“Come, Mrs. Vernon,” the vicar boomed. “Time we were about our own duties. I look forward to seeing you on Sunday, my lord. Mrs. Lindon, our thanks. Goodbye.”

  He marched over to the gig and pony which Piers had just driven past. Mrs. Vernon trotted after him, twittering thanks and delight over her shoulder. A groom waited at the pony’s head, quick to throw the reins to Mr. Vernon, who hadn’t waited to hand in his wife first. It was the groom who did that before striding over to April at the curricle.

  “Come inside, my lord,” Mrs. Lindon said graciously. “We’ll have some fresh tea.”

  “Thank you,” Piers murmured. The groom was leading the horses around toward the stables now, April walking beside him and chattering. Which made Piers want to smile.

  “Oscar is home and very much looking forward to meeting you,” Mrs. Lindon told him with a smile, leading the way across the handsome hall, which was much as Piers remembered it, and into a gracious drawing room.

  Before following her, Piers paused to raise his eyebrows at Lindon. “Has Oscar seen...?”

  “Not yet,” Lindon said unhappily. “I couldn’t insist with his mother so glad to see him and Laura on tenterhooks for Hunter to turn up. I can’t bring myself to tell them.”

  There was no time for more. Walking into the drawing room, Piers was reintroduced to Oscar Lindon, whom he remembered as a serious boy, happy enough to get into mischief providing he didn’t get dirty at the same time. At the time Piers had blamed the influence of his mother for such fastidiousness.

  Now, he met a man a few inches shorter than himself but very neatly and properly dressed in a well-fitting coat and shining shoes. There were no obvious signs of recent travel except a certain tiredness around the eyes. Oscar was fairer than the rest of the family, but he had his father’s nose and something of his mother’s proud posture. Although not particularly handsome, at surely only eight or nine and twenty, he was already distinguished.

  “My lord,” he said to Piers, bowing and advancing with a smile. “How good to see you!”

  Piers offered his hand and had it warmly shaken. “And you, but please don’t my lord me. It sounds wrong when you were the one who hauled me out of the river like a drowned rat after I fell out of that tree.”

  “Did I?” Oscar sounded surprised.

  “I expect he complained because you got him wet, too,” Laura said.

  “Do you know, I believe he did,” Piers agreed, smiling. “But I was so grateful not to be dead that I didn’t care.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Lindon said jovially. “Sit down, Petteril.”

  “We heard you had devoted yourself to study at Oxford,” Oscar said, taking a seat beside Piers. “It must have been quite a shock to be flung back into the world.”

  More than you will ever know. “It still is,” Piers said mildly. “I’m slowly finding my feet.”

  “Are you fixed here for some time, then?”

  “For a couple of weeks at least. Probably until the end of the month. It rather depends on what I learn from Daniels over the next few days. There are other estates, too, though smaller.”

  Oscar nodded. “Of course. And I gather there is much to do. Daniels found it difficult to interest his late lordship in the land. Everyone was delighted to hear you were coming. In fact, hopefully you will still be here for Laura’s wedding.”

  Laura blushed. “Oscar! He is not even here yet, so you must not assume—”

  To Piers, her protest sounded a curiously discordant note, which may have been what caused her brother to interrupt.

  “I assure you we would take it very ill if our assumptions proved wrong,” he said dryly. “Such a fuss over settlements! You will find the same, Petteril, when you marry.”

  “I have much to see to before that happy day,” Piers said.

  Oscar smiled. “As do I.”

  Piers turned to Laura. “You are engaged to Lord Maxwell Hunter, I believe? I don’t think we have met.”

  “He is the Marquis of Aylesworth’s son,” Mrs. Lindon said proudly.

  “Fourth son,” Laura added, which made her mother frown in annoyance. “Otherwise, I daresay, he would never have considered me.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Oscar said sharply. “Your family may not be titled, but you are as gently born as he is. There have Lindons at the Grange since the Conquest. Before, probably.”

  “You need not jump to my defence,” Laura said with a quick smile. “I quite understand the way of the world.”

  “I wish you very happy,” Piers said. “How did you meet?”

