Page 17 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

Chapter Eight

“The good news is, I turned up not even a hint of a sighting of the young lady. I tried every posting inn, many more than once.”

Hyperia and MacNamara occupied the wing chairs.

I sat on a hassock before the estate office’s cold hearth.

The window was open, letting in an early evening breeze perfumed with the grassy scent of haying.

A much-creased likeness of Miss Stadler stared at the library ceiling from the middle of the reading table.

Her steady, intelligent gaze reproached me.

I ought to have been on hand to ride around the fields with the steward and encourage the hard labor of bringing in the hay crop.

I should not have jaunted off to London.

Why hadn’t I found the young lady by now and seen her restored to the captain’s loving arms?

Time was running out, and the mission was not advancing, though the creeping dismals were making a return.

“Competent kidnappers might have spirited Hannah past the inns,” MacNamara said. “She might have been bound, gagged, and drugged.”

“If the objective is to haul her to Scotland for an anvil wedding,” Hyperia said, “that approach makes sense. If the objective is to hold her for ransom, then keeping her at a distant location only complicates matters. A discreet location is necessary. A distant location would make communicating with the Stadler family more time-consuming and difficult.”

“And every day,” I added, “is another day when the curate visiting an invalid might see smoke from the chimney of an abandoned cottage, or a yeoman coming home from darts could see a light in a window that’s been otherwise dark for months.

A successful kidnapper wants his ransom, the sooner the better. ”

We were assuming Hannah was alive, when the other explanation for having found no sign of her at the posting inns was that she’d taken up permanent residence among the angels.

Murder and kidnapping both earned their perpetrators a trip to the scaffold, if caught.

“Then we assume Hannah is being held locally,” MacNamara said, “and Miss West and I can add little to our meager store of facts. Lady Dewar declined to attend divine services this morning.”

“Or she was prevented from attending by her family.” Hyperia longed to toe off her slippers and tuck her feet up under her. I knew the look.

I longed to sit beside her on a comfy sofa, holding her hand while we faced facts and sorted theories. Hyperia likely grasped as much, and I adored that we knew each other so well.

“How was Sunday supper with the venerable cousins?” I asked.

“Excellent food,” MacNamara replied, something a former soldier would never take for granted. “The ladies confirmed that Lady Dewar is neither a Papist nor a Dissenter, and she does attend services in the ordinary course. I was surprised at how highly both women spoke of Hannah.”

“Miss Reenie Fortnam has a passion for lending libraries,” Hyperia said.

“Miss Harolda Fortnam is a walking lexicon of British poetry. Can quote Burns by the mile and isn’t above a line or two of Wilmot along with the requisite references to the Bard.

I gather she spurred Hannah to memorizing quotes, while Miss Reenie takes credit for Hannah’s sponsorship of the local lending library. ”

“They are proud of her,” MacNamara said, eyeing my hassock. “I am proud of Hannah as well, but I hadn’t realized… That is to say…”

“Her family does not appreciate her,” Hyperia suggested. “A woman who is not appreciated for her many obvious gifts can go to great lengths to earn notice from those who should never ignore her.”

MacNamara stared at Hyperia. “You think Hannah has staged this disappearance to annoy not only her mother, but also her brother and father?”

“No.” Hyperia toed off one slipper. “No, I do not, though Hannah is essentially a woman scorned by her family. According to the Fortnam cousins, Lady Dewar shares Hannah’s interest in books, and the two of them had a standing appointment to visit the lending library on Tuesdays.

Hannah might be exasperated with her mother, despair of her father, and view her brother with fond impatience, but she would not purposely upset Lady Dewar. ”

“She would not upset me either.” MacNamara banged a fist on the arm of his chair. “She hasn’t a devious, sly, bitter bone in her body. I know my Hannah.”

I rose and shoved the hassock in his direction. “Would anybody like a drink? The offerings include Armagnac, hock, lemonade, and Mrs. Gwinnett’s signature meadow tea.”

“Lemonade for me,” Hyperia replied. “Captain?”

“Brandy.”

I poured out. More meadow tea for me. In summer, I drank it by the gallon. Part mint, plus spent black tea leaves and a dash of honey along with some magic blend of spices known only to the queen of the ducal kitchen.

I saw to Hyperia’s lemonade and passed the captain his brandy. “If you know Miss Stadler so well, MacNamara, then where would you keep such a lady if you had kidnapped her and wanted to return her to her family in good condition?”

