Finding an item that bore Thales’s scent—and only Thales’s scent—had been a surprisingly difficult undertaking. Eleanora had eventually produced an old rag of a horse blanket that she claimed Thales had favored in puppyhood. Silforth had kept the relic in the stable to accommodate Thales’s post-morning-hack naps.
The condition of the blanket surprised me—tattered, the plaid barely discernible, the wool lamb-soft—because it spoke to sentimentality on Silforth’s part. In this at least, his hound’s comfort had mattered more than appearances.
I introduced Zeus to the scent, while MacNeil glowered down his pipe at the whole proceeding.
Zeus turned a rheumy, puzzled gaze on me.
“He’s a scent hound, but not a searching dog,” MacNeil said. “His quarry is the fox, and we don’t want him running riot.”
To run riot was to chase game unacceptable to a hunt—rabbits, deer, badgers—and a mortal sin on the part of any self-respecting foxhound. Zeus and his kind were to chase foxes and only foxes.
“Zeus’s days of running game of variety appear to be well past him.” I rose, and the dog continued to regard me with that head-tilted air of perplexity canines affect so charmingly.
MacNeil took his pipe from between his teeth and squinted at the westering sun. “Don’t be fooled. He naps as much as any hound, but Zeus can still turn up keen when you’d least expect it. Best of luck.” Having delivered what was doubtless some sort of warning, he stomped off into the middle lodge of the kennel.
According to Lizzie, Lady Petunia—all the Silforth bitches were Lady This or Lady That—was in anticipation of a blessed event of the wriggling, tail-wagging variety. Neither Nax nor MacNeil would sleep until Mama and puppies were safely through their travail.
I fitted a leash to the harness MacNeil had produced under protest and urged Zeus to his feet. “We’re on the king’s business, my boy. Up you go.”
Zeus heaved to his paws, and we set off for the home farm. After two hours of relentless sniffing about—the dairy, the laundry, the springhouse, the old summer kitchen, the stable, the plow shed, the carriage house, endless hedgerows, the steward’s cottage, and more than a few stone walls—Zeus parked upon his haunches, panting with the attitude of a weary soldier both unwilling and unable to follow even one more stupid order.
The walk had done me good, even if it hadn’t turned up any sign of Thales. Moving at a modest pace, monitoring the dog while pondering the whole situation at Bloomfield, breathing in the air of a bucolic evening bearing a hint of autumn… I was content.
So often on reconnaissance, I’d found myself in the same mental state—meandering through the countryside on no particular track or road as darkness fell, cogitating on some question of military strategy, and thoroughly at home among the elements.
As evening shifted to twilight, Zeus and I were working our way back to the kennel by passing behind the dower house, a dignified structure of the same architectural pedigree as the manor itself. Either old Orville had built the dower house at the same time as the main dwelling, or somebody had had sense enough to enforce stylistic consistency.
Zeus abruptly ceased his snuffling and looked into the distance, nostrils quivering. He swung his gaze to me, then whuffled.
“What is it?”
He snorted and gave an arthritic half-hop.
I produced a strip of the old horse blanket I’d sliced off after MacNeil’s departure. “Is that who you smell?” I offered it to him again, but he wasn’t interested. He instead pulled stoutly in the direction of the dower house, where—to my surprise—I saw a light in one of the windows on the first floor.
“What have we here, noble hound?”
Zeus continued to put on a show of geriatric enthusiasm. As we neared the otherwise darkened structure, I perceived a woman’s voice singing a lullaby I hadn’t heard since mustering out. The composer was a Welshman—one Edward Jones, now harper to the Regent—and thus the tune had been popular among any soldiers and camp followers hailing from Gaelic parts of the realm. As was known to any who held command in the Peninsula, a Welshman would sing at length without obvious provocation, and his repertoire would be vast and known entirely by heart.
Zeus and I had moved close enough to the dower house that I could see a branch of candles sitting before a half-raised window.