  “Oh, at a cousin’s party in Oxfordshire. Mama and Oscar and I went to stay for several days, and Lord Maxwell was one of the other guests.” She glanced at him and seemed to think something more was called for. “He is very handsome and has charming manners.”

  Which was rather faint praise for one’s future husband. Piers began to wonder what was wrong with him. What had been wrong with him before someone stuck a hunting knife in his heart.

  “I have brought Laura up to be a modest young lady,” Mrs. Lindon intervened, taking charge of the teapot which had just been brought in. “Though I don’t think she need be quite so modest about her future husband.”

  As she spoke, Piers heard the sound outside of wheels on gravel. Laura heard it, too, for she stiffened, one arm stealing across her stomach in a gesture that spoke to him of self-protection. Well, a young lady had much to fear from a relative stranger who was suddenly put in charge of everything she did and everything she had.

  “Ah, that should be Lord Maxwell,” Mrs. Lindon said comfortably.

  Piers looked at Lindon who shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and at Oscar, who drew in his breath, almost like girding up his loins for confrontation. Piers received his tea from Laura, whose fingers trembled slightly. He hoped it would be Lord Maxwell, though that would leave even more of a mystery as to the identity of the dead man.

  Voices sounded in the hall, muffled and indistinguishable, and then the drawing room door opened.

  “Mrs. Alleyn, and Mr. Samuel Alleyn,” announced the butler.

  Laura relaxed. Lindon looked at Piers with a sort of conspiratorial resignation, as though this were the final proof they needed.

  Mrs. Lindon looked annoyed, as though she knew her unexpected visitors had come to gawp, though whether at Piers or at Laura’s husband-to-be, he could not tell. Like all the gentlemen, Piers rose to his feet as a broad-boned, plump and stocky lady sailed into the room, rather like his aunt Hortensia except that he read only good humour in this lady’s face.

  “Alleyn’s in trade,” Oscar murmured to Piers with distaste. “But since they are our neighbours over at Barnwood, we are obliged to receive them.”

  “How kind of you to call,” Mrs. Lindon was saying to the plump lady, with a curious mixture of condescension and graciousness. “Allow me to present you to our guest. My lord, our neighbour Mrs. Alleyn, and her son, Mr. Samuel Alleyn. Viscount Petteril, of course.”

  Mrs. Alleyn beamed at him, not a whit awed by his title. “How do you do, sir? Very pleased to meet you.” She spoke with a slightly northern accent that betrayed her origins.

  Piers bowed. “And I you, ma’am.” He turned to her son, an upright, if slightly awkward looking young man, probably a year or so younger than himself. He was quite good looking, though he held himself very stiffly. Piers hoped it was not from embarrassment at his mother or the unkind condescension of his hosts.

  Piers offered him one casual hand, and Samuel looked somewhat surprised, though he shook it with firmness. “Pleased to meet another neighbour,” Piers said.

  “My lord.” Piercing blue eyes searched Piers’s face as though looking for hidden insult. Finding none, Samuel gave a very small smile before turning to bow to Laura. “Miss Lindon.”

  “Good day, Mr. Alleyn,” Laura said with a pleasant smile. “I hope you are well?”

  “Perfectly, thank you.” Deeper colour seeped into his face. He cast a sweeping glance about the room, adding awkwardly, “And you, Miss Lindon?”

  “Oh yes, as always!” Laura sat and arranged her skirts once more as though desperately seeking a topic of conversation. Or just a distraction from her betrothed’s continued absence. “Do sit down, Mr. Alleyn. Have you heard the latest news? Lord Petteril found a dead body in his wood!”

  “So it is true?” Mrs. Alleyn exclaimed. “And is it truly a stranger?”

  “It would seem so,” Lindon said, crossing then uncrossing his legs and shifting in his chair. “No one has recognized him.”

  Samuel threw a frown at him. “So that is why you were asking me about expected visitors?”

  “Afraid so,” Lindon admitted. “I have to ask everyone, as magistrate, you understand.”

  “Poor soul, how awful,” Mrs. Alleyn said with genuine sympathy, presumably for the corpse. “And for your lordship, of course, to have come across such a thing almost as soon as you’re home.”

  “When would be a better time, Mrs. Alleyn?” Mrs. Lindon asked glacially.

