“You know, dearest, I’m not at all certain that it was a thief. There is this business of the map and King Macbeth and Pope Leo IX. Couldn’t there be someone else other than that dreadful Lambert man involved?”
Without thinking, Rohan said, “Actually, I plan to ride to Eastbourne this afternoon to do a bit of checking. I think it likely that Lambert was staying there. If there is someone else, perhaps I’ll be able to locate him.”
“I will, of course, accompany you,” Charlotte said, giving him a sweet smile.
“No, I will accompany you,” Susannah said, suddenly leaning forward in her chair.
Curse his loose mouth, Rohan thought. “No. Actually, neither of you is coming with me,” he said, every ounce of firmness in his entire brain coming out with that one sentence.
“Dearest, I’m sorry, but if you aren’t reasonable about this, then Susannah and I will simply ride to Eastbourne and make inquiries.”
“Both of us, Charlotte?”
“Naturally. I am willing to let you share the excitement. Ah, the art of detection. I find it fascinating. I am quite good at it. I was the one who found Lady Perchant’s ruby ring, you know. Perhaps there will be young men to question. I am very good at getting just about anything out of young men. They haven’t a chance.”
Rohan threw his napkin into the air. It fluttered down over his plate, still filled with delicious scrambled eggs and bacon and a rather tasty scone heaped with clotted cream.
“Me! Me!” Marianne shouted, pulling free of Lottie’s arms and running full tilt toward Rohan. “Me go too!”
Rohan groaned. “It is too much. Am I not the master in my own house?” He wasn’t about to put any of his family in danger. Surely Susannah realized that it had probably been Theodore Micah who fired at them the previous evening. Surely she realized he was more dangerous than Cleopatra’s asp. He appreciated her keeping her suspicions to herself.
“I will see to Marianne, sir,” Toby said.
“Yes, but first give me a go at her.” Rohan held out his arms. “Ro-han!” He picked her up and sat her on his lap. He lifted his napkin from his plate and the two of them ate his scrambled eggs.
Susannah stared at the man whose wife she had been for more than two weeks now. He was holding her daughter, playing with her, quite at ease with her. Nothing new really, but this time she felt something powerful move deep inside her. This something powerful—it was like a flower, she thought, a lily: it was radiant and white and pure and was coming into full bloom. It was very frightening. She’d never had much luck growing lilies.
There was no way she would let Rohan ride into danger alone. She knew that Theodore Micah had probably been the one to ambush them the previous night. Perhaps he had been following them, perhaps he had been hiding near Tibolt’s vicarage. No, she wouldn’t allow Rohan to go alone. She had to protect him.
What the baron did an hour later was underhanded, but it worked. Lady Dauntry and her two companions, Mrs. Goodgame and Mrs. Hackles, came by for a visit. It was too early for a proper visit, Charlotte said to Susannah, but she couldn’t very well tell them to leave.
Susannah didn’t trust Rohan an inch. She hoped he wouldn’t take advantage of this visit to run off to Eastbourne without her. She knew he thought he had her best interests at heart, but he would soon smother her with such protectiveness. She watched Rohan go to his estate room and close the door. He looked as if he would wait until the ladies left. Still, she didn’t trust him. But she also knew it would be intolerably rude of her not to play hostess to the “three battleships,” as Toby called them. So, Rohan had a chance to leave.
The old biddies had come by for a good gossip, Charlotte explained in a whisper. It was the family’s responsibility to feed the women appropriate tidbits. It was even their duty, and an excellent opportunity as well. “After all,” Charlotte said, “if we tell what we want everyone to know and believe, then they won’t be encouraged to make up their own little tales, which, trust me, would bear only incidental resemblance to the truth. I will, naturally, tell them all these little bits in strictest confidence. Also, Susannah, Rohan has gone into the estate room. He is hopefully doing correspondence with dear Pulver, not planning to go by himself to Eastbourne.”
Rohan waited until both ladies were well occupied. He put Pulver to work and told him to stay in the estate room until he returned to let him out. He went to the stable and told Jamie to take all the horses to the east pasture for at least three hours and not come home until the time was up. He said he was to pull two wheels off the two carriages as well. He himself saddled up Gulliver, even as Jamie and the other stable lads made a chain of the horses and led them away.
He was whistling when he rode Gulliver away from Mountvale House down the splendid graveled drive lined with lime and oak trees. A man did what a man had to do, he thought, and he’d bested them. He wished he could have smiled at his duplicity, but he was too worried. He waved at Jamie, who was well beyond the brightly painted white fence, too far away now for either his mother or his wife to bring him back. He stopped briefly and spoke to two of the patrolling men. They’d seen no one suspicious.
He was so relieved with his stratagem that he belted out a limerick he’d heard Jamie sing several times. He yelled it out at the lovely blue sky overhead, at the top of his lungs.
“There was an old lady of Kent
Whose nose was remarkably bent
One day, they suppose
She followed her nose,
For no one knows which way she went.”
Gulliver’s head snapped around. He snorted at his master, then tried to bite his boot.
When Rohan reached Eastbourne an hour later, he rode directly to the waterfront. It didn’t take him long to find out the name of the woman who rented rooms. Indeed, she had rented a room to an actor fellow who had the sweetest smile and the deadest eyes that Alice, the incredibly buxom barmaid, had ever seen in all her born days.
The actor fellow was gone. A man who had Rohan’s reputation would have been easily seduced by the buxom barmaid Alice, but instead he rode home. He didn’t relish returning home, but there was no hope for it.
He thought ahead to the ball for all their neighbors, at which he would confess his sins and seek redemption. He needed to practice. He wanted his performance to be perfect.