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

Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

As Arthur’s traveling coach lumbered northward, I put all thoughts of correspondence aside and hoped some kindly elf would burn the lot of it before I returned to the Hall.

“Whyn’t you bring Atlas, guv?” Atticus occupied the opposite bench, while I sat facing the horses.

“Because fairness to my mount dictates that he be brought up to Town in reasonable stages, which might have us leaving just as he’s arriving. This is a lightning raid.”

“On what?”

“Old Londontowne. Stop eyeing the hamper, lad. We will eat after the second change.” We’d be in London after four changes, if all went according to plan. I’d made this journey dozens of times and knew every inn and crossroads along the way. John Coachman typically changed teams every ten or twelve miles, but bad going would shorten that interval to eight miles or so.

The number of changes didn’t affect the length of the journey in the usual course. Hostlers experienced at the job could swap out tired horses for fresh equines in less than a minute. The condition of the roads, by contrast, could result in progress so limited that walking to London would have been the faster alternative.

Fortunately, the same cold snap stinging noses and fingers meant the roads were frozen into rigid washboards. A well-sprung coach could keep moving under such conditions, and now that we were en route, I was eager to reach our destination.

“What are we raiding in Old Londontowne?” Atticus asked, swinging a heel against the bench.

“If anybody asks, we are retrieving Healy West so he can join the merriment at the Hall.”

“What merriment, guv? You being ironical?”

“Give it a week or so. The merriment has started among the staff. Pettigrew will swell the ranks of guests today, and the punchbowl will be set up in the foyer on Sunday. By tradition, we decorate inside the Hall the day after.”

“If you hung any more kissin’ boughs inside the Hall, we wouldn’t see the rafters. What decorating is left to do?”

“Cloved oranges, wreaths, ribbons. The pine swagging must wait until Christmas Day, but Mama is following the recent fashion for decorating conifers with candles and trinkets. She has small trees set up in the servants’ hall and the music room. The whole business is quite lovely.”

So lovely that last year I’d slunk off to London rather than endure another impromptu chorus of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” from the footmen. Everywhere I’d turned, I’d seen giggles beneath kissing boughs, bright red ribbons wrapped around banisters, silver bells hung on door latches, wreaths, punchbowls…

So much gaiety, and I hadn’t had the heart for any of it. Part of me still didn’t, hence this respite in London afforded me some guilty relief.

“What if we can’t find Healy West?” Atticus thumped the bench with one heel after the other in alternation.

“He’s a sizable specimen. Why would he be hard to locate?”

“Because he don’t want to spend his holly-days listening to a bunch of old besoms carp at each other.” Atticus struck a pose, nose in the air, hand at his throat. “‘Not to be critical, but everything at the Hall is soooo intolerably duuurty. Young people today don’t know how to dust, or curtsey, or bow, or breathe. Such a pity!’”

He had Aunt Bertha to the life, the little rotter. “That is rude, Atticus.”

“What’s rude is bellyachin’ all the time. Aunt Crosspatch isn’t so bad, but that other ’un… Even when she says thank you, Aunt Bother is somehow saying you disappoint her. She puts me in mind of the matrons at the poorhouse. Always scolding a lad, and sounding nice while they did it.”

Aunt Bertha was in good form indeed if Aunt Crosby benefited by comparison. “You can recall the matrons?”

“Aye. One of ’em wasn’t so bad. Mrs. Hipple used to pass me an extra piece of bread sometimes, and she’d put butter on it too. I still love me some fresh bread with butter. Mrs. Hipple found me the post at Makepeace House. Last I saw of her, she was warning me to say please and thank you, not speak unless spoken to, and say my prayers every night. Always had us prayin’, the matrons did. Grateful for this and grateful for that. I woulda been grateful to have a pillow for me poor knees, we did so much prayin’.”

I made a mental note of the name Hipple because Atticus’s antecedents could at some point bear investigating. He was an orphan cast upon the charity of the parish, and because that had been a London parish, the chances of ever learning his story were minuscule. Even a single name, though, might illuminate a few facts.

“Young Jamison was glad to come up to Town with us,” Atticus went on. “Said he needed a repairing lease for his health. The undercook gets him beneath the mistletoe and don’t let him go.”

The undercook was Mrs. Gwinnett’s niece, a fetching armful of about twelve stone, and all of it jolly. A junior footmen could face worse fates.

“I can assure you, Atticus, the repairing lease was necessitated by an excess of toddies rather than an abundance of holiday affection.”

