Chapter 7
Archer sat at his desk and stared at Gerry and Lamentation. Both looked considerably more drooping and tragic than the bloodhounds at their feet.
“Tell me that it worked,” he said. “Tell me they’re finally leaving.”
Gerry winced. “Ah,” he rumbled. “No.”
Archer tried not to grind his teeth. “Tell me that you did not fill this house with hundreds of green, malodorous beetles for nothing.”
Five days ago, he’d been forced to abandon Lady Ruby to her own devices in the kitchen.
She had, as he’d anticipated, promptly purloined Wall’s favorite macaroni.
Lamentation, meanwhile, had dragged Archer to the back of the house, where the makings of one of their schemes to rid the house of ladies-in-waiting had gone somewhat awry.
For over a week, Lamentation and Gerry—motivated, as usual, by Lamentation’s penchant for brilliant ideas—had been gathering shield bugs, which they’d intended to loose in the ladies’ bedchambers.
Unfortunately, the shield bugs had broken free from their cardboard captivity and begun to flutter wildly about the room that Gerry and Lamentation shared.
It had taken hours to get the damned things back in the boxes, and Wall had been shouting about proper habitation and diet, and Archer was absolutely certain that a number of the creatures had slipped out through a gap beneath the door hinge.
He kept finding the escapees in his coat and his trouser pockets and once, memorably, deep within one of his stockings.
Lamentation had promised Wall that they would release the remaining bugs into the ladies’ room expediently, and Archer had spent the subsequent days hoping against hope for the sound of ladylike shrieks. Or packing. Or the departing footsteps of expensive slippers.
He had heard nothing of the sort.
“She liked them,” Gerry said gloomily.
“Who did? Lady Ruby?” Archer sprang to his feet and started to pace. One of the bloodhounds bayed enthusiastically in response.
Of course she would like the beetles, damned devil creature that she was. She had certainly liked everything else he’d thrown at her.
He had thought this would not be difficult?
It was bloody impossible. She was impossible—a little plum pudding of a woman who could out-scheme a hardened criminal.
Somehow she’d turned the entire house upside down with her pigments and oils; he felt as though he spent three-quarters of each day attempting to anticipate her whereabouts and transport illegally acquired silks to new and more obscure hiding places.
When they’d absconded with her bed linens, she’d had a fresh set procured in less than half a day.
And when he’d put that damned seagull in the music room, she’d simply climbed a ladder, agile as a sailor on the ratlines, and chased it back outside with a fluttering lace glove.
He suspected if she had a mind for gambling, she could’ve coaxed fortunes out of half the rich sots in London, with her air of sweetness and that twisty, ruthless brain. She—
“Not Lady Ruby,” said Lamentation. “Lady Alice.”
Archer halted. “Lady Alice? Are you certain?”
“I have managed to divine the differences between them, yes. Lady Alice. The black-haired one, who looks like she’d run screaming at the sight of a hole in her stocking.
She squealed in delight when she found the beetles in her chamber, started talking in Latin, and then told the other girls all about how, in the South Seas, shield bugs come in enormous sizes and display a maternal instinct heretofore unknown in the kingdom. Or phylum. Or something.”
“Also,” Gerry put in, “she says they’re not beetles. We got that bit wrong.”
“They’re not beetles,” Archer repeated.
“No. No chewing mouthparts.”
“No chewing—” Archer flung up his hands. “This is madness. Absolute, utter—‘no chewing mouthparts’? Are they ladies-in-waiting or natural philosophers?”
“I’ve never seen a lady-in-waiting,” Lamentation said. “Perhaps this is typical.”
“It is not typical.”
Lamentation shook back his curls, and Archer saw a green bug flutter out from where it had been entrapped. One of the bloodhounds leapt eagerly to catch it.
Archer groaned, thrust his hands into his own hair, and then started to pace again.
“Cap,” Lamentation said, “I know you said—”
“No.”
“—not to bring this up except in the direst straits and—”
“No, Lamentation.”
“—I hate to say this, but I think things have grown dire.”
Gerry looked up from where he was using a handkerchief to polish the toe of his boot. “I agree. Never seen your eye twitch like that before, Cap. Not even at Grado.”
Archer squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again, which regrettably did not still the tiny tic. He elected to pretend it was not happening. “No. We are not bringing out the Scourge of St. Petroc’s.”
Lamentation settled his hands on his hips. “I don’t see why not! I think it’s a good idea.”
