Mountjoy bowed. “I’ll bring them to the drawing room directly.”
“Oh.” Christopher’s mother hunted in her capacious bag. “I brought you this.” She withdrew a large jar of some dark substance and handed it to Mrs. Woolsey, who received it almost reverently.
“Is this what I think it is?” Mrs. Woolsey raised wide eyes to his mother’s face. “A jar of Mrs. Haggerty’s famous plum jam?”
His mother smiled. “Indeed, it is. Haggerty sent it with her regards. Unfortunately, with the season so poor this year, she only had enough fruit for jam.”
“But so lovely!” Mrs. Woolsey turned to Mountjoy, the jar cradled in her hands. “Perhaps with the scones, Mountjoy?”
“Indeed, ma’am.” The butler lifted the precious jar from his mistress’s hands. “I’ll take it to Cook immediately.”
Mountjoy turned and headed for the rear of the hall, and Mrs. Woolsey waved, intending to herd them into the drawing room, but halted as the clack of several pairs of boots approached from another corridor.
Everyone waited, then Henry, Dagenham, and the three other young men came striding into the front hall.
“Aha!” Henry’s eyes lit, and a smile curved his lips. “I thought it might be you lot.” He’d directed the comment to the children, but now raised his gaze to Christopher’s face. “We saw the blacks the stable lad was leading off and couldn’t imagine who else they might belong to.”
“They looked to be a bang-up pair,” Kilburn put in.
“Lovely lines,” Dagenham added.
When the gentlemen gave every indication of plunging into a discussion of horseflesh, the ladies, young and old, grew restive. Recognizing the signs, Henry suggested, “I say, Osbaldestone, we were just on our way to the billiard room. Why don’t you join us? That will make six of us, so we could play as teams. Always makes it more interesting, I think.”
Christopher glanced at his mother and Mrs. Woolsey. “If you ladies will excuse me?”
“Yes, of course, dear,” Mrs. Woolsey replied, while his mother, smiling, waved him away.
Standing between the adults, the three children shared a long look, then Jamie looked at Henry. “George and I would like to watch, if that’s all right?”
“Of course, young Skelton,” Henry assured him. “You and George might be too short to play, but you’re welcome to watch and learn.”
Jamie smiled brightly, as if that was all that was on his mind.
He glanced at Lottie, who nodded and shifted to their grandmother’s side. “I’ll go to the drawing room with Grandmama.”
With that, the group parted, the males heading down another corridor to the billiard room beyond the library while Lottie went into the drawing room with the older ladies.
Jamie and George trailed after the men. Quietly, so only George would hear, Jamie said, “Lottie will keep track of anything Mrs. Woolsey says. She probably won’t know anything about strangers being seen about the village—”
“But,” George said, “one never can tell what Mrs. Woolsey might let fall.”
Jamie nodded. “Exactly.”
Just before they’d left the house, Drummond had caught the three of them in the upstairs corridor and, pointing out that this was one outing on which he couldn’t accompany their uncle, had asked them to keep their eyes peeled and their ears open for any sign of or mention of strangers about the village.
As they neared the billiard room, George said, “I wonder if we’ll get any scones.”
Jamie and George followed their elders into the room and took up positions by the wall, making themselves as inconspicuous as possible. The six gentlemen divided themselves into three teams of two players and commenced a set of games, with each team successively playing against the other two.
Both Jamie and George were more than tall enough to watch the action on the table, making it easy to pretend to an interest in the game. Indeed, upon further consideration, Jamie couldn’t imagine any foreigner being able to approach his uncle in the billiard room of Fulsom Hall. He jogged George’s elbow and whispered as much.
“You’re right,” George whispered back. “So we may as well concentrate on the play.”
Subsequently, both gave their attention to the games, watching the balls and even more the techniques and angles employed by the players.
They also listened closely to the quiet exchanges between the team members, which were, in the main, about tactics to defeat their rivals. The single exception was Dagenham’s apparently idle question to their uncle about what life in the Foreign Office was like.
Jamie and George exchanged a glance. They knew that Dagenham had joined the Home Office at the prompting of his family. To the boys’ minds, there was only one reason for Dagenham to be interested in Foreign Office matters.
Consequently, they listened avidly as the viscount asked several more questions, all apparently to do with how things were done, assignments decided, inside the Foreign Office.
For the life of them, the boys couldn’t fathom what Dagenham was really trying to ask. In the end, Jamie whispered to George, “It’s as if he’s asking random questions so that when he asks the important one, Uncle Christopher won’t realize and will simply answer, just as he’s doing now.”
After a moment, George whispered back, “Do you think we ought to tell Uncle Christopher? About why Dagenham’s asking questions?”
Jamie thought, then shook his head. “Not when we can’t be absolutely certain that Melissa is the reason he’s asking them.”
Over the past two years, their cousin, Melissa, younger daughter of their aunt Henrietta, Lady North, had spent the weeks before Christmas at Hartington Manor along with Jamie, George, and Lottie, and Melissa and Dagenham had grown close, although Melissa was far too young to be thinking of bestowing her hand on anyone.
Although neither Jamie nor George fully understood why, Lottie had declared that it was necessary that Melissa and Dagenham part, at least for the next several years until after Melissa made her come-out.
The crux of the matter—the reason Jamie and George suspected Melissa was the reason behind Dagenham’s questions—was that her father, Lord North, occupied a position toward the top of the Foreign Office tree.
Jamie met George’s eyes and shrugged, and the pair turned their attention back to the table as their uncle and Dagenham strolled forward to take on Kilburn and George Wiley.
That left Henry and Roger Carnaby standing and chatting quite close to Jamie and George.
“I enjoyed our ride this morning,” Henry said.
Roger nodded. “It was a good idea of Thomas’s to ride out every day that we can and see more of the countryside.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. He met George’s gaze, then leaned forward and asked Henry and Roger, “When you’ve been out riding, have you seen any strangers around about?”
George amended, “Any foreigners, we mean.”
Henry and Roger looked from George to Jamie, then Henry said, “Not that I noticed.” He arched a brow at Roger.
Roger shook his head. “Nor me. All we saw were farm workers.”
“But why do you ask?” Henry directed the question to both boys.