I addressed myself to that light. “Halloo! You have an appreciative audience.” Also a disappointed one. Zeus had simply heard this impromptu concert before I had, and we were no more on Thales’s trail than we had been two hours ago.
The candles were moved aside, and Lizzie raised the sash and stuck her head out. “My lord? Is that you?”
“The very same, in company with Zeus. We’ve enjoyed a pleasant constitutional.”
“I’ll come down,” Lizzie said, closing the window, which went dark forthwith. A moment later, she was a shadowy figure moving on the terrace of the dower house, only her blond hair distinguishable in the gloom.
“I suspect Zeus is out past his bedtime,” she said, coming down the steps. “No sign of Thales?”
“Not that Zeus alerted me to. Tracking a fellow hound is apparently not in his gift.”
Zeus whuffled again, as if to imply that only a fool would think to track a foxhound with a foxhound, in which logic, he was probably right.
“No telltale paw prints?” Lizzie asked, absently scratching Zeus behind the ears. “No strange whining from the depths of an old well?”
Oh dear. “Are there any old wells?”
“Of course not. Osgood would never allow such hazards on a property where his nieces and nephews enjoy so much liberty.”
She took my arm and steered me along a cart track that led in the direction of the main house. The two dwellings were separated by a mature line of maples, bordered by a bridle path and a crumbling stone wall. At a break in the trees, we came to a gate bordered by a stile.
Lizzie negotiated the steps as nimbly as a goat, while Zeus’s progress was more labored.
“He really is getting on,” Lizzie said, resuming her hold on my arm. “You needn’t keep the leash on him. He will find his way to the kennel and plant himself outside his old lodge, there to sleep until Domesday. Zeus is Thales’s grandsire, and for that alone, he’s guaranteed a peaceful old age.”
“Do you ever resent the hounds?”
“I should, shouldn’t I? Eleanora can wax very emphatic about the expense, but the whole foxhunting business makes Nax happy, and that means a lot to me. He could be spending the same amount on bad art, loose women, or fake antiquities.”
“An enlightened perspective. What brought you to the dower house at such an hour?”
Lizzie gave my arm a playful tug. “I had a passionate assignation with three-quarters of an hour of peace and quiet. Why do you think I was here? I was raised in the dower house, and some of my girlhood treasures are there. Hera is of an age when they might mean something to her. Under the pretext of sorting through my old sketchbooks, I slipped away. You are sworn to secrecy.”
I sensed she was only half joking. “Are you sure it’s safe to wander the property alone at this hour?” The sky was dark, vestiges of light remaining only off to the west.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because somebody bold enough to steal a prize hound might be bold enough to deprive your husband of other irreplaceable treasures.”
“Gracious, you have a suspicious mind. The local gentry resent Nax stepping into Osgood’s shoes. I hope that taking Thales hostage until the hound trials are over is in the nature of a rude prank. I doubt Nax would be half so upset if I disappeared. Perhaps I should test that theory.”
“Please do not. I’m having no luck finding the hound, and tracking you down would doubtless prove an even greater challenge. Shall I stop hunting for Thales?” I still wanted to nose around the local posting inn, have a word with the grooms, look at Silforth’s ledgers, and pay a call on the nursery—home to every family’s best reconnaissance officers—but Zeus had proved himself to be of no help whatsoever.
“Don’t quit quite yet, please. Nax might grumble and pout, but as long as you’re looking, he won’t give up hope.”
“You mean, he won’t make untoward accusations against the neighbors?” I stopped short of mentioning the foolishness referred to as dueling.
“Something like that. Osgood doesn’t know what to do with Nax, I understand that. They are chalk and cheese, though both are very estimable fellows. Nax can’t ride roughshod over you, and that’s a good thing. Nax when frustrated can be unreasonable. If you fail to find the hound—you whose skills were sufficient to earn Wellington’s esteem—then Nax won’t look quite so foolish when he himself can’t locate the dog. I don’t expect you to keep searching indefinitely though. Never that.”
