The Charmer (10 page)

Let him wonder. It was none of Holt's
business. And she hated talking about the past anyway. Her marriages in all
their disastrous glory were buried along with her husbands, and that's how she
wanted it to stay.

"There'll be a good crop
this year," her father said some time later. Susanna thought he'd fallen
asleep but he seemed lucid and alert. "Is everything in place for the
shelter? If it stays this clear you'll need to secure the canvases over the
trees tonight."

She smiled at him. He still loved
the trees, still cared for them. He would until the day he died, if only
because his wife had loved them so. "You're right," she said, coming
to stand beside him. She pressed her hand to her aching back and stretched.
"If you're here for supper, Mr. Holt, perhaps you can help me throw the
canvases over the trees. It's not an easy job to do on my own."

"I'll be here," he
said, carrying a box filled with weeds over to them. "I think I'll head
into the village this afternoon, if that's all right with you, m'lady."

"Of course. I told you to
take the afternoons off. Indeed, I feel guilty if you don't. We're not paying
you enough to stay here and work all day."

"Why aren't we paying
him?" her father asked, blinking up at her. He looked tired. It was time
to return him inside for his dinner and a nap.

"We can't afford to,"
she said.

"Oh. Pity." He indicated
the patch Holt had weeded. It was clean and much larger than her own. "I
hope you can stay until the spring, Holt. There's so much to do in the spring,
isn't there, my dear."

"Yes, Father. Now, I think
it's time for you to go inside. Mr. Holt, do you mind?"

Holt put the box of weeds down
and, instead of helping her father to stand, picked him up bodily and carried
him out of the garden. Susanna tried to pick up the chair, but it was large and
awkward and far too heavy for her to carry all the way back to the house. She
packed away the gardening things and a few minutes later Holt returned and took
the chair.

"Tell me more about Sir Francis
Carew's orange trees," he said suddenly. Of all the things she'd expected
him to say, that was not one of them. "You said he builds a structure over
them to protect them. How big is it? What's it made of?"

"It's like a small barn, I
suppose, but it can be removed in the warmer months. Three of its walls are
wooden and the fourth is the brick wall of the garden. The top is open except
on cold nights and wintry days when he covers them with a wooden roof. He
followed a design drawn up by our French supplier. I sent off for it too but
haven't built it yet. You see, orange trees can go without sunlight for some
time, so it doesn't matter if they are protected in this way for several days
during particularly bad weather."

He nodded. "It sounds like a
good method."

She sighed. "It's the best
we have."

"Is it not good
enough?"

"A milder climate would be
better, particularly as we get more trees. That wall is the best spot for them,
but I can't fit many more plants along it."

"I can't do anything about
the weather," he said, chuckling.

"Or the wall."

"Where will you get more trees?
Buy them?"

"I can't afford to buy more.
I want to graft them. It's easy enough to do, according to the Frenchman who
sold Mama and Sir Francis the saplings. But I have nowhere to shelter them. I
need to build something out here to protect them. It's the bane of enterprise,
Mr. Holt. You cannot be prosperous unless you have a lot of product to sell,
but you won't get a lot of product if you can't afford to invest in them. Does
that make sense?"

His smile set off his two boyish
dimples. "I think my poor gardener's brain can wrap around the
concept."

She winced. "I'm sorry. I
didn't mean to imply you're dull-witted." He may be a servant and ignorant
about orange trees, but she shouldn't have assumed he was stupid. Her other
three servants certainly weren't.

He hefted the chair and she tried
not to stare at the way his muscles in his arms bulged. "Why can't you build
a moveable barn like Carew? You said you have the plans."

"We have no money for
materials or labor."

"What about me? I can build
it."

"You'll be leaving soon. A
structure big enough to cover all the orange trees would take weeks to build."

"Hmm," he said, and
together they went into the house.

***

According to the Plough Inn's
innkeeper, a stranger had arrived a few days earlier in the village of Sutton
Grange. He told Orlando he'd find the man at Sutton Hall, so that's where he
headed. The manor house was situated amidst wide green fields a mile from the
village. The house itself was much grander than Stoneleigh with wide wings and dozens
of chimney pots reaching like fingers into the sky. It was also in better
repair. It looked fresh and new, a virgin compared to an old hag.

He avoided the house itself and
sought out the stables where he found a scrawny lad leaning on his broom handle,
gazing across the countryside.

"Lo," Orlando hailed
him.

The lad almost fell over in his
haste to get back to work mucking out the first stall.

"Don't mind me,"
Orlando said. "Keep doing what you were doing. I just want to know if the
land steward's here."

"No," the groom said.
"He's ridden out with the master."

Good. Orlando didn't want to
happen upon either of them or any servant of authority. The person he really
wanted to speak to was right in front of him. A stable boy. A maid would have
been better—more prone to gossip, and they responded well to his questioning techniques—but
the chances of getting inside and not raising suspicions were nil.

"Maybe you can help
me," Orlando said, patting the nose of an inquisitive horse over one of
the low stall doors. There were seven stalls, all but three of them occupied.
The stables were clean and the smell of leather hung in the air so either the
lad didn't day dream all of the time or he had help. "I'm the gardener
over at Stoneleigh. Lady Lynden needs some timber for building, and I thought a
place like this one would have some to spare. Can you help her?"

The lad's mouth twisted as he leaned
on the broom again. He was about sixteen and wore ill-fitting and faded livery.
"There might be some left over from the second barn. It was built last
spring after your mistress sold her inheritance back to my master."

"She sold her widow's rights
to him?"

"Aye, in a manner." The
lad gave a sigh of strained patience. "I don't know if it was all
official, but they made some sort of agreement where Lord Lynden bought her
inheritance back. She needed the money to fix up Stoneleigh, see. It was in a
right bad state a year ago with half the roof gone."

