Chapter 6 #4
Aubrey assured the major that his visit would be most welcome, as his grandmother loved visitors, especially if they came bearing the latest village gossip.
By the time he had finally freed himself, a good fifteen minutes had passed.
Cursing, he hurried up to the green door he had knocked upon once before and rapped sharply upon it.
No answer.
Muttering crossly, he hammered hard upon the door, determined not to be denied.
A few moments later, it opened. “Where’s the bleedin’ fire?” the housekeeper demanded crossly, glaring at him.
Not stopping to explain himself, Aubrey pushed past her with a terse apology. “Alfie!” he bellowed, stalking along a narrow corridor into a small front parlour, which he found to be empty.
“Alfie ain’t here!” Lill said angrily, following him as he searched. “And you weren’t invited. What kind of gentleman are you, what goes around forcing his way into respectable people’s homes?”
“Respectable? Ha!” Aubrey exclaimed, which was not the most eloquent thing he’d ever said, but it felt good, nonetheless. “I know very well that lying, two-faced devil is here, for I saw him come home.”
He pushed through the next door, which opened onto a small but comfortably furnished dining room, also empty.
“He ain’t here, I tell you!” Lill shouted, increasingly furious as Aubrey made his way into the kitchen.
No Alfie. He opened the back door, surveying a slightly unkempt garden and a path that led to a back gate.
He hurried to it, snatching it open and staring down the narrow alley that led out onto the main street farther along.
No sign of the lad taking to his heels, but Aubrey knew well enough he was quick on his feet.
Well, he wasn’t leaving until he was certain Alfie wasn’t hiding upstairs. He went back inside and found Alice standing at the bottom of the stairs.
She looked like she’d dressed in the dark, everything crumpled and not quite sitting straight, and he opened his mouth to rail at her and stopped as he saw her face.
She looked exhausted, dark circles bruising the delicate skin beneath her eyes, though those eyes blazed with indignation all the same.
“Alfie is not here,” she said coolly. “Might I ask why it is you have forced your way inside, shouting abuse at a pitch that ensures our neighbours will hear you?”
Aubrey hesitated, feeling rather ashamed of himself in the light of her dignified manner until he remembered precisely why he was here.
“Don’t try to protect him, Miss Marwick. I know exactly what your brother is, and just how he got his hands on my mother’s brooch, not to mention the rest of her diamonds.”
If she had been pale before, these words sent any remaining colour draining from the young woman’s face. She looked frightened and fragile, and he did not miss the way she reached out to clasp the newel post for support.
“What?” she asked, the word little more than a whisper.
Despite his anger and indignation, his heart went out to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his voice even.
“I do not know how much you know of your brother’s affairs, though I pray you will not think me fool enough to believe you are completely ignorant of how he came to have such a valuable item as my mother’s diamond brooch in his possession.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to check upstairs. ”
“He’s not here,” she said, barring his way, a hectic splotch of red staining her cheeks.
“I don’t believe you.” Aubrey held her gaze. “Please, Miss Marwick. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I know your brother stole the diamond parure from my uncle’s house, and I promise, you would far rather deal with me than make this a matter for the local magistrate.”
“But he’s really not here,” she said, and he heard the panic in her voice, the breathless quality, but he was not about to leave until he’d checked the sneaking little rat wasn’t hiding in a wardrobe or under a bed.
“Forgive me,” he said. “But I will check for myself.” With no further word on the matter, Aubrey reached out and put his hands at her slender waist, picking her up and setting her to one side with ease before hurrying up the stairs.
“No!” she shrieked, grabbing at his coat and trying to haul him back down again, but Aubrey was too strong for her.
Certain now that his quarry was upstairs, he ran to the first bedroom, throwing the door wide.
This must be Alice’s room, neat as a pin and with all the expected feminine accoutrements.
Feeling like a beast, he walked in and checked under the bed and in the wardrobe, just in case, finding nothing remarkable.
