A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe (The Lord Julian Mysteries #7)

Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

I held the two documents and wrestled with an odd mix of emotions. Astonishment, certainly. Somebody had seen Swinnie’s loneliness and been moved to take the same steps I’d taken to address it.

The exact same steps, right down to the sum conveyed, the date upon which it was conveyed, and the bank from which it was issued.

I was also resentful. A bearer draft bore no features that identified to the recipient from whose account the funds would be drawn. Swinnie would simply present the draft to, in this case, Wentworth’s bank, receive her funds, and go on her way a wealthier lady.

And I was puzzled. What to do with the bank draft in my left hand, for one thing, and who was Swinnie’s benefactor, for another? Her Grace had not mentioned leaving Swinnie an anonymous gift, and Arthur would have told me if the funds had come from estate accounts.

I crept down the steps and avoided the third stair, tucked my bank draft back into my pocket, and let myself out into the painfully cold night air.

Killing cold, the sergeants had called weather like this. The shifts on picket duty had been cut in half, and still, men had lost toes and earned medical leave as a result.

More gloomy thoughts circled as I traveled back to the manor. Perhaps Squire Pettigrew had been offended that the Caldicotts would not see a loyal retainer safely into the arms of her family? He’d be generous out of an urge to make the ranking title look parsimonious, though I could not ascribe to Pettigrew the magnitude of largesse I’d found sitting on Swinnie’s blotter.

What to do with the sum still in my figurative and literal pocket? I was pondering that conundrum when I noticed a shadow moving along the privet hedge that flanked the walk between the house and the path to the stable.

Somebody was bending low, trying to keep out of sight, but the moonlight and natural stillness made the task difficult. A third factor—the tendency for sound to carry across a fresh blanket of snow—meant I heard footfalls and muttering, even from fifteen yards away.

“Halt,” I said, “and show yourself.”

The figure bent behind the hedge and ceased moving.

I was unarmed, but in my present mood, I was disinclined to deal leniently with attempted housebreaking. The footmen, maids, and stable boys were free to come and go as they pleased once their duties were attended to, and folk from the village were welcome in Mrs. Gwinnett’s kitchen at any reasonable hour.

Which left… “Uncle Terrence, what are you doing impersonating a thief when my own dear mother has invited you to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall?”

He straightened slowly, a moonrise of scarves, mufflers, and put-upon dignity. “That you, Julian? Fine night for a stroll, isn’t it? Saw you coming across the park, had no idea who you were, and assumed you were up to no good, eh? I see your hair still ain’t right. Pity that. Might have recognized you if you were back to normal. Still, you have hair, no matter it’s the wrong color. Comes a time when you’ll be grateful for any hair at all.”

I would never be back to normal, if normal was the man I’d been before buying my colors. “None of which explains why you were skulking like a rat among the hedges.”

A tall rat, skinny but for a slight paunch. Uncle wore his white hair long and queued back in the old-fashioned style, though he was quite thin on top.

He strode past me, making straight for the entrance to the back hallway. “Fine way to greet your uncle, young man. I wasn’t skulking, though you appeared to be. You think a frail old fellow should simply allow himself to be set upon by a footpad?”

“How many footpads frequent Caldicott land?”

“Only takes one, and you’re all swaddled in dark wool. That’s how footpads dress.”

I had not missed Uncle Terrence, but there was something backwardly comforting about his unchanging hubris.

“Sensible people wear wool in weather like this, and I note that you yourself are styled a la footpad, if dark wool is the defining trait. Why not walk in the front door, Terrence? You have been invited, and you are expected.”

He paused at the back door, hand on the latch, his posture worthy of Mrs. Siddons in a tragic role. “You’ll ruin everything.”

“What scheme have I threatened by taking a brief constitutional beneath a spectacular night sky?”

He let himself into the relative warmth of the Hall. We were in the lower reaches, which were cozy indeed, and redolent of the supper roast and damp wool.

“I was trying to arrange my arrival as a surprise. Trying to add a bit of spontaneous good cheer to tomorrow’s breakfast. Here is long-lost Uncle Terrence, braving the elements to join those in need of company, strolling into the breakfast parlor as if he’s just come down from his bedchamber instead of all the way from London. Making an entrance, you know? I’m not David Garrick, of course, but I do enjoy causing a bit of a splash.”

