Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

Even as mere clouds, they boded ill. This was how the sky had looked yesterday before it loosed the torrents that drove them indoors.

Below and to the east of the New Lodge, one caught glimpses of Throgmorton’s large lake, between the trunks and branches of the trees and shrubbery bordering it on this, its western side. On the eastern side lay a series of temples and grottoes, cunningly situated so as to be visible only from certain points along the pathway. At its southern tip, the lake narrowed and spilled into a picturesquely steep cascade that tumbled into a river. In the decreasing intervals of sunlight, the restless waters sparkled. Mainly, though, they were murky, like the sky.

Rathbourne, Lord Northwick, and Peter DeLucey stood talking a few yards away from her. Occasionally they looked up from their discussions, to study the heavens.

Though the aristocratic countenances revealed little emotion, she doubted the conversation was optimistic.

If it rained as it had done yesterday, the children would seek shelter, and they had all too many hiding places to choose among. If it rained as it had done yesterday, searching for them would be far more difficult, nearly impossible.

The afternoon was waning. In a few hours, night would fall.

Another day would be lost.

I’ll have another night with him, Bathsheba thought.

She wanted another, and another. She wanted that badly; at the same time she doubted she could bear another day. The passing hours were hard enough.

She’d steeled herself for the break, today.

She was ready to be strong, today.

She was not sure for how much longer, though. She’d already had her nerves wrung to pieces with a series of false alarms. Three times Lord Northwick’s search parties had cornered tenants’ children by mistake. Once, they’d cautiously surrounded what turned out to be an escaped pig rooting under the shrubbery near a “ruin” built in the last century.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rathbourne step away from the others and start toward her. Northwick and his son set out in the opposite direction.

She quickly returned her gaze to the clouds roiling above the temple.

“Northwick is sending men out to investigate the latest rumors,” came Rathbourne’s low voice beside her. “One of the local women thinks she saw the children at some point along the eastern boundary wall, not far from the main gate. Another report puts them nearer a gate along the northern boundary. I’ve told him we’ll stay where we are. It makes no sense for us to chase every rumor. At any rate, it is time we had our tea.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“You’re pale and chilled,” he said. “You ate scarcely anything at breakfast, and nothing at midday. If you faint dead away when the prodigals finally put in an appearance, people will mistake you for one of those fragile creatures you insist you are not. That would be extremely awkward for me, considering the pains I have taken to assure Northwick that you are a determined woman of strong principles.”

“A waste of breath,” she said. “He would never believe one of my ilk knew what a principle was.”

“He does believe that you are determined to leave Throgmorton as soon as you retrieve your daughter,” Rathbourne said. “He has agreed to put a carriage at your disposal.”

“A private carriage?” she said. “Have you taken leave of your senses? All you need do is lend me coach fare.”

“No, I do not,” he said. “You dislike stagecoaches. On account of the jolting and crowding and drunkards and puking and vermin, remember?”

“Then a place on the mail,” she said. “Or a post chaise, if you must be extravagant. But I beg you will not send me away in one of my relative’s private carriages.”

“I am not sending you away,” he said. “You are sending you away. Because of noble principles. Which I am obliged to respect, curse you.”

She turned and looked up into his handsome face, though it hurt her. He wore the same bored expression he’d worn at the Egyptian Hall, but his dark eyes were gentle. Oh, it was affection she saw there, worse for her. If he were truly bored and distant she would not long so much to touch his cheek.

“How do you think I feel?” she said. “I have a handsome, wealthy aristocrat in the palm of my hand, and I must let him go.”

“Dream on,” he said. “I find you merely tolerable.”

“Imagine how I feel,” she went on. “I can look back on generations of utterly amoral, conscienceless DeLucey ancestors, any one of whom wouldn’t have hesitated to ruin your life and bankrupt you for good measure. Why couldn’t I be like the rest of them? But no, I must be the one cursed with scruples.”

He smiled. “I shall never forgive you for that, Bathsheba. For that and a great deal else. I believe I shall nurse a . . . grudge . . . to the end of my days.”

“Ah, well, at least you won’t forget me,” she said.

“Forget you? I should as easily forget a bout of whooping cough. I should as easily—Damnation.”

He looked up and raindrops splattered his face.

“Come inside,” he said. “There is no point—”

“M’lord!” came a shout from not far away. “Sir! This way!”

They both turned toward the sound.

“It’s Thomas,” Rathbourne said. He ran that way. Bathsheba ran after him.

Chapter 17

WHILE LORD NORTHWICK’S MEN WERE searching the northeastern section of the estate, Peregrine and Olivia had been making their way in the opposite direction.

