Chasing the Heiress

by Rachael Miles

  Chapter Six

  “We have a meeting this morning with a client, Flute. And I am trying to determine which of our partners would handle the meeting best.”

  “Who is the client?” Flute scratched his head.

  “Archibald Pettegrew, Lord Marner. He inquired about our services in the spring, but decided not to hire us.” The man called Charters walked from his ornate French desk to the front of a large wardrobe.

  “Ah, I remember him. Petty, vicious man. Had some relative he feared was going to inherit instead of him.”

  “That would be the one. When last I met with Marner about his troublesome cousin, I gave him a very reasonable price for what he wanted, but he decided to handle the situation himself.” Charters opened the wardrobe doors wide, revealing a series of shelves and hooks holding the materials for various costumes.

  “Then what does he want with us?”

  “Apparently, he handled the situation badly. But, given that he chose not to hire us when we were being reasonable, I think Marner deserves to meet with our less reasonable partner.” Charters removed a tan superfine tailcoat with richly detailed red embroidery on the sides, a matching embroidered waistcoat, and tan trousers. He held them up for Flute’s approval. “What say you, Flute?

  “I always say I like Georges best, ruthless old sod that he is.” Flute tucked his large frame into a comfortable cushioned chair in the corner, always fascinated by the process by which his employer transformed from one role to the next. “But he’s a desperate man, Marner. Georges will try his patience.”

  “Even better.” Charters set his costume on the ottoman to his right, then began to undress. He removed first the tinted eyeglasses that obscured the true color of his eyes, then the blond wig with its long hair pulled back into a working man’s ponytail. He pulled the smock top over his head and removed his wide-legged trousers, then carefully folded both and placed them on a shelf along with his glasses. He hung the wig on a hook nearby. “We still haven’t the full story from Marner, and perhaps Georges is the man to frustrate it out of him.”

  Bare-chested and wearing only his drawers, Charters took a pot of grease from the dressing table and began to remove the makeup that darkened the skin of his face and the back of his hands. As he turned to wash the grease away in the basin, Flute noticed again the long, badly knit scar on his employer’s back. The lean muscles formed by fencing had been slashed by a sword tip from his left shoulder to his right hip. Flute wondered again at the circumstances: when would an experienced swordsman like Charters turn his back to an opponent?

  “I find it a marvel how you take off one face and put on another.” Flute leaned forward to get a better view, as Charters picked up a brush and a pencil. Flute was the only man alive who knew Charters’s real face and name. It was a bond between them. The men had survived a shipwreck together, years before when Flute was a loyal subject serving in His Majesty’s Navy, and Charters was a headstrong aristocrat, intent on a Grand Tour despite the wars. Flute would have drowned that day, despite his superior strength, had Charters not pulled him, unconscious, to shore.

  “It’s more of a marvel in the ton when people change faces with no makeup at all.” Charters stood and turned, having aged his face with lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Flute nodded approval.

  Charters took a brush and applied a layer of white powder to give his skin the pale complexion of an aging fop. Then he pulled on the ornately tall, heavily powdered wig of George III’s generation and struck a pose as Georges. Extending his arm out before him, he waved a handkerchief edged with an ornate lace toward Flute, his audience. When he spoke, the low, cultured accents of his regular speaking voice were gone, replaced by the drawling mannerisms and altered vowels of the fops on the London stage.

  “Of all things that belang to a woman, I have an aversion to her heart.” Quoting from a popular play by Colley Cibber, he pulled his hand back to rest against his forehead, the lace hanging low in front of his nose. “Far when once a woman has given you her heart—you can never get rid of the rest of her bady.”

  Flute applauded, laughing.

  “It’s a shame you never took to the stage, my lord; you would have made your fame as Lord Foppington.” Flute took a small apple from his overcoat pocket and bit into it.

