Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

Peregrine straightened his own shoulders, puffed out his chest, and marched up to them. Instead of the persuasive and tactful speech he’d rehearsed, he said, “Miss Wingate, I’ve come to take you home.”

Her big, blue doll eyes widened. “Why? Has something happened to Mama?”

“No, something has happened to you,” Peregrine said. “A head injury is my guess. It’s the only way to explain this cork-brained scheme of yours.”

Scowling, the bull-boy moved in front of Olivia. “Here, bugger off, you,” he said.

“Bugger off yourself,” Peregrine said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

The boy grasped the front of Peregrine’s coat.

“Take your hand away,” Peregrine said.

“Oooh, will you listen to him?” said the boy. “Ain’t he the fine lady, though?”

“No, I ain’t,” Peregrine said, and slammed his fist into Bull-Boy’s jaw.

BENEDICT WAS AT his club when he was informed that one of his servants wished to speak to him.

This was not a good sign.

The last time a servant had come to the club for him was when Ada had collapsed upon her return home after a prayer meeting.

Still, Benedict appeared calm and composed when he entered the antechamber where Thomas waited.

At his entrance, Thomas’s face worked.

A very bad sign.

Ignoring the cold spreading in his gut, Benedict told him to say what the matter was in as few words as possible.

“It’s Lord Lisle, my lord,” Thomas said, blinking hard. “I don’t know where he is. He went in the print shop door like he always does. I went into Porter’s Coffee House to wait, like I always do. I come out like I always do, a few minutes early. He never come out, sir. I waited a quarter hour past the time, then I went up. The classroom was locked up tight, and no one answered when I knocked and called. I went down to the shop and asked Mr. Popham if the drawing lessons was over for today. He said there wasn’t any. Mrs. Wingate went home early, he said, on account her pupil never came.”

The cold spread further, numbing feeling. Time itself seemed to slow, as though frozen, too. “I see,” said Benedict. Then he ordered his hat and coat and left with his footman.

During the short walk home, his feelings safely closed down, Benedict disciplined his mind to analyze the problem as though it were like any of the other problems he was called upon every day to sort out and solve.

By the time he entered his house, the thousands of wild possibilities he might have entertained had narrowed to the two likeliest, in the circumstances:

1. Peregrine had run away.

2. Despite all their precautions, someone had found out who Peregrine was and had kidnapped him.

Benedict went up to the boy’s room with Thomas. A search revealed no signs of a planned departure. No clothes were missing, Thomas said, except for those Lord Lisle had worn today. Questioned more closely, however, the footman did produce two relevant pieces of information. First, the boy had struck up an acquaintance with a red-haired girl at the British Museum two weeks ago. Second, Peregrine was in the habit of visiting the garden several times a day.

Benedict destroyed several shrubs and a flower bed before he discovered the loose bricks near the back garden gate. Stuck to one was a broken piece of sealing wax and a fragment of paper.

Benedict returned to the bedroom. His gaze went to the window seat, which looked out into the garden. He often found his nephew there, bent over a book. A few minutes later, Benedict found the cache of letters, folded between the pages of Belzoni’s Narrative.

IT DID NOT take Lord Lisle long to leave Nat Diggerby in a stunned heap by the side of the road. It was time enough for a crowd to gather, though, which gave Olivia a chance to slip away unnoticed.

The crowd aroused the curiosity of passersby, and traffic slowed in consequence. The road on both sides of the tollgate became jammed with vehicles, horses, and pedestrians. Among those forced to wait was a young farmer driving a small wagon. Olivia approached him. Tears filled her great blue eyes. From her trembling lips fell a poignant tale about an ailing mother in Slough.

Moved, the farmer offered her a ride in his cart as far as Brentford.

She climbed in.

Before the cart was through the tollgate, Lord Lisle came running alongside. “You beastly girl!” he said. “I won’t let you do this.”

“Oh, look, it is my poor brother,” she told the farmer. “He is mad with grief. I told him to stay in London. He is sure to find work eventually. But he . . .”

She went on to tell a tragic tale of family woes. The farmer swallowed it whole. He told Lord Lisle he was welcome to join his sister if he chose.