She wasn’t teasing now, and that worried me. “I’ll soldier on, then.”
Lizzie paused on the path that led to the formal parterres, the manor house forming a solid edifice against the darkening sky. “Bloomfield has always been magical to me.”
We were firmly and not exactly gracefully off the subject of Nax’s hotheadedness. I found it interesting that Lizzie took it as a given that Banter would hand over the keys to his kingdom to Lizzie and her spouse.
“Does Nax know that you and your Cousin Osgood were at one time very close?”
She dropped my arm and resumed walking. “Women are accused of being the biggest gossips, but I vow, men have us beat by leagues. Why would Osgood trust you with such a confidence?”
“Because he knows I do not spread gossip, and he respected me enough to ensure I was in possession of all relevant facts before asking me to investigate the situation here.” Not exactly an accurate sequence of events, but close enough. “If Nax has a violent temper, then resentment he harbors toward Osgood could be turned on any party acting on Osgood’s behalf, and, in fact, I think it already has been.”
“What can you possibly mean?”
I explained about the dangerous incident with jumping the gates, which was troubling me more with time, not less. By the time Nax had led me over the in-and-out, both my mount and I had been flagging. As I spoke, it occurred to me that Lizzie had anticipated that Nax would try some sort of test of my equestrian abilities. You are not to turn a hack into a steeplechase.
Lizzie’s pace slowed as we reached the walkway along the garden’s perimeter. “Blast my husband for risking the life of a guest. Nax is all dash and derring-do, and sometimes, he goes too far. He tells himself he would have made a splendid cavalry officer, had he only been able to serve. I vow, my lord, he would have galloped straight into the first available ambush.” She stopped and studied the outline of Bloomfield’s roof. “Your brother is a duke and Osgood’s dearest friend. If anything happened to you, the sole heir of a bachelor duke, Waltham would be well within his rights to haul Nax before the assizes just to shame him. English juries are unpredictable at best. Nax simply does not realize…”
I bent to remove Zeus’s leash and harness. “What doesn’t he realize?”
“The consequences of his actions.” Lizzie held out her hand for Zeus to sniff. “I have a nursery full to overflowing to prove that point. Nax rails against the expense involved in raising so many children, but that doesn’t stop him…” She heaved a sigh known to all mothers of large families. “I should go in.”
Yes, she should, and without my escort, given her husband’s temper. “Is that why you sought out the solitude of the dower house?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle. “I beg your pardon?”
“Is your nursery soon to expand yet again?” The question was half hunch and half the instinct of a man possessed of myriad nieces and nephews. Eleanora’s distaste for her brother-by-marriage also figured into my reasoning, as did the sense that far more was wrong at Bloomfield than one missing canine.
“Osgood warned us that you have a knack for seeing what’s hidden in plain sight. I’m not sure, to answer your very presuming question, and you must not mention this to anybody. It’s early days, and one doesn’t tempt fate.”
Said every woman when caught between dread, hope, and resignation. “Does Osgood know?”
“Why would he—? Oh. I have no reason to tell him, my lord.”
“Tell him anyway. Praemonitus, praemunitus, and so forth.”
“My lord?”
“Forewarned is forearmed. If you’ll excuse me, I will see Zeus safely to his slumbers.” I waited in the garden until she’d crossed the terrace into the house. Hyperia would have known the Latin, easily, and she would have understood its application.
And while Perry took a dim view of risking her life in childbed, she would have understood why I—always expected to produce legitimate offspring and unable to sire same despite enthusiasm for the particulars—wanted to slap some sense into Nax Silforth.
He was disliked by his neighbors, held in contempt by his wife’s sister, resented by his spouse, and disrespected by the grooms. Were he obscenely wealthy, he might enjoy the luxury of overlooking his unpopularity, but he wasn’t wealthy at all.
