“No doubt one of us will,” Robert replied.
Folie pursed her lips and cut into the pie. “This smells delectable!” she said brightly. “How is the food here?”
“Excellent,’’ Robert said, at the same time that Sir Howard muttered, “Adequate.”
She took a bite. “It tastes marvelous,” she said, and then added, “Though I’m sure I’d think anything edible quite marvelous at this point.”
Robert smiled slightly. “Fence-sitting?”
“Yes, I am devoted to peaceable pursuits. I’ve had enough of adventure lately.” She felt odd and frivolous, almost blithe. As if in the release of tension, the terrors of the night dissolved in this flighty, light-spirited relief. “But when can we send word to Melinda? And Lady Dingley? Please. They’ll be frightened out of their wits.”
“Folly—” He fingered a flat-bladed knife that lay on the table, looking up at her. “Tell me what you remember of the note that you wrote.”
She paused with a bite poised. “Note?”
“The note about Vauxhall.” He glanced toward Sir Howard, and back at her. “The one that came to me.”
Folie ate more of the pie. She shook her head, frowning. “It’s all a blur. Vauxhall—I remember the fireworks. But...did I write a note to you?’’
“You told me—on the ship. Do you remember that? You said that you had written it to him.” He nodded toward Sir Howard.
Folie looked doubtfully at Sir Howard. He said nothing, giving her no aid. “Did I?” She frowned down at the steaming gravy on her plate. “I suppose...” She chewed her lip. When she tried to concentrate on the recent past, her memory seemed a confusion of vivid, distinct pictures, like frozen scenes lit by the bursting rockets at Vauxhall. “I don’t remember a note. Are you sure that I wrote it?”
“Utterly,” Robert said.
“How so?” Sir Howard demanded. “Perhaps it was a forgery. It makes no sense whatsoever, that she wrote a note to me, only to have it delivered to you!”
“It was not a forgery,” Robert said with certainty.
“Oh, are you so very familiar with Mrs. Hamilton’s handwriting?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes, Dingley,” Robert said with some exasperation, “I am.”
“Still—handwriting may be imitated.”
“She wrote it.”
“What makes you so sure—”
“Because it smelled like her letters, for God’s sake!” Robert snapped. “Trust me, Dingley. I know she wrote it.”
Folie bit her lip, lowering her face and applying herself to her dinner. Then she looked up. “Robert!’’ she gasped. “My shawl! I wore it to Vauxhall!”
He nodded. “I know.”
“You don’t have it? It wasn’t with me?”
Robert shook his head. “No. Nor your jewelry. I’m afraid they are all gone for good.”
“Oh!” Folie cried, her heart sinking, “I’ve lost my blue shawl!” She hunched in the booth, trying to absorb the belief that her beautiful kashmir shawl was really gone. Now that they were safe, her emotions seemed to ride up and down on ungovernable waves. Somehow it seemed a greater disaster than anything else, all out of proportion to reason. She felt tears burn the back of her throat, and a wild urge to go back to the hulk to retrieve her loss.
“No doubt Cambourne stole it,” Sir Howard said.
Folie turned on him. “What a disagreeable thing to say! Of course he didn’t steal it! He gave it to me.”
Sir Howard looked nonplussed. “Cambourne?” He glanced between the two of them. “I beg your pardon. Perhaps I am unaware of the true circumstances here. Is she your—”
“And you need not make odious, vulgar intimations,” Folie exclaimed. “He sent it to me years ago, from India.” Her posture sagged again. She picked at her plate with her fork. “It was my very favorite shawl—I always wore it whenever I felt low.” She glanced shyly at Robert. “I always loved the scent of it.”
“My, my, what a pair of noses the two of you have!” Sir Howard said.
“To our misfortune,” Robert retorted, “considering your stench after we rescued you from the bilge.”
Folie’s humor rose irrationally. She smiled in spite of herself, touching Sir Howard’s shoulder. “Oh dear! You really were awful.”
“Thank you! I shall not pull you from the Thames next time!”
