Chapter 10
“You sent notes to the colonel and the captain, asking them to visit Lord Leontius’s study?” asked Edward as they made their way downstairs. He hoped the note of doubt in his voice wouldn’t discourage her.
Tabby bounced down the steps, clearly pleased with her machinations. She was altogether too reckless and competent to be allowed to make her way in the world alone. Someone should tie her down, fill her with babies, fuck her against that bit of wall over there—
“Dick Stone, are you even listening?” she asked.
“Ahh, yes, just thinking about how we might decorate the rooms like that,” he said, gesturing to the spot of wall he’d been staring at with what must have been feral intensity.
Tabby looked at the rather plain stretch of wall in confusion, but didn’t question him. She scratched under her wig, and Edward fought the impulse to laugh, grabbing her hand instead and leading her on.
“Wait. How did you send notes?”
“Oh, I wrote them. Lord Leontius sent a lady’s maid to help me with my ribbons and geegaws, so we helped each other and then her footman beau delivered the notes.”
“All this while I wallowed in doubt and self-pity,” he said, nodding in amazement. “But why send the colonel and the captain to the study? They’re hardly going to walk in, see my face, and confess.”
“We don’t need them to confess immediately,” she said. “We just need to know who did it. And then we’ll make another plan.”
He led her down a hall that a footman indicated would lead to the study.
“How the devil will simply meeting them tell us who did it?” he asked, taken aback.
Tabby cast him a concerned glance. “You don’t know when someone is about to deal a blow to the breadbasket?”
“Pardon?”
“You know, that look a cull gets before they’re going to punch you and you better make a leg or end up real sore?”
“I can’t say that I have,” he said. “People don’t tend to haul off and hit lords. At least not without cause.”
“No, they merely make false accusations of treason.”
She had a point.
“So we’re to sit in the study and stare at faces?” he asked.
“I had my lady’s maid set up a screen like you used for dressin’ when you were shy,” she said excitedly. “We can go behind it and watch those army men and then pop out — surprise! — and see if one of them looks mad at you.”
“As far as plans go, it’s not the worst I’ve heard. Certainly better than I’ve come up with in the years since my disgrace.”
Edward helped steady Tabby when she tripped on the carpet.
“It’s so thick I just want to die on it,” she said, looking at the luxurious pile longingly.
“Surely I can convince you in favor of dying in our bed, long, long in the future,” he said, then navigated her into the study even as she tripped again and cast him a questioning look.
“Oh dear,” she said under her breath when they walked into the study and found it occupied.
“The Camvilles,” intoned Edward without moving his lips.
Major Camville and Mrs. Camville were nice enough people, but not germane to the false treason charges since that mother-in-law had prevented Edward from rogering the major’s wife.
It was fortunate that someone at Elmwood could be considered, if not a friend, then at least not an enemy.
“Stone,” said the major, his arm falling to his side. For her part, Mrs. Camville sank into Lord Leontius’s plush chair behind the desk.
Now that he thought about it, it was rather odd that lordly studies were so often left unlocked and empty when guests visited. Such places seemed like the perfect site for , supported by the fact that even Tabby of the slums thought to assemble the cuckolds there for observation.
Edward looked longingly at the promised screen and hoped they could conclude their pleasantries with enough time to slip behind it for some kisses before their guests arrived.
“What is the meaning of this?” asked the major, his jaw tight. He waved a scrap of common paper as Mrs. Camville pressed a handkerchief to her face.
“My letter,” whispered Tabby. “But how did they get it?”
“Someone sent notes to Giffard and the Earl,” said the major. “Messages in a child’s handwriting. They were puzzling over them at tea. And then you, Dick Stone, stud extraordinaire, waltz in with your latest conquest.”
“What are we to think?” wailed Mrs. Camville.
“What are we to think?” muttered Edward for Tabby’s benefit.
“My wife is distressed,” said the major. “Most distressed. Always has been about the foul-up, but this latest blow has hurt her most acutely.”
“Most acutely!” she cried.
“Edward,” said Tabby lowly.
“It was easy enough to ignore things in Portugal at first,” said the major, his expression growing ever more haunted. “But the shame you inflicted on our family has been a festering wound these many years.”
“Dick Stone, listen to me,” Tabitha rasped.
