Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“Dantry met somebody behind the livery,” Hyperia said as the coach hit a jarring rut.
“The head groom assured you that after dark, that location would be deserted. The back of the livery is also out of the view for the village, and it has no visibility from the lane leading to the Knot. Our question becomes, whom did the earl meet in such clandestine fashion and why?”
I’d chosen to travel to the Dovecote with Her Grace and Hyperia in the capacious Waltham coach and four.
The team was managing the sloppy roads, though the heated bricks in the vehicle’s floor had long since lost the battle with winter.
Sir Clive was making the journey on horseback, and Miss Weatherby shared the coach with us.
“Wicksniff makes a last check on the horses,” I pointed out. “If Dantry was trysting with a lady, the location is singularly unromantic.”
“Why hang up his spurs like that?” Her Grace asked. “Those spurs are valuable. He took them along for some reason, then did not hire a hack from the livery. He’d already lost his hat along the stream. Perhaps he was in a hurry.”
Miss Weatherby, who occupied the place beside the duchess, facing the horses, shook her head. “Or he was harried.”
What sort of kidnapper neglected to notice that his victim had hung a pair of golden spurs at eye level in plain sight?
“Maybe Dantry was leaving a trail,” Hyperia said slowly. “Making sure that if whatever errand he was on went sour, somebody would have an idea where to start looking for him.”
Interesting thought, though Dantry hadn’t been seen in the immediate vicinity of the stable. I’d consulted half the denizens of the Weasel before returning to the Knot, and they had agreed to a person.
“His father gave him those spurs,” Miss Weatherby said. “A present when Dantry went off to university as a reminder of the family crest—spurs and an olive branch. They were one of very few gifts given by the old earl. Dantry would not have been absent-minded with them.”
Dantry had certainly been casual about handling love letters, about hauling a significant sum of money over hill and dale, about taking his leave of his cousin…
The duchess looked thoughtful. “You describe the spurs as vanities, Julian, the kind worn to inform the world that here is a horseman, rather than anything the horse himself would take note of.”
The coach swayed around a turn, and the Dovecote’s gateposts came into view.
“Is that significant?” Hyperia asked.
“He took spurs,” I said, “but he probably wasn’t going by horseback. If he anticipated taking a hack from the livery, then functional spurs might have been in order. The notion that he left them as a sort of calling card or as a signal makes some sense.”
Not a lot of sense—how long had those spurs hung unnoticed on that post? Though Dantry had apparently been at the livery at an hour when it was deserted, further suggesting no horseback journey had been anticipated.
“The steward’s cottage is around the next bend to the left,” Miss Weatherby said. “Mr. Fontaine is quite active, from what Dantry has said. You might not find him in.”
“Then I’ll leave him a note and make my way to the manor on foot.” I wanted the element of surprise. The whole shire would know that Her Grace was coming to call, but the steward was likely unaware of my interest in him.
I waved the coach up the last half mile of the Dovecote drive and made my way down a muddy lane to a cottage sitting in a copse of pines and rhododendrons.
Smoke drifted from two chimneys that rose above a tidy thatched roof.
The little dwelling was half-timbered and amply adorned with mullioned windows.
If a gnome had stepped out of the front door in a green felt hat and pointed shoes, I would not have been surprised. Fontaine, as it turned out, was no sort of gnome. He was tall, spare, upright, and put me in mind of a more austere Sir Clive.
“Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service.” I bowed on his front stoop, and he motioned me into a foyer lit by only one sconce.
“You bear a resemblance to your papa, my lord.” He eyed my peculiar hair and held out a hand for my cloak.
“You knew the late duke?”
“The hunt field is a democratic place, and your late father enjoyed a good gallop.”
In the course of a day, a lively hunt could easily cover thirty miles. That the pack had ranged this far afield should not have surprised me.
I laid my gloves on the sideboard and passed over my cloak. “That gallop must have been years ago.”
“His Grace was more interested in flirting with the few ladies who followed the hounds than in chasing Reynard. He made an impression.”
Fontaine spoke with a slight French accent, which, like dripping eaves and late winters, bothered me for old reasons. I should not have needed a warning that Dantry’s steward was French, but one would have been appreciated.
A poor reflection upon me.
