Chapter Fifteen #3
Before long an old man entered the parlor, his gaze going first to Gideon, then to Irene.
He was a compact man, not tall, but sturdily built, with close-cropped iron-gray hair.
He wore a gray jacket over dark breeches and a plain collarless shirt, and it was clear that he had been out in the yard working.
A sheen of perspiration still dotted his forehead.
He bowed his head toward Gideon. “My lord.”
“You are Mr. Owenby?” Gideon asked.
“Just Owenby, sir. That is what his lordship always called me.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
Gideon introduced Irene, and the other man gestured toward the chairs grouped before the small fireplace. “Please, sit down, my lord. My lady. May I bring you a cup of tea? Water?”
“No, thank you. We came here to ask you a few questions about the night my mother and I…left Radbourne Park.”
“Of course, sir. When you were kidnapped.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Of course, my lord.” He flicked a glance at Irene.
“Lord Radbourne got a note asking for that necklace, and he gave it to me in a little velvet pouch and told me where to take it. So I did. I left it beneath a pew in the church, and then I went down the road to a certain oak tree and I waited. Only nobody ever came to give you to me.”
“Owenby, stop,” Gideon said shortly. “There is no need to pretend. My grandmother has already told us that the kidnapping was a hoax, something my father made up to cover up what really happened.”
“Did she now? What did she say happened?”
“I’d rather hear it from you,” Gideon told him flatly.
The man shrugged. “Lord Radbourne went to Lady Radbourne’s chamber, but she was not there.
He thought she was downstairs, but he did not find her there, either.
He wasn’t worried at first. He looked around the house a bit, then in the garden, thinking she had gone for a walk.
He asked the servants, but none of them had seen her.
Then the governess came down, screeching like a madwoman, saying as how you were gone.
Everybody started searching like mad then.
And finally, in his study, his lordship found the note she had left for him. ”
“Did you see this note?” Gideon asked.
“Me, sir? No. He wasn’t likely to show a private letter to me. But he told me that she had run away. She’d taken you and gone off with a man.” His lips curled contemptuously. “No surprise to me.”
“Why not?” Irene asked, rather taken aback by the man’s tone.
The man barely spared her a glance. “I could see what kind of woman she was—begging your pardon, sir. Anybody could see, except his lordship.”
Irene could not help but be struck by the difference between this man’s opinion of Gideon’s mother and the one expressed by his uncle.
It was unusual for a devoted servant to speak ill of his master’s wife—and even more so for him to express such an opinion in front of that woman’s son.
Clearly Owenby’s bitterness toward the countess ran deep.
“And what did my father do after he read the letter?” Gideon asked.
“Sent me after them, that’s what,” the older man answered simply.
“He wasn’t one to let her go without a fight, least not at first. He didn’t tell anyone else what had happened.
I took a horse and rode to the village. His lordship took the road the other way.
” He shrugged. “We couldn’t find anyone who’d seen a woman and child, with or without a man. ”
“Did she take a horse from the stables? How did she leave?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. His lordship questioned the head groom, but he said no horses had been taken. I figured she must have taken the boy and run down to the road to meet her lover. That he was waiting for her with a carriage or horses.”
“How long did Lord Cecil search for her?”
The man shrugged. “He didn’t search, not after that first morning.
He thought she’d see the error of her ways and come back.
But he had to tell the servants and the neighbors something, so he came up with that tale of the two of you being kidnapped.
He figured nobody would question her being gone a few days and then coming back if she had been taken.
Only she didn’t. He didn’t hear from her.
A week or so later, he sent me to try to track them down.
But it was useless. The trail was cold. I couldn’t find anyone who’d seen them, and I had to be careful not to let the truth get out.
I checked some ports. I asked at the docks.
Nobody remembered seeing a woman and child or a family, at least not a particular one. ”
“Then what did you do?”
“I came back. What else could I do? They had done a good job of covering their tracks. We had no way of knowing where they went. I think Lord Radbourne hired another man later to look for you and the lady on the Continent, but he never found aught.” His mouth tightened.
“His lordship was never the same after that.”
“You remained in my father’s employ?”
“Of course.” The valet nodded. “Until the day he died. I gave him his medicine and brought his food to him, what little he could get down. He was a good man, Lord Cecil, and a good master.”
“Less good as a father, it seems to me,” Irene offered.
The valet shot her a scornful look. “Begging your pardon, miss, but you didn’t know the man. Or the woman. She broke him, she did. He deserved better than that—” he bit off the clearly derogatory remark he had been about to make, casting a quick glance at Gideon, and said instead “—that woman.”
“I would think a man would make more of an effort to find his own son,” Irene countered.
“He thought the boy was better off with his mother,” Owenby shot back. “He didn’t know she had let him go in the city to fend for himself.”
“How do you know she did?” Gideon asked.
“What? What do you mean?”
“How do you know that she let me go in London?”
“I don’t. I just assumed…I mean, that’s where they found you, didn’t they? That’s what the rumor is, that the duke found you in some gaming hell in London and knew it was you.”
Gideon arched his brows. “A little more colorful, perhaps, than the literal truth, but yes, London is where I lived.”
“And can you remember nothing else?” Owenby asked. “Nothing about your mother or how you came to London?”
“No. Nothing. I would like very much to find out what happened.”
“I wish I could help you, my lord,” Owenby said. “But I’ve told you all I know.”
“My father never heard anything from her? No letters? No rumors? No one ever claimed to have seen her?”
“Not that I know of.”
That was all they were able to get out of him, though Gideon asked him a few more questions. His reply was always the same: He had told them everything he knew. Gideon’s mother had run away with her lover, taking her son with them.
It was clear that he was through. Finally Gideon nodded and bade the man a polite goodbye. Then he and Irene left the cottage.
“Well,” Irene commented as they settled into the carriage and drove away from the valet’s cottage, “he is certainly consistent in his answers.”
“And not inclined to elaborate on them, either,” Gideon added. “I cannot help but wonder if he knows more than he is saying.”