“You think it’s a good idea because you invented it. There is no Scourge of St. Petroc’s.”
Archer had never heard those words put together in that order until Lamentation had brought them out in front of Lady Ruby.
Lamentation’s powers of invention were, evidently, bolstered by bug-induced panic.
And now that he’d planted the seeds for the creature’s existence, Lamentation was inclined to take the scheme to its natural, outrageous culmination.
Lamentation was frowning lightly. “I am aware that the creature is not real. That’s all the better. I’ve been saying it for days now, Cap: We can act the part of the Scourge. Clothe ourselves in sea wrack. Growl and moan outside their windows—”
“Their windows are about thirty feet in the air.”
Lamentation was undeterred by this threat of physics. “Lurk in the shadows and persuade them that the Scourge is here to devour their hearts. If we do it right, we take all the suspicion off Pomeroy House and put it on this mysterious foul beast.”
Archer stifled another groan for fear of hurting Lamentation’s feelings.
The trouble was, it was not a good idea. They had resolved not to imprison the ladies-in-waiting in the manor—despite Lamentation’s enthusiastic suggestions to that effect—which meant that the trio visited the village regularly.
How was he to persuade them that there was a real and terrifying local legend known as the Scourge of St. Petroc’s if none of the St. Petroc’s residents had ever heard of such a thing?
Unfortunately, Archer was running out of good ideas. He had exhausted his own capacity for ingenuity with lions and marrow jelly and a bloody horde of insects. What would it take to frighten off these ladies-in-waiting if a biblical plague did not manage it?
“No,” he said finally. “No foul beasts in the shadows. Not yet, in any case. Let me keep trying.”
Frightening the ladies off had not worked thus far. But it still seemed possible that Archer could talk them into leaving. Somehow induce them to recall how lovely their lives were back in London and how much they missed their homes.
He cast a suspicious glance at Gerry and Lamentation as he left the office. Lamentation smiled angelically back, even as he whispered something to Gerry about sea lettuce.
Gerry, at least, would listen to his orders. Gerry had been only eleven when he’d found himself on one of Archer’s ships. He’d been narrow-shouldered and sullen then—afraid, Archer had thought, beneath his surly silence.
When he’d gone overboard with the iron ballast, no one had noticed but Archer.
It had been a hell of a leap and plunge to get the boy back onto the ship.
Gerry hadn’t thanked him, had glared furiously in the other direction, his arms across his chest and water dripping from his hair and into his mouth.
He hadn’t cried until later. Archer had found him curled up in the fo’c’sle, and when he’d sat down silently beside him, Gerry had flung himself wordlessly into Archer’s arms.
He’d been Archer’s ever since—would follow Archer straight into Hell.
Lamentation, on the other hand, was more likely to charge Satan with a saber out of the wrongheaded notion that he was protecting Archer from himself.
When Archer had been sent down from the navy, Lamentation had been far more furious than the rest—would have happily thrown Admiral Penney in front of a cannon and been hanged for his efforts if it would have kept Archer on the Swallow.
Archer had to get these ladies-in-waiting out of the house before one of his crew did something catastrophic and wrongheaded and loyal.
But inside the library, he did not find the trio he’d expected—he found only Lady Ruby, standing on a stool and carefully repairing a crack in the wall with a silver mortar knife.
She hadn’t heard him enter, so he took the opportunity to study her.
He had contemplated her more than seemed strictly necessary this last fortnight—mostly how to expel her from the house—but in their typical interactions, he was generally scheming as rapidly as possible, trying his level best not to let her get the better of him.
And when he was sparring with her, he could not properly take her in.
Now he could. Her blond fall of hair was pulled back off her face, and he could just make out her pointed chin, the round cheeks that gave her face the contours of a heart. He had no idea if her figure was in fashion in her circles—plump, buxom, soft about the jawline—
God above, he ought not think about her figure.
She was certainly in fashion to him.
He cleared his throat, and she jerked around to look at him. She colored pink, scrambled off the stool, and then glanced down in dismay as mortar fell in a gloomy plop onto the floor at her feet. Hastily, she drew the stool over the spill, winced, and then thrust the mortar knife behind her back.
She had cleverness and tenacity in spades, to be sure—but subtle, she was not.
“Captain Archer.” Her voice was a trifle breathless. In her brief flurry of activity, her hair had burst free from whatever had held it back, spilling in a disheveled tangle down her neck and shoulders.