Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“Buy candles?” Hyperia dabbed butter on her toast. “I’m to buy candles, despite having neither a household to shop for, nor much with me in the way of coin?”
“Tell Miss Letitia,” Sir Clive said, “that Dulcie sent you to collect more of those honeysuckle-scented pot candles. Put your purchases on the Knot’s account. Dulcie is partial to floral aromas, and this time of year, we go through candles like locusts devour wheat. Jam, Miss West?”
“Please.”
Miss Weatherby was already up and about, apparently, while the duchess was taking a breakfast tray in her room, as was Mrs. Stoneham. I did justice to a hot, fluffy omelet and—when only one slice remained in the rack—helped myself to a serving of buttered toast with raspberry jam.
“When I am interrogating the chandler’s daughter,” Hyperia asked, “what will you be doing, Jules?”
“I will find room for another portion of the most delicious baked potatoes served this side of Caldicott Hall. I will also dispatch Atticus to make inquiries at the livery and in the coaching inn’s stables. If we can manage it, I’d like to pay a call on the vicarage too.”
“Mr. Goodenough is punctual about his meals.” Sir Clive retrieved the teapot from the sideboard.
“If you arrive at about noon, he’ll shoo you out the door in thirty minutes flat.
If you arrive after the noon meal, he’ll take you hostage until you’ve been duly versed in Rome’s failures as a colonial power. ”
I’d struggled through Gibbon’s version of that tale—all six volumes of it. Once was enough.
“On the dot of twelve, then,” I said. “I trust Her Grace will alert Sheldon that he’s to have visitors?”
“I’ve already sent word.” Sir Clive topped up tea cups all around and set the honeypot and cream pitcher at Hyperia’s elbow.
“Sheldon will be in a dither—the boy is prone to dithering—though the staff at the Dovecote has entertained royalty in its day. While we’re in the vicinity, I hope we can pry Deemster from his sister’s side. ”
“Deemster is your butler?” Hyperia asked.
“He has that honor. He’s youngish for a butler, but he had been our first footman for several years, and one must respect traditions.”
I finished my toast, though I could have consumed another full rack, provided the butter and jam were ample.
“Did Lord Dantry have a valet with him?” I asked.
Sir Clive considered his tea. “He did not. Hammond manages my attire to the extent it needs any managing, and the laundresses deal with the everyday tasks. We were up to starching a few extra cravats or polishing an extra pair of boots. Dantry isn’t fussy about his turnout.
Clean, tidy, stylish without being flamboyant. Not like some of his station.”
And yet, he’d enjoyed his fancy trinkets and Bond Street finery.
Sir Clive finished his tea and rose. “I must be off. The ewes are dropping lambs like mercy supposedly falls from heaven. The sheep know more hard weather is in the offing and are making use of what sunshine we have. Enjoy your sortie to the village. They are good folk, and if they know you seek an explanation for Dantry’s disappearance, they’ll give you what aid they can. ”
He jaunted from the room, snatching a raspberry tart from the sideboard on the way out the door.
“I do like our host,” Hyperia said. “He doesn’t put on airs, doesn’t suffer fools, and doesn’t have to bruit about his every opinion and recollection.”
“A week ago, I might have described him as a bumpkin. Now…” I brought the plate of jam tarts to the table. “He is shrewd and kind. Not a combination one finds in great abundance.”
Hyperia took two pastries. “What do you know, Jules, that you suspect Sir Clive is keeping to himself?”
I took three. “Alphonse Fletcher has been preaching Tory holy writ to the denizens of Middleton.”
“Alphonse is the MP who mocks Dantry?” She dipped a tart into her tea and took a bite.
I momentarily forgot all about Dantry, Fletcher, and impending bad weather. Not in the sense of another gaping lapse of memory, but rather, a triumph of tenderness over rational processes. I had held Hyperia through the night, heard her sighs, and delighted in her sweet warmth.
She was so dear to me, so beautiful in so many ways, and why she would yoke herself for the rest of our lives to such as myself…
I love you. Madly, eternally, hopelessly.
“Or do I have the two Fletchers confused?” she asked.
“You have the right of it. Alphonse Fletcher makes a laughingstock of Dantry behind the earl’s back. Not sporting, to quote Hammond. I have yet to meet the younger Fletcher, though I did call on his uncle. Sheldon apparently gets on with both reasonably well.”
“You have already taken Alphonse into dislike sight unseen. Why?”
