Ned sat beside her on the settee. Arranged at scarcely greater distance were the other male members of the Baroness’s house party.
Lady Halliday was delighted by her surroundings. She admired the carved cedar walls, inlaid with ivory and colored woods; marveled at crossbows and pavises and medieval tapestries; expressed a deep appreciation of the eclectic furnishings. Never had Amanda seen such magnificence, she told her companions; not even at Halliday Hall. By her naïve enthusiasm, her audience, or at least the masculine portion thereof, was charmed. Even young Austen seemed intrigued.
Lady Dorset found herself considerably less enchanted. She felt queasy, and irritable, and down in the dumps. Livvy wished that she had followed Jael’s example upon hearing of a visitor, and taken herself elsewhere. Not Livvy’s pregnancy prompted these discomforts, but her rakeshame spouse.
Currently, Lord Dorset was entertaining his companions with an account of the day’s hunt. The three-month season, during which the red-coated hunters were preceded into the field by an army of beaters, had begun the first Wednesday in November and would continue twice a week. Wrinkling her pretty nose, Amanda announced that her sympathies lay with the fox. “Because it cannot be at all pleasant to have a herd of horses galloping at one’s heels. And then there are the hounds. I cannot look upon one of those nasty snarling brutes without thinking it wishes to tear me limb from limb.” Lady Dorset, noting the amused expression on her husband’s handsome all-too-worldly face, decided she wouldn’t mind at all if their guest was torn to bits.
Lady Bligh entered the room, Bluebeard on her arm. Dulcie’s gown perfectly matched the parrot’s plumage. As did her hair.
Amanda was first to recover the use of her tongue. “You must be the Baroness! I would curtsey to you, but—” She gestured to her ankle and the cat, who, eyes fixed on the parrot, growled deep in his throat. “I am grateful to you for your hospitality, my lady.”
“Do hush!” Dulcie chuckled at Amanda’s expression. “Not you, my dear, but the cat. Casanova is jealous of Bluebeard, who is a Hyacinth Macaw, the largest and most beautiful of the parrot family. Alexander the Great had pet parrots three hundred years before the birth of Christ.” She caressed the bird.
“How now, hussy!” said Bluebeard, and bestowed upon her a velvety look. Casanova turned his head away, tail twitching like a metronome.
Lady Bligh turned away, also, and floated across the room, pausing by Livvy’s chair. “My dear Lavender,” she murmured, “Dickon did marry you.”
Which meant precisely what? Dulcie’s own spouse was an impenitent profligate. Livvy clamped her teeth together against a wave of nausea, praying she wouldn’t disgrace herself.
Sir John had chosen to sit on the Gothic church pew. Dulcie joined him there, first extending her arm so that Bluebeard could hop onto the pew’s carved back. Her gown was fashioned of some flowing material with long sleeves drawn tight in several places and a rounded décolletage drawn into position by a golden cord.
Another golden cord was tied beneath her bosom. Additional bands were threaded through her heavy hair. The gold showed up nicely against the blue.
Sir John could not help but smile at her. “You’ve outdone yourself this time.”
Dulcie cast him a roguish glance. “I hope you’re not going to tell me I should dress my age.”
“Heaven forbid. I think you should dress however you wish.” This particular dress at closer glance was damned near diaphanous and molded itself to her body so splendidly that Sir John feared he might have a heart attack. He glanced at Bluebeard, who returned his interest. “Jolly dog,” the parrot remarked.
Sir John wasn’t feeling especially jolly, what with Ned going off constantly in maudlin fits and starts, Hubert doing his malicious best to set everyone at odds, Lord Dorset flirting with Lady Halliday, and Lady Dorset looking ready to cast up her accounts. “What happened to ‘shiver me timbers’ and ‘pieces of eight’?”
“Gibbon has been teaching him more appropriate language. Although I do think that ‘twiddle-diddles’ hardly qualifies. Now do hush, dear John! I want to hear what’s being said.”
“Twiddle-diddles,” crooned Bluebeard, and liked the phrase so much he repeated it several times again.
