Chapter 16
“Rutherford! Rutherford!” Keaton barked.
“Yes, Your Grace,” the tall butler answered from the doorway with his usual grace and patience.
“Where is she?” Keaton demanded. “The clock chimed the hour and now the half hour. Is she ready?”
“I have sent a maid to check, Your Grace, and...”
He cut off, and Keaton heard someone else enter the room. Heard whispering as that person relayed their information, then departed.
“I do not need my own staff keeping secrets. Out with it, man!” Keaton barked irritably.
“I am informed that Her Grace has not yet returned,” Rutherford imparted.
“Returned? She is not here?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Where has she gone?”
Rutherford hesitated. “I do not know, Your Grace. She took the trap earlier this morning.”
“And informed you she was taking it where?” Keaton pressed, his voice rising.
“I… was not informed of her intention to take it, nor the act itself.”
Keaton growled. “Someone must have known, Rutherford. One does not simply take a horse and trap from my stables without notice!”
He had been in the act of binding his cravat. Now he wrenched it from his neck and tossed it aside. The pin with its obsidian stone made a sharp clatter as it struck against something equally hard, terminating its flight.
“I believe the horse was bridled by Lawson in the stables, Your Grace,” Rutherford said, reluctance heavy in his voice.
“Sack him!” Keaton roared.
“Your Grace! No!” Rutherford was shocked to speak so plainly to his master.
“No?” Keaton whispered.
He stood stock still because he didn’t trust himself to be able to target Rutherford and walk to him accurately. His anger was clouding his spatial perception and his memory of the room. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back, knuckles cracking with the force.
“Your Grace, the boy has done nothing wrong other than obey the orders of the Duchess…”
“She is not the Duchess.”
“Your Grace, we were not to know that. There was a wedding. There were no standing orders given to me that Her Grace’s orders, or if you insist, Miss Roseton’s orders, were not to be carried out as your own would be.”
“Then it is yourself who has been remiss. You should have asked for such orders or taken them upon your own initiative.” Keaton turned away.
“Am I to be sacked then, Your Grace?” Rutherford questioned.
His response walked a fine line over a chasm of insolence. Only the butler and housekeeper would be permitted to even approach such a question, phrased in such a way and delivered in such a tone.
“If you do not change your ideas, then I might,” Keaton said sharply, “now leave.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Rutherford left, closing the door behind him.
Keaton cursed his own foolishness. He could ill afford to offend the butler.
Rutherford was an ally who helped him read the books in the library, including many that Keaton had known since his youth.
Keaton’s anger had been a bright, hot flame fed by the kindling of Georgia’s inexplicable behavior.
She knows her cousin is safe. Her Aunt and Uncle told her so, and I’m sure they will deliver the address of the sanatorium. Where else can she be going?
That's when he remembered Lord Hale. That thought had never fully left his mind. Now, he remembered the conversation. The sounds he had heard and the interpretation he had put on those words.
What was it about her that I heard going to Hale? This tale about a letter from her cousin could be nothing more than a ruse to give her the excuse to be out of this house.
He could not check. Could not search her rooms. Another man could put his mind at ease in moments by that means.
Keaton thumped his hand against a table, slapping the surface with the palm he had cut the day before.
The pain was loud, and he gritted his teeth against it.
He could recall Rutherford and ask him to look.
But after the way he had spoken to the loyal old retainer, he thought better of it.
Then the solution came to him. He actually smiled, knowing how he could either catch her in the act or clear the suspicion from his mind entirely.
He went to the bureau and felt among an array of wooden stamps.
Deft fingers found the shape of a name and address which he had patiently carved out of a block of birch years before.
The carving spelled out the name and address of a particular gentleman with quarters in London.
A tin contained a piece of wadded silk that had been soaked in ink.
He pressed the block against it and then carefully pressed it against a pristine envelope.
It was a means by which Keaton could summon the man to whom the envelope would be sent, without requiring him to recruit the assistance of another to write for him, and therefore allow him to keep secret whom he was sending for.
The envelope would arrive at the home of Mr. Aloysius Thorne empty, but he would understand it to be a summons.
As he replaced the stamp and the ink tin, Keaton’s hand brushed a heavy ring of metal.
He paused, letting his fingers read its surface, its elaborately worked surface, and the ostentatious stone that was set into it.
The metal the ring was made from was thick and substantial.
No wedding ring for a bride. It was a signet, used by a gentleman and inset with a ruby of quality.
And pushed into my hand by… someone. The first thing I was aware of when I awoke after the… accident. But by whom? And what does it mean?
“Joe…” he whispered, “short for Joseph. Joel? Johnathon. Devil, it could be half of England.”
That was another fragment of memory from that fateful night. A voice, desperate and hopeless. The voice of a dying man calling out to someone precious. Or calling out on their behalf. Or calling for an acquaintance. An intercession with God, perhaps.
He growled in frustration, feeling that his head was too full to be dwelling on this.
