The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall Read Free Page A

you would have found the stairs and climbed up and begun your search for me?”
    Pip leaned close. “I know where Papa’s room is, Barnaby. I could take you to him so he could be a hero for P.C. Papa’s not a chancel-ship. I never heard of that sort of boat.”
    “Yer a smart nipper, ain’t ye?” Barnaby gave Pip an approving look, then sat up, wrapped his arms around his bent knees, and looked up at Grayson. “But yer right ‘ere, so I don’t gots to do no lookin’ around for ye. Will ye come wit’ me now, yer worship?”
    Grayson started to tell the boy Thomas Straithmore was a fictional hero, but he realized the boy’s eyes were no longer on his face, rather focused on the bottle of champagne on the floor not three feet away.
    “Ye be drinking the bubbly? Wit’ the nipper? Fer shame, yer worship. If ye wants a drinking companion, me mistress likes to tip the bubbly. She stole some once, fair to set her ma’s hair on fire.”
    “Only a tiny sip for the nipper. How far away is your mistress? I’m not a worship.”
    “She’s down by the ‘ollow, jest where yer land leaves off, all crouched down behind a willow tree by the edge of the little lake the Great built back in the time of Noah, she told me, said she’d wait there fer ye. Will ye come now, yer princeship?”
    Was Barnaby talking about Colonel Lord Josiah Wolffe, Baron Cudlow? The old curmudgeon who reputedly hated all his neighbors and sat in his library polishing his Waterloo medals? Grayson had heard his wife had passed on some twenty years ago, but his widowed daughter-in-law lived with him. He’d also heard a widowed granddaughter-in-law lived there now, but he knew nothing about her. Grayson had lived at Belhaven House for only four months, and all his neighbors had visited to welcome him, invited him to dinner and to small parties, but not the Wolffes of Wolffe Hall. The vicar, Mr. Elijah Harkness, had told him in a lowered voice that he and Mrs. Harkness were invited to dinner once a quarter when the baron paid his employees’ wages because he wanted a witness, a man of God, to attest to his probity.
    Was Barnaby’s P.C. the widowed granddaughter-in-law’s daughter? Hard to sort through that. Grayson asked Barnaby, “Is P.C.’s last name Wolffe?”
    Barnaby looked distressed. “Sorry, yer guvnorship, I can’t tell ye else P.C.’d burn off me toes and stick ‘em in me ears since she told me to fetch ye and keep me clapper shut.”
    An abyss? Not a child’s word, an adult’s word. His interest and curiosity were near to brimming over. He knew he wanted to know what was going on, and so he said, “Barnaby, give me a moment. Pip, it’s time you were in bed. Barnaby, wait here, I’ll be right back.”
    “What be that big wooden thing?”
    “It’s called an icebox. And no, do not even think of opening the handle. You never know what might jump out at you. Stay right where you are or I won’t go with you to P.C.”
    Barnaby’s attention turned back to the champagne, so Grayson picked up the bottle in one hand, Pip in the other, and went upstairs to the nursery. “Papa, I want to help save P.C.”
    “Not this time, Pip.”
    “But I’m nearly five, Papa, well, maybe four and a half, but I’m tall, way past your knees, I could—”
    And on and on. How had Pip learned so many words? Grayson would have gray hair by the time his son ran out of arguments, and P.C. would have fallen off the earth into the abyss. Bribery, no hope for it. “I’ll take you into York to Mr. Hebbert’s Viking Marvels, but only if you get into bed now and sleep.”
    Finally, a nod. Visions of brutal Viking axes and shields and helmets won out, this time. “When?”
    The second-most-asked question. “As soon as I take care of P.C.’s trouble.” Grayson wasn’t surprised to see Pip’s nanny, Mary Beth, sound asleep.
    He tiptoed to Pip’s bed, settled him under the covers, kissed him, and heard his son whisper, “Save P.C., Papa. Take her the