  Charters bowed, then turned to put on his costume: a padded potbelly, followed by a linen undershirt, then a waistcoat and tailcoat reminiscent of a more florid time and more excessive styles. Once belonging to a gentleman of some means, the coat was crafted from a tan superfine, but with accents in a rich red embroidery. At the shoulders, sleeves of deep red superfine joined the body of the jacket in circles of red fabric that resembled the shape of epaulets. Each red arm was cuffed in a tan brocade with red embroidery. From those red shoulders, curving lines of red embroidery extended like tree roots across the chest in rivulets or tendrils. The sort of suit a man obsessed with fashion would wear—even if the fashions were more than a decade old. Finally Charters added the trousers, a form-fitting tan superfine with a red vine trailing down the outside edge of each leg.

  “Why, split my windpipe, and strike me dumb!” Flute marveled, himself quoting from the plays.

  Georges bowed low. “You are a thief, my dear Flute, stealing lines as well as apples.”

  “Purchased the apple,” Flute offered flatly.

  “Ah, what sentiment, Flute. Unwilling to steal from that most pretty miss who sells fruit in the market?” Georges struck another pose and stole another line from Cibber: “Don’t be in a passion, Flute; far passion is the most un-becahming thing in the warld—to the face.”

  Flute shrugged his shoulders and took another bite, leaving only the core. Then he ate that as well.

  * * *

  By the time Lord Marner arrived with his trio of country henchmen, Georges was ensconced in the outermost office, a tray of perfume bottles of various shapes and sizes next to an ornate desk set filled with ink, sand, and prepared quills.

  A hungry-eyed lad named Wilks, hired for his quick feet and nimble fingers, led Marner’s group in.

  Georges greeted the group from behind the desk, nodding to Wilks that he could retire. “You will excuse an old man for nat standing. The rain—” He waved his hand, making the lace at his wrist ruffle to the sides. “It pains my old bones mare each day.”

  “I care nothing for your bones, old or not. I wish to see Mr. Charters.”

  “Ah, but Lord Marner, he is nat free, nat free at all. A lady needed his skills, and he is—as the Americans say—a slow poke when it comes to the ladies.” Georges laughed at his own joke. “Mr. Charters has asked me to manage whatever affairs you bring to us. Are you lang in town? Are you looking for the best gambling hell? Or another kind of entertainment? Perhaps something more exatic that requires the knawledge of a . . . connoisseur such as myself?” Georges winked provocatively.

  “If Charters is ‘nat free,’” Marner sneered as he mimicked Georges’s pronunciation, “then I will see whoever is above Charters.” Marner looked at the door leading to the inside office and started to walk toward it.

  Flute stepped in front of the door and leaned back against its frame, crossing his arms.

  “I assure you I am every whit as ruthless as my younger partner. In fact, our man Flute here often says we are merely opposite sides of the same coin, though I prefar to think of myself as the mare appealing, mare fashionable side.”

  “You don’t seem much alike to me.” Marner turned back from the door.

  “Ah, that’s because you only focus on the surface, nat the heart, nat the soul. I am the very soul of Charters, and he is only one of my exteriors.”

  “You are daft, old man,” Marner sneered, his face contorting into an angry mask.

  “Perhaps, perhaps, I have often wondered if the powder in my wig makes me mare or less clever.” He let his tone turn cold. “But I am still your only hope.” In an instant his tone shifted to playful again. “But, sit down, sit down. I
have all the knawledge of your case here.” He waved his hand in a circle before his temple.

  Marner looked over his shoulder at his two servants behind Ox. “My cousin—dear girl—has wandered away from my great-aunt’s house. Since she returned from the Continent, she hasn’t been quite well . . . almost mad sometimes. And we have been unable to find her. I had hopes to do so quietly, before she comes to harm.”

  Georges squinted at Marner, through a monocle he’d pulled from inside his coat. “Ah, a lady’s case is a delicate one and best spoken of in private.” His voice turned hard. “Your men can wait outside.”

  “I prefer them to remain,” Marner countered.

  “Ah, but you see, I do not.” Georges placed one hand on his chest, then turned his attention to a sheaf of paper in front of him and, reading, dipped his pen in the ink. “Mr. Flute, Lord Marner and his men will be going.”

