Enticed

Chapter One

    His grace, Chance True-Son Quincy Ridgeway, the seventeenth Duke of Rivenoak, glided on moccasined feet through the maze of London alleyways, a fleeting, noiseless shadow melting in and out of the deeper rain-driven shadows. At his heels the dog kept pace in the silent, ground-eating trot of the wolf on the trail. And, indeed, the dog was half-wolf, a gift to Rivenoak from his maternal uncle, Laughs-In-The-Rain--a mourning gift to the last of the Three-Rivers People.
    It was Laughs-In-The-Rain who had schooled the youthful Chance in the traditional ways of the Clan. From his uncle he had learned how to shape a canoe from birch-bark, how to spear fish and stalk game, how to fashion weapons from wood and stone, and how to move through forest and glade with the stealth of the fox--talents that had proven less than useful in his unasked-for role among his father's people. Or at least they had until now, he thought with a mirthless twist of the lips.
    The Town House on Portman Square stood shoulder to shoulder with the other four-story brick houses of the fashionable elite. The square itself was held second in prestige only to Grosvenor Square in which stood Rivenoak's own over-sized mansion that had come to him, along with numerous houses and estates, a moldering castle, and a title he had neither hoped for nor desired, from the previous duke, his grandfather.
    No doubt the old man would turn over in his grave if he could see his mixed-blood heir now. Dressed in buckskin breeches and leather moccasins, his hair the color of raven's wings allowed to fall, unfettered, down his back in the manner of his mother's people, he had the look of his savage forbears, thought Rivenoak with grim humor, remembering that gentle woman, his mother, who had taught him to read and write, using the King James Bible as his primer. The irascible old duke would have disinherited the "Cursed Savage" in an instant in favor of Chance's Cousin Percival had it not been for the laws of entailment; and there was a time when Chance True-Son of the Three-Rivers People had cursed those very laws that bound him to a life that was utterly foreign to everything he had once held dear. But no more, he thought, stealing past the uninhabited carriage house and stables and across the cobblestones drive to the back of the great house. The Duke of Rivenoak was a power to be reckoned with in England. Chance had spent the past ten years making sure of that.
    He was the last of his mother's family, removed from his mother's people at the age of fifteen and educated at Eaton and Cambridge to take his place as heir to a venerable dukedom. At fifteen he had been a man among the Three-Rivers People, a shaman and a warrior who had tasted danger more than a few times. In England he had been a boy, a savage to be tamed and broken, the last vestige of his mother's race eradicated from him according to the wishes of his English grandfather. He had learned well. It would be his father's son who sought redress for the wrongs perpetrated against his mother's clan. But it would be Chance True-Son, shaman of the Three-Rivers People, who must first find the sacred things. Mirthlessly, he grinned. There was a certain irony in that, an irony that appealed to his highly developed appreciation of the absurd.
    "Stay, Stalker," he said softly to the dog. "Watch."
    Reaching with gloved hands for the lead drainpipe, Rivenoak began to climb, hand over hand. He did not have to look to know the dog had sunk instantly to its haunches in the rain. The dog would remain, a silent guard at Rivenoak's back, until his master's return. Prying open the third story window with his long-bladed knife, Rivenoak slipped inside.
    Massingale House, like a large number of those on the square, had been closed for the winter and, save for the staff who kept for the most part to the lower floors, was empty. The furniture, draped in holland covers, wore a frozen, eerie look reminiscent of a graveyard in winter, reflected Rivenoak, his breath forming fleeting, white vaporous clouds in the chill, still air. He could sense nothing in the room in which he found himself. The chamber, containing a bed, a dresser, chairs, a highboy, and a standing wardrobe, had an aura of impersonality about it that marked it as a guest chamber. The things he sought would not be there, he thought, and noiselessly let himself out into the hall.
