Page 49 of The Meddler
He had pulled the stablemaster aside, hoping he would not have to interview any of the grooms, but that was not to be. Carstares could not confirm that he’d had Miss Wilcox in view at all times, as he had been much engaged with the carriage. Carstares had told him he’d seen both Lord Asturt and his own valet in the park, and Lord Asturt had proceeded to accompany Miss Wilcox to the gate. What they’d talked about, he could not say.
Was that a coincidence? And what in God’s name was his valet doing in the park at that early hour?
Jasper remembered that when he’d seen the grooms depart with Miss Wilcox, it had been Thomas riding his mother’s horse, Biscuit. Thomas would have remained within earshot of Miss Wilcox and so it had been Thomas he’d asked to see.
Carstares had given over the small room he used to keep his various records. It was a tidy place, considering it was in a stable, consisting of a desk, two chairs, shelves with a book for each horse, and a place for a teapot and cups. The lone window looked out upon the mews, and the dust from the hay drifted in motes through the feeble light.
Thomas, a rather eager-looking fellow on most days, now appeared as if he stood before a magistrate. He glanced nervously round the little room and twisted his hands together.
“Good God, fellow,” Jasper said, “I only wish to ask you a few questions, not hang you.”
Jasper thought he might not have selected the precise right phrasing, as poor Thomas had nearly jumped out of his skin at the mention of hanging.
“I only wish to know about your excursion to the park with Miss Wilcox early in the morning the other day. Of course I know she was quite safe in our servants’ care, but as she is our responsibility, it is necessary that I have reports. As a usual and commonplace matter. Very usual.”
Thomas nodded eagerly.
“I understand Marcus was there, and Lord Asturt, too.”
Thomas nodded eagerly again and Jasper was beginning to fear that was all he would get.
“Yes, well,” he said, “can you elaborate? Tell me what you saw and heard.”
“Everything?” Thomas asked.
Jasper did not know why he should pose such a question. “Of course, everything.”
Thomas began a slow pacing back and forth in front of the desk as if he were winding up to make an argument in Parliament. “Well, first, Carstares did scold me about how Biscuit handles. She’s a bit of a layabout if you don’t drive her forward. She’s one of them what prefers stopping and eating grass, if you know what I mean.”
Jasper did, exasperatingly, know what Thomas meant. He simply did not know why he was meant to care. Still, he knew from past interrogations that people often needed to get to the point in their own time and on their own winding path. He nodded encouragingly.
“So I got Biscuit going respectable-like, though she ain’t happy about it, and Miss Wilcox was got on Minerva in the park and we went along very pleasant. Then we sees Lord Asturt and Marcus, though Marcus just hurries off like he don’t know us. I reckon your average valet has got loads of free time ‘cause how long can it take to put clothes on a person anyway, but they don’t wantusto know it. When I seen him strollin’ in the park in the morning, he knowed I know it.”
Jasper was not at all certain that hiding one’s free time would account for his valet’s appearance in the park.
“So then Lord Asturt joins Miss Wilcox and he says Marcus is determined to stretch his legs every morning after his duties as it keeps away colds. P’raps that’s right, us grooms is stretching our legs every minute of the day and we never get colds.”
“Excellent,” Jasper said, hoping to move on from preventing colds, “so Marcus left. What did Lord Asturt have to say for himself?”
Thomas snorted and said, “Us fellas think the lord is sweet on Miss Wilcox, ‘cept he don’t know how to go about the thing. William says you got to say somethin’ nice about a lady’s dress, or if you’re a darin’ individual, you might even say a nice thing about the hair on her head.”
Jasper folded his arms, beyond aggravated that the grooms were speculating on such a matter. Asturt sweet on Miss Wilcox, indeed!
“I presume, then,” Jasper said, “that Lord Asturt made no such remarks?”
“No, he says it’s nice that Lady Mendleton sent the whole stable with her as these isunsettled times. He says it all dark-like, as if a war’s upon us. We reckon he was tryin’ to scare her into affection and William says it won’t work ‘cause you can’t keep a lady scared all the time. Either she gets unscared or she drops dead from exhaustion.”
“What did he mean by unsettled times?” Though he asked, Jasper was certain he already knew—many a gentleman had employed Napoleon as a dark figure who might turn up in a lady’s neighborhood at some future date and need to be defeated. He found he was rather in agreement with William on the ultimate inefficacy of such a gambit.
“I don’t rightly know what he meant by unsettled,” Thomas said. “He mumbled something I didn’t catch, but Miss Wilcox turned her head away like she don’t want to hear it. She was probably expectin’ a compliment to herself and didn’t much care whatever kind of times the fellow was blathering about. I reckon William is right about the romancing aspect of it all.”
“And then what?” Jasper asked.
“Oh then he just babbles his way to the gate,” Thomas said. “You know, the sort of thing a gent will talk about when he don’t know what to talk about. He ought to been praising her hair to the skies but he was just ramblin’ on about his horse and another gent’s horse and another horse a fellow he knew might buy. It was embarrasin’—the fellow don’t know horses like he thinks he does. Even Biscuit was shakin’ her head over it. Then, runnin’ out of road on that subject, he tells her all about his dog.”
Jasper felt himself faintly color, as he could not entirely forget that he had, only a few years ago, blathered on about horses and dogs himself when no other subject presented itself to his mind.
He shook it off and sorted through Thomas’ pointless information to distill it to what he must consider. Marcus had been in the park to stretch his legs. On closer consideration, that was not all that unusual, the fellow could walk there from the house in a matter of minutes. Further, Thomas’ suspicions were correct—a valet did have a good amount of free time. Perhaps not as much as Thomas assumed, but a good amount all the same. That particular morning, Jasper had been dressed and down to the library a full hour before Miss Wilcox departed the house. And then, it would not be so unusual for his valet to stop and speak to Asturt, as the lord was forever wanting to know how the fellow was doing.
