Chapter Two The Duke Who Came Demanding #5
Sebastian should have left then. Every rational purpose of the morning had been concluded.
Yet he lingered, irritated by his own reluctance to depart.
There were questions still crowding his mind.
What had Evangeline looked like when she came here?
What had she said after asking about brothers?
Had she waited for him? Had she cursed him?
Had she died believing he had chosen their father over her?
The questions had no right to be asked in front of strangers.
Miss Vale, unfortunately, had become attached to them.
“Did she suffer?” he asked before he could prevent himself.
Miss Vane stilled.
Miss Vale’s pen stopped.
Sebastian stared at the window. “When she came here. Did she suffer?”
No one answered at once. The silence lengthened, and he wished with sudden violence that he had not asked. It was a boy’s question. A brother’s question. A useless question, because suffering did not lessen because one learned its shape.
At last Miss Vale said, “Yes.”
His breath left him slowly.
“But she was not only suffering,” she added.
He turned.
Miss Vale looked down at Evangeline’s letter rather than at him. “She was frightened. Angry. Exhausted. But not broken. I remember that most clearly. People later spoke of her as if she had dissolved into scandal and nerves. She had not. She knew she had been wronged.”
It was a strange mercy, and he did not know how to receive it.
“Thank you,” he said.
Her hand moved slightly on the paper. “Do not thank me yet.”
“No?”
“Not until we know whether gratitude will require action.”
He almost smiled again, and again there was no humour in it. “You make every civil exchange sound like a contract.”
“I have seen too many uncivil ones disguised as gifts.”
Before he could answer, a crash sounded from below.
It was not loud enough to be furniture, not deep enough to be a door. Glass. Small glass, perhaps a windowpane. Then a woman cried out, and Mrs Finch was already moving before Sebastian fully turned.
Miss Vane left the study at once. Miss Vale gathered the papers with swift, practised hands and thrust them back into the folder before following. Sebastian took the stairs two at a time, forgetting propriety because there were some sounds that struck beneath etiquette.
The disturbance came from the rear of the house, near the narrow passage that led to the garden door and the little room where cloaks, pattens, baskets and old charity bundles were kept.
Several women had gathered at the far end of the passage, their voices overlapping in alarm.
Mrs Alderley demanded to know whether the French had come back.
Beatrice Ashcombe stood with a fire poker in one hand and a look of such fierce readiness that Sebastian might have found her comic in another circumstance.
A young woman he did not know sat on a chair against the wall, pale and trembling, while a maid tried to brush glass from her skirt.
In the small rear window above the cloak pegs, one pane had been shattered. Rain-speckled air crept through the hole.
On the floor lay a stone wrapped in paper and tied with coarse twine.
Sebastian reached it first, but Miss Vale said, “Do not touch it with bare hands.”
He paused, astonished by the command.
She did not seem to realise she had issued one. Or perhaps she did and did not care. Taking a handkerchief from her sleeve, she crouched and lifted the stone by its paper wrapping. Her movements were controlled, but he saw the tightness around her mouth.
Miss Vane dismissed the residents gently but firmly. “Mrs Finch, take Miss Harlowe to the blue parlour. Beatrice, put down the poker.”
“I would rather not.”
“Put it down.”
Beatrice obeyed, though with visible regret.
Within a minute the passage had mostly cleared, leaving Sebastian, Miss Vane, Miss Vale, Mrs Finch, and Tom the footman, who looked profoundly distressed that a window had been attacked on his watch.
Miss Vale unwound the paper.
The message was written in the same blockish capitals as the one Sebastian had received, though he did not need to see the hand to feel the kinship of menace.
Return what was stolen, or the ladies of Lantern House will learn what ruin costs.
Mrs Finch crossed herself under her breath and then looked annoyed at having done anything so revealing.
Miss Vane’s face had gone very pale.
Sebastian took the paper from Miss Vale, this time without asking. She surrendered it, but only because she had already read it.
“I will send men,” he said.
Miss Vane looked up. “Men?”
“Footmen. A watch at the front and rear. Someone stationed in the square. Your locks are insufficient. The rear wall is low enough to be climbed. That passage window should be shuttered from within. No one opens the side door without identification. No resident leaves unattended. I will have two men from Halgrave House here within the hour and more by nightfall.”