The next room must be her brother’s, and here he discovered clothes cast hastily aside, some on the floor, others thrown over the bed.
He’d changed in a hurry, but why? Even his boots were here.
They were a decent pair, very well made and expensive, but it seemed unlikely that Alfred Marwick would have dozens of such pairs at his disposal.
Mind you, he’d sold those bloody diamonds, so maybe he did. And suits made by Weston, too, Aubrey thought sourly.
“My room’s up there,” Lill said, having followed him up. She glared at him as she gestured to a narrow staircase hidden behind a small door. “Help your bleedin’ self, why don’t you?”
Feeling increasingly like he was in the wrong, Aubrey went up, by now unsurprised to find the place deserted.
If there was some kind of hidey hole in this house, it was damned well concealed.
He came down again and made his way back to the front parlour where Alice stood stiffly before the fire, her arms wrapped around herself.
Lill stood to one side, looking like she’d disembowel him if only her mistress would give the word.
“See, like we both said. He ain’t here,” she snarled.
“All right, Lill. We cannot blame him for being angry. Make some tea for us, there’s a love. Mr Seymour and I will discuss the matter like civilised people. Won’t we, Mr Seymour?” she said, turning cold grey eyes upon him.
Aubrey nodded, feeling an odd sense of loss at having her regard him as the enemy. Why he should care what she thought when she and her brother were criminals he did not know, but it was true all the same.
“Won’t you sit down?” she said, excessively civil, once Lill had left them alone.
“Thank you,” Aubrey replied, matching her civility with an icy tone that would have done Hawkney proud.
There was an impenetrable silence that seemed to ring in Aubrey’s ears, broken only by the relentless ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Nothing to say, Miss Marwick? I have accused your brother of having stolen a quantity of diamonds. It’s the kind of accusation that might send him to the gallows,” he said, provoked by her silence into cruelty.
He regretted it at once, especially as her pallor increased, her fine skin so white it looked almost blue in the indifferent daylight that penetrated the parlour window.
She stared at him, her fingers tugging anxiously at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. The movement struck him as dreadfully familiar, but the recollection remained just out of reach.
“Is that what you want? To see him hang?” she asked, the words just as brutal.
Aubrey cursed and surged to his feet, striding to the window and staring out.
“Devil take the pair of you! No, Miss Marwick, that is not what I want, though it ought to be. You have both treated me abominably, lying to my face and making me into a complete fool. I liked you—both of you, dash it—and this is how I am repaid for my amity.”
There was a taut silence, and Aubrey could not make himself turn around, staring instead at the seafront through a white lace curtain.
“I don’t imagine it will make any difference to you now, but we both liked you very much too.
We never intended to deceive you, but you must see we could hardly admit what we had done?
I know what Alfie did was wrong, but we were not raised with all the advantages you were.
You said once that you thought life had not been kind to me.
Well, Mr Seymour, I must tell you that you don’t know the half of it. ”
Aubrey sighed and turned to regard her, wishing at once he had not. She looked so fragile and alone, yet sat so straight, defiance shining in her eyes. How proud she was, and resilient too. “I don’t expect I do,” he told her gently. “But not everyone turns to larceny to improve their lot.”
She snorted. “There speaks an educated man. Precisely what opportunities do you think are open to children raised in the workhouse, Mr Seymour?”
Aubrey blanched, his stomach twisting into a knot. The workhouse. She had not been exaggerating.
“I cannot pretend to imagine what you endured in such a place,” he said carefully.
“And perhaps in your place, I would have followed the same path as Alfie. It is all most dreadfully—” he hesitated, not knowing what to say.
It was a complete bloody mess, and he fervently wished he didn’t know about it.
He wished he had never followed Alfie, and that he could still live in happy ignorance, but he had learned the truth as he’d been determined to do, and here they were.
“Unfortunate?” Miss Marwick suggested crisply.
“Quite.”