“My study is humble but warm, my lord. If you seek refreshment, you will have to tolerate what I can manage from the larder. My house is kept by a senior maid who comes down from the Dovecote, and I prepare most of my meals myself.”
An unusual arrangement. “You were a cook, once upon a time?”
“My wife was a cook. I was the gamekeeper, son of a steward, and now I ply my father’s profession. You are not here to discuss my distant past.”
He’d come over from France decades ago, then, an émigré fleeing the Terror. Possibly even an escaped prisoner of the Revolution. His observation about the purpose of my visit had not been rude, so much as a request for privacy regarding his past.
A request I respected.
He ushered me into a wainscoted room no more than ten feet square.
Exposed beams formed the low ceiling, and a braided rug covered the plank floor.
The furnishings were sturdy—two chairs and a hassock before the large fieldstone hearth, a heavy oak desk angled along the windows.
Bookshelves lined the interior wall, and a painting of a gray granite castle topping a sunny hill hung above the mantel.
“Do have a seat, my lord. The cat is forbidden to occupy the chairs, though she will occupy your lap without notice. I assume you are here regarding the earl’s absence.”
He waited for me to take the proffered seat. The room held no ticking clock, for which I was grateful. People much occupied with the land and the out of doors seldom needed timepieces, and I certainly did not need incessant ticking to go with the faint dripping from the cottage’s eaves.
“You are correct that I am searching for Lord Dantry. I do so at the request of Sir Clive, who is paying a visit to the Dovecote with Miss Weatherby, my mother, and Miss Hyperia West, who is my intended.”
My intended. I hoped I remained Hyperia’s intended.
Fontaine settled onto the cushion with a sigh. “The earl’s absence is causing much anxiety. We are not to know of it, of course. We are to think he has simply gone up to Town early, but a peer does not remove to London without some fuss and bother, non?”
“C’est vrai.” That’s true. The French had slipped out all on its disconcerting own.
“Ah, my lord speaks French. I would be honored if we might continue in my mother tongue. I hear it so infrequently and miss it, you see.”
I obliged, feeling consternation akin to that of the bachelor who found himself standing up with a young lady to whom he’d barely been introduced. How did this happen? One contended graciously for the sake of manners and gentlemanly deportment.
“I know nothing of Dantry’s disappearance,” Fontaine said, his French of the Parisienne variety.
“He had been making more frequent calls on Sir Clive, who is, as you English say, getting on in years. Dantry was very fond of his cousin. I believe the kind regard to be mutual. The earl would not miss the opening of Parliament, on that we all agree.”
The village we. The busy, kindly, tolerant we that supposedly defined Merry Olde on its best days.
“Tell me about Dantry’s activities here at the Dovecote. When he bided at the Knot, he occupied himself with endless correspondence, political tracts, and pamphlets. He was prolific with his pen, crusading for all manner of causes. How did he spend his time at the family seat?”
Fontaine rose and retrieved a pipe and pouch from a desk drawer. “Shall we walk while I smoke? You strike me as restless, my lord, and the day yet offers us some light.”
I was more than willing to stretch my legs. By the time Fontaine was relighting his pipe, we had reached the village high street, where the steward strolled along like a beldame showing off her new puppy.
We chatted in French, about the Dantry succession, the great good health of the estate acres—no enclosures draining the exchequer of every groat, wonderful climate, good soil—and the earl’s willingness to listen to common sense when it came to the land and its policies.
“The old earl was similarly sensible, sometimes to a fault,” Fontaine said as we passed the door of an establishment that dubbed itself the Flying Rooster. Warmth, conversation, and the aromas of beer and cooking bacon wafted from the door as a patron exited.
“Sensible how?” I asked.
“His papa before him broke entails in every direction, as did the previous earl. Of the Dovecote’s 23,437 acres, only 948 remain entailed.
The manor house sits on those acres, and they will pass with the title.
Much of the rest of the family wealth is personal, and of the thirty-seven tenancies, twenty-eight are held by at least the third generation of their tenant families.
Many go back further than that. Dantry could increase rents on many of them, but his father would not have, so Dantry does not. ”
The village was as charming as winter conditions would allow, the thatched roofs snug, the cobbled high street free of potholes. Masonry was pointed and parged. Chimneys were in good repair.