“Don’t listen to that stuffy fusspot. I pay the wages, so please pack the coquelicot, the sparkish jonquil and the striped one. I’ll need to impress.”
Young Hamilton hastened to the wardrobe with a despairing glance at the portmanteau.
Lord Rainham’s scrawled additional notes outlined his interest in this case, having always suspected the hand ofLa Chauve-Souris. But if so, why leave the girl alive? What did she know? Carlsbrook, it appeared, had been more than a little heavy-handed and the girl’s father had sent him packing with a… Jack re-read Carlsbrook’s words in disbelief.
…upon which I was shot at by Sir Jago and told never to venture past the River Tamar again unless I wished to sing castrato.
Thunder and turf, Rainham never mentioned that.
“Hamilton? Best pack my three-inch stiletto boot blade, both pairs of silver knuckle punchers, the fencing paraphernalia and my Manton pistols.”
A whimper and Jack glanced up. The apprentice valet held a bottle-green tailcoat and brush in one hand, with a single boot and stocking in the other, an expression of muddle marking his young brow.
“Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”
Trailing a finger down the report, he searched for anything essential… Jibber-jabber. Twaddle. Uninteresting. Pettifogging detail to fill the page… Ah, Sir Jago’s business interests – owns two china clay pits providing raw material for the finest porcelain.
Shame, he’d been expecting tin mines and all that usual Cornish rigmarole.
A package accompanied the folder. And a card:
Since you are staying under the guise of business, I thought this might be useful. R
The book weighed at least a stone and the leather spine remained unbroken – a sure mark of its tediousness.
China Clay – The Geology, Geography and Industryby Doctor Tuffle.
Faugh, no time for that, he’d have to brazen it out…or give it to Miggens for the coach journey – his studious valet would read seating plans for pleasure.
Which reminded him…
Lowering his boots to the floor, he shuffled the papers together. “And my deck of cards, the miniature chess set and three bottles of brandy.”
Hamilton groaned, dropping the shaving kit, but Jackmerely gathered up the irksome tome and surveyed the bursting portmanteau for a gap.
Gads, packing was such a chore.
∞∞∞
Penrose Manor, Treloor, Cornwall.
“I see a man.”
Not again.
But this time, Mrs Mildern’s bony finger pointed straight at Tamsyn.
“Me?” she squeaked.
The old lady’s brow creased, eyes misting as she bowed to the obsidian mirror once more. “I see a man, a man as dark as the devil.”
Tentatively, and so as not to disturb the spirits, the snoozing butler, or the scavenging seagull nibbling crumbs of hevva cake from the floor, Tamsyn shifted her chair closer. She gazed into the blackness of the scrying mirror but could see no image that Mrs Mildern described.
No man. No dark devil. Just her own blurred grey shape and the silhouette of her neatly bound hair.
But Mrs Mildern peered closer.
“Devil and angel. Shadow and light. Sorrow and joy,” she mumbled. “He comes for you!” she suddenly cried, wrinkled hands aloft, gold rings glinting.
