Chapter 20
Ives arrived at Langley House the next evening. He found Gareth in the library as planned. He poured himself some brandy and stood by the window, watching twilight begin its fade to black.
“Where are the others?”
“Eva is in her chambers, reading. Lance is in his study, pretending to attend to estate affairs,” Gareth said. “The solicitor sent a stack of documents around late in the afternoon, with a message they required his immediate attention.”
“Convenient.”
“Damned convenient. Good of him to help out.”
“He does not want Lance in more trouble any more than we do.”
He opened the window and stuck his head out. He could see the moon low in the sky. There were few clouds to interfere with what light it would give.
Gareth stood. “Shall we go?”
Ives nodded. They walked side by side to the reception hall.
“Ives. I did not know you were here.” Lance’s voice sounded from the stairs.
“Keep walking,” Ives muttered under his breath. He shot a quick glance back at Lance, who stood on one of the stairs with a stack of papers in his arms. “I just stopped by to get Gareth.” He aimed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
Gareth turned and shrugged. “Out and about. No place of interest. No place that is any fun. I am married now, so it is bound to be a boring few hours all around.”
“Not as boring as mine.” He frowned at the documents. “I think we need a new solicitor.”
Ives hung back while Gareth engaged.
“It is quite a lot of paper,” Gareth said.
“I was going to spread it out in the library and see if it makes more sense that way.”
“Such are the duties of the title, eh?” Gareth gave Lance’s shoulder a firm clasp. “We will let you get to it, then.”
“Hell. It can wait. Even being bored by you is better than this.” He gestured for a footman, and deposited the stack into his arms. He brushed off his coat sleeves. “So, where to first?”
Ives inserted himself. “You cannot come.”
“Why not?”
“It would not be appropriate,” Gareth said. “If we are caught, it is one thing. If you are, it is a huge scandal and the talk of the town.”
“Caught doing what?”
Ives wanted to throttle Gareth. “None of your business. Which is why you cannot come.”
“Is it his business?” Lance jerked his thumb at Gareth. “I didn’t think so. It is your business.”
“Correct. So I get to make all the decisions, such as the one that says you are not joining us.”
“Yes, I am. An adventure is afoot, I can tell.”
“A very small one,” Gareth soothed. “So small it is almost as boring as those documents.”
Lance frowned peevishly. Then his expression cleared. “It has to do with that Belvoir case, doesn’t it?”
Ives often regretted forgetting that Lance, for all his self-absorption and distraction, had a mind as sharp as a sword when he chose to use it. That he so chose at the most inconvenient moments was a source of unending annoyance.
“I am right. You are investigating something, and I’ll wager it is not for the Crown’s interests. You will only make a mess of it without me, whatever it is.” He snapped his fingers at a footman. “My horse.”
Gareth sighed, defeated. Ives wondered if they could lose Lance between this house and the one they would visit.
“Do not follow your own nose in this,” he said to Lance. “If you insist on coming, at least do not get in the way or cause more trouble than we need.”
“I am insulted and wounded. I do not cause trouble.” He strode to the door, paused, and turned to them. “Say, do we need our pistols?”
“It is not that kind of adventure.”
“If you say so. Pity.”
* * *
Lance stood in the alley, gazing up at the house.
“Are you coming?” Ives whispered.
Lance joined him. “The house appeared familiar to me. Have I been here before?”
“I am sure you have never stood in this spot before.”
They crowded Gareth, who bent over the lock on the carriage house, working a pick.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Lance asked.
“Here and there. It mostly requires concentration, and silence.”
“You will have to teach me. It might be a handy skill to have. Don’t you agree, Ives? We will have Gareth give us lessons on lock picking some rainy day.”
“Concentration and silence,” Gareth repeated tightly.
Lance folded his arms and waited.
Thus far bringing him had not created any particular problems. By arriving by the mews behind the house, and entering along the alley on which the carriage house stretched, Lance had not even realized just where they were.
They would be done here and he would be back in Langley House with him none the wiser.
The lock clicked. Gareth straightened, removed it, and swung open one half of the carriage house door. They all slipped in.
Windows allowed moonlight at least. The bulk of a carriage filled most of the space. “A groom has his chamber above,” Ives whispered. “He may be there, so move quietly.”
“Move where? And why?” Lance asked.
