Page 33 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

Chapter Fourteen

Because Atlas was enjoying a needed day off, my first order of business was to return the hack I’d rented to the coaching inn. I was surprised to find none other than Captain James MacNamara making a careful ascent of the inn’s front steps as I approached.

“My lord.” He nodded, probably as close to a bow as he could accomplish when leaning heavily on a walking stick.

“Captain.” I swung out of the saddle and passed the reins to a stable boy. “Shall we appropriate the snug?” MacNamara’s pale and drawn appearance suggested he hadn’t been sleeping much or well. We’d need a private setting if he intended to let fly with his temper.

“The private parlor would suit me better. I grew impatient with your dispatches. ‘No new developments. Search continues.’ What sort of report is that?”

“One that tells the enemy nothing, should it fall into his hands.”

“Ah. Of course. But who is that enemy?”

“Sylvester Downing, would be my guess. Hell hath no fury like a fortune hunter scorned.” I spotted Jem on his shaded bench, nose still in a book. “My sentry is all but asleep on duty, thanks to some scribbling novelist. That boy will go for a schoolmaster, given the chance.”

The captain made a laborious climb up the steps, one hand on the railing, one on his walking stick. “Jem? He would like that. Hannah would encourage him too.”

I waited until we had secured the private dining parlor before making my report. “Of Hannah, we have seen no sign, which is odd.”

“‘Odd’ is putting it politely.” MacNamara lowered himself carefully to the seat at the head of the table.

“Grown women don’t just disappear from their own backyards, Caldicott.

Order us some tucker. I was up before daylight.

Couldn’t sleep, figured I’d be of more use here.

The Hall is lovely, but without the ladies to keep me company, I grew restless. ”

I gave our order to one of the serving maids, returned to the parlor, and closed the door.

“When I say we’ve come across no sign of Hannah, I mean… none. Nothing.” Our utter failure had bothered me increasingly. Hannah had lived her whole life at Pleasant View, but for all the evidence of her passing, she might as well have been a ghost.

Where was she lurking on those frequent outings on foot?

“We found a pair of Strother’s gloves in the unfinished grotto,” I went on.

“The stable lads have been using the empty tenant cottage as a place to tryst and dice. The bridle paths and trails show that even the viscountess has been out and about on the property—her tread is heavy, even out of doors—but Hannah might as well never have set foot on the place.”

MacNamara took off his hat and laid it on an empty chair.

“She was frequently out of doors nonetheless. She left me regular notes in the fishing cottage, which I disdained to lock as a result. She was forever conferring with Mrs. Ellington at the lending library, and she kept a friendly eye on the tenants and neighbors.”

As a true lady of the manor would. “She also retrieved your notes from the belvedere, but we found no discarded handkerchief, no forgotten fan, no riding crop laid aside in a distracted moment. She left no sign of even regular passing.”

“Hannah is a tidy person. In her thoughts, in her habits. She is in Paris by now, for all we know.”

She might be dead. Neither one of us needed to say that.

The food arrived, an early lunch for me, and I was hungry enough to partake.

“She’s not in Paris,” I said between bites of a ham-and-cheddar sandwich.

“That would require travel expenses as well as documents and run the risk of meeting other travelers fresh from Town who know her. Difficult for her to pull off on her own, even harder for her kidnappers.”

“Documents can be forged, but I agree. No point in dragging her off to France. The easiest way to hold a captive is to secure them behind stout walls under trustworthy guard.”

I put aside the uneaten half of my sandwich, assailed by images of a stone fortress on a bleak French mountainside. Dread pressed in on me, and I had to force myself to take an even breath.

Stone walls formed one sort of prison, despite what the poet claimed. Memories could form another.

MacNamara took up another sandwich, his appetite apparently in good repair, despite the situation. I tried for a sip of my ale, managed that much, and set down my tankard.

Where had I been before my mind had snatched me back to hell? “We know Hannah did not struggle when her captors approached her. She went with them willingly. Two men in gentleman’s riding attire.” As I had gone willingly with my captors.

Cease and desist. I aimed the order at my own ghosts, Harry among them, of course.

“You think her captors were neighbors?” MacNamara paused in his demolition of the food. “Somebody who has had enough of the viscountess’s snobbery? I could see the ladies taking up against the viscountess, but not by snatching Hannah from the garden. I hate not knowing who my enemy is.”