“You ain’t seen ’em go at it, guv.” The boy sounded utterly bewildered.

“Avert your eyes and ignore the spectacle.” Life in an army camp had involved a great deal of averting the eyes and ignoring spectacles, another reason why I’d preferred to wander the countryside on my own.

The coach rolled on, the passing miles giving me an opportunity to ponder. I let my thoughts wander from church bells to besoms, from the poorhouse to the sponging house. Because we passed within a few streets of the West address, I asked John Coachman to drop me on its doorstep and take Atticus on to Caldicott House.

We’d made good time and were thus arriving in London in the early afternoon. The darkness in the sky—dense coal smoke—made the hour seem later and gave the day a sinister cast. In the countryside, the sun might be shining, but here in the metropolis, all was reeking winter gloom.

The knocker was off the Wests’ front door, but I banged my fist stoutly several times anyway. I had run tame in this house as a boy, just as Hyperia had been a frequent visitor in the Caldicott dwellings. Healy, too, though he was enough my junior that we’d not been in the same forms.

Nobody answered my knock. I took myself in a full circuit around the house. The walkways, save at the front, had not been swept or shoveled. Smoke curled from only a single chimney, and a peek into the mews showed no evidence of West’s horse in residence.

Odd.

I returned to the front of the house and made my way to the area steps, which descended from a side walkway to the level of the kitchen. When I rapped on this door, it was opened by a young woman in two shawls, a full-length apron. and mobcap.

“He ain’t—isn’t—here if you’re looking for Mr. West. Sorry.”

She attempted to close the door, but I’d already wedged my boot into the opening. “I am looking for Mr. West indeed. Might I come in?”

“Wouldn’t be proper. Mrs. Helms ain’t—isn’t—here either.”

The young woman should not have told me that. I’d put her age at about sixteen, and her rosy complexion suggested a rural girlhood. New to Town and wary, but not yet wise.

“I am Lord Julian Caldicott, a friend of the family. Miss West is visiting at Caldicott Hall for the holidays, and she asked me to fetch her sewing basket while I was in Town. I won’t be but a minute.” I offered my best harmless-fellow smile, though Hyperia had asked no such thing of me.

I wanted to look around the house, for several reasons.

The maid stepped back, and I passed into a surprisingly cold kitchen. A weak fire smoldered on the enormous cooking hearth. No heat came from the oven. No scents of food preparation hung in the air.

“You’re here alone?”

“I’m not supposed to say. I think you’d best leave, my lord.”

More proof that she’d been newly hired and from the shires. London lords did not take orders from scullery maids.

“I’ll just be a moment.” I brushed past her and mounted the stairs that led to the ground floor.

She remained at the bottom of the steps, clearly torn between the need to keep an eye on an intruder and the need to keep herself safe.

“Mind you take only the sewing basket!” she called after me.

Her wages would be at the very bottom of what the agencies demanded, if she was receiving wages at all. She would not be able to afford coach fare back to her village, and she likely hadn’t a friend in the entire city.

What in blazes was Healy West up to?

The rest of the house was deserted and frigid. Draperies were drawn over every window. Dust was accumulating on even the railing of the stairs that led up to the first floor. Either Healy West was not in residence, or he’d taken to selling his best boots, half his clean shirts, half his morning coats… His jewelry box was similarly half emptied, and his bed had been stripped.

One was normally escorted to a sponging house in the clothes on one’s back, though for a sum certain, somebody might have been dispatched to gather up Healy’s effects.

And yet, no furniture or carpets had been sold, no paintings taken off the walls for permanent “cleaning.” The pianoforte remained in the music room. I made a brief pass through Hyperia’s apartment—I had business there too—and of course came across no sewing basket.

I returned to the kitchen and found the maid huddled in a blanket near the desultory fire. I stirred up the coals and looked around for kindling to toss on the embers.

“Wherever Miss West’s workbasket is, it’s not where she told me to look. Wait here.”

I went out into the garden and broke a dead oak sapling into eighteen-inch lengths. I gathered up sticks and dead leaves and returned to the kitchen.

When the fire was making a bit more of an effort, I took an empty metal bucket to the back of the pantries where the coal hole emptied and found barely enough fuel to fill a scoop.

Not good. Not good at all. I brought what coal I’d found back to the kitchen.

The maid gathered her blanket more tightly around her at the sight of me. “Coalman won’t bring no more unless he’s paid.”

“You aren’t staying here.”

“I ain’t got nowhere else to go, and I’ve been hired here proper. I’m to stay. I will get wages for biding where I was hired. Cook said.”

