Page 78 of The Trick of the Treasure
“No. I came in the front, all ready to waste a great deal of time persuading your extraordinarily large footmen to admit me, but they merely sent for the girl who brought me up the main stairs without a quibble. Did you warn them to expect me?”
“Actually, no. I didn’t think you would come at this time. I suppose word has got around. It seems you are approved, since you brought me home this morning.”
“Not because I am your husband-to-be?”
Husband.Good grief, I shall have ahusband. “I wonder if this has ever happened in my family before?” she murmured.
“It certainly happened in mine. We have a history of odd marriages.”
She knew his mother had been a Maroon, the descendant of an escaped slave, who had married his plantation-owning father. “What was she like, your mother?”
He leaned his head back against the pillows, close to hers but not touching. She wondered if he would answer.
“Warm,” he said at last. “Fierce.” He smiled. “And funny.”
“Was she happy?” Constance asked.
“Yes, I think so. Most of the time. She was happy by nature, and against the odds, she did love my father. But it was not always easy for either of them. There was prejudice, ill feeling. Some of my father’s acquaintances regarded her as a slave. Some of hers regarded him as a monster, and her as a traitor of some kind. It used to worry him that if he died first there would be no one to protect her. There was often trouble between the Maroons and the white people… But in the end, she went first and my father never married again.”
“Was there prejudice against you too?”
“Some,” he said with a shrug. “Not so much.”
“And here? In London?”
“Here in London, not everyone notices or cares. I could be from anywhere. I am not above exploiting that for business reasons, though I never hide my origins.”
“Why should you?” she said stoutly.
He turned his head against the pillow and met her gaze. “Why should you?”
“You’ve met my mama,” she said lightly.
“I like your mama. She gave me you.”
She searched his eyes. He was telling her not to be ashamed of who she was, becausehewas not. They were both oddities in their own ways. And somehow, they had found each other. And fitted.
She must have still been weak from her head injury, for her throat tightened with foolish tears. She swallowed them back as best she could.
“What of the case?” she asked rather desperately. “What have you been doing all day? Have you found Miss Lloyd?”
“No, but I have found some rather interesting connections. Between Audrey Lloyd and Captain Tybalt, and between Tybalt and Samuels, also called Clarke. I have also discovered the hackney driver who picked Audrey up in Oxford Street last night and took her to the railway station. I think she’s in Folkestone.”
Constance sat up straight and winced. “Folkestone? Why Folkestone?”
“Because Tybalt is there with the treasure. So are regular packets to France. And she was at the railway station just in time to catch the ten o’clock boat train.”
“Then what are you doing here?” she demanded, nudging him as though pushing him off the bed. “She could already be in France!”
“I’m tired,” he said calmly, and she smiled, because she knew it was a lie. He was here with her because he wanted, maybe even needed, to be.
“Tell me,” she instructed him, and he gave her an account of his interviews with Lloyd, Garrick, Rachel, and Sydney, his failure to find Tybalt at home, and the conclusions he had drawn.
“So Tybalt stole the treasure,” she said with excitement, “motivated by resentment against Lloyd and love of Audrey. He used Samuels to make a replica chest, which he hid in his own cabin until he managed to switch it with the real one just beforeeveryone disembarked. Oh! What did he fill the fake one with to make it seem so heavy?”
“Who knows? Probably the rubbish still piled beside it in the strong room. Stones he’d collected from various beaches on their travels, wood and rusting tools, general rubbish from the ship. I think a lot of the weight probably came from the thickness of the wood itself. Sydney would never have carried the original chest, so he had nothing to compare the replica with when he carried it upstairs from the drawing room. It’s more surprising the seamen didn’t notice the discrepancy when they unloaded it from the ship. But they were probably concentrating more on getting to the Crown and Anchor.”
“Tybalt was last to leave the ship,” Constance mused. “So he had as much time as he wanted to unload the treasure and dispose of the original chest. Andheshot Samuels so he could never give away how he had performed the trick.” She frowned. “But then, why did Clarke change his name to Samuels on board the ship?”