Dulcie’s sweet perfume was in his nostrils, and her hyacinth-gloved hand rested on his knee. Wondering idly how testicles had made their way into the conversation, Sir John listened to Ned’s account of the victory celebrations that had taken place after Wellington entered Lisbon, which had included all manner of merrymaking, and a special theatrical performance wherein Victory placed a wreath of laurels on the brow of a noble figure with a magnificent nose. Sir John joined in the general laughter at this description of the Duke. Ned had a rare story-telling ability. He made the scene come alive.
Amanda clapped her hands. “How I wish I might have been there!” Since this was the sort of remark that generally set Ned to reminiscences of a less amusing nature, the company held their assorted breaths.
Ned said, merely, “No, you don’t. It’s a wretched dirty town.”
“Then naturally I do not wish it,” Amanda agreed amiably. “Because I dislike discomfort above all things. But nonetheless I envy you, because you have been so many interesting places and had so many interesting experiences.”
“I fancy that romance is the order of the day, dear aunt,” murmured Hubert, lounging against the side of Dulcie’s pew. “It is a bit off-putting to observe, perhaps, but infinitely better than tales of blood and gore.”
“Is it?” The Baroness spoke so softly that no one but Hubert and Sir John heard. “You have forgotten one major impediment.”
“I have?” inquired Humbug. “And what might that be?”
A rough voice came from the hallway. “Be damned to you! I’ll find my own way.”
“Connor,” said Dulcie, as that gentlemen strode into the room.
Mr. Halliday wore the customary country habit of buckskins and top boots, a coat with deep flapped pockets and a moderately tied cravat. His gaze fixed immediately on Amanda, who flushed guiltily. “You are in remarkably high bloom for a lady whose horse came home without her. I see you’ve put off your widow’s weeds.”
Amanda smoothed the skirts of her pale gray habit. “I had nothing else to wear. You can hardly expect me to go riding in an ordinary dress.”
“I could have expected that you wouldn’t go riding at all. But I see that it is too much to ask.” Connor glared at the neat little ankle that was propped up on a stool. “You took a tumble? That will teach you not to take my cattle from my stable without asking leave.”
The assembled guests had been struck mute by this display of bad temper and worse manners. Lady Bligh said, sternly, “Your stepmother has wrenched her ankle, Connor. Lieutenant Sutcliffe brought her here. Since you are both here, you must stay and dine. My cook is excellent and the company uncommonly good.”
“Oh, may we?” cried Amanda, then flushed at Connor’s sharp glance.
“Of course you may,” Dulcie replied. “Have I not just said so? I’ll warrant there’s little enough amusement at the Hall. I trust you mean to attend the midnight services at the village church next week.”
Amanda replied that she would very much like to attend. “With a wrenched ankle?” Connor asked. “Do you mean for Sutcliffe to carry you in and out of the church? I won’t stand for it. There’s enough talk as it is.”
“Sit!” commanded Dulcie. With obvious reluctance, Connor took a chair. The Baroness launched into reminiscences about Yuletide celebrations when she was a girl. These remarks brought young Austen to her side with various questions about Christmas stockings and the contents thereof. Dulcie ruffled his hair and embarked upon the tale of an occasion when she and the Baron had shared a night-coach with a gentleman in a fur coat who turned out to be a performing bear.
Connor’s lip curled. He turned to Livvy, beside whom he sat. “We meet again, Lady Dorset. I daresay you are expecting an apology.”
<
br /> His words said one thing, his expression another. Livvy met his mocking expression with one of her own. “Whyever should you apologize? Surely you are not referring to the occasion when you threatened to apply your boot to my, ah—”
“Posterior?” he supplied. “Derriere? Rump?”
Livvy refused to let him shock her. “Such an unusual occurrence tends to stick in one’s mind.”
Connor’s eyes moved boldly over her. “I have reconsidered. Were I to apply something to your posterior, Lady Dorset, it wouldn’t be my boot.” His gaze lingered on her belly. “Under other circumstances, that is.”
So much for refusing to be shocked. “Do you try to be outrageous?” Livvy gasped.
“Did you try to be enceinte? Yes, that was outrageous also. I can’t seem to help myself.”
Livvy turned away. Scant surprise that Connor was no one’s favorite Halliday.
