How To Beguile A Beauty Part 21

"You'd have made a good Sergeant major, darling," he said softly, but when Lydia turned and glared at him, he managed to control his smile before backing up two paces.

"Who is your lover?" she asked Jasmine flatly, clearly not in the mood to tread carefully on the girl's recently bereaved sensibilities.

"But-but that was to be our secret. You promised." Jasmine's gaze s.h.i.+fted to Tanner. "She told you the name?"

"Schoolmaster Beattie, yes. As I have a healthy regard for my neck, I'm doing my best not to interfere, but I have to tell you that I don't think she believes you any more."

As if her last hope was gone with his defection, Jasmine buried her face in her hands and sobbed piteously.

Well, he'd thought it was piteously. Lydia didn't seem much impressed.

"Jasmine, your Bru-your lover probably murdered your father. We'll have his name, now."

"I know," Jasmine whimpered. "I know, I know. And it's all my fault, isn't it?"

"No, Jasmine, sweetheart, you couldn't have known what-" Tanner held up his hands in mock surrender when Lydia turned on him, and backed up another pace. Clearly the love of his life had been pushed beyond all endurance.

"His name, and his location. You were in bed with him. You know where he resides."

"In bed with him? You make it all sound so tawdry. I loved him..."

At last Lydia looked at Tanner with more than cold purpose in her eyes. Confronting Jasmine, in her recent bereavement, was not easy for her. She sighed, as if in resignation, and gathered the weeping girl into her arms. "It's all right, Jasmine. n.o.body blames you for anything that happened. You were foolish, yes, but this man, this unscrupulous scoundrel, could come here now, could cause us all terrible trouble. Please, help us."

Jasmine lifted her tear-drenched face and looked at Tanner, her eyes wide. "Me? He could come here for me? He could...he could want to kill me?"

Tanner shrugged his shoulders, believing Lydia had found the way to get through to his cousin. If there was one thing in life Jasmine cared about, he was coming to realize, it was Jasmine. "It's possible. You know who he is."

"Oh, my G.o.d! He'll kill me, won't he? Because I know who he is. No, no, I don't want to die! Tanner, you have to help me. You have to find him, and kill him before he kills us!"

"Tell me again," Justin said as they stood hidden in the dense trees outside the small tavern in near Malvern Wells.

"I've already told you," Tanner said, peering through the branches, taking his measure of the place. It was half-past midnight.

"True. But I don't think I'll ever tire of hearing it. Wrung every last bit of information from her, did she? And all the sordid details? Tell me again about the sordid details."

"Another time," Tanner said, shaking his head. "How do you want to do this? He knows what we look like, which was probably why he showed me his face in the first place, so we can't just go walking in there. Jasmine swears he's alone, but Lydia warned me not to believe that. She's still suspicious of Jasmine."

"And if your beloved is suspicious, you're suspicious, and so am I. Why are we suspicious, hmm?"

"Because Lydia wouldn't believe Jasmine if she told her the sky was blue. And something about sugared buns, but we didn't have time to get into that. Well, d.a.m.n, Justin, there he is. And he's alone. That makes things easier. I thought we might be here all night."

The baron, who had been standing with his back to a tree trunk, an unlit cheroot between his teeth, turned and peered into the clearing in front of the tavern. "And he's had a miracle, hasn't he? Heaven be praised, his sight has been restored."

Tanner watched Brice Flanagan walk out of the tavern, cautiously looking about the area with his two good eyes as he mounted the horse they'd already recognized as belonging to the man.

Without speaking again, each knowing what the other had concluded, Tanner and Justin hurried back through the trees to where their own horses were waiting. Flanagan could have mates inside the tavern who could come to his defense. Much easier to take him on the road.

They followed at a safe distance for over a mile, Flanagan's familiarity with the road as easy as Tanner's.

"He's heading for Malvern," Justin whispered at last, unnecessarily. "Cheeky thing, isn't he?"

"Desperate is more like it," Tanner returned just as quietly. "He had to know that Jasmine would turn on him at some point. Are you ready?"

"I don't know. I almost wish to see what he's up to, don't you?"

Tanner considered this for a few moments. Was Flanagan on his way to the estate in some last bold attempt to find the Malvern Pride, that hadn't been among the stolen jewels, according to Jasmine? Was he going there to collect Jasmine, his lover? Or, yes, to kill her...

"All right," he said at last, as they slowed their horses, no longer needing to be too close to Flanagan. "I admit to some curiosity of my own. Why chance capture for the Malvern Pride? He's got the rest, he's got all of the real jewelry, enough to live handsomely on the rest of his life, d.a.m.n him. Besides, n.o.body knows where the Pride is, remember? That's why he'd demanded the key from Jasmine, in order to conduct his own search."

"All of which brings us back to your cousin. He's already rid of Thomas. Jasmine is the only remaining loose end, the only one that could identify him. Save us, but he can't know we've been so brilliant. After all, if you called in Bow Street or anyone else, you'd be sending them after a red-haired one-eyed man with a patch. Not the best of disguises, but certainly effective."

They were on the estate now, Flanagan completely out of sight on the nearly moonless night.

