The Butler Did It (34 page)

But, before he could react, Fanny's cane seemed to appear out of nowhere, and Mrs. Norbert was holding on to her head with both hands as Fanny scrambled out from beneath her, then jumped on the larger woman's back.

“My kudos, old friend,” Perry said close to Morgan's ear, trying to be heard above the shrieks and shouts. “You certainly are an entertaining host. Five pounds on the Widow Clifford. You game?”

“Shut up, Perry,” Morgan ordered, “and help me break this up, for God's sake.”

“If I must,” Perry said, and the two of them waded in, neither of them in a very large hurry to grab hold of any
part of either woman's anatomy, some of which was showing and which should have been hidden.

Morgan did manage to wrest away the cane before Fanny, still straddling Mrs. Norbert's back, could bring it down on the woman's generous hindquarters, rather like a riding crop.

The crowd around the fighting pair, their blood among the bluest in England, and dressed in their silks and satins, began to loudly hoot their disapproval of his interference.

 

“F
IGHT
! F
IGHT
! Ladies, fighting!”

Thirty previously occupied gentlemen turned as one at this information, shouted at them from the doorway of the card room, then ran to be the first to see this titillating spectacle.

Elbows slammed into ribs, heels trod down on toes…and cages, rickety bits of wood at best, were knocked over, breaking apart.

The gentlemen burst into the ballroom. One by one, the gamecocks, rather angry after being so unceremoniously dumped onto the floor, began to follow after them.

“Harry, stop! Wait! Not you, too.
Harry!
”

Cliff Clifford, with pound notes sticking out of every pocket, looked around him, at the overturned tables, the sand on the floor, the smashed and empty cages.

He had a moment's insight, probably the first of his
young life: He probably shouldn't be here when someone came into this room.

But where to go? Where to go? He needed a place to hide.

 

J
OHN
H
ATCHER HANDED
the empty sack back to Wycliff who, on orders from his new employer, delivered each sack and then stood back, out of sight of the coach door, as Hatcher carefully arranged each new load in one of the trunks.

Hatcher still had to climb the stairs, to load the sack each time, but at least he didn't have to carry the heavy gold himself.

“Should be one more trip for us and we're done, boy. Damned rain. We'd best hurry,” Hatcher said, his dancing slippers squishing in the puddles caused by what had become a downpour. The two of them, Wycliff holding the empty sack, made for the door to the kitchens one last time.

 

“O
NE MORE KICK
and I swear, madam, I will not hesitate to punch you into insensibility,” Rolin said, cutting through the deserted gardens, Emma still dangling over his shoulder, but far from a willing captive.

And then he stopped, peering through the darkness, through the pouring rain. “Damn! Damn and blast!”

There were two coaches in the mews, his being the
second, and unable to go forward or turn around unless the first was moved.

As Emma beat on his back with her fists, yelling “Morgan! Morgan!” Jarrett Rolin adjusted his plan.

 

“A
NYBODY BETTING
?” Sir Willard asked, skidding to a halt at the front of the crowd ringed around Fanny and Mrs. Norbert.

“I've got ten on the fat one.”

Fanny picked up her head—she had been biting Mrs. Norbert on the shoulder—and yelled, “I heard that, Archie!” just before Morgan bent down and lifted her clear of the seamstress, arms and legs still flailing.

“Much as I value your friendship, dear boy,” Perry said, planting a foot on Olive Norbert's ample belly, “this is as far as I go.” He spread his arms and appealed to the crowd. “Some assistance, if you please? Gentlemen, come, come now, you would not ask me to float a barge on mine own, would you?”

“She tried to kill me!” Fanny shrieked.
“Twice!”

Morgan would have asked her what she meant, but just then there were more female screams, a multitude of them, coming from the rear of the crowd ringing them.

He looked up, to see befeathered women swooning into gentlemanly arms. A veritable
ripple
of movement seemed to be running through the crowd, lifting them, one after another, off their feet.

And then he saw Harry….

 

C
LIFF PACED IN CIRCLES
, wringing his hands, listening to the shrieks and shouts from the ballroom, and made up his mind.

