to get my bonnet.

“I’ll talk to you later, Peter. I have something I want to ask you,” Sinclair said, as a palliative for robbing him of the excellent squeeze.

“What I must be purchasing is the curricle for driving my own ladies my own self,” Pierre decided. “Very fine yellow curricle, with only two seats. This will be most excellent for ladies.”

By the time I had brushed out my curls and tied up my bonnet, which I did in my room, the delighted squeals of an upstairs maid, cornered by Pierre, were issuing down the hall.

“That wench ought to be turned off,” Pinny adjured. “When she ain’t winking at the footmen, she’s hotfooting it after Mr. St. Clair. Disgraceful I call it.”

“You’re just jealous, Pinny,” I teased her. “Why don’t you roll your eyes at him and see if you can steal him from her?”

“My eyes don’t roll, miss. They only squint up like a mole caught in the sun.” she answered simply.

“Maybe you should wear green glasses.”

“Mr. Sinclair beat me to them. He took up the old pair belonging to Sir Edward’s father as soon as ever he came across them.”

“You mean he only started wearing them after he got here?” I remembered Auntie saying St. Regis told her in his letter that Welland required them.

“It’s only what his valet told me.” she replied, blushing red as a beet.

“Pinny, are you seeing Mr. Sinclair’s valet?” I asked.

“Once in a while I do,” she admitted, “Napier is ever so nice, miss. Not a forward sort of a lad at all.”

“Good for you! See what you can pry out of him about a certain Mary Milne, will you?”

“Oh, miss,” she tittered, thinking I was joking, till I advised her otherwise.

“I’ll ask him tonight,” she volunteered, when she understood me to be serious. “It’s strange he never said a word about her, for he’s always singing his master’s praises.”

“Will you just check in a subtle way too whether Mr. Sinclair was wearing green glasses before he came here? St. Regis said he needed them. It is odd he didn’t bring any with him, if that is the case.”

“Napier mentioned how they found them at the gatehouse, and Mr. Sinclair hadn’t had them off his nose since. Isn’t that odd, then, miss?”

“There are many odd things go on with that pair,” I said.

“If you’re talking about Napier giving Diablo the wrong feed and causing the colic, miss, it ain’t his fault. He never had to do stable work before. He’s Mr. Sinclair’s valet. He looks after all his jackets and linen and boots.”