Fool's Paradise: A Lady Priscilla Flanders Mystery

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  “Deal with Lord Beamish and his daughter?” she asked.

  “Duncan has volunteered to arrange for them to be held until the proper authorities can be alerted.”

  “He is a good friend.”

  Neville chuckled. “I will owe him big time after this.” He looked at where Duncan, with the help of three more of the men he had brought with him, was trying to herd the baron and Miss Beamish down the hill. “They will be someone else’s problem now. Our problem is below.” He looked down at the settlement. “We must make sure what happened here can never happen again.”

  SIR THOMAS SAT on his throne beneath the twin banners with the imperial eagle and the bull of the VI Legion, but no one else was in the great hall of the principia. Stars glittered through the windows, but the only light within came from the few sconces lit on the walls and a pair of torches flanking the throne.

  He stared off into the distance, ignoring Priscilla and Neville as they walked along its impressive length. Roxanne was on her way to collect Miss Redding. The rest of the men who had come to their rescue, including Duncan, were overseeing their prisoners. Livius and his men were being shut up in the granary while Lord Beamish and his daughter would be kept under guard at her expansive house.

  Novum Arce had appeared deserted when they returned. Priscilla guessed some of the residents were hiding, waiting to see what happened, but when she and Neville had come down the fell, she had seen a long line of people escaping while they had the chance. No one remained in Sir Thomas’s house, so she and Neville had come to the principia, expecting to see his most loyal retainers gathered here.

  But Sir Thomas was alone.

  The room had never seemed so long. Priscilla was exhausted and she had to push herself to take each step. Neville must have noticed because he offered his arm. Grateful, she put her hand on it, letting him guide her down the length of the hall. She stumbled when the ripped toe of her sandal caught on a slightly raised mosaic tile, and his hand held hers tightly against his arm.

  As they neared, Sir Thomas did not turn his head. “There are no audiences tonight. You may schedule one with my secretary on the morrow.”

  “Impossible,” Priscilla said quietly.

  “Then come to my secretary’s office the next day or whenever you wish to make an appointment.”

  “Impossible,” she repeated. “Your secretary has left Novum Arce.”

  That got Sir Thomas’s attention. He shifted on his throne to face them. Did he really believe the cold stare he had perfected in his role as the Imperator would intimidate them now?

  “Lying is a sign of a weak mind,” Sir Thomas said as if speaking to an insolent child.

  “Quite to the contrary.” Neville put one foot on the lowest step to the dais. A smile played along his lips. “I have found the act of creating and telling a lie with enough sincerity for it to be believed requires a quick, supple mind.”

  “Neville,” she cautioned. Sir Thomas could not see the truth that his utopia was crumbling around him, destroyed by Bella Beamish who had pulled out its brittle underpinnings.

  Sir Thomas frowned. “Neville? I thought your name was Leonard.”

  “No, my name is Neville Hathaway.”

  “Hathaway?” He squinted at Neville as if trying to see him more clearly. “The actor?”

  “I was many years ago. I am honored you remember.”

  “Do not flatter yourself. I don’t remember you because you were a skilled thespian. Rather, you were in a performance I saw the night I met my beloved late wife. Everything about that night remains clear in my mind.” Sir Thomas dismissed him with an indifferent wave of his hand. “Whether your name is Leonard Williams or Neville Hathaway, it does not matter to me. I asked you once to begone and return on the morrow if your need to speak to me is urgent and genuine. Why won’t you heed your Imperator?”

  “Because the play is finished, the audience is departing, and the actors have left the stage save for you.” Neville climbed the steps to stand by Sir Thomas who slowly came to his feet. “It is over.”

  “Guards!” Sir Thomas shouted. “Guards!”

  Priscilla walked up and stopped on Sir Thomas’s other side. Gently, she said, “They will not come. Your soldiers have either sworn off their vow to serve you or are imprisoned because they were foolish enough to obey Miss Beamish’s orders.”

  “What? Why?” He looked from her to Neville, clearly baffled. “Why would my legionaries follow Bellona?”

  “Because they are not your legionaries,” she answered before Neville could. Trying to keep her voice calm and kind, she went on, “Maybe they were at one time, but you could not offer them the rewards Miss Beamish could. Here, they had no true enemy but ennui. With her, they believed they might have the power to topple a king.”

  “And some,” Neville added, “were never your legionaries at all. They were volunteers to the Scottish cause Miss Beamish holds dear. She helped them sneak in here so they could use your training field for their practices and your storerooms to keep their weapons hidden.”

  “That is nonsense.”

  “Sadly, it is not. It is the truth.” Priscilla felt sorry for the man who had never imagined his utopia would be perverted in such a way.

  “She was using you.” Neville’s voice became less stern. “While you dreamed of recreating Pax Romana, she was plotting to overthrow our king and put a descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the English and Scottish thrones.”

