“No.” He looked his father right in the eye. “The Virgin Bride was right. There is trouble here. Where’s Peabody?”
“I got rid of him right away, sent him to Eastbourne to fetch some special pomade for me, I made up a name-Foley’s Special Hair Restorer.”
“But you have lots of hair.”
“No matter. It’ll drive Peabody quite frantic when he doesn’t locate the pomade, something he deserves since he’s always sticking his long nose in my business.”
James drew a deep breath. “I want to look at your arm, Father. Jason is right as well-someone is after you. We have to do something. But first I want to see for myself that the wound isn’t bad.”
Douglas raised a dark brow at his son, saw the fear in James’s eyes, and knew James had to see for himself that the wound was nothing.
“Very well,” he said, and let James untie the linen he’d just wrapped around it.
James studied the angry red slash that had torn through his father’s flesh. “It’s nearly stopped bleeding. I want to wash it, then I want Hollis to see it. He will have some salve to put on it.”
Of course Hollis had exactly the right nasty mixture. He also insisted, under James’s watchful eye, on smearing it over the gash himself. “Hmmm,” he said. “Hand me the clean bandage, Master James.”
James handed him the clean linen. The old man’s hands shook. From fear for his father? No, Hollis never was afraid of anything. “Hollis, how old are you?”
“Master James?”
“Er, if you don’t mind my asking your age?”
“I am the very same age as your esteemed grandmother, my lord, well, perhaps she is a year older, but one hesitates to speak bluntly about such things, particularly when it involves a lady who is also one’s mistress.”
“That means,” Douglas said, laughing, “that Hollis is older than those Greek statues in the west gardens.”
“It does indeed,” Hollis said. “There, my lord, you’re tied up right and tight. Would you care for a tetch of laudanum?”
His arm throbbed, but who cared? He raised a haughty brow, looked disgusted, and said, “No I would not, Hollis. Are the two of you happy now?”
The door opened and Jason walked in, turned white, and blurted out, “I knew it. I just knew it was something bad.”
James looked at the blood in the basin of water, swallowed, and told his brother what had happened.
“You know, sir,” Jason said before the three of them went downstairs, “Mother will know there’s something wrong when she sees the bandage on your arm.”
“She won’t see it.”
“But you and Mother always sleep together,” James said. “Surely she’ll see it. I heard her say once that you never wore a nightshirt.”
James said quickly, “She didn’t know we were listening.”
“Hmmm,” Douglas said. “I’ll think about that.”
“We don’t wear nightshirts either,” Jason said, “once we heard that you didn’t. What were we, James, about twelve?”
“Something like that,” James said.
Douglas felt a lurch in his chest. He looked at his boys-
Of course Alexandra found out quickly enough, not later than five o’clock that afternoon. Her maid, Phyllis, told her what the laundry girl-who’d washed a bloody linen strip-had told Mrs. Wilbur, the Sherbrooke housekeeper, who had rightfully passed it along to Hollis, who’d told her sharply to close her lips over her teeth, which, naturally, Mrs. Wilbur hadn’t, and thus it had come to Phyllis’s sharp ears over a cup of tea in Mrs. Wilbur’s parlor.
“A bloody cloth?” Alexandra said, swiveling about on her dressing chair to stare up at Phyllis, who had mossy green eyes and a lovely thin nose that constantly dripped, necessitating a handkerchief in her right hand most of the time.
“Yes, my lady, a bloody cloth. From his lordship’s bedchamber.”
Alexandra raced out of the bedchamber and through the adjoining door to confront her husband, to run her hands all over his body, to even check the teeth in his mouth. Curse him-he wasn’t there. And she knew when she confronted him, he would look down his elegant nose at her, call her a twit, and tell her it was all a tale invented by some silly girl in the laundry room.
Even though it was five o’clock in the afternoon, Alexandra hurried downstairs to the butler’s pantry, a lovely airy room with black and white marble tiles on the floor. The only problem was, Hollis wasn’t alone. Indeed, he was in the embrace of a woman. A woman she’d never seen before. Alexandra stared, then retreated, step by step, until she quietly closed the door.
Hollis hugging and kissing a strange woman? It seemed suddenly that everything was flying out of control. She forgot about nailing down proof so Douglas couldn’t look down his nose at her, and burst into the estate room where her husband was in conversation with the twins. She looked at them all with new eyes. The twins were in on it, whatever it was. The three of them were in a
CHAPTER FIVE
When you have no problems, you’re dead.
ZELDA WERNER
DOUGLAS AND THE twins shut their mouths fast. Douglas said, “Er, Alex, my dear, did you say that Hollis was kissing a strange woman? In the butler’s pantry?”
“Yes, Douglas, and she was much younger than Hollis, no more than sixty years old, I’d say.”
“Hollis taking liberties with a younger woman,” Jason said, threw his head back and laughed, then stopped. “My God, Father, what if she’s an adventuress, after his money? I know he’s well-heeled. He told me you’d been investing his money for him for years and he’s nearly as rich as you are now.”
“I will ensure that Hollis hasn’t been snared by a rapacious grandmother,” Douglas said.
James said, “You’re sure they were actually kissing, Mother?”
“It was a rather passionate embrace, and yes, quite a bit of nuzzling and kissing,” Alexandra said. “I’ll tell you, it fairly made my eyes pop out of my head.”
She took a step closer to her husband and whispered, “They both appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely.”
Douglas said, “One hopes this is the young woman Hollis intends to marry.”
His wife and his sons stared at him.
“You know about this, Douglas?”
“He spoke of marriage several days ago-something to the effect that a young wife would make him feel just fine.”
“But-”
Douglas raised his hand to cut her off. “We’ll see. After all, it really isn’t any of our business.”
James said, “It’s Hollis, sir. He’s been here longer than you have.”
“Do not equate old with dead,” Douglas said. “A man isn’t dead in his parts until he’s six feet under. Strive not to forget that.”
Alexandra sighed. “All right, enough of this excitement. Now, Douglas, you will tell me what happened to you and you will tell me all of it. You will include all references to a bloody cloth found in the washbasin in your bedchamber, and you will not fob me off with a cut finger.”