A thread of hysteria ran through the girl’s obstinance.

“Let me put it another way.” I rummaged until I found the tea drawer and a small crock that held some crystalized honey. “You will freeze to death if you stay here much longer. I am offering you the hospitality of Caldicott House, and I will send around one of our maids to fetch you. She can vouch for your safety beneath a ducal roof.”

“You’re a duke ?”

Dukes were not, strictly speaking, “my lords.” More proof of her recent arrival to London. “I am the brother of a duke.” The kettle held some water, probably melted snow, and I swung it over the growing blaze. “The duke himself would be addressed as Your Grace. When did you last eat?”

“Day before yesterday. Scraps from market.”

My next objective was to find a mug. “I beg your pardon?”

“I go to Haymarket, and when a vendor packs up for the day, they sometimes leave scraps behind—a dirty carrot or two, some parsnips. I’m not particular, but I’m also not very fast. The street boys let me have some carrots, though. Probably felt sorry for me.”

The notion disgusted her, clearly.

“It’s worse than that. They were earning your trust so that when you were truly starving, you’d go with them to the nice landlady who needed a scullery maid for her busy, warm kitchen. What they would not have told you was that the lady was an abbess, and your duties would not be in the kitchen.”

The girl put a hand over her mouth, eyes round. “I told me uncle London was wicked. Aunt told him, too, but he wouldn’t listen. ‘Wages are better,’ he said. ‘You’ll catch the eye of a handsome man,’ he said. ‘You’re a hard worker, and you’ll get on fine in Town.’ Uncle is a fool.”

Uncle was no more foolish than half the yeomanry in the land. Peace had brought the opposite of prosperity, and times were hard in the countryside. What the tenant farmers did not realize was that times were unimaginably worse in the slums and always would be.

I found a clean mug and filled a tea strainer with a portion of China black. When the kettle had whistled for a minute, I poured boiling water over the leaves and set the tea on the hearth near the maid.

While she held the steaming mug in two red hands, I poured a dash of hot water into the honey pot and swirled it around.

“Give it another minute,” I said, “and you can sweeten your tea. Do you know where Healy West has gone?”

“No, sir. He gave the senior servants holiday leave, but I don’t think he gave them their packets before he sent them off. I was to take in the mail and such, but mostly I’ve been shivering.”

Healy must have decamped the instant Hyperia had stepped into Kerrick’s traveling coach.

“Did you see him go?”

She breathed in the steam from the steeping tea. “Aye. He simply walked up the street and turned the corner.”

“No luggage? Not a satchel or valise?”

“He packed one. I think one of the footmen took it someplace before they left Town.”

West would not bide at his club and leave a servant behind to starve and freeze. I was nearly sure of that.

“What was Mr. West wearing when he left?”

The girl removed the strainer from the mug and set it on the hearth, then poured a portion of the honey water into her tea.

“Don’t gulp it,” I said. “Your tummy will rebel if you’ve been missing meals.” Spoken from experience.

She sipped silently, and I was reminded of Atticus, repeatedly exhorted to be grateful for a life of hardship and hunger.

“Mr. West was wearing his fancy coat, sir, the one with three capes. Fancy boots, all shiny. Come clear up to his knees. He has gloves lined with lamb’s-wool, and he were wearing a black scarf. Perishin’ cold, it was, and he jaunted off like he was going to see his tailor.”

“When?”

“Right after Miss West went with that countess in the big coach.”

This was bad news. Hyperia would expect me to find Healy West, and he had days’ head start on me. “What’s your name, miss?”

“I’m Clark. Hannah Clark, from Dunking Cross in Hampshire. This tea is ever so wonderful.”

“You are free to wait here, Miss Clark, until I can send a maid for you. Caldicott House is only a few streets away. In the alternative, you may finish your tea, and I will escort you myself to Caldicott House, where you will be welcome to spend the holidays with what staff remains.”

She was young, afraid, and far from home. She ought not to trust me.

“You ain’t an abbess,” she said, hands wrapped around her mug.

“I’m not Father Christmas either.” That had been proven three times over. “I intend to find Healy West and get some answers from him. He might simply have returned to the family seat for a few days before joining his sister at Caldicott Hall. He might be visiting friends, but he left you to make shift under trying conditions, and that worries me.”

“Worried me something powerful. I suppose I’ll go with you. You ain’t looked at me wrong since you stuck your boot in the door.”

