just it,’ she whimpered. ‘I can’t afford no doctor. Not to pay for treatment of this...’ she moved her legs, waved her arms vaguely ‘...not this much.’
And Miss Underwood had thought of that, as well.
‘You must not worry about that,’ he told Mrs Pagett. ‘I will make sure all your bills for treatment are met. And that you have the nursing you need, for as long as you need it.’
‘You?’ She frowned up at him. ‘Why should you do that?’
‘Because it is my duty. And that of the committee who organised tonight’s events to take care of you. And,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘your family, should you be unable to work to support them for any length of time.’
She rolled her head from side to side. ‘It’s all very well you saying that now. But who’s going to listen to what you have to say?’
‘Everyone,’ he said with perfect assurance. ‘Because I am the head of the committee.’
‘You are?’ She gazed up at him in disbelief.
‘Yes,’ he assured her. ‘I am the Duke of Theakstone.’
‘And you say the man in question is Viscount Norborough,’ said Oliver. ‘You are certain of that?’
Perceval, his secretary, opened the document case he’d brought with him into the study, riffled through the contents and withdrew a slim ledger.
‘The tenants of Number Six Theakstone Crescent,’ he said, holding out the relevant entry so that Oliver could see it, ‘are Lord and Lady Norborough, their niece, Miss Underwood, sundry servants and a dog. They took up tenancy on June the first on a three-month lease.’
Oliver leaned back in his chair, frowning as he recalled the rough way the uncle had manhandled his pretty young niece away from the scene.
He started tapping one finger on the arm of his chair. He should have insisted she stay put, until she’d received medical attention.
But then Dr Cochrane had been too busy with Mrs Pagett to have spared time for Miss Underwood.
And he’d heard mention of an aunt. That lady had probably done all that was necessary for the minor cuts and bruises Miss Underwood had sustained.
Wouldn’t she?
‘What do we know of these Norboroughs, Perceval?’
‘Their principal estate lies in Derbyshire. Lady Norborough is the oldest sister of the Earl of Tadcaster. The—’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. I mean, what of their character? Their habits? Their history?’
‘I shall look into it, Your Grace,’ said Perceval smoothly.
It wasn’t good enough. Oh, Perceval would dig and dig until he’d unearthed every last secret the couple might ever have attempted to conceal. But it would take time. And Miss Underwood might be suffering who knew what right now.
‘It need not be a priority, Perceval. You have your hands full with the investigation into the cause of last night’s accident.’
They’d already visited the scene of the fire, hoping that in daylight they would be able to determine what had caused the painstakingly constructed display to explode.
Though he knew nothing of fuses or gunpowder, the men who’d set it all up certainly did and were all equally puzzled by how it could have gone so spectacularly wrong.
‘No evidence left,’ one of them had said gloomily. ‘Ashes, is all.’
‘Evidence?’ He’d pounced on that word, and all that it implied, with a frisson of disquiet. ‘Are you saying you think some crime took place here?’
‘Sabotage,’ one of the other workmen had stated. ‘Must have been.’
‘Or carelessness,’ Perceval had muttered, so that nobody but Oliver could possibly have heard. ‘Or drunkenness. Or incompetence.’
Well, whatever the cause, Perceval would get to the bottom of it.
‘In the meantime,’ he decided, ‘I shall call upon Miss Underwood.’ He could not rest easy until he’d seen with his own eyes that she had suffered no lasting ill effects from the incident. And it wasn’t because she was pretty, as far as he’d been able to judge from the glow of the burning scaffolding. It was because of her bravery in running towards a woman whose clothes had caught fire, when everyone else had been fleeing in the most cowardly, selfish manner. And the compassion she’d shown in kneeling down and holding the burned woman’s hand. And her disregard for the woman’s social station when she’d so selflessly donated her own cloak to conceal Mrs Pagett’s limbs, even though doing so had meant he’d been able to catch a glimpse of a shapely lower leg through her own ripped skirts.
Perceval tucked the ledger back in his folder and extracted Oliver’s diary. ‘You are attending an extraordinary meeting of the Committee to Celebrate the Peace with France, tomorrow at five.’
‘And Marine View is on my way. Efficient as ever, Perceval. I need only set out half an hour sooner.’
‘I shall make a note of it, Your Grace,’ said Perceval, licking the end of his pencil.
* * *
‘The Duke of Theakstone,’ Babbage intoned from the doorway.
‘Duke of Theakstone? Are you sure?’ Aunt Agnes frowned at the butler who’d come with them from Nettleton Manor. ‘I wasn’t aware we knew any dukes. Ned? Do we? Know this duke?’
Uncle Ned lowered his newspaper. ‘Theakstone? Ah. Come to think of it, he’s our landlord. Probably come about some problem over the lease, or something of that nature. Show him to the study, Babbage, and I will attend him there.’
Babbage cleared his throat apologetically. ‘His Grace gave me to believe he wished to speak to Miss Sofia, my lord.’
Uncle Ned and Aunt Agnes both turned to gape at her. It was Uncle Ned who recovered first. ‘Nonsense! Must be some mistake. Sofia don’t know any dukes. Keep too close a watch on her, don’t you, Agnes? Where would she have met him? Eh?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Aunt Agnes decisively. ‘I can assure you of that.’
And so could Sofia, if he’d bothered to ask her. But that was not his way. Sofia was not, as he was so fond of saying, his niece. She was pretty sure he didn’t begrudge her house room. It was just that he held the firm conviction that raising girl children was a woman’s work. He’d said so, the very first day she’d reached Nettleton Manor, bedraggled and woebegone and half-sure they, too, were going to pass her on to yet another set of strangers. It had been the first time he and Aunt Agnes had discussed her as though she wasn’t even in the room. In the years that followed, they’d fallen into the habit of doing it on what felt like