He was not David Garrick or Sarah Siddons—he was a poor liar. “You were up to something.”

“Such an untrusting nature, Julian. So many who served in uniform returned with suspicious attitudes. I don’t suppose you might offer a guest newly arrived from the bitter snows a tray? A toddy? Anything? I understand you are playing the host in Arthur’s absence. One would never know it from your present behavior.”

Take your lying, old, reprobate self up to the family parlor, use the bell-pull, and run the poor night footman off his feet. To say that would be ill-natured, and in point of fact, I wasn’t playing the host.

I was the host. “Her Grace has put you in the Gentian Suite,” I said, information I knew only because Hyperia had passed it along. “If you can find your way to the family parlor, you can warm up there, and I’ll send a footman to light the fires in your apartment.”

Terrence unwound a scarf from his neck and stuffed gloves into the pockets of his greatcoat. “And sustenance?”

“I will alert the kitchen and have a pot of tea and some comestibles sent to you in the family parlor. You might well find Kerrick and the ladies lingering over their scandal broth. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“I don’t want to find Kerrick and the ladies, my boy. I want to make my entrance at breakfast tomorrow.”

“Then you can wait in the formal parlor, which is colder than the ninth circle of Hades, and unless I mistake the matter, you would have me believe you just crossed the tundra on foot, holes in both boots, trudging uphill into a headwind the entire time, while enormous wolves howled for your blood.”

“No need to be sarcastic.” He passed me his cloak and sauntered up the shadowed passage. “Come along to the family parlor when you’ve seen to the tray.”

That degree of disrespect would never do. “Terrence.”

He paused and half turned. “Hmm?”

“I am not the duke. I am the family disgrace, according to many, and I earned my suspicious attitude in a very hard school. You are here at my sufferance. Watch your step.”

He let me have the last word—this time. I took off my outer garments and wished myself back in Spain. I’d spent my winters not at Wellington’s headquarters, but out in the countryside. I’d been cold and hungry and very often thirsty, but the solitude and quiet had suited me.

Trading barbs with Uncle Terrence did not suit me, and I was abruptly tired of the day, the season, and the role I was trying—without much success—to fulfill.

“My lord?” Winters, Aunt Crosby’s lady’s maid, had emerged from the servants’ hall. She, too, carried a cloak, and her features had the carefully composed quality of one who finds his lordship in a part of the house where he ought not to be.

Her looks had not changed in all the years I’d known her. She was spare, gray-haired, and blessed with a perfect complexion. Harry had once told me she was a lady fallen on hard times, but whether that was his surmise or reliable intelligence, I did not know.

“Miss Winters, good evening. I thought to take a peek at the stars, and I found Uncle Terrence coming in from the stable.”

“The stable?” Winters allowed the merest hint of puzzlement into her tone. “I grant you the stars are magnificent tonight, and I went out for a few minutes myself to enjoy the quiet, but Mr. Tuttleby isn’t one for stretching his legs unnecessarily.”

Precisely. “He has taken himself up to the family parlor, and I am charged with conveying the need for a pot and tray to the kitchen.”

“I’ll have a word with the undercook, my lord. You’d best join Mr. Tuttleby and the ladies.” Her smile was mostly in her eyes, though I suspected she well knew I’d rather have gone right back outside and admired the stars until spring.

Instead, I went to the family parlor, and to blazes with changing my boots and brushing my hair. I had questions to put to Uncle Terrence before he had time to fabricate any fairy tales about his reasons for stealing about the grounds under cover of darkness.

“Do you believe him?” I asked Hyperia as I escorted her up to her apartment. “A post chaise to the village and then a hired cart from the livery?”

“A hired post chaise is expensive,” Hyperia said. “Every mile adds to the cost, so yes, Uncle Terrence might have taken a post chaise down from Town, though he was vague as to the reasons for that extravagance. Even Town gents are occasionally found on the stage coaches.”

