Chapter Seven #2
He hesitated, searching her face, which she kept carefully focused on him. He melted visibly. “Well, by gossip, Anne Jenson, the blacksmith’s daughter, for one. I believe her brother is helping you out here during the day.”
“Harold Jenson?” April hazarded.
“A simple soul but he knows right from wrong, which is more than Edward seems to. He courted Anne quite assiduously, then publicly ignored her in favour of Peggy, your parlour maid—much to the dismay of young Godley the gardener’s son, who had been walking out with Peggy.
There was probably the farmer’s wife at Edgwick, too.
There was certainly some trouble over there.
It seems Edward can’t pass up a pretty face, and he cares nothing for the trouble he causes. ”
“Then you think this attack could be the result of such trouble?”
“It’s possible. I always suspected he would push things too far one day. You will call on me again if you need me?”
April did not point out that she hadn’t actually called on him in the first place. Instead, she said, “Perhaps you and Dr. Fosterson could combine your talents.”
“If we get the opportunity,” Forbes said, shaking his head. “I am not sanguine, Lady Petteril. Not at all.”
***
DESPITE HIS DETERMINATION to discover Edward’s attacker, Piers found himself unwilling to cast a pall over this rare reunion of friends. Listening was also a useful tool of investigation, so he was doubly happy to join Hubb in a brisk walk after breakfast.
The primary purpose of the walk was to indulge Hubb’s interest in botany, though Piers discreetly guided their steps through the woods in the general direction of the summer house. It was a good excuse to poke amongst the undergrowth while they admired the fine display of bluebells.
While Hubb happily examined the different species, Piers poked around looking for any signs of bloodied sticks or stones.
“English, Spanish and hybrid,” Hubb said. “This is an excellent wood.”
“You should come and see the home wood at Haybury some time,” Piers said. “Fellow called Camden found a ghost orchid there last year.”
Hubb’s eyebrows flew up. “Epipogium aphyllum? Good God! I gave up looking for those. Wasn’t Sir Darius Camden by any chance?”
“That’s the man. Definitely an enthusiast. He was pleased as punch to discover it—the day before he left the area too.”
“I will come and have a poke around,” Hubb said determinedly.
“You’re welcome any time, with or without your lady wife. You all are.”
“Very civil of you, Withy.” Hubb sounded unexpectedly earnest. He straightened and moved on.
Piers whacked at some undergrowth with the long stick he had brought for the purpose.
Hubb said diffidently, “Sorry about the fuss Katherine made over her wretched reticule. I assure you she isn’t normally like that. I think she was nervous of meeting you all. Still, I knew it would turn up somewhere obvious.”
“I’m very glad it did. But she was right, you know. It definitely wasn’t there yesterday. Things in that house do appear to move and return at will. Whose will is the question.”
Hubb coloured faintly and Piers wondered if Mrs. Hubb had blamed April for the disappearance. “It makes no sense. Why would anyone bother? It makes a rather lame trick. I can imagine a servant might steal it, though I’m not saying anyone did. But then, why give it back?”
“Perhaps there was nothing in it that could easily be sold.”
“I doubt there was. A comb, a pin, a handkerchief, and a letter she hadn’t answered. Or at least, that’s what she told me when I asked.”
Piers regarded him carefully. There was some slight edge in his friend’s voice that made him say tactfully, “Do you think she forgot something?”
“Why else would she have made such a fuss?”
The letter, thought Piers. He whacked at some more brush around a tree trunk and then used the stick to point at another wildflower, pale beside the riot of bluebells ahead of them.
Hubb told him both the popular and Latin names, though they meant nothing to Piers.
“Funny to see you married,” Piers said casually.
“Funny to see you similarly leg-shackled,” Hubb retorted.
“Do you miss your bachelor freedoms?”
“No,” Hubb said. In Piers’s observations, most men behaved after marriage much as they had before it. Hubb, loyal by nature, had never struck him as the kind of man to humiliate his wife by affairs. There was a bit of a pause, then Hubb added, “I think it is Katherine who sometimes regrets it.”
Piers moved a large stone with his foot, turning it over and discovering nothing more interesting than mud and moss. “What makes you say that?”
“It had been arranged between us before I even went to Oxford,” Hubb said. “By our families, largely. We were too young. I told her to consider herself free if she preferred someone else. Noble, was I not?”
“Or hopeful?”
“No,” Hubb said simply. “There was no one else for me.”
“But there was for her?”
Hubb nodded. “I didn’t think I’d care. I was so young and foolish when I came to Oxford that I didn’t really know all I had in her. But when I came home again, I knew. Too late.”
“You weren’t exactly faithful yourself, Hubb.”
Hubb shrugged that off. “Young and foolish. Wild oats. Women aren’t meant to feel the same. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. She was faithful in body. Just not in spirit.”
“And you suspect the letter in her reticule was from him? And she didn’t want anyone else reading it?”
“Not that it matters,” Hubb muttered. “But yes, it springs to mind.”
Piers searched his face and returned to the ground around him. “Talk to her.”
“Talk?” Hubb said. “Do you talk to your...?” He broke off, biting his lip.
Your kitchen maid? Your street urchin? Piers said tranquilly, “My wife? Yes, as it happens.”
“Just not about Claudia Algernon?”
Piers blinked. “Claudia? There is nothing to tell.”
“Not sure Claudia—or Lady Petteril—would agree with you there, old fellow.”
That effectively silenced Piers, while he thought of April’s attitude of patience and waiting, and his own avoidance of remembering the blurry past. It wasn’t all part of the blackness that had consumed him in the last months before he left Oxford for good.
And by avoiding the whole issue, he was giving it legs to run on. ..
Casting all that aside for later, he said, “Edward didn’t try to flirt with Mrs. Hubb, did he?”
“He looked, but only once.”
And at least once at Claudia. Had Hale really been asleep at two o’clock last night? Had Professor Algernon?
Appalled by the direction of his own thoughts, he was almost relieved when Hubb said impatiently, “Intelligent men, educated, civilized men, do not beat servants over the head for impudent disrespect. They dismiss them. Or have them dismissed.”
In theory. The trouble was, everyone had a temper. Even Piers. Even Mal. And definitely Hale.