Tanner's horse lifted his head, sniffing the air, and then whinnying softly.

"Over there," Justin said, pointing into the trees. "That's the fellow's mare, isn't it? He's on foot now."

"We can't stumble over him out here in the dark," Tanner said. "He'll take his time approaching, picking his place of entry."

"I'll give you odds on the doors to your study. I know that's where I plan to continue my own search in the morning. Another hidey-hole, this one much more cleverly concealed. So you're simply going to let him walk in?"

Tanner urged his mount ahead on the road, heading for the front gates rather than to ride through the trees to reach the rear of the house and gardens, and his study. He turned and grinned at his friend in the darkness. "Should we pour him a brandy, do you think?"

They left their horses tied to tree branches halfway up the drive, and traveled the rest of the way on foot, pistols at the ready in case Flanagan didn't behave as Justin thought he would. But there was little chance the man would be so bold as to try one of Thomas's keys on the front doors of Malvern.

"You put Roswell on the front doors?" Tanner said in amazement as he watched the aged butler step out from the shadows, an equally aged blunderbuss in his hands.

"He insisted, and I thought this was the safest place for him. Don't shoot, man, it's your duke."

Roswell lowered his weapon and bowed, as if greeting his master this way were an everyday occurrence. "Your Grace. May I be some humble service?"

"No, thank-yes, Roswell, if you don't mind stationing yourself at the foot of the stairs. There may be some...commotion shortly, and I would ask that you keep the ladies from coming downstairs."

"Sans this nasty thing, I believe," Justin said, deftly removing the blunderbuss from the butler's hands as they entered the foyer.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Tanner said as they made their way down the hall after refusing Roswell's offer of candles to light their way. "Lydia's upstairs, and I've just all but invited a murderer into the house."

"Having second thoughts, are you?"

"Second thoughts, third thoughts. But if we don't get him now, I'd never sleep easily, wondering if and when he'd show up here again. Lydia understands that."

Then he held up his hand, pointing to his right, and the corridor that led to a second door to the study, one closer to the servant stairs.

Justin nodded and headed off. Tanner counted to ten, and then proceeded to the main door to what was supposed to be the duke's inner sanctum. He eased the door open, relieved to see that no fire burned in the grate, and that the only faint light in the large chamber came from the few stars in the sky outside the French doors.

But he was confident, having chosen his battlefield, and familiar with the placement of every chair, every table shrouded in darkness. He slipped into the room, staying low, having already decided that he would move to his left, and position himself in the far corner, behind a marble pedestal supporting a bust of Socrates.

He felt rather than saw Justin enter from the other side of the chamber, but even with his eyes accustomed to the darkness, he couldn't see which way his friend had gone.

It would be a devil of a thing if they ended up with Flanagan in between them, neither able to fire without fear of hitting the other one. The things you didn't think of until it was too late to change anything...

He tensed at the sound of someone moving across the slate terrace, a heel strike that couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Moments later came the sound of a key turning in the lock, and Brice Flanagan was inside the room with them.

Light a candle, light a candle, Tanner chanted inside his head. Then the man would be illuminated and it would be easy for him and Justin to step out, pistols leveled, and take the man.

But Flanagan didn't move to light a candle. He stood very still for the s.p.a.ce of several heartbeats, and then turned toward Tanner, heading straight for the bookcases that lined the side wall.

Sliding his pistol into his waistband, Flanagan used both hands to locate the wooden pillars that divided each expanse of books into separate sections, and then ran one hand up the third pillar, pressing on the wooden rosette that marked the fourth row of shelves.

Immediately, a small section of the shelf next to the rosette slid backwards, into the wall, and Flanagan reached into the opening with the confident air of a man who has found exactly what he'd been looking for.

Except that he hadn't.

Tanner watched the man's increasingly desperate patting and probing at the opening. Flanagan went up on tiptoe, as if to see into the dark void, now using both hands to continue his search.

"Nothing there, I'm afraid," Justin said just as Tanner was coming out from his own hiding place, as with the man's two hands occupied, there could have been no better time to take him. "I was as hopeful as you, earlier, when I discovered it. But, alas, no pretty diamonds I'm sure you were told were there. You murdered Thomas Harburton for nothing."

Flanagan had whirled about to locate the source of the taunting voice, already reaching into his waistband for his pistol as he stepped away from the bookcases.

Tanner could have shot the man. Or, as Justin seemed anxious to do, talked him to death. But Tanner wasn't an adventurous or even slightly flamboyant sort.

He merely silently stepped up behind Brice Flanagan and brought the b.u.t.t of his pistol down on the back of the fellow's head, and then watched, dispa.s.sionately, as the b.a.s.t.a.r.d pitched unconscious to the floor.

Lydia, he was sure, would have approved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

LYDIA FELT TANNER take her hand in his as they stood outside the family mausoleum, watching as Thomas Harburton's body was carried to its last rest.

Justin had been kind enough to have taken charge of Jasmine, both in the family chapel and on the sad walk to the mausoleum, the girl leaning heavily against him, the picture of sorrow, and yet stunningly beautiful in her hastily sewn mourning black.

