“I’m not too fond of the idea myself,” Thomas said. “Tanner has much to answer for, as do the Pettigrews.”
A mare squealed down the lane, her cry splitting the night like a trumpet blast.
“Excellent timing,” Thomas muttered. “Belmont, Fairly, let’s go.”
They walked right in the front door and followed raised voices up the steps, to Claudia Pettigrew’s personal parlor.
When Fairly had taken up a position across the corridor, Thomas dashed into the parlor as if he’d run a great distance.
“Pettigrew,” he gasped, “your stud has got loose. He’s at the mares right now, and I can’t catch him on my own.”
An equestrian could be expected to have both quick reflexes and strength, so Thomas made his one grab for Giles’s gun count. In the instant Giles needed to absorb the news of the loose stallion, Thomas shoved Giles’s hand up, so the gun was aimed at the ceiling.
Claudia’s cries of “Don’t kill my only son,” and the commotion of Belmont hustling Loris from the room, were vague impressions compared to Thomas’s focus on gaining control of the weapon.
The moment Thomas sensed Loris was safe, he kicked Giles in the back of the knee, had him on the ground, and passed the pistol to Tanner.
“Don’t hurt him,” Claudia cried again. “He’s only a boy, and he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“I want Nick and Beckman in here,” Thomas said to Fairly, “and Loris too, if she’d like to hear what Pettigrew has to say for himself. Mrs. Pettigrew, you’ll want to hold your tongue, because Belmont is present in his capacity as magistrate.”
More warning than the silly woman deserved, but she took it to heart and subsided onto a pink and gilt chair.
The room became crowded, though when Thomas sought Loris’s gaze, she was staring at Giles, still prone on the carpet. Her blue silk dress was dusty about the hems, and one of her white gloves bore a long dark smudge. The bracelet at her wrist was an incongruous sparkle against an otherwise wrinkled and worn outfit.
“I’ll let you up,” Thomas informed Pettigrew, “but the magistrate is on the premises, as are three other fellows whom no sane man would willingly cross. None of that ought to matter to you half so much as the fact that you have used Miss Tanner ill, and for that I might well kill you.”
Nobody winked, nobody smirked, for Thomas was at least half in earnest.
“He’s threatening murder,” Giles said, getting to his feet and pointing a shaky finger at Thomas. “You all heard him.”
“Sit down,” Belmont snapped. “Arson is a hanging offense, and if you’d torched my stable, I’d do more than threaten murder. Mind, anything you say will bear upon how I handle this situation. Sutcliffe, you have the floor.”
“Miss Tanner,” Thomas said, “perhaps you’d also like a seat?” The question had come out coldly polite, when all Thomas wanted was for Loris to look at him. She sank into a chair, and her father did likewise.
“Start at the beginning, Giles,” Thomas said. “From what I can see, you are likely to be charged with arson and kidnapping, at least, and that ought to be trouble enough for one young man.”
Beside Thomas, Nick crossed his arms, Beckman widened his stance, and had Thomas been a betting man, he would have wagered that either Haddonfield was ready to do Giles a permanent injury.
“Mama mortgaged the estate,” Giles said, which elicited a meep from his mother, though she didn’t contradict him. “To do that she forged my signature on some documents, and she kept the proceeds of the transaction. The estate is thus in debt, and she has made no payments on the borrowed sum. She won’t tell me what she’s done with the money or the documents, but I reasoned that Tanner knew something about her…”
“Her fraud?” Thomas suggested. “Forgery? Misappropriation of funds?”
“Her… actions,” Giles went on, “and that’s why she accused him of… accused him of wrongdoing.”
Giles’s ears were red, while Loris was now apparently fascinated with the tips of dancing slippers that had once been blue.
“So your mother is also a felon,” Fairly observed. “Sutcliffe, did you not take the quality of the neighbors into consideration when you purchased Linden?”
“Go on, Pettigrew,” Thomas said, though the rest of the picture was already clear.
“Mama mortgaged the estate, she sent Tanner packing, and there I was, without funds, without authority, without a means of making Mama see reason.”