  “Oh, I never, I suppose.” Mrs. Alleyn did not appear to take offence although her son’s lips tightened. “It just seems the worst possible. I suppose the best we can hope now is that Mr. Lindon here discovers who he is and returns him to his grieving family. So sad.” She turned to Oscar. “And so, you are returned from your adventures. I trust you had a pleasant trip?”

  “Indeed, but it was hardly an adventure, merely a meeting with friends,” Oscar replied. He spoke with courtesy, but it was chilly. The Alleyns, clearly, were never allowed to forget that they were beneath the ranks of the gentry. No wonder Samuel was so tense. It must make visiting intolerable.

  Although, he began to suspect another reason for Samuel’s discomfort over the next few minutes, as conversation flowed, breaking into several smaller ones. Samuel sat beside Laura, speaking earnestly, although the glow in his eyes betrayed that he was hopelessly smitten. And she betrothed to another man. Admittedly a dead one, but—

  The drawing room door opened again, and the butler intoned, “Lord Maxwell Hunter, ma’am.”

  Chapter Five

  Piers was fairly sure his jaw dropped, though fortunately no one was looking at him. Everyone jerked their gaze toward the door, whether in astonishment, pleasure, or avid curiosity.

  “Oh, thank God,” Lindon muttered, while his wife’s shoulders relaxed and she went forward with a beaming smile on her face. She might have believed the corpse was not Lord Maxwell, but she still had not been sure he would come.

  On Laura he seemed to have the opposite effect. Colour surged into her cheeks, and her fingers gripped each other so hard they looked white. Samuel Alleyn stood slowly, as though unwilling to meet the man who had cut him out merely by birth.

  Lord Maxwell had strolled into the room and came to a startled halt to find so much attention fixed to him. “Oh, Lord, did I wear the wrong coat?” It wasn’t even a sneer, or any kind of sarcasm, merely a self-deprecating amusement that was oddly charming.

  Mrs. Lindon laughed, giving her hand. “Of course not! How funny you are. Welcome to Lindon Grange, Lord Maxwell.”

  He bowed over her hand with enviable grace. “Thank you. I am delighted to be here! I did mean to arrive earlier in the day, but I had no one reliable to wake me. Miss Lindon, how delightful you look. Did I tell you once you should always blue? Now I think you should always wear pink.”

  Laura smiled nervously, offering her hand, which he gallantly kissed, his eyes smiling lazily at her with what Piers recognized as practised and probably habitual flirtation.

  Behind her, Oscar had come up to shake his hand. “Welcome, my lord! You have not yet my father, have you? Mr. Robert Lindon.”

  Lord Maxwell turned to Lindon with an easy blend of courtesy and respect. “Sir, an honour to meet you at last.”

  “Likewise, my lord, likewise,” Lindon said, perhaps a little too jovially, but he was clearly elated that the corpse was not Lord Maxwell after all. “Allow me to present our other guests, our neighbours, Mrs. Alleyn and Lord Petteril. And Mr. Samuel Alleyn, of course.”

  Lord Maxwell bowed civilly to the Alleyns, his smile still in place, before turning to Piers with rather more genuine interest. His smile broadened. “Petteril, eh? I was desolate not to meet you in London. You caused quite a stir.”

  “I did?” Piers said, startled. He clasped the offered hand.

  “Well, you defied expectations. Instead of a carelessly dressed and bespectacled academic, they beheld the next best thing to a dandy, witty and cultured and yet fashionably aloof. With a bang up set of greys to pull his smart curricle, and a small tiger enviably fluent in thieves’ cant to ride up behind. Naturally, I was agog to meet you, so this is an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Naturally,” Piers said. “You are enviably fluent yourself.”

  Lord Maxwell laughed. “You mean I prattle finest balderdash? Behold me nervous in the presence of beauty.” He threw his charming smile toward Laura and Samuel Alleyn’s lips twisted.

  “Mother,” Samuel said, “It’s time we left our hosts to their guest.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Alleyn said comfortably, allowing Samuel to haul her to her feet. She beamed at Lord Maxwell. “I’m sure the Lindons are doubly glad to see you, since you’re obviously not the corpse in the wood!”