    The next two rooms, a bedroom and an upstairs sitting room, were equally unrevealing. The instant he neared the final door at the far end of the hall, however, he experienced a light tingling at the nape of his neck, a prickle of knowing, like the touch of a warm breath against his skin. He let himself in, closing the door behind him. Unpretentious and small, this was hardly the room of one who stood high in the household--the governess, he reasoned, or a poor female relative--and yet it exuded a positive energy, a vitality he was quick to sense in the intriguing array of personal articles that it housed. In addition to the few neat, but unprepossessing dresses hanging on pegs in the wardrobe and a rather hideous bonnet thrust unceremoniously on the single shelf, objects of an unusual nature littered every flat surface in the room. On the cherrywood side table was an impressive bracelet of matched dueling pistols laid out in a walnut box lined in blue velvet, while the ottoman hosted a curious array of albums containing newspaper cuttings detailing every sort of bizarre occurrence of criminal nature. The dressing table boasted a leather-covered case in which resided and intriguing assortment of powders and liquids in sealed bottles; and on top of the wardrobe, among various wigs of every sort set on wooden forms resembling disembodied heads, resided a microscope and a magnifying glass.
    Even the recessed window still was filled with books of every description. Clearly the room's inhabitant was eclectic in her tastes, he observed, noting the titles, ranging from Boswell's Life of Johnson to Hannah Moore's "Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society," and from Charles Burney's "History of Music" to James Hutton's "New Theory of the Earth." Music, literature, history, the arts and sciences, it seemed nothing was beyond the curiosity of this singular female.
    Who was she? Rivenoak found himself wondering. Obviously not the governess, not with the colonel and his family in the country. What the devil was she doing here in Massingale's Town House with the colonel away?
Allowing his fingertips to trail across the strings of a lap harp, obviously fashioned by an amateur, but with a singular purity of tone, Rivenoak crossed to a secretary and rifled through and untidy heap of papers. His fingers paused over a stack of calling cards, printed in plain block letters and bearing the inscription:

"Miss Pandora Featherstone

Confidential Inquiry Agent

No. 3 South Audley Street"
 

    Rivenoak's startled glance swept around the room. A snoop by trade, he thought, smiling faintly. Interesting. And what the devil had Miss Featherstone to do with the Butcher of Bear Flat? he wondered. Could it be that Massingale had employed Miss Featherstone to inquire into the origins of certain artifacts the colonel had acquired during his sojourn in the New World? Or perhaps she was looking into the matter of some anonymous letters the colonel had received of late, letters that must surely have occasioned her employer no little concern. An odd profession for a woman. And a dangerous one is she was poking her nose into the colonel's past.
    His eyes fell on a small wooden chest at the foot of the four-poster bed. His heart quickened with a startled recognition. Pocketing the calling card, he knelt to trace the letters carved in the lid. "'T. F. R. ' Thomas Fairley Ridgeway," he murmured aloud. Then, aware of a tingling of nerve ends, he tested the lid. Locked. Curious, he thought. Extracting a penknife from a pouch at his belt, he inserted the blade in to he keyhole. A grim smile of satisfaction came to his lips at the small click of the lock. He lifted the lid.
    Unprepared, Rivenoak felt his throat constrict at sight of the things within. Like a man stricken, he dropped his head to his chest, his eyes clenched shut, as he struggles in the grip of powerful emotions.
The moment of weakness passed as swiftly as it had come, and Rivenoak, lifting his head, stared down into the box at the long familiar objects from never forgotten past.
    The beaded wampum belt fringed with porcupine quills recorded the pact of peace between the whites and the Three-Rivers People. His fingers caressed the beaded work wrought by his mother's own hand, as the memories swept over and through him--Laughs-In-The-Rain, singing the story by the campfire, how Ridgeway of the Long Knives had come among the People of the Three Rivers with open palms and words of peace and friendship. They had been true words, and Ridgeway a man to take into one's lodge. She-Who-Joyfully-Sings had taken him into her lodge, even as she had given him the wampum of peace, but not before they had been married by the missionary who had brought the Three-Rivers People into the Christian fold a good three decades earlier.
    She had died, singing a hymn, Rivenoak reflected, his lips thinning to a bleak, hard line at the thought.
With a hand that trembled ever so slightly, he reached for the King James Bible, the binding cracked with age and stained black with blood--the blood of the innocents, he thought darkly. Turning to the back, he glanced down the hand-written entries, until he came to the fourth from the last. Blurred by time and the elements, it was very nearly rendered illegible. Rivenoak, however, did not have to be able to make out the letters to know what had been recorded there. As a boy, he had read it often enough: "Chance True-Son Quincy Ridgeway, born 27 April in the year of our Lord 1767."
