“Of course we shall not gratify such vile demands.”
“Oh, but we shall.”
“What? And have the fiend ask for a hundred the next week and a thousand next year?”
Edward shook his head. “We shall bag up a few shillings and leave them in Sackville’s urn as bait. We shall wait and see who comes for it and then have our man. Or woman.”
“And what are we to do with the wretch once we have caught him, or her?”
“I have not the slightest notion. But at least we shall know whom we are up against.”
On the night of old Lady Day, Edward and his father slipped through the narrow door in the wall and into the churchyard. There, they positioned themselves on a granite bench behind the mausoleum of the second Lord Brightwell, a position which leant them a view of the Bradley and Sackville plots, across from a cluster of graves called the Bisley Piece.
“Do you see my mother’s tomb, there?” the earl whispered. “And the flower urn beside it?”
Edward looked. “Yes?”
“That is where I buried our stillborn son.”
Edward stared at the spot and felt a shiver run up his spine. It was eerie enough in the churchyard after dark without thoughts of late-night, clandestine burials.
“I bundled him well and buried him there beside his grandmother. I moved that urn over the spot to disguise the disruption of grass and soil.”
Edward looked at the massive stone planter and could not imagine any man moving it. “Alone?”
“Yes . . . I was a younger man then, of course. And prodigious scared I would be caught.”
They sat for several more minutes in silence, waiting, their eyes and ears alert for the extortioner’s approach. An owl screeched and his father jerked. Edward laid a hand on his arm.
A cloud, masking the greater portion of the moon, rolled away on the wind whistling through the yew trees, and the moonlight illuminated Sackville’s grave more clearly. A figure stood before it, though they had neither heard nor seen anyone enter the churchyard.
“What the devil . . .” his father whispered, but Edward shushed him with a squeeze to his arm.
They watched as the figure reached into the urn, but when he withdrew his hand, it held no white bag. His father made to rise, but Edward increased the pressure on his arm. “Wait.”
Two things caused Edward to hesitate. First, he wanted to catch the person with bribe in hand to seal his guilt. And second, there was something familiar about the thin figure.
“It is Avery Croome,” Edward whispered.
“What? I cannot believe it.”
Surprisingly, Edward could not believe it either and sat where he was, deliberating.
Instead of reaching in again to try to find the money—perhaps they ought to have used a larger sack, as his father had suggested—or turning to leave, Croome crept around a carved, pre-Norman tombstone and disappeared.
“Where did he go? Is there another gate behind the Bisley Piece?”
“Not that I know of. Perhaps he is lying in wait?”
“For us? You think he knows we are here?”
“Shh . . .”
Footsteps approached through the churchyard gate, boot heels on the paving stones. Now who was coming? Edward feared it would be Charles Tugwell, come to pray, or worse yet the constable on his rounds. While the constable would no doubt be more adept at apprehending the extortioner, they did not want it done publicly.
The figure left the paved path and turned in their direction. Edward and his father sat utterly still, hidden by tombstones and shadows.
A bat flew low over them, brushing the hair on Edward’s hatless head. He did not so much as flinch, so focused was he on the approaching figure. Whoever it was wore a hooded cape, as dark as the enveloping night. Beneath the black shadows of the hood, a crescent of face shone pale in the moonlight.
“Is it a woman?”
“Shh . . .”
Edward did not think it was a woman—the walk was a masculine lurch. But it might be a ruse.
The caped figure walked directly to Sackville’s grave as if the way were familiar even in darkness. An arm lifted, and Edward saw the slight glimpse of a pale hand as it reached into the “pozy urn”—deeper, deeper . . .
Snap! A vicious metallic clang split the silence, and the figure screamed. For a second, Edward and his father sat frozen in shock. The perpetrator’s hood fell back and Edward saw it was a white-haired man. Screaming again, the man snatched back his hand—and the steel trap which impaled it.
His father turned to him, eyes wide in the moonlight. “Did you . . . ?”
Rising, Edward shook his head. “Croome.” He rushed forward, his bottled fury at this unseen enemy greatly deflated by the old man’s pitiful cries. Croome reached the man before Edward did.
