Chapter 32 #2
“I need to get as near Harston Hall as you go,” she said quietly, drawing a coin from her purse. “I can’t pay a full fare, but I can pay something. I’ll ride in the back.”
He looked her over, saw the plain cloak, the tight jaw. “You running to something or from it?” he asked.
She managed a thin smile. “Both.”
He shrugged. “I’ll not say no to the coin. I’ll take you as far as the crossroads. From there you’ll be walking.”
“I’ve walked further,” she said.
She climbed up before he could change his mind, tucking herself among the sacks.
As the cart rolled away, she kept her head down and her heart steady.
It was only when they turned out of the Greystone drive that she allowed herself one glance back.
The house stood solid against the sky. No figures at the windows.
No one came running out and shouting her name.
Except, at the corner of the stable block, there was a flash of movement.
Lord Duskwood, with a coat thrown over his shoulders, had come out to the yard.
He saw the cart. Saw her cloak. She saw the moment he understood she had luggage at her feet.
He didn’t call out to her. His face set, hard and unhappy, and he stepped back under the archway.
His silence struck her harder than any alarm could have done.
She faced forward as the lane curved, hiding him from view.
By late afternoon, the air in the house had thickened with the weight of rain that hadn’t yet fallen.
Winston left his desk and the neat columns of names and dates he’d begun.
His knee complained about the hours in the chair.
His ribs sent up a quiet protest about the storm.
He ignored both and went in search of Adeline.
He meant to ask if she could bear to begin her own account that day.
He also meant, less nobly, to see her face, to hear Louisa’s voice rise in that particular way it did when Adeline had improved on one of his old stories.
The schoolroom was empty save for chalk dust and a wolf with six legs drawn by Louisa.
The small sitting room by the rose garden held only Cordelia’s abandoned embroidery.
The library contained Oswald, asleep in a chair with his boot heels planted on the hearthstone, snoring like a man who’d earned it. Winston smiled despite himself and went on. He found Mrs. Dale in the passage outside the stillroom.
“Have you seen Lady Adeline?”
“Not this last hour, Your Grace,” she said. “She was in the rose room after luncheon. Little Lady Louisa said they’d do letters, but then the child came down alone and asked Cook for an apple, so I suppose the letters didn’t take.”
He frowned. “Send Louisa to me when you see her. And if you see Lady Adeline, tell her I’m looking for her.”
He searched the garden next. No sign. The orchard? Only rooks. The lane down to the home farm? Empty. By the time he returned to the house, something colder than irritation had started to creep in. He went back to the library and woke Oswald with a hand on his shoulder.
“Have you seen Adeline?”
Oswald blinked, wiped a hand over his face, and sat up. “Yes.”
“Have you spoken to her?” Winston pressed.
“Not since this morning.” Oswald tipped his head from side to side as if he were stretching the muscles in his neck, “I asked whether she meant you harm. Whether she’s in league with Harston. Whether she’s bait in a trap you’ve been too besotted to see.” He didn’t apologize for the last word.
Winston’s jaw tightened. “And?”
“She denied it,” Oswald said. “Convincingly enough that I almost believed her until I saw her leaving two hours ago with a valise and her plainest cloak, climbing into a cart at the end of your drive without a word to anyone.”
The world did not tilt. It narrowed.
“You saw her leaving,” Winston said, “and you didn’t stop her.”
“I’m not her gaoler,” Oswald said, some heat entering his voice at last. “If she’s as innocent as she claims, she’s running because she thinks it will protect you.
If she’s not, then she’s gone to do whatever work she came here to do.
Either way, dragging her back by the hood in the yard wouldn’t have helped. ”
“You could have told me at once,” Winston said.
“And what should I have said?” Oswald shot back. “That the woman you’re half in love with has just fled your house like a thief? I came here to sleep and think. You found me first.”
Winston opened his mouth, shut it, and pressed his fingers hard into the bridge of his nose.
Anger at Oswald sat badly beside the knowledge that he had been the one to lie still at his desk believing the house would hold.
Before he could shape a reply, there was a knock at the library door.
Firm, assured, the kind of knock used by men who thought houses existed for their convenience.
A maid’s voice followed, thin with nerves.
“Your Grace, there’s a gentleman to see you. A Mr. Pike.”
Oswald’s eyes darkened. “Well,” he said under his breath. “The carrion birds travel in flocks.”
Winston scrubbed his hand over his jaw once and mastered himself. “Show him in,” he called.
Mr. Pike entered as if he’d been expected. Hat in hand, boots clean, coat without a crease. His smile hovered at the edge of propriety.
“Your Grace,” he said, bowing. “Lord Duskwood. I must insist on a private word.”
“You’re already having a word,” Winston said. “Say it in front of my friend or say it nowhere.”
Pike’s smile thinned. “Very well. I come in my capacity as agent to Lord Harston. His lordship has laid charges before a magistrate in town. I am bound to inform you that his daughter, Lady Adeline Warren, is accused of theft and…” He paused delicately.
“...of complicity in the death of her late mother.”
Oswald swore softly under his breath.
