To throw off the hounds - to uncouple them and let them quest for the chase

- The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose.

 

Ash strolled the garden with Keziah on his arm and allowed himself a pleasant daydream of what life might be like if she were his wife. He turned to glance at her lovely profile and felt an ache in his heart and a deep sense of longing that seemed to live beneath his skin, inhabiting his heart and his soul, urging him to reach out and touch her.

Of course he could not, would not, not when she had made her feelings so clear. But, nonetheless, his reckless heart still hoped, and he still dreamed.

He was every bit the fool his grandmother had accused him of being.

With relief, he noted that her lip had healed and the swelling about her eye had gone, though the bruises remained yet. Fury that someone had laid a hand on her burned with such aggression in his blood that he thought it was a good thing he’d already killed Lord Todd. Knowing Keziah better, falling for her more with each new day, and discovering more about the reprehensible treatment she had received from one who ought to have protected her, made him fantasise about all the ways he could have made the man pay, rather than simply end him with a bullet. That seemed far too quick and clean for such a monster.

He saw her eyes stray to the handsome figure of Tobias Mortimer as they walked, and swallowed down a burst of jealousy. Why couldn’t he be like Tobias? Not a gardener, of course, he wasn’t so much a fool that he’d wish that, but a man that a woman like Keziah looked at and sighed over.

Oh, it wasn’t that he was unsuccessful with the female race, far from it, but his title and his money were as much as an inducement as a handsome face, and they would never consider him the heroic type. No, his place was the ballroom, the assembly room, the theatre. He was good company, entertaining and vastly wealthy, popular, in fact. But he had never been taken seriously. Everyone knew the dowager ruled his roost, no matter his grand title. The ton would never respect anything but his bank balance and the dukedom, and believe the title bestowed on a good natured fool.

His grandmother’s loyal gardener had the kind of heroic face and figure that any female would fall over themselves to put their confidence in, however, no matter if there was actually a keen brain in his head or not. Keziah was not immune, either, judging on the surreptitious glances she was casting towards the man.

Ash sighed, and it must have been a more heartfelt sound than he’d realised, as she turned to him with a frown.

“You’re awfully quiet, Ash,” she said, giving his arm a squeeze, and then when he made no response, “A penny for your thoughts.”

He smiled at that and shook his head with chagrin. “Is that all they’re worth?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, tilting her head as if she was considering the question. “It depends on what you are thinking of, I suppose.”

“Ah, the lady is not a gambler I see,” he replied, amused despite his low spirits. “For surely you must take a chance if you wish to learn something of value. Perhaps it is worth less than a penny, or perhaps … perhaps everything I possess,” he said, the words rough and full of meaning.

There was too much honesty in his voice, he knew that, but he turned and looked at her, holding her gaze long after he ought to have looked away. Keziah blushed and stammered, and he was about to beg forgiveness for having made her uncomfortable when Inspector Formby called out to them, with a seriously discomposed Grant striding after him.

“A thousand apologies, your grace,” the butler said, looking really quite distressed. “One of the footmen allowed him entry. I only left my post for a moment …”

Ash waved away the man’s excuses. “It is of no consequence, Grant,” he replied, giving the man a reassuring smile. Though in truth, he’d had just about enough of Formby’s little visits. “You may leave us.”

Grant gave a very formal bow, as if to illustrate further his remorse, before favouring the inspector with a look of deep reproach as he walked away. Ash turned his attention to Mr Formby, wanting to get whatever it was over and done with.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” he asked, though it must have been abundantly clear from his voice that pleasure was the last thing he was feeling.

“I have something for you, your grace,” the inspector said with a broad smile. “My constable brought in a young thief, a Mr Lightfingers, would you believe,” he added with an indulgent chuckle. “And low and behold …” He held out a very handsome pocket watch which Ash recognised at once.

“My watch!” he exclaimed as a slightly unsettling feeling shivered over him.

“Ah, thought it must be, going on the inscription and coat of arms,” Formby replied, looking very pleased with himself.

“Thank you, inspector,” he said, returning the man’s smile and trying hard to ignore the anxiety that had begun to claw at his throat. “I should have been sorry to lose it.”

