It was frightening, as if there was nothing to be said or done to put him off. For that matter, the look on her father’s face was frightening. She could not remember ever seeing him so incensed.
“We ought to just send him away, papa,” Kitty said, “We can pretend you are not at home.”
“Nonsense,” Lord Penderton said, “I have no intention of hiding from this fellow. I will see him, and I will make short work of him. When I am done, he will not trouble you further. Go upstairs Kitty, and then Hidgson can show him in.”
Chapter Fourteen
Giles had returnedto Dalton’s house, glad his friend was out somewhere. He would not have liked to explain what he had been doing out on the town with his valet. As it was, he was certain they looked as two conspirators as they raced up the stairs.
In his bedchamber, LaRue took the book from his pocket and handed it over.
It was a small book with a strange binding, probably expensive. It was not a usual leather, it was exceedingly soft with odd nubs. Giles briefly wondered if it were rabbit or something of that nature.
“She was an uncouth creature,” LaRue said of the charwoman.
“Who cares?” Giles said. “She retrieved the book. How much did you pay her, by the by?”
“Thirty guineas,” LaRue said with a sniff.
“Thirty! Are you mad? That was all we had from selling off six of my best coats!”
“Mrs. Smat, as she is charmingly called,” LaRue said, “was able to explain to me the exorbitant price. One, Sir John would know she’d taken the book and so she must never returnthere. Two, he would go and tell the service she worked for, so she must never returnthere. And three, she thought Sir John an unpleasant kind of man who might resort to violence, so she must not returnanywhere.”
Giles thought that, considering her well-rehearsed reasoning, Mrs. Smat had engaged in this sort of borrowing before.
“As Mrs. Smat so delightfully put it,if you want me to be a-stealin’ then you best pay me enough to tiptoe out of town. I ain’t swingin’ for no fancy pants.” LaRue straightened a cuff and said, “Naturellement, I informed the savage that my trousers were notfancy, only well-made.”
“Never mind,” Giles said. “We’ve got the book and I suppose I still have enough coats.”
“Mrs. Smat has no interest in your coats,” LaRue said. “Only your fancy pants.”
Giles opened the book, hoping he would find a documentation of Sir John’s appointments—where he’d gone and who he’d met with. Instead, it was a diary of some sort.
He turned the page to the inscription and almost dropped the book.By a faithful servant of Sir John Hill.
“Now, why would Sir John have a diary written by one of John Hill’s servants?” he said quietly.
“One never knows these things,” LaRue said. “Why does Mrs. Smat smell like a brewery? We can only make guesses.”
As Giles flipped through the pages, he followed the description of John Hill’s troubles. According to his servant, The Royal Society’s determination to keep out his master was blamed for all the ills of his life. In particular, Martin Folkes and Lord George Penderton, Miss Dell’s grandfather, were blamed for all his ills. The tone of the writings slowly turned from irritation to unhappiness to despair to revenge. This servant wrote with glee of the ludicrous paper John Hill used to embarrass them all. Finally, there was a burning hatred. The hoax of a paper had accomplished its aim, it had embarrassed the society, but it had not got his master John Hill the standing he was due.
Giles ought to have condemned the tale outright, but he ended feeling sorry for the whole case. As it seemed to him, John Hill was a man of many talents.Toomany. It seemed the society had never taken him seriously as a botanist, only because he had engaged in so many other endeavors. Perhaps the society thought of him as a jack of all trades, master of none. Whatever he was, John Hill had employed a faithful servant indeed. Giles could hardly imagine what LaRue would write of him, if he ever bothered to write at all.
While John Hill may have been wronged, that did not change the fact that somebody was attempting to use that idea against the society now. Sir John was at the bottom of it, though why it should be so he could not fathom.
How little he would have cared about it if it were not for Miss Dell! If someone told him of the story of the society tearing its hair out to discover some fellow named Veritas, he would have laughed heartily and never thought of it again.
And yet, here he was.
“The old Lord Penderton is noted quite often in this book,” Giles said. “He was the current lord’s father, Miss Dell’s grandfather. So, Sir John claims to receive a mysterious letter signed by Veritas, he attempts to ingratiate himself with Miss Dell, and he has possession of a diary written by John Hill’s servant which rants and rails against her grandfather.”
“Perhaps he bought the diary from Mrs. Smat’s cousin?” LaRue asked.
Giles would ignore LaRue’s endless commentary on the horrible Mrs. Smat, had he not raised a valid point. Sir John may have acquired the book during his own hunt for Veritas.
That particular theory did not suit and so he put it aside. He had skimmed through pages but now he would go back to the beginning and read through everything carefully. He would consult Crackwilder on whatever he discovered. His old lieutenant was perhaps the only person he could trust enough to reveal exactly how the book had come into his hands to begin.
LaRue left to do whatever his valet did when he was off on his own. Giles suspected mainly what he did was go down to the kitchens, stare atthe barbarians, as he called them, and make insulting comments in French.
