Page 4 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)

Her Grace had news to report. In her perfectly correct leave-taking, her good wishes for Miss Stadler’s safe travels, and her reminder to pass her regards to the viscount and Mr. Stadler, she was every inch the duchess.

When it came to the smile she bestowed upon me, however, and the little squeeze she gave my arm as I escorted her to the coach, she was a Caldicott who’d come across information in the field that was relevant to the mission.

I gave John Coachman leave to spring the horses and waited for Her Grace’s report.

“Lady Dewar has the same lady’s maid and companion she had twenty years ago,” the duchess said as the coach turned through the rearing-horse gateposts.

Atticus, once again on the backward-facing seat, was devouring the tea cake I’d purloined for him. He, too, would have a report, but Her Grace had the floor for the present.

“They are loyal to her,” Her Grace went on, “and would likely raise a hue and cry if any attempt were made to send Lady Dewar back to Scotland. The viscountess has apparently suggested it. Lady Dewar would rather remain near her grandchildren.”

“A Scottish winter isn’t for the faint of heart.”

“Scottish winters are long, dark, and cold, true, while at Pleasant View, Lady Dewar has ample heat, a kitchen capable of producing feasts, and little need for funds. Banish the old dear to Scotland, and she’d likely be consigned to living on crusts in a garret.”

I did not understand how one could treat a parent thus. The duchess and I had had our differences and misunderstandings, but she was my mother.

“Has Lady Dewar no independent means?”

“She should have, but, Julian, she’s a bit dotty. Had to be reminded to address me in English, and while I’m sure she knew who I was, she had no idea what to say to me.”

So far, Her Grace described a typical interview with an elder of declining faculties. “You asked after Miss Stadler?”

“I did, and the companion informed me Miss was off to take the waters. I asked who had the pleasure of chaperoning such an excursion and got an awkward silence, followed by a waved hand and mutterings about one of the viscountess’s friends who was available for the journey…”

The coach picked up speed, and Atticus began sending the hamper on the seat beside him longing glances.

“That struck you as odd, that the companion would not know who Miss Hannah’s chaperone was?”

Her Grace took the pin from her bonnet and removed her hat.

“Very odd, Julian. A companion has little to do all day but step, fetch, and gossip with the other servants. She’s an upper servant, but she has little authority over the rest of the staff.

She must make alliances, and Miss Rumsperger has been in that household for decades, as has Claypole, Lady Dewar’s lady’s maid. ”

“Them two would know everything,” Atticus said. “All the secrets and who got a post with a cit and who was hired away by the neighbors. Ex-specially the old companion.”

Her Grace should have stared the boy into silence, but this was a council of war. All were permitted to speak.

“Correct,” Her Grace said. “A senior servant, almost family, of very long standing would know who chaperoned Miss Hannah, where the ladies went, what sort of retinue they took, and when they’d return.”

I put the hamper on the floor and opened the top. “Would Your Grace care for a sandwich?”

“Anything without watercress, please. Atticus, you are not to eat the biscuits first. His lordship was forever attempting that misdemeanor in his misspent youth, and I saw what happened to your tea cake. I’m forced into proximity with a pair of scoundrels.”

Atticus beamed. I passed Her Grace a cheese-and-butter sandwich. Bread from white flour, no crusts. Atticus contented himself with the same on rye bread, as did I.

“Do we conclude that Miss Hannah has eloped with the undergardener?” I asked when my first sandwich had been dispatched.

“We conclude that something scandalous is afoot,” the duchess replied. “The looks, Julian, between the companion and the lady’s maid were bursting with disapproval and doom. They were careful to keep their volleys from Lady Dewar’s notice, but slipping memory is not synonymous with stupidity.”

How well I knew that. “Then MacNamara’s concerns might well be justified. What do we know of Miss Hannah’s settlements?”

Atticus had finished his sandwich and was back to sending the hamper covetous looks. “Wot’s that got to do wiv anything?”

“She’s not an heiress,” the duchess said. “Not famously well dowered, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“My question,”—I gave Atticus one-half of a second cheese sandwich on rye and took the other half for myself—“bears on the possibility of a forced elopement. If a fortune hunter without conscience grows too desperate, then hauling a young lady over the border to Scotland against her wishes can still result in matrimony.”