“I’ll bet,” the inspector chuckled, though there was a glint in his eyes that Ash could not like. “Worth a pretty penny, I should think.”

Ash nodded. “It was a gift from my grandmother when I took the title.”

Formby just stood there for a moment, grinning at him, and Ash fought the urge to ask where the thief said he’d got it from.

“Oh, and Lady Todd, I can now return the valuables found upon your father’s person,” he said, with a rather more sympathetic smile as he handed her anther watch, a deal less fine that the one he’d given Ash. “Is that all?” Keziah asked with a frown. “What about his ring?”

“A ring?” Formby repeated, curious. “I ain’t seen no ring. What’s it like?”

Keziah shrugged. “It was genuine, not like this,” she said, and Ash watched as she looked at the poor quality paste stones on the watch with a sigh. “A large gold ring with a ruby stone, it has a fox’s head engraved on the back. One of the last genuine pieces we had.”

“A fox, you say?” Formby muttered as he made a note of it.

“Yes, well, Todd - fox, you see, inspector.”

“I do,” the fellow agreed with a cheery nod as he tucked his wretched notebook away again. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out.” Then the man just raised a hand and turned away.

“Well, I’ll not disturb you further. Sorry to have troubled you,” he called over his shoulder as he walked away.

Ash watched him go as the troubling feeling grew, and he felt Keziah squeeze his arm.

“What is it?” she whispered as he turned to look at her, finding concern shinning clear and bright in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, shaking his head and telling himself if was likely nothing. “But I lost this sometime that day.” He didn’t need to explain further what specific day he was referring to, it was perfectly clear.

Keziah’s eyes grew wide. “You mean when … when …?”

He nodded, staring at the watch. “I don’t know when or where, though,” he said, feeling sick to his stomach. “I only know that I had it that morning, and I didn’t the next. It could have happened anywhere, along the road as I drove home, even.”

Keziah said nothing, quite obviously as unconvinced as he was, the fear in her eyes was quite eloquent enough, though.

“Come on,” he said, guiding her back into the house. “I need a drink.”

Keziah stopped him, her hold on his arm keeping him in place.

“I’m so dreadfully sorry, Ash,” she said, looking so forlorn that he wished more than ever to take her in his arms. “You must wish you’d never met me.”

Despite his best intentions, he reached out a hand and touched her cheek with one finger. “I could never wish that,” he said, trying to smile but discovering that it was hard to find the will when he wanted to weep at the unfairness of it.

She blushed a little and looked away from him, and he dropped his hand.

“I’ll do whatever I can to make this right, Ash. You must believe me,” she said, sounding more miserable than ever. The guilt behind the words tore at his heart, knowing that she felt worse than ever because she did not return his feelings.

“Don’t be foolish, Keziah,” he said, meaning to sound kind but finding only weariness in his voice. “There is nothing you can or should do.” He patted her hand in a reassuring manner that he was far from feeling. “Come now, I really do need that drink.”

They passed the rest of the afternoon playing a rather desultory game of spillikins, until Keziah declared herself sick to death of it and taught him how to play piquet. Ash found this so absorbing that it occupied them until dinner time, though he lost most every round.

Dinner was an uncomfortable affair. Both Lady Anne and his sister Hannah had taken to their beds and were being treated as invalids. Judging from the identical and permanently harassed looks both women’s abigails wore, they were not the most tolerant of patients. Ash could only be glad that he was spared their histrionics, as his grandmother’s presence at the meal was quite wearing enough.

With the exception of a couple of outwardly innocuous but clearly barbed comments sent in Keziah’s direction which caused Ash to glare at her in fury, she said nothing. Her frosty presence was enough, however, to relieve Ash of what little appetite he had left. His mind was caught up in conjecture as to what had happened to his watch, how seriously a jury of his peers would take Snyder’s accusations, and whether he would ever free himself of the dark cloud that seemed to hang over him like a shroud. Something would have to be done. If only he could decide what. Keziah seemed similarly distracted, though, and as soon as the meal was over, all parties retired to bed early in very low spirits.

