Chapter 23
The morning after the inspection, Adrian came down to the breakfast room to find Honoria already spreading jam on a piece of toast, and Oliver nowhere in sight.
“Where is Mr. Ferrand?” he asked, taking a seat and pouring himself a cup of tea.
Honoria answered without looking up. “He left early this morning with some business to attend to in town, he told me he would be back by breakfast but…” she trailed off, raising her hands as though to indicate that Oliver’s words did not match his actions.
“You saw him early this morning, before he left?” Adrian asked, as innocently as he could. Honoria was not known for rising before the sun.
“We walk, sometimes,” she said simply, taking a bite of her toast.
“The early mornings are a time I myself enjoy a vigorous stroll,” Adrian acknowledged, hiding a smile.
“Now that this business with Thornefield is beginning to draw to a close, dear Sister, do you think the London Season is going to capture your interest again, or do you plan to linger longer at the estate?”
Honoria set down her toast and raised her eyes to him, a small smile on her lips. “I may have reason to stay a week or so longer, if that is what you are implying—”
“I would not venture to imply anything,” Adrian said quickly, raising his hands in surrender. But in truth, Honoria did not seem as defensive about the matter today as she had the last time they talked. She seemed to have softened toward him, and towards his influence.
He steered completely away from Oliver but pressed gently, “I want you to know, Sister, that I regret being absent from your life for so long. I do not expect you to simply open the door to my advice and opinions now that you have been forced to navigate the social sphere without them for so long, but I would be remiss in letting another moment pass without telling you that I am at your service, should you require me in any capacity.”
Honoria arched a brow, and took a sip of tea. “Do you know, Adrian, I actually believe you? It was odd, watching you come to Miss Thorne’s defense for these last few weeks—I was intrigued, and I still urge you to question your true motives, but I was also… envious.”
Adrian nodded, her withdrawn behavior suddenly making sense. “Because I took more care with her problems than I have taken with yours?”
She inclined her head in agreement. “I know it is childish…”
“No, it makes perfect sense, and you are right to feel that way.” He set his own cup down. “I shall make an effort to be less absent in the future, Honoria.”
She smiled weakly in agreement, just as the door opened to admit Oliver. He was still shrugging out of a riding coat and pulling off his gloves as he strode to the breakfast table. Adrian noted that he pulled out a chair by Honoria’s side as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
“How was the village?” he asked.
“Enlightening,” Oliver grinned, catching up a soft-boiled egg in one hand, tossing it lightly to the other, and then setting it in the cradle cup in front of him.
He had the air of a man who was more than a little confident in himself.
“I returned with two pieces of post for you, and a bit of news.”
Honoria’s eyes had lit up at his entrance, and Adrian did not miss the bright colors of pink in her cheeks when Oliver had chosen a seat at her side. “What did you learn?” she asked.
“I thought this morning that we ought to follow up on some of the players in yesterday’s performance,” Oliver said, nodding at Adrian. “Your brother here sent his groom in to ask after Mrs. Vane—that is the first letter I bring—and he sent me to see after Sir Percival.”
“Oh dear,” Honoria said, looking nervous. “I hear that he is an uncouth character. Was it entirely safe for you to engage him on your own?”
Oliver smiled easily. “I think I can manage a foppish cad fairly easily, Lady Honoria, but I will say that I was not afforded the chance to put my military practice to good work. Sir Percival Drake was gone. His horse—gone.
His rooms—paid in coin and stripped of every paper and distinguishing element that might be a clue.
” He leaned forwards, his eyes sparkling, and added in a conspiratorial tone, “The innkeeper was utterly baffled with how, and why a gentleman might leave in the night without the boy in the stable hearing him go.”
Honoria laughed despite herself. “You make it sound very torrid.”
“Perhaps.” Oliver seemed to soak up her laughter like sunshine. “But then again, I believe Drake is a rather torrid man. The question is—have we seen the back of him for good?”
He raised his eyes to Adrian’s, and for the first time since Oliver’s debonair entrance, Adrian saw something lurking in his gaze that was not purely charm and delight. He was worried about something. Have we really seen the back of Drake?
“I would have been happier to send him on his way myself and be certain of his leaving,” Adrian mused, “but I imagine a gentleman as scurrilous as he does not linger when he knows his game is up.
He will likely take to the nearest city and start his ploy all over again with some other unsuspecting lass. I will write to my solicitor to see if we can do anything about prosecuting him, but I am not hopeful. He has slipped the arm of the law before.”
Honoria clasped her hands together and smiled. “What of the two letters?” she asked.
“Ah, yes.” Oliver reached into his coat and pulled out both. One had clearly travelled a distance, the other was written in a casual and familiar hand and not even addressed.
“This is from my groom,” Adrian said, opening the simple note.
“I sent him to the village early this morning to inquire after Mrs. Vane, he writes that…” he scanned the page, synthesizing the information as he did so, “…she was seen at the Vane cottage at midnight paying her reckoning to her housekeeper in coin and giving notice that the cottage was to be shut up… and at four o’clock at the post-house at Hatfield boarding the London coach alone, in a travelling cloak, with a single trunk. ”
“She was ‘seen?’” Honoria asked, wrinkling her brow. “By whom? At that hour?”