Georgia was ever-present in his thoughts, and the jealousy she ignited within him was corrosive and all-consuming.
He could not put it aside and ignore it any more than he would have been able to ignore a lit match burning down to his fingers.
The bureau snapped shut decisively, and he turned the key in the lock, pocketing it before letting his hand rest for a moment on its polished, smooth surface. It had belonged to his father, his father before that.
Uncle Edric once asked me if he could have it. I laughed at the sheer impudence of the man.
“But, old chap, you do not actually need it. You can’t use it, and I would like to keep something of my brother’s,” had been the incredulous reply.
Edric was certainly a man of nerve, to claim the possessions of a Duke like that. To overstep propriety so boldly. But that was Uncle Edric.
Keaton let his hand fall with a sigh, focusing his mind on the task of navigating the room and acknowledging to himself that he would need to apologize to Rutherford.
And say nothing to Georgia. There is little point in asking a question to which the answer will be a lie. Let Thorne discover the truth. That is his expertise after all. He will discover if my wife is being unfaithful.
Georgia stopped the trap a little way from Silverton, steering it into a field where she tied the reins to a gate and, picking up her skirts, walked along a country lane that she knew would lead her to the rear entrance of Silverton, the tradesperson's entrance.
She was a little breathless when she slipped through the gate in the tall brick wall that surrounded the estate, both from the exertion and her own boldness.
If Aunt or Uncle realize that I am here, there won’t be an explanation that I can give for being here without their knowledge. They will know that I am spying and may retaliate against Amelia. Oh, but I wish I knew what has become of her!
There was a tension inside that was only growing worse.
The knowledge that Amelia had pleaded for help and she had, so far, not been able to give any, was a weight on her shoulders.
The problem of Keaton’s high walls was another.
No matter how many times she told herself that those walls could not be stormed, that she did not care to try, her heart gave her the lie.
She could not stop herself from worrying at the problem, wanting to be inside those walls.
Why? Because he is handsome? I am not a silly girl to have my head turned by a fine pair of shoulders or a gleam in a rogue’s eye. I proved that to myself by my indifference to Lord Hale, beautiful and roguish though he is.
She scurried quickly across the stable yard towards the servants' quarters, feeling a pang of nostalgia. Living at Silverton had never exactly been comfortable. But among the servants, when her Aunt and Uncle had retired for the evening, Georgia had known acceptance and companionship. Family.
Oh, Elias, where are you? You should be my family! If you are in some far-flung corner of the world, simply write at least. I do not care as long as you are alive!
That weight was crushing. It made her want to stagger, doubled over. But she had borne it forever, or so it seemed. She could bear it a while longer.
Knocking at the door, she opened it and went inside. Those servants not immediately engaged in the big house were seated around the kitchen table, sharing a cup of tea and chatting while the cook bustled about the stove, occasionally joining in.
They made a fuss of Georgia when they saw her, all greeting her joyously and offering her food and drink. She declined as politely as she could but accepted a seat at the table.
“To what do we owe the pleasure, Your Grace?” Mrs. Pewter, the cook, asked, hovering over Georgia like a proud mother.
“I came to ask if Tom the Horse had returned from driving for Lady Amelia,” Georgia said, using the nickname that Thomas Higgins was known by on account of his expertise with the Silvertons’ horses.
“No, not yet, I’m afraid. He’s got a long drive ahead of him, bless,” Mrs. Pewter said, wiping her hands on a tea towel tucked into a pocket of her pinafore.
“From where?” Georgia asked.
“Why, I don’t know the exact place,” Mrs. Pewter pondered aloud, “somewhere in Kent as far as I know. Why, Your Grace?” she asked, inquisitively.
“I just had a hankering to see my cousin, that is all. Of course, my timing could not have been worse, for the very moment I decide to call on her is the precise moment she falls ill.”
Georgia noticed the look that passed between the servants.
“She was taken ill, was she not?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Of course,” Mrs. Pewter quickly answered, returning to her pots and pans.
The others echoed this sentiment as Georgia looked around the room.
“If there is something wrong, something I should know about…?” Georgia asked urgently.
“Only this, Your Grace. And you didn’t hear it from me,” murmured Murtaugh, her father’s former valet who also took up occupancy at Silverton as a senior footman, “Lady Amelia looked right as rain the day she went away. And none too pleased about going.”
Ice settled into Georgia’s stomach. She nodded, having expected something of the sort.
“No more of that talk now, James Murtaugh,” Mrs. Pewter warned with a flick of a soup spoon that sent liquid flying across the room, “it's his Lordship and Ladyship that do decide, and that’s what they said.”
“I would very much like to visit. Will you write me when Tom returns? Please?” Georgia implored.
She left Silverton in the same manner she arrived, and feeling the weight of her burdens even more than she had.
The clock in the kitchen had told her there was little time to get back to Westvale and prepare herself for the afternoon at Vauxhall Gardens.
Keaton would be displeased, she was sure.
But that could not be helped. She would not abandon Amelia even if it cost her Keaton’s enmity.