Thirty-eight
Lavender
After the gentlemen had spent the morning plotting, Lavender debated the wisdom of following them to the pub for the farce they meant to perform.
She understood that the only way they could hope to find evidence or obtain a confession was through trickery.
Given their small population and inability to enforce laws, the village had experience at such.
But she couldn’t read the script they’d drawn up, and her sewing ladies were falling behind schedule without her to give orders.
Unwilling to raise her hopes about the charade, Thea refused to join in. She joined Clare in writing letters to acquaintances in hopes of determining the extent of Lord Talbot’s debts, which meant Arnaud stayed at the manor with her.
But Fort had asked Lavender to go with them, and she hated to disappoint when he actually recognized she might be useful for something other than a pretty distraction.
Besides, it was new and exciting to have a duke’s son invite her anywhere, especially when he went out of his way to be attentive. She feared she followed in her dissolute mother’s footsteps, but on this gloomy autumn day, she wanted to know how it felt to be part of the drama.
She’d spent her life watching from dark corners, hidden because of her lowly birth.
She already knew that if she wanted to live fully, she had to make her presence known.
Until now, she’d been too timid to step above her place.
Doing so on Fort’s arm—offered recognition that she actually was a lady and not an invisible dressmaker.
Foolish to want such recognition, but she’d always thought ladies like her grandmother were special.
The stage was already set by the time they entered. Fort and Hunt and the lawyer had been holed up in the study all morning, while all the ladies had copied out Calendar’s notebook.
Unable to help with writing, Lavender had entertained the boys by showing them where to find the designs from the clock in the horrible old paintings of dead people in the gallery.
Well, not all dead. Her grandmother’s portrait was there.
The boys had become so excited, they had begged their resident artist to help them search for clues.
“Ah, there’s one of the beautiful heiresses now!
” Large, raw-boned Kitty greeted Fort and Lavender’s arrival in the pub with a wave of a mug.
The performer had dressed like a man for a change—a very fat one—in a decent coat and pantaloons for this drama.
The actor made a more convincing man than a woman. “Ripe for the picking!”
Lavender blinked in shock. She had thought the actors liked her!
Before she could respond to the rude greeting, Fort squeezed her hand and led her to a trestle table where the baron and his assistants sat. “Theater,” he whispered. “Just watch.” He took a seat beside her and pulled a bundle of script pages from his pocket.
“That ladybird’s a poor bastard.” Reynard, the slender, well-tailored leader of the troupe, spoke in scorn from his place at the bar. “The real heiress has enough wealth to put us back in business, and we’ll be well paid for taking her off her father’s hands.”
Lavender stiffened. Fort squeezed her arm in warning, so she held her tongue.
Hearing herself and Thea insulted hadn’t been her idea of stepping out with a gentleman.
She puzzled instead over the beautiful penmanship of the pages in front of him.
This was the notebook the ladies had been copying all morning?
“But the young one’s grandmother promised land as a dowry,” Kitty whined, in disguise as who? Lavender’s knowledge of theater was limited to this troupe, and their cross-dressing confused. If he referred to Lavender, she didn’t think the baroness had promised any such thing, had she?
“What is money if I can’t have a title?” Kitty slammed his/her mug on the bar. That certainly sounded like something fat Humphries might say, judging by Thea’s reports.
Lavender frowned and tried to work out the words in the script. Surely they must be talking about her and Thea, only neither of them had land other than their small portion of the Priory. She recognized her name in the script. It looked quite elegant in this fine handwriting.
Fort pointed out the words they were speaking now, on a different page from her name. After hearing that last line spoken, with Fort’s finger tracing the letters, she found it easier to form the words.
Othello, his dark beard trimmed and his coarse hair concealed in a top hat, leaned toward the first two actors, as if in confidentiality, although his voice carried.
“Marry both. I don’t care. I need the money you promised before my investors and Haggarty comes after my hide.
” Ah, Othello must be playing the money man, Gladstone!
“Talbot’s petition to sell the manor has Weston and his fellow fribbles asking questions. ”
Following Fort’s finger on the page, Lavender glanced up in startlement at the mention of Fort’s obnoxious brother. Fort pressed her arm again. Puzzled, she finally noticed the size of the silent audience hidden in the shadows of the unlit pub.
At the pub’s best table, the real Gladstone and Featherstone pretended to ignore the nonsensical performance at the bar.
At one of the trestle tables, the valets appeared fascinated.
In a far corner, a gentleman looking very much like Weston, sat with the lawyer, Haggarty.
They whispered and flipped pages of a notebook.
“Weston is behind this?” she murmured in disbelief.
“He set it off. He wants them hanged. They’ll not confess on their own, but if we can make their servants understand. . . Listen.” Fort nodded at Mercurio sidling up to the other actors.
Slender, graying hair cut short, Mercurio disguised their slight bosom with a baggy, over-sized coat, instead of their usual tailored frockcoat. “Begging your pardons, sirs, Mr. Humphries, but your swindling Hindu claims to have information he will take to the authorities if he is not paid.”
Mercurio recoiled while the others berated him. Then Reynard/Featherstone ordered him to deal with the problem, adding, “You’ve done it before. You owe me.”
Was Mercurio supposed to be playing the part of Perser? And the bookkeeper had killed before? Because he owed. . . the scheming gambler? So if Kitty was fat Humphries, bronzed Othello was Gladstone, the investor. . . Lavender glanced at the script and worked out the names speaking the lines. Oh.
They’d ordered a bookkeeper to kill that poor servant? A bookkeeper who gambled, perhaps, and killed because of it?
