breeches and cried out, “Pardon, sir! Pardon, sir!” as he wiped the offending food away with a napkin. Matthew stood up from the table as the boy’s hand rapidly darted here and there to clean off the debris and Matthew finally said, “It’s all right. Really. I’m fine.” He brushed the last bits off himself and returned to his seat, while the boy-a small-boned lad with a mass of curly brown hair and the fast movements of a weasel-wadded up the napkin in his fist and started toward the door that presumably led to the kitchen.
“Silas, Silas, Silas!” Chapel said, with an air of exasperation. “Stop where you are, please!”
The boy obeyed and, turning around toward the master, had a crooked grin on his red-cheeked face.
“Give it up,” Chapel instructed. “Whatever it is.”
“Give it up, Silas!” jeered the young wine-guardian.
“Now.” Chapel’s voice had begun to lose its humor.
The boy’s grin faded. “I was jus’ practisin’,” he said. “Gonna put ’em back later.”
“Return them to Mr. Corbett. This moment, or you and I will have some difficulties.”
“Awwww,” Silas said, in the manner of any boy caught redhanded at a mischief. He approached Matthew, opened the napkin, and deposited from it both the silver watch and the dairyhouse key onto the table next to Matthew’s plate. Instinctively and with abject amazement Matthew checked his pockets, which had been picked so quick and cleanly he’d had no sensation of looting fingers.
“Go about your business, Silas,” Chapel instructed, as he began to slice the calf’s tongue. “No more nonsense, now.”
“No more nonsense,” smirked the wine-boy, who flinched as Silas balled up a fist and made a threat of striking him, but then Silas thought better of it and went out through the door to the kitchen.
“Silas has a little habit.” Chapel pushed the tongue platter toward Matthew. “We indulge him sometimes, as he does no harm. He is quick, isn’t he?” His gaze locked on the watch. “Very fine, that is. How come you to have such an expensive time instrument?”
“It was a gift,” Matthew answered, aware he was again edging on shaky ground. “From…” His wits failed him.
“Oh, it’s not Mr. Deverick’s watch, is it?” Chapel made a wide-eyed expression of mock horror that was almost comical. “You’re not the Masker, are you?”
“No.” His mind started up again, like Sassafras running on the treadmill at Micah Reynaud’s barbershop. “It was a gift from the man who founded the town of Fount Royal, in the Carolina colony. Given for clearing up an important matter.”
“The witchcraft thing? Yes, Ausley told me. I might mention that my Carolina source says Fount Royal dried up and blew away last summer, so sad to relate. But life goes on, and so does time. Ah, what’s this?” Chapel plucked up the dairyhouse key even as his mouth was gobbling tongue.
Matthew, who felt as if Dr. Godwin’s breeches were already about to burst at the belly, had passed the tongue on down to Miss LeClaire, who stabbed herself a piece. Evans was intent on his small portion of ham and across from Matthew, Count Dahlgren put a fork to the grilled lamb and chewed steadily while watching Chapel inspect the key.
“This is an antique,” Chapel remarked once his mouth was clear. “Charity tells me you live in an outhouse.”
“A dairyhouse,” Matthew corrected.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Outhouse, dairyhouse…”
“Whorehouse,” the lady sniggered, with a shiny look that skimmed past Matthew. One of her blond curls had come unpinned and was hanging down over a chocolate eye. Her wineglass was empty. The wine-boy poured another.
“Here, mind she doesn’t get too much!” Chapel told the boy. “She’ll have us all on the table devouring us like Sunday sausages!” He returned his attention to Matthew. “Why does a young man of your aptitude live in an outhouse?”
“My aptitude, sir?”
“Your brains. Your gumption. You’re not lazy, I know. Also I know you have curiosity and you’re not afraid to strike out on your own. Why an outhouse, then? Do you have no ambition?”
“I have ambition. I am where I am, for right now.”
“Where you are right now,” Chapel said as he set the key down beside Matthew’s silver plate, “is here. It’s where you’re going tomorrow morning that I think shameful.”
“Sir?”
“Back to that noxious town. Full of those cretins and clodfoots. Pigs in the streets and horse manure…well, need I mention that to you? I think you have such potential, Matthew! Such a mind as yours should not be put to waste…” He paused and took a sip of wine.
“To waste, sir?” Matthew asked.
“Doing menial labor,” came the reply. “Isn’t that right, Lawrence?”
“Yes sir.” The s was perhaps a shade slurred.
“Listen to him, for Lawrence was once a legal clerk himself. Drowning in ink and debts. But look at him now, Matthew. Dressed in such finery and performing tasks more suited to his skills. And with a great future yet ahead of him!”
Matthew was watching Dahlgren, who watched Matthew. “Does the Count also work for you?”
“In a sense. He’s a guest, but he’s also my fencing instructor. I’m a bit late in taking it up, I fear, but I’m trying to learn. It’s damned hard, though.”
“Hard?” Miss LeClaire stirred and seemed to be rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes flicking from one man to another. Her voice was thick. “Who’s hard?”
“Hush,” Chapel said. “I meant to say difficult, Matthew. One must take care around Miss LeClaire, lest her condition leap out and romp us to death.”
Matthew finished his glass of wine and put a finger to the rim, allowing no more, when the boy rushed forward to pour again. Sense had to be made of this strange cornucopia, and he knew of only one way in the situation to start finding some answers. The frontal assault. “Mr. Chapel,” he said, and at once the man was listening attentively, “may I ask exactly why Ausley’s notebooks are so important to you?”
“Of course. They hold, amid his ravings and chamber-pot tribulations, the names of the orphan boys he’s sold to me.”
“Sold to you?”
“Well, I suppose rented is a better word. You know. To work here, as grounds and house staff and in the vineyard. Good help is so difficult to find. We clean them up, of course. Educate them and give them a trial period. If they fit in, they stay. If they don’t, they return to the orphanage.” Chapel continued eating. “A simple solution to my needs. I suppose I could have bought slaves, but I don’t wish black hands on the grapes.”
“Black hands,” Miss LeClaire slurred, both eyes now obscured by fallen curls. “On the grapes.” And then she snorted a laugh that made clear threads of snot shoot out of both nostrils.
“Dear Lord! Lawrence, do something about her, will you? Mind your stones, she’s got a claw of iron. Where were we? Oh, the orphans! Well, this arrangement’s been going on since I-Lawrence in my stead, I mean- approached him…oh, back in 1696, I suppose. And when did you leave the orphanage? 1694, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Matthew tried not to look as Evans cleaned the lady’s nose and tried to make her stop rubbing herself back and forth on the chair’s seat. The nymph’s itch, indeed.
“We just missed you. It works well for us, and well for Ausley…until he was murdered, I mean. Now we’ve got all the books but the last one, and we really must find it.”
“Why?” Matthew asked. “What’s so important about the names?”
“Actually, there’s only one name I care about in the books. My own.” Chapel offered an apologetic smile and a tilt of the battering-ram. “You see, Ausley was not removing the names of his charges from the rolls after they were sent to me. Therefore he could continue to get the same amount of money from the charities and the churches because his numbers stayed the same. I suppose I paid for much of his gambling adventures, plus he took the extra charitable funds. Now that the poor wretched bastard is dead, I’d think someone in a position of responsibility will be going over the official ledgers and records of placement. The notebooks, you understand, are highly unofficial.”
Chapel leaned toward Matthew in an attitude of sharing a secret. “I told him, through Lawrence, not to write