Folie put her hand over her mouth. She stared at him in dismay. “And I had forgot! Truly I had—I am so worried about Melinda—and my mind has been so bewildered! Oh, Sir Howard, I’ve not even given you a word of thanks! Forgive me! You must forgive me! You saved my life!”
“It was nothing,” he said gruffly.
“Indeed it was! You saved me! All I remember is that wicked boy pushing me against the gate, and the water like ice, and that coat dragging me down, and then you were there. God bless you, Sir Howard. I owe you my life. How you held us both up I shall never know.”
He shrugged off her effusions of gratitude modestly. “I’m a strong swimmer. We were used to bathe all summer in the lake at Dingley when I was a boy. I taught all my girls to swim before they could walk.”
“I have never been in anything larger than a copper tub!” Folie said. “I cannot swim at all. Thank God you were there.”
“You must learn, for your own safety’s sake,” Sir Howard said. “I’ll teach you. This summer, if you like. We could all go down to Brighton–”
“Let us return for a moment to our predicament, before you make plans for the summer,” Robert said dryly.
“Yes—oh, yes—” Folie turned anxiously to him. “We must get word to Melinda directly. I cannot be easy until she knows we’re safe.”
Robert nodded, but before he could speak, Mrs. Moloney returned with the roasted chickens. After setting out a generous table of vegetables and meat along with the fowl, inspecting Folie’s plate and announcing that she ought to eat another portion of pie, or take a slice of roast chicken, she went away again.
“I believe I can send word safely to Cambourne House,” Robert said low, “but if Folie cannot account for that note, then we have no lead at all as to who did this to us.” He looked at her. “Until I’m certain we won’t be attacked again, I can’t allow you to go back. None of us should appear there alive.”
Sir Howard made a dissenting sound, but offered no alternative.
“But Robert—” Folie said in a whisper. “Have you no idea what it all means? None whatsoever?”
He rubbed his fingers over his eyes, and then leaned on his hand. “You will think me mad again if I tell you what I suspect.”
“Nay—we’ll only think you criminally careless to allow Mrs. Hamilton to be involved,” Sir Howard said.
Robert lifted his head. “Dingley,” he said, “if I don’t kill you before we’re through this, remind me that I mean to do it.”
“With pleasure,” Sir Howard said.
“Oh, what a pair of—of—lobcocks!” Folie exclaimed, using a word she had overheard aboard the hulk.
They both looked at her as if she had just dropped her garter in Lady Melbourne’s drawing room. “What?” Robert said.
“A pair of lobcocks,” she repeated gamely. “Why, is it a very bad word?”
“Oh, perfectly applicable to him,” Robert said graciously. “But don’t trot it out to describe him in polite company.”
“Robert Cambourne,” she exclaimed. “Here we are, in danger of our very lives, and the two of you must act a pair of eight-year-olds. You are both lobcocks, whatever that may mean, but I hope it signifies that you have straw in your silly heads.”
He looked a little abashed. “I did not mean that as it sounded.”
“Yes, that is what you always say,” Folie admonished.
“I do?”
“Whenever I remark that you have been particularly spiteful.”
“Spiteful!” he said in surprise.
“Spiteful,” Folie said firmly. “I don’t know where you learned to say such m
ean, clever things. It is not like you.”
He looked into the corner with a reflective expression, as if he were staring at some far horizon. Then he glanced back at her. “How do you know it isn’t like me?”
Folie gave a small shrug. “I just know.”
Sir Howard grunted irritably. “So let him cut at me with his sour tongue—we’ll meet over a pair of good pistols and discover who is the cleverest.”
“That you will not,” Folie said, rolling her eyes. “Now—kindly tell us what you suspect, Robert. However mad it may seem. We are clearly in no case for common sense.”
Robert sat back in the corner. “I believe this is a plot to make the Prince Regent appear insane,” he said simply.
After a pregnant pause, Sir Howard threw back his head and began to howl with laughter. He gasped and chortled, then put his face down on his crossed arms, his shoulders shaking.
Robert watched him cynically. “I expected this.”