  “Corpse?” Lord Maxwell’s eyebrows flew up. “I hope not! Got a corpse on your hands, sir?”

  “Robert is Justice of the Peace,” Mrs. Lindon said, glaring at Mrs. Alleyn who looked abashed for the first time.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “My tongue runs ahead of my brain. I don’t mean to spoil your reunion.”

  “Come, Mother,” Samuel said, pausing only to throw thanks at Mrs. Lindon, bow to the company in general and cast a last look at Laura before hustling his parent from the room.

  Lord Maxwell allowed himself to be pressed into Samuel’s vacant chair and accepted a cup of tea poured by his prospective mother in law and presented by his betrothed. But his frowning gaze was on Robert Lindon.

  “Did you really think the corpse was me?”

  “No, no, of course not,” Lindon said, flustered, then, “Well, it crossed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  Since this seemed to flummox Lindon, Piers answered. “It was the body of a young man about your age and build, unknown to anyone in the village, and clearly a man of means and leisure. Someone at the Dog and Duck said you had left very early on Tuesday to come to the Grange. Our man died probably in the small hours of Tuesday morning.”

  “Did he, by God?” Hunter said slowly. He set down his cup and looked from Piers to Lindon. “Do you still not know who he is?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” Lindon admitted.

  Hunter’s lips twisted. “I might have. You’d better take me to look.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Piers was back in the curricle with April and following the Lindon coach down the drive to the village road.

  “Well, if it ain’t him,” April said, “Who does he think it is?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Are we going back to the Red Lion with them?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Piers said vaguely. “What did you learn from the servants?”

  “That this Lord Maxwell is a nob of the first order and a fine catch for Miss Laura. Only his pockets’re all to let and he’s clearly after her for her money. They hope he appreciates her for more than her readies.”

  Piers raised his eyebrows. “I’d no idea the Lindons were so wealthy.”

  “They’re not. Laura is. Inherited a fortune from some great aunt who married a nabob. It’s hers when she marries.”

  Piers whistled. “Well discovered. Only if her fortune is so great, why don’t they look higher? Maxwell is only a fourth son, never likely to be marquis unless the entire family is struck by plague. There must be an earl going spare, or even a duke on his last legs.”

  “Cynical cove, ain’t you? Word is, the neighbour’s son wants to marry her too. He’s rich but beneath her. They’re worried she’ll take him over the nob.”

  “Him being Samuel Alleyn.”

  “That’s the name. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not convinced she wants to marry either of them,” Piers said. “But she’s a good daughter and will oblige her family.”

  “He looks well enough,” April allowed. “Is he horrible?”

  “No, he seems quite likeable, in a frivolous sort of way.”

  “Vice,” April said with a sigh.

  “What?”

  “Vice. Young, frivolous nobs always have vice. Drink, gaming, brothels and not the cheap sort neither. We shouldn’t let her marry him.”

  “We shouldn’t?” Piers asked, fascinated.

  “Not unless she’s horrible, too.”

  “I don’t think she is, though to be honest, I have no idea. Presumably her father and brother looked into Hunter’s affairs, though.”

  “What, like your family looked into Henry Dove’s?” April said scornfully, referring to his aunt Hortensia’s efforts to marry his cousin Gussie to a fortune-hunting lout with nothing in his favour whatsoever except a plausible charm of manner.

  “Fair point,” Piers said. “I shall enquire.”

  Abandoning their slower horses in the Red Lion’s yard, Piers and April were only just in time to follow Lindon and Hunter down to the cellar. The body lay where it had before, but this time there was no doctor to draw back the sheet.

  Lindon hesitated, a natural fastidiousness showing in his face. Or perhaps it was superstition. Without a word, April brushed past him, drew the sheet down to the man’s neck, and stood back.

  Piers kept his gaze on Lord Maxwell and saw at once that he knew him. Even in the cellar’s gloom, he could see the blood drain from Hunter’s face, the wobble of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, his expression one of pity and regret. But he did not close his eyes.

  “His name is Nathaniel Orr,” he said quietly. “He is—was—my valet. I shall write to his family. How did he die?”

  Lindon shuffled, perhaps looking for the right words to tell a man his closest servant had been so brutally done to death.

 

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