They'd been a sad, subdued party since Thomas's death. Jasmine had kept very much to her rooms, although she'd managed to eat everything Tanner had ordered sent up to her.

And then, this morning, just before the services, she'd startled them all with the announcement that she had decided she would very much like to go to Wales, and her late mother's sister, where she could "mourn my poor father and do penance for my own sins of the flesh. I am no better than any of those unfortunate women my aunt cares for."

Even as she sang along with the few hymns and followed in her prayer book, Lydia thought about Jasmine's new role, the one of penitent...and the more she thought about it, the more she felt uneasy. Would she never be able to forget how easily Jasmine lied? Was she being petty, still miffed about a sugared bun?

She didn't like to think that of herself, but it had been that question that had kept her silent for two long days.

As they walked back to the house in the warm suns.h.i.+ne of a beautiful day, Tanner whispered in her ear. "I've missed you. Would it be selfish of me to ask you if you'd join me for a tramp through the hills this afternoon? I feel a need to clear my head, and that always seems easier to do up there."

Lydia was immediately put in mind of their last time together on a hillside overlooking Malvern. "I think I'd like that, yes," she said quietly. "Shall I wear my new boots?"

His smile was her answer.

Two hours later, the vicar still lingering over the obligatory funeral meal following the interment and fully engaged in a theological discussion with Justin, who Lydia believed to be deliberately baiting the man with his cunning questions about what form eternal d.a.m.nation might take, she and Tanner were walking through the gardens, on their way to a path he knew well.

"Jasmine was to leave the key to your study beneath a rock down here, at the end of the gardens," she told him, thoughts of everything the girl had told her never far from her mind, unfortunately. "How might things have gone differently, I wonder, if she had done so before you and she left for London."

"I don't know. I suppose that's one of the questions I could ask Flanagan when I visit the gaol tomorrow. The Squire took me aside at the services, to tell me that Flanagan has been demanding to speak with me ever since he woke up, but the Squire thought I should first be allowed to bury my cousin before having to deal with his murderer."

They had moved into the shade of the trees overhanging the path that climbed slowly, but steadily. "Do you think he'll tell you where he hid the jewels?"

"In exchange for his neck? Perhaps. And I'd like to know why he didn't just take them and leave the area."

"The Malvern Pride," Lydia said as he took her hand and helped her across a section of the path crisscrossed with tree roots. "Justin believes he made your cousin tell him where it was, and then killed him."

"For not sharing it with him, yes. A falling out of thieves, almost inevitable, I suppose."

Lydia looked at him, seeing the pain in his eyes. "Tell me more about Malvern," she said, trying to divert him. "What is it like here in winter?"

He smiled, and her heart leapt.

"What is it like here in winter?" he repeated as they walked the gently meandering path that made their ascent almost unnoticeable. "Like a...like a carpet of white. The sun is low, and s.h.i.+nes through the bare branches of the trees...and the streams sparkle in the sunlight, running clear, and icy-cold. The deer come closer. If we wake early enough, we can lie in bed and watch them feed."

He slipped an arm around her shoulders. "And if there's enough snow, I'll have the sleigh harnessed. I'll tuck you up with blankets, with a hot brick at your feet, and when the moon is full, and the night sky dancing with stars, I'll show you a wonderland that will bring tears to your eyes."

Lydia turned in his embrace, loving him so much. "It all sounds so beautiful."

"Not as beautiful as you. Malvern is where we'll live, and where we'll raise our children. But you are my world. I want these past days behind us, and d.a.m.n the Malvern Pride and the rest of the jewels, d.a.m.n all of it. I spoke with the vicar, Lydia. He's agreed to marry us on Friday, if you'll still have me."

"But your cousin...and Jasmine..."

"Thomas is dead, so he won't care, and I've decided to send Jasmine to her aunt, as she seems to want. I need you, Lydia, for more than stolen moments like this. I need you as my wife."

She melted against him-how could she not?-and his arms went fully around her as he took her mouth with his, a hint of desperation transferring itself to her, so that she clung to him tightly.

She was slightly breathless when he let her go, only to take her hand and grin at her. "Come on, darling. I've something to show you. Let's try out those pretty new boots."

Lifting her skirts, the better to keep up with him, she ran with him along the path until he pulled her into a thicket of bushes and wildflowers. "What's this?" she asked, looking at the small shelter nearly hidden in the greenery.

"A hunting blind," he told her. "But not today. Mind your head."

As he held back the greenery, she bent low and stepped inside, to see that someone had laid fresh blankets on the ground. She sat down, because it was impossible to really stand, and waited for him to join her.

"You did this?" she asked him, patting the blankets as she looked around her, smiled at the way small sunbeams found their way through the leafy covering, making lacy patterns everywhere. The air was redolent with the smells of wildflowers and rich, warm earth.

It was all so rustic. So very...elemental.

"Guilty as charged, yes," he said, his grin boyish, and so endearing. "I came up here before dawn. And, G.o.d help me, I spent the entirety of poor Thomas's service thinking about how I could ask you to come up here with me. Am I being selfish? Because if you-"