***

Mr Formby looked down at the corpse and cursed. Just what he needed at this hour. He’d barely finished his breakfast, and had been casting an unfavourable eye over the skies and wondering if an umbrella was in order when constable Greenly had hammered on his front door and demanded he come at once. It was enough to give a fellow the raving hump. What’s more, he’d left without an umbrella in his hurry, and now the rain was running down the back of his neck in cold little streams.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said in disgust. “Get him out of here.”

Greenly came running up to him, holding his collar tight to his neck. “Neat shot, eh, sir?”

“Aye,” Formby nodded, pleased that his young apprentice had been so quick to notice what he had. A witness, who had seen nothing but heard the report of a gun, had come forward once the body had been discovered. The poor woman had awoken with terror at the sound in the early hours of the morning, and swore it must have been fired below her bedroom window. Sadly, she was an elderly soul and by the time she’d made her way to look out, any perpetrator had been long gone. But judging on her report and the position of the corpse, the shot had been fired from a considerable distance and - it being a moonless night - with only the uncertain light of the flickering street lamps to guide him.

It had been one hell of a shot.

Naturally, no one had seen anything, the place being in one of the oldest and most unfashionable parts of town, and the locals were of a mind to keep their noses out. The body had been stripped of anything of value; whether or not that had been the perpetrator or someone taking advantage of the situation was impossible to say.

Whatever the truth of the matter, his only witness to the fact that Lord Ashwicke had murdered Lord Todd in cold blood was now lying dead with a neat hole in the middle of his forehead.

What’s more, the sight of it had given him a nasty bout of indigestion.

“Right, then,” he said with a sigh as Martin Snyder’s body was covered with a sheet and lifted onto a hand cart. “Time to go and see Lord Ashwicke.”

This was spoken with such a gloomy air that his constable took pity on him and was clearly of a mind to give him some good news.

“The surgeon said you could call on him today, sir,” said Mr Greenly, with the apparent expectation that he would think this a rare treat. Not having such a ghoulish turn of mind as his constable, Formby just glowered at him.

“What for?” he demanded.

Greenly shrugged and fell into step with his superior. “I don’t know, sir, only ‘e wasn’t available when you wanted ‘im, but now ‘e is.”

Formby sighed and muttered, but nodded his agreement. “Very well, tell him I’ll be there before lunchtime, oh,” he said turning to his companion before he headed off to do his bidding. “And I want you to track down that young varlet as stole Ashwicke’s watch. I want to speak to him again.”

“What for?” Greenly demanded, looking intrigued and clearly not having yet learned that it was a bad idea to question his superior’s motives, especially at this hour on a wet Wednesday when his digestion was troubling him.

“Because I know sommat ain’t right, constable!” Formby snapped, having reached the end of his tether as the indigestion wore away the remnants of his patience. “I don’t know what, nor why, nor who, but my gut tells me someone is pullin’ my strings, and I don’t bleedin’ well like it!”

And with that retort hanging in the damp air, he stalked off in the direction of Royal Crescent.

***

“Oh, the devil take him!” Ash cursed as his valet informed him that a rather bedraggled Inspector Formby was awaiting him downstairs. He had been in the middle of practising a fiendishly difficult style of tying his cravat - and doing rather nicely too, until his concentration had been shattered. Throwing the ruined cravat to the floor in irritation, he snatched up a new one and deftly tied it in the Oriental style which he could do in his sleep.

So it was not an even-tempered duke who greeted Keziah as he spied her emerging from her room. Doing his best to put a cheerful face on things, he smiled at her and enquired if she had slept well.

Sadly, the answer was evident before her wan smile insisted, “Perfectly well, thank you.”

His beloved looked tired and pale, and Ash urged her to return to her bed.

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head as she walked the landing. “Our dear friend Formby has demanded my presence,” she added with a grimace.

“Damn him,” Ash muttered, reaching out and taking her hand. “Well, he can go to perdition, I shall tell him you are unwell and not up to seeing him.”

But Keziah merely shook her head, giving his fingers a brief squeeze before letting go and carrying on ahead of him. “There’s no sense in putting it off,” she said over her shoulder. “If I try and avoid him, he’ll only get suspicious, and he’ll just keep coming back until he gets what he wants.”

