Never a Duke, page 18
“You’ve been looking for your sister?”
He nodded. “She had some fella panting after her. Sissy’s pretty. She said this bloke was special. Ain’t none of ’em special enough that she’d turn her back on me. She’s not like that.”
Hope and conviction colored Artie’s words, the hope coming through most loudly.
Ned strode out of the livery. “They asked me where I’d found my groom,” he said, climbing into the vehicle. “Said the lad had a nice way with the ribbons.”
Where had Ned found Arthur? Rosalind would ask that when the boy wasn’t shamelessly eavesdropping. She passed over the reins, though in future, she’d remember to bring her new driving gloves when on an outing with Ned.
“Arthur and I have been chatting,” Rosalind said. “Arthur, you might be interested to know that my most recent lady’s maid and the one before her have both gone missing. They left without collecting their wages or gathering up their things.”
“Piked off?” Artie muttered. “Did a bunk? From a lord’s house?”
Ned half turned to peer at Artie. “You know of a similar circumstance involving another party?”
Artie took a moment to translate that. “My sissy hasn’t met me on her half day for two weeks. Sissy never misses a chance to check on me, not even when it’s raining and cold and miserable. She sometimes brings me a meat pie or tuppence.”
Ned stared off down the road, which wound out of the village past fields and hedges. “Tell us what you know, Artie, every detail.”
Artie heaved a sigh, which to Rosalind sounded relieved. “I got to askin’ around, and Belinda Crocker—she has the flower stand nearest the bank—said her cousin went missin’ about the same time as Sissy. I’m that worried, Mr. Wentworth, but you mustn’t say they went on the stroll. Sissy ain’t a game girl, and I’d black your eye for insultin’ her.”
“Well you should,” Ned said, giving the reins a shake. “But two heads are better than one, Artie, and I fear this problem is bigger than either of us knows.”
Rosalind kept her peace all the way back into Town, but foreboding had cast a gloom over her perfect picnic. Ned asked the same thoughtful, thorough questions of Arthur that he’d asked of Rosalind, and like Rosalind, Arthur had little enough to offer in the way of information. Nobody had seen his sister taken up by the watch, she wasn’t in the sponging houses, and her friends hadn’t heard from her.
Ned drew the horse up under the porte cochere, handed Rosalind down, and walked with her to the foot of the steps.
“I will make an appointment to speak with your father. As soon as he can see me.”
Rosalind did not envy Ned that interview. “Papa will expect you to observe the formalities, and he will play the very devil over the settlements, but I know what my mother left me. I am quite of age, and the situation in truth should not require much discussion.”
Ned bowed over her hand. “I will do this correctly, because you are deserving of every courtesy and consideration. Perhaps you might ride in the park on Friday morning?”
How she loved the warmth in his gaze when he posed the question. “I most assuredly will, one hour after sunrise.”
He touched a finger to his hat brim. “Until Friday morning. Good day, my lady.”
Rosalind wanted to watch him drive off, looking so handsome and dashing at the reins, but Ned would wait for her to safely enter her house, and thus she parted from him. The news Artie had disclosed was alarming, but also encouraging.
More disappearances meant more potential witnesses and more clues, and thus more hope.
And as for the picnic…Rosalind removed her bonnet and gloves, reliving memories of blossom-scented breezes, intense pleasure, and the sweetest lassitude.
I am in love. She made that announcement silently, while examining her reflection in the mirror over the sideboard. Her hair was still a plain brown, her figure unremarkable, her attire boringly proper, but her eyes were sparkling, and her heart…
In her heart was knowledge and wonder and love.
“Just where have you been?” Papa stood on the landing halfway up the steps, his query disturbing Rosalind’s musing as effectively as a rifle shot. “The Wentworth whelp escorted you again, and for a woman who spent hours out shopping, you’ve returned without packages.”
“I often find nothing to suit me,” Rosalind said. “Mrs. Barnstable despairs of my finicky tastes, and for once, she did not have to accompany me as I browsed.”
