Elizabeth Thornton - [Special Branch 02] (13 page)

They ate a late supper in Chelsea. Mark was too excited to eat much. He was fascinated by the ostlers and grooms in the stable yard and, as soon as they were finished, they went outside and allowed him to explore.

“Are you going to teach me to ride when we go down to Haddo Hall?” asked Mark. Jason’s groom was standing at the horses’ heads, while Mark fed the horses lumps of sugar.

Jason gave Gwyn a quick look. “If you want,” he said. “But your mother is a fine rider. She can teach you as well as I.”

“Will you teach me, Mama?”

“Mmm” was all she said. Flattery would get him nowhere.

“Mama, can we go and visit grandmother’s grave?” Then to Jason, “Grandmama is buried in St. Mark’s churchyard, right here in Chelsea.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jason. “I was there with your mother at the service when your grandmother was buried.”

And if he was trying to soften her by reminding her of how close they had been as children, it wasn’t
going to work either. She spoke to Mark. “The churchyard will be locked up. We’ll go another day.”

“Did you know my grandfather?” Mark asked Jason.

“Your Grandfather Radley? Oh, yes. He was in the navy. I remember he took me sailing with him once. When you come down to Haddo, I’ll teach you to sail.”

Haddo
. She gave Jason a look that told him what she thought of that idea. When he smiled, she was horrified to find she returned his smile. She wasn’t softening! It was just that she was tired of being angry.

It was dark when they left Chelsea, and very late by the time they arrived in Sutton Row. For the last mile or so, Mark slept in his mother’s arms, but when the curricle stopped, and Jason lifted him down, he wakened.

“Are we going to have hot chocolate, Mama?” Mark yawned hugely.

“It’s way past your bedtime,” she pointed out. “But I’m wide awake. Put me down, sir. I can walk.

See, Mama?”

In spite of her own feelings, this had been, Gwyn decided, a special day for Mark. She wasn’t going to spoil it for him now. “All right,” she said, “but you’ll go straight upstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll bring the chocolate up to you.”

“Perhaps,” said Mark innocently, too innocently, “Cousin Jason would like chocolate, too?”

Gwyn didn’t want to be rude in front of Mark, but she didn’t want to be alone with Jason, cozily ensconced in her kitchen while she made the chocolate. She might be tempted to murder him. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to discuss things, not until she’d had time to think about things on her own. She just wanted Jason to go away.

She gestured to the curricle. “The horses must be
tired, and it would be cruel to keep them standing out here in the cold.”

“That’s easily dealt with,” said Jason. “Knightly can drive them home and stable them.”

“Then how will you get home?” asked Gwyn.

“I’ll walk, of course. It’s not that far.”

How could she have forgotten how obstinate he could be, and how manipulative? Her eyes flashed. His danced. “In that case,” she said, “while I make the chocolate, you can help Mark get ready for bed. If it’s not too much trouble, that is.”

“No trouble at all,” he answered easily, then for her ears only, “and afterward we’ll talk.”

Conscious of Mark’s eyes on her, she contented herself with sucking in air, then led the way to the front door. It was only when they were in the house and she’d lit a candle to light their way upstairs, that it occurred to her that Jason would now see how poor they really were. After the first landing, there was nothing but bare floorboards. In Mark’s room, there was a bed, a washstand, a small chest, and a table set with toy soldiers in battle formation. After setting the candle on the mantel, she turned to face Jason.

He took in the room in one comprehensive glance. His eyes held hers momentarily, thoughtfully, and she felt her cheeks burn. He hadn’t missed a thing.

She didn’t wait for him to say anything. “I’ll make the chocolate,” she said, and quickly left them.

Ten minutes later, her arm aching from whisking the lumpy chocolate, she trudged upstairs with a tray set with three steaming cups. She took a few steps into Mark’s room and halted. Mark was under the covers and Jason was on top of them. He’d removed his jacket and neckcloth and held a toy soldier in one hand. They were both asleep.

“Jason,” she said softly as she approached the bed. “Jason!”

His long dark lashes fluttered, but he did not waken. She set the tray down on the chest and tried again. His only response was to frown and turn on his side, away from her, closer to Mark.

