Collington drawled, “Fascinating as is this conversation, alas, I cannot linger. Your servant, messieurs. If you please, Naomi…?”
Keeping her eyes downcast, she put her hand on his arm and he led her away.
***
“I tell you,” said Gideon earnestly, “that blasted chess piece is bound up in it somehow! I wish to God I knew how!” Clinging to the strap as the coach raced through the late morning, he waited for a response and, receiving none, turned to his friend.
Morris leaned back against the squabs, smiling vacantly at the postilion’s back.
“Hey!” said Gideon.
Sighing, Morris murmured, “M’father will adore her. So will the family.”
“Did you hear one word I said, you star-crossed dolt?”
“Ain’t star-crossed! I’ve found the most wonderful girl ever created, and I intend to wed her. What has star-crossed to do with that?”
“Oh, nothing at all. Save perhaps that her brother swears to blow a hole through you, and if you instead blow another hole through him there is some slight possibility he would object to your marrying his sister. In either case you haven’t exactly won his esteem, Jamie.”
Blinking, Morris returned to reality. “Who are you to talk of winning esteem? If ever I heard of people living in glass houses and flinging stones! To judge from that scorching scold he dealt you, your honoured sire ain’t delighted with you, my Tulip.”
“No,” acknowledged Gideon rather grimly. “My apologies that you were present through it all. He’s really not such a bad old fellow. At least, I got you away.”
“So you did.” Morris looked around, frowning. “Away to where, might I ask? And what am I doing in this coach? I was reduced to blancmange after hearing Sir Mark comb you out, and you took advantage of it to kidnap me, damme if you didn’t!”
Gideon laughed. “You agreed to come, and I thought it very good of you. But an you wish to be put down…” He reached for the window.
“In this wilderness? What are you about, you villain? I’ll have no more of your minor wars, and so I tell you!”
“We’re coming into Canterbury, as you’d know did your eyes see aught but Miss Falcon. As to what I’m about—Jamie, I am in a fair way to being convinced that the chess piece Naomi lost is in some way connected with my sire’s troubles.”
Morris stared at him. “My idea exactly! The ringleader is that curst chessman. I felt when he was in my pocket that actually,Iwas inhis,and—” He threw up one arm to protect himself, and having begged for mercy, settled back, laughing. “No, really, dear boy. You must allow ’tis far-fetched. But you’d Collington facing you an hour ago. Why didn’t you ask him? An he knew something, he’d likely tell you. Good man, the earl.” Gideon’s speculative gaze turned to him, and Morris added reinforcingly, “M’father says so.”
“And how if your sire is mistaken, and Collington is the man behind my father’s downfall? A fine figure I should cut asking him for information!”
“Collington?”Morris groaned and drew a hand across his eyes. “Poor lad, you’ve a proper rat’s nest ’twixt your ears! Why do you not accuse the Archbishop of Canterbury? Or the Lord Mayor of London? We might have as much fun with them.”
Gideon said quietly, “I’ll hire another coach in Canterbury, and you can go on to Sevenoaks. I shouldn’t involve you, at all events.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Mind you, I’d be glad of a brawl did you point me the villain, and say ‘There he stands! Tally ho!’ But you’re tilting your lance ’gainst every windmill in sight, and each more unlikely than the last! I wonder why I had it fixed in my foolish head ’twas Derrydene you suspected?”
“I do suspect him.” Gideon frowned. “And perhaps I am tilting ’gainst windmills. The devil’s in it that I don’t know who I’m fighting, Jamie. Dammitall! ’Tis like trying to grapple a shadow.”
“And what shadows do we grapple in Canterbury?”
With a faint grateful smile, Gideon said, “’Tis my hope that the jeweller who repaired that confounded chessman may be able to tell me something.”
“If he ain’t connected with the murky business, he’ll know nothing. And if heisconnected with it, we’ll likely wind up with our throats cut! Besides, how d’you know which jeweller? There are likely a dozen or so in Canterbury.”
“When Lady Naomi came to Promontory Point that first day, she mentioned a jeweller’s shop in Stour Street. It shouldn’t be hard to find, surely?”
His optimism proved well founded, and an hour later, the two young men stood on the flagway, gazing at Shumaker’s Jeweller’s Shoppe.
Morris sighed. “Well, you were right, dear boy. ’Twasn’t hard to find.”
A tug at his boot roused Gideon. He glanced down. A tiny monkey with a red shako strapped to his head blinked up at him and waved a tin cup. Mechanically, Gideon took out his purse and dropped a groat into the cup, and the monkey scampered, chattering, to the organ-grinder. That large individual, wearing an ill-fitting scratch wig, and with a purple kerchief knotted around his throat, beamed, and turned the wheel, and the piercing notes of some unidentifiable melody shattered the quiet. Gideon raised one hand, and the organ-grinder stopped, his soulful dark eyes scanning the customer questioningly. “You no like-a da music, signor?”
Stepping into the kennel, Gideon lied, “Very much. But I’d liefer have information. Can you tell me what happened here?”
