An Unwilling Conquest (Regencies 7)

The young traveller who had been slouching in the tap slipped out of the inn door in their wake.

“My dear Mrs Babbacombe,” Harry began in what he hoped was an even tone. “I do hope you’re going to satisfy my curiosity as to why a gently reared female, however well-equipped for the task, goes about interrogating her company’s employees?”

Unabashed, Lucinda met his gaze; aggravation showed clearly in the green. “Because there is no one else.”

Harry held her gaze. His lips thinned. “I find that hard to believe. What about this Mr Mabberly—your agent? Why can he not take on the challenge of such as Blount?”

Lucinda’s lips quirked. “You must admit he was a definite challenge.” She slanted a deliberately provocative glance his way. “I feel quite chuffed.”

Harry snorted. “As you well know, you performed a minor miracle. That man will now work himself to the bone—which will be a distinct improvement in itself. But that,” he continued, his tone hardening, “is not the point.”

“But it is, you see.” Lucinda wondered why she was allowing him to put in his oar. Perhaps because it had been a long time since anyone had tried? “Mr Anthony Mabberly is all of twenty-three. He’s an excellent man with the accounts and is scrupulously honest and fair—a far cry from Scrugthorpe.”

“Ah, yes. The undesirable Scrugthorpe.” Harry cast her a quick glance. “Why was he so undesirable?”

“Fraud. He was appointed by my husband just before his death—on one of his bad days, I’m afraid. After Charles’s death, I by chance learned that the books as they were being presented to me did not reflect the actual figures generated by the inns.”

“What happened to Scrugthorpe?”

“I dismissed him, of course.”

Harry noted the righteous satisfaction that underlaid her tone. Clearly, Lucinda Babbacombe had not approved of Mr Scrugthorpe. “So until recently the agent took responsibility for negotiating with your tenants?”

Lucinda lifted a haughty brow. “Until I reorganised the company’s procedures. Mr Mabberly would not know where to start with such as Blount—he’s of a somewhat timid disposition. And I consider it appropriate that both Heather and myself are familiar with the inns that form our legacy.”

“Laudable though such sentiments might be, Mrs Babbacombe, I do hope—” Harry broke off as she stopped and looked consideringly across the street. “What is it?”

“Hmm?” Absentmindedly, Lucinda glanced up. “Oh—I was just wondering if there was time left to do the Barbican Arms today.” She glanced back at the busy inn across the street. “But it looks rather crowded. Perhaps tomorrow morning would be better?”

Harry stared at her, an unwelcome suspicion slowly crystallising in his brain. “Very much better,” he averred. “But tell me, Mrs Babbacombe—how many inns do you and your stepdaughter own?”

She looked up at him, an unlikely innocence in her powder-blue eyes. “Fifty-four,” she replied. Then added, as if in afterthought, “Up and down the country.”

Harry closed his eyes and struggled to suppress a groan. Then, without another word, with no more than a single speaking glance, he escorted her into the yard of the Barbican Arms and, with heartfelt relief, handed her up to Em’s gig and watched her drive away.

“SO SHE’S STAYING in Newmarket?”

Mr Earle Joliffe drew a riding crop back and forth through his fingers. A thickset man of undistinguished mien, he sat back in his chair, his pale gaze, as pale as his pasty complexion, fixed on the young roughneck he’d sent into town to track their quarry down.

“As to that, I ain’t sure.” The youngster took a swig from his tankard.

They were in a rundown cottage three miles from Newmarket, the best they’d been able to rent at short notice. Four men sat about the deal table—Joliffe, the youngst

er whose name was Brawn and two others—Mortimer Babbacombe and Ernest Scrugthorpe. The latter was a hulking man, rough despite the severe clothes of a clerk; he sat silently glowering into his beer. Mortimer Babbacombe, a slight figure in the attire of a would-be dandy, shifted restlessly; he clearly wished himself elsewhere.

“She got into a gig and drove out eastwards. I couldn’t follow.”

Scrugthorpe grunted. “See? Told you she’d go to the Green Goose. Couldn’t keep away, meddling witch.”

He spat contemptuously on the floor; the action made Mortimer even more uncomfortable.

“Ye-es, well.” Joliffe transferred his gaze to Scrugthorpe. “Might I remind you that she should, by now, have been in our hands? That but for your lack of foresight, she would be?”

Scrugthorpe scowled. “How was I to know it were a race-week? And that gentlemen would be using that road? Everything went perfect, elsewise.”

Joliffe sighed and raised his eyes heavenwards. Amateurs—they were all the same. How had he, who had spent his life thus far successfully extracting a living from the rich, descended to the company of such? Lowering his gaze, his glance fell on Mortimer Babbacombe. Joliffe’s lips curled in a contemptuous sneer.

“Ought to mention,” Brawn put in, surfacing from his tankard. “She was walking the street with a swell today—right chummy—looked like the same swell as wot rescued them.”