Since there was no one there to see her, she didn’t try to hide what she was feeling. It hurt her to see them like this, so trusting, nestled together, the dark-haired man and the fair-haired boy. And even as she watched, in sleep Jason reached out his hand, with its long sensitive fingers, and captured Mark’s smaller hand.

She swallowed the painful lump in her throat. How much did Jason know? Maybe he knew the truth. Maybe that’s why he wanted to be Mark’s guardian.

No. He didn’t know, because if he had, he would have confronted her with it, straight out. That was Jason’s way. He was a Radley. Mark was a Radley. They were a close-knit clan. If she needed proof of that, she had only to remember how good they had all been to her own mother when she became a widow with a child to support.

But that was different. Her mother had been glad to return to the Radley fold, while Jason had forced this on her. Beneath the charm and smiles, there was a hard edge to him that frightened her. She had to be careful, very careful, because she had far more to lose than Jason.

Better a courtesy title than the real thing.

She turned away and picked up a soldier she found on the floor. Mark’s clothes were neatly folded over a chair, and she knew she had Jason to thank for that. Neatness was not one of her son’s outstanding virtues. She folded the towels at the washstand and emptied the basin of water into the slop pail. It was all so domestic and trivial. She’d done it a thousand
times before, but never with Jason there, never with this feeling of foreboding in the pit of her stomach.

When Jason stirred, she turned and stared at him for a long, long time. Finally, she went to the closet in the hall, found a blanket that wasn’t too threadbare, and draped it over his inert form.

She knew one person who would be delighted when he wakened in the morning. She wasn’t so sure about Jason. It was a narrow bed and if he wasn’t careful, he would fall out of it.

The thought should have amused her, but it didn’t. With one last, lingering look, she went downstairs to tidy the kitchen.

T
hough it was very late, Gwyn did more than tidy up downstairs. Tomorrow was Sunday. There would be no Maddie, and all the work would fall on her. All the same, she wasn’t going to make a drudge of herself just because there was a guest in the house—an uninvited guest. Jason would have to take them as he found them or trot off home where, no doubt, he’d be waited on hand and foot by an army of servants.

The chocolate she’d made earlier was carefully poured into a jug and placed in the larder for tomorrow’s breakfast. She then took out the dishes and cutlery they would need and stacked them on the table. The fire was the next order of business, and a tedious business it was. She raked it, carefully banked it with lumps of coal, and finally covered it with the metal couvre-feu. Fires were not her forte, but, with luck, she’d be able to blow it to life in the morning with the bellows. When the fire was damped down, she filled a kettle from the pump and set it on the hearth, not to boil the water, but to take the chill off it. This was the water they would use for their morning ablutions.

The temptation to do more, such as scrub the granite sink, polish the furniture, and put away the laundry that Maddie had ironed had to be sternly resisted. Jason, she reminded herself, would have to take them as he found them.

She was reaching for the candle when she heard someone knocking on the back door. She glanced at the clock. Who, she wondered, could be calling at this time of night? It couldn’t be for her. Then it must be for Jason. Brandon? A footman?

When the knocking came again, she quickly left the kitchen and crossed the vestibule to the back hall. It took her a moment or two to recognize the young man who stood on the doorstep. He wasn’t wearing his workman’s clothes, but was smartly dressed in a well-fitting dark coat and trousers.

It was Harry the plasterer.

She regarded him coolly. “You’re out of luck, Harry,” she said, “My maid is not here, nor do I expect to see her until Monday morning. And,” she went on tartly, “as for you, I don’t expect to see you again until you’re ready to begin work on my walls and ceilings.”

He prevented her from closing the door by wedging his foot against it. “Mrs. Barrie,” he protested, “you’ve got it all wrong. I knows Maddie isn’t ’ere. No. What I came for was my toolbag. I left in such a ’urry this morning that I left it behind. I ’ad a funeral to go to, see, and forgot all about it.”

The funeral explained the smart clothes. “Your toolbag?”

He nodded.

She remembered interrupting Maddie and Harry when they were eating scones and sharing a pot of tea in her kitchen. He’d left in a hurry all right, but only because she’d appeared on the scene.

“I didn’t see any toolbag in my kitchen.”

