Leland suppressed the urge to throw both of them from the house. “I have no inclination to participate in these nonsensical speculations. I will get to the truth, and I am certain the truth is that Lady Winsome, and no doubt Landry too, are blameless. Thetontalks too much and when they run out of truths, they invent things.”
He strode out of the room and left the two hens to gossip together. It was frustrating that he could not solve the problem this minute, but with Landry unconscious and Lady Winsome gone to Kent, his hands were tied. All he could do was await Landry’s return to the land of the living and Lady Winsome’s return to Town.
Assuming she was coming back to Town. If she did not appear at the masque, then he must locate her in Kent.
Though this situation was vexatious in the extreme, ithadserved to solidify his plans. He would see Lady Winsome, secure her, and on no account was she going to Brazil with his idiot cousin.
*
Mrs. Right wasnot precisely certain what she ought to do. When Winsome had cut out letters to the word jumble from the scavenger hunt and Valor had such good luck unraveling it as the word “sewing,” the housekeeper had thought that might be just the thing to do with the mysterious hint in Mr. Wicket’s letter—Trulogap.
All along, she’d thought it was the name of a horse until Mr. Wicket had said it was a word jumble. She’d tried to unjumble it a few times with no luck.
She’d posed the idea of separate pieces of paper for each letter to Mr. Wicket and he’d written them down and cut them out. They’d spread them across the servants’ hall dining table. Then the footmen came in and thought it a good game, Cook had a look, even thehousemaids made a show of staring and moving the letters around.
After much false starts, Mr. Wicket had unraveled it. Trulogap was Portugal.
At first, Mrs. Right had presumed it was not the right word, simply a word that could be made. Mr. Wicket proved it otherwise though, when he’d pointed out that the letter was a warning about a gentleman on a dowry hunt, had specifically mentioned that gentleman might be susceptible to bribes on foreign shores, and Lord St. John was currently empty pocketsandpoised to become the ambassador to…Portugal.
So…she had made a bit of an error there. She’d been certain the letter was about Lord Manderbey and Trulogap was a horse he’d bet on.
That might be easily forgotten, had it not been for what she’d done to avenge her girl. She’d had the idea that she might turn Winsome away from the gentleman completely by submitting a piece for the gossip pages of the newspaper. It read that the banns had been read in Lord Manderbey’s home parish, and he was to wed Lady Edith Cullington.
In retrospect, perhaps that had been hasty. A bit quick off the mark, as it were.
The duke had returned from a fruitless visit to Lord Landry. Apparently that fellow was indisposed, having fallen down a flight of stairs and knocked himself out. That was not the really worrying part, though. The duke had come in with the newspaper under his arm, laid it on the table, and Winsome had picked it up.
Mrs. Right had done her best to distract, providing conversation so Winsome might lay the paper down. If that were to happen, she would find a way to get hold of the paper and burn it. What she would do after that, she had not the first idea.
So far, the offending item sat on Winsome’s lap.
Whether Lord Manderbey had a gambling problem and gothimself in debt or not, Mr. Wicket’s letter was not warning about him. Trulogap was not a horse. The man to be guarded against was Lord St. John.
What had she done? If she were successful in driving Winsome away from Lord Manderbey, would it result in her driving her girltowardLord St. John? He’d been to the house, he’d brought flowers.
The duke had left the room with Valor, as she was determined to show her father the improvements she’d made to Sir Galahad’s bed. These improvements included several shawls draped over the top of the four poster and the evidence of two rows of knitting that would someday be a blanket.
Mrs. Right relocated herself next to Winsome. “Several things, my dear,” she said. “First, that letter I found in the cellar, the one we thought was a warning against Lord Manderbey.”
“Oh yes, and that awful horse he must have bet on, Trulogap.”
“Yes, that’s the one. Well, no surprise really that we would have leapt to that conclusion. However, it seems that Trulogap was a word jumble, just like ‘sewing’ was last night at the scavenger hunt. We were just an hour ago able to unscramble it and…it spells out Portugal.”
“Portugal? The only person who has mentioned Portugal…oh, it is Lord St. John.”
“Just so.”
“Hm, well that is good news. I am in no danger of succumbing to Lord St. John’s charms, whatever they might be, and am certainly not setting off for Brazil. Of course, I suspect Lord Manderbey has got himself in rather deep with gambling, he has said enough to indicate it, but at least he has not lost it all on a horse called Trulogap.”
“That is how I see it, yes.”
“Mrs. Right, you said there were several things?”
“Oh yes, I did, did I not? Well, as to the other thing, you know how hot I get when I feel like one of my own is in danger—”
“You did not mess with Lord Manderbey’s carriage springs as you did with Lord Thorpe?”
“Goodness, you knew that was me, did you?”
