Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
“Did Louisa not come back with you?” asked Lady Esher as Seraphine and the children tumbled up the steps into Rosemere, pink-cheeked and smiling from their outing and exercise.
Benedict was just descending the stairs as they entered and his ears pricked up at the mention of Louisa’s name. While the house was quiet, he had just been to her empty bedroom and returned her book, laying it on her bed along with a fragrant white rose from the garden.
The addition of the flower was a kind of apology, Benedict supposed, or perhaps compensation for keeping the dried rose that had dropped from the book. Either way, he hoped he had not been seen and would not have to explain what others would wrongly see as a romantic gesture.
“Oh, yes,,” Seraphine answered her aunt. “Louisa has just gone down to the orchard to choose two of the best and sweetest apples for Fanny and Ezra who walked so well today and were so well behaved in our calls on your neighbors, and especially during luncheon with Sir Arthur and Lady Manners.”
“What good children!” Lady Esher praised them. “I have rarely met two such strong walkers so young. Ah, Your Grace, you are here now too. Will you join us for tea? Damien said that he must deal with his correspondence today and I don’t believe we will see him before dinner.”
“Uncle Benedict!” yelled Ezra, hurling himself at Benedict while Fanny took one of his hands. “Come and play, Uncle Benedict!”
“I am not sure whether tea will be allowed,” laughed Benedict. “I must ask Ezra, I think.”
“Tea first, Ezra, and then you may play with Benedict, if he has time,” his mother told him sternly.
“I don’t like tea,” Ezra pouted, much to the adults’ amusement. “I can play now.”
“You have milk instead of tea, Ezra,” Fanny told him with big-sisterly impatience. “I have tea, though.”
“Remember, you shall both have rosy red apples soon enough too,” Lady Esher reminded them. “Let us all go to the garden drawing room and call for our tea there. Then we shall see Louisa on the path as she comes back and wave her in."
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen and then twenty, without any sign of Louisa appearing.
Benedict tried to dismiss stray anxious thoughts – after all, she was only walking in her own gardens.
He reached the limits of his self-control, however, when he saw Lady Esher checking her pocket watch against the clock on the mantelpiece.
If Louisa’s aunt was also now worried, he was not overreacting. What if Lord Ashbourne had not been deterred by the warning of their rabbit shooting the other day? What if he had come back and waited to find Louisa alone..?
“I’m going out to find Louisa,” the Duke of Northwick declared, going straight to the French windows, stepping outside and closing them again before Ezra had a chance to follow him, or any of the adults to deter him.
He thought again of that lurking figure he had seen through the telescope, tall, thin and fair-haired with dark, piercing eyes.
Damn it all, Benedict would have it out with the man once and for all and thrash him soundly if he caught him on the Rosemere estate today, regardless of Damien’s calls for caution.
After reading Lord Ashbourne’s letters, even Damien had changed his original position somewhat, agreeing that there was something not right about the man’s mind.
Benedict had spoken to Lady Esher since then too, telling her a little of the letters, although not giving the full and alarming detail of Lord Ashbourne’s obsessive behavior.
They had agreed that the gamekeepers should keep an extra watch for intruders.
Given the Earl of Ashbourne’s rank, however, the servants would have limited ability to act.
Decisive action must fall to Benedict in the end.
His long legs covered the distance from the house down to the fountain quickly and then took a short cut, vaulting easily over a hedge which separated the decorative lawns from the path to the kitchen gardens and working orchards.
This late in the day, Benedict came across only one gardener, cleaning and putting away tools in the shed.
“Have you seen Lady Louisa?” he asked the old man, who shook his head and shrugged.
“No, Your Grace. Lady Louisa hasn’t come this way and I’ve been working around here this past hour.”
Nodding acknowledgement, Benedict frowned and continued on his way towards the orchards, picking up his pace even more. Louisa had likely taken another route from the front of the house to the orchard, but she would presumably have returned this way, if she had got that far.
“Louisa!”
Passing through the gate in the hedge that fenced off the first of the orchards, Benedict called her name. At first there was only silence but then he heard a woman’s cry and broke immediately into a run towards it’s source.