Loris wiped at her cheek, and Thomas nearly ordered everybody from the room, he needed to take her in his arms that badly.
“Miss Tanner was left without funds,” Thomas said, “without authority even in the position she took up to protect her father’s interests, without a parent’s guidance and companionship, without much of a roof over her head, and yet, I cannot recall a single felony she’s committed as a result, unless working hard every day is now a crime. What am I missing here?”
Fairly passed Loris a handkerchief.
Nick growled.
Belmont had produced pencil and paper and was scribbling away at an escritoire by the window.
From outside, in the direction of the pastures, another mare was conveying her sentiments to all in the vicinity.
“Mama isn’t always wise,” Giles said. “She likes pretty things, and those are expensive. She’ll spend all the money on millinery, when we need a new stud. She’ll have fancy gowns, but we won’t have hay for the horses in winter. I’d already decided I had to do something even before I learned of the mortgage. Marrying Miss Tanner was a solution to my problems—I gain control of my funds as soon as I wed. Marriage would have been a solution to Miss Tanner’s predicament as well.”
Such solutions would see the damned puppy bankrupt and transported.
“So you put Chesterton up to making trouble for Miss Tanner,” Thomas said, “just as the new owner of Linden would have been most likely to turn her off without a character. I must commend you on the originality of your courting strategy.”
Thomas paused to marshal his temper. He didn’t even glance at Loris, lest the sight of her provoke him to using his fists on Pettigrew.
“Then you heard rumors Tanner had been spotted,” Thomas went on, “perhaps in Brighton, perhaps closer. You learned of the mortgage, and modified your scheme. Miss Tanner would still be pressed into service as your wife, but first you’d use her for bait to draw her father to the area, so you could unravel your mother’s fraud.”
Claudia Pettigrew had dropped her face to her hands, but Thomas felt no compassion at the sight, not for her, not for the young man who matched her for arrogance.
Thomas lowered his voice, when he wanted to shout. “You reasoned that if Loris Tanner faced enough problems, a mutiny even, then she’d be escorted from the property, bag and baggage, and Tanner would show himself. You were right.”
Tanner swore, Loris patted his knee. Thomas wanted to toss her papa out the nearest window.
“Giles, don’t say anything,” Mrs. Pettigrew said, lifting her face from her hands. “A mother might sign her son’s name to a few documents. There’s no harm in that. The money isn’t all gone, but don’t say a word about that fire.”
“Not all gone?” Thomas inquired.
“Penny and Treasure nearly died in that fire,” Nick said.
“My brother nearly died in that fire,” Beckman added. “You put Miss Tanner, the baron, Fairly, and me at risk, because you and your mama acted like children.”
“I didn’t start the fire,” Giles cried. “I would never have started a fire. I love horses, and I never told Chesterton to start the fire.”
Belmont was looking very alert, his pencil poised above the foolscap.
“Did Chesterton start the fire?” Thomas asked. “Think carefully before you answer, Giles.”
“Don’t say anything,” Mrs. Pettigrew snapped. “Keep your stupid mouth shut. Not another word.”
“Claudy, hush,” Tanner said. “The boy has be
en a fool, but he has a chance to right what he’s put wrong. Your damned hats aren’t worth his honor.”
That rebuke silenced the widow, which was fortunate, for Thomas would not have been half so polite.
“Giles?” Thomas prompted.
“I told Chesterton to make trouble, bothersome trouble, nothing serious. Spilled oats, a gate or two left open, a stud colt in the mare’s pasture, that sort of thing. He did not take direction well, though he was happy to take my coin. I gave him more money and ordered him to leave the area. The next morning, your stable burned, and I told myself it could not have been him. Stables burn, and it’s not necessarily a matter of arson.”
“But?” Fairly asked, sighting casually down the barrel of the coach pistol.
His lordship was a regular thespian masquerading as a viscount, and Thomas had never loved him more.
“But at the tavern that morning,” Giles said, “I was assured Chesterton had been on the premises not fifteen minutes before I arrived, and acting more pleased with himself than usual. I left without ordering so much as a small pint, but I was too late.”
