Chapter 36
“Tibbs,” said Pevensey as they walked to Lord Fremont’s house in Grosvenor Square. “Have you ever made love to a nurserymaid?”
Tibbs scowled. “No. Why would you think I had?”
“I don’t think it,” said Pevensey. “But I have, so I suggest that for this one, you bridle your tongue, stand by that lamppost, and watch me proceed.”
Tibbs grunted noncommittally, but Pevensey could see that he was considering it. Pevensey hoped that he had built enough trust with Tibbs today that he would allow himself to be managed and thus avert disaster.
By now, it was the warmest part of the May afternoon.
Pevensey had high hopes that the offspring of Lord and Lady Fremont would be taking the air, and he was not disappointed.
A harried nurse with large ears and lanky hair slipping out from under her cap was shepherding two young children—a boy and a girl—and a third child of indecipherable sex who was still in leading strings.
They were walking towards the garden in the center of Grosvenor Square.
“Jack, Amelia, stay close!” admonished the nurse as the older children ran farther and farther ahead.
Inevitably, one of the children soon tripped on an uneven cobblestone. The nurse scooped up the littlest one, who began to cry since he could no longer exercise his limited independence, and hastened toward the older boy who had fallen and was refusing to get up.
Pevensey was there before her, however. He seized the lad by the armpits and hoisted him up. “There you are, my lad. No harm done.” He brushed off the boy’s suit of robin’s egg blue. The child glared at him and pulled away.
“There now, Jack, thank the kind man for his help,” instructed the nurse.
Jack continued to glare.
“No thanks needed,” said Pevensey pleasantly. “Happy to assist a lady with her brood.”
The youngest child, who Pevensey could now see was also a boy, began to wail louder about his desire to be put down on the ground. The nurse groaned. “They ain’t mine, mister—I’m just the nursemaid.”
“I’m in service too,” said Pevensey, sympathetically. “I suppose you get as tired chasing after these little ones as I get delivering messages round about town.”
“Probably more,” said the nurse promptly. “But it’s paying work, so I can’t complain. Oh, Richie, will you hold still?” The toddler in her arms squirmed so much she was forced to put him down before she dropped him on his head.
“Here, let me help,” said Pevensey, snatching up the child’s leading strings. “He barely needs these, he stands so well on his own.”
“Aye, he’s a right terror, he is, since he started walking.”
The toddler strained at the harness and began to cough.
“Is the poor lad sick?” asked Pevensey.
“He was,” said the nurse, “but my mistress claims he ought to be well by now with all the pills and potions she’s given him, and that he just needs to be outside to strengthen his lungs.”
Pevensey fell into step companionably with the nurse as they continued into the park with Richie toddling in front of them. “Pills and potions, is it? She must keep the apothecary busy.”
“No, she mixes up her own. Keeps an uncommonly large kitchen garden out at the country estate and then bottles it all up in elixirs to bring with her wherever she goes.”
The older two children, Jack and Amelia, both ran for the same stick and began fighting over it, with Jack winning out and Amelia bursting into tears. Pevensey pasted a smile on his face. “I hope she puts those elixirs far out of reach. They’d be poison if this lot got into them.”
“She might dote on her children, but she’s no fool,” said the nurse. “She keeps the bottles in her still room, and they’re all clearly labeled which ones are dangerous.”
“Does she dose her husband too with the stuff?”
The nursemaid laughed. “She tried to, but I heard him tell her to keep her witch’s brew to herself.”
“A happy couple,” mused Pevensey, trying to sound out how much the nursemaid knew about the relationship between Lord and Lady Fremont. He watched Richie fall to his seat on the ground and begin pawing at the dirt.
“Oh, they rub along together well enough. He goes out more than he stays in—I think her conversation about the children bores him, but then most men don’t care for nursery talk, do they?”
“I would if the children were my own,” said Pevensey promptly. He gave the maid a friendly wink, and she blushed to the tips of her large ears. “So, they don’t fight with each other. That’s good.”
“N-no,” said the maid.
“What’s this? You don’t sound sure about it.” Pevensey picked up a leaf and knelt down to present it to Richie. The toddler immediately stuffed it into his mouth, and Pevensey was forced to dig out the pieces while avoiding the little blighter’s teeth.
“Well, they don’t fight usually, but a few weeks ago, they had a frightful row, and it was so loud the whole house heard it.”
“Egad!” said Pevensey with a whistle. “Did you cover the children’s ears?”
“They wouldn’t have understood it. Grown-up troubles, if you take my meaning.”
“I’m a simple man,” said Pevensey, “and it helps if you spell things out for me.”
“Well,” said the maid, leaning in confidentially as if he were one of her favorite gossips, “she thought he had a little ladybird he was visiting. He denied it. Then she demanded to know what had happened to the pink topaz necklace. Apparently, she’d looked in the safe and it wasn’t there.”
