Well, she’d have to see about this. Thomas Doverspike would be back in her studio in the morning. And she could think of any number of ways to humble a nak*d, spying member of the press.
“Good day, Mr. Shipwash,” Artemisia said with forced pleasantness to the stoop-shouldered gentleman cooling his heels in her paneled study. The masculine room had been the duke’s private retreat, but since his death, Artemisia had claimed it as hers. “Be kind enough to close the door and we’ll get right to business.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
James Shipwash spread the portfolio before her and took notes while Artemisia scanned the documents, nodding his agreement to her changes and answering her queries succinctly. If Mr. Shipwash disagreed, he was encouraged to explain himself. Sometimes, Artemisia heeded his advice, and sometimes she brought Shipwash round to her point of view.
“That covers everything, I believe. Oh, before I forget, my mother wished to have the affairs of these gentlemen examined—Lord Shrewsbury the younger and Mr. Trevelyn Deveridge.” She handed the slip of paper to Mr. Shipwash.
“How soon do you wish a report?”
“You have until the masked ball. Mother intends to marry off my sisters to these gentlemen. I want to make sure they have at least some redeeming qualities before I see my siblings shackled to them.” Artemisia eyed the stack of documents the clerk placed before her. Almost as an afterthought, she added, “While you’re at it, see what you can discover about one Thomas Doverspike. Of the three, this request is the most urgent.”
James Shipwash wrote down the name in his small ledger. “The other two gentlemen will be easy enough to investigate since they’ll be listed in DeBrett’s. I’ve not heard of Thomas Doverspike. Where shall I begin with him?”
“Check the roster of contributors to The Tattler. Then try our contacts in the constabulary. I wouldn’t doubt there’s a criminal dossier on Mr. Doverspike somewhere,” she said as she dipped her pen in the inkwell and signed the first document with a flourish.
Josiah H. Beddington
Chapter 4
Pale dawn sent forth pink attempts to penetrate London’s soot-choked sky. Felix Pelham-Smythe, the Duke of Southwycke, angrily shook off his footman’s attempt to assist him as he stumbled from the gilded barouche. He could spare no time to notice the delights of a new day’s birth. Not after the depressing night he’d just spent. Besides, he was fully occupied with keeping himself upright as he made his way toward the nearest door of the manor house.
“My manor house,” he grumbled. “Though you’d never know it. The place is positively infested with Dalrymples.”
Just because he wasn’t quite of age yet, his stepmother, who was really only a few years older than he, held the purse strings.
Correction, he told himself. Her guard dog, Mr. Beddington, controls Southwycke’s coffers. Of course, he had the title. No one could keep that from him, but thanks to the terms of his dearly departed father’s will, they kept Felix on a short leash.
A damned short leash.
Well, that would change with time. But not soon enough to suit Felix. Hellfire, he couldn’t even get Beddington to agree to discuss the wholly inadequate size of his piddling allowance. Everything came down from on high through the great man’s assistant Mr. Shipwash or Felix’s not-so-great stepmother.
“As if Beddington was bloody Moses on Mt. Sinai,” Felix slurred. He caught a toe on a paving stone and nearly plunged face down on the path.
His stomach heaved uncertainly, and he hoped he’d make it to his suite without being sick in public. On second thought, what did he care? The servants needed something to clean up in any case.
Felix emptied his belly behind the hydrangea and felt slightly better for it. His head was beginning to pound, and his mouth tasted like a band of gypsies had danced over his tongue. Barefoot.
Drink wasn’t entirely to blame for his malaise. Dame Fortune had been cruel to him at the whist tables of late, and Felix didn’t have the guineas to pay up.
Didn’t Beddington understand a man had to honor his debts?
If Felix had been unlucky at cards, at least he’d been fortunate in his creditors. Amazingly, Lubov and Oranskiy, the visiting Russians holding his markers, were willing to forgive his losses if only he’d do them one teeny, tiny favor.
Put them in touch with Mr. Beddington.
It was a simple enough request. After all, shouldn’t a mere man of trade hop to when summoned by a peer of the realm?
However, nothing was simple when it involved Beddington. Felix was sick and tired of having his wishes ignored. He didn’t care that Beddington had taken Southwycke’s dwindling resources and turned the estate into one of the most prosperous in the Empire. His aloof manner was downright insulting. The man was beyond impudent. As soon as Felix took his full inheritance, his first official act would be to sack Beddington.
But his birthday was months away, and he had the sneaking suspicion that Lubov and Oranskiy might turn out to be much less pleasant if he couldn’t deliver the estate’s trustee to them.
Felix had no idea why they wanted Beddington. In truth, he didn’t care.
He only knew he had to flush the reclusive Mr. Beddington into the open.
And soon.
* * *
Artemisia nearly tripped over her stepson’s body on her way to the garden. Her nose twitched delicately at the alcoholic fumes rising from his prone form. She could almost hear Cuthbert declaiming that it was “bad form to be found snoring off a debauch in one’s garden instead of one’s bed.”