“Finicky,” the earl said, descending the steps slowly. “Does Wentworth know how finicky you are?”
“He is a considerate escort, Papa, but I’m sure my preferences regarding gloves and scents hold no interest for him.”
Papa gave her a brooding examination, one that was supposed to intimidate her into babbling, for which he would then rebuke her.
Rosalind passed her father on the stairs and assured herself that she and Ned would have a very brief, passionate courtship. If Papa thought it odd that she was more interested in escaping his company than removing her cloak, he kept his opinion to himself—for once.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m sure you didn’t ask me here to discuss investments, Ned. What is on your mind?”
Duncan Wentworth posed the question politely, for Duncan was always polite. He was a cousin to the Wentworth siblings, a few years older than Walden, and decades more reserved. While Walden exuded consequence, Duncan exuded nothing so easily labeled.
Not arrogance, not impatience, not humility, though Ned knew him to be a humble man. With his wife and children, Duncan was quietly doting, and with his cousins he occupied a place both in the family circle and entirely unto himself.
In the role of tutor to Lord Stephen, Duncan had years ago created a bridge between the most difficult Wentworth—which was saying something indeed—and the rest of the family. Ned had watched that process with a mixture of awe and envy.
“Thank you for heeding my request,” Ned said. “May I offer you a drink?”
Duncan would never gawk, but in his reserved, understated way he was clearly inspecting Ned’s informal parlor—his family parlor.
“I’ll have a tot to wash away the dust of the road. You favor botanical art.”
Ned passed him a glass of brandy. “A man can’t very well admit to a preference for having flowers on hand, can he?” At a bank, fresh flowers were a touch of graciousness. In bachelor quarters…
“Who did the stitchwork?” Duncan asked, examining one of Ned’s more complicated flights of embroidery. “The blooms look vibrant enough to bear a fragrance.”
“I needed something to cover up the seam in the wallpaper, and like you, I thought the work pretty so I had it framed. Shall we sit?”
Duncan took a sip of his drink, regarding Ned over the rim of the glass. Ned had prevaricated about the origins of the needlepoint, and Duncan knew it.
“I will be quizzed,” Duncan said, taking Ned’s favorite wing chair. “Her Grace will want to know if your housekeeper is maintaining standards. Stephen will ask if your libation was decent. Quinn will admit to general receptiveness regarding any reports I might make. My lady wife will ask if you are happy.”
How to answer that? I am in love would never serve, and yet, it had become the defining reality of Ned’s existence. He stared off into space while mentally recounting the most amazing two hours of his life. In his head, he calculated the minutes until tomorrow’s sunrise, for sixty minutes after dawn, he and Rosalind would meet in the park.
When he wasn’t praying that the weather would be fine, he was fretting over how to approach Rosalind’s father. Hence, this conference with the Wentworths’ most accomplished strategist.
“I am thriving,” Ned said, taking the end of the sofa. “As always. How are Matilda and the children?”
“Hoping you will soon come for a visit.”
Ned’s version of a visit now involved tooling along in the curricle, Rosalind at his side. Yesterday, that same visit would have meant making the journey alone, on horseback.
Nothing had changed, and yet, everything had changed.
“Ned, whatever it is, just get on with it. I wore a collar once upon a time. I know how to keep a confidence, even from my prying cousins. They are always well intended, but their concept of personal privacy can leave a fellow feeling like Prometheus, bound to the cliff face, raptors flapping about as they peck away at his peace.”
Precisely. “You were clergy,” Ned said, seizing on the least fraught aspect of Duncan’s recitation. “In the course of your duties you encountered courting couples.”
“I never progressed much past the disgraced curate phase of church work,” Duncan said, running a finger around the rim of his glass. “I did not have a true vocation as it turned out.”
And parting from the Church of England apparently troubled Duncan not one bit. “But you took holy orders.”
“So I did, and I have not been defrocked, as it happens. Do you require last rites, Ned? Her Grace won’t care for that idea at all.”