“Louisa!” he bellowed as he caught sight of her golden-haired figure racing towards him from where a collection of classical statues had been scattered among the fruit trees by some eccentric earlier owner of the house.
A moment later, she was safe in Benedict's arms, shaking and gasping for breath as he scanned over her shoulder for signs of what might have precipitated such a state of mind.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” he asked urgently, seeing no obvious injury beyond the disarray of her hair and fright in her eyes. “Did something scare you?”
“Benedict! Thank God you came,” Louisa burst out, clinging to him. “There was someone in the orchard following me. I’m sure of it. I couldn’t get away. I heard him laugh.”
“Who?” Benedict demanded, looking around again and wondering if Ashbourne were here somewhere watching them right now. “Who was it? Did you see his face?”
Louisa shook her head.
“When I first heard someone moving around, I thought it was old Bill, the gardener. But when he laughed, I knew it wasn’t Bill, or any of our gardeners.
All I saw was a glimpse of a man’s coat as he hid behind a statue, the one of Hercules.
I tried to hide too, behind trees and statues, but I could hear him following me each time. ”
While Benedict strongly wished to search the orchard and give the intruder the thrashing he so richly deserved, he could feel Louisa trembling against him.
She had been badly frightened and the first priority must be to bring her back to the house.
He could come out here again later with Damien and make whatever investigation was possible.
“Come, I’ll take you back to your aunt,” Benedict said gently.
He put an arm about Louisa’s shoulders and even dropped an entirely innocent kiss on her hair for good measure, hoping that Ashbourne really was watching and would see that she was now far from unprotected.
What vile kind of man would have deliberately played such a game of cat and mouse with a lone young woman?
“The house is not so far to run but I was afraid that if I ran out in the open, he would catch me,” Louisa whispered. “I was so frightened, Benedict, but then you came…”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you, Louisa,” Benedict promised fiercely, feeling and meaning every word he spoke, and then raised his voice for any unseen ears. “If anyone ever threatens you, there will be consequences.”
Louisa leaned against his shoulder in response and then let him steer her back towards the house. The only other sound was the wind through the trees.
“Shooting at this hour?” queried Damien as he followed Benedict to the gunroom. “There’s only a couple of hours until dinner.”
“Evening is the best time to get rabbits,” Benedict said calmly, loading his gun.
“This is also the best time to look around the orchard. If Ashbourne was there and left any clues, they could all be trampled away by gardeners and wheelbarrows in the morning. Ezra and Fanny are also each owed an apple.”
“You’ve told the gamekeepers that we’ll have the guns out, I take it? We don’t want them to come running, thinking there’s a plague of poachers on the estate.”
“Yes, Damien, I have taken care of that already. The ladies know too and will not be alarmed by our shots.”
Calm and methodical, Benedict did not pause in his preparations as he replied. Sufficiently assured, Damien collected a weapon from one of the wall cases and went through the same motions as his friend.
“I see where you’re going with this, Benedict, but can you be entirely sure it was Ashbourne?
” the Duke of Wexford asked. “I’m not saying that Louisa imagined it, for she is not the nervous type, but what if it was only some local boy scrumping for apples?
He might have been as scared of her as she was of him. ”
“You didn’t see quite how frightened Louisa was, Damien.
Dreamer or not, she’s no fool either. If it had been a local boy playing around, Louisa would have known it at once.
She knows everyone in this district and they all love her…
No, I can’t be sure it was Ashbourne, but he’s the best guess I have for what happened. ”
Louisa had managed to compose herself by the time they got back to the house, although she had been dismayed to find she had forgotten the children’s apples.
Talking of a stranger in the orchard who had given Louisa a fright, Benedict had explained the incident in as neutral terms as possible before the children while signaling to Lady Esher and Seraphine that there was more to the matter.
As the ladies took charge of Louisa and gave her tea, he had also promised Ezra and Fanny that he would personally fetch their apples in time for supper.
“Are you going to chase the stranger away, Uncle Benedict?” Fanny had asked him.
“Yes, that too,” Benedict had assured her. “Your father and I will see to it, and there is nothing for you to worry about.”
There would be nothing for the women and children of the house to worry about because Benedict intended to make sure of it. Now, in the gunroom, both men were ready for their second bout of impromptu rabbit shooting this week.