  “I do not believe it. Bellona is completely dedicated to Novum Arce.”

  “She is only completely dedicated to herself and her cause, which was doomed before it began.” Neville stepped down from beside the throne and assisted Priscilla to the floor before he said, “I know you hoped for something perfect here, but Novum Arce is done. A lot of its people are gone, spreading the word of what really has been happening here, from the kidnappings to the coercion to marry.”

  “They would not dare!” cried the furious man. “No one will believe their lies. And your lies!”

  “They believed yours,” Priscilla said quietly. “Good-bye, Sir Thomas.”

  Neither she nor Neville looked back as Sir Thomas raged. They had gone only a few steps when someone came through the main door.

  “Aunt Tetty, what are you doing here?” Priscilla cried, not wanting the old woman to take the brunt of Sir Thomas’s anger. “It is—”

  “Fine, my dear.” Aunt Tetty patted Priscilla’s shoulder, then marched past them at a speed that belied her age. She halted in front of where Sir Thomas was still cursing them in the foulest language Priscilla had ever heard, even when she had been in the lowest sections of the London slums.

  “Enough, Thomas!” scolded the old woman. “I will not have you speak so in the presence of a lady.”

  Priscilla gasped when Sir Thomas paused in the middle of a word. She expected him to snarl something at Aunt Tetty, but he subsided, sitting on the throne again and bowing his head in what looked like shame.

  Neville frowned. “Who are you, Aunt Tetty? Really?”

  “I have worked in the St. John household since I was a child. First, in the stillroom and later as a nursery maid and finally as the governess.” She looked at Sir Thomas who had not moved, save for tears that dripped on his knees. “Though I am sorry to say so now, Novum Arce was my idea.”

  “Yours?” asked Priscilla at the same time Neville did.

  “I thought it would be a good way for him to stop squandering his money gambling.” She flung out her hands. “Rather than fill up the pockets of cheating gamesters, he could build something beautiful. And it was beautiful when it began. People who struggled to feed their families had work and warm, dry homes. With Thomas’s funds, we never had to worry about deprivation.”

  “The wall—”

  “Was intended
to keep out thieves. It was never meant to keep people in. At the beginning, we could come and go as we pleased. It was Thomas’s vision that people would be part of Novum Arce because they wanted to be. But that changed after Miss Beamish stayed here several days then left. It was many months before she returned. I had not thought to see her again because I could not imagine a young woman like her living here.”

  “You knew Miss Beamish before she was brought here?” Priscilla asked.

  “I did because she visited Thomas’s estate. Knowing Lord Beamish as he did, Thomas believed Miss Beamish was neglected and unhappy. He wanted to give her everything, and he played along when she set up what was supposed to look like an abduction.”

  “She arranged that as well?” Neville gave a terse laugh. “She was a busy girl.”

  “Quite so. Somehow, she convinced Thomas to kidnap others for the community, selecting women whom she thought would be compliant and men who would . . .” A faint pink rose up the old woman’s face. “Men she would find attractive.”

  “We know the stable boy at The Rose and Thistle was one of her agents.”

  “Among others. I doubt we will ever guess how far her web reached, but it was her cruel disregard for her servants that convinced me that her plans had nothing to do with Thomas’s. I am sorry you were caught up in her game, Cordelia.”

  “Actually my name is Priscilla Hathaway, and this is my husband Neville. We—”

  She was cut off when Sir Thomas shouted, “Now I understand. You helped them destroy Novum Arce!” He leaped off the throne dais and toward Aunt Tetty. His hands were outstretched like talons to close around her throat.

  Priscilla pulled the old woman away as Neville stepped forward and drove a single fist into Sir Thomas’s chin. The man halted and stared at them in disbelief. Folding, he collapsed to the floor where he groaned once and was silent.

  “Go,” Aunt Tetty urged.

  “Only if you come with us,” Neville said, shaking his reddened knuckles.

  “I should stay and help—”

  “Come with us,” Priscilla said gently. “If you stay here, he will kill you.” She put her hand on her abdomen. “In addition, Lord Hathaway and I will soon find ourselves in need of the services of a good nursery maid and governess.”

  Aunt Tetty stared at her for a moment then nodded heartily as a smile spread across her face.

  Neville offered his arms to both the old woman and Priscilla. Together, they walked out of the principia and Novum Arce. None of them looked back.

  Epilogue

  GAZING AROUND the table in the dining room at Tarn’s Edge, Priscilla listened as Duncan related—again—the efforts he had expended to find out where she and Neville had been taken after they disappeared from the inn. The children and Burke listened as intently as if they had not heard the story twice already. Aunt Cordelia acted bored, but her aunt was thrilled to hear how brave her husband had been.