Some things were the same, town, village, or country. “Collect your things. What you can’t carry, we can always retrieve for you later.”

She finished her tea and rose. “I can carry me things. Give me a minute.” She disappeared down a dim corridor, leaving me to tidy up and to lecture myself about displays of temper before servants.

She returned a moment later, the blanket now formed into a knotted bundle of pathetically small portions. “I’m only borrowing the blanket, sir. I promise that.”

“You’re borrowing a decent cloak, too, and a bonnet, scarf, and gloves, Miss Clark. Let’s be on our way, shall we?”

I made no effort to relieve her of her possessions, concluding she’d rather keep hold of them herself, what little she had. As we traveled the distance to Caldicott House, I listed more reasons why Healy might have abandoned house and staff and absented himself from his home.

None of my excuses—for that’s what they were—held any merit. A friend falling ill would not summon his chums to catch his malaise. If Healy had been set upon by footpads, he’d not have packed half his belongings before trundling off for a gratuitous pummeling. If Healy had nipped off to look in at the family seat, he’d had no need to keep that journey a secret from his sister.

“Watch out what you wish for,” I muttered as we approached Caldicott House.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Nothing of any moment.” I’d bemoaned a lack of substantive investigations to occupy me, and now I’d found a true puzzle. Hyperia would be wild with worry, and I was not a little concerned myself. By the time I found Healy, Arthur’s mail would be stacked to the heavens, and Aunt Bertha would likely have inspired the entire staff to give notice.

Happy Christmas.

“This is Caldicott House,” I said as we approached a staid three-story facade. “I will introduce you in the kitchen. The circumstances are unusual, and you are not responsible for them.”

She looked at me blankly, poor thing.

As it happened, I did not have an opportunity to shock the Caldicott House staff by intruding belowstairs with a scullery maid in tow. We were greeted at the door by the butler, who exhorted me to take myself to the cozy study and await a tray with all the trimmings.

“And Atticus?” I asked.

“Being stuffed with biscuits in the kitchen. He is delighted with the cinnamon shortbread. I will see to Miss Clark, my lord.”

He padded off, Miss Clark sending me a dubious look and scuttling after him.

I followed orders and made for the study, ready for both warmth and sustenance. What I found was Healy West, cuffs turned back, boots up on Arthur’s desk, and newspapers strewn about the blotter.

“Get your rubbishing feet off His Grace’s desk.” I advanced into the room, which was cozy indeed.

West stared at me over the Society pages. “Julian. What are you doing here?”

I shoved his boots aside and might have planted him a facer except that he was seated and I was standing, and even brawling must be conducted according to certain rules. Then too, if the fates were kind and Hyperia generous, Healy West might one day become my brother-by-marriage.

Assuming he lived to see the sunset.

“I am here by right of familial ownership of this dwelling,” I retorted. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

He rose and sidled away from the desk. “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

“You didn’t think I’d find out. Hyperia has been worried about you, fearing you’ve been taken up by the blacklegs or tipstaffs. She envisioned you shivering with a lung fever in some sponging house, unwilling to spend even the blunt necessary to contact her for help.”

West made a production out of organizing the newspaper— Arthur’s newspaper. “Hyperia has a vivid imagination.”

“She is the soul of good sense and sororal devotion. You, by contrast, are a mooching trespasser.”

He paused in his rattling of pages. “Mooching, I grant you, but trespasser? I’ve been a guest in this house.”

“You’ve been a caller, on very rare and distant occasions. What the hell do you think you’re doing, idling about like some remittance man who must keep out of sight of his uncle?”

Healy West had no title, but his pedigree was venerable enough to be far, far above reproach. For many generations, the family had prospered, but Healy’s parents had died before acquainting him with the finer points of preserving inherited wealth. The Corn Laws would keep him afloat for a time, but his best hope lay in patience, prudence, and sound investments.

In addition, of course, to some of the economies I’d suggested when I’d thwarted the blackmailer draining what coins remained in Healy’s coffers.

“It’s not my uncle begrudging me a spare groat,” he said, laying the newspaper beside the blotter. The blotter itself held several pages of writing in various stages of drying. “Nobody warns a fellow that the tailor who’s always so glad to suggest the latest fashions turns into a bloodhound come December. The vultures were circling, and without Hyperia in residence, I knew what I was in for.”

“So you left some girl just in from the shires to turn the duns away from your door while you bolted to the nearest ducal residence?”

West had the grace to look ashamed. “They won’t dare pester me here.”

