Chapter 2
“Your coach will not last half a day if you load it like a mail wagon.”
Henry Kingswell, Duke of Sappherton, did not pause in his stride. “I am not bringing the entire estate. Only the minimum for six weeks. I will not risk a delay in delivery.”
Tristan Lilacourt, the Duke of Evermere, leaned in the doorway with one boot braced against the jamb and a smirk that belonged at a gaming table. “The minimum? You have more paperwork packed than food.”
“I anticipate most meals will be taken at coaching inns. I do not anticipate time for reading.”
“Yet you bring a trunk of ledgers.”
Henry set his pen down. “If you are here to offer farewells, say them and be done.”
“I am not,” said Tristan. “I am here because your man said you had not eaten, and I am the only person in London with the stomach to share breakfast with you.” He wandered past the desk, eyeing the stacks of correspondence.
“Also because Lavinia said you were liable to work yourself to death before noon.”
“Lavinia should worry about her own husband’s health. You look half-starved.”
“I have a metabolism that burns away everything but charm. You, on the other hand, look as though you have not slept in a week.”
“I have not,” Henry said.
“Why? The Drummond boy will not vanish in a day.”
Henry pushed the topmost folder a quarter inch to the right.
“If you had read the latest dispatches, you would not say so. My cousin Nathan Drummond’s estate is in utter chaos.
There are three sets of stewards giving conflicting orders, and not one of them has authority to act.
There is no word from the Drummonds themselves, and the staff are at their wit’s end. The boy—”
“Ian,” said Tristan.
“Ian,” Henry said, “has already bitten a footman and attempted to escape out a third-story window.”
Tristan let out a long, low whistle. “He is Drummond’s child.”
“Obviously.”
“Has anyone told him his parents might not be coming back?”
Henry glanced up. “They are missing, not dead.”
Tristan arched a brow. “Very reassuring, coming from you.”
“I have spent every hour since the news arrived petitioning every friend and functionary north of Yorkshire. There is no evidence they are gone.”
“Yet no evidence they are alive,” Tristan said, dropping into a chair. “That is what troubles you.”
Henry closed the portfolio with a snap. “What troubles me is how quickly everything degenerates when a single link fails. If I do not reach Drummond by Thursday, the estate will openly revolt.”
“And you, of course, are the only person in England equipped to prevent it.”
Henry’s hand curled on the desk. “It is my obligation. Not only is Nathan my cousin, but Ian is my godson.”
Tristan studied him, one leg crossed over the other. “Is that what you tell yourself about all your obligations, or just the ones that keep you from sleeping?”
“I do not see the point of your visit if all you intend is to analyze my emotional state.”
“I have not even begun to analyze your emotional state. That will happen when you return and drink yourself insensible.”
Henry stacked the papers in a tight block. “When I return, I will have a ward. I will not have time for insensibility.”
Tristan’s smirk faded. “Henry.”
He did not want to hear it, whatever it was. He swept the stack into the trunk and closed the lid. “Thank you for stopping by.”
Tristan rose, stretching like a cat. “You will make a dreadful parent, you know. All rules, no warmth.”
“I am not meant to be a parent. I am meant to keep the estate from ruin until Nathan is found or confirmed lost.”
“Children do not respond to estate management. They need other things.”
“I shall pretend you do not have any expertise in the matter.”
Tristan’s smirk faded. "Pretend all you want. But I know what it looks like when a child is left behind to carry grief alone. I have watched you do it to yourself ever since your father died."
Henry felt the jab but did not flinch. “I am not a child.”
“No. But you manage loss exactly as a child would. By refusing to feel it and burying yourself in work.” Tristan ran a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf. “How old were you, when your father died?”
“I was two-and-twenty...”
“Old enough to inherit. Not old enough to know what to do with it.”
Henry shut the trunk with a firm hand. “My father is irrelevant to the current problem.”
“Is he? Or is this all the same thing, repeating forever?”
“I appreciate the concern,” Henry said, “but it is wasted on me. I have a schedule to keep. If you are finished, I should like to prepare in silence.”
Tristan shrugged, making for the door. “Remember to eat something. Or at least drink water. Lavinia will never forgive me if you die of dehydration.”
“I will keep it in mind.”
Tristan paused on the threshold. “When you find Ian Drummond, do not try to explain the world to him all at once. It will only frighten him.”