Winston’s hands went cold. “Complicity.”
“Indeed.” Pike produced a folded paper and tapped it.
“His lordship has given sworn testimony that Lady Adeline absconded with certain jewels and papers belonging properly to the Harston estate. Furthermore, he asserts that she argued with Lady Harston and fled the accident that resulted. An accident that saw Lady Harston tragically killed. He does not accuse her of murder but believes she is culpable.”
“Accident,” Winston repeated, every word a step on thin ice.
“A domestic dispute gone tragically awry,” Pike said smoothly. “You know how the world delights in exaggerating such things. In any case, Bow Street has been engaged to discover Lady Adeline’s whereabouts and to question all who have…harbored her.”
He let the word sit.
“Harbored,” Oswald said, sharp as a flint.
“It is a legal term, sir,” Pike replied, not looking at him. “Nothing more.”
Winston heard Adeline’s voice in the vicarage yard:
He killed my mother. I saw it.
He saw again the way her hands had shaken, not like a woman rehearsing a line but like a girl remembering the sound of a fall.
“And what,” Winston asked, “does Lord Harston suggest I have to do with this?”
“Merely that his daughter may have taken refuge in your household under a false name,” Pike said. “As your steward and the local magistrates can attest, strangers in a district draw notice. Bow Street will require statements. I thought it kinder to warn you before they do.”
“How very considerate,” Winston said.
Pike’s gaze flicked, just once, to the empty chair near the hearth where Adeline often sat. “If Lady Adeline is here, Your Grace, it would be wise to urge her to submit to proper questioning. If she flees, it will look…unfortunate.”
Winston’s mind had already run ahead.
Accused of theft and murder by the man who killed her mother. Bow Street roused. Strangers asking questions at my gates. And Adeline, who has always run from hurt, hearing of it and thinking there was only one thing to do.
“She isn’t here,” he said.
Pike’s brows rose a fraction. “No?”
“She left this house without my permission,” Winston said, each word smooth with effort. “If Bow Street wishes to find her, they may start with Harston Hall. My money says she’ll go there before anywhere else.”
Pike’s composure slipped just enough to show genuine surprise. “To Harston Hall? Why under heaven would she…”
“To gather what her father has been careful to hide,” Winston said. “Statements. Witnesses. A scrap of truth, if any of it is left where your master hasn’t trampled it.”
“Your Grace goes too far,” Pike said sharply. “I represent a peer of the realm.”
“You represent a man who beats his wife and sells his daughter on paper,” Winston replied. “You’ll forgive me if the realm impresses me less than my own eyes.”
Oswald made a small, admiring sound.
Pike’s lips thinned. “I shall convey your opinions to Lord Harston.”
“You do that,” Winston said. “And convey this as well. If he or any man in his employ sets foot on my land without a warrant signed and sealed by a magistrate I respect, I’ll have them turned out by my own hand.
If he wishes to charge his daughter with crimes, he may do it in a court where she can answer. Not in parlors and corridors.”
Pike recovered some of his smoothness. “Then we understand one another. Good afternoon, Your Grace. Lord Duskwood.”
He bowed and withdrew. The maid’s frightened face flashed in the doorway and vanished as the hall swallowed Pike up.
For a moment neither man spoke. The fire ticked. A log collapsed in on itself.
“Harston will go back to London,” Oswald said. “He’ll pull every string he has left. But she… Do you really believe Lady Adeline went to Harston Hall?”
“Yes.”
Oswald swore again, more feelingly. “How far ahead is she?”
“Two hours,” Winston said. “If your guess about when you saw her is right.”
“On a farmer’s cart, you’ll catch her.”
“On a farmer’s cart with a head start, we may meet her at the crossroads,” Winston said. He was already moving to the bellpull. “Or on the avenue if we’re too slow.”
He rang hard enough to make the wire hum.
“Have Hartley saddle the two best hunters,” he said when the footman appeared. “Not carriage horses, hunters. And send a boy to the forge. I want fresh shoes on both. We ride within the half hour.”
The man’s eyes widened but he bowed and hurried out.
Oswald had gone to the map table. “It’s a full day’s drive by coach,” he said. “On a good horse we can cut it, if we don’t break our necks.”
“We won’t,” Winston said. “I don’t have time to die.”
Oswald looked up at him then, the wariness still there but something like contrition in it now. “I should have stopped her,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” Winston said. “You should.”
Oswald took the blow as he deserved. “Then let me mend it.”
Winston hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. “Tell my mother what we can without frightening her. Tell her Louisa is not to know anything except that we’ve gone on business. She’ll smell a lie if it’s too neat. She gets that from you.”
Oswald’s mouth twitched. “From you, more like. I’ll manage them. You see to the horses.”
Winston stepped out into the corridor. The house felt different now, not less safe, but less still.
It was as if the stone itself had leaned forward, listening.
He paused at the foot of the main staircase, tempted, just once, to call Adeline’s name on the off-chance she’d appear at the landing with ink on her fingers and some tart remark about his timing.
Silence answered. He went on toward the yard.