Jack of Clubs

by Barbara Metzger

  “Lud, some poor chap will be sending us money to take her back.”

  Allie could not laugh at Jack’s effort to relieve her anxieties. This was London, and Harriet might be alone, frightened, hungry and friendless.

  That was Allie’s worst nightmare, and Harriet could be living it.

  “Find her, Jack!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “You know I will,” Jack said.

  But Allie was weeping, so he took her in his arms. “It is all my fault,” she wailed against his chest.

  “Hush, sweetheart. It is none of your fault. I should have known the little she-devil was lying.”

  “But she is my responsibility. That is what you are paying me so handsomely for, to look after her. And her grandparents, to keep her safe. But there I was, fussing over foolish clothes like some vain debutante in her first season.”

  “No, you were asking after that Queenie woman for me.”

  “But I was enjoying myself picking out styles and colors and feeling the luxurious fabrics. I had no business neglecting my true duties.”

  “I asked you to, as a favor, remember? And you deserve pretty things, too. What woman would not enjoy them?”

  “Then I should have taken her with me. We all know how Harriet gets into mischief if she is left to her own devices. I should have stayed here with Harriet, teaching her to play the harp. I saw one in the music room under wraps. Harriet’s musical education has been neglected too long.”

  Jack released her from his arms long enough to reach for his handkerchief. As she blew her nose, he said, “Her musical education has not been neglected long enough if it means I have to sit through another harp recital. I swore off the plaguey things when I joined the army. Try the pianoforte if you must—I’ll make sure it is in tune—but not the harp.”

  Allie sniffled and agreed.

  “Besides,” he went on, wishing he had another excuse to take Allie back into his arms where she fit perfectly, “you left her for what, a few hours? Even the lowest scullery maid is entitled to her half day off. A week with Harriet ought to count as a month of battle time, so you deserve more holidays. We’ll hire another woman, a real nanny, for those times, and so we can go out in the evenings without worrying.”

  “What, now my negligence shall cost you an additional expense?”

  “Cease blaming yourself, Allie. It was my fault for believing the little vixen in the first place—and for letting her out of my sight while you were gone. I trusted the brat when she said she was taking a nap. I knew she had Joker and the kitten, and the new book we just bought. I expected her to obey me when I told her to be good, as if she were one of my soldiers. Lud, I wouldn’t be surprised if Burquist tries to overset my guardianship. Now that there is money involved, he can find any number of families willing to take the snippet. I guess I just proved I am no fit trustee. After all, what do I know about being a father?”

  “You know everything you need to know.”

  “Except where Harriet is.”

  The messenger came back from The Red and the Black with Downs and Calloway, Darla and the cook, but no Harriet. They had not seen her. Nor had Lady Margery, when Allie and Jack hurried across the park square to Montford House. The nannies were all gone, taking their charges home for supper. The flower girl had sold her last bouquet ages ago, and the newspaper boy had taken his last issues to a busier section of town. The man who fed the squirrels was asleep on his bench, and no one else had seen a small red-haired girl.

  The butler at Montford House was at the vintner, selecting wines, but a footman quickly summoned Margery from the orangery. The young lady was out of breath and Harold was out of his cravat, but they had not seen Harriet. Margery ran upstairs to her room, thinking Harriet might have been waiting for her there, but no, all of her face creams and lotions were intact. Harriet had not been in the bed chamber. The others looked in all the rooms off the entry hall, in case Harriet had fallen asleep until Lady Margery returned. The only place they did not check, of course, was the marquess’s book room.

  They met up again near the front door and hurried back to Carde House, hoping the child had returned on her own. Mrs. Crandall was wringing her hands, while Darla was weeping in Downs’s arms. Well, she was in Downs’s arms, anyway.

  Jack sent for the Watch and Bow Street.

  “I’d wager she just went for a walk and forgot the time,” the young Runner, Mr. Rourke, suggested, taking notes in his Occurrence book. “You know children.”