    "Chance" because of the wild impulse that had brought Ridgeway, the younger son of a duke, to the New World in search of his fortune, and "True-Son" because the boy was a true son, born in wedlock and, therefore, his father's legitimate heir and, in the way of the Three-River's People, his mother's heir as well. "Quincy," ironically, had been chosen in honor of the newborn's paternal grandfather, a distinction that the old duke had notably failed to appreciate.
Setting the bible aside, Rivenoak reached at last for the bundle wrapped in deerskin. Aware of a heady surge of excitement flowing along his veins, he laid back the soft folds of tanned hide.
    He had hoped, even expected, to behold the sacred things. What he discovered were scalps--three of them. Old scalps. Two raven black, the third white. A woman and child of the tribes, and an old man.
    Bile, swift and burning, rose in Rivenoak's throat. "The devil," he cursed. It was all, save for some clothing, a journal kept by his father, and a worn volume of poetry by Herrick of which his father had been fond. Grimly wrapping the scalps back in the deerskin, he replaced them in the trunk along with the other things and refastened the lock. Miss Featherstone, whoever she was, had a deal of explaining to do. But not here and not now.
    It would hardly suit Rivenoak's purposes to be discovered in the colonel's house in the process of questioning an apparent guest of Massingale's, especially as he might be called upon to resort to unorthodox methods of extracting the information he required.
    Miss Featherstone would be persuaded to talk, he vowed, his hand clenching about the haft of the knife at his belt until his knuckles went white. Before he was though with her, she would gladly tell him everything she knew about Massingale and the things of power, not to mention the contents of the bloody damned box. In the meantime, he had still to locate and search the colonel's study. The letter had been deliberately vague in all but the certainty that his grace would find what he was looking for in Massingale's Town House.
    Rising with swift, agile grace to his feet, Rivenoak stole from the room and along the hall back the way he had come. The sounds of voices issuing from the stairwell brought him to a halt at the top of the stairs.
    "You should sit a moment, Lady Pandora, and warm yourself in the kitchen while Jessop lays a fire in your room. You had ought to've let us know you'd be coming back. We'd have had your room all toasty and warm for you."
    "You are very kind Mrs. Caulkins," came in pleasingly low, melodious tones, "and I apologize for the inconvenience of the hour. You and Jessop were ready to sit down at your supper."
    "Not at all, Miss. Seldom before six. We keep country hours in the winter."
    "Yes, well, as it happens, my work here is finished, and I shall be moving to my own house tonight. And about time, too. I daresay Aunt Cora will have had her hands full looking out for the children while I've been away. I only dropped by to pick up a few of my things. I shall send a boy for the rest tomorrow, if it is convenient."
    "Anytime, Lady Pandora. You know that. It's been a pleasure having you here. Did you find what you were looking for?"
    "Perhaps, Mrs. Caulkins. It is early days yet, but I believe I shall have a full report for Col. Massingale sooner that expected."
    "I daresay the colonel will be pleased. He seemed in a fair taking when he showed up at the Town House. Quite unlike him to come to Town for any reason this time of year."
    As the voices grew nearer and more distinct, Rivenoak slipped noiselessly into the guestroom from which he had gained access to the house. Leaving the door slightly ajar, he peered through the crack at the two women who appeared at the head of the stairs.
    One, plump, middle-aged female, would be the housekeeper, Mrs. Caulkins. Of the other, he was given only the briefest impression of a slender, straight-backed figure enveloped in a hooded, fur-lined cloak before she stepped briskly out of his line of sight.
    Carefully, he closed the door and stood for a moment lost in contemplation. Massingale had dome to Town in a hurry. He had engaged Miss Featherstone, a confidential inquiry agent, to look for something. What? And why Miss Featherstone? How the devil had the woman come in possession of his mother's things? And the scalps? What in bloody hell was she doing with them?
    Lady Pandora Featherstone and her cursed wooden chest presented a whole new tangle of questions, questions that he must have answered before he proceeded and further. Indeed, it would seem that what he needed was the services of a confidential inquiry agent.
    Letting himself out the window, he made swift word of sliding down the drainpipe to the waiting dog.


    "But you said nothing was taken, Auntie Pandora," insisted twelve-year-old Galatea Featherstone, her freckled face puckered in a frown as she puzzled over the peculiar incident her aunt had just related to those gathered in the parlor that morning before the fire. "Why should anyone sneak into your room and go through your things if they did not mean to take anything?"
