Lord Dalton, instantly noting her distress, said, “What? What is it?”
“The watchmen,” Daisy said. “It may be nothing, but only a few hours ago they reported to Mr. Bellamy that they’d turned away a peddler and also…that they’d spotted a boat off the coast that struck them as suspicious. I am sure it does not mean anything…”
“But it might,” Lord Dalton said. His voice had taken on a harsher, crisper tone than Daisy had heard in some weeks. “The distraction of a party and my cottage unoccupied might be just the time somebody might choose to slip in and slip out. After all, Farthmore knows what he is looking for, while we did not.”
“Is he here? In the house?” Daisy asked, her voice sounding too high to her ears.
Lord Dalton did not answer, but turned to Lord Bartholomew and said, “Will you care for the ladies?”
Lord Bartholomew nodded. Lord Dalton turned to Lord Burke and said, “Let’s go.”
Burke gently placed Miss Minkerton in a chair. The lady wrung her hands and said, “Oh, do be careful, whatever it is you are planning!”
Lord Dalton and Lord Burke raced from the room and Daisy heard them bounding up the stairs.
Over Lord Bartholomew’s objections, Daisy ran from the drawing room to the bottom of the stairs. She could hear the pounding of feet overhead, a door thrown open, and then Lord Dalton shout, “The window!”
Daisy hurried back into the drawing room, to the far side that housed the windows overlooking the garden. They were the windows that sat directly below her father’s bedchamber and whatever now occurred there.
“What do you look for, Daisy?” Mrs. Jellops asked tremulously from the other side of the room.
Daisy hardly knew what she looked for, she’d heard Lord Dalton yell something about the window and so she’d run to it.
The garden was softly lit with a full moon and punctuated with shadowy outlines—the shrubbery lining the garden’s walls, the well-worn paths in the scrubby coastal grass, worn down from trodding feet, the gate in the distance that led to the old cement stairs. The cat stretched out on the bench in its usual spot, illuminated by the lone candle burning in the window of the cottage.
It seemed peaceful as it ever did, but for the pounding of feet and shouting overhead.
A rope dropped into her view and a man’s legs dangled in front of the window. At first, she’d only seen shoes and trousers. The shoes were worn and the trousers dirty and frayed. Then came the rest of the man.
It was Lieutenant Farthmore. His eyes met hers and Daisy recoiled from the hate she saw in them. She instinctively grasped at the window sash to ensure it was locked, lest he leap in and murder her, as he had no doubt planned with her father.
She was certain that he’d dressed himself as a peddler earlier in the day to gain entrance—he was dressed as a peddler still. After he’d been turned away at the front gate, he’d found another way in.
He clutched the scepter and raced toward the back of the garden. He skirted the bench that sat outside the cottage, the cat since disappeared.
Lord Dalton came down the rope next. Daisy was horrified that he would pursue the lieutenant.
“Do not follow him,” she cried through the glass. “There may be others with him!”
Her words fell on deaf ears. Lord Dalton had set off in a run and now Lord Burke had landed on the ground and was fast on his heels.
“Please, please do not let anything happen to him,” Daisy whispered, her palms against the glass. “Nothing must happen to him.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
As soon as Charles had heard of the suspicious boat offshore that had been reported by the watchmen and dismissed by Miss Danworth and his butler, he’d known Farthmore was making another run at the scepter.
Of course he would choose this night. Somehow, Farthmore had discovered the card party—easy enough to hear of it from a grocer or a maid chattering about it in a shop. Since none of household often left the premises, the second-best thing was to ensure that everybody was in the same room, engaged in an activity together.
It was his own fault for discovering it at the last moment. He’d said nothing to anybody about the letters he’d discovered in the cottage. Nobody but himself had known that Lord Childress had been a smuggler.
He’d told Daisy,Miss Farnworth, that he had not informed her of it because he did not wish her to be frightened. That was true, though he had also not wished her to be damaged. News that one’s father had engaged in criminal activities was a quick way to find doors shut in one’s face across England. That sort of news would be picked up and carried everywhere by the likes of Lady Montague. That her cousin, three times removed, was also involved would have been conveniently glossed over or she would have simply cut the connection.
He’d bounded up the stairs, Burke coming behind him, and raced to Childress’ bedchamber. In his hurry, he’d been stupid enough to forget a candle and at first, he could not see much when he threw open the door. He could feel, though, and what he felt was a distinct breeze from an open window.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom with the help of the light from the full moon. The scepter that had stood in for a bedpost was gone, and a man climbed out the window.
Charles had run to the window and found a rope tied round a stone gargoyle that sat just below it. The man, who he was certain was Farthmore, had reached the end of the rope and leapt to the ground. Charles followed him out the window and he’d heard Burke coming down after him as he set off across the lawn. Farthmore was making for the back gate and Charles wondered if that was how he’d gained entrance in the first place. Beyond the gate was only the dilapidated cement steps leading down to a rocky beach. It was not a place for swimming, or even strolling. It was a hemmed in cove and so had never been particularly guarded. After all, nobody could reach that beach unless they came by boat.
