“Silforth is a problem,” I said when Banter and I had ridden a sufficient distance from the stable.
Banter had announced at breakfast a desire to show me about the place, by which he did not mean the house, but rather, the estate. I would explore the manor itself, but more immediately, I needed privacy with Banter in a situation where he could not dodge off on some handy pretext.
“Silforth is a problem,” my host murmured. “Do you know, you are not the first person to make that observation?”
Banter rode a lovely, leggy chestnut, while I had been put up on a guest horse. My mount, Owen by name, was a muscular, stolid bay, of much the same conformation as my own Atlas. Atlas was more athletic, but Owen had comfortable gaits and good manners.
And why in the name of all that was rational should I suffer a pang of missing my horse?
“If you knew Silforth would cause difficulties for your neighbors,” I asked, “then why recruit him to mind the shop in your absence? You doubtless have tenants and employees who are capable of managing without direct supervision for a few seasons.”
We rode along an ancient track between two rows of splendid oaks. At some point in antiquity, a game trail had become a footpath and then, over the centuries, a bridle path. The very venerability of the byway lent the morning a peaceful air, despite the topic.
“Firstly,” Banter replied, “when I made inquiries of Silforth’s erstwhile neighbors, they all gave him a glowing character. In hindsight, I can see they wanted to be rid of him. Secondly, you labor under the assumption that I will return from the Continent sometime late next spring. What if I don’t?”
His Grace was a creature of duty, and if necessary, he would return to England without Banter and without complaint, though it would break his heart.
“You’d abandon my brother?” I did not add, After all he’s risked to be with you? Though as to that, Banter and Arthur both risked death, disgrace, and ruin if their association were ever found to be more than a close friendship.
“I would not abandon Waltham,” Banter replied. “I would abandon England, gladly. The laws here are barbaric. Boys hung for what goes on in the Royal Navy and most public schools nigh openly. Every time I meet Waltham at the club for supper, we risk speculation, and every time I look at young George, I know I have options Waltham does not.”
“Arthur would understand if you chose to marry. He has no doubt said as much.” I did not want to discuss my brother’s personal business, but Banter’s situation bore on the matter of Thales, which was proving to be more complicated than a missing dog.
Needs must.
“Arthur would understand,” Banter replied, “wish me well, congratulate me, send more congratulations on the arrival of my firstborn, who’d probably be my secondborn, and… I would thank him. Every dictate of common sense says that is the path I should follow, precisely because I do care for Waltham.”
“And every instinct says you would be miserable, Arthur would be yet more miserable, and let’s not even speculate about where this would leave a wife whom you might be fond of but did not love as you are capable of loving elsewhere.”
“You see the problem.”
A year ago, certainly five years ago, I would not have. War and a lack of reliability regarding my own manly humors had shifted my priorities. My fancies lay strictly with the ladies, but my ability to rise to the occasion, as it were, had gone missing in action. Another casualty of my time in captivity, or my adventures upon quitting the French prison.
All that aside, Arthur was the only brother I had left, and he was an exceedingly good man. The problem with Arthur’s choice of paramour wasn’t Arthur or Banter, but rather, the vindictive, hypocritical society into which they’d been born.
“You are thinking of establishing a household in France,” I said, drawing the reasonable conclusion. “I will see Arthur only when Parliament sits?”
“I am pondering such an arrangement. The Duke and Duchess of Richmond have certainly made a home for themselves on the Continent. Others of lesser rank do as well. I haven’t assayed His Grace’s opinion on the matter, but before such a plan is even thinkable, I must leave Bloomfield in good hands.”
I hadn’t met Silforth, but he’d already fallen from my list of available good hands. “Sell the place to a responsible buyer.”
A yellow leaf twirled down, joining a few others on the ground. Harvest was in the offing, as was Arthur’s departure. Was I to lose two brothers to France?
“Bloomfield will go to Lizzie in trust,” Banter said with a hint of the resolve that always lurked beneath his friendly manner. “The children deserve at least that much security. Silforth can’t spend acres held in trust as he can coin sitting in a bank.”
He could wreck those acres, as he’d apparently already wrecked his own. “He’s not managing well?”
“The usual difficulties. Too much land, not enough cash, and thus the arable parcels have been neglected and don’t produce well. The old story, and he thought he’d avail himself of the old solution.”
