The Butler Did It (25 page)

“A ride in the park? Me?”

“Yes, indeed. Mrs. Clifford has kindly allowed me use of her coach in the mornings, before she might need it to visit friends, or whatever.”

Olive was having some trouble digesting this, the only problem she'd had with digestion since she'd mistakenly swallowed down a bite of wax fruit the other day in the music room.

“You want
me
to go driving with
you?
Blimey. I never rode in a coach, you know, not ever. Just hackneys, and they always stink, and the straw's piss-wet on the floor, and—me?” She began chewing again, her mouth still open, and stared at Sir Edgar. He was fairly certain he could hear small gears turning in her head. “Why me?”

This was proving even more difficult than he'd thought, but he pressed on, keeping the smile on his face.

“Ah, Mrs. Norbert, please, spare my blushes. Is it so
astonishing that a man like me would be in your company, day in, day out, and not wish to be alone with you for some moments?”

“Har! If that don't beat the Dutch. Me?” Then she blushed. Dear God, the woman blushed. “Really?” she asked, clearly dumbfounded.

“Really,” Sir Edgar answered, not dumbfounded, but not feeling too well, either.

Olive stood up so quickly her chair tipped over. “Well? Let's be off then. I'm too old to waste time, Edgar dearie. Could we ride by my old shop, d'ya think? Stop mayhap, and go in there, stepping outta that fine coach, me hanging on your arm all wispylike and fragile? That would suit me to a cow's thumb, it would.”

“Anything you desire, Mrs. Norbert,” Sir Edgar said, trying to picture Olive wispylike and fragile, an effort akin to balancing a mountain atop a pea; it simply couldn't be done.

Casting one longing look at the plate of coddled eggs, he then followed after Olive, who had hesitated only long enough to pluck a blueberry muffin from the sideboard and stuff it, whole, into her mouth.

 

D
APHNE STOOD
at a window in the drawing room, the curtain drawn back, to watch as Sir Edgar and Mrs. Norbert rode off in the Clifford coach.

“I didn't believe you when you told me, Mother Clif
ford,” she said, returning to the couch, “but you were right. Sir Edgar is actually smitten?”

“Smitten, bitten, sat on, whatever,” Fanny Clifford said, shrugging. “No accounting for tastes.”

“No, of course not, Mother Clifford.” Daphne folded her hands in her lap. “Ah, isn't this lovely? Mrs. Norbert gone, Emma off for another of her dreadfully long airings in the Square with Claramae. We two can have a Lovely Coze.”

Fanny wished for a lovely coze with Daphne as much as she wished for a throbbing toothache. Besides, she had things to do.

She twisted her pinched lips from side to side, cudgeling her brain for a way out of the room. She decided to toss her daughter-in-law a bone; the idiot woman caught so few of them. “I cannot believe Sir Edgar could have developed a tendre for…for that woman. I had so hoped…never mind. It's not as if I'll pine away.”

She then slapped her knees and got to her feet, holding her chin at a defiant yet tragic angle. “Excuse me, Daphne. I think I must go lie down for a space.”

Daphne just blinked as Fanny's heavy-handed hint sailed
pfthfft,
straight over her head. “But…but it's just gone ten. You only awoke an hour ago. I thought we could take this time to have a Lovely Coze, as we seem to be Ships Passing In The Night, Mother Clifford, and have not had a chance to talk at any length since Emma and I went to Almack's. There's so much I wish to tell you.”

Sad, so sad. Daphne Clifford wouldn't recognize A True Symptom Of Unrequited Love if it penned her a note, with diagrams, and tossed it through her window, tied around a rock.

“How nice of you to watch over me, Daphne,” Fanny said, then added, “Now stop it. As for Emma and Almack's, she was a sensation, because I wouldn't have had it any other way. So why don't you go chase down Thornley and drive that poor man insane with your daft mooning and sighing, and leave me be. And Sir Edgar doesn't mean a thing to me,” she added, giving it one last shot, this time tossing away the rock and employing a sledgehammer, “so don't think I'm going off to pine over the ungrateful man, because I'm not.”

Fanny stomped, quite sprightly, out of the drawing room, then hid herself behind one of the doors and waited. And waited.

And waited.