And yet, Osgood intended to put Bloomfield into Nax’s hands. Trouble was afoot, and I was supposed to diffuse the situation before somebody resorted to pistols and swords.
“Come along,” I said to Zeus, who was free of all restraints. He trotted off in the direction of the kennel, suggesting his earlier histrionics had been a comment on having to work in harness rather than a testament to the infirmities of old age.
I am surrounded by frauds. I ambled along in Zeus’s wake, enjoying the night air despite the day’s developments. I’d made some progress, insofar as I knew many locations where Thales was not being held captive, and I’d identified a few more places to investigate when I had privacy to do so.
I saw the old hound to his preferred napping place and returned to the garden, where I sat for some time, puzzling over the growing list of parties who benefited from Thales’s absence. A hint of a notion of a possibility occurred to me as I turned my steps for the house.
First thing in the morning, I would find Eleanora and have a look at Silforth’s ledgers.
First thing in the morning, Eleanora was nowhere to be found.
I took my earliest meal of the day in a breakfast parlor deserted by all save a young blond footman standing guard over the buffet. He explained to me, somewhat nervously, that Missus took a tray in her room, Squire hadn’t come in from the kennel, Miss Eleanora presided over breakfast in the nursery, and Mr. Banter was at his correspondence.
I set aside my empty plate, having done justice to ham, eggs, toast, and tea. “Did Silforth tell you to refer to him as the squire?”
The fellow blushed magnificently. “Didn’t have to, my lord. Missus and Miss Eleanora call him that, and Mr. Banter never said otherwise. Call him Mr. Silforth and he gets that peevish look. Butler says don’t make trouble, so now we have a Squire at Bloomfield. Housekeeper says he’ll go after the magistrate’s job, except O’Keefe says he can’t because he don’t bide here, not really.”
I set my napkin on the table and rose. “What does MacNeil say?”
“Old Mac mostly keeps to himself, unless somebody says a word against Missus. MacNeil was a groom here, back in the day. He went with Missus when she married the squire. Mac’s a good sort, but not easy in company. Eyesight’s troubling him, and he’s getting on. We all do, eventually. O’Keefe can get Mac telling stories, though, and you never laughed so hard in all your life as when MacNeil starts on his recollections. Can’t nobody beat our Mac at chess either.”
That I’d struck up this conversation with this very footman—probably an underfootman—was a stroke of luck. If he’d been more senior, he’d have kept his mouth shut out of loyalty to the house. More junior, and he would have kept his mouth shut for fear of losing his position.
“Your name?”
“Donald, my lord. Donald Donald. Ma said it was easier having to holler only the one name.”
“First, what you say to me remains in confidence, and I do mean in confidence. Not Mr. Banter, not His Grace, not old Zeus himself will hear a word of what you pass along. And as to that, you never uttered a peep the whole time I sat here reading the Times and sipping my tea. Besides, everything you’ve said is common knowledge in the village.”
“Thank you, my lord. ’Tis at that. What’s second?”
“If I want to avoid the path along the river, what’s the shortest route to the coaching inn?”
He looked relieved, bless his innocent, friendly soul. The point of the exchange from my end was simply to give the folk belowstairs a chance to form a current impression of me. My hope was that Donald would pronounce me a good sort, not too high in the instep, not a fribble, and not like the squire.
“The river path is actually sort of roundabout. Sir Rupert and his friends like to use that trail to twit the squire, but if you go to the stable and take the track running off to the east, you’ll be on the green in fifteen minutes. Goes by the mare’s pasture and cuts through a corner of the home wood. They serve a good summer ale at the Pump and Pickle, and a plate of Mrs. Joyce’s jam tarts is the winning team’s reward on darts night—for good reason.”
“You play?”
“I’m a fair hand, my lord. Pride of the house, in fact. Our autumn tournament coincides with the hound trials, and Bloomfield has a shot at winning.”