  Actually, Jack did not. “But I do know Harriet. If she had been for a mere walk, she’d have returned hours ago, with a giraffe in tow.”

  “And she would not be missing her afternoon tea,” Allie added, “leaving Joker to fend for himself.”

  “Maybe she went to Hyde Park to view the toffs in their finery?” Calloway asked, his beefy arm around Patsy. “She likes to look at the horses.”

  Allie shook her head, still clutching Jack’s handkerchief. “No, she promised never to go so far on her own, and Harriet would not go back on her word.”

  The others looked uncertain about the brat’s sense of honor, but they did not speak their doubts aloud.

  Allie did. “Someone must have stolen her from between the stables and here or else she would have returned.”

  Jack cursed. Someone had stolen his sister, and they never got her back. “No, that cannot be,” he insisted. “Harriet is no infant. She knows her way around. She climbs trees and drainpipes and rides horses twice the size of her pony.”

  “She does?” Allie went two shades paler.

  The Bow Street officer made more notes.

  “And she never goes anywhere without her slingshot,” Jack concluded. “So she is fine. And will be until I get my hands on her for causing us this worry.”

  “But she is just a child!” Allie cried.

  Jack put his arms around her, not caring that the Carde House hallway was filled with interested spectators. “Get any thoughts of foul play out of your mind. No one has abducted Harriet. No one.”

  Just to make certain, he sent Calloway to make sure the pimp Fedder was not getting his revenge, and he sent Rourke to see that the card cheat was still in debtor’s prison. He deployed everyone else off to search again, to knock on each front door and kitchen door in the neighborhood, all the grand houses and the smaller ones too. “Ask if anyone has kittens or puppies she might have gone to visit, or if they saw her speaking with a peddler, especially if someone was selling live chickens or piglets. Talk to everyone!”

  Dealers, doormen, and decorators all scattered throughout Grosvenor Square, with Harold and Lady Margery calling on the owners of the houses, the others asking the servants if they had seen a red-haired child. Samuel volunteered to ask at all the stables.

  Mrs. Crandall and Patsy stayed behind. They were to recall the searchers by beating the fire gong when she was found, because those two were the least likely to beat the missing girl.

  Jack could not swear he wouldn’t throttle the brat, just for that haunted look in Allie’s eyes. As he led her away from the front of the house, wondering where to look, he grasped Allie’s hand and said, “We’ll find her, I promise.”

  “But you promised to find your sister and you have not!”

  When Jack dropped her hand Allie brought it to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry. I should never have said that. It is just that I am frightened and—”

  “You need not apologize. Do you think I do not live with the truth that I have not fulfilled my vow to my own father?”

  “But you were a boy when you swore that oath, and you have been trying ever since. And your brother, who has all the resources in the world, made the same vow, and he has not succeeded either.”

  “No, but we shall find Lottie. And we shall find Harriet. And heaven help anyone who has harmed either of them.”

  Allie took up his hand again and squeezed it. “We will find them. Together, we will.”

  But no one rang the gong and
none of the searchers had any news.

  “Damn, I wish I knew where else to look,” Jack said. “If that chit thinks this is some kind of joke, hiding—”

  “Joker! That’s it! The dog can find her! He’s a hound. That is what he is meant to do, isn’t it?”

  “Joker believes he is meant to find lamb chops and a soft bed. I doubt he could trail a rabbit if it bolted in front of him, unless it was carrying a tray of strawberry tarts.”

  “But we can try!”

  So they went back to the house and up to Harriet’s room, where the dog was looking disgruntled, his wrinkled brows and baggy eyes giving him a pitiful look. He’d been shut in, with no treats or tea.

  With the promise of a meaty bone or a macaroon, the old dog followed Jack and Allie down the stairs. Allie waved one of Harriet’s stockings, from her darning basket, under his nose. “Find Harriet, Joker. Find your friend. She’ll find you food.”