“Your scullery maid was out of coal, West. No food in the house. I could see my breath unless I was in the kitchen standing by the hearth. That girl was scavenging at the Haymarket for edible garbage.”

Miss Clark’s situation bothered me more than Healy’s appropriation of the ducal residence, which was saying something.

“The lower orders are resourceful,” West said, bracing a hand on the mantel. “I have been resourceful, too, but you show me no understanding whatsoever.”

He was on his feet and all but begging for a thrashing.

“Cut line, or we are for the alley, where you will not last five minutes.”

His chin came up. “I box, I fence, I ride to hounds. In all modesty, I must warn you that I can give a pretty impressive accounting of myself.”

Spare me the bleatings of a blustering bachelor. I clipped him on his pretty impressive chin, a left cross, the sort of blow that at first seems negligible. Then the pain begins to radiate along the jaw, the teeth and nose join in, and a throbbing starts up in the brow and temple. Harry had taught me the left cross because it was an unexpected opening move and never had I used it to such excellent advantage.

“That is for Miss Clark, whom you left all alone to guard your empty, freezing larders. Unless you want more of same—for Hyperia who fretted terribly over you, for the staff here of whom you’ve taken shameless advantage, and for my own selfish satisfaction in teaching you some pugilism—you’d best get the apology over with and make a start on the explanation.”

West rubbed his jaw, which was turning a pleasing shade of red. His gaze held wary surprise, and I was reminded that he had no brothers. The gentle art of horseplay had likely been denied him.

And that gap in his education showed.

“I am sorry. Never meant to inconvenience anybody. Meant to follow Hyperia down to the Hall in due course, but the press of business demanded my presence in Town. She hadn’t been gone an hour before the tailor was at my front door—the man himself at my front door—and I knew the bootmaker would be right behind him.”

And the hatter, glovemaker, wine merchant, gentlemen’s clubs, jeweler…

“West, the trades must be paid. They’ve extended you credit for the entire year , and now you must pay them. You know they must be paid.”

“I do know, true, but I was a bit vague on how much they had to be paid. Hyperia managed the household money, and thus the grocer and cheesemonger and so forth are all taken care of. The coalman fell on my side of the ledger, and he’s an insistent sort. Caldicott House was staffed, and I didn’t think you’d mind my biding here for a bit. It’s so blessedly quiet, and I need that.”

He was a good-looking specimen. Tallish, broad-shouldered, trim through the middle, hair styled a la Brutus. He cut a dash credibly enough. I could not see him impersonating a recluse.

“Do you need quiet or cash?”

Something speculative flickered through his eyes, a how-much-to-admit/was-that-an-offer quality. “Both, though the shortage of cash is pressing. I could do the usual pathetic things—sell the artwork, claim the pianoforte is no longer stylish, pretend to pant after heiresses—but those measures are pathetic, and they also lack imagination. Every fellow bobbing in the River Tick attempts them. I am not in dun territory quite yet. I just need some time.”

“So you thought you’d demonstrate your flare for bad manners and move in here without an invitation?” I could, in a grudging corner of my mind, admit that West had shown initiative of a sort—a near-criminal sort.

“I thought I’d…” He stared at the fire. “Well, never mind what I thought. You found me out, and now I suppose you will tattle to Hyperia.”

“I have yet to hear the full explanation, West, and try as you might, you cannot paint me as the villain of this piece. You are living beyond your means, and when you could not prevail on Hyperia to solve that dilemma for you, you turned to subterfuge and duplicity.”

I was laying it on a bit thick—West’s means had been considerably reduced by a true felon—but I sought the full story, and he was being coy. Had he simply wanted to evade creditors, he could have jaunted down to Caldicott Hall days ago with Hyperia. The Hall was a ducal residence, and West had been invited to visit there.

He could have asked me for permission to tarry in Town for a few days at the ducal town house, claiming his entire staff deserved holiday leave. I would have seen such a request as blatant penny-pinching on his part, but assented. Future brother-by-marriage, victim of undeserved ill fortune, and all that.

“Not duplicity,” West said, dropping his contemplative young philosopher pose by the fire. “I planned to tell you when I came down to the Hall. Mention that I’d imposed for a brief while, gone short of staff at home, and that sort of thing. You, though, must see wrongdoing instead of a man coping with exigencies beyond his control.”

“I might see both if you’d tell me what it is that you’re writing and how you think it will cure your lack of cash.”

He went still. “Writing? You think I’m involved in a writing project?”