“Oho!” said Pevensey, “and was she right?”
“That’s more than I know, Mr—?”
“Jacob,” said Pevensey smoothly. “Call me Jacob.”
The maid simpered and moved closer to his ear. “That’s a fine name. Mine’s Laura.”
“Laura,” repeated Pevensey, letting it roll over his tongue.
He cast a furtive glance at the lamppost and saw Tibbs glowering at him.
He had better hurry things along. “What a treat you have, to see firsthand how the ton throws their tantrums. I declare, hearing your stories is as good as going to the theater.”
Laura giggled.
“Well, carry on with the play. Was that the only part of their argument then or did the shouting keep going?”
“Well, I’m an honest girl, I am, and I don’t know if I should repeat the rest.”
“I won’t tell anyone, Laura,” said Pevensey. He said a silent prayer that the children would keep playing nicely without distracting their nurse from the subject at hand.
Laura blushed but forged ahead. “She said, ‘If the House of Lords find out about your…bastard, you can say farewell to a seat in the government.’”
“Tsk, tsk,” said Pevensey. “Such a naughty word. And was that how it ended?”
“He told her he would take care of it. And I haven’t heard a word of wrangling between them since, so he must have. He’s even been taking her for walks in the park—which must mean he has a guilty conscience.”
Pevensey was afraid that Lord Fremont’s way of taking care of it might not have been to Libby Clifford’s benefit.
“Oh, lud!” said the nurse, looking back at the house and squinting at the upper story of windows. “I think she might be spying on me right now from the upstairs window.”
“Spying on you? Does she often do that?”
“Every quarter of an hour! The baby must be sleeping now, so she has time to look for the rest of her darlings.”
“How peculiar,” said Pevensey, watching Jack chase Amelia round a tree in the park.
Richie was still seated on the ground, looking for the pieces of leaf that Pevensey had taken away from him.
“Most parents would be happy to leave their brats in the care of a devoted nurse and disappear for the evening.”
“Oh, she goes out at night sometimes, but only after they’ve all said their prayers and gone to bed.”
“Where does she go? The opera?”
“Lud, no. She only goes to chaperone Miss Wedgwood, her sister, to balls and such.”
“So, she never goes out except with Miss Wedgwood?”
“Rarely. The day after the argument, she left for a good long while and wasn’t there to say prayers or to pick up the baby when he cried. I thought about dosing them myself with the laurel water, but I wouldn’t have known how many drops to mix with the water.”
“It’s not already mixed up in a draught?”
“Oh, no, she says it works better to steep it as strong as possible and then just mix a drop or two with a cup of water when it’s needed.”
Right as Laura finished speaking, Pevensey spotted a footman coming out of the house and striding in their direction.
The nurse saw him too. “That’s James, and he looks angry.”
“Why? Is he sweet on you?”
“No, I don’t think so. But I daresay the mistress saw me talking and sent him out here to put a stop to that.”
“A handsome girl like you’s not allowed to talk to anyone?”
“Not while I’m watching her darlings.”
They both glanced at the children. Amelia had made a crown of leaves and was attempting to put it on Richie’s head, while he tried to bat it off himself with his pudgy fingers. Jack was using the stick taken from Amelia to hit the trunk of a tree over and over again.
“Probably best if I don’t stay to make footman James’ acquaintance,” said Pevensey with a rueful smile. “Good-bye, Laura. Maybe I’ll be in the neighborhood again sometime soon.”
“Good-bye, Jacob,” she said, smoothing a stray piece of lanky brown hair behind her ear. She gave him a schoolgirl’s giggle.
Pevensey retreated across the street from the square just in time to avoid the footman’s censure and right in time to receive an earful from Tibbs. “About time!” growled Tibbs. “I thought you were going to call the banns and sign the register with her.”
“Oh, come now, surely it wasn’t as bad as all that.”
Tibbs grunted. “Let’s just say that your ‘girl with the sapphire eyes’ wouldn’t care much to see the eyes you were making at that nursemaid.”
Pevensey grinned cheekily, but he filed that comment away for later thought.
He had never flirted with Miss Cecil like that before—it would have been too disrespectful both to her station and to her good sense—and he had not thought about how she would take it if she saw his methods for coaxing information out of girls in service.
“Making those eyes was worth it,” Pevensey told Tibbs. He gave a brief explanation of what he had learned from the nurse about the workings of the Fremont household.
What next?” demanded Tibbs as they strode down the pavement side by side.
Pevensey slowed, rubbing a hand against his chin.
“It depends on what information Miss Cecil has been able to extract from Dolly. We know that both Lady and Lord Fremont had motive to harm, and that Lady Fremont had the poison to do it. But whether either of them can be placed at the theater that night is still more than we can say.”