Chapter Four
J ackie did not go home. She reached the old shack in the woods where she kept the clothes that she wore in her other identities, but she did not enter. Instead, she paced up and down the clearing outside the shack, fuming.
She had been so close! If only she had refused to play that final game. Although, if he was prepared to cheat, Lord Riese would probably have found some other way to get the money off her when she tried to walk away. He was a liar, a bully, and a thief.
Her mother’s words echoed in her ears. “Your father would gamble away the last of his coins and things would be worse.” Jackie shuddered.
But it was not her fault, even if Maman would never admit it. Someone should rob Rotten Riese, so he could see how he likes it.
The thought resounded in her brain, stopping her in her tracks. I should rob him . She walked on more slowly. It would not really be theft. She would simply be stealing back the money he had won by cheating. It was her money, by rights.
It would take planning, and to plan, she needed information. She would have to find out where the viscount might keep his money. His study? His bedroom? Where were those rooms in the castle? When was Riese most likely to be away from home? What time of night would be best for moving around without being detected?
Would some of those who had lost places in the castle be willing to help her? She would have to be careful—she could not risk letting them know what she planned lest someone betray her. But surely, if she talked to enough people, she could piece together the information she needed?
She had best get some sleep. She could not start asking questions until the morning. Tonight, the rickety bed in the shack would have to do, for she was not going home until she could pour money into her mother’s lap. She was not like her father. She wasn’t.
*
It did not take Jackie long to gather the information she needed. She made a start the following morning when she went to work at Squire Pershing’s stables. One of the other grooms had worked for the viscount before he came to the squire’s and was still walking out with one of the viscount’s maids.
“How do the stables here compare to those at the castle?” she asked him, as they mucked out the stalls.
“You don’t want to work up at the castle, young Jackie,” the man said. And he began a series of hair-raising stories about how the viscount and his mother treated the servants. Jackie barely had to ask any questions, and she soon had a good idea of when the viscount made demands on the stable, and where he tended to go when he took out his curricle or a carriage. The same for the viscountess and also Miss Riese, her daughter.
“Mr. Allegro mostly takes his horse,” the groom commented. “And he likes to groom the beast himself. He’s a nice man, is Mr. Allegro.”
Jackie had been trying not to think about Mr. Allegro. Until last night, she had only ever seen him at a distance. He was even handsomer up close. Far handsomer than Lord Riese, who was running to fat and who generally wore a scowl or a leer.
Mr. Allegro was tall and muscular, with dark brown eyes and hair that probably would probably have touched his shoulders, if not for the curl. She liked his eyes. They were kind, she thought. He looked as if he smiled a lot, though she couldn’t imagine the Rieses gave him much to smile about.
It counted, too, that Mr. Allegro had helped her to get away. She hoped he didn’t get into trouble with Lord Riese for it. But then again, he was some kind of cousin of the viscount. Presumably that would help insulate him from the worst Riese could do.
He had not been gambling last night. He had not been drinking either. Just watching. Jackie felt a shiver run through her. She had a feeling he saw a lot more than he revealed. Just as well that he did not sleep in the main house—according to her groom informant, he had a bed in the steward’s cottage.
After the morning’s work was over, she headed for her next informant, changing back into Jacqueline at the shack first, and then stopping at the bakery to spend the few coins she had left on buns and a loaf of bread.
Grace Campion had worked as a maid at the castle and would know the layout. The only question was whether she would share it with Jackie. She had been dismissed from her position when her pregnancy was too advanced to be hidden. She refused to name the father, but everyone assumed she had been forced by the viscount. She wasn’t the first, by a long shot.
Turned off without a character or any wages, she lived with her mother and her little daughter in a small cottage just outside the village. The little family depended heavily on the goodwill of the villagers, including Maman, who gave Grace piecework. When Jackie arrived at the cottage, she met Maman at the gate into the Campion’s small front garden.
“Jacqueline. You stayed out all night.” Maman glowered at her, and her tone was accusing.