Hard work and strict economies were solutions for many. “He married money.”
“He is charming, handsome, and glib, when he wants to be. If he and Lizzie weren’t a love match, they were certainly cordial for a time. Then he ran through her available funds, the nursery filled up, and Lizzie has grown more pragmatic than a lady should have to be. Eleanora, who has her own settlements, is an unpaid governess out of sororal loyalty, not because she lacked offers.”
“So you brought them here.” Rescued them, in blunt terms, and rescuing Lizzie and the children meant casting a spar in Silforth’s direction as well.
Banter opened a gate without leaving the saddle. I rode through, and he closed the gate behind me.
“Earlier in the year,” he said, “I invited Lizzie and the children here for an extended visit—Lizzie was hinting broadly in her letters that my help was needed, though the pretext was to introduce Eleanora to a new circle of bachelors.
“Bloomfield in spring is beautiful,” Banter went on, “and I love having the children about. Then Silforth showed up when haying was done. Arthur got the notion that we should go traveling, a notion I heartily endorse. Silforth began to imply that he’d graciously assist me with Bloomfield’s management for a sum certain strictly to cover his expenses.”
And Banter, having few options and being determined to quit Albion’s shores, had talked himself into seeing Silforth as acceptable.
“Are you obligated to retain him as your factor by any written instrument?”
“You sound so much like your brother. That is a compliment, and no, I haven’t signed anything.”
Banter was leaving it a bit late for contractual negotiations, but then, perhaps he hoped to avoid any legal obligation to Silforth. We rode along the border of an overgrown pasture that rolled slightly before edging against a wooded hill. Pretty scenery and, as Banter had said, good land.
“You should have this grazed down before frost,” I said. “You don’t want the grass to get much taller.”
“I told Silforth to have the fall heifers moved here last week. The pasture is close enough to the steward’s cottage that O’Keefe can check on the ladies regularly, and the foraging is excellent. But as you see, the grass will soon be too tall to appeal to the heifers, and not an expectant mama in sight.”
“Because Thales has gone missing, and Silforth has been distracted. Your neighbors wish Silforth would go missing, but they aren’t quite up to kidnapping him.”
“And neither am I, so you will just have to find the damned hound, Julian. I cannot leave Bloomfield in the midst of an uproar, and if I must bide here, Arthur must depart without me.”
“Because people will talk otherwise?” I would have scoffed at the notion, except that Arthur was a wealthy, single, handsome, robustly healthy duke whose succession rested at present upon the slender reed of my own dubious matrimonial and procreative prospects.
For His Grace to lark off to the Continent with a traveling companion under those circumstances was somewhat out of the ordinary.
For him to upend his traveling plans entirely because his companion was delayed would be noted by every gossip to set his boot in a fancy club or her embroidered slipper upon Almack’s dance floor.
“Is this why you’re acquainting me with Bloomfield’s metes and bounds?” I asked as we passed through the gate at the far end of the field.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If I had stolen Thales, or taken him hostage until the hound trials are over, then the only reasonable place to secret my prisoner would be on Bloomfield property itself.”
“Because then,” Banter said slowly, “the hound is not technically stolen. He’s… misplaced?”
“Something like that. Or he got himself into some duck blind and couldn’t get himself out. The legal case for theft is much harder to make if the dog is found on the same property where his owner bides. Then too, Silforth will look a fool for peering into everybody else’s stable and springhouse and neglecting Bloomfield’s.”
Banter saw to another gate and turned his horse down a worn track along the line of trees. “Your theory has merit. The whole shire would enjoy humiliating Silforth. If you’re set to search the Bloomfield estate proper, I’d best introduce you to O’Keefe. My steward is getting on, else I’d leave the whole property under his care. If anybody knows where a hound might be hidden, O’Keefe will. I’d forgotten about the ruddy hound trials, but they do add a logical dimension to the whole situation. Nobody wants to see Silforth walk off with that prize money.”
“And yet, he needs it desperately, doesn’t he?” An uncomfortable thought occurred to me. “Would he steal his own hound to lull his competitors into a false sense of confidence?”
More leaves had fallen here, though the canopy above still sported plenty of healthy green specimens. Autumn had been my favorite season, though its approach was little comfort to me now.