    "I daresay Auntie had nothing they wanted, stoopid," theorized Galatea's twin brother, Ganymede, who was perched on a tall stool while his Aunt Pandora trimmed his unruly blond curls.
    "Or perhaps he heard Auntie and Mrs. Caulkins coming and fled before he could take anything," serenely suggested thirteen-year-old Iphigenia Featherstone, taking neat stitches in a pair of nankeens she was mending for Ganymede, who the previous afternoon had torn out the knee fetching Clytemnestra, the kitchen feline, and her four newborn kittens out from beneath the floor of the garden shed.
    "Or maybe there was not a burglar at all," piped up the ten-year-old Odysseus, holding up one of the tiny balls of fur in the palm of his hand for inspection, while Clytemnestra looked on from her cozy nest in a basket, her tail twitching in patent motherly disapproval.
    "Someone was in that room moments before I arrived," declared Pandora Featherstone, tipping Ganymede's head forward in order to get at the hair on the nape of the boy's neck. "And I cannot think it was one of the servants. Whoever it was who stole into my room went through my things. Besides, I detected the faint scent of damp wool on the air mingled with something else--wet leather, perhaps. And one must not forget the footprints in the garden bed at the bottom of the drainpipe--a rather large dog's and a human's." She did not add that she had found the footprints in the mud most peculiar. The intruder, whoever he was, had not been wearing boots or shoes, but some sort of footwear resembling soft-soled slippers without heels. Most peculiar as his apparent interest in the locked box, whish the colonel had placed in her keeping with instructions what is must on no account be opened. It was, he contended, the box itself that was to be the object of her research, of it's contents. Blast the box! It had nearly driven her mad with curiosity. "Furthermore," she continued, "a thorough search of the room revealed a damp depression in the rug by the box, which would indicate someone knelt on one knee on the rug for some little time. I daresay the intruder's unmentionables were wet from the rain, nor should I be surprised if he managed to pick the lock in order to search through the things inside. And, finally, I discovered something caught on a snag in the window sash in the upstairs guest room."
    Setting the scissors aside, Pandora retrieved a folded scrap of paper from the placket pocket of her grey serge gown. Carefully she unfolded it to reveal a single strand of jet-black hair.
    "Oh, really, Pandora," declared "Aunt" Cora, a tiny wisp of a woman whose predilection for order in the midst of chaos caused her to wear a perpetually frazzled appearance. "How could you pick up someone's hair and put it in your pocket? The idea is positively revolting."
    "No it's not," said Odysseus. "It's a clue, is it not, Auntie Pan?"
    "It is indeed, Odysseus," Pandora replied. "A very important clue. Notice its length. If the intruder was indeed a man--and from the size of the footprints I found in the snow leading to and from the drainpipe, I sincerely doubt that it was a female--he wears his hair most unfashionably long."
    "I daresay he is a poor fellow who cannot afford to pay a barber," Galatea opined. "Very likely he does not have an aunt like you to cut it for him."
    "I should think he is a fortunate chap, then," submitted Ganymede, who, if he were allowed to have done, would have let his hair grow to any unseemly length rather than submit to sitting still for a haircut. "No females to tell him to wash his face or to cut his hair or do anything he doesn't wish to do."
    "An end no doubt to be devoutly desired," Pandora observed with our rancor. "I do not think, however, that is the case in this instance." Pandora, carefully folding the clue back in the scrap of paper and replacing it in her pocket, returned to the task of trimming Ganymede's hair. "Upon examining the strand under the microscope, I discovered it came from a head that was well-groomed and kept habitually clean. It was, furthermore, uncommonly healthy, indicating an exceptionally good diet. Whoever scaled that drainpipe and stole into my room at Col. Massingale's is very probably in possession of a more than moderate income, which tells me that, besides being exceptionally fit, not to mention athletically inclined, he is very likely strong-willed, arrogantly independent, and wholly indifferent to what anyone else might think of him. I should not be surprised if he turned out to be among the higher ranks of society."
    "You can tell all that from a single strand of hair?" demanded Galatea in awed fascination. "You must be a magician Auntie Pan."
