CHAPTER NINE #4
For himself, he knew it to be a curse, aggravated by the bitter blows to which fate had subjected him.
No, he had not been able to unleash himself on Rosina that night.
He had slept ill, his mind dwelling upon the undoubted unrest with which he guessed his Rosy was spending the night. All to be laid to his account.
“I must put an end to it, Ottery. Until this matter is resolved, I cannot trust myself to deal with her as she deserves.”
“And if the matter is resolved to your discontent, my lord?” Ottery had asked, with an accuracy of aim that pierced his defences.
He had sunk his head into his hands. “Don’t. That is the grief under which I hang suspended. It is killing me, Ottery!”
“And Lady Raith no less.”
Raith had jerked up again, his heart twisted by the reproach in his lawyer’s voice. “I know it. You are right to take her part. There are times when I wish fervently that she had not written that accursed letter, and put herself irrevocably into my hands.”
Ottery had leaned across the small desk and placed a hand over those Raith gripped together on its surface. It had afforded him a small degree of comfort to be understood. “My lord, if I believed you meant that, I would be advising you this moment to put her aside.”
A wry smile had creased Raith’s lips. “You know me too well.” His hand had turned up and gripped the one above it. “Help me, my friend. Yet again, I beg of you to help me.”
“You know I will, my lord. What do you wish?”
“I cannot go home. I cannot face her. At least, I must go back, if only to fetch some toggery and other necessaries. But I need not fear an encounter. If I know Rosina, she will be only too eager to stay out of my way.”
“But where will you go, my lord? You cannot walk away from your own home.”
“For what do you take me? No, no, Ottery. I will go with you to search out this nurse of hers. Until I have the truth, there can be no peace for either of us.”
But the hunt was nearly three days old, and they were no nearer to finding their quarry. His lawyer, however, had been thinking.
“My lord, I wonder if we might do better to go back to the receiving office.”
“For what purpose?”
“We have assumed a place within walking distance. I had been holding to the notion that Lady Raith, when she was Miss Charlton, had collected her letters for herself. But figure to yourself this, my lord. Now Her ladyship is gone to Ratley, how does the nurse receive any letters, if she is blind? Did you not say that Lady Raith had written to her?”
“Why did we not think of that before?” Raith half-rose from his seat. “I franked that letter for Rosina not a week since.”
As they were staying at the Crown at Brinklow while conducting their researches, it was no difficult task to find their way to the receiving office upon the morrow, and effect an interview with the individual in charge.
This worthy remembered their first visit, when Ottery had asked after “Miss Charlton.” No one had known from which village she had hailed.
“A blind woman this time, is it?” mused the postmaster, scratching his chin. “I don’t recall no blind woman a-coming here to fetch no letters.”
“But someone might have called on her behalf,” Ottery pressed him. “A friend, perhaps.”
The postmaster eyed them both dubiously. “You don’t have no name, then?”
“No,” replied Ottery with a patience Raith could only admire, “that is why we are asking. We know that the woman concerned lives in a cottage, at no great distance from here. At one time Miss Charlton, about whom we asked previously, was staying with her.”
The postmaster was shaking his head, a frown creasing his brow. There was no recognition here, and Raith’s heart sank.
But one of the clerks whose function was to sort the mail had been hovering in the background, apparently waiting on a query. He spoke up suddenly. “Your pardon, Mr Briggs, but would it be Mrs Hoswick as the gentlemen is after?”
Hope quickened in Raith’s breast. “Who is she, fellow?”
“I don’t know no Mrs Hoswick, lad,” objected Briggs.
“I were thinking of Toly Aughton, the apothecary’s boy down Hopsford way, sir.”
“Oh, young Toly?” said Briggs, his face clearing. “Ah, yes, gentlemen, maybe that’ll be it.”
Raith was on the point of bursting in, but he was checked by Ottery’s hand on his arm. As well his lawyer had so ready an understanding of his moods.
“How does this boy Toly come into the picture, Mr Briggs?” Ottery asked gently.
But it was the clerk who answered. “He come and fetch the letters for Mrs Hoswick, sir, as is blind and lives in a village about a half-mile from his master’s shop.”
“That’s right,” agreed Briggs. “Now I think of it, sir, he come in not a few days agone. There was a letter seemingly, wasn’t there, lad?”
“Aye, sir,” said the clerk, looking awed. “Franked by a lord it were.”
Raith exchanged a glance with Ottery. “What name?”
Ottery clarified it. “The lord’s name, lad. Do you recall?”
“Couldn’t hardly read it, sir,” uttered the clerk disparagingly. “A scrawl it was.”
His lordship gave a wry smile, as he asked, “Was it ‘Raith?”
“Aye, that would be it.”
Ottery became businesslike. “Right then, my lad. Where may we find this Toly Aughton?”