Page 32 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

“I’ve seen nothing, sir. The usual coaches at the usual hours, the usual nonsense on darts night. My cousin says Viscount Standish has took off for London, but his lordship does that on the regular. Haying has begun, but that’s not news.”

“If you were a hungry coach horse, the hay crop coming in would be wonderful news. What are you reading?”

“A novel.” He seemed torn between pride to be reading a sizeable tome and self-consciousness that his interest was piqued by fiction rather than literature . “It’s long and seriouslike. Miss Ellington don’t have no patience for slow readers, so I’m keeping at it.”

“I’ll let you get back to your reading, then.” I did not tell the boy I was intent on physically beating the bushes in hopes of locating his personal heroine, but to leave him whiling away the afternoon while I…

Bother. I was abruptly exasperated with myself and my investigation. I had a young lady to locate and a fortune to find. Either objective could thwart the villains behind Miss Stadler’s present difficulties. I’d stop by Pleasant View, make my report, and then get back to the job at hand.

Napoleon hadn’t been vanquished in a day, after all.

Strother occupied his usual location at the edge of the battlefield.

He took a three-quarter profile stance by the windows, out of which he doubtless longed to leap.

The viscountess’s fussy, desiccated formal parlor seemed more forlorn than usual compared to the glorious summer weather that had followed on last night’s storm.

“The bankers refuse to aid us?” Lady Standish muttered. “I’m not at all surprised. That lot trades in scandal and misery, for all their polite airs. They profit from a family’s ruin and—”

“Mama, please recall that Lord Julian tried his best for us and that time is very short.”

The viscountess rounded on her son. “A gentleman never interrupts a lady.”

“A lady,” I said, “does not react in anger when others are trying to aid her cause. I can donate three thousand pounds in banknotes to the total ransom, and Lady Ophelia has sent for some of her own gold jewelry.” Her ladyship had lit upon this measure as a ploy to fool the kidnappers long enough that Miss Stadler might be freed.

I hadn’t offered a word of protest. Desperate times were upon us.

The viscountess indulged in a great sniff of affronted dignity.

“His lordship,” she said, addressing her son, “has been as useless as a heroine in a Gothic novel who hardly deserves the label because all she does is lament her vicissitudes and pine for her horse or her dog or her loyal footman, who is, of course, a long-lost prince in disguise. Life is not an adventure story, and nobody is ever rescued. We are ruined, I tell you. Of course the bankers are unavailing. Of course Lord Julian has found nothing. Perhaps it’s for the best that our downfall is not simply financial.

You two will expect me to thank Hannah for that. ”

“If the heroine had a dog,” Strother retorted, “her loyal hound might have defended her from those perils in the first place.” He turned his face to the window rather than huff and puff.

I wanted to bang their stubborn heads together.

“Madam, I have been dressed down by Wellington himself on at least three occasions, only one of which I halfway deserved. I will take your remarks as proof that you are distraught over your daughter’s unfortunate situation.

Strother, if you would give me some privacy with the viscountess, I would appreciate it. ”

Strother bowed shortly and left before his mama could fashion a counterorder.

I closed the door to the parlor, and her ladyship watched me as a house cat watched a pensioned hound new to the privileges of the hearth.

“Anything you have to say to me can be said before my son,” her ladyship said, now that that worthy was well out of sight.

“No, it cannot. Is Hannah’s progenitor the late duke or my late uncle Thomas?”

Lady Standish fisted her hands against her skirts. “How dare you? How dare you even intimate, suggest, or imply such a thing!”

“Reluctantly, that’s how, but Hannah is in significant danger, and your reaction as a mother has been ambivalent.

You blame her for this great misfortune even as you worry about the scandal of it all.

She could be dead as we speak, and yet, you fret over the family’s reputation rather than the family’s loss. ”

The viscountess stalked to the wing chair nearest the cold hearth and sat with less-than-perfect grace. “I love my daughter. You are unnatural and mean-spirited to imply otherwise.”

“You also resent your daughter. If she was the inconvenient result of a regretted liaison, that might make some sense. She is headstrong and intelligent—two more strikes against her from your perspective—but no young lady deserves to be hauled away from her home and held for ransom.”

The viscountess fussed her skirts, the first real sign of nerves I’d seen from her.

“Every young lady of good family is hauled away and held for ransom, my lord. We refer to the practice as holy matrimony. Hannah should have accepted Sylvester Downing when he was of a mind to offer for her. I will never understand her refusal, much less why she’d prefer that limping Scotsman.”

One could only pity a person who had no comprehension of love.

I took the second wing chair and to blazes with the etiquette manuals. “My question stands. Was it His Grace or Lord Thomas who tempted you to stray?”

To give the lady credit, she put up a rear-guard action. “What possible relevance does ancient history have on the present looming disaster?”

“If it’s any consolation, I am one of very few who know that Lord Thomas tempted even the duchess herself.” More specific than that, I need not be. For all her vitriol, Lady Standish was no fool.

“The duchess? Her Grace of Waltham ? Tempted?”

I kept my peace while Lady Standish doubtless inventoried memories. Odd moments, chance sightings, peculiar notions dismissed as pointless imaginings. What I suggested—temptation resulting in tangible regrets—was only too possible.