    "Don't be a gabby, Galatea. What Auntie Pan does has nothing to do with magic. It is science," declared Iphigenia, biting off the end of her sewing thread. "It is all a matter of keen observation, logical deduction, and rational extrapolation, is it not, Auntie Pan."
    "It is indeed," Pandora cheerfully agreed. "That and a smidgen of feminine intuition." Stepping back to view Ganymede with a critical eye, she gave a short nod of approval. "There, you will do, Ganymede. I do, in fact, believe I am finally getting the hang of barbering."
    "I liked it better when Sergeant-Major Lemkins used to cut it," Ganymede submitted grudgingly. "He was ever so much quicker about it and not nearly so fussy. Do you think he and Papa are ever coming back again, Auntie Pan?"
"But of course I do!" Pandora, taken off guard by the wistfully uttered question, glanced round her at her nephews and nieces, who, save for Odysseus, demonstrated a marked tendency to avoid her eyes. The poor dears, she thought, her heart twisting beneath her breast. How dreadfully the must miss their papa. "You musn't give up on your papa. India, after all, is a great distance from England. Why, it took your papa several months just to make such a voyage. And when once he arrived there, you may be certain he has been kept very busy fighting the Sultan of Mysore. I daresay he is as anxious as you are to get the job done so that he may come home to you."
    "Are you quite sure, Auntie Pan?" queried Galatea, crinkling her nose at Pandora. "I have wondered at times if perhaps he had forgotten all about us."
    "He could never forget you, Galatea. Any of you," Pandora stated with great firmness. "Not in a thousand years. Now why is everyone looking so glum, when it is a perfectly glorious day for a picnic?"
    "A picnic?" exclaimed Iphigenia, her lovely eyes widening in disbelief. "It has been raining for two days, and everything is a perfect sludge-mire outside. A picnic is clearly out of the question."
    "Not for Auntie Pan," declared Odysseus, his face alight with unshakable conviction. "Auntie Pan can do anything."
    "Indeed, I can, Odysseus," said Pandora, laughing. "One can do anything if one only uses one's imagination. Now where shall we have our picnic? In the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Or at the foot of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh perhaps? Or, I know. Among the cypress gardens beside the pools of the Taj Mahal! We shall dress in native costumes and dine on native dishes. I'm nearly certain we have most of the ingredients in the house for Mulligatawny Soup. And certainly we can come up with a reasonable facsimile of Gajar Halva. How difficult can it be, after all, to devise a carrot pudding? Especially as your papa was good enough to send us the recipe in his last letter."
    "May I help make the pudding, Auntie Pan?" asked Odysseus, returning the kitten to its mama. "Please? I promise I shall be exceedingly careful not to break anything."
    "But of course you will help," Pandora declared. "We all shall. We shall make a perfectly glorious mess of the kitchens, which we shall had a great deal of fun cleaning up afterwards. Now everyone off to the attic to rifle through the trunks for costumes. I suggest old tablecloths, linen sheets, curtains--anything that can be draped about one in the fashion of a sari for the girls or a dhoti for the boys. While you are doing that, I shall check with Mattie to see what we have on hand in the larder. Dress warmly for your treasure hunt. The attic promises to be positively frosty."
    It came to Pandora as she watched the children rush to the stairs that not in all the time since their papa had brought them home to England in the wake of their mama's passing had they ever once voiced a single doubt that Capt. Herodotus Featherstone, their papa and her elder brother, would come back to them. But then, he had been gone and unconscionably long time. Indeed, it was nearly three years since he had deposited his family with the eldest Feahterstone, Pandora's brother Castor, the Earl, who promptly passed them on to the nest in line, the eldest sister, Cleo, who handed them over to the next sister Helena, who had been glad to see them go at last to her Aunt Cora, who was not really her aunt, had been more than happy to take them in, never mind that Pandora's small competence, left to her by her father's spinster sister Philomena Featherstone, had been only just sufficient for Pandora to maintain herself and Cora in something approaching comfort. St least they had Aunt Philomena's house on South Audly Street, which guaranteed a foor over their heads, and Pandora's determination and ingenuity, which had led her to embark on a career that must be considered as unorthodox for a female as it was singular.
