Page 14 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
He sat a little taller in the saddle. “You and MacNamara are acquainted?”
“We served together for a time.” I had a distinct memory of MacNamara’s hand applying a hearty shove to my backside, boosting me out of a muddy trench in which the French would have found us, and doubtless buried us, had I spent another moment noisily scrambling around.
He’d saved my life. I’d saved his on another occasion. What else did serving together imply?
“MacNamara is a hopeful suitor, my lord. One must regard his concern with sympathy rather than alarm. Mama doesn’t care for him, though I regard him as a decent fellow, all told.
Not to put too fine a point on it, he’s a decent, somewhat impecunious fellow.
” Stadler urged his horse into the walk.
“You see how that might put Hannah’s absence in a different light? ”
I positioned Atlas beside Stadler’s bay. “You believe she was trying to let him down gently by simply leaving the stage without an explanation?” What I knew of Hannah Stadler did not comport with that theory, but then, I wasn’t her brother.
“My darling baby sister has done this before,” Stadler said.
“I hope you will keep that in confidence. She had an Irish lordling trailing after her a year or two ago, and believe me, Mama approved of him. Dowling… or, no, Downing. He and I were chums of a sort at the time. An heir, albeit an Irish heir, and his interest in Hannah struck me as one of those this-cannot-last affairs. Perhaps her literary bent was a novelty to him. Who knows with the Irish? Half daft, half fey, half inebriated, according to Papa.”
And how would the Irish characterize rackety English viscounts? “Hannah did not share Downing’s enthusiasm for matrimony?”
“She humored him for a time, but he was all sweet words and no substance. Hannah does not suffer fools. She can’t help herself. I adore her, but my opinion of her represents the minority of polite society.”
Stadler’s admiration bore a curious resemblance to faint praise. “And when she’d had enough of humoring him, she simply quit the scene?”
Stadler glanced over his shoulder, though we were quite alone on the path.
“She gave no notice. Simply summoned the coach early one morning, and the next thing we knew, we were reading a note she’d sent from the local posting inn, telling us not to worry.
She planned to stay with a school friend for a few days and had her lady’s maid with her.
Not a proper chaperone, of course, but better than nothing.
She gave us the direction, which lay a mere ten miles away in Kent.
To Downing, she was to be emphatically not at home. ”
A simple, expedient plan. “He desisted?”
“After about two weeks of Hannah not being in when he called, and a few pointed words from me, he went back to Ireland. Mama fumed for weeks, but Han would never have been happy married to him. One hears things at the clubs and so forth. Downing lacks the gift of temperance.”
Diplomatically put, but also true of most young lordlings. “You believe Hannah is treating MacNamara to the same tactic?”
Stadler, while remaining in the saddle, deftly opened a gate, his gelding apparently well-versed in that particular country maneuver. Atlas and I passed through, and Stadler closed the gate with equal ease.
“She well could be. To be honest, my lord, this is a busy time of year. Our steward is getting on, and I try to stay out of the skirmishes between Hannah and Mama. Hannah is cleverer than Mama, but Mama has determination that makes Wellington look like a lollygagging schoolboy.”
We were once again riding beneath a stand of stately hardwoods. “Has Hannah sent you the same sort of note? Off to visit a school chum, tell MacNamara I’m not in?”
Stadler patted his horse for no particular reason I could see.
“Not as yet. In the alternative, such a note was entrusted to the potboy at the inn, and he has long since forgotten it, or the laundress turned out his pockets, and the note has been burned with the rubbish. One doesn’t dare inquire, does one? ”
Inquiring was the best way to find answers, in my experience. “Certainly, discretion is in order. MacNamara is still very worried, and the duchess is also concerned. I don’t suppose you could tell me the name of the school friend in Kent?”
“Heavens, Caldicott. The whole business was some time ago. I can inquire of Hannah’s lady’s maid, if I can pry her loose from Claypole and Rumsperger.