“Here I am in my dotage, and my wife never fails to remind me of my failures,” said Camville, his shoulders rounded and slumping forward. “Failing to secure a title. The country cottage with drafty rooms that I did manage to obtain.”
“It’s so very drafty!” Mrs. Camville exclaimed.
“But foremost, the thing I must hear of daily, that also weighs on my heart, is my failure to produce a child,” bellowed the major, warming to the topic.
The whole situation was most peculiar. Mrs. Camville had forgone her dramatic repetition of the major’s statements in favor of wailing into her handkerchief, and Tabby was tugging at his coat insistently.
He needed to say something to calm the couple and avoid attracting the notice of the entire house party to this well-appointed room.
If guests set arse in those finely tooled leather chairs near the fireplace, they’d never depart!
“I am very sorry to hear that your breeding efforts have come to naught,” said Edward, shuffling closer to the desk despite Tabby’s attempts to pull him out the door. She probably saw a tea tray passing by and wanted to fill her belly in the drawing room, but she’d just have to wait!
The major regarded Tabby’s note, sent to one of the two men most likely to have levied the false treason charges at Edward, and nodded. “It’s too much. The insult is too much to bear.”
“But sir! I can assure you I have never interfered with your wife! At no time did I disrespect the bonds of matrimony by engaging in…that act with her,” protested Edward, trying yet again to resolve this minor disturbance quickly.
For her part, Tabby had given up attempting to drag him out of the room, and she simply looked on in horror. He’d really need to feed her properly once their inquiries were complete; she must be starving to be looking about like that.
“And that, Lord Netherwallop, is precisely the problem,” said the major with a strange light in his eyes. “Was a mere ‘major’ or ‘mister’ insufficient for breeding? Did you not consider us worthy of your stud services, unlike the captain and the colonel?”
Never let it be said that Dick Stone was an intellectual sort of man. His fashion sense was limited by his purse, his frame and cock were good but not astonishing, and his stories went on longer than warranted.
But he wasn’t completely stupid.
“You mean to tell me you’re insulted because I did not interfere with your wife?”
“Insulted is a fine way to put it,” said the major, spittle flying as he unleashed his spleen. “Your aristocratic predilections prevented my wife and me from achieving happiness at last, even as you spread your seed indiscriminately to other families.”
“I am most sorry,” said Edward. “I mean to cease my breeding activities, but I’m certain you can find another stud to service the lady and complete your family.”
Tabby cast Edward a look of confusion, and he was tempted to haul her off for that afternoon tea followed by a solid rogering, demme these Camvilles.
“You suggest that while taunting us with these notes passed to our friends,” said the major, holding up Tabby’s missive. “After denying my wife her due disrespect in Portugal. It’s too much to bear, far too much, sirrah!”
Edward sighed and put a hand on the buttons at his falls. “If it’s such a cause of consternation, I suppose I can undertake a breeding, provided my…Tabby agrees.”
Tabby’s eyes went wide, and she nodded no slowly, as if trying to tell Edward something without words.
“My wife has gone through the change while you were sticking your cock in every other woman in the kingdom!” roared the major. “Every other aristocratic woman! Is she not sufficiently beautiful to tempt you?”
“I can assure you, had your mother-in-law not been—”
“Edward!” rasped Tabby, clawing at his coat now, and pulling him along despite her much shorter stature.
“You’re not getting away this time, Dick Stone,” growled the major. Edward looked away from Tabby for just a moment to see what the man was on about and had to look back at him immediately.
In his hand, he had a dueling pistol rather like the one that sat on Edward’s father’s desk. He suspected this one was made after the Stuart era and kept in good repair. Demme and blast.
Edward felt as if something had knocked him from a boat, and he was now falling through water. His ears didn’t quite work, and his vision blurred. The last time this had happened, he’d been in battle — with Tencendor nearly cut from under him.
“This time?” interjected Tabby, advancing on the major. “So it was you? You put forth the false treason rumors?”
“You’re nothing but an aristocratic little miss,” hurled the major. “You wouldn’t know the insult he’s offered my family.”
“You’re wrong,” she hissed, kicking off her delicate slippers. “And you don’t seem to understand the insult you’ve offered my family.”
At that, Tabby yanked the wig from her hair, sending pins across the thickly carpeted floor. The mass of hair thumped against the screen behind which they’d meant to hide. And then she raced to the desk, right into the maws of danger.