Dulcie had embarked upon a discussion of prospective Christmas activities, chief among which was to be an enactment of The Rivals, with Dickon playing the part of Falkland, Sir John as Captain Absolute, and Hubert as a lady’s maid. None of these gentlemen seemed enthused by his prospective theatrical debut. Indeed, so exasperated was Lord Dorset that he sought out the less aggravating company of his wife. As he crossed the room, the Baroness issued a peremptory request for Connor’s company.
“Getting up a flirtation?” asked Dickon, as he appropriated Connor’s abandoned seat.
Livvy eyed her husband. “You don’t mind?”
“Mind?” Lord Dorset was watching Lady Halliday. “Why should I?”
Why, he asked? So this was marriage with a rake. Abruptly, Livvy rose and quit the room. Dickon stared after her, puzzled, then accepted the challenge of a game of billiards with his son.
Dulcie indicated that Connor should draw a chair up near her pew. “It’s an age since we last met. I assume you are keeping yourself tolerably well-occupied.”
Connor said, “I am.”
“So we hear,” Hubert murmured. “Setting man-traps, for a start.”
Dulcie gave her least favorite nephew a quelling glance. “I might have approached the subject more discreetly, but why did you set those damnable traps?”
“What did you say to drive Rosamond to palpitations?” responded Connor. “The only sense I could make of her high flights was that the tinkers were involved.”
“Tinkers?” Hubert echoed.
“You wouldn’t like them,” the Baroness said, dismissively. “Nor would they like you. And what is all this nonsense about a ghost? You really should speak with Giuseppe, Connor, instead of trying to drive him away.”
Sir John was developing a headache. “Who the devil is Giuseppe?” he inquired.
“Giuseppe is the tinkers’ leader.” There was nothing roguish, now, in Dulcie’s tone. “His mother was once in service at the Hall.”
“Enough!” snarled Connor. Amanda shrank back in her chair.
“You might consider that every man has his price, Connor,” Dulcie continued, uncowed. “Even Gypsy Joe.”
Chapter Eight
Eerie enough in bright midday, at twilight Lady Margaret’s Garden was even more uncanny, a ruin hidden away behind old stone walls and ancient trees, where the clock of time had wound down and stopped.
Tonight, with rusty gears and cogs, the clock had started up again.
One of the occupants of the garden was clearing leaves from the clogged fountain. He had taken off his coat and tossed it over a tree branch. The other intruder sprawled lazily on a vine-encrusted bench, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. She wore a skirt of bright scarlet and a thin muslin blouse. Around her shoulders was draped a heavy cloak. The harsh light of her lantern illuminated the scar than ran from cheekbone to chin.
Her companion was strongly built and wildly romantic in appearance, a few years older than she, with hair black as his eyes. The merest glimpse of that uncompromisingly cruel face had caused many a village lass to wish for things that she should not.
As she looked at him, the faintest hint of warmth lit even Jael’s cold eyes. “Tell me true, Giuseppe: what might the old man have seen to cause the expression of horror that you described?”
He shrugged. “I’ve already told you that I noticed no one and nothing.”
“Mayhap he saw a wicked tinker with a silk scarf round his throat and a gold ring in his ear. Mayhap it was a sight so fearsome to him that his heart seized up.” Jael drew on her pipe.
“Mayhap.” Giuseppe shoved aside an armful of dead leaves. “And if so, what then?”
Jael exhaled, slowly. “A hard way to kill a man, surely? It would have been much simpler to slip a pillow over his face and smother him while he slept.”
“So it would.” Giuseppe removed the scarf from round his neck and used it to wipe his brow. “If one had access to the Hall. I am but a poor traveller, miri pen.”
Jael prodded a piece of broken statue with her foot. “What is this damned tale of a ghost?”
“Imagine it.” His smile flashed. “A gaunt and ghastly figure, clad in a tattered shroud, wailing in a gruesome manner about past sins for which payment is long past due. That’s how I would have played the ghost. Not as a country squire out for an evening stroll, which is how this ghost has been described.”
“This is the truth? You’re not responsible?”