  Flute stepped forward, his body taut and primed for a fight, and Marner’s men shrank back.

  Marner looked at Georges, then Flute, then at his men over his shoulder. He nodded at the door, and the two younger ones—field hands with an appetite for adventure—fled. Ox remained.

  Flute leaned once more on the door frame. “Mr. Georges, I believe Lord Marner has changed his mind.”

  Georges looked up, offering a wide smile. “Ah, sir, I see we have come to an understanding. Now the truth, please . . . or follow your men. I am already well versed in the details you shared with Mr. Charters.”

  “She’s been gone for over a month. No one has seen her, and we have been unable to find her.”

  “Then you have the situation well in hand. You have lost the very thing from which you wished for us to free you.” Georges waved his hand with the lace handkerchief. “What more can you want?”

  Marner looked at the floor and then at Ox. “We need her signature on some documents. Without that . . . well, if she manages to get to her solicitor’s office in London before we find her, all my plans will be ruined.”

  Georges took a pencil-shaped pumice stone from the outside pocket of his embroidered waistcoat. With sharp deliberate motions, he smoothed a particular spot on his index fingernail, stopped, looked at his nails, then moved to the next nail.

  “Before you had her, now you don’t.” Georges tucked the pumice stone back into its small pocket, then dipped the pen in the ink, and scribbled for a moment. “Yes, it will be more expensive.” Georges handed the slip of paper to Marner. “That will be our fee, but you need nat worry. Since we learned that your cousin escaped, our man has been guarding the offices of your great-aunt’s solicitor. Your cousin will nat slip past us.”

  “But what if she does?” Marner crushed the slip into a tiny ball. “I was told there was no way she could stay gone this long.”

  “Nat by us,” Georges corrected quietly.

  “What?”

  “You were nat told that by us. You even waited to write to us until she’d already been lost for more than two weeks. Had you called upon our services, say, the day you lost her or even the day after, this business would already be concluded.”

  “I didn’t know I needed your help until after I’d lost her.” Marner pushed over one of the chairs in fury.

  “Now, Marner.” Georges spoke with almost preternatural calm, his accent growing flat. “Over a year ago, you approached our firm to address the problem of your cousin. You merely didn’t wish to pay our fee.”

  “And now it’s tripled.” Marner flung the wadded-up slip at Georges.

  The ball landed in the center of the desk in the middle of the papers Georges had laid in front of himself. He brushed it to the floor with a sweep of the lace at his wrist.

  “When you first consulted us, we had more flexibility. Now the situation is more complicated and requires more resources. Before, all that was required was a particular slow-working poison we import from abroad. During her lingering death, we would have had ample time to address whatever . . . issues . . . her presence created.”

  “I tried poison, but she figured it out and bolted.” Marner stepped forward, his hands balled into fists.

  Georges, unflappable, raised his hands to stop Marner’s objection. “Our poison is subtle and unknown, a tasteless teaspoon or two a day until she grew too sick to recover. She had no heirs, no friends in the country, no one would have questioned a lingering illness leading to death. You chose to administer a single dose in a glass of milk.”

  “It’s not my fault she decided to share with the barn cat.” Marner scowled.

  “You thought you could manage the situation, and you bungled it, lost the girl and, with her, a great many of our possibilities. Her death at this point will draw suspicions.” Georges pulled a printed piece of paper from his desk. “So, the question remains: do you wish to employ our firm to locate your cousin and bring her to . . . safety?”

  “What’s this?” Marner began to read the terms.

  “A guarantee. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Someone to solve your”—Georges waved his lace once more—“problems for you.”

  “I want you to go to hell.”

  “Ah, my dear sir, I’m sure that has already been long arranged.” Georges shrugged.

  “Give me the pen.” Marner snatched one of the prepared quills from the desk set and began to sign. Angry, he pressed the pen tip too hard into the paper. It splayed and crushed.

  Georges handed him another. When the contract was signed, Georges slipped it into the desk.

  “We are now partners. Return to your estate and set about the rumor that you have placed your cousin at a country home to recover her wits.”