Finally she heard Daphne say in some surprise: “Oh, I see it all now. Poor Mother Clifford. Disappointed In Love. She's off for a good cry, I suppose.”

“Finally! At least now she won't come looking for me. Lord, what a looby,” Fanny said, and took herself off upstairs.

In the drawing room, Daphne's mind quickly loosed its grasp on her mother-in-law's troubles. After all, she had her own troubles. She picked up her embroidery and
wondered if she could manage to down even one more cup of tea without sloshing when she walked if she were to ring and ask Thornley to fetch it for her.

She was a Terrible Person, she knew that, but the highlight of her day had become watching from behind as the Dear Man bent over to put down the tea tray.

 

A
NDERSON WATCHED
as John Hatcher, nightcap askew over one bloodshot eye, thumbed at the wax seal and unfolded the note his man of business had just delivered to him in his bedchamber.

“Came by messenger, you say? Just now?”

“Just now, yes, sir. A messenger,” Anderson said, hoping he had sanded the ink enough before folding the thing and using a plain seal to press the wax.

“Says here it's from—well, never you mind who it's from. Let me see…‘My dear Mr. Hatcher, I take pen in hand with some reluctance and write to you…'etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ‘…experiment…new success…procure additional im…imp…' What the devil?”

Implements, you idiot,
Anderson screamed inside his head.
I knew I should have gone with tools.

“Oh, wait…got it now.” Hatcher squinted as he read the remainder of the note, then ripped it into small pieces he dumped in his hot chocolate. “Anderson, fetch me my box.”

“Yes, sir. Immediately, sir,” Anderson said, already on his way to the clothespress, and the small, locked box that rested just behind his employer's dancing shoes. “Here you are, sir.”

Pulling a chain free from the neck of his nightgown, Hatcher fitted the attached key into the lock and twisted it.

Anderson stood quietly, itchy palms carefully behind his back, and waited while Hatcher counted out five thousand pounds in crisp banknotes.

“The messenger is waiting below?” he asked, closing and locking the box once more.

“Yes, sir. If I may say so, sir, I think it may be time for you to confide in me. I am, after all, your man of business.”

“And this is no blasted business of yours, boy,” Hatcher said, holding out the banknotes. “You think I don't know what I'm doing? Now, put this in something and then hand it over to the messenger.”

Not ten minutes later, for his bags were already packed, a smiling Anderson was on his way down the servant stairs, heading for the kitchen door and blessed freedom.

His calculations had told him he needed another ten years of inching five hundred pounds a year out of his employer's books and into his pocket before he had enough to take himself off to Paris, and a new life. That had been ten years too long.

But this was perfect. The damn fool was shoveling money at that natty little gentleman in the pub who'd spun him a tale of alchemists. Why not shovel that money to him, instead?

He could have just taken the box, of course, but then an alarm would be raised, and he'd be hunted down as a thief. But this…ah, this was a gift from the gods…and John Hatcher's truly marvelous stupidity.

 

F
ANNY LOOKED UP
and down the hallway, assured herself that she was alone, and then inserted a key into Sir Edgar's bedchamber door and slipped inside, locking the door behind her. Fool man, didn't he know what she'd discovered—that one key unlocked all the bedchamber doors?

Not that she was about to tell him that; she'd just be here, waiting for him with a full decanter of wine, when he returned from his drive with the seamstress. Poor man, two decanters might not be enough.

Quickly, but careful not to disturb anything, Fanny rifled through Sir Edgar's clothing, his drawers, and even beneath his mattress. She finally located the packet of money jammed behind a particularly ugly painting, and fanned her way through the notes, toting them up in her head.

“Aha, just as I'd supposed. Magically, four thousand five hundred pounds has become six thousand pounds. Well, then, Edgar, that makes us about even, considering how Johnnie sent over another two thousand pounds this morning you'll know nothing about.”

She took a moment to admire her reflection in a small mirror standing on the dresser top, patting at her hair as
she gave herself a wink. “Ah, Fanny, you'd enjoy men more if you were young again, when they were young and randy and stupid. At this age, they're merely stupid.”

