Hudson said, “I did learn something that will interest you. It seems our poetical friend Preston is becoming less mythical and more genuine pestilence.”
“Oh?”
“His crimes are mounting, and with it his infamy. Word around London and the admiralty is that he stole a shipment of Royal Navy prize money bound for Portsmouth. At least he is being credited with the deed. The navy has added to the reward you’ve already offered.”
“The insolence of the man. When was this?”
“The fifth of November. Which means, if true, Preston could not have shot your brother. He was eighty miles away in Portsmouth, robbing the navy.”
Nathaniel frowned. “Why is that not a comforting thought?”
“Because that means we still don’t know who did it.”
Nathaniel shook his head. “If not him, if not Saxby, if not me, then who?”
Away from home, the valet waited on [his master]
at table and loaded his shotguns.
—Upstairs and Downstairs, Life in an English Country House
Chapter 30
He has come to finish what he started, Margaret thought, standing frozen in the shadowy sickroom, unable to move or cry out as a man tried to force Lewis Upchurch to swallow some poisonous weed. But Lewis was asleep and could not chew. The weed wouldn’t go down Lewis’s throat, no matter how the man stuffed it in his mouth.
The man looked over at her, and with a start she realized it was Sterling Benton.
“You can’t marry Lewis if he’s dead,” Sterling said, his face a grimace of effort as he jammed his fingers into Lewis’s slack mouth. “Now you shall have to marry Marcus....”
Margaret’s eyes flew open, startled awake. The disturbing images lingered along the edges of her mind, and she shuddered. How relieved she was to realize it was only a dream. An unsettling dream.Lewis is all right, she told herself. No one—not Sterling, nor masked man, nor pirate—had come to finish him off.
Still, an eerie sense of fear prickled through her limbs and needled her stomach. There would be no falling back asleep now. Giving up, she threw back her covers and climbed from bed. She pulled on her wrapper, slid her feet into slippers, and let herself from her room. The attic was perfectly quiet. Yet the eerie feeling did not diminish; if anything, it coiled and grew.
She crept down the first set of stairs and paused to listen. Had she heard something? She wasn’t certain. She padded down the back stairs to the ground floor. How still and museum-like the soaring hall felt in mottled moonlight, filtering through the high half-circle transoms. Nothing but the ticking of a tall case clock to disturb the silence, mark time, match her stride and heartbeat.
Her feet took her past the main stairway and Hudson’s office and across the marble floor to the library. There should be only two people inside at this time of night. Lewis and his nurse. Why did she feel they were not alone? Why this sense of imminent danger?
———
Nathaniel sat on a bench outside, leaning his back against a low-bending willow. From where he sat, he had a clear view of the moonlit arcade and gardens beyond. He hoped Margaret might venture out tonight and join him.
Unfortunately, thoughts of Lewis, and of Preston’s threat to come calling, kept impinging on more pleasant thoughts of Miss Macy. Even if the scoundrel had robbed the navy in Portsmouth five days ago, he could easily have returned to Kent by now. At the thought, he idly ran his finger over the hilt of the sword at his side. Ever since Lewis had been shot, he’d kept it near at hand.
Footsteps sounded on the flagstones of the arcade. He swiveled his head, but it was not Margaret emerging from the house. It was a man emerging from the shadows, wearing a long, many-caped coat.
And a tricorn hat.
Nathaniel rose and crept to the arcade. Though his blood boiled, he managed a cool façade. “Good evening.”
Abel Preston started. Surprise widened his eyes and slackened his mouth. But just that quickly, his eyes hardened, his lip curled. “Hello, Nate. Are you the welcome party?”
Nathaniel drew his sword. “If this is the welcome you had in mind.”
The man sighed. “I had hoped to find the rest of that money first. I know there’s more.”
Nathaniel glanced beyond the man, alert to the possibility of accomplices. “Where are your partners in crime?”
“Oh, they don’t like to venture so far from the sea. Besides, I assured them I could handle this small errand myself. I don’t suppose you would give me leave to do so, if I promise to return afterward and die like a gentleman?”
