“I notice ye dinnae deny being miserable,” Sandy said, and ducked as Luce threw her thimble at him.
“Foolish Scotsman!” she murmured.
“Aye, but are we off tae York or not?” Sandy said.
“Of course we are!” Michael said. “I suppose it is too late to go now?”
“It is,” Luce said crisply. “Dinner in an hour, followed by a leisurely evening and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow you may go tearing off to York, if you wish.”
But this plan was soon forgotten, for the dinner hour saw the return of another of Michael’s colleagues, James Neate, an unobtrusive man whose great skill was to sit unnoticed in tap rooms and hear all the gossip.
“Any news of Peachy?” were his first words, but when Michael shook his head, James went on at once, “I bring interesting news. Guess who is staying at the White Swan? No, you will never guess. Miss Nicholson and a lord… Lord Tarvin. Do we know a Lord Tarvin? I thought she was betrothed to a commoner?”
“Miss Nicholson? Lord Tarvin?” Michael said, stunned. “But Pettigrew has just written to say they are gone to York. Wait… what date is on the letter? Well, I suppose if they only stayed one night in York… How long have they been at the White Swan, James?”
“Two or three days. They have been very furtive, using false names. He is Lord Frimley, and she is his sister, Miss Frimley, but the carriage has the coat of arms on it, and the servants are…a bit careless in their talk, especially when plied with ale. I am very good at plying servants with ale.”
“Two or three days!” Michael cried. “Who knows what they may have been up to in that time. And what are they even doing here?”
“I overheard the servants talking about a house,” James said. “I would wager that is Miss Nicholson’s house.”
“But what can they do about it?” Michael mused. “They cannot enter it… but perhaps they can. Lord Tarvin is Mr Frith’s trustee, I believe, so now that Miss Nicholson is engaged to marry him, he might be able to persuade the attorneys that he has a right to go in. But then, why the false names? They are up to something, that much is certain. We must keep an eye on them.”
“False names… masquerading as his sister… and ye think they’re up to something?” Sandy said. “Well done, Michael! Ye should take up a career as an investigator.”
It was as well Michael had no heavy object in his hand, for he would surely have thrown it at Sandy’s head, but the rest of them laughed long at his discomfiture, and he was not brought back to good humour until cajoled with a dish of sweetbreads and several glasses of very good claret at dinner.
***
Edward fizzed with excitement. He had spent three whole days looking at Apstead House from every possible angle, and loitering nearby to observe the comings and goings. He quickly discovered that few people went into the house and even fewer left it, just as Tess had said. But the gentlemen arriving in the evenings by way of the garden were interesting, so he sent Deakin to patronise every inn in town and make certain discreet enquiries. That brought surprising intelligence. Apstead House,it appeared, was in business as a rather exclusive and very expensive brothel.
That would make it easier for a gentleman to be at the back of the house, near the coach house, in the evening. There were bushes in abundance to hide behind, and an ancient apple tree meandering its way up the side of the coach house, easily climbable, and half hiding a window large enough for a man to scramble through into the office. Tess had told him that she had been spotted moving about, so he had only to keep below the level of any windows on the house side of the office. It should be easy.
Tess was very cross to be excluded, naturally, but he insisted that she and Betty should keep well out of sight. They had been confined to the inn since they arrived, or at least, he had told them to stay there. With Tess, there was no knowing what she might get up to when his back was turned. That was what made her so fascinating.
“It would never do for you to be recognised, especially as we are not using our own names,” he said. “It would look deeply suspicious.”
“We are not doing anything illegal,” she said. “That house is mine, after all. I am entitled to enter it.”
“Well… perhaps. I am not sure that a magistrate would be convinced by that argument.”
“I have more right to get into it than you have.”
“Tess, I am going to climb a tree, and then force a way in through a closed window. That is no venture for a female, especially as we have no idea what might be waiting inside. For all we know, Mrs Mayberry may have hired armed guards to protect that room. You must stay here, do you understand?”
She smiled and nodded and assured him that she had no thought of climbing trees, but he mistrusted her all the same.
“Do you want me to watch her while you’re gone, my lord?” Deakin said when she was out of the room.
Edward sighed. “Really she needs tying to the bedpost, and the servants with her, for they are totally loyal to her and cannot be trusted to protect her. No, let her do as she pleases, but if she should leave the inn, please do your level best to keep her out of trouble.”
He left early enough that there would still be light enough to see by, for lighting a candle would be fatal to his hope of secrecy. He had planned to wear his normal evening dress, to attract less suspicion, but Tess had pointed out scornfully that his usual pale silk breeches and stockings would be easy to see, so he had settled on black pantaloons. And then he was out of the inn, making his way towards the small house where he, a peer of the realm, was going to break in and steal whatever was in the safe.
The thought amused him, and he had the comfortable notion that even if he were caught, he had the justification of acting for Tess, whose house it was, and neither she nor her trustees would pursue him for his crime. The only point in the plan that gave rise to a degree of apprehension was the prospect of meeting a man with a pistol in his hand, but it was six weeks since Tess had been there, so he was optimistic that the affair had been forgotten.
Edward took his time walking through the streets. Pickering was not a large town, so he had to meander a bit, but eventually he found himself at the back of the house, and hastily dodged out of sight in the shrubbery behind the privy. Here he paused to catch his breath, calm his thumping heart and prepare for the next stage of his adventure.
Climbing the tree was easy, and he was mostly hidden from the ground by the still expansive foliage, although the ripening apples kept bumping him as he climbed, or else fell with soft thuds to the ground below. The highest part of the tree wasabove the roof of the privy, but thickly growing ivy provided shelter from anyone watching from the house.