I tried another sip of ale. “Like Spain. Whose side is the tavernkeeper on? The cobbler? The latest batch of double deserters? Can the laundresses be trusted? Too many puzzle pieces to consider at once, and the formerly loyal cobbler might have switched allegiance because the bandits threatened to slaughter his mule.”

“I don’t miss it.” MacNamara selected one of the two remaining sandwiches. “Especially at this time of year, with the heat coming on, the forced marches that never ended, the damned sieges... I don’t miss it. I miss Hannah terribly.”

“She hasn’t gone far. Of that, I am increasingly certain.” I apprised the captain of the situation with the gold and jewels, and he allowed as how he’d put together a few thousand pounds himself.

I thought of his modest cottage, his unprepossessing employees, his treatment at the hands of Lady Standish.

“Why hide your wealth, MacNamara?”

“I am not wealthy, not personally, but my family builds ships. We’ve coin enough when we need it.

The day will come when the ships will be too big to navigate the River Clyde—steam is changing everything—but for now, we’re managing.

I also located a number of Sylvester Downing’s debts—thank you for the suggestion—which I’ve secured.

For good measure, I tried to locate the younger brother’s vowels, too, but couldn’t turn up even the smallest unpaid sum from any quarter. ”

“You were following a cold trail in dense undergrowth. Well done regarding the honorable Sylvester, but you are attempting to change the subject. You have been discreet about your means because you did not want to put Hannah off with your wealth.” What other secrets was MacNamara keeping, and from whom?

“I haven’t misrepresented myself, Caldicott.

She knows my family’s situation, more or less, but I was born a younger son, and I learned to be comfortable in that role.

Besides, the MacNamaras, despite the title, build ships, and that qualifies as trade.

Lady Standish barely lets me in the door as it is. And her a Scot.”

That last was said with a sort of disgusted humor.

“Her ladyship is quite keen that we find the gold while we’re trying to locate Hannah.”

He muttered something in Gaelic. “Truly, I must be smitten with my Hannah, or I would never contemplate taking on that besom as my mama-in-law.” He finished his ale and thumped the empty mug on the table. “Find my bride, Caldicott. For the love of leaping salmon, find her, please.”

“I’ll be about my appointed rounds, then, and you can pay the shot.”

He nodded and went for the last sandwich.

I donned my specs and prepared to make what use I could of the last half day available before ransom instructions were due. Jem was still under his shady tree, absorbed with his novel. Truly, the Regent could have paraded before him resplendent in royal regalia, and Jem would not have noticed.

“Jem, greetings.”

He slipped his pamphlet bookmark between the pages and rose. “My lord. A fine day, isn’t it?”

A fine day to idle away with a book. Not such a fine day to search for a kidnapping victim. “I take it you’ve still seen nothing suspicious?”

He slid a glance at his tome. “I’ve been keeping an eye out. Captain MacNamara’s back, and Lady Ophelia and the young miss went off on some errand. Took the coach, but said they’d return for supper.”

He wasn’t entirely oblivious to the world. “Where does Miss Stadler like to go if she’s just hacking out for pleasure?”

He considered his book, the volume bound in red Morocco leather, Mrs. Burney’s name embossed along the spine.

“Miss Stadler doesn’t hack out for pleasure, sir. She takes the mare if she wants to go to the library or sometimes to call on the neighbors, but the mare is old. Miss Hannah spares the horse if she can.”

Because that horse had to last. “Then where did the lady prefer to walk if she was simply going for a stroll?”

The book received a more studied perusal. The Wanderer , which had taken the author years to complete, many of which she’d spent exiled in France with her French husband.

“Miss Han isn’t the strolling type either, sir. She goes afoot between the manor and the village and will often walk home from services, but she’s not one for idle rambles.”

And yet, her family said she was forever off the premises. Taking a book or her lap desk…

While Jem shifted from foot to foot, an obscure fact marched forth from the recesses of my memory. “Jem, let me see that book.”

He passed it over. “Mrs. Ellington said I can have it until Monday noon. I’m reading as fast as I can. It’s not like Mrs. Burney’s earlier novels. No real villain, so far.”

The villain was Society itself. I examined the book closely. “This is from the lending library?”

“The only copy they have. Look in the back for the stamp.”