She tucked the packet back where she'd found it, then used the key he had left on the washstand to open the door to Sir Edgar's small dressing room. She took a pillow from the bed and tossed it onto the floor. Smiling as she looked inside the closet, she pulled on a pair of thick gloves she'd “borrowed” from one of the gardeners and lowered herself creakily to her knees on the pillow.

She opened the smallest of the trunks and pulled out the pot of gilt and a brush, depositing them on a cloth on the floor. Next, she opened one of the four larger trunks and took out three red bricks, hefting them one at a time in her gloved hands.

One entire box of the bricks were gilt now, as she and Sir Edgar had worked most of the night on them, painting them, lining them up to dry.

She began humming to herself as she reached for another brick.

 

D
APHNE DROPPED
her spoon, then bit her bottom lip between her teeth and watched as Thornley bent to retrieve it. “Oh, I'm just So Horribly Clumsy, Thornley. Please forgive me.”

“That's quite all right, madam,” Thornley said, taking another spoon from his pocket, for this was the third time this week Mrs. Clifford had managed to drop her
spoon. He had knives in the other pocket, for she seemed to lose her grip on those, as well. “Accidents do happen. Now, if there's nothing else?”

“Actually, Thornley, there is something else.” Daphne, who had prepared for this for a good hour (preparations that had included a quick trip to the water closet in her chamber) before daring to ring for him, reached for her embroidery bag and pulled out a fistful of different threads, threads she had carefully tangled beforehand. “I need some small assistance with my embroidery, you see.”

“I will admit that I've taken the liberty of looking at your embroidery, Mrs. Clifford, and I must tell you that I doubt I could be of much assistance, as every stitch you place is perfect, a true work of art.”

Daphne squeezed the threads in her cupped hands as Heavenly Music began playing inside her head. “Oh, thank you, Thornley, that was…Poetical.”

He bowed. “Nothing more than the truth, Mrs. Clifford.” Actually, the truth was more like Thornley sneaking into the drawing room after everyone else was abed and stroking a piece of half-done embroidery before lifting it to his face, to smell the faint, lingering perfume that was Mrs. Clifford herself. Not that he'd mention that, not unless he was prepared to go to the kitchens, take up Gaston's sharpest knife and then slit his own throat.

“But…but there is a problem. I wish to start a new color, but Mother Clifford is gone, Mrs. Norbert is gone,
and Miss Emma is No Use At All with such matters. I was hoping,” she continued, sparing only a moment to furiously bat her eyelashes—because Samuel, Rest His Soul, had once, just the once, told her that her eyes were her most pleasing feature— “Well, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to offer your opinion on colors for my embroidery.”

“Something in your eye, Mrs. Clifford?” asked Thornley, who had never been flirted with in his life and was unschooled in the nuances of that particular mating call.

Daphne blinked again, a small part of her fearful she just might be Making A Cake Of Herself, but then another part of her, the more desperate part, realized that Opportunity had just come to call.

“Oh, yes, yes. Something—” she raised one hand to her eye, careful to extend her little finger, as was proper “—something seems to be there…right there. Can you see it?”

Oh, Thornley could see it. He could see all of it, now that he was really looking. But the thing was…well, the thing was, he didn't care. He had spent too many nights alone in his quarters, dreaming up fantastical ways to get himself closer to Mrs. Clifford, and now that one had come knocking on his door with all the subtlety of a red brick (the Grosvenor Square mansion was chock-full of red bricks, it seemed), he was not about to spend
this
night cursing himself for a fool that didn't go answer the door.

He skirted the table and sat himself down right next to Daphne, taking her chin in his hand to turn her to face
him. He brought his own face close to hers, pretending a great interest in locating the offending object in her eye while his real interest lay somewhere else on the dear woman's anatomy.

Using a corner of her serviette, he dabbed, oh, so carefully, at the outside corner of her eye, then sat back and folded his hands in his lap so they wouldn't misbehave. “Blink for me, Mrs. Clifford,” he said. “That may help.”

She blinked, then blinked again, and then she smiled. “Why…I think it's gone. Oh, Thornley, you're A Genius. I don't know how I can Thank You Enough.”

“That I was able to be of assistance is thanks enough, Mrs. Clifford,” he told her, and he just knew his ears were red, because they felt hot, and they even began ringing as he watched those lovely dimples appear in her cheeks.