“He kidnaps her, then marries her? That don’t sound like a recipe for happiness.” Into his little maw went one corner of the sandwich, but he knew not to talk with his mouth full.

“Such a ploy,” I replied, “can result in solvency for the fortune hunter, which in some cases is a necessary prerequisite for continued existence. The lady is quietly sent to live abroad until the scandal dies down, but even if she’s not married to the scoundrel, she has been ruined by his scheme.

If she does marry him, he gains control of at least a portion of her funds. ”

“Yeah,” Atticus said, “but then she can make his life a misery too. Might be some satisfaction in that.”

A wife could not rain down violence and malevolence on a husband of anywhere near the intensity that a husband could inflict on a wife. Atticus would learn that verity too soon.

“Who would know the details of her settlements?” I asked, offering the duchess a jar of sliced pickles.

She waved the food away. “We’ll ask the solicitors. They keep abreast of the possibilities in case Waltham decides to take a bride. Miss Stadler is a neighbor, of marriageable age, and wellborn. She will be on the list.”

I paused mid-dive into the pickle jar. “If they’ve looked into her situation, they must have similar information on hundreds of young ladies.”

“Also young widows. If a fellow is presented with a hundred options, he’s more likely to find one to his liking than if he’s presented with three. For the duke’s men of business to make discreet inquiries into a young lady’s situation is considered an honor.”

Then half of Mayfair and the home counties had been so honored, and all for nought. The apple of Arthur’s eye was his traveling companion, confidant, friend, and lover, Osgood Banter. The duke had made it plain to me that, for him, marriage to a woman would be an exercise in pointless appearances.

The burden of the succession rested on my own shoulders, which made the viscountess’s rejection of me as a suitor for her Hannah somewhat puzzling.

True, my military record was held in dubious regard by many, and I’d come home from the war the worse for my experiences.

All of that notwithstanding, I’d still be considered above Miss Hannah Stadler’s touch.

Speaking of touching… “Atticus, one takes a single pickle at a time.”

He looked at the fistful he’d taken. “Sorry, guv. Should I put ’em back?”

“You should eat them,” the duchess said. “Then we’ll hear what you gleaned belowstairs, after which, if your belly has any room, and the swaying of the coach hasn’t disturbed your digestion, you will be permitted one apple tart.”

“They’re small,” Atticus said.

“One now,” the duchess replied, looking exceedingly formidable. “A second later, conditioned upon good behavior and time spent on the box learning the coachman’s art from the resident expert.”

Atticus held up a slice of pickle. “Got you a bargain, ma’am. John Coachman has all the best stories. Like that time Lord Harry—”

“Your report,” I said, jamming the cork lid on the pickle jar and giving it a solid pound with my fist.

Atticus munched his pickle like a squirrel dispatching a nut.

“Nobody was saying a word in the kitchen or the servants’ hall.

I mean not nuffink, not a peep. One of the footmen came in from the footmen’s stairway hollering about his lordship and the young master going at it again over the ledgers.

He got scowled to silence worse than if he’d farted at a funeral service. ”

“Knowledge belowstairs,” the duchess said with a perfectly composed countenance, but then, she had reared seven children and put up with our dear papa as well.

“What did you see ?” I asked as Atticus finished his pickles.

“Kitchen is spotless. Servants’ hall is clean too. A bit chilly, though. No fire in the hearth and, being like a half basement, not exactly cozy.”

“Were you offered tea?” the duchess asked.

“Ale, and watered ale at that. Not so much as a biscuit to eat or a slice of cheese.”

“No food on the servants’ sideboard?” I asked. Our cook at the Hall, Mrs. Gwinnett, believed that hungry staff worked neither happily nor efficiently. She kept fruit, cheese, bread, and libation on the servants’ hall sideboard at all hours.

“The servants’ hall didn’t have no sideboard, now that you mention it.”

I passed Atticus the smallest apple tart of the lot. “What of the livery? Was it new, clean, mended, ill-fitting?”

