Chapter 24
Twenty-four
Rafe
“I swear, this place will make me old before my time,” Rafe complained as he watched a motley collection of village folk and artists gather in the undergrowth to dig and whack and tear up the weed-infested Bradford House yard. “Should I bring in a mule and team while we’re at it? Plant corn?”
The lion-maned baron paced, growling at anyone who approached. Rafe liked his style. He’d just stay back here by the house and let Greybourne terrify anyone with questions.
“Open a new burial ground?” Greybourne suggested sardonically. “And your prospective mayor wants to change the village name why?”
“They haven’t found any human graves yet,” Rafe remonstrated. “The cellar has you looking for bones everywhere. The rest of those uneven hills of dirt might be animal burrows. Maybe that’s why the trap was set.”
“Giant badgers, mayhap? A lonely bear? I’m sure that’s it.” Grey glowered at the lad, Andrew, approaching. “They kept a circus bear and left it here when they moved out.”
“That would explain a bear trap,” Andrew said complacently, hearing this last. “There is a good stone wall under the thicket. El is bemoaning the loss of blackberries, but we’d have to take out the trees for them to receive enough light.
If anything is buried, it may be lost under tree roots. How much do you want removed?”
“If you haven’t found any people bones, I say leave any sleeping dead lie,” Rafe said roughly. “Have Upton say a few words, sprinkle holy water, just in case.”
“Thea can dance a little spirit dance and the local witches can burn sage.” Greybourne’s biting sarcasm almost had Rafe smiling, until the baron stalked off to investigate the plundering himself.
Miss Leonard had warned Rafe about the baron’s heir. He didn’t see anyone who might be a lord or an assassin but he wasn’t an imaginative man. He just did what he had to do. He stalked after Greybourne.
The lazy artists were getting in the way more than anything, peering over shoulders, admiring blooming bushes, scraping around in empty holes.
On a mild Sunday afternoon, there were plenty of folk eager to join in a hunt for buried treasure.
So far, all that had been found beneath the mounds young Andrew had discovered were the skeletons of dead pets and a horse.
The Bradfords had liked burying things. That didn’t mean there weren’t victims of piracy or abuse or anything else the women could dream up.
It just meant no one had dug deep enough.
Dead pets might be subterfuge. If one wanted pirate loot, one had to work for it, presumably.
Rafe recognized most of the people hacking at the ground, even if they never came into his pub.
He didn’t know all the names. He stopped near Henri Lavigne, the owner of Monk’s tavern, a working man’s establishment.
“What’s the name of the burly fellow with graying black hair under that ugly cap? I’ve seen him with the other artists.”
“The artists call him Mort. Don’t know his full name. He’s usually with Tiny, that ragged thin fellow doing all the work.”
“Recognize that one. He knew how to fix Grey’s carriage wheel.” Rafe watched the artists elbow each other, swipe at thorns, and occasionally stick a shovel in loose dirt, as if they might find diamonds under the weeds. “Arnaud responsible for bringing them out to dig?”
“Thea, mostly. She had hysterics all over the gallery and ordered them all to work.” Henri grinned. “She may look like porcelain, but our heiress cracks verbal whips.”
Rafe grunted. He’d once seen his lady wife carrying a torch, prepared to set a killer on fire. Women were as dangerous as men, more so, because men had no notion of what the ladies were thinking. You knew what to expect of a man and could prepare accordingly.
The baron stalked along the newly uncovered stone wall, speaking to the diggers, examining holes, gesturing toward the house.
A couple of the artists ignored him. Grey grabbed one by the back of his coat and pitched him from the wall.
Rafe stepped forward to prevent a brawl, but the fellow scrambled to his feet and headed toward town.
“Percival,” Henri explained. “Journalist. He holds a grudge against Grey, curses him every chance he has. Slippery sort, hard to pin down.”
“But a puny London gentleman unlikely to kill Comfrey or bury a horse. Or saw a tree branch, for all that matters. Their sort prefer knives in the back. I’ll talk to the ones with more muscle than brains.” Rafe sauntered over to the part of the wall the baron hadn’t reached.
“Getting dark soon,” he said to the burly fellow called Mort. “Might as well pack it in. If pirates buried anything out here, it’s under those tree roots.”
The fellow removed his cap, revealing a balding spot, and wiped his sweaty brow with his shirtsleeve. “Reckon any coin goes to the bank even if they find anything. Them’s that have, always gets.”
“Sadly, you might be right there. I’m buying a round for everyone at the pub tomorrow. Stop by.” Rafe made his way down the row, passing on his goodwill message. He kept the pub closed on Sundays so he and Verity could rest—as if such a luxury existed. Tomorrow would be busier than usual.
Grey caught up with him and heard Rafe’s spiel. “I’ll buy,” he said, anger burned off. “I probably owe you a year’s wages after all this.”
“Priory pays me.” Rafe watched the last stragglers depart. “Probably ought to have a trained constable. Sutton is pushing through the petition for the village to be recognized so we can hire one. Everyone signed it—except the bank—but it don’t mean much with no money.”
“You need a population who can pay taxes, understood. And the bank doesn’t want to cough up a share of the rents they’re collecting. Do you know who the bearded fellow is still digging on the other side of the gate?” Grey stopped behind an overgrown, half-dead rhododendron.
“Seen him talking with my clerk.” Rafe studied the black-bearded, piratical-looking fellow.
“That’s the fisherman they call Black Dick, I believe.
New around here.” Now that Rafe noticed, gray grizzled the fellow’s thick hair and beard.
Stout but well-muscled, he was older than he’d realized, but still able to wield a shovel as well as the young ones. Better than some.
“I don’t want to call Miss Leonard out here to identify him, but she described someone like that threatening her one evening, said this place belonged to him. He bears watching,” Greybourne warned.
Rafe’s clerk was an ex-convict from the penal colonies.
If Parsons knew this stranger. . . Vaguely alarmed, Rafe didn’t mention that to the baron.
“I’ll ask about. Go back inside and pacify the ladies before they form an army.
I’ll get rid of the rest of this lot. Buy a barrel of my good ale, and we’ll be even.
” Rafe strode off, hoping Grey heeded his warning about pacifying the women.
Worried females were damned dangerous. The professor was a scholarly sort who wouldn’t understand the machinations of the fairer sex.
Rafe sent a few more workers home on his way to the now-cleared pathway and broken gate. Leaning over the pillar, he examined the hole the burly Dick was digging. “Why would pirates bury anything in their neighbors’ yard?”
“Not stupid.” Blackbeard leaned on his shovel and eyed Rafe skeptically. “Would you bury victims in your own yard, eh?”
A chill ran down Rafe’s spine. The stranger’s accent was similar to that of Parsons, the clerk who had spent these last decades in the Australian colonies.
“These pirates buried victims in their own cellar,” Rafe countered. “You from around here?”
“Nope. Ain’t no treasure or the mongrels wouldn’t have moved away, eh?” He hefted his shovel to his shoulder and nodded at the vacant cottage on his side of the wall. “I’m bunking there as long as the bank’s stealing my land. You want me out, you get them toffs out.”
He stalked off before Rafe could even offer him a pint.
Well, swell, there was Miss Leonard’s pirate—and the man who hit Grey over the head?