“I do not frighten children.”
Tristan’s look said otherwise, but he left it at that. “Safe travels, Sappherton.”
“Thank you, Evermere,” Henry said, and meant it.
* * *
The carriage rolled out of the London drive at six precisely.
Henry checked his watch, then leaned back against the squabs, letting his mind move ahead of the road.
He thumbed through correspondence, jotting notes in the margins, refusing to let his thoughts wander to anything but the day’s itinerary.
Every stop, every hour, were mapped in advance. The driver had orders to alert him if there was any delay longer than five minutes.
The streets changed from city to fields, the fields to gray, empty miles. He preferred not to look out the window. There was nothing of value out there, nothing that could affect him, at least.
He drafted a letter to the Drummond stewards, sketched out a plan for consolidating the household, and began a list of possible tutors for Ian. None of them would last, he suspected, but the boy needed structure immediately.
At noon, the carriage stopped for horses. He stayed inside, nibbling at a cold chicken sandwich his cook had insistently packed, his eyes never leaving the page.
At three, another change occurred. This time the inn yard was noisy, full of travelers and the slap of harness leather. The driver brought a note: a local land agent was waiting with news. Henry steeled himself and went inside.
The land agent was a reed-thin man with an apologetic cough. “Nothing yet, Your Grace, but the search continues. There is rumor the Drummond carriage was spotted north of the river, but it may have been a false report.”
Henry nodded. “Report again if you learn more.”
The man bowed himself out. Henry returned to the carriage, more aware than ever of the time pressing on him.
He made Biggleswade by dusk, as planned. The Swan Inn stood at the town’s edge; its yard already lit with torches for the evening trade.
Henry stepped out into the cold, stamped the stiffness from his legs, and handed the driver a coin. “Up at first light. I want no delays.”
The driver nodded. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Inside, the inn was warm but crowded. He took a private room rather than eat among the locals, preferring the silence and the quick service. The food was tolerable, the ale, thin and sour. He barely tasted either.
After supper he spoke with the ostler, checked the horses himself, and paid in advance for the rooms occupied by himself, his valet, and his coachman. The staff were competent, if nosy. He ignored their questions, retiring early.
In his chamber, he locked the door, undressed, and sank into the hard bed. He listened to the distant noise of the taproom below, the stamping and snort of horses in the yard, and the rattle of the window in the wind.
He closed his eyes and, for one moment, allowed himself to remember Nathan’s laugh, and the way they used to walk the moors at dawn. The last letter Nathan Drummond had sent was full of jokes about the weather and not a single word about disaster.
Then Henry put the remembrances away, as he always did, and fell asleep.
He woke before the inn’s rooster, dressed, and shaved by candlelight. The world outside was flat with morning mist, the yard empty save for the sweep of a broom and a sleepy ostler unbarring the stables.
Henry went out to the carriage and checked the harness because he liked to maintain order in every aspect of his life, the undercarriage, and the wheels.
The driver was inside, taking tea with the stable hands.
The carriage was as he had left it—except for a slight list to one side, as if a load had shifted.
He frowned. He had not loaded anything himself last night; all trunks were stowed in the box and strapped by the porters. The only thing that might have moved was the sheaf of papers on the rear seat.
Or…there was a stowaway hunkering down inside the coach.
Impossible, he told himself but checked anyway.
He swung open the door and peered inside. In the half-light, there was a shape curled on the bench, slight and limp, hat pulled down over the face. A boy, from the look of it—too small to be more.
Henry’s first instinct was irritation. The second was calculation: a stowaway meant delay, disruption, and perhaps a scandal if the boy belonged to the one of the staff members at the inn.
“Up,” he said sharply.
No movement.
He reached in and seized the boy’s shoulder, shaking it hard. The figure came alive all at once, scrambling upright, arms up in defense. The hat tumbled off. A tangle of brown hair spilled out of the cap, and the face that looked back at him was not a boy’s at all.
This was a young woman, eyes wild and bright, jaw set for a fight.
She stared at him unwaveringly.
Henry felt an odd stillness. Then he was consumed a white-hot anger, cut sharp by confusion.
He held her gaze for a beat, then said, in the voice he reserved for the worst of his staff, “Who are you and what are you doing in my carriage?”