CHAPTER 26
Talk Erasmus did. All the time that Harold cleaned, bound, and braced his leg in the kitchen, he poured out what he knew to Eva and Gareth.
He had come late to the scheme, unfortunately, and did not know the names of all involved. Eva assumed that Lord Ywain was persuading Mr. Crawley to fill in those details upstairs.
She listened instead to how Nigel had recruited Erasmus to help retrieve some property stored some distance away, and how they drove a wagon there over almost three days and moved many flat crates onto it.
She heard how another man arrived as they drove away, and exchanged pistol fire with Nigel, who took that ball in his side.
“Cursing he was,” Erasmus said while he watched Harold handle him none too gently.
Sweat dampened his hair, the result of terror and pain.
“Cursing those who first expected him to wait forever to turn the goods into blunt, then lied to him and said it had all gone up in flames so there’d be nothing to sell after all.
He guessed it was a lie, he said, and he needed money. ”
Eva wanted to accuse him of lying, only right now Erasmus was too frightened to lie. Her heart sickened. Nigel had helped in the theft of the pictures, just as Mr. Crawley had implied.
“Did you help him store the crates once you returned to Langdon’s End?” Gareth asked,
Erasmus shook his head. “He left me off on the other side of town. I told him I should help, that with that wound he would only kill himself dragging the big ones off the cart and around. He wouldn’t hear me.”
Dragging those crates up to that attic probably had made the wound worse, Eva thought. It possibly did kill him, eventually.
“How did you come to be with this man tonight?” Gareth asked.
Erasmus flushed red. “Came upon them the first time they went into Miss Russell’s house.
She asked me to check on things every morning, and that morning these two men were there.
Wiggins, that big one, and another one. Tearing it apart, they were.
They flipped me five shillings and just continued on.
I’d no idea it had to do with those crates from that night.
I told them there was nothing to steal, but they didn’t listen, and I couldn’t stop them.
Then, the other day, Mr. Crawley was in the village with Wiggins, who pointed me out, and there was another five shillings in my hand. ”
“Did you recognize Crawley from that night you helped Nigel Russell?” Gareth asked.
“I didn’t see him there. He may have been, though. I was in a wagon with the cattle under Mr. Russell’s whip, wasn’t I?”
Just then Harold pulled the rope to tie the splint in place. Erasmus screamed in pain. “Hell, you don’t have to try and kill me! We’re friends, for mercy’s sake.”
“Friends? For years you’ve been smirking about some big secret, and I go to find it was this.
You’re no friend of mine if you deal in with such as that blackguard above us.
” Harold gave the rope another pull for good measure.
“That should fix you fine until the surgeon cuts out the ball. You’ll be fit as a fiddle for the gallows. ”
“Gallows!”
“What do you think becomes of them that kidnap girls from their homes, you fool?”
“I didn’t. I insisted I go so she wouldn’t be scared. I thought that Wiggins fellow might get ideas, and I could keep her safe.”
“You tell that to the court, and maybe they’ll believe you better’n I do.” Harold walked out in disgust.
Gareth offered Erasmus his arm. “You will have to stand now, and come outside. There will be other questions.”
Eva helped Erasmus too. Together she and Gareth got him out to the garden. Mr. Crawley already sat there, firm-jawed and resolute. Harold stood nearby, weapon at the ready. Lord Ywain sat twenty paces away, his pistol on the bench beside him. When he saw them emerge, he walked over.
“He is not speaking. Not a word. Moreover, he finds something about this very amusing.”
“It does him no good to cooperate,” Gareth said. “To give you the location of the other pictures would only prove he had taken them, after all.”
“We need that information, however.”
Gareth examined Crawley’s self-satisfied expression. “He waits to hear that you will let him go once the pictures are retrieved. Their location is his only card, but it is an ace.”
Lord Ywain’s face turned to stone. “Are you suggesting that I—”
“Do not pretend you never have before, if it were the only way to learn what you needed.”
Lord Ywain looked at Eva. “I apologize that you are hearing us bargain with justice, especially since it is your family’s justice that will be denied if we do this. Say the word and we will settle for a partial loaf regarding those missing paintings.”
Eva looked at Crawley. He had decided it would be a game to the end. She wondered if it had been a ball from his pistol that condemned her to five years of penurious drudgery with a bitter, melancholy Nigel.
Did it matter? She wanted this over. Finished. She wanted Crawley and the paintings gone. She wanted her life back, so she could look to the future, not the past.
“If you can make him leave England, I do not care what bargain you strike. But if he goes free, so do Erasmus and the others.”
