Chapter 8 #3
Hyperia would take it amiss as well, as would the duchess, and I would not for any reason unnecessarily trouble either lady.
The road had been gradually climbing for the past mile or so. I came around a bend and beheld the Dovecote on the slope across the valley. Dantry’s home was a handsome edifice, its windows gleaming boldly, the village tucked snugly below the manor along a dark skein of river.
Rural England. Peaceful, pleasant, waiting for spring, and yet, the scene made me uneasy.
I was overlooking some telling fact, some casual reference from Huffnagel or Fletcher.
Perhaps I’d noted something odd for its absence, but my mind had submerged the relevant detail, as it periodically submerged all of my memories.
“Walk on, my boy.”
Atlas obediently toddled on, but such was his sensitivity to my mood that, despite the sloppy going, he soon broke into a trot and then a canter.
By the time I returned to the Knot, my ears, toes, cheeks, and chin were frozen, but I was no closer to finding Dantry than I had been when I’d left the previous day.
“You shoulda took me with you.” Atticus collected Atlas’s reins and fell in step beside me. I’d walked the last half mile before reaching the Knot, both because I was saddle weary and because I’d lost all feeling in my feet.
“You never heard as much weepin’ and wailin’ as went on belowstairs last night,” Atticus continued.
“Maids and footmen shouting down the rafters, Miz Lizzie caught up in the affray, and Miss Trixie—that’s the undercook—waving her skillet about.
Mrs. Gwinnett would never have put up with such a ruckus in her kitchen. ”
Life went on. A peer disappeared without a trace, and still, the domestics feuded, the neighbors gossiped, and the horses had to be fed.
“What instigated the fuss?”
“Cook says tempers are flaring because the butler is stuck in Thankless Wherever, and it’s his job to keep the peace.
Sir Clive says the troops are rebelling because the weather is about to change again—more cold—and Miss Dulcie thinks the household is upset because the earl scarpered.
They was loud, guv. Louder than London fishmongers. ”
“Stay off the battlefield, but keep your ears open. The staff might have been arguing as a result of the earl’s disappearance, and that suggests somebody knows more than they’re telling.”
“More than they’re tellin’ you, more like. Dantry weren’t at the family seat?”
“He hasn’t returned to the Dovecote, no. Nobody has any idea where he’s gone, and his political enemies profess to have more use for him hale and whole than his friends do. Please see that Atlas gets a bran mash this evening with his last ration of hay.”
Atticus stopped at the edge of the stable yard, which featured wet cobbles, melting patches of snow around the edges, and the ubiquitous tattoo of dripping.
How I hated that sound. Reminded me of damp, dark castles, frigid stone walls, and hunger that never abated.
“You have a megrim coming on, guv?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
The boy studied a yard busy with the late-afternoon chores—horses being watered at the long wooden trough, grooms wheeling barrows of dirty straw around to the muck heap, an older fellow mending a horse blanket in the fading light.
“You ain’t looking at anything. You ain’t here.”
The charges were serious, and my tiger—whom I’d left to fend for himself in a household apparently not at peace—was worried.
“I am preoccupied, Atticus. I should not have expected to find Lord Dantry at the Dovecote, but apparently, I did. Or I expected one of his political detractors to be showing signs of a guilty conscience. I learned nothing of any consequence.”
Not quite true. I’d learned that I wasn’t taking my memory lapses seriously enough and that I had to stop pretending I was mentally whole.
This problem had occupied most of my thoughts en route from the Dovecote, which reflected poorly on my obligation to the missing earl.
My memory lapses were temporary, thus far, while the earl’s bodily absence was threatening to become permanent.
Atlas stomped a hoof, splashing mud in all directions.
“Patience, horse,” Atticus muttered, stroking a hand over the beast’s neck. “His lordship’s doubtless famished, and he’s not fussin’ for his tucker.”
“Let Atlas have some hay while you groom him,” I said. “He’s done yeoman service over miles of hard going.”
I made my way up to the manor, appreciating anew the convenience of sloping flagstone walkways. With each step, fatigue weighed on me more heavily, and the thought of a hot bath loomed…
As both a hint of paradise and a potential purgatory.
Did bathing cause memory lapses? I inventoried what I could recall of each instance of forgetfulness and concluded that, no, likely not.
A headache sometimes preceded the incidents, but I had frequent headaches and infrequent problems with recollection.
I was so absorbed in rumination—even after miles of nothing but rumination—that I tripped on the steps leading up to the Knot’s back terrace. I caught myself on the railing, but not before I’d barked the daylights out of my shin.
“That had to sting.” The friendly footman had seen my clumsiness. He came down the steps and stood awkwardly, clearly wanting to help, clearly understanding that help would be resented.
“I should have watched where I was going.” Atticus had all but warned me about the dangers of gazing vaguely at nothing.
“Many a man has said the same, my lord. Took a spill myself outside the chandler’s shop, and me trying to charm Miss Letitia. I made her laugh. Maybe that counts in a fellow’s favor?”
“We’ll hope so.” I limped up the steps, laughter the last thing on my mind.