That explained a lot. Orlando had
wondered why Farley and Susanna were so poor. As a widow, she was entitled to a
portion of the income generated from her late husband's lands. By all accounts,
Sutton Hall was a profitable estate. But if she had sold those rights back to
Jeffrey and used the money to fix up Stoneleigh, then it was no wonder she had
little left to pay for servants. A new roof alone would have cost a fortune.

"So there's timber left over
from the barn?" Orlando asked.

"Aye, I think so. Umberly
could tell you more when he gets back. That's the land steward. I'm sure my
lord could come up with a fair price for your mistress to get it off his hands,
them being related and all."

"The only fair price I can
think of would be nothing. Their being related and all."

"Nothing?" The lad
snorted and started sweeping again. "The master don't care for his
relations
that
much."

Then Orlando would just have to
find a way to make him care. It hadn't been his intention to ask about building
materials for Susanna's orange tree shelter. It had simply been a good way to
start a friendly conversation with the lad, but since Orlando would probably be
around for a few more days, he might as well start building the structure. Just
start it, mind, not go on with it. She would have to find someone else to do
that job after he left.

If she lived.

His stomach clenched and the
breath suddenly left his body. Hell. It was
not
the sort of reaction he
should have when thinking about doing his job. Hughe would remove him
immediately if he knew he had doubts about assassinating Susanna.

"He doesn't want to care for
the widow of his cousin?" Orlando asked, laying a steadying hand on the
stall door. "Just think, to have two husbands die in the same manner...very
unfortunate." He shook his head, warming to his subject as he had done
with the Stoneleigh servants the first time he'd met them.

The lad seemed intrigued too. He
was leaning on his broom again, having accomplished little so far. The stable
floor was as filthy as when Orlando entered it. "Never thought about it
like that. I didn't know they died the same way. Did they?"

Orlando shrugged. If there
weren't any rumors about it, he certainly didn't want to start any. The fact
there were no rumors was what he wanted to establish. Milner from The Plough
also hadn't mentioned the coincidence, and he seemed like a fellow who liked to
gossip. So no one seemed to think Susanna guilty, yet someone had anonymously
employed Hughe to assassinate her because she was a murderess. Interesting.

"Perhaps I'm mistaken,"
he said. "How did the previous Lord Lynden die?"

"His heart stopped, so they
say."

"And how did they know his
heart just stopped? Was someone with him at the time?"

"He was asleep. His man
found him in bed the next morning. Sad business. He wasn't a bad master.
Course, all the maids wept into their aprons for weeks after. The village girls
too." He sniggered and gave Orlando a wink.

Orlando was an expert at
schooling his reactions, but this time he had to call on all his experience and
training. While it wasn't unusual for a man of Lynden's station to have
mistresses, Orlando couldn't believe that someone married to Susanna would need
to stray. Not only was she beautiful, but she was passionate too. He didn't
need to bed her to know that, he could see it in the way she trembled at his
touch, the way her face heated and her breath quickened.

Lord Phillip Lynden had been a bloody
fool.

"Did his man tell you how he
found him?" Orlando asked. "How he looked? Was there anything unusual
about his skin or his eyes?"

"He was dead. Sounds unusual
enough to me."

The conversation was going
nowhere. If Orlando wanted to find out if the body showed signs of poisoning he
would need to speak to the manservant himself, or someone else who studied the
body.

"Was a coroner called?"

"Widow Dawson was sent for
first. She's the village wise woman, and the parish pay her to look over the
dead too. She said the coroner should be fetched on account of the master being
young and strong. Took him three days to get here."

Orlando made to walk off but
stopped at the entrance. "One more thing. Where can I find the stranger
who arrived here three days ago?"

"You can find me right
here."

CHAPTER 5

O
rlando nodded a greeting to the
man standing near the stable entrance. The stranger nodded back without taking
his cool gray gaze off Orlando.

"My name's Holt,"
Orlando said. "I'm the gardener at Stoneleigh across the way."

"Monk," the stranger
said.

"That a name or a
description?"

"Whatever you want it to
be." He sounded bored, as if he'd heard the jest a thousand times and
given the same response. He was a tall, lean man with brown hair and the sort
of face women looked twice at if he passed them. His clothes were that of a
country gentleman, well-tailored to his broad-shouldered frame but not as
ostentatious as Lynden. The ruff was small and there was no lace in sight.

"So why does the gardener at
Stoneleigh want to speak to me? I wouldn't know an apple tree from a cherry, so
I doubt it's for advice." Monk smiled and Orlando smiled back, despite his
unease. Monk's stance was deceptively casual. Most observers would think him
simply a man enjoying a conversation with another, but Orlando knew
differently. One hand rested on his hip near the sword strapped there, his
other was at his side, the fingers flexed. He stood with his weight evenly
balanced on both feet, blocking the exit.

So Monk was defensive and
prepared to fight. That meant he had something to hide.

Orlando held up his hands. Perhaps
it was foolish to take them away from the dagger tucked into his belt, but he
was playing the role of a simple, unthreatening gardener. "My apologies,
it's nothing personal, but I was told by Milner at The Plough that you and I
were the only strangers to come to the village lately."

"So?"

The
swish
of the broom
behind him stilled. The lad was listening too. "There was an intruder at
Stoneleigh last night," Orlando said.

The stable boy gasped then swore
softly. Monk blinked and a small line appeared between his brows. "And you
think I am that intruder."

Orlando shrugged one shoulder. "As
strangers passing through, we are always the first to be accused of such crimes.
It was not me, however."

"Why not report it to Lord
Lynden? He is the justice of the peace, is he not?"

"Aye," the lad said,
"he is."

"Lady Lynden plans on doing
just that," Orlando said. "Perhaps she has already been here."