“See if you can find out who the other gentlemen were,” Gareth added. “I doubt he will tell you, but try.”
Lord Ywain paced over to Mr. Crawley.
“You do not have to agree to this,” Gareth said to her. “We could try to beat it out of him.”
“Your brother would never agree to that.”
“You do not know my brother very well.”
She had to smile. “My generosity is not pure, I am ashamed to say. I am hoping that if Mr. Crawley is shown mercy, I will be as well. I am trusting that in light of so much bald thievery, your brother will not care much whether I copied those pictures with innocent intentions, or deliberately forged them.”
“I think he has forgotten about that entirely.”
“For now, perhaps. But he will remember it soon.”
“He will not care about that. It is not part of this mission.” Gareth took her hand and drew her farther from the others. “They will leave soon. When they do, stay here.”
“My sister—”
“Have them take her to the Neville sisters. She should do normal things today, not turn the remaining hours into a monument to her ordeal.” He raised her hand and kissed it. “Stay here with me.”
She closed her eyes so nothing distracted her from how that kiss touched her like the stroke of a velvet brush. Happy pleasure moved in her, reminding her that her own normal had been wonderful recently.
“I fear that if I agree, I will be in danger again,” she said.
“Stay anyway.”
His slow smile and warm gaze promised the best danger.
“I will go in now,” she said. “Make what excuses you will for me.”
* * *
“Hell of a thing,” Ives said. He did not appear happy with his conversation with Crawley.
“He only thinks he knows where the rest of the pictures are, and even then in a general way. According to him, after the paintings were stolen and stored, the leader informed them that a fire destroyed all of it. Crawley was suspicious, but indeed the location was reduced to cinders when he went to check.”
“How did he know Nigel had some of them?”
“He only discovered some of the paintings survived when he also stumbled across one of Miss Russell’s copies three months ago in a Birmingham house he visited, and realized Nigel must have taken some before the fire.
Or after, if the fire was a ruse. As for that general location where he suspects the rest of the paintings are now stored, he will not give it to me.
Unless he is paid a handsome sum along with going free. ”
“That won’t do.”
“No. Nor will he give the names of the other gentlemen involved, although he says that leader is dead now. He will gladly hand over the Wiggins and such, of course. It did start out as a joke, by the way. He learned about the movement of the art from overhearing Demmiwood talk of it. He and some friends from these parts, a few years after the last Duke of Devonshire died, drew away the butler on a ruse and marched it all out again.”
“I expect eventually it stopped being a joke. Probably when one of them learned the value of certain old pictures.”
“They fell out over it. Some, like Russell and Crawley, wanted desperately to sell. Both were young and in debt at the time. Others, including an unnamed gentleman who held considerable sway over the others, this leader Crawley speaks of, did not. That is why Crawley thinks that fire was a ruse. That other gentleman ensured he got his way by telling them there was nothing to sell due to it, but Nigel accused him of lying. When Crawley recently chanced upon one of Miss Russell’s copies, that proved the paintings still existed somewhere, and he assumed that copy meant she knew where they were. ”
That unnamed gentleman probably knew a large sale of art was easier said than done, Gareth guessed.
Crawley would have learned that quickly enough.
Had Ives not been given this mission and drawn his bastard brother into it, would one day Crawley have approached Mr. Fitzallen to obtain help with that sale?
“What are you smiling at?” Ives asked.
“A bit of potential irony. So, all is as set as it will be, it appears.”
“In exchange for his freedom, he will take me to where it was stored before the fire. The mere notion of doing so had him laughing for some reason.”
“Why not see if that big fellow Wiggins knows too? Then you won’t have to bargain. Lance may have terrified Wiggins enough he told everything he knows.”
“That is a good idea. We should go find out. Erasmus can ride atop the carriage, the lady inside, Crawley can walk, and you and I will take our horses.”
Ives began walking away.
“I think I will leave the rest to you,” Gareth said, stopping him. “And the lady is resting, I believe. She is tired, being of a delicate nature.”
Ives turned and walked back. “Feeling faint, was she?”
“Completely undone by the drama.”
“And you intend to stay behind and watch over her health?”
“Someone has to.”
“She has a sister. What are we to do about her?”
“Take her to her friends in the village. The Neville sisters. She will like that.”
Ives laughed lightly. “For the ladies’ sake, and their reputations, my intention is the village learn nothing of this kidnapping. I trust they also will be discreet?”
“Miss Russell is the soul of discretion. I am sure her sister will see the rightness of it too.”
Once more Ives walked away. “I will come when all is finished and tell you where we found what pictures could be retrieved, if we find any at all.”
“Better yet, write me a letter.”