Chapter Seven The Woman at the Blue Hart
Sebastian Rookwood’s first instinct was to send men.
It was, Marianne thought, entirely in character and not wholly unreasonable.
Men could ride quickly, knock loudly, command ostlers, frighten innkeepers, search outbuildings, watch roads, and stand in doorways with the visible assurance that came from belonging to a great house.
Men in ducal livery could ask questions that would be answered because refusal might carry consequence.
Men with broad shoulders and hard faces could cross a yard, open a stable door, and announce that a woman once known as Mrs Pike was required by the Duke of Halgrave.
And if Mrs Pike had any sense at all, she would run before they reached the kitchen.
Marianne said as much in Lady Theodosia’s study at Lantern House the morning after Lady Honoria Datchworth’s assembly, though perhaps with more restraint.
“She will not speak to your men.”
Sebastian, who had arrived before breakfast and been admitted only because Mrs Finch had decided storms, threatening notes and mysterious former maids had temporarily altered the laws of visiting hours, looked down at the small scrap of paper found in Marianne’s glove.
Mrs Pike is not dead. Ask at the Blue Hart before Sunday.
“She may not speak to me either,” he said.
“That is the first sensible thing you have said since entering the room.”
Beatrice Ashcombe, who had smuggled herself into the study on the pretext of delivering a tray and remained on the basis that everyone needed witnesses to folly, gave a small cough behind her teacup.
Sebastian did not look away from Marianne. “I can have the Blue Hart watched. If Mrs Pike is there, she can be detained until I arrive.”
“Detained?”
“Questioned.”
“By whom?”
“By someone capable.”
“A frightened former lady’s maid, accused of theft, paid to disappear, and now apparently hiding under another name, will not distinguish between capable men and dangerous ones merely because the capable men are better dressed.”
His jaw tightened. “You assume she will trust you.”
“No. I assume she is more likely to fear me less.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“Fear less is often where trust begins.”
Helena Vane, seated at Lady Theodosia’s desk with the calm of one who knew she would be required to govern both urgency and pride, tapped one finger against the note. “Marianne is right.”
Sebastian turned to her. “Naturally.”
The dryness of it might once have irritated Marianne. This morning, she found herself dangerously near amusement.
Helena continued, “If Mrs Pike is alive and within reach, we cannot risk frightening her away. Nor can we risk alerting whoever sent the note, assuming it was not Mrs Pike herself. The approach must be quiet.”
“It cannot be too quiet,” Sebastian said. “A woman has already been nearly run down in Chancery Lane, threatened by name, and followed from Halgrave House.”
Marianne folded her hands. “The woman is present and may be consulted.”
He looked at her. “I was consulting you.”
“You were speaking around me.”
“I was speaking of practical dangers.”
“And I am one of them?”
For a moment his face changed. Not with anger, but with that peculiar, inward check he had begun to show whenever he discovered his intentions had taken a familiar path before he had examined them.
“You are the person most at risk,” he said, more carefully.
“Then ask me whether I accept the risk.”
“Would your answer matter?”
“Yes.”
“To you?”
“To both of us, if you intend to keep pretending we are partners.”
That landed. She saw it.
Helena intervened before either of them could sharpen the exchange into something less useful. “We have until Sunday, according to the note. Today is Friday. We go today.”
“We?” Beatrice said hopefully.
“No,” Helena replied.
Beatrice’s face fell. “You did not even consider it.”
“I considered the certainty that you would challenge someone in a stable yard before luncheon.”
“Only if provoked.”
“Beatrice.”
“Oh, very well.”
Mrs Finch, who had stood near the door with the expression of a woman prepared to overrule all nobility and most law, said, “Miss Vale is not going to an inn beyond London with His Grace alone.”
“No,” Helena said. “Mrs Alderley will accompany her.”
Mrs Alderley, who had been listening from the armchair with her ear trumpet aimed imperfectly at Sebastian’s shoulder, brightened. “Am I going somewhere improper?”
“To the Blue Hart,” Helena said.
“I have never been there. Is it disreputable?”
“We do not yet know.”
“Excellent. New experiences are good for the circulation.”