Folie poked Sir Howard hard with her elbow. “Sit up and be still. Be still!”
Sir Howard choked with muffled laughter. After several jabs from Folie, he finally sat up, his face red and splotchy. “Oh, God give me strength,” he snorted. “A plot to make Prinnie insane! A plot to make Pr-prinnie insane!”
“I apprehend that it seems unlikely,” Robert said.
“Downright demented!” Sir Howard went off into sputters again, gasping for air. “What does the—what does the Pr-prince have to do with anything? More like it’s a plot to make y-you insane, Cambourne. And it seems to have succeeded.”
Robert looked at Folie, ignoring Sir Howard. “Well, that is what I think, frankly. That I was drugged, to make me appear mad, and the same thing is being done to the Prince.”
“Come, come, you ninny, where’s your proof of this?” Sir Howard asked.
“I have no proof as to the Regent. As to myself—I have the word of a girl named Kathy, or perhaps Mattie, that she added something to my food at Solinger. After she told me, she vanished. I believe she was murdered.”
Sir Howard’s chuckling ceased. He picked up his knife and fork and began to carve his chicken as if he were attacking it. His cheeks were flushed bright red.
“I think that somewhere in my Indian journals, I made some record of this—drug, or poison—whatever it might be.” Robert still did not look at Sir Howard, but spoke directly to Folie. “I can summon no specific memory, but I wrote hundreds of pages, on a number of guuruus and peculiar rites. Some of them used potions to induce eccentric mental states.”
“And this stuff was added to your food, you say?” Sir Howard asked in a tone of disbelief. “How, pray, do you propose one of these guuruus managed to get it from India into your plate in Buckinghamshire?’’
“I think someone went to the devil of a lot of trouble to get it there,” Robert said. “And therefore had a damned good reason.”
“But what, Robert?” Folie asked. “I can’t see any purpose to it.” She frowned. “Not that my mind seems very sharp today,” she admitted. “I’m all about in my head.”
He smiled at her. “Sweet Folly. You have been a remarkable heroine. I can only conjecture that someone believes me to know much more than I do, and wished to render me incapacitated—and make sure that if I did speak, no one would take me seriously.”
Folie blushed. It was the second time he had called her that, sweet Folly. It seemed to make her heart dance about in her chest, and invoke the most airy fancies. She smiled back at him bashfully. She ought to tell him not to address her so, she knew—particularly before Sir Howard. But she did not.
“Still, I cannot see it,” Sir Howard said. “You say that Mattie confessed?”
Robert looked up at him swiftly. “You know her? Mattie?”
“I—certainly, yes, I know her. Mattie Davis. She is a Dingley village girl, you know. I know the Dingley people. I keep up with them. In fact I recommended her father take the gardener’s position at Solinger when you returned. I suppose she went to serve up at the house? A good church-going family. Salt of the earth. I can’t believe the girl would knowingly poison a puppy!”
Robert looked at him for a long moment. “She gave me reason enough that she might.”
“What reason?” Sir Howard asked, his voice strident and curious.
“She had a babe in her, and no husband.”
Beneath his queue, the back of Sir Howard’s neck turned beet-red. He took a large bite of chicken and shook his head. “You gaby—will you say such things before a lady?”
“The girl is dead, Dingley,” Robert said, still looking directly across the table. “Is propriety all that concerns you?’’
Sir Howard chewed sullenly. He took a long swig of ale. “God rest her soul, if that is true. Which I take full leave to doubt, sir.”
Something tugged at Folie’s erratic memory, slipping away even as she thought of it. She frowned a little. She lifted her hand—then lowered it, uncertain.
“I hope you may be right,” Robert said. “I devoutly hope you may be right.”
“Then you don’t know for certain,” Sir Howard said quickly. “What makes you suppose she is murdered?”
“I found her apron. Bloodstained.” Robert glanced at Folie as if he did not wish for her to hear. “Gruesome,” he said briefly. “I need not go into it. But I think she’s dead.”
There was a short silence. Folie bit her lower lip.