“But it ’as to be there. Maybe Maddie put it in a cupboard to keep it out of your boy’s way?”

“Wait here and I’ll look.”

It seemed strange to her that Maddie hadn’t mentioned the toolbag, but she wasn’t going to stand on her doorstep and argue the point with him when it would only take her a moment to find it. She turned away and made for the kitchen. When she heard his footsteps as he followed her, she felt a ripple of something, not alarm, but something verging on annoyance. Give Harry an inch, she thought, and he’d take a mile.

She crossed to the cupboard where she kept supplies. He’d closed the kitchen door so softly that to her ears it sounded stealthy. The fine hairs on her nape began to rise. He’d known Maddie wouldn’t be here. There was no toolbag or Maddie would have mentioned it. He’d expected to find her and Mark alone. He was up to no good.

Beyond that, she didn’t take the time to think, other than to call herself a fool for trusting someone she knew nothing about. Blind instinct had taken over. If she was wrong, they would have a good laugh at her expense. But if she was right, if he was up to no good, she didn’t have a moment to lose.

“If it’s in the cupboard,” she said as naturally as she could manage, “it will be on the top shelf.”

She reached for the crock where she kept Nigel’s pistol, on the top shelf, well out of Mark’s way. Her hand dipped in and her fingers grasped the smooth wooden butt. Slowly, slowly she withdrew the gun.

“It doesn’t seem to be—” she said, and in the next instant, the breath was knocked out of her as his fist slammed into her back, propelling her forward, and her head struck the sharp edge of a shelf.

Dazed, gasping for breath, she sank to her knees and the gun clattered to the floor. She wasn’t given
time to recover or cry out. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he yanked her head back. His other hand closed around her throat.

“On the top shelf?” he said, and laughed softly. “I think not. If only you’d trusted me, Mrs. Barrie, we could have settled our business amicably. Now look what you’ve made me do.”

She would never have believed that cultured voice belonged to the young man who had flirted with her maid. She tried to speak, to ask him what he wanted, but her throat closed in terror, and all that came out of her mouth was a choked sob.

When the fingers at her throat tightened, she went rigid.

He spoke pleasantly, and that only added to her panic. “You know what I want don’t you, Mrs. Barrie? I hope you know, because if you don’t, you have nothing to trade for your life. You have a fine son. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, would you?”

The reference to Mark brought a swift and sudden chill on her. The pain in her head was forgotten as was the ache in her back. She was mortally afraid, but the threat to Mark helped her get a hold of herself.

Her mind worked like lightning. She was convinced he had the wrong house and the wrong person, but she did not think protesting her innocence would save her. He’d said as much. But it wasn’t hopeless. He knew about Mark, but he didn’t know about Jason. She had to find a way to alert Jason.

His warm breath fanned her ear, making her flinch, and he went on softly, “So, where is the portrait, Mrs. Barrie?”

The moment his fingers relaxed their hold, she began to pant, as though she was having difficulty breathing, and it wasn’t all a sham. But she was playing for time, groping frantically in her mind for a way of outwitting him.

If she tried to scream, the fingers around her throat would choke her to death. The gun was somewhere on the floor in front of her, but with her head pulled back and his knee digging into her spine, she couldn’t move an inch. She had to trick him into relaxing his crushing grip.

“Where is it, Mrs. Barrie? Where is the miniature? I know it’s not in the house. Tell me where you’ve hidden it.”

“I don’t know what—”

The fingers at her throat tightened, choking off her words, and she began to retch.

“If you don’t know,” he said, faint humor coloring his voice, “then I have no use for you. Shall we try again? Where is it, Mrs. Barrie?”

Her fear was edging toward panic again.
Think of Mark. Think of Jason. Where was Jason?

“It … it …” She began to suck great gulps of air into her lungs, then, with a little sigh, she went as limp as a rag doll.

“Mrs. Barrie?”

He gave her a rough shake, but she kept her eyes closed and her limbs relaxed. He muttered a profanity under his breath and let her slump on the floor. She heard his steps as he moved toward the sink.
Wait! Wait!
her mind screamed. When she heard the pump gurgling, she opened her eyes, grabbed for the pistol, and swung herself onto her back.