He took a bite. “The footman what got stared to death was missing a button on his coat.” Atticus patted his belly. “Here. The cook’s apron was stained. Never seen Mrs. G in a stained apron.”

The duchess listened to this recitation without comment, though she was likely drawing the same conclusion I was.

“You think they’re skint?” Atticus asked, tearing off another bite of tart. “Cold hearths, watered ale, short rations, and such?”

“It’s a possibility,” I said. “Or the viscount’s household might simply operate more frugally than what you’re accustomed to.” Though that interpretation was contradicted by the head of the family remonstrating loudly with his heir over the ledgers.

“I been frugal,” Atticus said, chewing rapidly.

“Don’t care for it. Got frugaled nigh to flinders by the charity of the parish.

My brother got farmed out, but the matrons said I should be grateful I’d not been sent to the country with him.

Frugal is bad enough, but sent off to the baby farms was worse yet. ”

Had the boy begun quoting Caesar’s Gallic letters in perfect Latin, I could not have been any more thunderstruck.

“You have a brother?”

Atticus finished his tart and dusted his hands together. “Had. Headmaster couldn’t tell us apart most of the time. Tom went to somewheres in Chelsea. He were naughty, were Tom, and stubborn. Full of mischief. I got in trouble less when he were sent away. Can I ride up on the box now?”

Neither I nor the duchess were capable of a reply.

“May I, I mean?”

“You may,” Her Grace said, rapping twice on the roof.

The coach slowed, and I opened the slot beneath the coachman’s bench. “Atticus will be taking the air with you, John Coachman.”

“Send the lad up, my lord. The team is settled, and I could do with the company.”

When the coach had halted, Atticus monkeyed onto the bench with some assistance from myself and coachman. I returned to the forward-facing seat and took the place beside my mother.

She helped herself to an apple tart. “He has a brother.”

“Or had. A possible twin. Full of mischief.”

My mother offered me a tart, which I declined.

“Julian… I know what you’re thinking. A brother lost to uncertain circumstances. Dead, we must presume, but still shrouded in mystery. Atticus doesn’t see it like that. His brother was naughty, his brother went away. For a small boy, that makes sense.”

No, no, and no. “It made sense to him at age five, or four, or whenever this atrocity was committed. They had only each other and were torn asunder because of a few pranks, or because nobody thought to put one in a brown jacket and the other in a black one. Such cruelty will make no sense to him at age twelve.”

I was half barmy over Atticus’s casual revelation. I wanted to cry, to bellow to John Coachman to turn the horses for Chelsea, to inform MacNamara that circumstances prevented any further investment of my time on Miss Stadler’s situation.

I had answers to find and, very likely, as the duchess noted, a grave to locate. Probably unmarked and unremarked, though if a boy survived infancy in the hands of the parish, he was a tough little specimen, or very lucky.

“Julian, before you dash off in search of a child who likely breathed his last several years ago, you need to know the final detail of my visit with Lady Dewar.”

I hauled my focus back to the matter at hand. “This is not a detail at all, is it?”

She shook her head. “As I was leaving, Lady Dewar lapsed back into her native tongue. My Gaelic is rusty, and she said only a few words. I can’t be certain of what she said, but I had been asking very pointedly about Miss Hannah.”

“And the companion had done all the answering.”

“Correct, though Lady Dewar heard the exchange and was alert throughout. As I took my leave, I offered her a hug, and she muttered something very quietly.”

Muttering beldames became my least favorite people in creation. “What did she say?”

“It sounded like: ‘ Thug iad i. Dà fhear .’ Or something close to that.”

I wasn’t all that astute reading the Erse, but so much of Wellington’s infantry had been Irish and Scottish that commands had to be given in both English and Gaelic. I’d picked up a fair amount of spoken Gaelic in camp and had studied what grammars I could find to pass the time.

“Say that again.”

“ Thug iad i. Dà fhear . We both know what it means, if I heard correctly.”

We did, and the news was bad: They took her. Two men.

What on earth was I to tell MacNamara, and how soon could I tear up to Chelsea and begin the search for Atticus’s twin brother?