Fifteen minutes later, Dain sat upon his horse, glaring at the front door of Athcourt. He waited another five minutes, then set out down the long drive, leaving Phelps to deal with parcels and Her Ladyship.
Phelps caught up with him a few yards past Athcourt’s main gateway. “‘Twere the toy what slowed her,” he explained as they rode on. “Went up to the North Tower, she did, ’n found one o’ them paper peepshows. A sea battle, ’t were, she said.”
“That must be Nelson and Parker at Copenhagen,” said Dain. “If it was one of mine, that is,” he added with a laugh. “I daresay that’s the only one I hadn’t time to destroy before I was sent to school. Got it on my eighth birthday. One needn’t wonder how she found it. My lady could find the proverbial needle in a haystack. That’s one of her special talents, Phelps.”
“Ess, I reckon it don’t work out so bad, seeing as how Your Lordship loses some’at now and again.” Phelps eyed his master’s left arm, which Dain had freed from the sling the instant he was out of sight of the house. “Lost your arm saddle, did you, me lord?”
Dain glanced down. “Good heavens, so I have. Well, no time to look for it, is there?”
They rode on for a few minutes in silence.
“Mebbe I shouldn’t’ve helped her look for the lad,” Phelps said finally. “But I been worrit ever since I heerd ol’ Annie Geach’d cocked up her toes at last.”
Phelps explained that the elderly midwife had been all the mother Dominick had known.
“When Annie passed on, there weren’t no one else wanted to look after the tyke,” said Phelps. “As I reckon, his ma made trouble in front o’ your new bride, figurin’ you’d have to do some’ at—mebbe give her money to go away or get a nuss for the lad. But you never sent nobody lookin’ for her, not even when the boy were raisin’ hell in the village—”
“I didn’t know he was raising hell,” Dain interrupted irritably. “Because no one bloodytoldme. Not even you.”
“‘T weren’t my place,” said Phelps. “Not to mention which, how were I to know you wouldn’t go about it all wrong? Transportin’, Her Ladyship said. That’s what you had in mind. Both on ’em—ma and boy. Well, I reckon it didn’t set right with me, me lord. I stood by once, watchin’ your pa go about it all wrong. I were young when your pa sent you off, and skeered o’ losin’ me place. And I reckoned the gentry knowed better ’n an ignorant village boy. But I be past the half-century mark now, ’n I sees things some’at different ’n before.”
“Not to mention that my wife could persuade you to see pixies in your pockets, if that suited her plans,” Dain muttered. “I should count myself lucky she didn’t talk you into secreting her in one of your saddlebags.”
“She tried,” Phelps said with a grin. “I tole her she’d do more good gettin’ ready for the lad. Like findin’ the rest o’ them wooden soldiers o’ yours. ’N pickin’ a nussmaid ’n fixin’ up the nuss’ry.”
“I said I would fetch him,” Dain coldly informed the coachman. “I did not tell her the filthy beggar could live inmyhouse, sleep inmynursery—” He broke off, his gut churning.
Phelps made no answer. He kept his gaze upon the road ahead.
Dain waited for his insides to settle. They covered another mile before the inner knots eased to a tolerable level.
“A problem ‘of cosmic proportions,’ she called it,” Dain grumbled. “And yet I must solve it, it seems, somewhere between here and Postbridge. We’re coming to the West Webburn River, aren’t we?”
“Another quarter mile, me lord.”
“And from there, Postbridge is what—less than four miles, isn’t it?”
Phelps nodded.
“Four miles,” Dain said. “Four bleeding miles to solve a problem of cosmic proportions. God help me.”
Chapter 18
An accomplished strumpet Charity Graves certainly was, Roland Vawtry thought. Clever, too, to come up with a fresh plan on the spur of the moment, with the village louts bearing down on her on one side and Lady Dain on the other.
As a mother, however, she was utterly useless.
Vawtry stood at the window overlooking the innyard, trying to ignore the revolting sounds behind him and the more revolting stench.
Immediately after the encounter with Lady Dain, Charity had hied to her tiny cottage in Grimspound, collected her belongings, and hurled them into the broken-down Dennet gig she’d bought a week ago, along with an equally broken-down pony.
The brat, however, had balked at getting into the gig, because of the thunder miles away.
Unwilling to risk his bolting from the vehicle and disappearing into the moors, Charity had pretended to sympathize. Promising they’d wait until the thunder stopped, she’d calmly set out a bit of bread and a mug of ale for him. To the ale, she’d added “the tiniest bit—not half a drop—of laudanum,” she claimed.
The “half a drop” had quieted Dominick to the point of unconsciousness. She’d stuffed him into the gig and he’d slept the whole way to the inn at Postbridge and for some time after, while Charity explained to Vawtry what had happened to destroy their original plans and what she’d contrived instead.
Vawtry trusted her. If she said Lady Dain wanted the loathsome child, then it was true.