“Get it off me, get the fiend off me,” the man begged.
“Tell me who sent you,” Croome demanded in his gruff voice.
Did Croome know what was going on? How? Why did he assume the man was not acting on his own?
“For the love of Pete—get if off me! My arm’s broke.”
“Croome . . .” Edward quietly urged.
“Who told you to do this, Borcher?” Croome persisted. “Who?”
“Nobody.”
Croome stuck a stake into the trap’s release, but instead of springing it open, he levered up the pressure.
“Stop! All right!”
Croome lowered the stake.
“A woman come round,” the man began breathlessly, “askin’ questions ’bout Lady Brightwell’s lyin’-ins, my missus bein’ the midwife in those days, God rest her soul. I had not thought on it in years, until the lady put it into my head again. She let on that Lord Brightwell had a secret.” He panted, perspiring profusely. “My boy Phineas figgered it might be worth a great deal to him to keep it quiet. He wrote the letter. Never learnt to write myself.”
Croome released the trap. “Phineas Borcher. Figured he had somethin’ to do with it.”
Edward glimpsed the man’s bleeding wound and dug into his pocket for a clean handkerchief. “Who was the lady who came to see you?” he asked.
“Oh, Lord Bradley! I . . .” The old man looked stricken to see him. “I don’t know. She wore a black veil. I never saw ’er face.”
Edward wordlessly handed him the handkerchief.
He pressed it to the wound. “I never meant you no harm. You—”
“Only me?” his father asked, coming to stand beside Edward.
The man’s eyes widened even further. “Bless me. Lord Brightwell! I never meant to . . . I don’t really know what it is all about.”
Edward turned to Croome. “Did you overhear us in the wood?”
The gamekeeper gave a slight nod.
“Even so, how did you—”
Croome held up his hand. “Let’s just say I have the misfortune o’ being acquainted with this man’s son. And I make it my business to know his. Heard him boastin’ how he was gonna lighten yer purse, my lord.”
“We didn’t mean no harm,” the man whined. “Phineas said we could get some blunt for nothing, and times is hard, you know.”
Croome scowled. “And about to get worse.”
Chapter 42
My nurse was my confidante.
It was to her I poured out my many troubles.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL, MY EARLY LIFE
Despite her regret over abandoning Audrey and Andrew and leaving without saying farewell to those she had come to love at Brightwell Court—and Miss Ludlow and Mr. Tugwell, besides—the time with her mother’s family had proved more pleasant than Olivia would have guessed. She had fretted how Mr. Crenshaw might react to her, considering her mother’s unsuitable marriage, disappearance—and the potential scandal—might all one day be revealed. But Mr. Crenshaw, a small, balding, cheery-faced man with dancing brown eyes, warmly assured her that he had “got quite used to taking in scandalous Hawthorns, forced from their homes and down on their luck—and should like it above all things to take in another.” It had been too many years since he had done so, he added with a wink and a smile for his wife. Olivia could not help but smile as well.
As Olivia had expected from the few lines Georgiana Crenshaw had penned within her grandmother’s note, she liked her aunt immediately. She was warm and amiable, with easy, unaffected manners. Perhaps it was the likeness to her mother, but Olivia felt as if she had known Georgiana for years.
Her grandmother was somewhat tentative and staid at first, asking questions about Olivia’s childhood and education. She avoided asking about Mr. Keene, for which Olivia was relieved. Still, Olivia realized that her grandmother was making a sincere effort to welcome this granddaughter she barely knew, and Olivia could not help but be touched.
The Crenshaws urged her to stay for as long as she liked. Olivia hoped to begin teaching school in the autumn but gratefully accepted their invitation to spend the summer at Faringdon.
Olivia had been with her relatives for less than a week when the Crenshaws’ footman announced Lord Brightwell and showed him into the morning room. Olivia rose, suddenly nervous in his presence, as she had not been in some time. Her anxiety was heightened by the fact that his usually placid countenance was strained.
“Are the children well?” she asked.
“Yes, though disappointed, of course, to learn of your . . . leave.”