“Well. I cannot sit here twiddling my thumbs any longer,” Sir Howard said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“Don’t go to London,” Robert said.
“I am not yours to command, sir,” he said coldly. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hamilton. You must excuse me.” Sir Howard bowed.
Folie nodded, but he had already turned away, shoving open the taproom door and ducking through. Robert made a small flick with his hand, as if to say, “Good riddance.” He picked up his fork and ate a few bites, then looked at Folie.
“Do you still suppose I’m mad?”
“No,” she said quietly. “The world seems mad, perhaps.”
“I didn’t want you in this. Folly, I didn’t know what to do. I was so...” His intense voice trailed off. He looked down at his plate. “Well. Never mind.”
“If I had listened to you, I would not be here.” She wrapped her hands in the borrowed apron. “But...then— what if you had been all alone? They might have kept you; you might have vanished and I would never have known what happened to you.” As she spoke, her voice began to rise with emotion. “Oh, Robert.”
They sat silent, the table between them. His face was strangely severe.
“Be careful of Dingley,” he said. “I swear he’s up to his ears in this.”
“Sir Howard?” she said incredulously. “No, I can’t believe—”
“Listen to me for once!” He stood up, leaning on his hands. “Folly. Just once.”
Folie bowed her head. His vehemence had an odd effect; instead of stiffening her resistance, which nearly anyone else’s sharp command would have done, it warmed her inside. Even if she could not really believe in his suspicions—it had been a long, long time since anyone had worried about her enough to give her overbearing orders.
“Yes, Robert,” she said submissively, hiding a small smile.
He gave a caustic grunt. “Very convincing,” he said. “I’m going to try to get word to Cambourne House now. Stay here in the house.”
“Yes, Robert,” she repeated.
He reached over and lifted her chin with his fingers. “Little scamp. Look me in the face and say that.”
Folie lifted her lashes. She stared into his ice-gray eyes. “Yes, Robert.” She was piqued to discover that she could not prevent the smile from playing at the corners of her mouth.
He stared back. The tips of his fingers were warm on her skin. His look drifted over her face, touching her cheeks and chin and forehead. Suddenly he drew a deep breath and stood straight. “I’m going,” he said f
irmly, as if she might not believe him. He turned away, buttoning his coat.
SEVENTEEN
It was after midnight when Lander arrived at The Highflyer. Robert felt strong relief when he saw the butler’s square, familiar face—sending a thin beggar boy to the back door of Cambourne House had not been the most certain of ways to convey an obscure message—but Lander had his wits about him, Robert could say that without reserve.
Folie and Sir Howard were in bed. The only light was from the fire, where Skipper lay curled by the hearth, casting a long shadow over the flagstone floor. Lander looked about the small public house curiously as he sat down with Robert, but as usual, he made no comment. Mrs. Moloney—who had flatly refused to discuss the party removing elsewhere when Robert had warned that they might draw something dangerous to The Highflyer—served out a pair of her creamy ales and left them discreetly alone.
“How is it at home?” Robert asked directly.
“I believe you saved Miss Melinda’s life,” Lander said. “I don’t think she could have survived another day of terror.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Only what you said, that Mrs. Hamilton is alive and well with you.” He gave Robert a crooked smile. “She was not overly reassured, but just to know her mother is unhurt has revived her spirits greatly.”
“Have you notified anyone of her abduction?”
Lander paused. He took a deep draw on his mug, then set it down carefully. “I must admit something to you, sir.”
Robert raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“You hired me out of Bow Street, as a servant and guardian. I told you I had experience with both—with the thief-takers and with being in service. That is not quite perfectly true.’’
Robert sat back. He looked at his butler expectantly.
“I am well acquainted with thieves and ruffians. But my experience with service has more to do with receiving than giving it.”
“This is shocking news,” Robert said mildly.
“My father is the Marquess of Hursley.”
Robert lifted his eyebrows.
“I’m not the heir, I assure you,” Lander said, as if Robert would wish to be confident on that point. “I have four older brothers.”