“There’s no need to explain, madam. I’ve heard the late Earl was a bit of a runabout, but I’m sure you and the current Earl will set it all to rights.” He looked around the large foyer, his faded green eyes taking on a hint that could almost be termed envy. “This is a lovely establishment. It would be a grievous sin to have it less than perfect.” He brightened, smiling down at Elly. “But if your brother the Earl is anything like his gracious sister, I’m sure there is no worry of Seashadow succumbing to the vagaries of poor husbandry.”
Knowing that her younger brother was at that moment in the west wing billiard room, blocking out a mural depicting the evolution of an apple from first juicy bite to bared core, Elly smiled enigmatically, allowing the Lieutenant to comfort himself with his own visions of the new Earl, and waved the man on his way.
Once the door was closed behind him, Elly stood staring sightlessly at the heavy crystal chandelier that hung over the flower arrangement atop the large round table in the middle of the spacious foyer. “Smugglers and spies,” she intoned gravely, her curiously slanted brown eyes narrowing. “Carrying intelligence to Bonaparte so that he can kill more of our young men. Young men like my poor love, Robert—cut down before they’ve had a chance to live, to marry, to have sons.” She raised her chin in determination. “Well, they won’t be doing it from Seashadow. Not if I have anything to say about it!”
ALASTAIR LOWELL stood lost in a pleasant daydream on the small hill, gazing across the rocks and sand toward his ancestral home, watching as the sun danced on the mellow pink brick and reflected against the mullioned windows.
Seashadow was particularly lovely in the spring of the year. It was almost as lovely as it was in the summer, or the fall, or the winter. “Face it, man, you’re in danger of becoming dotty about the place. Being near to death—not to mention the weeks spent in friend Hugo’s airless hovel—have given you a new appreciation for those things you have taken for granted much too long.”
He turned toward the water, smiling indulgently as he watched Hugo at play on the shore, chasing a painted lady—one of the thousands of butterflies that spanned the Mediterranean to cross the Channel each spring and make landfall on the edge of Kent. Dear Hugo. Whatever would he have done without him?
“I would have been breakfast for some sea creature, that’s what I would have done,” he reminded himself, his grey eyes narrowed and taking on hints of polished steel. “I mustn’t allow my joy in being alive to distract me from the reason behind that joy—my near murder.”
He turned back toward Seashadow, rubbing a hand reflectively across his bearded chin. He still found it difficult to believe that a new Earl had been installed in his family home, a fact he had discovered during his first clandestine meeting with Billie Biggs—once that devoted woman had finished thoroughly dampening his shirtfront with tears of joy over his lucky escape from drowning. His eyes narrowed. “So now I have a logical suspect. I hope you’re enjoying yourself, Leslie Dalrymple, Earl of Hythe, eating my food and drinking my wine—for if Wiggins’s and my plan goes well, you are very soon going to be booted out of my house and then hung up by your murdering neck!”
“Eeeeek!”
“Aaaarrgh!”
What a commotion! What a to-do! What high-pitched, unbridled hysteria!
“What in bloody hell? Hugo!” It all happened so quickly that Alastair was taken off guard, his hand automatically moving to his waist, and the sword that wasn’t there. All he had was his cane, and he raised the thing over his head menacingly, vowing to do his best with the tools at hand, for obviously there was murder taking place just out of sight along the beach.
Cursing under his breath, he began to run down the hill toward the shore, the shifting sands beneath his feet nearly bringing him to grief more than once before he cannoned into Hugo—who had been running toward him at full tilt—and was thrown violently backward against the ground, his wind knocked out of him, his senses rattled.
Air returned painfully to his starving lungs and he took it in in deep, hurtful gulps. There were several painted ladies hovering over him, swirling about in circles like bright yellow stars. No, they were stars, brilliant five-pointed objects that hurt his eyes. But that was impossible, for it was just past noon. There couldn’t be any stars.
He shook his head, trying to clear it, slowly becoming aware of a shadow that had fallen over the land. Hugo. The man’s enormous head blocked out the sun, the butterflies, and the circling stars.
“Aaarrgh,” Hugo moaned, his hamlike hands inspecting Alastair from head to foot for signs of damage.
Suddenly a parasol, built more for beauty than for combat, came crashing down on Hugo’s back, once, twice, three times, before splintering into a mass of painted sticks, pink satin, and lace.
“Unhand that man, you brute!” a woman’s raised voice demanded imperiously. “Isn’t it enough that you accost helpless females—must you now compound your villainy by trying to pick this poor fellow’s pockets? Away with you, you cad, or it will be much the worst for you!”
Alastair struggled to sit up, trying his best not to succumb to the near fit of hilarity brought on by both Hugo’s frantic expression and the outrageousness of the unknown female’s accusations. This proved extremely difficult, as Hugo, who was obviously thoroughly cowed, had buried his face against the Earl’s chest, seeking sanctuary. “I say, Hugo, leave off, do, else you’re going to crush the life out of me,” Alastair pleaded, trying to push the man to one side.
“You—you know this brute?” the woman asked, dropping the ruined parasol onto the sand, clearly astonished. “I came upon him as I rounded the small cliff over there. I thought he was a smuggler going to…but he must actually have been afraid of me…which is above everything silly, for he is four times my size…and then I took him for a robber when he was only trying to help you? This is all most confusing. I don’t understand.”
“That makes the two of us a matched set, madam, for I am likewise confused,” Alastair replied, prudently reaching for his cane before attempting to rise and get his first good look at the woman who had so daringly defended him against Hugo.
She was a young woman of medium height, slightly built in her rather spinsterish grey gown, her fair hair scraped back ruthlessly beneath her bonnet so that she looked, to his eyes, like drawings he’d seen of recently scalped colonials. Her huge brown eyes were curiously slanted—probably a result of her skin-stretching hair-style. She looked, and acted, like somebody’s keeper, and he immediately pitied her “keepee.”
“When last I saw friend Hugo here, for that is his name,” Alastair continued, “he was amusing himself chasing a painted lady.”
“I beg your pardon,” the female said crushingly. “I have not insulted you, sirrah! Just because I am on the beach without a chaperone is no reason to—”
Alastair hastened to correct her misinterpretation. “A painted lady is but another name for a butterfly, madam—the two-winged variety, that is,” he said, rising to his knees as Hugo put a hand under each of his arms and hauled his master ungainly to his feet. “Ah, there we are, almost as good as new. Thank you, Hugo,” he said, having been righted satisfactorily. “Now, perhaps we might try to make some sense out of these past few minutes.”
“I knew that,” the woman said in a small voice.
“You knew what?” he asked, bemused by the slight blush that had crept, unwanted, onto her cheeks.
“I knew about painted ladies—that is, about butterflies,” she stammered, looking at him as if she had never seen a man up close before. “Are you sure you are quite all right? That was quite a blow you took.” Her voice trailed off as a humanizing grin softened her features. “You—you must have bounced at least three times,” she added, belatedly trying to disguise the grin with one gloved hand. “Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t see any levity in this, should I?”
Alastair made to push the kneeling, still-quavering Hugo—who reminded him of an elephant cowering in fear of