What Her Grace wanted had become subordinate to what Rosalind needed, a curiously fortifying thought.
“How do I approach the father of my intended about gaining permission to court his daughter?”
The sole clue that Duncan Wentworth had been caught by surprise manifested in the manner in which he set his drink down on the side table.
“You have an intended.”
“Lady Rosalind Kinwood. She has indicated a willingness to allow me to pay her my addresses.”
And in his head, Ned heard Lord Stephen muttering about fast work, airs above your station, and don’t bungle this, Neddy.
“Her father is the Earl of Woodruff,” Duncan said. “Old-school aristocrat. Her grandfather was among the most enthusiastic about seeking enclosure acts for his common lands. The heir is a self-important fribble, while the spare fancies himself a poet. One will not envy you your in-laws.”
“One must first marry the lady to acquire those in-laws, and Rosalind confirmed that her father will expect protocol to be observed.”
Duncan rose and began a perambulation about the room. “Why her?”
“I esteem her greatly.”
“You esteem everybody, from your urchins to the flower girls, to Her Grace’s familiars, to the shopkeepers who flock to you for loans. One hopes you reserve a scintilla of esteem for yourself.” Duncan paused before the other piece of framed embroidery, which depicted a tabby cat curled among a border of pansies. “I can almost hear him purr.”
Her. Smokey had been a her, a friendly old besom who’d dozed away many an afternoon in Papa’s shop window. She’d gone to her reward just weeks before Papa had been impressed.
“A gentleman shows courtesy toward all,” Ned said, “but how do I inform Lord Woodruff that I intend to marry his daughter? I cannot approach him as a supplicant, for Rosalind paints him as a self-important boor who will sneer at weakness. I cannot condescend to him, or I will inspire his antipathy. I know how to discuss money, I know how to discuss final arrangements, I know how to tell genteel old women that they must sell their silver as soon as may be, but an earl whose daughter I seek to marry? I am at a loss.”
Duncan took up a lean against the mantel, the posture reminiscent of Lord Stephen. Casual, elegant, thoughtful, and deceptively relaxed.
“If the earl is so difficult as all of that, then you must resign yourself to being disrespected. He has something you want badly.”
“Rosalind is not a thing.”
Duncan did not smile, but his gaze warmed. “Of course not. I allude to the tranquility of relations that ensue when a father reconciles himself to his daughter’s choice of spouse. For Rosalind’s sake, you want to get off on the best foot with the earl. What does the earl want that you can offer him?”
“I can offer him lifelong security for his daughter. Rosalind will have my utmost devotion and care. She will have the influence of the Wentworth family to call upon. She will have her own home to order and manage as she sees fit. What else could any man offer her?”
A nasty thought intruded: If the earl regarded Rosalind as a means of paying off his bills, then Ned’s plans for her would disrupt that scheme for all time.
“I suspect,” Duncan said, “if Lady Rosalind is the right choice, she would settle for your heart, and devil take the hindmost. The issue becomes, though, what does Woodruff need or want?”
“I fear he wants to dangle Rosalind before the cits and beer barons until she’s at her last prayers.”
Duncan eased away from the mantel. “You might consider eloping.”
Of all the suggestions Duncan Wentworth might have made…“Eloping? That implies the lady has been compromised, or that I am not suitable.”
“Has she been compromised?”
Thoroughly and delightfully, as had Ned. “Of course not.”
“Then you are slower off the mark than the rest of the Wentworth menfolk,” Duncan said. “Tell me about the missing maids, Ned, for that is apparently what brought you to her ladyship’s notice.”
Ned recounted what he knew, which now amounted to four young women in service disappearing from their posts, and three of them had recently kept company with a handsome young swell who had promised them marriage.
“And the fourth?” Duncan asked.
“Miss Arbuckle might have attached a follower as well, but we have no way of knowing.” Or did they?
“And these ladies have not been taken up by the abbesses?”