Would Silforth pout if the staff won their darts crown, while he had to sit out the trials for want of his champion?
“Best of luck, and I’ll put a fiver on Bloomfield, proceeds to be split between the team and the parson.”
“Thank you, my lord. We’ll do our best.”
He jaunted off with a tray full of dirty dishes, and as I made my way from the house, I counted the conversation productive. Banter had not lost authority with the staff. If he’d forbidden them to address Silforth as Squire, the staff would have heeded his dictates… would probably have been relieved to do so, given my sense of the situation.
Of course, because Silforth had his own acres and his own dwelling upon those acres, he was free to style himself as a squire if he pleased to. The term had no precise meaning in current parlance, though everybody understood it to refer to a rural fellow of some means, acres, and consequence.
Though of the three, Silforth could boast of only the acres.
I set aside those thoughts as I reached the home wood, a mature stand of hardwoods going yellow and sparse in its understory. The forest stretched along both sides of the river at this point and bordered the home farm as well.
The home wood represented acres and acres of freedom where a hound could roam, nap, and snack on game, but I was convinced Thales was not at liberty. He’d return to his pack and his master if he could, just as a wounded soldier longed only to return to his regiment.
I emerged from the trees, grateful for my tinted spectacles in the bright morning sun. After a quarter mile of ambling along a coaching road, I came to a village that could have graced any shire in the home counties. Against a backdrop of stately maples along the water, a smattering of shops and houses circled a flat green. A serene little granite church with a square bell tower occupied one end. The coaching inn, the worldly epicenter of the village and also fashioned of pale gray granite, occupied the other.
I stood in the shade of an obliging maple and let impressions form, a skill learned of necessity in Spain.
The village spoke of contentment and modest prosperity. The goodwives appeared to be in a friendly competition regarding the blooms in their flower boxes, this one rioting with pansies, that one awash in salvia, another trailing a cascade of late roses. The church roof was in good repair. The stable lad who came to take a horse from the hitching rack moved with jaunty energy.
Caution advised, but safe to proceed.
I struck out across the green and got a cheerful greeting from a maid with a bucket who plied the eponymous pump at the foot of the steps. “And mind how you go, sir. Mrs. Joyce would not be best pleased to have you sailing top over tall boots on these wet steps.”
I winked and gained the cool, relatively dim interior of the inn. The common sat to the left of the spacious foyer, the guest parlor to the right. A ladies’ parlor was likely to be found farther down the corridor, just as the back corner of the common—opposite the snug—was likely reserved as a ladies’ dining room.
The dartboard hung to the left of the common’s main hearth, between the fireplace and a row of sparkling windows. A worn mailbag dangled from a wooden peg to the left of the dartboard. On the opposite side of the hearth, a likeness of what might have been Queen Anne held pride of place, the monarch resting a fond hand on a lowly pickle barrel.
The inn’s arrangement was practical and predictable, as were the enormous, dark ceiling beams and support posts, whitewashed walls, and capacious fireplaces. The whole was spotless, from windows to tabletops to the floor itself, and the tables and chairs were organized neatly.
I took my specs off, got out my notebook and pencil, and proceeded to the dartboard hanging in a front corner of the room. Twelve names had been jotted on a piece of foolscap tacked to the cork boards surrounding the target.
A. Silforth, Esq. had been crossed out.
“Will you be joining our little competition?” The question came from a handsome woman in a blue dress, no cap or apron. Her complexion suggested ancestry from more southerly climes—India perhaps, or the Levant—and her posture spoke of self-possession and confidence.
She was the antithesis of the pale English rose and utterly lovely.
“You can take Mr. Silforth’s place,” she went on, advancing into the common, “seeing as he’s no longer able to field a pack. I’m Mrs. Joyce.”
“Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service.” I did not have to tell her I was a guest at Bloomfield. This was an English village, and she was the proprietress of the inn. She likely knew which bedroom I’d slept in and how I took my tea. “Who crossed out Silforth’s name?”