Thomas considered options, while across the room, Loris folded and refolded a wrinkled square of white linen.
“Miss Tanner, have you any questions for Mr. Pettigrew?” Thomas asked, again simply to encourage her to look at him.
She shook her head.
“Then I suggest Mrs. Pettigrew provide Mr. Belmont the combination to the safe, and he will examine its contents as part of his investigation into the matter of the fraudulent mortgage.”
“Excellent suggestion,” Belmont said. “Nicholas, Beckman, if you’d accompany us. One always wants witnesses when handling valuables.”
Belmont did not handle Mrs. Pettigrew, did not so much as offer her his arm as she marched from the parlor. They were back within minutes, and Mrs. Pettigrew’s expression would have felled forests of stout-hearted men.
“What of the mortgage?” Thomas asked the magistrate.
Belmont read from a document, naming a sum, a bank, a series of terms. If Giles was correct, and no payments had been made against the total owed, the estate was ripe for foreclosure.
“Fairly?” Thomas asked.
“The work of an afternoon,” the viscount said, “though this place needs a great deal of work, and I’d advise caution.”
“Then here’s what I propose,” Thomas said, though that word—propose—made his heart ache. “I will bring the mortgage on the property current and take over the obligation, meaning I will hold the note on this estate. Mrs. Pettigrew, I cannot tell you what to do, but I can intimate that Belmont will pursue charges of forgery and fraud if you disregard my suggestions.”
Rather than glare at Thomas, or even aim a beseeching look at Giles, Mrs. Pettigrew sought Tanner’s gaze.
“You, Mrs. Pettigrew, will remove to London with a very modest allowance,” Thomas said. “Miss Tanner managed well enough when you deprived her of a father and his dubious protection, and Giles will have too much work to do here to spare you much attention. You will bide on your small income and not trouble this neighborhood again. Your jewels will be turned over to Giles, in compensation for the value you robbed from his estate.”
When another son might have been indignant at such treatment of his mother, Giles looked relieved.
“What of me?” he asked. “I’m not an arsonist, and I didn’t forge anything.”
“Kidnapping,” Belmont said, pencil in hand. “Threats of bodily harm, conspiracy to commit all manner of malicious mischief through Chesterton’s meddling, and now you have a loose stallion, which qualifies as permitting a common nuisance.”
“I leave your fate in Miss Tanner’s hands,” Thomas said. “You imperiled her livelihood, held her at gunpoint when she’s done you no wrong, caused harm to her horse, and threatened her only immediate family. If she says you hang, I will personally fetch the rope and wrap it around your worthless neck.”
Belmont maintained a diplomatic silence in the face of that slight exaggeration, the pencil moved across the page without stopping, and a few jewels winked near the magistrate’s elbow.
A very few.
“Miss Tanner, I’m sorry,” Giles said. “I’ll marry you if that helps, or I’ll join the cavalry, or I’ll… I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do, and I never meant you any harm. Linden could afford a spilled sack of oats, a few loose sheep. I knew if I married you, you could put my land to rights and I’d have control of my funds, too. I didn’t mean for all of this to happen.”
“That’s the problem with being foolish,” Tanner said. “You only mean a little harm—a spilled sack of oats’ worth—and next thing you know, you’re riding your horse up the church aisle, or being accused of heinous misdeeds. If I were Sutcliffe, I’d see you transported, at least.”
Loris regarded her father for a long moment. “Is that an apology, Papa?”
Say yes , Thomas wanted to bellow. Say yes, and mean it.
Tanner eyed the jewels. “That is an apology, Daughter. For leaving you to deal with problems I should have resolved, at least, I am sorry. The rest we can discuss in private.”
For the first time, Loris met Thomas’s gaze, though her expression was the unreadable, self-contained mask Thomas had first encountered in the Linden stable weeks ago.
“I did not lose my position,” Loris said, “unconventional though that position has been. My horse recovered, and my father did indeed return to the area when I’d given him up for dead or long departed. I have no quarrel with Giles. Nicholas, if you’d see me home, I’ll leave you lot to sort out Giles’s fate. All I want is old Johnny as restitution for the harm done my horse, and for the inconvenience of this entire, misbegotten evening.”