    The idea had come to her one evening as she sat going over the weekly expenditures with frequent interruptions from her nephews and nieces, who seemed wholly unable to keep track of the least little thing, such as Odysseus's favorite carved wooden bunny or Galatea's hair ribbon or Ganymede's nightcap, not to mention the mate to Iphigenia's single slipper. It has become a matter of rote, beginning with, "Now think back. When do you recall having it last? Where were you at the time? What were you doing? Where did you go after that? Did you take it with you or did you set it down?" Leading one of the children through the process of logical deduction for the umpteenth time, she was struck by a most peculiar notion. It had occurred to her that it was a pity she could not employ her talents for finding things and for solving seemingly insoluble problems for something more gainful than tracking down the children's lost articles. Her papa, a classical scholar, had not only named all his children after famous Greeks (a tradition continued by her brother Herodotus), but, left in his middle age a widower with a daughter fully fifteen years younger than her next oldest sibling, he had not hesitated to give full reign to his love of logic and systematic research in rearing his one remaining chick in the nest. Pandora had been inculcated in the tenets of reason and scientific observation almost from the time she was old enough to talk. Possessed of a keen intellect and a lively sense of curiosity, not to mention an acute appreciation of the absurd, she had taken to classical training like a duck to water. It was, in fact, second nature for her to treat every obstacle in life in the light of her papa's precept that every problem had a solution if only one approached it with keen insight and a calm rationality.
    It had come rather on the order of an epiphany that her singular gifts and abilities put her in the way of offering a rather unique service to those in need of help in dealing with conundrums that, to the untrained mind, must seem insolvable. The very next day she had placed and advertisement in the Gazette announcing that P. I. (the "I" stood for Ianthe) Featherstone, a noted practitioner of the science of observation and deductive reasoning was offering her services for hire to discover the seemingly undiscoverable, to determine answers to the apparently unanswerable, and to recover the ostensibly unrecoverable.
    In the five months since she had first placed her advertisement in the Gazette, she had garnered as many as half a dozen clients and managed to earn all of eighty-five pounds. Not a bad beginning for a female in an unorthodox profession, she had been wont to reflect. Her first assignment, involving the recovery of an abducted pug for Mrs. Somerset, the wife of a draper, had been easily resolved after interviewing the servants. She had been led immediately to suspect the groom's nephew, who was reported to have suffered numerous painful assaults to the ankle by the ill-tempered little beast. With the assurance his employers would remain in ignorance of the true state of affairs, the culprit had been persuaded to produce the missing pug, which, though considerably chastened, appeared little the worse for wear after its three-day sojourn in an abandoned cellar.
Two missing pets and a misplaced samovar later, she had been into the presence of Lady Stanhope, who had heard from her modiste, Madame Dupres, who had it from Mr. Somerset, the draper, of Miss Featherstone's uncanny ability to solve irresolvable mysteries of life.
    Lady Stanhope's irresolvable mystery, involving a ghost in the attic, had proven rather more stimulating than any of Pandora's previous assignments. Still, it had required little more than a thorough inspection of the lumber room and an interview of the household, including Miss Abercrombie, her ladyship's loquacious companion, (from whom she picked up such interesting tidbits as the fact that the earl and his wife were utterly devoted to one another, that his lordship had a tendency to gout, which had occasioned his physician to prescribe a plain diet and the curtailment of certain of his lordship's pleasures, most in particularly his fondness for port, and that Lady Stanhope was possessed of exceedingly delicate sensibilities that made her prone at the smallest upset to take her to bed with the spasms) to deduce that the haunting of Lady Stanhope's attic was attributable, not to a phantom, but to a different sort of spirit altogether. While arriving at a solution to the mystery had been simple enough, however, Pandora, ever of a sympathetic nature, had found herself in something of a quandary as how to, without disturbing her employers' domestic tranquility, she was to explain the occurrences of footsteps in the attic late at night not to mention an occasional eerie glow issuing from the window beneath the eaves and frequent loud thumps attended by muffled curses of the sort to bring a blush to the cheek of any female of refined sensibilities. It came to her that the most logical approach would be a tete-a-tete with the ghost itself.