“I want to say,” Banter began, “that Silforth isn’t shrewd enough to devise such a scheme. He presents himself as the bluff squire, blunt to a fault, a man’s man, et cetera and so forth, but he has a streak of guile. He weaseled himself into the role of temporary lord of the manor, trading on my affection for Lizzie and the children. He’s trying to get himself appointed to the board of aldermen so he can approve a bridge to be built where the Bloomfield ford is. He’ll levy a toll to cover the construction costs, and a fellow who thinks up such a scheme isn’t simpleminded.”
“Then my list of suspects now includes Thales’s owner?”
I wanted to be very clear with Banter if that was the case. To widen my inquiries to include Silforth might well result in family drama. An insulted cousin-by-marriage was a poor choice of trustee for a profitable estate.
“Be discreet,” Banter said as we came out on a farm lane that led to a tidy, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof. “Be very discreet, but I don’t suppose you can rule him out. I’d rather you simply found the dog than found the thief who stole the dog, but I suppose the two are related.”
“Who benefits?” I murmured. “Always a useful query in situations like this. The list of suspects is rendered inconveniently long by the hound trials, even before we add Silforth. You are right that I’m better off simply finding the dog, assuming he’s still extant.”
“Pray God he is,” Banter murmured. “We will have a feud to rival the Border Wars if somebody killed that hound.”
And a good dog, who’d done nothing but try to please his owner and live in harmony with his pack, would have gone to an untimely reward. That last bit bothered me more than a rigged hound trial, Silforth’s ailing finances, or even Arthur and Banter’s potentially delayed holiday.
Hector O’Keefe was a man in pain. I knew that before gently shaking his hand, which was swollen about the knuckles and joints.
Even stooped as he was, he was tall, and his faded blue eyes conveyed a lively intelligence. Too many years in the elements, too many hours in the saddle, had nonetheless taken a toll. His gait, when he ushered us into his parlor, was uneven. If I’d tracked him, his footprints would have shown that his right leg lacked even half the mobility of his left.
A bad hip, at least, compounded possibly by gout. I could not see this man lurking in the woods by the river for any length of time, much less moving through the bracken without leaving a very clear trail.
And yes, I needed to eliminate O’Keefe as a suspect. A loyal steward might act to protect Bloomfield from a plundering poseur. O’Keefe would also know the requisite details—Sir Rupert’s habits, Silforth’s preferred walking paths, where to bide out of sight of both men—and he would have been familiar to the foxhound and the beagle.
Making a fool of Silforth might be one step in a plan to oust him. Showing him up to Banter in a bad light another step. Denying him the prize money would not improve Silforth’s prospects either.
But O’Keefe’s infirmities put him above immediate suspicion, for which I was grateful. The whole shire might be in a conspiracy to ruin Silforth, but O’Keefe could not have personally taken the dog.
“Shall I ring for a pot?” he asked, a slight brogue lurking in his intonation. The Irish had the gift of clear enunciation that nonetheless lilted, as if even their speech were accompanied by harps. “Mrs. MacNeil has a light hand with the shortbread too.”
“I could do with a cup of tea,” I said, lest Banter brush aside a reason to have our conversation while seated. “Is Mrs. MacNeil related to the MacNeil tending the kennel?”
“His sister, for her sins. He takes his Sunday supper here, as regular as the tides. Maisie!” O’Keefe called as he escorted us to a parlor. “Put the kettle on.”
“Already boilin’, ye daft mon,” came the reply from down the corridor, “and no need t’ shout.”
I studied the surrounds and pretended to ignore that exchange. The room was spotless without being fussy. A hassock sat before a wing chair near the swept hearth, and pillows embroidered with matching bouquets of roses adorned a small sofa. The colors were subdued—brown upholstery, a brown and cream braided rug livened with a few dashes of scarlet. Exposed beams of dark oak cut across a whitewashed ceiling.
The center of the mantel was occupied by an ormolu clock, ticking placidly along. A landscape of the steward’s cottage, nestled against the leafy woods, smoke curling from the stone chimney, hung over the clock.
Beyond the windows, drystone walls separated green pastures and golden fields, grazing horses swished their tails at late summer flies, and delicate purple scabious was interspersed with lacy wild carrots along the hedgerows.
There were worse places to grow old. Far worse, but where would O’Keefe bide when he retired?
“You will forgive O’Keefe his rudeness,” a stout, older woman said, bearing a tray into the parlor. Her half apron was as pristine as her mobcap. “He gets testy when he can’t be in the saddle. Don’t eat all the shortbread, Mr. O’Keefe, or Mr. Banter will think the worse of us.”