“We are looking for evidence of a cellar, and access to it,” Gareth said.
They walked the perimeter of the room, then went through the door to the stables. The horses had been noisy and nervous, and became more so on their arrival. Lance walked to the stalls and calmed them. Ives paced the plank floor, evidence that this building once had had a different purpose.
Suddenly his boots made different sounds. Hollow ones. He crouched and felt the floor. His hand found a ring. He gestured for his brothers, and pulled.
A hinged door in the floor opened. Darkness gaped below. “Wait here,” he said.
He lowered himself through the hole. There were no steps, so he dropped down.
There was a cellar after all, one so low ceilinged he had to bend his shoulders to move about.
A small window high on one wall must have been what Padua saw last night.
The vaguest light leaked in, but it was enough to show the lamp on a table nearby.
He went over, found the flint, and lit the candle in the lamp. The cellar took on form. Shapes and shadows stretched into view.
“What is down there?” Lance’s loud whisper poured through the hole.
“Stay there. It is not large enough for all of us.”
Silence. Then a few scrapes, huffs, and boots landing on the cellar’s dirt floor.
“I said to wait.”
Lance ignored him. He looked around the cellar, then advanced on a corner. “What is this here? Some kind of machinery.”
“It used to be an ironmonger’s or some such factory.”
“This is iron, that is certain. Bring that lamp here.”
Ives carried over the lamp. The machinery’s parts jumped out of the dark. He looked at it and knew at once what it was. “Shit.”
Lance played with the wheel and poked at the roller. “Is it a press? It is rather small.”
“It is a rather small cellar.”
“You make a good point.”
“How heavy is it?”
Lance set his arms under it and tried to lift it. “Heavy, but not immovable.”
Of course not. Men had to carry it in. Which meant men could carry it out. Ives set down the lamp. “Let us see if we can hoist it up to Gareth.”
“You are going to steal it?”
“I am. Since you insisted on coming, so are you.”
Lance did not argue. “I hope you know what you are doing.”
Together they lifted the press and carried it to the hole in the floor. Straining, they pushed it up through the opening. Gareth helped from his end, until the press rested on the stable floor.
“There is a door to the garden, near the carriage,” Ives said. “Can the two of you take this out that way, and hide it? Just tuck it under some shrubbery for now.”
Gareth gave him a direct but curious look. Then he extended his arm for Lance to use to get out.
Up above, Ives heard them shuffling along the floor toward the carriage room. He returned to the lamp. He carried it back to where he had been, near the window.
It cast its glow over the wall, and the two objects he had seen there when he first lit it. A good-sized wooden box sat on a large trunk. He set down the lamp and threw the box’s top back.
It contained thin metal plates, stacked one atop the other. He ran his fingertips over one, and felt fine ridges and depressions. He lifted it and held it to the light. The ghostly image of a banknote showed.
He lifted the whole box and set it on the table with the lamp. Then he opened the trunk. Its contents surprised him less. Paper filled it. Half was blank. The other half consisted of sheets with six banknotes, each sheet about the size of the bed on that press that had just been carted away.
Padua had not only been correct, she had been completely correct, more totally than she guessed. The counterfeiters were not only connected to this house. They had worked here, right in this cellar.
He gazed at the irrefutable evidence of that. Evidence that, if Hadrian Belvoir’s ownership of this property became known, would send him to the gallows for sure. It would be assumed he was not the dupe of a whale, but the whale himself.
And Padua . . . He shook his head. He did not have to speculate how it would look. She had announced she was taking her father’s place. She lived in the house right now.
He cursed under his breath. Cursed long and hard.
This was all evidence in a serious crime.
He was supposed to give it to the authorities.
To ignore this, to turn a blind eye—that was not who he was.
It violated all that he believed and would leave him without honor or integrity, even if it never came to light. And if it did . . .
He closed the trunk. He blew out the candle. Steeling his strength, he lifted the box with the plates and carried it over to the hole. He lifted it over his head and slid it onto the floorboards, then jumped, grabbed the sides of the opening, and leveraged his weight up.
Gasping for breath, he rose and carried the box to the next chamber, and out the door.
“What have you there?” Lance’s whisper carried through the silent night as he and Gareth approached on the path.
“Do not ask.”
“Let me help you.” Gareth moved to take one side.
“No. Go and wait for me near the door. I will join you in a minute.”