He bolted for the hallway behind the card room, heading for the storage room. But there was another door in the hallway, already partially open, and one hidey-hole was as good as another, at least until he was forgiven…which could possibly happen before he starved in here.

He yanked open the door.

He saw the most magnificent set of…

Claramae screamed.

Riley moaned.

Claramae bent and snatched up her underpinnings, pressed them to her bosom and all but knocked Cliff down as she burst from the closet, screaming at the top of her quite generous lungs.

“Riley?”

The footman took a quick step and fell flat on his face, as his breeches were still around his ankles.

“Did you…?”

“No, thanks to you and damn your eyes, I didn't!” Riley said, pulling up his breeches and getting to his feet. “Which way did she go?”

“Toward…toward the ballroom. Oh, Lord,
toward the ballroom!
”

Riley cursed again and set off after her, leaving Cliff to step inside the closet and softly close the door. But
then, realizing that his beloved Harry could come to grief, he manfully opened that door again and joined the fray.

 

W
OMEN, CRYING HYSTERICALLY
or swooning. Gentlemen, chasing after gamecocks, except for the one old gent who was standing on a chair, swinging his stick at a rather large red bird that seemed to be on the attack below him. Noise, everywhere. Mayhem, everywhere. Gamecocks, everywhere.

And no Emma.

“Thornley,” Morgan said, grabbing the butler's sleeve as that man did his best to support a swooning Daphne. “Have you seen Miss Clifford?”

“No, my lord. We were out on the balcony and—”

The balcony! He hadn't looked on the balcony!

Morgan bounded through the doorway out into the dark, now rainy night, just in time to hear loud masculine cheers rise from several hundred male throats, and too late to see Claramae, sobbing, her uniform only half covering her front, and nothing at all covering her shapely derriere, race through the ballroom, a half-dressed, still bewigged Riley running after her, holding his coat in both hands. All eyes, and much applause, followed them both.

Morgan skidded to a halt at the balustrade and looked both ways. Nothing. Emma wasn't out here. The entire
world had exploded inside the ballroom, and she wasn't there, either.

Something was wrong. He winced at the thought. Hell and damnation,
everything
was wrong. But the worst was that he couldn't find Emma.

Morgan looked to his right again and saw carriage lamps in the mews. Carriage lamps? There was no reason for anyone to call out his carriage.

He ran toward the end of the balcony, rain streaming down his face, and all but leaped down the steps leading into the gardens.

 

W
HILE BEDLAM REIGNED
in the ballroom, it was also becoming rather confusing in the mews.

“Move that damn coach!” Rolin said, glaring up at Young Tommy, who was a hulking lad with little regard for the Quality. “I
demand
that you move this coach!”

“Up your arse,” Young Tommy said, his foot firmly against the brake.

“Stap me, what's going on here? You—get away from my coach.
Rolin?
”

Rolin turned.
“Hatcher?”

Hatcher squinted in the scant light from the carriage lights. “Who's that you got there, Rolin? Looks like a female, don't it? Rather wet, ain't she?”

Emma, weary of hanging upside down with a sack over her head, pushed her hands against Rolin's back and lifted her upper body, putting the man rather off balance
on the slippery cobblestones, as he'd been looking at Hatcher and wasn't paying quite the attention necessary to keep a determined young woman like Emma successfully held in his grasp.

She was free! Her feet were on the ground.

Emma yanked off the black silk that had covered her head, spitting bits of lint out of her mouth as she blinked, unable to see much after the darkness of the sack.

Rolin reached out, almost lazily, and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to his side. She kicked him, tried to make a break for it, but he held her wrist fast, now at arm's length but still holding her.

“Here, now, what do you think you're doing, Rolin?” Hatcher asked. He hadn't been born yesterday, after all, and he was fairly certain the young lady didn't wish to be here with Rolin, or go somewhere with him, for that matter. He put down his sack, the very last sack (he'd carried it down himself, while Wycliff nipped off to gather up his portmanteaux). Puffing himself up, he demanded, dredging up the words from somewhere romantic in his soul: “Unhand that woman!”