“Doubtless the driver was willing to speak once his services were no longer regularly required,” Adrian said drily. “That is the only person I imagine would be able to see both the paying of the housekeeper and the boarding of the London coach.”
He let out his air all at once, feeling the relief wash over him in a wave. “So she was part of it, after all. I know I ought to have confronted her one last time, but… I am more relieved she has gone her own way.”
He raised his eyes, meeting Honoria’s. There was a question in her own. “Are you relieved, brother? I wondered if her presence here might have brought up… old memories.”
“Resolved them, more like,” Adrian said. He thought of the night of the Assembly, and how he had fled that woman, and the manipulation that dripped from her very being, for the security and peace of Rosalind’s company. “I feel nothing for Mrs. Vane anymore,” he said, and he meant it.
The third and final note was from his London solicitor. It was entirely unexpected, and for a moment Adrian considered waiting to open it until he returned to his study.
Doubtless it was a matter of personal business irrelevant to the table at large. In the end he opened it simply to satisfy Honoria’s curiosity, and read the contents with growing agitation.
“It is about Mr. Edmund Crewe,” he said, after finishing the letter.
He looked up at Oliver. “The man who holds Mr. Crewe’s debts—a certain Gilford E.
Stanley—has been named in a public suit.
His agents have been named as well, and there is a case against him in London waiting only for instructions from witnesses to the events of the last few days. ”
Oliver’s eyes widened. “I know that name. Gilford E. Stanley...” he looked into the distance, reaching for some far off memory. “Ah, yes,” he said suddenly, “I heard tell of him at a club I attend on occasion.
He is notorious around the gaming tables—he rarely plays, but always seems to be on hand to loan money to those who would be better served ceasing gambling entirely.”
“Do you think he is a dangerous man, this Stanley?” Adrian pressed.
“I would not get on his bad side,” Oliver said grimly. “I have no doubt that, if your solicitor is digging into his past, he will find more than extortion. He is the sort of man who has been at the top so long nobody dares challenge him.”
Adrian nodded at the letter. “He writes of you, Oliver—your visit alerted him to the possibility of a greater conspiracy. He is looking to prosecute.”
Adrian stood suddenly, a bolt of understanding flashing through him. “I must go to Thornefield,” he said. “For the picture has come clear at last.”
***
He found Rosalind in the orchard, dressed simply in brown calico with an old gardening apron tied around her waist and pruning shears in her hands.
Her hair was in a long, loose braid, like some fairy tale princess, and she was too focused on her work to notice his approach.
When he spoke, she jumped and turned with a smile.
“Lord Marwood! What a surprise.” She looked bright and healthy, and free of worry at last.
He nodded at the pruning shears clutched in her hand. “That is rather rough work, is it not?”
“It feels good to be out of doors,” she said, snapping the bough off with a rough twist of her wrist. “And this tree has been needing tending for some time.”
“I received news from town about your stepbrother,” Adrian said quietly. “Do you have a moment to talk?”
She nodded, and set the shears aside, a small crease of worry coming to her forehead.
“It appears he was embroiled in a debt scheme with one Gilford E. Stanley.” Adrian sighed.
“He is rather notorious in financial circles for lending money to those who cannot repay, and then leveraging their position for his own gain. No doubt your brother’s attempt to claim Thornefield was in part inspired by his desperate need of funds. ”
“What shall he do now?” Rosalind asked, taking off her gardening gloves. “Will he be alright?”
Adrian tipped his head to one side, surveying her. “It is odd that you should ask that, Miss Thorne, after all he has done to you.”
“I was struck, yesterday, by how fearful he was,” she murmured.
Adrian raised his eyebrows. “I will look into the matter further, but it may well be that he has to face his bad decisions without recourse. I suspect, though I am not certain, that Mrs. Vane is similarly in Mr. Stanley’s debt.
Drake… I am not certain, with that gentleman, though he could be an enforcer or simply a vulture capitalizing on the situation. ”
“Well,” Rosalind sighed, “it is all over now, is it not?”
“Indeed, you and Thornefield are safe.” He examined her in the dappled light of the tree. “And you look the better for it, I must say. Did you have a headache today?”
She smiled, and shook her head silently. He nodded to the row ahead of them.
“Shall we walk, then, in celebration of your good health?”
She nodded and fell into step beside him, walking with the ease they had developed over the last few weeks in the moving afternoon light.
He felt as though her very presence was as restorative to his spirit as the outdoors was to her own health. He did not even feel the need to speak—he only wished this moment to remain, spun out before him like a golden thread, forever.
It was not until that evening, when he returned home on horseback, that the perfection of the last day came crumbling down around him. He was putting away his saddle when a slip of paper fluttered free—tucked there at some point during the day.
On it was a single sentence in an unfamiliar hand, and it struck fear into his heart: Tell your lady that she is being watched.