Ash snorted as he followed her down the stairs. “As he wants my head on a platter, I’m not sure how to feel about that.”

Any further conversation had to wait as they presented themselves before Mr Formby. Whilst Ash was not in the least high in the instep, nor one to insist on a great hue and cry over his lofty title, being forced to dance attendance on someone whom he took no pleasure in seeing and heartily wished to Hades was wearing on his nerves and his tolerance. That Keziah was also being forced to endure another interview in - what he considered - her fragile state of health was enough to make him really rather angry. So it may have been that his impatience with the inspector was rather more obvious than was perhaps politic when he greeted him.

“What the devil do you want now?”

That Mr Formby was likewise in a bad skin was soon perfectly evident.

“What do I want, your grace?” the inspector repeated, with the air of a man who sorely wanted to throttle the life out of someone. “Well, I’ll tell you, sir. What I want, very much, is to discover who exactly shot Martin Snyder in the head and left his lifeless corpse in a back alley during the early hours of this morning. That’s what I want if it’s all right with you, your grace.”

“Dammit, sir!” Ash exclaimed, guiding Keziah, who had gone as white as the marble bust of Aphrodite that he had once compared her to. “Ladies present.”

The inspector reddened a little and nodded his apology. “Forgive me, Lady Todd, for speakin’ plain. But it seems a right neat little happenstance for Lord Ashwicke here that the only eye witness to his part in this affair has been done to death!”

The inspector was near to shouting now, and Ash discovered that there were indeed limits to what even the most mild-mannered of men could endure.

“Unless you have come here to arrest me, sir,” he said with an icy calm that in no way disguised the depths of his fury, “I suggest you tread very carefully indeed. Now get out of my house before I have you thrown out!”

The two men glared at each other, one with the weight of centuries of power and breeding and wealth at his back, the other with the law.

“Where was you last night?” Formby pressed, staring at Ash, his tone low and angry now.

“Here,” Ash replied, equally furious as he folded his arms to stop himself from planting the man a facer. How strange that he’d never before felt the slightest urge to do violence to his fellow man, but in recent days it had been all too easy to contemplate. “The household is not in the best of spirits, and we all retired early.”

“Anyone to corroborate that, your grace?” Formby asked, narrowing his eyes.

“My valet was with me until close to eleven, but other than that, no,” Ash replied, the words bitten out in such a way that it was clear the inspector would be on thin ice if he pressed the matter further. “Now, you’ve asked your questions, so get out!”

“Wait,” Keziah said, reaching out to tug at Ash’s sleeve before Formby could raise an objection to being dismissed. “Inspector, you said the man was shot in the head?”

“Aye, that’s right,” Formby replied, clearly curious as to her interest. His face turned from curious to downright perplexed as Keziah began to laugh.

Mr Formby stared at her, obviously bewildered as he turned to Ash, who was also a little taken aback and trying hard not to look shocked.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, inspector,” Keziah said, wiping her eyes and shaking her head in an indulgent manner. “Only, it couldn’t possibly have been Lord Ashwicke who shot Martin,” she said, smiling at him.

“Oh?” Formby replied, folding his arms and quite clearly unconvinced.

“Of course not.” Keziah leaned back in her chair and sighed, giving Ash a fond look which only mystified him further. “You see, Lord Ashwicke is famous for being a truly appalling shot. He couldn’t hit the long side of a barn.”

Ash felt his cheeks flush a little, and wished she hadn’t been quite so forthright. Whilst he was all for not being at the top of the inspector’s list of suspects, having his less than creditable skills with a pistol bandied about was not something a fellow wanted. And … dash it, she might know he was a bad shot, but how the devil did she know he was famous for it?

He sent Keziah a rather wounded look, which he did not need to fake, before sighing and nodding as the inspector turned to him. “Much as I hate to admit it, that is perfectly true,” he said, sounding just a trifle indignant. “You can ask any of my intimate circle,” he added with an irritated wave of his hand. “And now … if that is all?”

“For now,” Formby glowered, clearly not at all happy at how things had proceeded. “But don’t go thinking you won’t see me again because someone killed that blighter, and whoever did was a bloody fine shot.”