  Joker ambled down the front steps and across the wide street to Grosvenor Park with Allie eagerly following, offering encouragement and the promise of steak.

  “You see?” Jack held the gate open for the dog and Allie. “He just had to relieve himself.”

  *

  Harriet had to, also. She’d been waiting hours, it seemed. And she’d been good. Well, she’d been good after lying to the Montford House butler about waiting in Lady Margery’s chamber, that is. But the sneering old stick was too full of himself anyway, so he did not count. Once she’d found the marquess’s book room, though, once the butler went about his duties, she had not touched any of his lordship’s papers or sampled any of the interesting contents in the nearby decanters. She couldn’t help it if the frog got out, though. Or that a table had fallen over when she tried to catch him. The jade horse was not in all that many pieces. Allie could fix it.

  But Allie was not here. She ought to be, though. She’d like all the books in their leather bindings. Thinking of the injustice done her beloved teacher, Harriet was resolved to stay, no matter how hungry she grew, no matter how loudly nature called. She ignored the other calls too. The door was so thick here that she could not make out the words, and did not care. No one knew where she was, so no one would be looking for her.

  She would have been gratified to think that she mattered to so many people. For most of her life Harriet had mattered to no one. Now she had to make sure that never happened again.

  *

  The country was going to hell in a handbasket and the idiots in Parliament would do nothing but argue about how fast it was rolling. Lord Montford was weary, aggravated, and irate. He did not care about any crisis in Grosvenor Square or that his granddaughter had gone off with hapless Harold to help. The marquess did care that his dinner would be late, deuce take it. He decided to wait in his blessedly quiet private sanctuary, with a bottle of cognac.

  And a frog?

  His beloved book room was in a shambles, the end table overturned, a priceless jade sculpture in pieces. Worst of all, a small red-haired gremlin was hopping from foot to foot in the center of the room in some pagan dance. As the marquess stood there, his mouth hanging open, the imp thrust the slimy creature into his hands.

  “This is for you. I’ve got to piss. And Allie needs her dowry.”

  Great gods, he’d lost his mind! Pointing—with a frog, by Jupiter!—Montford directed his unwelcome but now identified visitor to the water closet through a hidden door. The frog could wait. Allison Silver’s doubtful dowry could wait. Hildebrand’s brat could not wait, it appeared.

  Montford wanted his cognac more than ever. And more of it. But his hand was shaking—no, that was the blasted frog. The Marquess of Montford was holding an anxious amphibian, and which of them was the more appalled he could not begin to guess. Damn, if the little witch wasn’t using the chamber pot, he could put the frog there. Instead he set the beast in a cut-crystal goblet, and used a second one to better purpose as he sank onto the chair behind his desk.

  “I do not suppose you know anything about a disaster in Grosvenor Square, do you?” he asked when the moppet reappeared, looking much more cheerful.

  “No. Did I miss something interesting? Drat! But I have been waiting for you for an age.” Her voice sounded accusatory, as if running the country was less important than an interview with an impossible infant.

  Montford was too exhausted to argue the point, or point out that he had not invited her. “I would not be surprised if people were looking for you. Run along now. And take your familiar—that is, your friend—home with you.”

  Harriet crossed her spindly arms over her chest. “Not until you listen to what I came to say.”

  Montford could have rung for his butler. He could have shouted for a footman. For that matter, he could have picked up the chit and tossed her out the door himself. But he was tired, old and tired, and no one had brought him a gift in years. He looked at the frog in his heirloom crystal, gulping, then he looked at the freckle-faced girl with flyaway curls, glaring, and he laughed.

  His butler would have called for the doctor. His daughter-in-law would have fainted, and his granddaughter would have turned into a watering pot. Harriet Hildebrand laughed with him.

  “There,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t be such an ogre. So you have to see that Allie—”

  “That should be Miss Silver to you, missy.”

  “Oh, Allie isn’t stuffy at all, sir. And she loves me. She says it every night, although she always adds that it’s against her better judgment, but that is all right. And she loves Papa Jack too.”