Miss Vale turned on him. “No.”
He stared. “No?”
“This is not Halgrave House.”
“Clearly. Halgrave House has better glass.”
“Your Grace,” Miss Vane said, warning in her voice.
But Sebastian’s attention was on Miss Vale, whose composure had finally taken flame. Not a great blaze. She was not a woman made for theatrical anger. But colour had risen in her face, and her eyes were very dark.
“You have had a threat thrown through your window,” he said. “This is not the moment for independence.”
“How fortunate you arrived to explain danger to us.”
“Do not be absurd.”
“Do not be arrogant.”
Mrs Finch’s mouth fell open. Tom looked as though he wished the French had come instead.
Sebastian stepped closer. “Whoever sent this knows these papers are here. They know this house is vulnerable. They are willing to threaten women.”
“They have always been willing to threaten women. That is not new.”
“It is new that I can do something about it.”
“No,” she said, and there was a force in the word that checked him. “It is new that you are present.”
The distinction landed harder than he expected.
Miss Vale held his gaze. “Lantern House has bolts on doors you have not seen. We have servants who know every carriage that stops twice in the square. We have arrangements with a physician who asks no questions until questions are safe. We have friends in kitchens, laundries, parish offices and solicitors’ clerks’ rooms. We have women who know how to leave by one door while angry brothers are admitted through another.
We have protected ourselves without your footmen, Your Grace, because women who wait for male protection often wait too long. ”
He looked at her, and for the first time the house around him seemed to reveal itself in layers.
The polished knocker. The quiet side door.
The controlled servants. The residents who had scattered not in panic but according to instruction.
The housekeeper already ordering shutters.
The young woman from the hall being moved out of sight.
This was not a charity of helpless females.
It was a fortress made respectable by necessity.
Miss Vale’s voice lowered. “We are not helpless because you have only just noticed the danger.”
He had no answer ready.
That annoyed him.
It also shamed him.
Miss Vane, who had allowed the exchange to go on with the look of a commander assessing two quarrelling officers, now intervened. “We will accept additional watchmen in the square, provided they remain discreet and answer to Tom when on this property.”
Sebastian turned. “My men will not answer to your footman.”
“Then they will not stand at my door.”
Mrs Finch’s chin lifted.
Sebastian looked from Miss Vane to Miss Vale and understood, with a frustration so complete it was almost admiration, that neither woman was bluffing. They would rather face the threat with inferior manpower than surrender command of their own threshold.
“Very well,” he said sharply. “They will coordinate with your footman.”
Tom blinked, startled to find himself promoted in the power structures of Mayfair.
Miss Vane inclined her head. “Thank you.”
“It was not a concession made for thanks.”
“No. But it was a concession. We shall accept the progress.”
Miss Vale had turned back to the broken window. “The stone came from the garden path.”
“How can you know?” Sebastian asked.
“The stones at the front are smoother and paler. This has brick dust on one side. The rear path by the wall has loose mortar from the old edging.”
Mrs Finch peered at it. “So it does.”
Miss Vale looked through the broken pane toward the small garden. “Someone came over the rear wall or through the mews entrance.”
“They may still be nearby,” Sebastian said.
Tom straightened at once. “I’ll go, Your Grace.”
“No,” Miss Vale and Sebastian said together.
They glanced at one another.
Miss Vale looked away first, annoyed.
Sebastian said, “Send two men. Do not go alone.”
Miss Vale added, “And take Bess’s brother from the kitchen yard. He knows which gates stick.”
Tom looked between them, uncertain whom he obeyed, then fled to follow both orders at once.
The following half hour was all movement.
Shutters were checked. The rear gate examined.
The women relocated from exposed rooms. Mrs Finch issued instructions with such formidable efficiency that Sebastian’s own contribution was reduced chiefly to sending a note to Halgrave House and another to Bow Street, though he suspected the latter would produce more paperwork than protection.
Miss Vane received each new problem as if she had anticipated it.
Miss Vale moved quietly through the house, not commanding loudly, but adjusting.
A chair shifted here so an older lady could sit away from glass.
A letter removed from the hall tray before a servant with frightened hands misplaced it.
A whispered reassurance to Miss Harlowe in the blue parlour.
A note to the cook that luncheon should be plain and prompt because alarm sat better upon a settled stomach.