My shin still ached by the time I reached my temporary quarters. No one welcomed me back to the Knot, albeit I’d been gone a mere day. Unless new developments presented themselves posthaste, I’d be back at the Hall before another sunset.
I laid my saddlebags on the sideboard in Dantry’s sitting room. The same piles of pamphlets, letters, and bills were stacked in their assigned locations. The earl was still missing, his own brother had no idea where he’d got off to, and who was I—?
“Jules.”
My heart recognized Hyperia before my fuddled mind could grasp the reality of her standing in the doorway to the bedroom. She smiled at me tentatively, maybe even a bit sheepishly.
“You came.” The stupidest words of greeting a man ever offered his intended.
“You invited me. Her Grace knew your whereabouts, and I hope I haven’t presumed—”
“You could never presume.” I enveloped her in a hug reminiscent of the desperation with which a prisoner recalls the gentle apricity of winter sunlight on his brow. She was all that was good and dear, and she was in my very rooms, in my very arms. “You came.”
She must have heard the catch in my voice, must have known that my dignity had gone careening onto its arse. She let me hold her for an embarrassingly long time and stepped back only when my grip eased.
“I was going barmy in Town,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair over my ear. “We ought not to be alone like this, but I gather Sir Clive runs an informal household.”
“Very, or rather, Miss Weatherby does. Standards of cleanliness are punctiliously observed nonetheless.” I beheld Hyperia with all the focus and acuity my gaze had lacked previously.
Same russet-brown hair, luminous green eyes, lovely curves…
My Hyperia. A tension of both body and soul eased at the sight of her.
“I gather Dantry has not turned up?”
“Of course not. I would suspect he’d taken a tumble and fallen prey to the elements, but he didn’t bestir himself to do more than stroll into the village and back. He wasn’t one for hiking the hills. The ground was bare when he disappeared, and he’s familiar with the immediate surrounds.”
To blazes with Dantry. I wanted to sit beside my beloved while she embroidered flowers onto the border of some lucky handkerchief. I wanted to breathe in her rosy scent, study the curve of her cheek by firelight, and compose maudlin poetry about her eyelashes.
I did not want to discuss my latest bout of forgetting with her, nor the implications that lapse had for our future dealings.
But at some point, I had to do exactly that.
“Might we ring for a tray?” I asked. “I’m beyond peckish and longing for your wise counsel regarding an investigation that has been singularly frustrating.”
She took a seat in a corner of the sofa and patted the cushion beside her. “Every investigation is singularly frustrating, Jules, until you find the answers, and then it’s gloriously satisfying to solve the riddles.”
I tugged the bell-pull twice and took the place beside her. “Just to have you remind me of that is reassuring, Perry. I really am glad to see you.”
“Good. I am glad to see you too. The weather gave me pause the farther south we traveled, but your mother was ready to climb up on the box to encourage the horses personally. Her Grace had some idea that you could use reinforcements, though I suspect she also wanted an excuse to call on Sir Clive.”
“He is fond of her. I believe they qualify as cronies.” I wanted badly to wrap my arm around Hyperia’s shoulders, but at any moment, a footman might barge through the door with the tea tray.
“What did you make of Sheldon Arbuthnot?” Hyperia asked.
“You know him?”
“I’ve stood up with him a few times.”
“You don’t care for him.” Her diffident tone said as much.
Hyperia wrinkled her nose. “I don’t dislike him. He’s a bit too smooth, a bit too relentlessly insubstantial while he keeps a watch to see who just came down the ballroom steps.”
“He’s a younger son, and he’s given me to understand the family finances are troubled.” I recounted the rest of my jaunt to the Dovecote—Fletcher’s rudeness, Huffnagel’s pragmatism, Sheldon’s air of general bewilderment.
After we’d done justice to a substantial tray, I further recounted the circumstances of Dantry’s disappearance—gold spurs in hand, but no horse, no coach fare, and no witnesses—and the discovery of the torrid letters, as well as the business with Mrs. Stoneham’s gloves.
“Lizzie Stoneham married in haste,” Hyperia said. “Her husband was a sot and apparently mean when he drank. He drank her dowry, her pin money, his allowance… I doubt she would do anything to jeopardize her place in this household, Jules.”
Only Hyperia called me Jules, and only when we were in charity with each other. I doubt she herself grasped that subtlety.
“The household refers to Mrs. Stoneham as Miz Lizzie,” I said.
“But?”
I mentally shied away from the thought that had intruded. “But her given name is Elizabeth, and a nickname for Elizabeth is Betty, or Beth, or Bet, and those dreadful billets-doux were all signed with a B.”
Hyperia liked that notion even less than I did, but we discussed the ramifications at sufficient length that I had no time to mention my latest memory lapse.
“You still think you can find Lord Dantry, Jules? He’s been gone a week. He might well be halfway to Rome by now.”
“I don’t know, but I will continue trying.” I would hate to end my investigative ventures with a failure, but some things—many things—were out of my hands.
High time I reconciled myself to that reality.