“My lady, you were right to dissuade Hannah from riding to hounds. Harry loved the hunt meets, the informality and good cheer of the institution. He and Hannah bear a close resemblance, and though Harry is gone now, his memory—and the memory of his appearance—will linger.”

Her ladyship regarded me for the first time without visible animosity.

“ Even the duchess . I never… His Grace and Lord Thomas had a fraternal resemblance, though Lord Thomas had more dash. Mama once said… Well, no matter. I was an idiot, and furious, and Standish didn’t care provided a spare showed up before such a thing was no longer possible.

He regrets that now. Were he alive, Lord Thomas might have a few regrets too. ”

Said with more rue than relish. “This is why you wanted to see Hannah safely married to Downing and bundled off to Ireland, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of course. She’s too headstrong, too outspoken, too bold.

Thank heavens she hasn’t much use for Town, or some old tabby would sooner or later remark that my Hannah bears a resemblance to the late Lord Harry or late Lord Thomas.

People would suspect Waltham of philandering too.

He was a challenge as a husband, anybody could see that. ”

Had my mother felt kidnapped into the institution of marriage? Probably not at first. “Did you collude with Sylvester Downing to have Hannah kidnapped, my lady?”

She stared at the carpet, her profile revealing a beauty that had likely been stunning before time and bitterness had taken their tolls.

“That would make sense, wouldn’t it, given what you know of me.

I am pleased to say that you are wrong, my lord.

I truly do care for my daughter and want only her happiness.

She would be a fool to settle for the captain, even now, if a viscount’s son is willing to have her.

You must understand that much. But Hannah has a third choice—she needn’t marry anybody.

She will always have a home here. Lady Dewar will leave Hannah a competence—and a competence for me as well, thank the heavenly intercessors.

“This drama is not of my making,” she went on, rising. “To court scandal like this is the last thing I’d do. The very last thing.”

Valid point, but I didn’t entirely believe her. She had raised the creation of drama to a high art. Pleasant View and surrounds were her stage, and her performance as the Royal Arbiter of Standards and Dignity would cast Mrs. Siddons into the shade.

I pushed to my feet, happy to conclude the interview. “Nonetheless, my lady, Hannah is yet at risk, and I still have many hours of daylight left to search for her. Where should I be looking?”

“You’ve given up hunting for the gold?”

Just when I was tempted to dismiss the possibility that Lady Standish was the mastermind behind the whole affair, she asked a question like that—and with a particular intensity to her query.

“Hannah is the greater treasure, is she not? Find her, and you have no need to surrender the gold.”

“We need that gold, my lord. We desperately need that gold.”

Wrong answer, and because I was disappointed in the viscountess, I gave the Stadler family bushes one more whack.

“My lady, has it occurred to you that Strother might be reluctant to marry because he’s hesitant to ask a bride to share a home with you?”

She smiled a genuinely warm and humorous smile.

“Oh, of course. I am difficult and domineering. My husband calls me formidable as he’s leaping into his coach to run once more for the safety of his club.

I am the scourge of the ladies’ charitable committee, and I would terrorize Strother’s wife without mercy.

I have forbidden him to have a dog. He retaliates by refusing to wed. My son is such a paragon.”

She strode for the door, skirts swishing. “Do you know what I want, my lord? What I really, truly want?”

World domination came to mind. “Your daughter returned to you hale and happy?”

“Oh, that, too, despite what you think. I want grandbabies. Not an heir and spare, but grandbabies who squall and drool and grin. My daughters have four children between them, children who are never brought here to Pleasant View, children in whose upbringing, I have no role.

“I want grandbabies who grow up right here at Pleasant View, little cherubs who toddle around the garden and sit on granny’s lap while she reads them stories.

That’s what I want. If Strother and his bride can manage to have a few babies here at the family seat, the ladies’ charitable committee will never hear from me again. ”

She put her hand on the door latch and spoke with her back to me.

“But Strother truly isn’t inclined to marry.

He’s too much like his father, too featherbrained and foolish.

He relies on Hannah to do his thinking for him, and she willingly obliges.

He has asked repeatedly to have a wretched, stinking dog, though about taking a bride, he is curiously silent. ”

She left me in the sterile parlor.

Left me with much to think about.

Her ladyship had doubtless been different as a younger woman and younger wife, but not that different.

She was no wanton, and she truly resented her youngest daughter.

She might have flirted with Lord Thomas to spite her husband, as Hyperia had suggested, though a liaison before a spare was on hand… ?

She was dutiful. Perhaps grudgingly so, but duty meant much to her.

As I saw myself out into the summer sunshine—spectacles donned before I left the house—I pondered the possibility that Lord Thomas had indeed pressed his attentions on a reluctant party.

She could not have cried foul—not against a ducal scion whose advances she’d encouraged, despite her marriage—so she’d explained the situation to her husband, who’d understood the dilemma she faced and borne her no malice.

The pieces fit, right down to the sort of backward fondness Lord and Lady Standish seemed to feel for each other.

Right down to the social distance between two titled families in neighboring surrounds.

Right down to Hannah being a constant reminder of folly paid for in very dear coin and of all that could go wrong for a viscountcy teetering on the brink of ruin.

And yet, her ladyship still hoped I would find the treasure.

Families were the greatest puzzle of all. On that eternal verity, I left Pleasant View and sought out the searching party whose efforts thus far had been in vain.