Then he took a step forward, tripped over the sack and fell against Rolin, who rudely pushed him off, releasing his grip on Emma to do so.

She could run, but now Rolin was hitting the older man who had tried to save her. She couldn't desert him.

Looking around for a weapon, she spied the sack at her feet, but it was too heavy to lift. She reached inside,
closed her hand over something about the size and shape of a brick, and pulled it out.

“Emma!”

Emma, in the process of trying to sort out Rolin from the two bodies now dancing around each other in the downpour, each trying to land a punch, lost her concentration for a moment as she yelled, “Here, Morgan, here!” Which was a pity, because she was also bringing down the heavy object on Rolin's—oops—the older man's head.

Hatcher dropped like a stone.

“Oh dear,” Emma said, wincing as the injured man rolled around on the ground, moaning. “I'm so sorry…”

“Come on,” Rolin said, grabbing her wrist once more, even as he took out a purse and threw it up onto the box. “Get us out of here, and there'll be another just like it.”

Young Tommy neatly snatched the purse out of the air and changed loyalties. “Yes, sir!”

Emma was being pushed into the coach, which was already quite full of trunks, when Morgan reached the mews, pulling Rolin away so that he could help her back out of the coach and down to the ground.

He didn't make it, because Rolin picked up the weapon Emma had so lately used to sad effect, and hammered Morgan on the back with it.

Emma, still inside the coach, sprawled inelegantly over the trunks, screamed.

Rolin slammed the coach door and bounded up onto the
box, brandishing the golden brick. “Off,” he said succinctly.

Young Tommy, holding on to the purse (and not quite as dumb as he looked), obliged.

Rolin loosed the brake as he picked up the reins. He gave them a sharp shake, giving the horses their office to start, even as Morgan, down but not out, was climbing up the side of the box, not in the least distracted as Claramae and her magnificent bosom bobbed on by, chased by no less than two hundred assorted male and female members of the
ton.
Oh, yes, and Riley.

The horses, already made cranky by the rain, reared in the traces and attempted to break into an immediate gallop. Unfortunately, the rickety old coach, loaded down as it was by four large, heavy trunks filled with bricks, was not up to the challenge.

The back wheels collapsed, the shaft broke, and the four horses were off down the mews…followed, at least briefly, by Rolin, who had hung on to the reins just a tad too long, and had been catapulted into the air, only to land, facedown, in the middle of a very large puddle.

Hatcher got to his feet, goggling at the broken coach. His gold! His gold! He wrenched open the door, to be confronted by the resourceful Emma, who had opened one of the trunks and was now armed, both hands, with two more gold bricks.

The rain, as if in a hurry to be somewhere else, went away, all at once. The clouds parted, the moon and stars
became visible. Some of them shone down on the glittery objects in Emma's hands.

“My gold! That's my gold!” Hatcher said. “Give it over, girl!”

Morgan, who had somehow managed to hold on to the side of the coach, turned to face a new enemy. “Get away from her,” he said, nimbly leaping to drop between Emma and Hatcher.

But the older man wasn't listening or even protesting. He'd dropped to his knees to pick up the two pieces of gold that had so lately been one piece of gold, until it had made contact with Morgan's back. Now it was gold on the outside…and red on the inside.

“It's…it's—what happened to my gold?” Holding a half brick in each hand, he desperately tried to fit them back together.

Perry had sauntered into the mews behind the majority of the other guests, and just then had been peering into the disabled coach, opening trunk after trunk. At Hatcher's words, he lifted his quizzing glass to his eye and said, “Bricks, turned to gold? Ah, dear. Always knew there were a few slates missing from your roof, John. But think of this, there should be enough here to build yourself a lovely golden wall that will be the envy of all your friends.”

Sir Willard elbowed his way to the front of the crowd—less well-heeled financially, and not so well dressed, and that crowd would be termed a mob, one who
had assembled for a ball, but were now seemingly quite willing to watch a farce. “What's going on here?” he demanded. Perry stood back and waved for his uncle to inspect the interior of the coach.