“I would never,” Banter said. “Any man who willingly denies himself even a crumb of your shortbread is a fool.”
He twinkled at her, and had I not been present, she would have likely swatted his arm with the tray’s tea towel, such was the power of Banter’s charm.
“Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service,” I said, lest I be denied an introduction. Housekeepers knew everything and everybody, in my experience, and one ignored them at one’s peril. “Banter will have to wrestle me for my share of your shortbread.”
She swept the three of us with a gimlet glance. “Mind your crumbs, you lot. Mr. Banter, you will please pour out.” And off she went, likely to her preferred eavesdropping post.
“We have our orders,” Banter murmured. “Shall we follow them?”
We took our seats, O’Keefe in the wing chair, though he didn’t go so far as to put his foot up. Banter and I took the sofa, a lumpy, horsehair affair that had doubtless gone into service when Mad George had been in leading strings.
“You’re here about the hound?” O’Keefe asked when Vicar’s most recent sermon had been admired at length, and the prospect of rain had been thoroughly discussed. “Poor beast is likely expiring at the bottom of some badger hole.”
No, he was not. Foxhounds did not fit down badger holes, and badger holes were more horizontal than vertical. Curious boys learned all manner of arcana, to the everlasting inconvenience of wildlife in their vicinity and any laundresses in the boy’s household.
“Somebody took him,” I said, rather than allow O’Keefe to embroider on his theory—or to continue laying a false trail. “Tracks in the woods suggest the party was known to both Merlin the beagle and Thales himself. Mr. Banter and I are not concerned about who that party might be, we simply want to find the dog.”
A lie—we were concerned regarding the thief’s identity. I was, at any rate. Stealing that hound was a hanging felony, as the thief himself doubtless knew.
O’Keefe slurped his tea. “Mustn’t call Thales a dog in MacNeil’s hearing, my lord. Has his standards, does MacNeil. Houndsmen have etiquette enough to baffle the queen, what with who can wear which buttons and how they greet the master of foxhounds.”
“The military had the same tendency,” I said, manfully ignoring two pieces of shortbread lurking at the edge of my plate. “Somebody wanted Thales out of contention for the hound trials, or wanted to vex Silforth on general principles. The beast doesn’t deserve to suffer for his owner’s shortcomings.”
“Beast isn’t suffering,” O’Keefe said between sips of tea. “He’s either snacking on the slower rabbits in the shire or taking up with a lady of questionable morals, if he’s not cavorting among the angels. If God has a sense of humor—and I believe He must with such as us among His creations—then Thales is enamored of some yeoman’s mongrel bitch hanging about the coaching inn two villages to the west. Silforth will go mad to think of his darling lad in such company.”
And the prospect of Silforth losing his reason was apparently cause for amusement.
I took out my little notebook: Whose bitch is in season? Breeding to the legendary Thales would soon come at a high price, if Silforth had his way. Progeny with Thales’s skill and conformation could rival their papa in the hunt field and, better still, their very existence would vex Silforth past all bearing.
“Where would you confine a foxhound on the Bloomfield estate, if you wanted him out of sight for better than a fortnight?”
“I wouldn’t,” O’Keefe said. “A hound like that would fair no better in captivity than a man does. Shut him away from light, from laughter and warmth, from his mates, and Thales will turn up barmy as sure as Mrs. MacNeil’s shortbread shouldn’t go to waste.”
I popped a piece of said shortbread into my mouth and wondered if O’Keefe knew of my own captivity at the hands of the French. I had gone mad, or nearly so, and my captors had intended that I should. For months after my return to England, I’d been obsessed with having an accurate timepiece on my person—I’d been held in complete, dank, cold darkness and lost all track of days and hours. Since returning from the Continent, I’d piled two extra blankets at the foot of my bed, regardless of how warm the sheets were, or how luxurious the quilts.
I was down to one extra blanket, though I still tended to notice clocks and their absence and to follow the progress of the sun, moon, and stars with inordinate interest.
I made another note: Would destroying Thales’s nerves serve some purpose? A stud who wet himself at the approach of strangers wouldn’t impress anybody.
“You’re saying that Thales, if he’s in the area, must be taken out for regular, extended exercise?”