  “That would be Jonathan Endicott?”

  “Cap’n Jack, that’s my new papa.”

  “And does she love him against her better judgment, too?”

  “Oh no, everyone loves him. But, you see, he can’t really afford a wife and a family, and Allie’s afraid he might lose what he has, because his business is gambling.”

  “Does he love her too?”

  “Of course. He’d never get married if he didn’t. That’s what Mrs. Crandall says, that a bachelor won’t budge unless his heart kicks him in the…That is, he needs a good reason. Allie’s the best reason he could have, and the best wife he could find, except that she’s poor. If she had a dowry, they would get hitched, like Samuel says, I just know it.”

  “And then your guardian could gamble with my money instead of his own. No thank you. I could feed my bank notes to the hogs. At least I might get some bacon out of the investment.”

  “Oh, Cap’n Jack would never wager with Allie’s money. He is a gentleman.”

  “And half the members of the House of Lords, gentlemen all, are in debt to the cents-per-centers while their well-dowered wives go without new frocks. There is no guarantee what a hardened gamester will do.”

  “But Papa Jack isn’t like that. He hardly wagers at all, except when he has to, to pay the bills. And he always wins.”

  Of course, Montford reasoned, he could make so many stipulations in the settlements that the former officer could never touch a groat of the money. That is, if the marquess decided to grant the child her favor, which was by no means a foregone conclusion, except in Harriet’s mind.

  She pressed on. “But if he had funds, maybe he would start a new business, one Allie could like better, so she’ll marry him faster.”

  The marquess looked at the child over the top of his glass. “What makes you think I care whether those two get wed or not?”

  “You care about Lady Margery and Harold being happy, don’t you? And you are going to pay her dowry, they say, and they don’t even need it, ’cause they can live at home in the country or here with you.”

  “Heaven forfend,” his lordship muttered.

  “Allie and the captain need the money, and she is your granddaughter, too. It’s only fair that you give her the same amount, like what you would have given her mother.”

  “I would have given Miss Silver’s mother far more, if she had married the man of my choice.”

  “But she had to
choose the man she loved, like Lady Margery and Darla and Patsy and Mrs. Crandall.”

  “Am I supposed to dower them, too, whoever they might be?”

  “No, only Allie. It’s only fair,” Harriet repeated.

  The marquess’s views had not been changed by wiser heads and better orators. He set his glass down and stood. The conversation was at an end. “I am sorry, young lady, but the world is not fair. You will have to learn that lesson sooner or later. Now go on home before someone comes searching for you here. I have had enough botheration for one day. I owe nothing to your guardian or your governess.”

  Harriet’s lip started trembling and her eyes filled with tears. “My lord,” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper, “my mother was killed by my uncle when I was three. My father died in the army, and my grandmother is too addled to care for me. Don’t you think I know that the world is not fair?”

  Montford stared at the frog, rather than the child.

  “Don’t you think I deserve a family, sir?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Jack was pacing in the street in front of Carde House. Allie was standing in the carriage drive. He was waiting for Harriet to come home; she was waiting for a ransom note. Neither wanted to think about someone carrying back a small broken body or, almost worse, no news whatsoever.

  Then there she was, skipping through the nearly empty park, merry as a grig.

  “I’ll kill her,” Jack growled.

  “There will not be enough of her left when I am done,” Allie said when she saw whose hand Harriet was holding. The Marquess of Montford was holding a tin bucket in his other hand.

  Harriet saw them waiting and rushed forward, her arms opened wide. She raced past Jack, who knelt to scoop her up, and she rushed past Allie, who held her own arms out, despite her fury.

  Harriet hugged the dog.

  Patsy and Mrs. Crandall had been watching through the windows, so now they ran out and beat the fire gong as hard as they could and as long as their arms could stand. Servants and searchers came tearing out of houses all along the street, cheering and laughing, and patting each other on the back.