  “But we don’t have her. How will we find her if my men quit looking?

  “Do as I say. We shall take care of the rest.”

  Marner turned to leave, with Ox following behind.

  “And Marner . . .” Georges paused, waiting until the man looked up into his eyes. “Do not return unless you have some information we can act upon.”

  * * *

  At Marner’s hotel, the men were dismissed to their other duties. Only Ox accompanied Marner to his rooms.

  “He’s a bad one, that man. Worse I think than the first,” Ox spoke his thoughts aloud.

  “But we have no other choices.” Marner waved his hand, dismissing Ox’s concerns.

  “He won’t like that you didn’t tell him everything,” Ox cautioned, looking out the window into the street to see if there were any sign that they had been followed.

  “All they have to do is find her.” Marner poured himself a glass of claret, but ignored Ox. “Then we’ll take over again from there.” He walked to his dressing table and began pulling impatiently at his cravat.

  “Should we call the men back?” Ox helped himself to a glass, not of the claret, but of the sweeter port. “Or do you wish them to keep looking?”

  “We’ll spread the rumor as he wishes, but keep looking. If we find her, I don’t have to pay his fee.”

  “He strikes me as the kind of man who always gets his fee.” Ox rubbed his chin. “He won’t like that.”

  “I don’t care what he likes. I need that girl back before she discovers that we read her a fake will.”

  * * *

  After Marner and his men left, Charters took off his costume as Georges and settled in to assess his situation. The revenues were coming in just as he and Flute had hoped. His alliances with the gangs in the hells of London and Manchester were growing stronger. He’d even infiltrated the working-class levelling movements to thwart or aid them when necessary. It would do him no good to encourage a collapse of the aristocracy on the lines of what had happened in France. Not just now. Not when he was about to become a very wealthy man.

  The finder’s fee for the runaway heiress would be very useful. But he still didn’t trust that her cousin would allow him to manage things in his own way. He had few qualms about killing the girl, and even fewer about killing the cousin if he decided to try to wriggle out of their agreement. />
  The thieves of London were easier. They might try to double-cross you, but they understood completely the consequences if they were unsuccessful. And if enough people experienced the consequences, soon no one was interested in the double-cross.

  He looked over the maps of rural London roads. He liked maps: they made the lines of his plans tangible. Fields to hide things in, towns to avoid unless necessary.

  The heiress had escaped from a country estate in Shropshire. He put a pin in the map. The cousin believed she had taken the London road, and he had focused his efforts in the southeast for the first two days, before considering she might have gone initially in another direction. Marner had found nothing. He’d also insisted that she knew no one who would help her escape, that all of her clothes remained in her closet, and that she had taken no monies. Not all of those things could be true.

  When Charters had heard through his networks that Lady Fairbourne had disappeared, he had sent a pair of men to the area to learn what they could. Though their efforts had been hampered somewhat by the traffic to and from Manchester for the rallies, his men still had taken only a day to discover something interesting

  Two days after the heiress had escaped, a secondhand clothes merchant had traded two servant’s dresses for a fine silk dress and a set of embroidered slippers. He put a pin in his map. The woman selling the dress had claimed that her mistress had made her a gift of it. Nothing unusual there. But then the servant had chosen two drab, ill-fitting dresses when others more attractive and better fitting were available. That was thirty miles away. He put a pin in the map. Thirty miles farther from London than her estate. If the cousin were correct, she should have been heading to London to see her solicitors. Her indolent cousin couldn’t walk five miles in an afternoon, but a woman who grew up in the army could—and far more than five miles. Thirty in two days would have been easy on the roads, but still manageable off them. She would have known that her cousin wouldn’t have considered it because it was the wrong direction. So, a diversion.

  The next place close by where she could have caught a stage or found a ride was a stable and inn another ten miles away. Farther north, farther from London. But ten miles safer, in an unexpected direction. There were five inns on that road, all with coaches direct to London. He had men at each inn now, watching for a female servant traveling alone on her way to any station in the general direction of London.