The door opened, and Lill appeared with the tea tray. Aubrey saw the frightened look she cast her mistress and knew in that moment Miss Marwick had been correct. Lill was more than just her housekeeper, she was family.
“It’s all right, Lill. Mr Seymour does not wish to see Alfie go to the gallows.”
Lill let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes, then she opened them and turned, staring at Aubrey with only a degree less hostility than before. “Then what does he want?”
“I don’t know yet. Leave us for now, love. I’ll explain everything to you later, once Mr Seymour and I have come to an agreement.”
Lill looked none too pleased by this but left the room.
Miss Marwick looked up at him before reaching for the teapot.
He noticed it was a pretty set, bone china painted with a delicate floral design and edged in gold.
Expensive, he thought with amusement. The entire house was like that, he realised.
On the face of it, the place was modest, but if you looked closely, there were touches of luxury, things that would not look out of place in Hatherley Hall.
“Please sit down, Mr Seymour. I do not enjoy having you looming over me.”
He did as she asked, noticing her hands were steady as she poured the tea, making it as he liked, with milk and no sugar. She had remembered, he thought, absurdly pleased by this, though he told himself he was being ridiculous.
“Have a biscuit,” she said, offering him the plate of sugar biscuits that accompanied the tea. “I made them myself and they are rather good. They are the only thing I can make mind. Lill remarks that I could burn water.”
Aubrey took one, and then sat staring at it, wondering bemusedly how he’d got here.
“I promise they are not poisoned,” Miss Marwick said wryly, taking his attention. “Our villainy only runs to larceny; we don’t indulge in murder.”
“How reassuring,” Aubrey replied, taking a bite of the biscuit.
“Well, Mr Seymour. You say you do not wish to see Alfie hang, but you do not say what you do want? How, might I ask, came you to discover such information about him? I would like to know if someone has been indiscreet.”
“Then you must speak to Alfie. I followed him yesterday and overheard his conversation with Mr Repton.”
“That was you!” she exclaimed, and then gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
“What was me?” Aubrey demanded, frowning at her.
“A-Alfie said he thought someone was following him, wh-when he came out of the tavern,” she stammered, looking thoroughly rattled, so much so that she set her cup and saucer down as her hand shook too hard to keep it still.
Aubrey stared at her, feeling once again like he was missing something obvious but quite unable to figure out what it was.
“I cannot believe you followed him,” she said, her voice hollow. “Worse, I cannot believe he didn’t realise sooner. How unbelievably stupid! He knows better than that!”
She seemed so terribly distressed that Aubrey felt compelled to comfort her, despite the incongruity of doing so.
“Once I realised where he was headed, I stayed some miles behind him, catching news of him at the various places we passed through. He would have had no idea I was there. It wasn’t until we reached Dover that I got closer, or else I’d have lost him, and Dover is so very chaotic it’s no wonder he didn’t realise I was there.
Though he knew it quick enough when he left the tavern.
I think he knew the moment I set foot outside the door. ”
She nodded, looking somewhat comforted by this news.
“So you heard his entire conversation with Mr Repton?”
“I did,” he agreed. “Did Alfie tell you everything that was said?”
She nodded, and Aubrey wondered at that.
Alfie had been home only fifteen minutes before Aubrey had turned up, of that much he was certain.
Had he explained everything, changed his clothes and got out of the house before Aubrey had arrived, and if so, why?
He was still puzzling over this when she spoke again.
“What it is you want, Mr Seymour?”
Aubrey studied her, noting she had regained her composure. She reached for her tea and delicately sipped it, her expression placid.
He looked her in the eye, every word spoken with precision. “I want my mother’s diamonds back.”
Her eyes grew wide, staring at him in astonishment, as well she might. “And how, precisely, do you propose we accomplish that?”
Aubrey smiled, wondering just what her reaction would be.
“Alfie and I will steal them before Silas Mourney gets the chance.”