“I did. Without Thales, he hasn’t any particular advantage, and Anaximander Silforth hates to lose. Sir Rupert’s beagles have been bred since his grandfather’s day for the hunt, which is why they’re taller than most other beagles. Smarter, too, and a beagle is no fool in the field to begin with. Mr. Michael’s pack is rumored to be in prime condition as well, and we mustn’t write off Mrs. Ladron’s hounds. They are in a class by themselves for stamina and love of the chase, though they can be slow to find the line of scent.”
“Do you ride to hounds, Mrs. Joyce?”
“I did. I haven’t decided whether I will this year. Join me in a pint?”
“Thank you. A lady’s pint will do for me.”
Women rode to hounds, albeit not in great numbers. The athleticism required in the field when riding aside was nigh unimaginable to me. On the Continent, many women rode en cavalier when hunting—astride, as men did—and the ladies thus enjoyed greater safety.
Not so for the typical British equestrienne.
And yet, whatever else was true of foxhunters, they were egalitarian. Anybody with the means to participate, regardless of their walk of life, was welcome to saddle up. If they had a modicum of ability and more means yet, they could eventually graduate from guest to member of the hunt. Vicars, chandlers, yeomen, ladies and lords, all galloped off after Reynard, united by love for a sport that gave me the collywobbles.
The collywobbles would not dare plague Mrs. Joyce.
“Where have you looked for Thales?” she asked, sidling behind the bar and pulling a small pint. She set it before me and started on another.
“The usual places. Outbuildings, home farm, hedges, and ditches. I haven’t seen any carrion birds circling, so one hopes the beast is still extant.” Either that, or somebody had taken the trouble to bury the poor wretch.
She set her pint beside mine and came out from behind the bar. “Let’s sit out back, shall we?”
I collected both drinks and followed her to a shady terrace at the rear of the inn. The sizable stables required of any coaching establishment sat off to the east—downwind—while the view immediately before us was of extensive pastures. Horses at grass munched contentedly, and my hostess surveyed the vista with a satisfied air.
“Harvest should be good this year,” she said, gesturing to a wrought-iron table. “O’Keefe says his hip presages good weather for the nonce, and O’Keefe’s hip is never wrong.”
I set down our drinks and held the lady’s chair. She wore an interesting fragrance, spicy rather than floral, putting me in mind of the South of France and Mediterranean shores.
“Where should I be looking for Thales?” I asked, taking my seat and waiting for the lady to enjoy the first sip of her drink.
“Sir Rupert is determined to win,” she said, “and if you’d heard him reminisce about his days in India, you’d know he is no respecter of protocol when it comes to winning a battle. But then, many of the other contenders need the money even more than Sir Rupert does. They all want to see Silforth bested, but most of them would prefer honorable combat to dognapping.”
“Would they put period to Thales’s existence?”
She tasted her drink with a connoisseur’s sense of focus, then took another sip. “Kill a foxhound in his prime? I doubt it. The local foxhunters wouldn’t consider that sporting at all.”
“But dognapping is sporting?”
She turned a dispassionate eye on me. “You went to war, my lord. How far did rules of engagement and officers’ courtesies go on the day of battle?”
“With notable exceptions, they went straight to hell.” An image rose in my mind, of an infantryman looting his superior officer’s corpse, finding an ornate flask, and holding it up in the brilliant Spanish sunshine with as much glee as if he’d stolen from Napoleon rather than his own commander. The fallen lieutenant had been a bully and a sot, but still…
“Right,” Mrs. Joyce said. “When battle is joined, most of us become barbarians. And Anaximander Silforth, who is little better than a barbarian to begin with, has thrown down a gauntlet. If we let him win, he’ll strut off with our money when he contributed virtual pennies to the pot for the previous three years. He isn’t paying to have those hounds cared for and exercised and trained. He isn’t footing the bill to keep his hunters in oats and hay, but he wants what we’ve been saving for one of our own. We understand that Banter’s hands are tied by bonds of affection and blood where Lizzie Silforth is concerned, but our hands are free.”