Loris swept out, dusty hems, dirty gloves, and all, head held high, leaving those responsible for creating the present situation to clean up their own messes.
Thomas didn’t know whether to applaud, or to howl.
Chapter Twenty
In the aftermath of the assembly, Loris slept more than usual, and for a few days, she allowed herself that indulgence. She’d resumed dwelling at Dove Cottage, while her father remained on the Pettigrew estate helping Giles sort out the effects of Claudia’s mismanagement and greed.
Thomas apparently took over the Pettigrew mortgage, and whether Giles would ever have clear title to his father’s property mattered to Loris not at all.
Thomas was avoiding her, and that mattered a great deal.
“You must not think you know what goes on in a man’s head,” Lady Fairly said, as she settled on the porch swing beside Loris. “Sometimes, they hardly know themselves, and Thomas has been closeted with solicitors and men of business all week. He reminds me of my husband, which is, of course, a compliment.”
“Of course. Must you go back to London tomorrow, my lady?”
“Lord Fairly would never refuse aid to a friend, but Thomas has managed well here, and we have obligations in London. The decision is not entirely mine to make, my dear.”
Obligations… Loris had obligations, too. Since the assembly, the weather had turned to gloriously cool, sunny days and nights that bordered on crisp. The pansies that had been wilting at the base of Loris’s porch steps were back in good form, and the summer seemed to have righted itself. Somebody should be keeping an eye on the fruit crops, at least.
The grain harvest was still weeks away, and Loris could not leave her post until then—assuming she still had a post.
“Nicholas and Beckman have urged me to visit Belle Maison,” Loris said. “They say I have cousins who are ladies.”
Lady Fairly stroke a spear of potted mint, then crushed a leaf between her fingers.
“Lovely women, they are, too, but I hope you sort matters out with the baron first. Thomas is too good at being lonely, and now he’s invited that sister of his for a visit, when he has nobody to see him through such an ordeal.”
Thomas needed nobody. He could sort through biblical plag
ues, multiple felonies, and crimes in progress, all on his own.
“I miss him,” Loris said—wailed, more like. “My lady, I miss Thomas as if the heart has been torn from my body, but he hasn’t come by, hasn’t sent for me.”
Her ladyship tucked Loris’s braid back, bringing the brisk fragrance of mint with her touch.
“So you conclude, what? That your baron is disgusted with you for being embroiled in Giles Pettigrew’s imbecilic machinations? You’re not making sense, Loris Tanner, and you are an eminently sensible woman.”
Loris was an eminently unhappy woman, and yet, she couldn’t simply present herself in Thomas’s library and demand that he attend her. So she sat on her swing, restless, miserable, and weepy.
Why hadn’t she told him she loved him when she’d had the chance?
“Thomas knows I met my father at the assembly,” Loris moaned. “Nick confirmed this—Thomas knew Papa was in the area, Thomas somehow guessed that Papa had sent for me, and then Papa met me at the assembly. I might have run away with Papa, too.”
Lady Fairly got up from the swing. “How could Thomas know anything of the sort, Miss Tanner?”
“Thomas hired investigators to look for Papa, and used Squire Belmont’s sketch to find him. He probably saw when I got the note from Papa, too. He’ll think I was l-leaving him, and I might have. My lady, I very nearly m-might have. I h-hate to cry.”
“I hate to see you cry,” said a masculine voice from the path across the garden.
There he stood, not Thomas, not Loris’s lover, but Baron Sutcliffe. He wore impeccable riding attire, a sapphire signet ring winked on his left small finger, and his black riding boots were polished to a high shine. Even for him, he’d troubled to look every inch the lord, which did not bode well for the lord’s steward.
He came forth, his stride the same relaxed, bold gait that had first brought him to Loris’s notice amid a stable full of miscreants bent on causing her mischief.
Then he stopped at the foot of the porch steps. “Lady Fairly, would you excuse us?”
Thomas Page 30