“Unless he’s in very cruel hands, my lord, and I hope we have few of those on this estate.”
Few, not none. A subtle dig at Silforth? Banter was eyeing my last piece of shortbread, so I slipped it into my pocket.
“You raise an interesting point,” I said. “And give me cause for hope. If the hound is out and about, even occasionally, he’ll be much easier to find.”
O’Keefe set down his tea cup. “If I might be blunt, my lord. Nobody dislikes that hound. How could we? He’s a friendly, handsome specimen, and he can’t help who his owner is.”
I remained seated, because when I rose, the other two men would have to get to their feet as well. “But nobody likes Silforth?”
O’Keefe wrinkled his nose. “His missus apparently had a use for him at some point. Eight or nine in the nursery, or thereabouts. It’s not that we dislike Silforth, though we do. He can be quite the hail-fellow-well-met country squire when he wants something. He’s long-winded, but then, we’ve had quite enough of Sir Rupert’s recollections of his days in India. The problem with Silforth is that folk don’t respect him, don’t trust him, and are loath to see him squatting at the manor. I’m not talking out of turn. Mr. Banter well knows the local sentiment.”
O’Keefe was old and achy, and he used those supposed weaknesses to appropriate the right of plain speaking. Another wily elder who’d make an ideal mastermind if he hadn’t committed the crime himself.
“So where do we look, Mr. O’Keefe?” I asked.
His gaze went to the fields and pastures behind the windows. “If I’d taken that hound, I’d keep him someplace he’d be unlikely to leave tracks. Nowhere near the river, in other words. You’re better off putting the question to MacNeil. I know the arable land and, to some extent, the woods, but MacNeil has a dog’s-eye view of life in general. Ask him.”
I stood. “I shall. No need to get up. Enjoy the last cup and put your mind to my question. If anything occurs to you, please do send word up to the manor.”
“Will do.” O’Keefe poured himself another cup, though his hand shook holding even the mostly empty pot. “Regards to Miss Lizzie and Miss Eleanora.”
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Banter said, leaving the last piece of shortbread on the plate, like the true gentleman he was.
We’d retrieved our horses from their grazing and were back in the saddle and heading for the manor house before Banter spoke.
“What is going on in that busy mind of yours, Julian?”
“I need a map of the estate and the loan of that pensioner hound.”
“Zeus?”
“The very one. Your prevailing wind is from the southwest at this time of year, correct?”
Banter fussed with his horse’s mane. “South… Well, yes, southwest, I suppose. How do you know that?”
“You take in matters of fashion without realizing it. Who is dedicated to the plain mathematical knot, who prefers a tad too much lace, who will be powdering his wig until the heavenly trumpets of woe have gone silent.”
“Arthur is the same way about plowed land. He knows if it will drain. If one corner will be prone to weeds, if it needs marling or fallowing, and he can go on and on… Well, yes. I take your point. You were a reconnaissance officer.”
Maybe a part of me always would be. “The wind carries sound. If the dew is falling, wind can carry sound across an entire valley, or it can obscure conversations at a ridiculously short distance. Wind also carries scents.”
“Ah. If you limit your explorations to areas that make for poor tracking and take Zeus along to give tongue if he picks up Thales’s scent, you can make an efficient search. Shall we task the grooms and gardeners to aid you?”
“Not yet.” A herd of bunglers could easily—and purposely—obscure any relevant sign, and while one hound long retired from hunting protocol might well call out to an old friend, who knew what a pack on leashes might get up to?
“Before you undertake those maneuvers, Julian, you’ll have to endure a midday meal.”
“I’m famished. Why would any meal at Bloomfield qualify as an ordeal?”
“Because Silforth will join us, and if you thought O’Keefe’s critique of Vicar’s sermon somewhat lengthy, you will grow old in your seat while Silforth proses on about his hunters and his memorable runs and his new saddle—assuming he ceases to pronounce on the topic of his missing hound.”
Years in the officer’s mess had inured me to such torment. “As long as he doesn’t discuss battles won and lost or his prowess with the ladies, I’ll manage to appreciate the meal.”
When we rode into the stable yard a quarter hour later, I paused upon dismounting to jot down another question: Why, if Silforth was incompetent to manage land, disliked by the neighbors, and a trial to even Banter’s kindly nerves, was Banter preparing to surrender control of Bloomfield to him and him alone?