“Would I rob you or pick your pockets? Nor will I lie when I cannot gain from it so much as sixpence. Another began this. I merely lend my efforts. Imagine the talk there will be when it’s discovered that the fountain in Lady Margaret’s Garden is flowing once again.” Giuseppe threw down his shovel and took the pipe from Jael’s hand. “Good Sir Wesley Halliday, who let the dirty tinkers camp on his land. Who was so generous as to let us occasionally hunt the beasts in his park.” He spat.
Jael hitched up her skirt and unsheathed a sharp-bladed dagger. In a desultory manner, she hacked at the vines that wound around the bench. “You should come to London. I can do little for you here.”
Giuseppe drew in the pipe’s sweet smoke. “You would see me as fettered as yourself.”
“Fettered?” Jael threw back her head and laughed. “I am as influential as any baroness, if in another manner, and not among the swells. Unlike you, baro, I have no need to roam.”
“Yet you came here.”
Jael’s amusement fled as quickly as it had come. “God’s bones, what choice had I, once I learned of Sir Wesley’s death? You say Lady Halliday came to you to have her fortune read. What did you say?”
Giuseppe handed her the pipe and retrieved his shovel. “ ‘A stranger, a journey; you’ll remember all your long life what the gypsy tells you this day.’ Do dogs eat dogs, or are all the gorgios dead in the land, that you doubt me now?”
“I doubt the lengths to which you may go.” Jael resumed hacking at the vine. “You haven’t told me what brought you to Sir Wesley, your cap in your hand.”
The flickering lantern cast shadows on Giuseppe’s lean face. “You think I came begging? Some food and blankets, master, so that the poor tinkers might not freeze or starve.”
“I think you have a hundred gold coins buried beneath your campfire.” With a flash of scarlet skirts, Jael rose from the bench. “You strain my patience, Giuseppe.”
He plucked more dead leaves from the fountain. “I knew Sir Wesley visited his hothouse most mornings. I saw him go into Lady Margaret’s Garden that morning, followed, and found him here.”
“Looking as if he’d glimpsed a fiend from hell. And then you left before anyone could discover you alone with the body.” Jael plunged her dagger into the earth. “Swear to me this is how it happened, tacho rat. For the true blood.”
The fountain clear now of debris, Giuseppe sought the water’s source. “My mother dead and Janthina gone also, from this garden, twenty years past. Should I not crave revenge?”
Jael wiped her knife on her skirt, her glance as sharp as its blade. “It’s not for me to tell you what you shoul
d and should not crave. But tread carefully, Giuseppe. The past is not a book you can rewrite to suit yourself.”
He made no response. Jael tucked her knife away, and then the pipe; walked to where her horse was hidden among the trees. Giuseppe followed, made a stepping-block of his hands, and tossed her up on the mare’s back. She nodded at him, curtly, and touched her heel to the horse’s flank.
Deep in thought, Jael rode through the night. She arrived at the Castle stables, unsaddled and curried her horse. When she stepped outside again, a figure detached itself from the shadows. Jael drew her knife.
“You wound me, my treasure.” Hubert gazed with a pained expression upon the gleaming blade. “Like Diogenes with his lantern, I have looked into every nook and corner; but unlike Diogenes, I have found she whom I sought. At the cost of appearing rather prudish, I must observe that to be racketing in a solitary manner about the countryside, and in the dead of night, is not at all the thing.”
Jael made a vulgar remark concerning what Hubert might do with his hypothetical lantern. He smiled and gently plucked the knife from her grasp. “This, from the charmer of my heart and soul. I wonder at myself. Now, my pet, I think you must explain to me why you were prompted to play least-in-sight. And,” he dropped his bantering tone. “I warn you that my temper has been sorely tried already tonight.”
It was a measure of the man that this remark, despite his effeminate appearance, caused Jael to eye him cautiously. “I should think it was clear as noonday.”
“Am I to conclude that you are tired of my company, and have chosen this extremely circuitous way of informing me so?” Hubert asked her. “Appalling to discover in oneself a dog-in-the-manger attitude, but there it is. What is to be done? Will you allow yourself to be frightened into submission, or shall I offer up tears and threats of suicide?”
Jael accepted the knife that he held out to her, replaced it in its sheathe. “You surpass belief.”
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