Eyebrows raised, she studied the table of inn guests being mocked. They whispered angrily now that they also figured it out.
“It didn’t happen that way,” a blond, curly-haired man shouted from the trestle table.
“Hunt let Darley out?” Lavender whispered in surprise.
“Knife-wielding really isn’t reason for arrest,” Fort explained. “Now that he’s sober, Darley’s temper is more useful here.”
The other valets at the table tried to pull him down, but Darley shrugged them off. “Chandar knew the scoundrel paid us in lead. He said if we helped him get fair wages, he’d help us get fair coin. And they killed him!”
Accustomed to a rude audience, the actors admitted no guilt but stuck to their script. Kitty/Humphries pounded his thick fist on the bar. “Talbot lied! His daughter is a harridan! I won’t have her for all the jewels in the Tower.”
Handsome Reynard, playing the gambler, slapped him on his big shoulder. “I need your markers paid, sir. Sell your ships to Gladstone, marry the dowager’s beauty, become Sir Humphries, if you will. But unless your markers are paid, we’re all dead men.’’
Othello/Gladstone shook his top hat. “Until Talbot pays his debts, I can’t buy ships.
We need that manor or our investors will have us all up in court.
Use your charm, sir. Talk to the old lady, persuade her you’ll marry her bastard granddaughter if she settles a substantial dowry as well as land on her.
She claims to have some of the Wycliffe jewels, does she not? ”
Lavender bit her lip and struggled to follow the script to see how much they were making up.
It was easier to follow words when they were being read to her.
The actors didn’t seem to be improvising.
Their words were all right here on paper.
Copied from Calendar’s notebook? Men had actually said these terrible things? Not men. . . swine.
Reynard/Featherstone abruptly interrupted with an obscenity. “The bedeviled architect just got himself arrested for trespassing! I’ve seen him taking notes in those books of his. Someone needs to prevent him from talking.”
Lavender wrinkled her nose. “That couldn’t come from Mr. Calendar’s notebook if he was tied up in the stable.”
“Artistic license, Clare called it. We’re just looking for reactions, but they’re a pretty cold lot.” Fort glanced at the table of guests, who had fallen silent.
“Fine one you are to talk,” Mock Humphries said in scorn from the bar. “Haggarty warned me that the authorities are trying to shut down your entire operation, Featherstone.”
Lavender was torn between finding the place on the page and just following the drama.
Mr. Featherstone was a gambler. He must have other operations like the one they meant to set up in the manor?
And the architect overheard them arguing and feared the authorities meant to shut down their plans for the manor?
He put that in his notebook? Gathering evidence?
“Weston wants to marry his whore. He thinks stopping Talbot’s petition will bankrupt us, but we’ve arranged for his noble earlship to no longer be a problem.
Just do your part, secure the manor, and we’ll all sleep better.
” Reynard/Featherstone shrugged, as if hiring an assassin to kill an earl was of little moment.
It was a good thing they’d hidden Weston!
Lavender glanced in the earl’s direction, but he was scarcely listening.
He talked, while the lawyer, Mr. Haggarty, scribbled frantically.
She was becoming a trifle confused. The script seemed to jump around a lot—because they’d been copying it from Mr. Calendar’s notes and making up the rest?
None of this was real, she reminded herself.
But it could have happened. Someone had tried to kill the earl!
“Perser has done it now!” Their local shoemaker strolled up, shouting. Jacques wore his usual frockcoat and frilled cravat, so Lavender didn’t know who he was meant to be. “The berserker has killed Calendar and left that notebook in the manor’s hands.”
Lavender glanced at the script. It called for the gambler’s valet, Tatum, to speak. Jacques was pretty-boy Tatum? She glanced at the real valet, but he watched with fascination.
Jacques/Tatum grimaced. “The book’s in code and not useful. But those counterfeit gold boys they found on him are a problem. We’ll be caught if we stay in this dump much longer.”
Mock Featherstone shrugged. “We’ll blame everything on Perser, including the coins. He’s murdered two men and is out of hand.”
“We never said any of that.” Standing, Tatum objected from the valet table. “And that’s a woman playing Perser. You got the bastard, fair enough, you have to let the rest of us go.”
Apparently having discussed this, Jones and Darley, two more of the valets, stood as well. Wilson pared his nails.
“Not going as planned.” Fort started to rise.
Lavender beat him to it. She was the one these louts had meant to use. If nothing else, she meant to make them see she was no pawn.
“Sit back down, all of you,” she shouted, standing and glaring.
The valets looked startled. Good.
“Pay attention!” she ordered, stepping into the aisle between the bar and the tables and pointing at the valets who had remained standing.
“This doesn’t end with theater. First, you need to know your employers lied to you and to each other.
The manor cannot be sold. It belongs to all Wycliffe’s heirs, and there are dozens of us. We are not selling.”
Jones sat down, eyes wide.
“Secondly, neither Thea nor I have any intention of marrying for money, not when we can earn our own.”
Darley, the investor’s knife-wielding valet, looked confused.
“And thirdly, we will succeed because we actually work, not gamble, lie, cheat, borrow, and use friends to pretend we’re important or to get rich fast. Being rich is meaningless, as you can see from this lot of rotten scoundrels.
” She gestured at the two elegantly-dressed, disgruntled guests.
“Working together to build something worth having, caring for others, those things may be difficult, but at least we’re not cheating and killing each other.
If you want to be better men, step up and put the killers and frauds in prison, where they belong! ”
In the far corner, Weston finally revealed himself by standing and applauding.