Thick as thieves, those three. She might recall the name of Hannah’s former hostess and even the direction.
I’ll send you a note if I have any luck. ”
“My thanks. I don’t envy you the challenges you face, Stadler, but you do have a lovely property.
If you should become concerned for your sister, please feel free to call upon me in any capacity.
My years in Spain honed an ability to reconnoiter discreetly in enemy territory, and you might find my skills useful should trouble arise. ”
Had a fortune in Irish gold gone into maintaining his acres, or was his conscientious management responsible for the greening fields, tidy stone walls, and majestic oaks?
He certainly wanted me to think that, and to think he maintained order among the eccentrics biding under Pleasant View’s stately roof.
I did not see a way to raise the issue of the gold and its potential use should a ransom note arrive, so I took my leave of Stadler and began sorting through our discussion.
I had learned that Hannah was capable of taking French leave.
Knew how to do it, had done it before, and had places to go where Society wouldn’t necessarily look for her.
I had learned that the viscountess and her sole unmarried daughter were out of charity with each other.
I had learned that Downing had shown some persistence in the face of Hannah’s absence.
A fribble he might be, but he had not quit the field until his defeat had been made embarrassingly obvious.
I’d learned that Stadler had matured into a well-spoken, pleasant young man of whom I ought to think well.
Instinct told me that I was overlooking some fact, some disclosure that Stadler had made without realizing it. I was missing something…
As Atlas and I approached the local posting inn, a young man stood in the stable yard and watched me. He was in the lanky phase between youth and manhood, his dusty trouser cuffs hovering two inches above the tops of his worn boots.
To my astonishment, he’d knotted a red and white checkered kerchief about his skinny neck in a perfectly tied mathematical.
“Good morning.”
He touched his cap. “Sir. Will you be wanting your gelding rubbed down and stabled?”
“A thorough grooming, please. Offer him hay if you have it, or grass if that’s available, and certainly give him a go at the water trough. No grain. I’ll break my fast and be back on my way.”
“You come from Pleasant View?” A note of hope lay disguised in that simple question.
I put that together with his vigilance and the kerchief. “I did, and in answer to your question, Miss Hannah has yet to return.”
Young ears turned cherry red. “She lends me books. I always finish ’em and give ’em back, and we talk about ’em. Miss Han is ever so smart and twice as kind. She says I could amount to something.”
He was worried about her. The supposedly prickly, difficult spinster had supporters in unlikely places. “Captain MacNamara is concerned for Miss Stadler, as am I.”
“If she’d meant to be gone this long, sir, she would have asked my cousin Petey to exercise her mare. He’s at Pleasant View, working in the stables. Petey is taking the mare out, but Miss Stadler never let him know she was travelin’.”
“The last time she went away, she gave you a note to take back to her family, didn’t she?”
His ears were still red, but his stance became more upright. “She did, and I took it. This time, no note, no warning. I gotta bad feelin’, mister.”
“Then keep your eyes and ears open.” I passed him my card. “I’ll leave coin with the innkeeper so you can send me a note if you see anything interesting. I intend to locate Miss Stadler and return her to her family, if she’s agreeable.”
He stashed the card in his pocket. “I’m good at keeping my eyes and ears open, see if I’m not. You get word from Jem Bussard, that’s me. We like the captain around here, and if you’re a friend of his, you might be hearin’ from me.”
“My thanks to you, Jem Bussard.” I passed him two shillings, a generous tip by any standard.
He nodded gravely, saluted with two fingers, took Atlas’s reins, and disappeared with the horse into the shadows of the stable.
I was enjoying a tall tankard of lemonade when I realized what exactly Strother Stadler had revealed in the course of our conversation. He’d offered to consult with Hannah’s lady’s maid regarding her previous sojourn to Kent.
Meaning that the lady’s maid yet bided at Pleasant View and was not traveling with her employer.
The whole situation had just become much more worrisome.