‘So who could have approached the terrace unobserved, Lady Northam?’
‘Almost anyone,’ Guin admitted. ‘I was entertaining our callers in the salon on the other side of the house. There would be a risk of being seen by the servants, of course, but anyone could walk across the lawns from the shrubbery.’
‘Or come out from the house.’
‘One of us, you mean, sir? One of the staff?’ Faith shot an apologetic look at Guin, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, my lady. But I’ve been thinking about it so much. Who would have a snake hidden, be carrying it about, just on the off-chance that they would come across your sewing box outside and unattended?’
‘I imagine they meant to take it inside and put it in your bed, or a desk drawer,’ Jared Hunt said. ‘They cannot have guessed or predicted that you would take your embroidery to the terrace when you did. The unattended sewing basket was simply fortuitous. It doesn’t help us identify anyone. I suppose you have no young lads with pet snakes about the place who might have confused the species? I kept grass snakes as a boy.’
‘No small boys.’ The mental picture of a thin child with dark eyes and long, sensitive fingers holding a writhing mass of snakes came to her. Surely this man had never been a small boy? ‘Nor does this help us eliminate anyone either. If we even had a list to eliminate people from, that is,’ she added with a sigh.
‘The sawn-through stair rail means that someone must have gained entry at least once before.’ Jared Hunt was frowning over his notebook again.
‘My husband had the stairs carpeted at the same time as the work carried out in the room in the turret,’ Guin said. ‘We were away that entire week in York – anyone might have got in along with the workmen and carpenters.’
‘We have arrived, my lady.’ Faith was gathering her things together as the carriage drew up in the little side street off Piccadilly.
Guin stood up when the footman opened the carriage door and let down the step, only to find that Mr Hunt had followed her out onto the pavement. ‘There is no need to trouble to come in with me.’
‘I think there is.’ He was already at the door and into the shop before she could respond, leaving the footman to escort her and Faith across the pavement. She sincerely hoped he did not intend following her into the fitting room.
And when they were inside he was already talking to Madame Fontenay’s principal assistant – flirting with her, Guin thought indignantly – and she showed him through to the back, quite ignoring Guin.
They remerged after a moment with Madame herself. She bore down on Guin, all fluttering tape measures and beaming smile. ‘My lady. The gowns are waiting for you in the fitting room. May I order you some refreshment?’
The modiste steered her towards the familiar door but not before Guin overheard the assistant. ‘Ooh, Monsieur! Is that sword real? It is so big!’
Guin managed not to roll her eyes. Why Mr Hunt had to be armed with his rapier – which was not, whatever the assistant might think, a big sword – in order to visit a dress shop she could not imagine. A pistol would be more use, surely? Perhaps he had one of those concealed about his person. He certainly had a knife, she remembered.
‘My lady? Here is the walking dress, your choice of the fawn twill was most successful, I think. Might I suggest this blue rick-rack braid? And these horn buttons?’
Guin turned her mind firmly from personal peril and her new bodyguard and focused on the detail of trim and hemline.
Chapter Five
Jared had been in many establishments run by women in his time, but none of them had been respectable gown shops. This was like being in an exquisite little bon-bon box and he found himself sitting very still on a ludicrous gilded chair expecting something to crack and drop him to the floor at any moment.
The back door had been locked and was equipped with a tinkling bell that would ring when it was opened, so no-one was going to get in the back without him hearing. The room full of seamstresses looked exactly as he imagined they should and the young woman flirting not very discreetly with him showed neither alarm nor curiosity at being informed that the Viscount preferred his wife to be escorted everywhere.
‘Not surprising, her ladyship being so beautiful. I’ll wager you have to hold the young men off with that sword to stop them making a nuisance of themselves.’ She prattled on, Jared responded, becoming increasingly tired of the game, the majority of his concentration on the puzzle of Lady Northam’s enemy.
Anyone with intelligence and nerve and the money to employ competent criminals could have set up the attacks. There was no clue there to either the sex or the age of the antagonist. And the motive seemed equally hidden.
If the Viscount’s daughters were after the title for their sons then they would have to eliminate not only Lady Northam but his lordship’s brother and nephew and distant cousins – to say nothing of their own father, if they were impatient. The nephew could surely be ignored, at least for the present, because he would be secure in the knowledge that he would inherit sooner or later.
Unless the brother and nephew feared the young wife would produce an heir for Augustus… For some reason Jared had assumed that this was a marriage in form only, despite his routine questions earlier. There was nothing new about an elderly man acquiring a pretty trophy wife to look after him in his dotage and a young woman in difficulties taking on the role of old man’s darling in return for status, luxury and security.
But the Viscount was a lively and seemingly vigorous man. If he was still active in the bedchamber, or the heirs believed him to be – and it might take as little as a meaningful glance or a teasing comment to convince them of that – then they had genuine grounds for concern. And if someone felt that an inheritance they had grown up believing was theirs, or their heir’s, was threatened, then removing the young wife might seem a solution.
Or it could be that Lady Northam was unaware of an enemy elsewhere, or had misjudged a threat. Or was keeping something secret. Or, or, or… Possibilities churned round in his head, each as likely, and unlikely, as the next. This was getting him nowhere and he still was not even certain whether this was a campaign of harassment or a genuine attempt at murder devised by someone with a warped mind and a scattergun approach to method.
If Lady Northam was going out that evening to a social function then he would have to accompany her, begin to establish himself in the London scene and discover what was being said about the Viscountess of Northam. He made a note to approach Cal for some introductions. His friend would not mind and a duke vouching for him would do wonders for the speed with which he could work his way into Society.
The other end of the scale was less easy. He had been out of London too long to know the underworld, not that he had ever been familiar with it before he took up his post as swordmaster and companion to Viscount Castledale, as Cal had been then. Jared had been too young, his own swordmaster too strict with his apprentice, to have mixed with the criminal classes.
On the other hand he had plenty of experience of the seedy underbellies of other cities around the world. It was time to put that to good effect. Jared made another note as the shop door bell tinkled and his flirtatious companion hastened away to deal with the newcomers. Jared stood up, the little chair creaking in relief, as a flurry of ladies entered. There were only four of them but they managed to fill the shop to overflowing with femininity.
He edged into a corner, hand on the hilt of his rapier to push it down parallel with his leg and out of sight. He was not exactly what the customers would expect to find in this temple to feminine elegance but there was nowhere to retreat to without giving up his line of sight on the fitting room door.