Artemisia sighed and stepped over Felix, satisfied he’d come to no more harm than a crooked neck from sleeping on cold stone. Further on the path, she met Naresh, her father’s Indian servant. Naresh and his wife Rania, Artemisia’s ayah, had left their sun-drenched home and followed the Dalrymples to the soggy British island out of loyalty to Angus. If ever they regretted their decision, Artemisia had yet to hear them complain.
“Good morning, Larla,” Naresh said, templing his fingers in a graceful greeting. He always used Artemisia’s ‘milk name’ instead of her Christian one. It made no difference to Naresh and Rania that Artemisia was a duchess and should be considered a grand, if unconventional, lady. To the humble Indian couple, she would always be Larla, the first round little white baby they’d cosseted and adored.
“Is my father in the garden?”
“Oah, yes, by Jove. He is gardening fit to wake the dead,” Naresh intoned in his singsong English. “He is sending me to fetch a vase for his roses.”
“But the roses are well past their prime,” Artemisia said with despair. “He’s delusional, isn’t he?”
“Do not let your heart be troubling. Seeing roses where there are no roses is no bad thing. Would you rather he was seeing thorns?” Naresh asked philosophically. “He is calling me by name, and I am thinking he will know yours as well. The master, he is having a good day today.”
“Well, Southwycke’s future master is not,” Artemisia said with disgust. “Felix is passed out on the path again. Please see if you can rouse his valet and put him to bed.”
“As you wish.”
Artemisia continued on in the pale early light. Southwycke’s garden was not fashioned after the popular French style, each blade of grass and leaf neatly manicured. This garden grew in unruly profusion. Most of Artemisia’s visitors considered it an untidy mess, but she loved it. The rampant growth reminded her ever so slightly of the thick jungles of India, where one never knew if the next bend in the path would reveal a vine-encrusted abandoned temple or a troop of monkeys screaming through the canopy overhead.
Artemisia heard her father before she saw him.
“Fetch me those pruning shears. Lively now, there’s a good lad.”
She covered her mouth in despair. Angus surely must know he’d sent Naresh away. He’d fallen to talking to himself now. Even if the words made sense in a garden, the world generally frowned upon speaking to thin air.
Then Artemisia’s ears pricked to another voice. Her father wasn’t alone, after all. But who could be with him this early?
She peered around a large clump of pampas grass to see who had invaded her garden.
Bold as brass, Thomas Doverspike strolled over to her father and handed him the set of shears he requested.
What on earth was he doing here? She’d told him to come early, but not at the peep of dawn. And she certainly didn’t want him troubling her father.
“Thankee kindly,” Angus said. “Now just ye hold this stem still while I nip the bugger off. Got to trim it just so or the vine will run wild.”
When Mr. Doverspike did as her father bid, Artemisia was surprised by the sudden warmth in her chest. Perhaps there was some good in the fellow, after all, if he could take time for her poor confused father. Their heads were bent conspiratorially, the dark hair and the balding pate, hunkered close together. Mr. Doverspike was saying something, but Artemisia couldn’t quite make it out. She edged nearer without leaving the shelter of the decorative grasses.
“ . . . and so if I should say to you, ‘The tigress feeds by moonlight.’” Mr. Doverspike’s tone trended up, turning the statement into a question.
Artemisia’s father jerked his head toward the younger man and straightened his arthritic back. “Why, I should say, ‘But the bear feeds whenever it may.’” Angus Dalrymple laughed as if he’d just uttered the greatest witticism in the world and clapped his grubby hand on Mr. Doverspike’s broad shoulder. “But it’s up to men like us to make sure the bear don’t feed at all, eh?”
“Yes, quite,” Thomas Doverspike agreed, as if their disjointed conversation about wild beasts made perfect sense. “But to do that, I need the key.”
The key to what? Artemisia wondered. The manor house? The duke’s strongbox? Good Lord, was the man intending to rob them while they slept?
“Didn’t ye get my message? I don’t have it.” Angus scratched to top of his freckled bare head. “Ye want Mr. Beddington. That’s the ticket.”
Beddington? The last thing she wanted was for her father to steer this stranger even more toward Mr. Beddington. And what was this nonsense about a message? She’d only met Thomas Doverspike yesterday herself. Her father couldn’t have sent a message to a man none of them knew. Angus Dalrymple was sliding further into the dementia the doctor warned them was only going to worsen with the passage of time.
And he certainly didn’t need someone like Thomas Doverspike giving him a push down that dark road by playing along with his delusional games.
“Mr. Doverspike, a word with you.” Artemisia pushed through the decorative grass like a lioness springing on an unsuspecting gazelle.
Her father turned his pale blue gaze on her and smiled, his face a wreath of wrinkles. Constance had wanted to confine him to Bedlam, but Artemisia wouldn’t hear of it. The conditions at the hospital for the insane were deplorable. As long as her father didn’t do himself or others any harm, she would see him cared for at home.