“Run?” Silforth squeaked the word, half rose, and then sank back onto his chair. “I am not a coward to be chased from my home over some minor misunderstanding, just as hunt season lies in the offing.”
Bloomfield was not his home, nor would it ever be.
“Young man,” Lady Ophelia said, gently for her, “no misunderstanding involving thousands of pounds is minor. If you return the entire sum immediately, you will look less guilty, of course, but less guilty is still guilty. You well know how Society judges us based on appearances.”
The lot of us, even the dog, looked at Silforth questioningly, the same Silforth who had used appearances and Society’s willingness to judge to his advantage, time and again.
He addressed himself to Thales. “Just this morning, I sent off a bank draft to cover the arrears on the mortgage for my own property. I’ve been busy, what with hunt season approaching, and I let a few accounting details temporarily slip a bit.”
Hunt season was weeks away, and those arrearages had likely been building for months. Foreclosure might have already been in the offing, if Silforth had been forced to erase the arrearages entirely.
“I’d like to help, of course,” Banter said, “but my ready funds are at low ebb, and what cash I can command, I’ve forwarded to various European banks for traveling expenses.”
A nice irony. Banter could posit that his cash was at low ebb because Silforth had all but drained Bloomfield’s coffers.
“You’d best start packing, Silforth,” Lady Ophelia said. “Get thee to Paris and trust Banter to provide for your brood.”
“Paris is lovely in autumn,” Arthur murmured, though he’d never set foot off British soil.
“I don’t want to go to damned Paris,” Silforth said. “My place is here, leading the first flight, Thales baying victory at the head of the pack.”
Ye gods, the fellow had an exalted view of himself—and of his dog.
“Think of those insurance lawyers and the gossips as if they were forty-couple hounds in full cry,” Hyperia suggested. “They will be that tenacious, that loud, possessed of that many teeth and claws.”
Her analogy apparently penetrated the fog of Silforth’s self-convincing innocence. “Paris?” he asked, aiming the question at Lizzie.
“Perhaps a short repairing lease might be in order?” Lizzie replied.
“Always pleasant to see some of the larger world,” Banter said, “and we’ll have O’Keefe keep an eye on your acres, Silforth. Man knows his job and is much respected in these parts.”
“But how am I to… manage?” Silforth muttered. “My French is quite good, but one needs means.”
“You still have some of that insurance money, I trust,” Lady Ophelia said. “That should suffice for a time.”
Godmama, with every appearance of concern and simple practicality, ventured where I would not have dared to tread.
“Half the sum is in my London bank,” Silforth mused. “I was going to Tatts next week, and…”
Visions of lean, leggy hunters were doubtless dancing in his head, the stupid sod. “Move your trip up a few days,” I suggested. “Visit your banker just as if you intend to make a grand splash at the next two-year-old sale and very quietly book a packet for Calais.”
“Stay at your usual club,” Arthur said. “Hold to whatever patterns are expected of you, then, with no fuss whatsoever, dodge away while nobody’s looking.”
“Dodge away.” Silforth spoke as if translating the words into a personal dialect. “Lizzie, how soon can you be packed?”
“Merciful angels.” Lady Ophelia snorted. “You cannot think to make a discreet exit with a wife, a regiment of offspring, a baggage train, nurses, footmen, ponies… Mr. Silforth, need I remind you that your objective is stealth?”
“She’s right.” Eleanora, too, spoke somewhat gently. “If you value your own hide, Nax, you will jaunt up to Town precisely as you have on previous occasions, leaving wife and children behind in the country, until you decide it’s time to jaunt home.”
Arthur, Banter, and the ladies were doing what I could not: convincing Silforth to run, the remaining loot in his pockets, the details pointing to subterfuge, to self-interest, and—most convincingly—to guilt.
“Promise you’ll write, Nax,” Lizzie said, her eyes sheening. “You must promise to write to the children, please. I’ll tell them… I’ll tell them you wanted to try hunt season on the Continent, and an unforeseen opportunity arose.”
“They’ll believe that,” Eleanora observed. “The neighbors might, as well. You hunted this whole shire week after week last season, after all.”
“I don’t want…” Silforth looked around the table, and doubtless saw a semblance of sympathy on every face. His gaze at last settled on me. “What of Thales?”
No concern for his childhood home, the hunters of whom he’d demanded such reckless courage, the staff whom he’d bullied into spying on Banter, old MacNeil facing blindness and poverty, or even for Lizzie and the children…
“Thales must go with you,” I said, with an admirably straight face. “For him to be seen cavorting about in the first flight all but proves that the insurance company was misled. The alternative is to put him down,”—Silforth looked appropriately horrified—“or to send him off to hunt on behalf of some American farmer.”
Silforth’s horror coalesced into a decision. “Thales goes with me, but we’ll start with the German states, rather than Paris. I’ve never hunted boar, and my German is passable.”
Lizzie rose and, with an impressive display of uxorial emotion, trotted the length of the table and wrapped her arms about her spouse.
“You will write to the children?”
Silforth, to his credit, rose and hugged his wife. “Regularly, and you will have told them the truth: I’m off to try hunting, Continental-style. Thales and I are off, rather.”
Lizzie stepped back. “You’ll want to spend this afternoon in the saddle. I know you will. I’ll see to the packing, and Eleanora will help me. We will have a farewell picnic this evening, as a family, and give you a marvelous send-off in the morning.”