I was fairly certain, based on circumstantial evidence and my recent experience with Arthur’s mountains of mail in the Caldicott Hall study.

“You claim to need peace and quiet,” I said. “You have a gentleman’s education and can thus read, write, and, to a limited extent, reason. Somebody has certainly been scribbling away in the past hour or two right at His Grace’s desk. You can publish anonymously in most instances, thus preserving your gentlemanly credentials while taking coin for your creation. You have ink on your fourth finger, though we know ledgers and bank drafts aren’t the reason.”

I settled into Arthur’s seat, which was still warm from West’s prolonged occupation of it. “You chose to work here in the study,” I went on. “A quieter venue than the library, warmer, and housing many fewer distractions. His Grace’s studies are set up to comfortably facilitate great quantities of reading and writing. Ergo, you are trying to write your way out of debt.”

“You are scarifying, my lord. Positively scarifying. Hyperia has the same ability to notice a few details and then tell a fellow that his mistress is playing him false. She was right—Hyperia, that is, not the mistress—but a sister ought not to notice such things, much less speak of mistresses. Scarifying.”

“If you criticize your sister one more time in my hearing, I will black both your eyes. What is your magnum opus?”

West took the chair opposite the desk. “A play. Tom Jones brought forward sixty years. A coming-of-age tale on the surface, but satire if you look more closely. When one goes short of coin, one sees how little value is truly placed on standing and heritage. They all want money—the bachelors, the bankers, the strumpets, the matchmaking mamas. At least the tailors and strumpets provide some value.”

Coming of age indeed. “Is this play any good?” I expected harrumphing and pawing in response, but West’s smile was wry.

“I hope so. It’s funny, in parts. Bit, um, autobiographical in a vague sort of way.”

Meaning our hero’s mistress had played him false, and his foolish behavior on the field of honor had seen him blackmailed, while the family fortunes had unaccountably dwindled?

I had to admit that West had had a hard year. He was trying in a bumbling fashion to both make sense of his situation and to address his obligations. Heaven knew I’d stumbled along that same path. Maybe I would black only one of his eyes…

“You won’t finish the play reading the penny press, West.”

“Oh, but I will. The penny press is merciless, and they spare nobody. Some of my best material derives from the doings of my betters as recounted by the scallywags and weasels of the fourth estate.”

He spoke with a bit too much relish. “You keep your nasty little imagination off His Grace of Waltham and the Caldicott family, West, or I will break every one of your fingers.” I was certainly propounding a great deal of violence for a man who’d pulled the only punch he’d landed in months.

Peace on earth and goodwill toward future brothers-in-law. “Though I suppose,” I went on, “if I did give you a proper drubbing, Hyperia would commence breaking my toes.”

The promised tray arrived with enough food for four hungry men. I chose a toasted cheese sandwich, still hot for once and good fare for a cold winter day.

“Don’t stand on ceremony now,” I said, gesturing with my food. “You’ve appropriated an entire residence. Purloining a bit of sustenance is well within your capabilities.”

He took a beef-and-brie sandwich, also toasted. “Will you tell Hyperia?”

“She’ll be proud of you. You are making an effort to honor your responsibilities. If you asked her for a loan, she’d cheerfully give you credit, but you haven’t. She’ll like that.”

“I mean about squatting in the ducal town house. Mooching.”

Perhaps you should have thought of that when you waltzed in the front door and lied to the butler. “I will not knowingly mislead your sister about anything. If the topic comes up, she will hear the truth from me.” The sandwich was luscious, from the melted cheese to the perfectly toasted bread.

“And if the topic does not come up?”

“Then I would advise you to raise it with her, West. On this earth, I have not met a better friend than Hyperia, nor a better mind for parsing through options, possibilities, might-have- beens, or should-have-dones. She has the kindest heart paired with the keenest insight. Lying to her is pointless and stupid.”

West poured out two mugs of steaming mulled cider. “You are far gone, my lord. Hopelessly so. I assume you intend to propose?”

“Eat your sandwich. I assume you will get back to work when you’ve had your fill. I’m off to see a man about a recent delivery to the village, and by this time tomorrow, God willing, we will both be safely at the Hall. Before I decamp on my afternoon rambles, I will pen a note to that effect to be delivered to your sister by flying express.”

We finished our meal in silence. After I’d dispatched a message by pigeon to the Hall, I left West sitting at Arthur’s desk, pen in hand, foolscap on the blotter. He looked as happy as I’d seen him in recent months. I hoped for his sake—and his tailor’s—that his play became the sensation of the New Year.