Sebastian looked as though circulation was the least of his concerns. “Mrs Alderley endured enough yesterday.”
“I enjoyed yesterday,” Mrs Alderley said. “Except for Fenwick. He dresses like a boiled sweet and talks like damp bread.”
Marianne pressed her lips together.
Helena’s plan, once made, became law by being written.
They would travel in daylight. Sebastian’s carriage would be used because it was faster and better sprung than the Lantern House carriage.
A groom would ride behind. Tom would accompany them, because Marianne trusted him and because his indignation at danger was reassuringly practical.
Mrs Alderley would provide propriety, though everyone understood she also provided unpredictability, which in some circumstances was even more valuable.
They would ask at the Blue Hart discreetly.
If Mrs Pike was found and willing to speak, her words would be taken down, witnessed if possible, and copied upon return.
No one would remain beyond daylight unless weather, road or necessity required it.
Mrs Finch objected to necessity on principle.
Necessity ignored her.
They departed before ten, after Mrs Finch had equipped the carriage with a hamper large enough to sustain a small siege and Helena had taken Marianne aside in the hall.
“You need not go,” Helena said.
Marianne looked at her, surprised.
Helena’s composure was rarely gentle. It was something steadier than gentleness. But now, beneath the dark mourning silk and the contained authority of Lady Theodosia’s heir, there was worry.
“I know I have allowed it,” Helena continued. “Encouraged it, even. I know you are most likely to succeed where His Grace cannot. But this began with Lady Theodosia’s work, not yours. You do not owe the dead every danger they leave behind.”
Marianne glanced toward the open study door, where Lady Theodosia’s shawl could just be seen over the back of the chair.
“I know,” she said.
“Do you?”
Marianne considered the answer. She had owed Lady Theodosia much: employment, respect, purpose, the first astonished laughter that had made her intelligence feel less like an awkward burden.
Yet debt was not the only thread that bound her to this investigation.
Nor even loyalty. There was Evangeline’s letter, yes, and the girl in the torn ball gown whom Marianne had never forgotten.
There was the gossip sheet addressed to her own name.
There was the old, familiar anger that rose whenever men assumed women’s lives could be rearranged, silenced, paid off, sealed away, and then called unfortunate.
But there was something else too, less simple and more dangerous.
There was Sebastian Rookwood, waiting by the carriage with his hat in one hand, looking toward the street because he had learned, perhaps, not to appear to command her while she was speaking with Helena.
“I am going because Mrs Pike may speak to me,” Marianne said. “And because if she does not speak today, she may vanish again before tomorrow.”
Helena studied her. “Is that all?”
“No.”
Helena did not ask the rest.
Perhaps she knew better.
Mrs Alderley came down the stairs then, dressed for travel in a cloak of dark plum and a bonnet whose feathers had lost none of their defiance since the ball. “If we are to pursue criminals before luncheon, I insist upon departure. My courage becomes less decorative after noon.”
Tom, behind her, muttered something about criminals having no consideration, and Mrs Finch thrust another wrapped parcel into his hands.
Marianne stepped out into the morning.
The rain had stopped, but the world still glistened from it.
The square smelled of wet stone, horse leather and the faint green scent of battered trees.
Sebastian stood beside the carriage, and when Marianne approached, he did not reach for her hand at once.
He waited, offered his arm only when she paused before the step, and said, quietly enough that only she heard, “May I?”
A small thing.
Absurd that it mattered.
It did.
“You may,” she said.
His gloved hand closed around hers for the briefest possible moment as he helped her in.
There was nothing improper in it. Nothing tender, perhaps.
Nothing anyone could have named. And yet the gesture, because it was asked and not assumed, settled somewhere in Marianne’s chest with uncomfortable warmth.
The first hour of the journey passed with Mrs Alderley awake and conversational, which was to say no one else was required to carry more than half a thought to its conclusion before she interrupted it.
She spoke of the dreadful state of roads, the decline of manners among innkeepers, the unreliability of nephews, the superiority of plum cake over seed cake, and a colonel named Fortescue who had once hidden behind a shrub at Vauxhall to avoid a woman he later married.