“Why not change the entry requirements to include only local property owners?”
“Too late.” She smiled ruefully over her ale. “We will certainly change them for next year, but the pot will be much smaller. Then too, we’d exclude two or three local competitors who have yet to inherit or who hold long-term tenancies.”
The ale was very good, and I wished the lady and I might converse on more pleasant topics. Stealing a prize hound was nonetheless a serious crime. Unless Thales was returned immediately in good health, Silforth might well see somebody swing for it.
If I could caution Mrs. Joyce strongly enough, she might encourage the thief to return the goods posthaste.
“When Silforth learns whose hand has been raised against him—or against Thales—he might not wait for such justice as the assizes will mete out.”
Mrs. Joyce snorted. “Then he will have to call me out, my lord. I did not steal that hound, but I will gladly take the blame for any competitor suspected of such a crime. And if Nax thinks he can bring the matter to the magistrate, I wish him the best. The current magistrate is courting Mrs. Ladron. The previous justice of the peace was Sir Rupert.”
That was very bad news indeed. “All the more reason to return the hound now, Mrs. Joyce. If Silforth thinks legal redress will be denied to him, he’ll indulge in vigilante satisfaction.”
She sipped daintily at her ale. “I am a dead shot.”
I wanted to shake her, for all that her confidence impressed me. “He won’t fight fair, Mrs. Joyce. He’ll claim your ale was off. He’ll slander your good name—”
She laughed unpleasantly. “No, he will not. Not any more than he already has.”
I sampled my drink and moved mental chess pieces about on the Bloomfield board. “He trifled with you?”
She was quiet for a moment, gaze on the grazing horses. “Nax can be charming. I can be charmed—or I could—for an hour here or there. Widowhood is supposed to have its privileges. Then I learned he was attempting to share his favors—with a notable lack of finesse, let it be said—with Lizzie’s sister. Even I, merry widow of means, wanted no part of a man who’d cross that line. Eleanora is innocent of men, the proverbial retiring spinster, and Nax had no business whispering in her ear even if he was merely trying to make me jealous.”
She speared me with a look no man would find friendly. “To him,” she went on, “flirting with Eleanora, toying with her affections, was a lark. I hope for Eleanora’s sake that she set him down hard, once and for all. Stealing the favorite hound of a man like that isn’t nearly punishment enough for his selfishness.”
Ye cavorting gods and goddesses. If I’d been Thales, I would have run off to join the doggy navy rather than dwell amid this much intrigue and unhappiness.
“What can you tell me about the other competitors?” I asked, rather than dwell on Mrs. Joyce’s revelation. She had surprised me, in that I had suspected something was off between Nax and Eleanora, but not… not that far off, not that bitterly far off. Did Lizzie know what a hound she’d married, and did she care?
Mrs. Joyce recited facts and anecdotes as we finished our ale, though it would take more resources than I commanded to assess each competitor as a potential thief.
In all likelihood, I wouldn’t have to.
Thales didn’t know the various parties listed by the dartboard. According to my hostess, the missing beast had never laid eyes on Mrs. Ladron except in the distant context of the hunt field. He hadn’t crossed paths at any closer range with Mr. Michael. Had either of them abducted him, he would have set up a hue and cry.
My thief was someone known to the hound, perhaps somebody in the pay of others. I took my leave of Mrs. Joyce after placing my bet for the darts team and walked back to Bloomfield at a relaxed pace.
I owed Banter a report, but how was I to express that in his haste to quit the country, Banter was allowing Silforth to leave a trail of ill will in all directions? More to the point, Mrs. Joyce, according to the convoluted rules of infidelity, was a woman scorned—a widow of means, standing, and good connections—and in a position to seek revenge against Nax for any and all slights.