Chapter Fourteen #5
It was Foster that Olivia entrusted with the task of finding the perfectly turned-out major general. She settled enough money on him to buy Wellington’s entire army but made the major general the first order of business. She also gave him the velvet bag to place the commander in.
She watched him hurry along Putnam Lane until he turned the corner at Moorhead Street before she returned to the house. Somehow she must have imparted the importance of the mission because she could not recall the footman striding so purposefully in any direction.
Olivia found Griffin in the dressing room. He was toweling his hair dry and droplets of water scattered as he shook himself. Mason was setting out his clothes and trying to avoid the spray.
“Will you leave us, Mason?”
The valet hesitated, but not for long. Griffin’s head came out from under his towel and looked from Mason to Olivia and back again.
He did not bother to grant permission as his valet was already excusing himself.
“If you are going to make a habit of directing Mason in his duties, you really should marry me.”
“What nonsense. What does one have to do with the other?”
“Not a thing, I suspect, but after your declaration of last evening, I find myself compelled to put the matter of our unmarried state before you.”
“Our unmarried state suits me.”
“Yes, well, we are at odds there.” He tightened the hitch of the towel around his waist. “I am hoping to change that.”
Olivia set her mouth in a disapproving line and handed Griffin his robe. She waited until he put it on before she took the ring from her pocket and thrust it forward, displayed in the palm of her hand.
Griffin stared at it, then at her. He cocked one eyebrow. “Is it your brother’s ring?”
“The very same. Go on. Take it.”
He plucked it from her palm and made a cursory examination. When he would have returned it, he saw she’d already dropped her hand to her side. Uncomfortable with the idea of putting it on his own finger, he slipped it into the pocket of his robe. “How did you come by it?”
“Nat gave it to me at breakfast. He thinks you put it under his pillow last night.”
Now both of Griffin’s eyebrows lifted to attention. “Why would he suppose that—” He stopped as the possibilities presented themselves. “You think your brother was here?”
“If there is another explanation, I should like to hear it.”
“He lost the ring, remember? At Johnny Crocker’s hell. In a rigged game.”
“Yes, but when I stayed with Alastair, I asked him about the ring and whether or not he thought he could get it back. He said he could.”
“But why would he?”
“Because he needed to. It is a matter of self-respect.”
“That is a seed you planted and nurtured, not something that came to him on his own.”
“You had some part in it also.”
“How is that?”
“Alastair likes you. More to the point, he respects you. And, pray, do not say it is my imagining that makes it so. He told me. That he returned the ring speaks more to your influence than mine.”
Griffin snorted lightly. “He is yet a child. Nat has more in the way of good sense than your brother.”
Olivia did not disagree, nor did she feel obliged to defend Alastair for form’s sake. “However it came about, you now have the ring. The debt is well and truly settled.”
“It was settled already, Olivia. When your brother left you in my care, it was settled, and God’s truth, but I got the better part of it.” He pointed toward the bedchamber. “Join me at the table. I’ve yet to have a cup of coffee or a bite of toast.”
Olivia led the way out. She poured his cup for him before she sat and slathered strawberry jam on his toast while he drank.
She nudged the plate forward until it rested directly in front of him.
“If there is more you wish to say about the ring,” she said, sitting back, “I am most desirous of hearing it.”
Griffin took a large bite of toast and rather a longer time to chew it than was strictly necessary. “That was something a wife might do, you know. Pouring my coffee and spreading the jam.”
“Really? It seems to me it is most capably done by a nanny.”
Griffin’s mouth twitched. He raised his cup in a vague salute, conceding the point.
His argument had not been well conceived, and he appreciated that she had not stated the obvious, namely that his wife had never once attended him at breakfast. He washed down the toast with coffee, then set his cup in its saucer and regarded Olivia frankly.
“I heard some time ago that Mrs. Christie came into possession of the ring. She is known to frequent Crocker’s establishment and may have entertained the notion that he would make her his partner.
He is completely untrustworthy, of course, but then, so is she.
I imagine on this occasion, she was able to get the best of him. ”
“Then she won it back for Alastair. He’s still with her, is he not?”
“I have not heard differently, though I do not go out of my way to learn such things. As to whether she won the ring for him, I would not place a wager there. One rarely goes wrong depending upon Mrs. Christie, first and foremost, to look after herself. It is not beyond reasonable to suppose that she has come to some understanding with your brother and another with Mr. Crocker. She does not move from one situation without making arrangements for the next.”
“I wish you’d told me.”
“Perhaps I should have, but we both seemed to have put this matter of the ring behind us. I never wanted it, Olivia. Not for myself. I’d hoped possession would ensure your brother paid his debt, nothing more.
” Griffin found the ring in his pocket and set it on the table.
He nudged it with his fingertip, turning it round.
“Have you wondered at all how your brother was able to enter?”
She hadn’t. Now she did. “A key?”
“Most certainly. And that could have only come from Mrs. Christie. She would have had access to them at one time.”
“You think she still has keys in her possession.”
“It seems likely. Truss is particular about locking the doors. Everyone on Putnam Lane does the same. The hells are too vulnerable otherwise.”
“So he stole the ring from her, and the key, and came here. I am not certain I take your point.”
Griffin stopped turning the ring. It wobbled, then was still. “Someone else once had possession of a key,” he said. “You cannot have forgotten that.”
Olivia blinked. “The gentleman villain.”
“The very same. I thought—we all did—that he lifted the key from the peg in the servants’ hall.
Guests do not normally venture below, but we believed he could have done so unnoticed because almost all of the staff is engaged in the gaming rooms. The presence of this ring makes me suspect he had the key to your room when he entered the hell that night. ”
She frowned. “Are you saying that the villain is responsible for the return of the ring?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Then Mrs. Christie.”
Griffin flicked the ring so it skittered and spun across the table toward Olivia, the emerald and diamonds flashing. “For returning this? Hardly.”
Olivia stared at the ring for a long moment before picking it up. She turned it over in her hand thoughtfully, then, on impulse, slipped it on her thumb. She looked up at Griffin.
“Yes?” he asked, knowing full well that she’d worked it out for herself. Her eyes flashed much as the emerald had.
“You think Mrs. Christie sent the villain.”
“You have it exactly.”
“But why?”
“As to that,” he said, taking her hand, “we shall have to ask.”