Had I? Or was I sour on the whole investigation? “Political opponents are to debate and insult one another openly, face-to-face, for the entertainment and enlightenment of all. Alphonse snipes from the social hedges.”
“Now you are an expert on parliamentary argumentation?” Hyperia dipped and nibbled another tart and again went galloping off with my heart, doubtless all unbeknownst to her.
Would you search for me if I went missing again?
“I am a veteran of the schoolyard rules of engagement,” I said, “which are the root of all canons of gentlemanly deportment.” I put one of my tarts on her plate.
“Why did Alphonse feel it necessary to visit his oratorical skills on the ‘good folk’ of Middleton—the village cannot possibly be in his district—and when was he last seen enjoying Pippindonk’s hospitality? ”
“Atticus might be able to discover that much. If Alphonse has anything approaching a fancy mount, the grooms at the livery will have noticed.”
She casually demolished the third tart, and I loved her all over again for pointing out what I—former intelligence officer, accomplished horseman, sleuth-at-large, and general dunderhead—had missed.
“I hope Alphonse rides a blue-eyed piebald mare, then. Shall we walk or ride to the village?”
“We will take the dog cart, which will justify bringing Atticus along. I vow that boy grows taller every time I clap eyes on him.”
While Hyperia grew more lovely and dear. We were not yet lovers in the conjugal sense. My bride had decreed that we would not fully anticipate our vows, but I could not care for her more if we’d been married for twenty years and brought six children into the world together.
Which suggested that I had best tell her of my decision to give up investigating. Perhaps she would believe I was simply putting away the things of my bachelorhood, meaning no disrespect to First Corinthians.
We drove Sir Clive’s sturdy dog cart into the village nearly two hours later. The snow had melted off the walkways and lanes for the most part, and even the edges of the green showed muddy tufts of brown grass.
“See that the horse gets some hay,” I said to Atticus as I handed Hyperia down. “We won’t be here long, but if Sir Clive is right about another cold snap bearing down, nigh constant hay and water are in order for the equines.”
“Don’t feel colder to me,” Atticus said, climbing forward onto the bench and taking up the reins. “Feels like spring is on the way.”
Ah, youth. “You will inquire about Alphonse Fletcher as discreetly as possible,” I said. “You will start no scuffles, fisticuffs, altercations, riots, or scandals. Wait for us at the inn and limit yourself to a lady’s pint of mulled cider, which you will sip slowly.”
“Right, guv.” Atticus grinned as if he were plotting to commit at least three of the five listed transgressions. “Walk on, horse.” The cart rolled off along the muddy high street.
“That child has you sorted,” Hyperia said, linking her arm through mine, “and somebody is well on the way to turning him into a skilled whip. Let’s go candle shopping, shall we?”
This will be our last investigation.
One did not announce that literally on the village green.
My memory problems might be getting worse.
Though, in fact, my most recent lapse was also among the shortest I’d experienced.
You should not marry me.
After all that Hyperia and I had been through in the course of our engagement and its prelude, Hyperia would think I’d taken leave of my senses if I voiced that opinion.
Nobody should marry me.
We reached the walkway along the eastern side of the green. The late-morning sun did indeed have a benevolent warmth to it, but the incessant dripping of the eaves of the shops added an annoying note to the setting.
“What is it?” Hyperia asked as we approached the chandler’s shop. The sign depicted a lit carrying candle in fresh paint on a blue background and the word Chandler lettered in red above it.
“The melting,” I said. “It’s loud.”
“Loud?”
In for a penny. “In an ancient castle with bare stone walls, the sound of dripping is ubiquitous in the castle’s bowels.” I would hear that sound in hell, if ever I was consigned to that accursed region.
“Ah. You escaped this time of year, didn’t you? As winter was making a last stand?”
“I did not escape. I was freed—or abandoned, more like. The last of the prisoners were shown that dubious mercy when it became apparent Wellington had found a way across the Pyrenees and was headed for Paris.”
She stood arm in arm with me, the damp, sparkling little village going about its business all around us. “But nobody told you that part, did they? You did not know if your captors were initiating their most cruel game yet or running for their own lives.”
“I knew nothing, Perry, save that one form of torment had been traded for another. Captivity absorbed me. I developed little mental games, a routine—when they left me unshackled—and I coped. A progression of simple exercises, mental and physical. Over and over. Then one day, the head jailer thrust my cloak at me, and I found a knife secreted in its folds. He wished me best of luck and walked away, leaving the door to my cell open. I never saw him again.” Except in my nightmares, of course.