Educating Caroline by Patricia Cabot Page A

window.
    Oh, dear, Caroline thought. If she thinks this is bad. . . .
    7
    B raden Granville took careful aim at the target. Located some fifty feet away, it was nothing more than a six-foot board, covered with the paper outline of a man, leaned up against the back wall of the cellar. Braden had already drilled two holes into the paper figure’s head to represent eyes, and another for a nose. He was finishing off the mouth—a series of small holes in the shape of a crescent moon, the corners of which he’d made turn whimsically upward—when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw Weasel standing there, fanning black smoke away from his face, and saying something.
    Braden removed the cotton wool from his ears.
    “—won’t take no for an answer,” the secretary was saying. “I told her you were busy doin’ valuable research on your new pistol, but she said she’d wait.”
    Braden nodded to the young boy who’d been assisting him all afternoon. The boy hurried down the length of the cellar to fetch the paper target.
    “I’m sorry, Weasel,” Braden said. “I only caught that last bit there. What were you saying? One of the neighbors, again? Offer her a gun, would you, as a token of our esteem? Wait, on second thought, better not. I don’t need housewives taking shots at me in the street because I’ve woken their precious infants—”
    “This ain’t no housewife,” Weasel said. “And deep as we had this cellar dug, the only folk you’re wakin’ is the dead. No, this is a lady.”
    “A lady?” Braden took the target the boy brought to him, and held it up for his secretary to see. “There, Weasel. Look at that. Are you still accusing me of being out of sorts? I drilled six of his teeth out.”
    “Right,” Weasel said, drily. “Next time a man stands perfectly still with his mouth wide open, you’ll be able to hit his back molars, all right. This lady ain’t from next door. Name of Caroline Linford.”
    Braden lowered the target and stared at his old friend. “Caroline Linford? Lady Caroline Linford? What in the devil does Lady Caroline Linford want with me?”
    “Didn’t say.” Weasel took the target from his employer’s suddenly limp fingers. “Doesn’t look like the sort that usually comes a’callin’ on you, Dead, which is why I came down to check with you. This one’s got her maid with’er.”
    “Her what?” The cellar was thick, it was true, with smoke, but Braden could not believe that was what was making it so difficult for him to process this information.
    “Her maid. Sittin’ there right beside her, all prim and properlike.” Weasel shook his head. “You know I’ve never been one to give advice—least not in the romantic arena—but this one just don’t seem right, Dead. I’d send her packing, right quick. She’s bound to have a nervous papa with one of your pistols in his pocket. . . .”
    Braden Granville had already begun to take the stairs two at a time. “No nervous papa,” he tossed back, over his shoulder. “A fiancé, though. The Marquis of Winchilsea.”
    Coming up the stairs behind his employer, Weasel raised his eyebrows. “Winchilsea? You could take him easily enough.”
    “Get your mind out of the gutter, Mr. Ambrose.” Braden stepped into his study and went to a mirror to adjust his cravat, then found that the creases were filled with gunpowder. “Damn,” he said, tearing the cloth away, and reaching into a drawer for a new one. “There’s nothing going on between the Lady Caroline and myself. Not that way. But the girl did see something the other night at old Ashforth’s place—”
    “The night Jackie got away from you?”
    “Right. I asked her if she’d seen Jacquelyn go by, and she said she had, and that Jackie hadn’t been alone—”
    “So you reckon she’s here to . . . to what?” Weasel shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
    “I don’t either,” Braden admitted. “She’s probably here to thank me for my