    Since she had already reached certain conclusions regarding the ghost in the attic, Pandora's decision to spend a night in the haunted lumber room had hardly been the act of heroism her employer and the servants imagined it. It had, however, proven of a discomposing nature to the "ghost," who, at Lady Stanhope's insistence, had not been made privy to Pandora's investigation into the hauntings. The midnight appearance of Lord Stanhope, bearing dark lantern of the sort used by mariners and dressed in a rumpled example of the Deshabille, was only what Pandora had expected. Pandora's sudden materialization from behind the Louis XV standing trunk in which his lordship had been wont to stash his forbidden bottles of port, on the other hand, was almost enough to send Lord Stanhope into a swoon. When some minutes later, Pandora had managed to convince his lordship that she was neither a specter nor a burglar, but a confidential inquiry agent engaged by his lady wife to discover the identity of the ghost in the attic, Lord Stanhope sank with a groan on to a Charles II carved wing chair with a broken arm and, lifting the bottle of port in his hand in a gesture of finality, declared in a voice of gloom, "Alas, I am undone."
    "Not necessarily, my lord," replied Pandore, who, while waiting for Lord Stanhope to make his appearance, had come up with a possible solution to both their problems. "If you will only agree to a little play-acting, I believe we may satisfactorily explain the mystery of the haunted attic to Lady Stanhope without revealing the true nature of your visits. I'm afraid it will mean, however, giving up your midnight retreats to the lumber room."
    "I should agree to anything that would save my dearest Margaret from upset, Miss Featherstone," Lord Stanhope averred with a discernible shudder. "And, besides," he added upon reflection, considerably brightening, "there is always the wine cellar. No doubt it will not be impossible to relieve Steddings of the key long enough to have a duplicate fashioned. I daresay the wine cellar would be a deal more convenient than the attic for my nightly ablutions at any rate."
    "No doubt, my lord," agreed Pandora, who privately thought his lordship would do better either to give up his port as the doctor and his wife wished him to do or to manfully insist on indulging in it openly. He was presumably, after all, the lord of the manor. Clearly, Lady Stanhope in a fit of the spasms was something to be avoided at all costs. It was in any case none of her concern, she reminded herself and proceeded to detail her plan to his lordship.
    Lady Stanhope, awakened to the sight of her spouse in the act of prowling the halls, his arms extended straight out before him and his expression most peculiarly blank, was naturally startled to discover that the ghost in the attic was none other than her dearest Wilfred. As disconcerting as it was to suddenly find out the man to whom she had been wed for twenty-three years was given to bouts of somnambulism that had led him to frequent the attic room unbeknownst to himself, she could not but be relieved that the seemingly extraordinary phenomena that had occurred in the house could be attributed to a perfectly rationally explanation and not to anything remotely resembling the supernatural. Convinced that Miss Featherstone was blessed with uncommon powers of deduction, not to mention extraordinary courage, she did not hesitate to praise Pandora in glowing terms to her bosom bow, Mrs. Massingale, who promptly relayed the fascinating on it to her husband, the colonel. With the result that, little more than a month after the successful completion of her assignment for Lady Stanhope, Pandora had received a morning call from Col. Massingale himself. The colonel, a large man with an overbearing manner, fostered, no doubt, by a lifetime of command and abetted by a sizeable fortune garnered in the New World during the War of Rebellion (by, some were given to speculate, questionable means), had seemed to cause Pandora's cozy parlor to shrink considerably in size. Gruffly, her refused an offer of tea, saying he never touched the stuff, and, eyeing askance her Aunt Philomena's somewhat worn and undeniably dainty appearance dimity covered settee to which Pandora directed him, declared a preference to remain standing for the interview.
    Informing her that she had come highly recommended to him by Lord and Lady Stanhope, he proceeded without further roundaboutation to tell her his purpose in calling. It had come to his attention by means which he preferred not to divulge that he had in his possession certain articles, which, while of little intrinsic value, might very well prove of some historical import. As he, himself, was not of a scholarly bent, he wished to employ Miss Featherstone to ascertain the authenticity of the items and determine, if possible, their history: to wit, when and whence they had originated and an explanation of what, precisely, they were. In order to facilitate her research, her required her to take up temporary residence in his Town House, which was handsomely furnished with a large and comprehensive library, the legacy, along with the articles in question, of the mansion's previous owner, the late Marquis of Selkirk. Massingale had gone on to explain that Selkirk's bereaved father, preferring at the loss of his son never to have set foot in the cursed mansion again, had sold the entire house--lock, stock, and barrel--to the colonel at a considerably less than exorbitant price.
