His more rational thoughts told him otherwise. For one, Lady Cordelia had not even hinted that she needed rescuing. For another, if she did, she had not indicated that he would be her chosen rescuer. And for another, if he enacted such a mad plan, he would have turned himself into a perceived danger, on top of the one already there.
Wherever his thoughts took him, they all included Lady Cordelia. How had it happened? He’d gone along keeping an eye out for his lady intellectual, and now all he thought about was a lady quite the opposite.
Finally, as the clock struck two, whether it was right or behind time, he heard the door knocker.
Makepeace opened the drawing room doors. “Mr. Rembric, my lord,” he said, looking askance at the fellow’s ill-fitting coat.
His butler might well look askance—Rembric was a disheveled sort of person. Nothing he wore seemed to fit, his hair looked as if it had been separated from the company of a comb for too long a time, his boots were scuffed, and his skin was rather pasty.
Nevertheless, Makepeace poured the coffee for them both, bowed, and exited with his usual aplomb.
“Let us get right to it, Rembric. You said you had made headway, tell me everything.”
Mr. Rembric had sat himself down before being invited, which Percival assumed must be common in his milieu. The fellow took a long sip of coffee and set down his cup.
“To say I made headway, Lord Harveston, is to paint the thing weak. More like I bored through an Alp and rode my horse straight through it. In these kinds of cases, it is often like that—one goes along inch by inch, creepin’ through mud, then all of a sudden-like, one bores through the mountain. In my experience, it always comes down to a person who will tell some tales. Findin’ the tale-teller is my specialty, as it were.”
Mr. Rembric looked entirely satisfied that he’d explained everything. Percival did not have the first idea of what he was talking about. What did he mean, he bored through an Alp?
“Lord Darling, Mr. Rembric. What have you found out about Lord Darling?”
“Ah, yes, the lord in question. And that Chester you were interested in too.”
“Yes, both of them,” Percival said, feeling his patience wane, “but especially Lord Darling.”
“I don’t mind sayin’ it, the identity of that fellow took me back. I didn’t see that coming in a thousand years.”
Identity? Was he some sort of fraud, merely posing as a lord? Did the earl know?
“I done my usual operation, gettin’ acquainted with the lowliest of the staff through various means. Kitchen maids in particular are helpful—they don’t get paid much, they’re grateful for some extra, and they do like sharin’ an opinion. Nobody ever asks a kitchen maid nothing, so when you do ask, they’re as accommodating as you please.”
Percival had a great urge to pull Rembric to his feet and shake him to the point.
“Now then, my lord, I’m leadin’ up to the thing all slow-like as it ain’t gonna be what you were expecting. I don’t know what you were expecting, of course. But what it is, isn’t what you were expecting.”
“Mr. Rembric,” Percival nearly shouted.
“Aye, I see you’re gettin’ yourself anxious. Well, here it is—Lord Darling, Marquess of Basingstoke, ain’t a real lord.”
“I knew it!”
“He’s a goat that they got livin’ in the house. I could never discover why he’s livin’ in the house, but there you have it. The youngest, Lady Juliet, named him Lord Darling, Marquess of Basingstoke as that’s where they found the little fella. Basingstoke.”
Percival sank into a chair. “That cannot be right,” he said quietly.
“Oh, it’s right,” Mr. Rembric said. “I confirmed the thing backwards and forwards.”
“And Chester? The fellow who screams all the time?”
“A parrot they done left in the countryside. ’Parently, the creature shouts murder at everybody. I shouldn’t like to live with that myself, havin’ to think of murder all the time—’tis a bad business.”
Could it be true?
It was true that there was a goat in the house—he’d seen it with his own eyes. But could that really be Lord Darling?
The various conversations about Lord Darling presented themselves to him. Lady Cordelia’s description of him—he had been met with on their travels. The earl claiming he could not get him out of the house. Darden saying he would eat everything on Lady Rawley’s sideboard and then destroy her possessions.
My God. Lord Darling was the goat.
