“Was that the goat, Mrs. Huffson?” he asked gravely. “Is he having the temerity to bang on the door with his uncouth hoofs?”
“Um, yes, that would be him. Now, remember we did agree that we’d try him out in the garden this morning?”
“Step aside, Mrs. Huffson,” Tattleton said.
The housekeeper reluctantly stepped out of the way. Tattleton pushed down the latch and opened the door.
Lord Darling, or Lord Worst-goat-in-England as he would have been better named, trotted through the door with a bunch of peonies drooping from his mouth.
Tattleton looked out to the garden. Surveying the carnage that had been done there, he was no longer in doubt over what Cook was crying about.
The whole place was torn up!
Flowerbeds lay demolished. If a flower had not been ripped up by its roots, then it had been trampled upon or its head was missing and a forlorn stalk left waving in the breeze. The vegetable garden was no more—just dug up dirt left in its stead. The charming, white-painted wood bench that was meant for quiet reflection in the midst of nature had been overturned and its arms chewed on. The fountain with the blue-tiled bottom meant to make the water seem as the sea now only halfheartedly dribbled what looked as if it had come from a sediment filled canal.
“Now, Mr. Tattleton,” Charlie said in a soothing voice, “as I told Cook, I know it looks mighty terrible—”
“Mighty terrible? That would be one way to describe the wasteland I am currently viewing.”
“But I reckon it can be put to rights quick enough,” Charlie said.
“He reckons it,” Cook sobbed, “but I just don’t know!”
Though Tattleton would like to sob himself, there was no such luxury for a butler. He was the senior-most servant and if he collapsed, the whole house collapsed.
“And what, young Charlie,” he said, “would be your plan to put things to rights?”
“My uncle, he’s got a farm just outside of Town and he’s handy as the day is long. I could write to him and offer to pay if he brings in vegetables and flowers, and all the herbs Cook needs. He could fix the place up. I know ’im, he’d have his cart hitched in a trice.”
“A trice?” Cook said, wiping at his eyes. “He really would come in a trice and fix my garden?”
“In a trice, sir,” Charlie assured him.
Well, why not? That they had come to requiring somebody’s uncle to repair the desolation inflicted upon them by a goat they kept in the house should come as no surprise at this point.
Tattleton supposed he should anticipate that next season they would have a herd of horses in the house and then they could all seem surprised when every stick of furniture was kicked to pieces.
Maybe Charlie’s uncle could help with that too!
*
Percival paced hisdrawing room. The investigator, Mr. Rembric, was to come at two o’clock and he expected answers from the fellow. He’d written that he’d begun to make headway. Percival would demand the details of the headway. He wanted answers about this Lord Darling character.
Makepeace fussed with the coffee things. He’d brought out an old service, which Percival presumed was his comment on having the likes of Mr. Rembric in the drawing room.
“He was to be here at two,” Percival said. “It must be two by now. I do not like it that he is late!”
“It is five minutes to the hour,” Makepeace said, after having glanced at the clock on the mantel.
“I can read the time myself,” Percival answered. “I just doubt it is right.”
He stopped talking, as even to his own ears, he was beginning to sound like a lunatic. Makepeace only nodded and left the room.
Percival felt driven by a single-minded purpose. He must know about Lord Darling.
He must know what Lord Darling was to Lady Cordelia.
Percival had been up half the night sorting through his thoughts. The more rash side of his temperament, which he rarely allowed any freedom, had wished to ride over to the earl’s house and rescue his daughter from whatever untoward situation she was in.