A high wall surrounded Throgmorton’s park, as Peregrine had expected. Since Swain the pawnbroker had said the mausoleum was in the southwestern corner of the park, this was the way Peregrine led Olivia. Eventually they came to the stream Swain had mentioned. Thanks to the recent rain, its waters were high and muddy, rushing along a route it more usually meandered at a leisurely pace.

Peregrine was sure there would be a bridge, and near it a gate, to accommodate carts and wagons. Not many yards farther on, the bridge appeared, and the expected gate, which, though locked, was not guarded.

Climbing over it was no problem.

Once inside the property, they kept to the cart track, which followed the boundary wall. At first the thickly wooded landscape hid the rest of the park from view. But after a few minutes, the track began to climb, and Peregrine spotted the lantern-topped dome of the mausoleum.

“There it is!” Olivia cried.

Birds flew up from the trees, squawking.

“Be quiet,” Peregrine said. “I can see. Do you want all the world to know we’re here?”

But she was already hurrying up the hillside, along a narrow path that did not seem to be used very much. Peregrine glanced up once at the sky, then followed her. He did not like the looks of the clouds. At this point, though, it made no sense to travel all the long way back to the Bristol Road again because of bad weather.

They could take shelter from the rain at the mausoleum, he thought, under its portico. If they had to spend the night—and that seemed likely—they could do it in one of the numerous other buildings adorning Throgmorton’s park. Peregrine doubted they’d all be locked—not that he supposed mere locks could stop Olivia.

He saw her slip, and hurried to catch up with her.

“Do watch where you’re going,” he said. “Can’t you see the ground’s still wet? Do you want to break an ankle?”

She didn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes were on the mausoleum.

“It’s bigger than I pictured,” she said. “Fancier, too. They’ve put a dome on top of the roof, and a rectangular box on top of the dome, and a little ball on top of the rectangular box. And they’ve stuck all those urns or pots or whatever they are on every roof corner.”

The decoration didn’t surprise Peregrine. What did surprise him, when they reached the top of the hill, was how secluded the place was. The mausoleums he’d seen had been built for show, and dominated their immediate surroundings. Though this was typically grand, i

t was very private, with only a small stretch of lawn about it. A dense wall of tall shrubbery and trees almost completely enclosed the space.

“This isn’t the fanciest part,” Peregrine said. “It’s obviously the back of the building. The entrance will be under the portico.” He led her round to the front. “Much more elaborate, you see.”

It had a wide stone staircase, with balustrades, upon the ends of which stood two stone figures about eight feet tall. From the staircase, a wide pathway wandered down the slope, then seemed to continue up another hill nearby. Everywhere else, the trees blocked his view of the parkland. Peregrine guessed that beyond those trees would be more of the same: the usual rolling landscape. He couldn’t be sure, though, since the greenery shut out all but that bit of pathway.

“I’ll wager anything that Edmund DeLucey buried his treasure at the foot of one of the statues,” Olivia said, calling his attention back to the mausoleum. “But which one?”

“Maybe if we knew who they were meant to represent, we could guess,” Peregrine said. “Gods or demigods, probably. Funny, isn’t it, how our lot carry out their strict Christian burials under pagan symbols. I know that at least one member of the peerage has a mausoleum in the shape of a pyramid.”

Olivia, as one would expect, was not interested in the burial rituals of the British aristocracy. “I suppose we’ll have to dig in both places,” she said. She looked about her. “I doubt anyone will notice.”

Peregrine had to agree with at least the last statement. If Edmund DeLucey had buried anything here, he wouldn’t have had to worry much about attracting attention.

Peregrine’s family had a park like this, where features of the landscape, interesting structures and such, were artfully hidden along the pathways among trees and shrubbery, so that the visitor arrived upon them unexpectedly, or saw them at a distance only from the ideal vantage point.

Meanwhile, this building’s foundation rose about six feet off the ground. Anyone digging at its base would be very hard to see, unless the observer stood in exactly the right spot.

Of course, one must remember that the surrounding trees wouldn’t have been so thick and tall a hundred years ago. The hill might have been bare, for all one knew.

Not that Olivia would care what anything was like a century ago. She’d only want to know where they might find spades and shovels. And maybe pickaxes.

As Peregrine stooped to study the ground at the base of the balustrade, he felt the first cold drops of rain.

He straightened. “We’d better get under—What’s that noise?”

Olivia turned her head at the same time he did.

A man was running down the pathway on the nearby hill, waving at them and shouting. He was barely a hundred yards away.

Peregrine looked at Olivia. She looked back at him, her blue doll eyes wide.

“No,” she said. “No.”

And NO! he wanted to shout.

He wasn’t ready to be found.

Not yet. He wasn’t done.

He needed only seconds to decide what to do.

His punishment would be horrendous.