Particularly unmarried fellows racketing about at their leisure. “I will ask questions in the village, though as cold as it is, my guess is nobody saw what conveyance he arrived in.”

Hyperia stopped outside her door. “Does it matter?”

Oddly enough, it did—to me. Having solved a half-dozen vexatious puzzles for polite society, my ability to ignore lies, inconsistencies, and discordant facts had all but disappeared. I had put myself on reconnaissance, the same orders I’d been given in Spain, though my terrain now was manor houses and villages rather than mountains and plains.

“I will explain,” I said. “Invite me to bide with you for a moment.”

Hyperia glanced up and down the deserted corridor, then bussed my cheek. “Bide with me for a moment, Julian. The day has been long, and your company is an antidote to every ill.”

I unlatched the door and used my carrying candle to light a candelabrum on the mantel and two sconces in the bedroom. When I rejoined Hyperia in the parlor, she was tucked into a corner of the sofa, her slippers off, her feet up on a hassock. I loved the look of her at her leisure and loved that my company was any sort of boon to her.

“Join me,” she said, patting the cushion beside her. “What do you care if Uncle Terrence arrived from some gambling bacchanal masquerading as a shooting party? He’s independent and of age.”

I took Hyperia’s hand for the simple pleasure of touching her. “I decided to favor Mrs. Swinburne with enough coin to relocate to Philadelphia if that’s what she wants to do.”

“And I applaud your generosity.”

“My attempted generosity. I sought to act swiftly, before I had a chance to doubt myself, and thus I made my way to her cottage after supper. I hoped to leave a bearer bank draft where she was likely to find it in the morning. Somebody apparently had the same idea, right down to the amount on the draft. I found the document on Swinnie’s blotter. Her benefactor added three words: ‘Do enjoy Philadelphia.’”

Hyperia scowled at her stockinged feet. “The same, Jules?”

“Different accounts, and that little memo was lacking on mine, but the same amount, the same date, the same bank as I use.”

“Did you memorize the other account number?”

“I did, not on purpose, but Quinn Wentworth wouldn’t tell me who owned that account if I put him on the rack and tickled him with goose feathers.”

“Interesting image. Whoever this rogue Father Christmas is, he apparently had the same motive you did—to give Mrs. Swinburne a nudge toward rejoining her family. That suggests somebody local.”

I looped an arm around Hyperia’s shoulders, grateful in my bones for her willingness to discuss what was surely an odd coincidence.

A second odd coincidence, if the church bell counted as the first. “I thought perhaps Her Grace might be responsible. Wentworth handles her finances, and she is concerned that Swinnie is lonely.”

“And the duchess is generous,” Hyperia said. “She’s very loyal to her charities. Will you ask her?”

“I have another theory.”

Hyperia curled up, such that her head was on my shoulder, and her knee rested against my thigh. “Do tell.”

“I know Mama’s handwriting, and the D in ‘Do enjoy Philadelphia’ was not her style. Her given name is Dorothea, and she adds a little flourish to her capital D’s. We can’t rule her out entirely, but the handwriting tends to exonerate her. Uncle Terrence was sweet on Swinnie at one point, though I don’t think anything happened.”

“So what if something happened? Consenting adults and all that, and Mrs. Swinburne is a widow.”

I hoped that someday Hyperia and I would be consenting adults. “Uncle Terrence might have waved off his post chaise in the village and walked the remaining distance—it’s less than a mile on the bridle path—the better to slip a bank draft onto Mrs. Swinburne’s desk blotter. He claimed he sought to make an entrance at breakfast. He, in fact, may have hoped to obscure the hour and means of his arrival.”

Hyperia studied her toes. “You have a point, Jules. A cart from the livery stable might not have presumed to pull up to the front door, but they should have taken a guest of the Hall around to the porte cochere rather than leave him to slog in from the stable. Or maybe they did drop Uncle Terrence at the porte cochere, and he waited until he had the privacy necessary to sneak over to Mrs. Swinburne’s cottage.”

“No tracks on the drive. I checked. Terrence came either by the hedgerows or in a humble conveyance.”