Jackie felt a surge of resentment. She had been doing her best, but it was never good enough for Maman. “You said you did not wish to see me,” she pointed out.
“You will come home with me now,” Maman told her. “I have given the shirts you did not finish to Grace, but I have some sheets that need hemming.”
No. Not this time. She would not fall into heel at her mother’s skirts, like a chastised dog. “I have things I must do, Maman.” Adding, in the forlorn hope that her mother would understand. “I am trying to put matters right.”
“Do as you please then. You always do.” Maman brushed past her and headed off down the lane toward the village. “Just like her father,” she muttered.
Grace was watching them from the doorstep. Jackie forced a smile. “Miss Campion, may I have a word?”
The former maid frowned with narrowed eyes. The heavens alone knew what she had made of the little scene with Maman. “Come inside, then,” she said. “I need to finish peeling the vegetables.”
Jackie followed her into the little cottage—the main room downstairs and a steep staircase up to the sleeping area above.
“Ma has taken Ruby for a visit with Mrs. White, and I am making stew,” Grace explained.
She led the way past the small sitting area, where the basket of shirts that Jackie had been sewing was perched on one of the chairs. Grace waved Jackie to a stool at the kitchen table at the rear of the room. Cooking was done in the fireplace, which also provided the heat for the whole cottage.
The room was sparsely furnished but painfully clean and decorated with a few pretty touches—a bunch of spring flowers in a cracked vase, a colorful rag rug, a couple of samplers pinned to the walls that read “Bear ye one another’s burdens” and “God bless this home”.
Jackie picked up a paring knife and began scraping the outer skin off a carrot. Grace said her thanks and fetched a chopping knife to begin cutting those vegetables that were waiting ready. “If you need the work back, Miss Haricot, I understand. You will need Madame’s agreement, though.”
“I haven’t come about the shirts, Miss Campion,” Jackie assured her. “Though I wouldn’t blame you if you sewed ill wishes into every seam. I certainly feel like doing so. The viscount is a loathsome man.”
Grace looked up from her chopping, the frown back in her eyes. “Is that monster after you now, Miss Haricot?”
What could it hurt to be honest? It might make Grace more likely to help her. “He wants to be,” she admitted. “He made an offer, and when I refused him, he went to Madame. He is threatening to evict her if she does not make me submit to him.”
“No! Is that what you and she have argued about? Is she trying to force you?”
“Never,” Grace assured her. “We do not agree about how to stop him, though.”
The former maid grimaced. “I certainly cannot help you, Miss Haricot. I wish I could. Just don’t go anywhere you might meet him, especially alone. Though I daresay that if he hauled you off the street in front of half the town, no one would stop him.” Her tone turned bitter. “Many of them would find a way to blame you, and not him.”
“You can help me,” Jackie said. The inspiration had just come to her, and she followed it, testing it with her mind even as it flowed off her tongue. “He is a villain, and there must be evidence of things he has done that even he wants to keep hidden. I am going to search the castle, but I have never been into the private parts of the house.” It was even true, and she did not know why she had not thought of it before. “What can you tell me about his study and his private chambers?”
Silence from the other side of the table. Grace had stopped chopping and was staring at her, her jaw dropped. “Do you mean that?” she said, after a moment.
She really did. Stealing from the viscount would be satisfying. But it wouldn’t hurt him half as much as losing the favor of those who ignored his wrongdoing. “If you don’t feel you can help me, I am still doing it,” she replied. “And I will understand. Even if I am caught, I will never tell anyone you have helped me. But you must do what you believe is best for you and Ruby.”
Grace diced a potato before she spoke, wielding the knife with skill and speed. She swept what she’d chopped into the bowl where small cubes of carrot, turnip, and parsnip waited. Then she paused and looked Jackie directly in the eyes. “I will help,” she declared. “What do you need to know?”
*
“Oscar, before you go out, I would like a word,” Pol said after dinner. The ladies had withdrawn, and it was just the two of them and a couple of footmen in the room.