Lord Lisle looked wildly about him. A couple of soldiers had got hold of Nat Diggerby and were dragging him to the watch house.

Lord Lisle climbed into the cart.

BATHSHEBA LIT ANOTHER candle and read the letter again, because the first time, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her.

After the second perusal, she was furious.

Olivia’s scheme was all too familiar. It was the same method her parents used to deal with their difficulties. They’d count on a crackbrained scheme to solve all their problems at once, rather than tackle them directly, one at a time. They’d chance their money on a throw of the dice, rather than pay the rent with it.

She flung the letter down. “Only wait until I get my hands on you, my girl.”

But Bathsheba must find her first.

The letter did not reveal her destination. Olivia said she was going to find Edmund DeLucey’s legendary treasure, however, and that was clue enough.

She would head for Throgmorton, the Earl of Mandeville’s country house, because that was where Jack had said the treasure was, and why listen to boring Mama when Papa’s stories were so much more exciting and romantic?

The only question was how great a head start she had. Not more than a few hours, Bathsheba guessed. Had Olivia missed school, Bathsheba would have heard from Miss Smithson by now. With any luck, one might catch up with the girl in a matter of hours rather than days.

Still, to pursue her, Bathsheba needed money, which meant she needed a pawnbroker. She was not sure where the nearest one was. But Mrs. Briggs would know. Meanwhile, Bathsheba must find something to pawn.

She began to tear the rooms apart. She emptied cupboards and drawers, pulled bed linens from the mattresses. She flung everything into a heap in the center of the room. She was wrapping up her few pieces of cutlery when someone knocked on the door.

She rose, pushed her hair out of her face, and walked to the door, praying the visitor was the watchman, the beadle, or a constable, with Olivia in tow. She opened the door.

The man standing in the dimly lit hall was not the watchman, the beadle, or a constable.

“Mrs. Wingate,” said Lord Rathbourne, looking excessively bored. “I believe your daughter has made off with my nephew.”

THE PLACE WAS a shambles, and so was Mrs. Wingate.

Her coiffure was tumbling to pieces, the raven-black curls falling over her forehead and bouncing against her neck. Her face was flushed. She had a smudge on her nose and another on her cheek.

She glared at him.

Benedict wanted to snatch her up and kiss the scowl away.

He had to drag his mind back to reality, and remember why he’d come: Peregrine.

. . . who wasn’t here, as Benedict saw in the instant it took him to survey the room. His spirits sank. All the evidence had indicated his nephew would try to stop Miss Wingate, rather than go along with her.

Still, Benedict had endured nearly two weeks of stultifying boredom, and it was impossible to gaze at Bathsheba Wingate, tousled and cross, and feel completely cast down.

“I beg your pardon for giving no warning,” he said. “I should have asked Mrs. Briggs to announce me, but she had company. I was disinclined to wait in her parlor, making her guests uncomfortable, while she c

ame up to ask whether you were receiving visitors. I have let her believe I have come to inspect the place. May I enter?”

“Yes, why not?” With a dismissive wave, Mrs. Wingate moved away from the door. “I was about to go to the pawnbroker, but this. . .” She dragged her hand through the glossy black curls. “Lord Lisle is gone, too? With Olivia? But they scarcely know each other.”

“It seems they have become well acquainted,” he said. “They have been corresponding secretly for weeks.”

After briefly explaining this day’s discoveries, he took out from his inside breast pocket the most recent of the letters he’d found and gave it to her.

She scanned it quickly, then paused, her color mounting. “ ‘Pale and thin,’ indeed,” she said. “That is her overactive imagination at work.”

Benedict did not think so. Though Mrs. Wingate wasn’t pale at the moment, her face seemed thinner, more drawn. While she read on, his gaze slid lower. She had seemed more rounded the last time he saw her. . . .

Kissed her.

Touched her.

Think about the weather, he told himself.

She briskly folded up the letter and gave it back. “She will have hidden his somewhere about,” she said. “I see no reason to waste time looking for them. Time will be better spent finding her—and Lord Lisle, if he is with her, which I can scarcely believe. He is such a logical boy. He does question everything, as you said. I cannot believe he did not question Olivia. I should have thought he had better sense than to be drawn into one of her madcap schemes.”