Thick as Thieves

by Catherine Gayle

  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 th
e 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.

  Surely this cross must be a reliquary. But then Freddie began to wonder what ancient relics had once been housed within it.

  Not that such a thing mattered in the slightest. It wasn’t hers. It belonged to Lord Upton Grey…well, now it belonged to this other man. Regardless of who it belonged to, it couldn’t help Freddie and her family. She needed to stop thinking about it.

  She closed the door to her chamber behind her, leaning against it while she tried to slow her breathing and calm her racing thoughts.

  No matter what she did, though, a phrase kept pushing its way to the forefront of her mind: five thousand pounds.

  As soon as Preston entered the drawing room before supper, both Rachel and Mary rushed over to draw him into a hug, with Rachel even pushing herself up on her tiptoes to kiss him upon the cheek.

  “I’ve been near desperate to see you again,” his eldest sister said when she pulled back. “Your travel was all right? How are you faring after Arrington’s funeral?”

  Mary gripped his hand tightly within her own. “But you don’t really wish to speak of funerals right now, do you?”

  Every word from both of his sisters was said with such motherly affection, he couldn’t begrudge them for hovering. Any thought of that had fled him so long ago he could scarcely remember it. The two of them had banded together to rear him after their parents’ deaths. Rachel and Mary didn’t quite know how to stop mollycoddling him, even though he was now a man of thirty and more than capable of taking care of them both, instead of the pair of them taking care of him.

  Their overprotectiveness had annoyed him when he’d first gone away to Harrow. Arrington, Berkswell, Findley, and the rest of the boys in his house had been blessed with parents who saw fit to leave them to their own devices. None of their parents were constantly sending letters to the headmaster about every little thing. For that matter, Upton Grey was Preston’s guardian, and the earl couldn’t be bothered with such trivial matters as Rachel and Mary seemed to make almost daily concerns.

  Preston’s view on the matter had changed significantly when he’d returned home after the first term in his second year to find Rachel bearing bruises which had come at the hands of her then-husband, the Marquess of Charmouth.

  On that very day, Preston had decided he could withstand any amount of cossetting his sisters felt it was necessary to provide.

  He had also decided he would never sit idly by while a woman suffered at the hands of her husband, the man who should be protecting her from harm. That had formed the beginnings of what would one day become Darlingshire House, a safe haven for women whose husbands believed it their right to beat them. The act may be legal, but that didn’t make it right. Once he’d come of an age where he could take his seat in the Lords, he’d even started pressing for a change to laws that would allow women more legal protections.

  He was still pressing for them today, and imagined it would be quite some time before any of his goals came to fruition. As a general rule, peers thought it should be their right to do as they wished.

  But when he’d seen Rachel like that…

  It still vexed him, since he had been merely a boy, that he’d been unable to protect his sister. Preston had gone to Upton Grey with his discovery, asking for advice on how to handle the matter.

  His guardian had told him not to worry.

  Not worrying was easier said than done, however, yet they made it through his entire holiday from Harrow without another incident.

  A fortnight after he’d returned for the second term, he’d received a letter from Upton Grey informing him that Lord Charmouth had met an untimely end. A year later, after Rachel completed her period of mourning, Upton Grey had asked for her hand.

  There had been no more bruises.

  There would be no more bruises.

  There was no gentleman in all of England Preston held in higher regard than Upton Grey. Ellingham had proven to be equally as upstanding. He could trust his sisters’ care to them without fear for their safety.

  Just now, though, he held out an arm for each of his sisters to take, led them to a spot on the chintz sofa nearest the window, and answered every question they saw fit to ask of him. When their curiosity was finally appeased, he took his chance to appease his own.

  “I thought this was to be a family Christmas.”

  Rachel let out an inaudible sigh, the slight lines around her eyes crinkling as she gave him the look she always had which commanded his forgiveness. “It was,” she said softly. “But Lady Stalbridge is on the board of my ladies’ charity, you know, and we had our annual meeting last month. She arrived in a hired carriage, not one belonging to Stalbridge, which I thought rather odd. And she didn’t bring a lady’s maid with her, even though we were there for the better part of the week. I finally pulled her aside after tea one day, hoping to get the truth of it out of her. She wouldn’t speak a word against her son, however, though it was as clear as day to me that he’s the problem. I got the impression, though she wouldn’t confirm it, that funds are rather limited for Lady Stalbridge and her daughters at the moment. I just wanted the Bexley-Smythe family to have a nice holiday...”

  Preston doubted the situation was as dire as all of that, but he held his tongue. Standing by while others suffered was not a trait any of the Hounslow siblings had inherited.

  If there had been any true sense in his mind that Stalbridge was neglecting the ladies in his care, Preston would have done precisely what his sister had done and more. He would have removed them to Darlingshire House, where they could be safe and well looked after. Neglect could be just as damaging to a person as physical abuse.

  Whether the Bexley-Smythe ladies were truly suffering or not—and Preston was leaning more towards believing they were not—his eldest sister had it in her mind that they were.

  Throughout Rachel’s speech, Mary had sat on his other side, nodding vigorously and hemming at appropriate moments, as though her agreement was required for Preston’s understanding. They all knew it was unnecessary, though.

  Blast Stalbridge for being a degenerate. Preston had known for quite some time the marquess held loose morals. Now the man was convincing people he was even more dissolute and debauched than he likely was.

  “I see,” he said at long last, hoping to convince them he wasn’t upset that he wouldn’t have the quiet family time he’d been hoping for. Or perhaps he was attempting to convince himself of such a thing. “Dare I ask how long you invited them to stay?”

  Both of his sisters let out visible sighs of relief, and Rachel took his hand into her own again. “I knew you would understand! Upton Grey warned that you might not be very forgiving, considering that you’re mourning a friend, but I couldn’t bear the thought…” His sister’s eyes flitted across the room to where the two young ladies—both of them blonde and lovely and laughing
entirely too much for his comfort—sat with their mother, deep in conversation.

  Preston bit his tongue to prevent himself from grimacing. “Of course you couldn’t.”

  “That wasn’t your only thought in inviting them, Rachel,” Mary said cautiously, her eyes flitting up to meet Preston’s with a sizeable portion of implied meaning in her gaze.

  Good God.

  “You were hoping I might form a tendre for one of them…”

  Rachel squeezed his hand with such imploring fervor she was liable to stop the blood from flowing through his veins. “The elder sister, actually…Lady Frederica. I’m afraid that Lady Edwina is not yet out. But you do need to take a bride. There has to be an heir—”

  “Jeffrey is my heir.”

  “Jeffrey is our cousin, not your son. He’s working as a barrister and is quite happy to continue doing so.” Rachel finally eased her grip. “You know as well as we both do that he’d prefer not to have the marquessate fall to him. The responsibility…”

  Responsibility and duty, and the idea of having the estates and investments and servants all fall to him…those were all things which would terrify Jeffrey Hounslow. The young man much preferred being responsible only for himself.

  It had always been that way.

  But Jeffrey was young and teachable and far more biddable than any female Preston had ever known in his entire life. He’d proven he could learn to do things he never thought himself capable of, and he could learn to be the Marquess of Preston.

  He would have to.

  Every peer must learn how to do it, and who better to teach his cousin than Preston himself? He’d started learning to fulfill the requirements of the role at the tender age of four when his parents had died. Jeffrey could damned well begin to learn at the not nearly-so-tender age of four-and-twenty.

  “Jeffrey is my heir,” Preston repeated more firmly, ignoring the way Rachel’s hopeful expression faded before his eyes.

  Then he changed the topic of conversation, preferring instead to discuss the latest developments and accomplishments of all his nieces and nephews.