“I’ll have a port then,” Oscar said, waving a hand at one of the footmen.
Pol stood. “I’ll get it,” he said to the men. “Leave us, please. I will let you know when you can clear.”
“Uh oh.” Oscar grinned, mockingly. “I detect a Polly scold.”
The topic Pol wanted to broach had nothing amusing about it. “If you wish to see it that way. I am looking out for your interests, cousin. And they won’t be served by alienating the villagers and your tenants.”
He handed Oscar his port, and the heathen tipped back his head and swallowed the lot. Pol doubted if he’d tasted it.
“If you are going to scold me, I’m leaving,” Oscar threatened.
Right. Straight to the point then. “You’ve been trying to talk John Westerley’s daughter into meeting you in private. She had the sense to talk to her father. He asked me to let you know that any man who touches her, whoever he might be, will lose his ballocks.” Margaret Westerley was fifteen. If Oscar seduced her or worse, Pol might just hold his cousin down for the knife.
Oscar snorted. “Westerley is my tenant. He won’t touch me.”
“Westerley runs the biggest and most successful farm in the district. If he is hanged or transported for gelding you, you will lose not only your breeding equipment but also a third of your income. That is, if he gets caught. I tell you now, Oscar. If you turn up minus important body parts, I shall deny we had this conversation, and all your tenants and most of your villagers will make certain that Westerley has an alibi.”
“She’s ripe for it,” Oscar protested. “You can’t blame me if the tarts lead me on.”
Rubbish. Margaret Westerley was modest, well-behaved and innocent. She was also clearly frightened of Oscar. Perhaps he thought her horror and disgust to be an act, but Pol did not know how he translated that into “leading him on.”
Except that she was remarkably pretty, but there was no point in arguing that a girl’s appearance was not an invitation to molest her. “You’re an adult,” Pol told him. “If you want to stay whole, think with your brain and not your pecker. Leave the tenants’ daughters alone.”
In a whiny singsong, Oscar repeated the last sentence and added to it. “Leave the tenants’ daughters alone. Leave the villagers’ daughters alone. Leave the maids alone.” His sneer broadened. “You might be a eunuch, Polly, but I’m not.”
“Keep on poaching other people’s women and you will be,” Pol promised, ignoring the insult. “That goes for the dressmaker’s girl, too, by the way.”
Nothing in Oscar’s eyes or his expression hinted that he knew anything about what Pol had heard in the village—that the dressmaker was searching for her seamstress, who had not come home last night. So, it probably wasn’t anything to do with Oscar. Pol hoped she was somewhere safe, but he greatly feared she might have fallen afoul of some of the other predators who thrived in this district. Oscar’s example and the negligence of the magistrate saw to that.
“The dressmaker’s girl is my business, not yours.” Oscar was on his feet and pouring himself another port. “As for the tenants, I’m the highest ranked peer in the district. They won’t touch me. Little mice. Everyone is afraid, and they should be. You should be.”
He tipped his glass up again, swallowing several times as the port ran down his throat. “I can destroy them,” he added. “I can destroy you, Polly. So, stop trying to tell me what to do.”
He stormed out of the room.
That went about as well as I expected . Honestly, Pol should let Westerley loose with his gelding knife. Pol couldn’t think of anything else that would stop the viscount from his indiscriminate rutting.
He went out into the hall. “You can clear,” he told the waiting footmen. “I will take my port through to the study.” He’d been out about the estate all day and had come up to the main house to find a heap of paperwork waiting for his attention. His landlord, the steward, was away visiting a sister, and his cook-housekeeper had gone with him, since apparently the two women had been friends since they were children.
And while the company here at the Towers left a great deal to be desired, they had an excellent cook. He’d eaten a splendid dinner. If he stayed here tonight, he could expect a delicious breakfast.
Tired though he was, he’d not sleep until he’d managed to get at least some of the correspondence dealt with. After that, he’d probably catch a few winks on the sofa in the study—it would not be the first time.