Mr. Rembric rose. “All I know past what I told you, my lord, is that Lord Darling has gone and destroyed the garden. The butler was verging on some sort of apoplectic fit over it, but then it was decided that Charlie’s uncle would fix it up in a trice and they’re all countin’ on him.”
The investigator bowed and wished him good day.
Percival still sat, stunned by the realization that his supposedly intellectual mind had led him to think that a kid goat was some roguish gentleman set on seducing Lady Cordelia.
Where had that wild imagination come from? He generally did not have a wild imagination. He left imagining to composers and authors—his was a world of facts.
Makepeace came in and said, “I have shown Mr. Rembric out, but not before him pressing me to find out if we have any other mysteries that needed solving.”
Percival nodded. “He told you about Lord Darling, then?”
“He did not. I presumed whatever you discovered, you would be marching that information directly to the earl.”
Percival erupted in laughter. “No, not in this case. Lord Darling is the goat they have in the house.”
“The goat they were all chasing the night you wandered onto their street? They keep it in the house? Why? Why do they have a goat in the house?”
“I do not know, really,” Percival said. “They are the Benningtons, I suppose that is why. They are very charming and original people, very charming indeed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Several days hadpassed since Cordelia’s triumph as Cassio upon Lady Rawley’s stage. The lady had been so kind as to send both her and Miss Mayton flowers, which had been lovely until Lord Darling had somehow got to them.
Poor Tattleton was exceedingly distraught by Lord Darling’s mischief in the garden and so they did not mention it to him and just quietly put away the vases and mopped up the water on the floor.
Cordelia’s father had also been rather distraught over the destruction of the garden, or at least as distraught as he ever was outside of a housefire. He had been soothed by the idea that Charlie’s uncle was to have it sorted in a trice.
Charlie’s uncle, who refused to be called Mr. Hanson and would only answer to Farmer Hanson, had since arrived. Tattleton had found him a spare room somewhere and the fellow had set to work. Nobody was quite sure what a trice amount of time would actually be, as Farmer Hanson had shaken his head gravely at the situation.
Lynette said he was not making himself popular with Tattleton as he kept saying things like, “Ya can’t never allow a goat into a garden like that” and “I’m still a-head scratchin’ as to why ya got a goat in the house.”
Everybody else liked him well enough though.
Despite the entertaining doings of the house, Cordelia’s thoughts kept running in the same direction. Lord Harveston.
Certainly, the fates must be trying very hard to tell her something. Certainly, a person did not think of another person night and day without it meaning something particular?
That thing he’d said—if she were in any danger, she ought to call on him—would not leave her. She replayed it and replayed it.
And that was just one thing said! What else might he say?
She did not know, but she was certain she would see him this night, the night of Lady Bloomington’s masque.
She and Miss Mayton had eaten a whole plate of biscuits before getting dressed, as they knew Lady Bloomington had some particular habits. As a sort of thumbing of nose at the patronesses of Almack’s and their dreadful offerings, Lady Bloomington offered the moon and the stars.
Trays of little bites she called entremets would come round between every dance. Following those trays would be trays of champagne, and many a guest had left Lady Bloomington’s rather worse for wear on account of it.
Van Doren had once been a victim of it and had managed to insult the duke in the process. He’d been lucky to not find himself on a green the next morning, answering the insult.
Miss Mayton’s remedy was to go into the whole thing with a stomach well lined with biscuits.
Her aunt came into her bedchamber, looking as spectral as she had in other years. She would wear her widow’s weeds but had added a long black veil that completely covered her from head to toe. Having had experience attempting to wrangle food and drink beneath the veil, she had since had a seamstress modify it to have armholes and a hole around her mouth cut out. The effect was no less eerie though.
Lynette was laying out her own costume, which was not what she had at first thought it would be.
Miss Mayton examined it. “I think Darden did rather well,” she said. “The headpiece is marvelous.”
Cordelia nodded. She’d had her heart set on going to the masque as Desdemona, but then Darden had rightly pointed out that as Lady Rawley had just played Desdemona on the stage, she was likely to appear as that ill-fated lady herself.
