“Our star pupil triumphs again,” proclaimed the duke. He gave them no time to digest this startling news, turning quickly to ask Kate to go on with the story.
Kate Cole cleared her throat. “As you know, Mother and I had moved to Bournemouth after the old duke gave Mother the—after Mother left Penford Hall.”
“Broke her heart to leave,” said Nanny Cole, eyeing her daughter with unexpected gentleness. “But we couldn’t go back to the village. Bloody place was deserted. No school, no children to play with ...”
“So we went to Bournemouth, where Mother worked as a seamstress.”
“Kate was never happy there,” Nanny Cole went on. “Only time she perked up was when she got Grayson’s letters. So, when she came to me with his crack-brained scheme, I thought, Bugger it, I’ll jolly them along. Anything to get Kate up and punching again.” Nanny Cole sighed and looked down at her cobalt-blue yarn. “Hated to see her in such a funk.”
“Mother was wonderful,” said Kate. “She drew all sorts of costumes and I sent the drawings on to Grayson. We wrote to each other three or four times a week. His plan didn’t sound preposterous to me.”
Nanny Cole snorted. “None of Grayson’s plans ever sounded preposterous to you, my girl.” She glanced at Crowley with a devilish grin. “Remember the two of ’em tunneling under the arbor, looking for pirate gold?”
“I do indeed, Nanny,” Crowley replied. “Quite a time we had, pulling them out. I believe it was Miss Kate who christened Lex Rex. Isn’t that right, Nanny?”
“Very true,” Nanny Cole replied. “Lex from Alexander —one of Grayson’s other names—and Rex ... Well, she wanted her duke to have a promotion, didn’t she?”
“I thought it sounded well together,” Kate explained, coloring. “At any rate,” she hurried on, “it seemed to me that the most important part of the plan was that it be carried out in secret.”
The duke nodded eagerly. “Quite right. If I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as Lex Rex—and I most certainly did not—we would require the help of people whose loyalty and discretion would be absolute.”
Kate smiled. “Grayson had kept in touch with everyone, not just the staff but the remaining villagers, as well, those who’d refused to abandon Penford Harbor. We selected a core group and, with Mother’s help, began to visit them, one by one, to sound them out.”
“The response was quite astonishing,” said the duke. “Within the year, we had the entire staff working together to breathe life into Lex Rex. I knew that I wanted to do something with pop music, but I wasn’t sure what. Hallard’s the one who figured that out.”
“Mmmm?” Hallard peered absently at the duke.
“I was just telling Derek and Emma that you invented Lex Rex,” said the duke.
“Yes, yes.” Hallard blinked owlishly. “Just created a character, really.”
“Hallard,” the duke informed Emma, “is also known as Hal Arden.”
“The writer?” Emma gaped at the bespectacled old man. “Spy novels?”
“My publisher prefers to call them espionage thrillers, but never mind,” said Hallard. “Don’t hold much with labels.”
_ “But I’ve read everything you’ve ever written!” Emma exclaimed.
“He’ll autograph a complete set for you, won’t you, old man?” The duke beamed at Hallard. “Our writer-in-residence was instrumental in putting together Lex’s biography.”
“Just listened to His Grace and Miss Kate, really,” said Hallard. “Bit of a poser, really, making a character who was literally three-dimensional. But I liked the challenge.”
“And rose to it,” declared the duke. “Hallard was the one who discovered that ownership of England’s great estates falls into five basic categories: surviving families, few and far between; foreigners who wish they were English; corporations, which use the houses as retreats for harried executives; the National Trust, which turns them into museums—”
“And pop stars,” Hallard concluded. “Interesting subject, really, and His Grace made the research that much easier. It was like having an agent in place, really, with him spying on kids like Pogger and telling me what they fancied.” Hallard leaned forward, rubbing his palms together as he warmed to his subject. “Lex Rex couldn’t be a pretty-face pop phenomenon, y’see, because we couldn’t have people concentrating on His Grace’s face. We didn’t want a band with too much staying power, either. A medium-sized hit twice a year for five years would do us nicely. I figured that, if Time magazine called Lex the next Beatles within the first two years of our run, we’d done the job.”
“Their predictions inevitably fade,” explained the duke. He smiled slyly and scratched the end of his nose. “Hallard wrote the lyrics for Lex’s songs, as well. ‘Kiss My Tongue’ was, in my opinion, one of his noblest efforts.”