  Priscilla wondered if Duncan had any idea that Neville intended to speak to the highly placed person who had sent him to Novum Arce. She had no doubt that there would soon be a change in Duncan’s status. A very nice change that would please him and her aunt. But nothing could be said until everything was officially announced. She hoped it would be soon.

  “May I, my lady?” A white-gloved hand hovered near her plate.

  “Thank you, Snow,” Priscilla said with a smile for the former footman who also, at least temporarily, served as the butler at Tarn’s Edge.

  As Aunt Tetty had, Lord Beamish’s servants eagerly accepted Neville’s offer of employment at the rundown estate. Harrison had gone south to return Lord Beamish’s carriage and was expected back any day. The Oldfields were happily planning to move into the first cottage to be rebuilt on the estate, and Mr. Oldfield looked forward to taking up the job his forebearers had held: the estate’s gamekeeper. While Mrs. Oldfield still cooked, she was training her daughter to be her successor. Roxanne had been named as housekeeper. Young Davis was already proving his worth by keeping both a dirt-covered Beowulf and an equally filthy Isaac out of the house until they both were clean.

  It was not as happy an ending for Lord Beamish and his daughter. The truth of his attempts to obtain power in Whitehall and hers to steal King George’s throne and hand it over to a pretender had made them both pariahs. No door opened to them, and even their names were no longer spoken aloud among the ton. There were whispers, however, that Beamish’s estate might be forfeited to the throne if charges of treason were brought. It would be a small price to pay to avoid the gallows, but Priscilla guessed they would be allowed to live out their lives in the house which had become their prison where the only company they had was each other. Most of their allies had been swiftly sentenced and were on a ship bound for the distant penal colony in the far southern Pacific.

  Neville had been correct when he said that what happened at Novum Arce could not be allowed to happen again. With the conspirators scattered across the planet and Sir Thomas abandoning his dream and returning to his gambling now that he did not have Aunt Tetty to keep him from wasting what was left of his family’s fortune, it would not.

  As soon as the dishes were cleared from the meat course, Daphne said, “We have an announcement to make.” She put her hand on Burke’s. “Do you want to tell them?”

  “No, you tell them. I told my mother.”

  Neville arched a brow at Priscilla, and she covered a laugh with a cough.

  “Burke and I have decided where we will hold our wedding ceremony,” her older daughter said. “It will be here at Tarn’s Edge.”

  As her sister and brother cheered, Neville muttered, “We don’t have much time to build a chapel.”

  “Burke,” Priscilla said, paying her husband no mind because he would go to any lengths to get the chapel rebuilt for Daphne’s wedding, “is your mother agreeable with this decision?”

  “It seems she has friends in Lakeland she wants to visit. However, I believe the truth is that Lord Candless keeps his pack of foxhounds near here, and my mother loves to ride to the hunt. She hopes to combine the wedding with a little sport.”

  “It is settled.” Daphne smiled. “We could not wait to tell you.”

  As the conversation began around the table again, Priscilla said, “I have an announcement as well. Or I should say Neville and I have an announcement. In addition to welcoming Burke and Beowulf into our family, we will be welcoming one more.”

  Aunt Cordelia scowled. “Sweet heavens, Priscilla, what other stray pup have you brought home now?” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Neville. “You don’t need any other curs cluttering up your home.”

  “That is no way,” chided Neville, “to speak of your next great-niece or nephew.”

  “You are having a baby?” cried Leah.

  “A baby?” Isaac jumped to his feet in excitement. “Whose baby are you bringing home?”

  “Don’t be silly, Isaac.” Daphne tugged him back down into his seat. “She means she is having a baby. She and Neville.”

  Leah giggled. “He will really be Papa Neville now.”

  Neville rolled his eyes, and the children laughed more loudly.

  “Children!” Aunt Cordelia’s voice snapped like a buggy whip across the table, leaving silence in its wake. “Enough of this vulgar talk. Priscilla, such topics are not for the table.”

  “Yes, Aunt Cordelia,” Priscilla replied dutifully. Again, she glanced around the room where the people she loved most had gathered.

  And she understood why Sir Thomas had been wrong from the very beginning. Building a new world was not the way to create a utopia. Living in perfection was savoring the love and joy one found among family and friends.

  The End

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  Experience Jo Ann’s other titles from ImaJinn Books

  One Winter’s Night

  A Regency Yuletide Collection

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  The Wrong Christmas Carol

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  Lord of Misrule

  (from A Regency Yuletide)

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  Gentleman’s Master

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  About the Author

  Jo Ann Ferguson has been creating characters and stories for as long as she can remember. She sold her first book in 1987. Since then, she has sold over 100 titles and has become a bestselling and award-winning author. She writes romance, mystery, and paranormal under a variety of pen names. Her books have been translated into nearly a dozen languages and are sold on every continent except Antarctica. You can reach her at her website: joannferguson.com or by email:

  jo@joannferguson.com