He eased his foot up onto the hassock and sipped his brandy. “Interesting question. Hannah isn’t a sybarite, but she’s a lady.”

“A lady who loves books,” Hyperia said, “which is why we paid a call on the local librarian, a Mrs. Ellington.”

“Rhymes with Wellington,” MacNamara added tiredly.

“She guards those books like a dragon protecting golden eggs. Woe unto anybody who fails to return a borrowed volume on time. I once passed her a volume of Burns in the churchyard that by rights I should have turned in a day earlier at the library. She dressed me down like a gunnery sergeant going after a tipsy recruit with his cap on backward. The whole village enjoyed a good laugh at my expense.”

“Where would Mrs. Ellington’s patroness be most easily stashed in the local surrounds?

” I asked, sipping and sending up a silent prayer of gratitude for Mrs. G.

“Whose pensioner cottage is perennially empty. Whose hunting lodge has fallen into disuse? For that matter, MacNamara, who would want to ruin the lady you esteem?”

He rubbed his knee. “I’ve given that question a lot of thought, my lord, and the answer is…

nobody I can think of. I pay my bills early or on time.

I tithe and then some. I will lend any equipment or staff to my neighbors upon request, and I am neither bibulous nor quarrelsome.

I might not be knee-deep in friends, but I don’t seem to have accumulated enemies either. ”

Hannah Stadler was his friend, and for a man like MacNamara, that alone made her precious to him. I did not need to have that explained to me.

He was regarded poorly by the viscountess, though, so allies would be thin on the ground in any circles that felt her influence.

“If I were kidnapped,” Hyperia said, “I’d need to be isolated.

I am not above yelling my head off, climbing down a drainpipe, or using a coat stand to wave a flag out the chimney from a hearth in the garret.

You’d want me off the beaten path, no roads in sight where passersby could see me waving frantically from a window. ”

“Remind me never to kidnap you,” I replied. “A coat stand?”

“I’d need a stool to climb on in the empty hearth. I’m not very tall, in case you failed to notice. Waving a pillowcase out a window would not attract as much notice.”

“She’s right,” MacNamara said. “You’d want a location where Hannah could be locked in, not seen by those who’d recognize her, and kept in enough comfort that she’d not be desperate to escape.

If I’d kidnapped Hannah, I’d explain to her that she was being ransomed, or held pending a threat—merely a threat—to her family of a forced elopement.

I would eschew the bullying that might inspire the lady to leap into the branches of the garden oak. ”

“She might enjoy the thought of her family stewing a bit,” Hyperia murmured, discreetly tucking her stockinged foot under her. “She wouldn’t like tormenting her beau, but to think of her mother worrying about scandal and gossip might gratify Hannah.”

“And,” I added, “she’d know the Irish gold was available to pay the ransom.

Would she tell her captors that? Did they already know of the gold—neither I nor the ducal solicitors had been aware of it—and was the gold why she’d been taken?

In the alternative, did the kidnappers assume every viscount has sufficient means to ransom a purloined daughter? ”

My questions met with silence. Too many unknowns, too much room for conjecture.

I went on nonetheless, voicing thoughts half-formed. “Telling the kidnappers of the gold would ensure they exercised patience,” I said. “Any distinctive items would have to be liquidated or turned into bearer notes.”

“There you go,” MacNamara muttered, “thinking like a crook again.”

“Trying to. And all that said, if the hoard wasn’t a factor in Hannah’s kidnapping, revealing its existence to the malefactors would cost the Stadlers what might be the last of their fortune. Any half-way loyal daughter or sister would be reluctant to ruin her family’s finances, if so.”

“I will make a list of possible locations.” MacNamara set aside his brandy. “We don’t tend to pensioner cottages around Pleasant View, but we have hunting lodges, empty tenant cottages, a few old gatehouses, and the like. I fear you’ll soon be back in the saddle, my lord.”

“I like being in the saddle. Give me a good night’s sleep, some tucker, and a map, and I’m ready to mount up again.” A slight exaggeration that MacNamara would forgive as a soldier’s bravado.

“We’ll find her,” Hyperia said, getting to her feet.

“I’ll have a tray sent up to your rooms in an hour or so.

You might also try a hot, soaking bath for your foot and knee.

Mrs. Gwinnett’s comfrey compresses work wonders.

I’ve asked her to make some up, and you are to use them first and last thing of the day, Captain. ”