Caldicott Hall, like many rural manors, sat a short distance from the estate village. As was the custom, a grand formal front drive curved through the park and around a central fountain before delivering guests to the Hall’s southern facade.

From the stable, though, narrower bridle paths also led to the village, to neighboring estates, and along most of the local bodies of water. One could also take a fairly direct lane from the home farm to the village, and that byway—lined by trees and frequented by local traffic—would have been the preferred route for the livery stable cart.

“You could ask Terrence what he’s about,” Hyperia said, stifling a yawn.

“I tried that. Got a lot of blustering and insults, which is what made me think Terrence is hiding something. If the opportunity arises, you should ask him.”

Hyperia sat up, let her feet fall to the floor, and stretched. “Ask him if he’s playing Father Christmas to lonely retired housekeepers? The gift was apparently anonymous, Jules. You are piqued because twice now your own attempts at generosity have been foiled.”

I rose and offered her my hand. “You are right, in part. I found a home for my bell, and I will find a home for my bank draft. I don’t suppose you know of a deserving charity that could use a hundred pounds?”

“ A hundred pounds ? That’s more than some people earn in a lifetime.”

“Terrence could afford it. Her Grace could.” I certainly could, and other people—say, our dear curate—could earn that sum in a year or two.

“I could afford to be that generous as well,” Hyperia said, “and so could the aunties, but still… Maybe Terrence and Mrs. Swinburne did have an affair. That is a lot of money.”

“Ask about that, then. How smitten was he, and does he keep in touch enough to know her situation now? Two coincidences this close together smack of an intrigue.”

Also, vaguely, of an insult. In my first attempt at the role of host of Caldicott Hall, somebody was assuming responsibility for gestures that were mine to make. Perhaps this somebody sought to be helpful, but I did not feel aided. I felt frustrated and incompetent, surplus to requirements, just as I’d felt when I’d mustered out after the Corsican’s first abdication.

Hyperia hugged me. “Let it go, Jules. So you are not the only kind and generous denizen of the shire. That ought to be pleasant news, though I know you will fret all the same. I’m off to bed, and when the boys and I kidnap you tomorrow, try to act surprised.”

“I am surprised. Kidnap me for what?”

“You’ll have to wait and see. I thought I’d take Declan, Leander, and Atticus for an outing, unless the snow starts up again. Say you will join us.”

Hyperia was nothing if not brave. I could not claim as much courage, but I was loyal. “I will join you.”

“You won’t plead mountains of correspondence or ledgers or a meeting with the steward?”

Well, drat the luck. “I am meeting with the land steward at three of the clock, the house steward at four.” By which time, I ought to have subdued the day’s mail.

“We’ll be back at the Hall by then. Dream of me.” She kissed me on the mouth and stepped back before I could get into the proper spirit of the undertaking.

“Always ambushing me,” I said.

Hyperia brushed my hair away from my forehead. “Are you complaining? You could ambush me back.”

Lovely thought. “I have your permission to ambush you?” The question wasn’t as frivolous as it might have seemed. “I will exercise utmost discretion.”

She patted my lapel. “I would rather not be accosted under the kissing boughs, Jules. A bit of seasonal silliness is acceptable, but the Hall is awash in mistletoe.”

All of which, now that I thought about it, Hyperia had avoided—as had I.

“No public silliness. My nature rebels at the very thought.” Some of my nature did. “Yes or no, Perry? Are we to skirmish as equals, or do I defer to your timing on all occasions?”

She worried a nail. “Yes, as equals, bearing in mind that Healy is supposed to be underfoot soon.”

A qualified yes was still a yes. “We’ll consign your brother to sleeping in the dairy.” When I bowed over Hyperia’s hand—a different kind of silliness—I kissed her knuckles with lingering warmth, then her cheek, then her brow.

We were only informally engaged, true, but if my ambushes went well enough, by the end of the Yuletide festivities, that might change for the vastly better.

Nonetheless, as I drifted to sleep, I was not pondering how best to woo my intended. I was instead stuck on the notion that two coincidences were two too many. Had the same person funded the bell and Swinnie’s travels, and if so, why now, when I had been intent on the same ends?

And what was I to do with the hundred pounds that Swinnie no longer needed?