    And little wonder, thought Pandora, feeling a delicious chill explore her spine all over again just thinking about it. the Marquis of Selkirk had been found murdered, nearly twenty years ago, in that very Town House. Newspaper clippings detailing the brutal slaying and the failure to discover any clues to the identity of the killer were carefully preserved in her papa's catalog of interesting and bizarre crimes, along with the mention of the sizeable reward offered by the Duke of Rivanoak for information leading to the apprehension of the party or parties unknown who had foully put a period to his eldest son and heir apparent.
    From all accounts, Rivenoak had gone nearly mad with grief over his heir's death, coming, as it had, only a few months following the reported demise of his second son in the New World. It was the male offspring of that younger son who had assumed the title upon the event of his grandfather’s passing, and it was that scion of the New World who had made the Duke of Rivenoak one of the most talked about men in England, not to mention reputedly one of the most powerful.
It was common knowledge that he had taken the dwindling fortune left to him by his grandfather and tripled it by investing heavily in the innovative steam-powered mills and factories, an income which he was reported to have doubled yet again in speculations in foreign currency and trade. Having earned the reputation of a modern-day Midas along with a fortune that was the envy of practically everyone who was anyone, Rivenoak promptly turned to philanthropic endeavors, contributing large sums to efforts for the relief of the poor. Not satisfied with employing his considerable material resources for the benefit of those less fortunate, he had not hesitated to wield his not inconsiderable influence in the cause of reform measures, and effort that had earned him the disapprobation of his peers. He was judged a dangerous radical and a law unto himself and would undoubtedly have been given the cut direct had he not been a premier nobleman of the realm, second only to royalty, and had it not, furthermore, been considered exceedingly dangerous to have done.
    As it was, he was reputed to have few intimates, demonstrated a disappointing disinclination to lend himself to more than a tepid involvement in the demands of Society, and remained maddeningly elusive to those single females and their match-making mamas who would gladly have become more intimately acquainted with him. The truth be told, save for the Prince Regent, who unaccountably had taken a liking to his grace, Rivenoak maintained and impenetrable barrier of aloofness about himself which had caused him at various times to be termed high in the instep, coldly indifferent, and bloody demmed arrogant. But then, he was one of those exalted beings, after all--a duke. No doubt it would have been thought odd he acted any differently.
It was, consequently, with no little surprise that Pandora, attired in a make-shift sari fashioned from her Aunt Philomena's tartan decorative shawl that normally resided on the back of the sofa and occupied with balancing a wooden bowl of Mulligatawny Soup on one knee as she sat Buddha-fashion on the floor, looked up to see Aunt Cora ushering a visitor into the parlor room.
    "Pandora, dear," declared Aunt Cora, contriving to appear a trifle more frazzled even than she normally did, "you will never guess who has called on us."
    Pandora, gazing up into eyes, the frosty blue of a mountain lake on a clear, still day, could not but think that Aunt Cora has grossly understated the case. Tall and lean, with broad, powerful shoulders and muscular limbs, all of which showed to magnificent advantage in a snug-fitting cutaway coat of blue Superfine, skin-tight unmentionables of dove grey, and black Hessian boots, polished to perfection, her visitor exuded and air of superiority that placed him far above her touch.               

    Furthermore, she was reasonably certain that had she ever before had the occasion to look upon a face, composed like his of a high, wide forehead beneath raven black hair swept sternly back and done up in a twisted knot at the nape of the neck, a long, straight nose, high, prominent cheekbones, and a thin-lipped mouth set above a strong, stubborn jaw, all of which were finely chiseled to create and impression of masculine perfection, it was highly unlikely she would ever have forgotten it. The stranger was, she did not doubt, the most striking individual upon whom she had ever laid eyes.
    "You are quite right, Aunt Sora," Pandora answered, her gaze never wavering from the stranger's. "I am certain I cannot guess the gentleman's identity. Perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me."
    She was rewarded with a cold glint of amusement in her visitor's singularly hard blue eyes, which not only had the discomfiting effect of infusing a warm rush of blood to her cheeks, but served to remind her that she was in the act of receiving a gentleman caller of obvious distinction while dressed in little more than her Aunt Philomena's decorative shawl.
    "Allow me to introduce myself," spoke up the visitor, insufferably bowing. "I am Rivenoak, Miss Featherstone. Charmed to make your acquaintance."