“From what I can gather, no. This is a coordinated undertaking by somebody with considerable influence, and the usual procurers—who rarely venture to disturb the peace of Mayfair—are staying well away from it. I’ve posted eyes and ears to keep watch, and my pickets report only the predictable parade of drunkenness, debauchery, and despair.”
“What do all these women have in common?” Duncan asked.
Ned recited the litany that kept him awake at night. “They are young, unattached, in service, attractive, in good health, and without much family in London. One of the missing ladies has a brother among the bank’s badgers, but the lad is hardly in a position to apprehend kidnappers.”
Duncan peered at Smokey’s embroidered portrait. “And you are? This seems to be a matter for the authorities, Ned.”
Duncan was no stranger to life’s harsh realities, but in some regards, he was an innocent. Compared to Ned, all the Wentworths were innocents, despite their humble origins.
“The authorities might well have a hand in it, Duncan.” In fact, they probably did, if only to the extent that they were ignoring the whole matter.
“Ah. Peculation and plunderage, of course.” Duncan finished his drink and set his glass on the sideboard. “If the ladies aren’t suffering the usual fate, then what has become of them? In other words, what happens to them if you fail?”
“What happens to the women? I can only speculate, and in distressing directions, but if we knew what fate awaited the women, we’d have an easier time finding them.”
“What happens between you and Lady Rosalind if you fail?”
In Duncan’s typical fashion, he was asking several questions at once. Was Rosalind’s favor tied to Ned’s success solving the mystery of the maids? Was Ned’s interest in Lady Rosalind somehow dependent on that undertaking? How much was Ned willing to risk to unravel the situation Lady Rosalind had laid at his feet? Was rescuing unfortunate women to become Ned’s lifelong quest?
In other words, What the hell are you doing, Neddy?
“I won’t fail.”
Duncan studied the ceiling, which sported no murals or frescos, and no cobwebs either. “The earl will not want to give you his blessing, Ned. Association with the Wentworths, in his estimation, does you no credit. Do you see this venture on Lady Rosalind’s behalf as a means of forcing her father to respect you?”
“I undertook the search for the women without any thought of the earl’s opinions.”
Duncan regarded Ned, which was more unnerving than even Jane’s inspections. “If you fall on your arse, get arrested for peeking in windows, or otherwise bungle the white knight role, where does that leave you with Rosalind and her father?”
“I hope it leaves me married to Rosalind and trying again to find the missing women.”
Duncan eyed the parlor’s humble adornments. “You hope.” He ambled across the room, pausing only long enough to squeeze Ned’s shoulder. “It’s about damned time. Let me know what I can do to help, and yes, I will cheerfully stand up with you. You and her ladyship will always be welcome under my roof. Elope if you must, but be very sure the lady sees you as the wonderful fellow you are and not simply as an expedient minion who can solve a vexing problem for her. Be honest with her, about your family, about your past, about all of it. I will see myself out.”
Meaning the interview was over, and Ned still had no clue about how to approach his prospective father-in-law. He did, though, have a damn sight more questions to grapple with.
And as for being honest with Rosalind about all of it…Absolutely not. Not ever, if Ned could help it, and certainly not before they’d spoken their vows.
* * *
Rosalind stopped by the library to check the time on the longcase clock, the most accurate timepiece in the house.
Forty-five minutes until her rendezvous with Ned. Perfect.
“Roz,” came a groggy voice from the depths of the sofa. “That you?”
George rose, tousled and unshod. He wore no jacket, and his rumpled attire suggested he’d spent the whole night in the library.
“Good morning,” Rosalind replied. “You were up late writing?” The desk held the usual detritus of one of George’s poetry sessions—crumpled paper, open books, empty decanters.
“The muse was upon me,” he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I stretched out to rest my eyes, and then…nescience.”
Unknowingness. One of his many arcane poetical words, which in this case referred to drinking himself into a stupor.
“Papa frowns on dishabille in the public rooms, George. You and your muse had best toddle up to bed.”