Eleanora listened to this recitation with a peculiar gleam in her eye—satisfaction, perhaps?
“That’s my foundation mare,” Silforth said, kissing Lizzie’s forehead. “I’m off to the stable. Thales, come.”
The hound decamped on Silforth’s heels, tail wagging. Lizzie resumed her seat and reached for her meadow tea.
The silence that ensued was thoughtful. It occurred to me that with the assistance of friends and family, I’d solved the problem Banter had needed me to solve—Silforth was no longer a menace—and I took some satisfaction from that. As I reviewed Silforth’s reactions and comments in the past half hour, though, I wasn’t convinced I’d ferreted out the truth of Thales’s disappearance.
“His German is worse than his French,” Eleanora remarked, biting into a plum tart. “One doesn’t envy Thales.”
Lizzie re-draped her table napkin over her lap, but not before I glimpsed the start of a smile in her downcast eyes.
Ah, well, then.
I reviewed all the little moments that had puzzled me, such as Eleanora out daily dispensing tisanes when she was supposedly in charge of breakfast in the nursery.
The portrait of Thales hanging in the formal parlor—Thales, not Lizzie. What could be more indicative of a husband’s dunderheadedness than that?
Lizzie looking at sketchbooks in the dower house, but taking none of them with her to the manor.
Thales’s captor being someone he trusted and recognized.
Lizzie demanding that Banter haul me down from London, then offering no protest when I’d been banished from Bloomfield….
For once, Silforth had been telling the truth.
I addressed my hostess. “Somebody did envy Thales, and that envy inspired a dognapping. A single act of long-overdue defiance has achieved a purpose beyond the thief’s original intent. Do I have the right of it, Mrs. Silforth?”
Banter gazed down the table at his erstwhile intended. He then rose, closed the dining room door, and took the place beside Lizzie that Nax had vacated.
“What is Julian implying, Lizzie? We will, all of us, respect your confidences. Julian has a way of seeing what others try to keep hidden, so you might as well tell us. We can’t protect you if we don’t know the particulars.”
Lizzie brushed a glance in Eleanora’s direction and got a nod from her sister.
“I took the damned dog,” Anaximander’s loyal wife and foundation mare said. “Even had I known how matters would play out, especially had I known how matters would play out, I would do the same thing again, twice daily, so don’t you lot judge me for it.”
“We don’t judge you,” Eleanora said. “Never that.”
“I certainly don’t judge you either, Miss Eleanora,” I said, “but I think you ladies should know that the next time you set your dainty feet in the village, you might receive a heartier welcome than you anticipate.”
Lizzie reached for her meadow tea. “They despise me in the village, people who’ve known me all my life, and I can’t blame them. But for marriage to me, Nax would never have had an opportunity—”
“But for me,” Banter said, “and a delightful indiscretion committed years ago, which I refuse to regret, Silforth would never have got his greedy fingers into my account books.”
“I made the mistake of returning a few of his smiles in the churchyard,” Eleanora said. “He held my reputation on a short leash as a result. I suspect he was doing the same to Mrs. Joyce on an even less honorable level. We are well rid of him.”
Arthur poured more wine for Eleanora. “You are well rid of him for now, but tell me, Julian, what is the statute of limitations for fraud?”
I saluted Lizzie with my glass. “For most felonies, twenty-one years. An anonymous letter or three to Dewey and Blaydom, testifying to sightings of Thales and to his owner’s abrupt departure for the wilds of Bavaria, will likely ensure the file is kept open at least that long.”
“A successful hunt, then,” Lady Ophelia said, “but I’m foggy on the details. Julian, you will please elucidate particulars, and let’s have some more of that wine, Your Grace. Ridding the shire of crooks is thirsty work.”
“Lizzie had to do something,” I began, taking the place Banter had vacated at the head of the table. “She had reason to believe another denizen of the nursery was already on the way, and an eleventh or fourteenth, was foreseeable as well. If she couldn’t rein in Nax’s marital enthusiasm, he would husband her to death, as it were.”
“Julian,” Lady Ophelia muttered, “when did you become so indelicate?”
“He’s not being indelicate,” Hyperia snapped. “He’s stating the obvious. Silforth would have found another well-dowered bride to bankrupt and thrust upon her the job of raising his grieving children.”
Eleanora aimed a glower at Lady Ophelia. “Lizzie nearly died with the last two lyings-in. Nax can’t even give her six months to recover from one birth before he’s in rut again. My sister is not a broodmare.”
“The babies weren’t my entire motivation,” Lizzie said. “I love my children, and Nax isn’t the worst husband or father, but he is… hardheaded. If I pleaded too many headaches, he simply took his enthusiasms elsewhere.”
“To Mrs. Joyce,” Eleanora said, “until she lost patience with him.”
Lizzie’s smile was wan. “Mrs. Joyce did me a favor, though when Nax’s pouting took the form of flirting with Eleanora, I grew concerned. I trust my sister with my life, but Nax was creating an appearance of reciprocal interest that could only discredit Eleanora at the time of Nax’s choosing. He’s a bumbler in many ways, but fiendishly shrewd in others.”
Lizzie, in the end, had been shrewder. “What about young George?” I asked. “How did he come into it?”
“When I explained to Eleanora what all Nax’s flirtation and flattery was in aid of,” Lizzie replied, “she became less receptive to his silly overtures. Nax took to mentioning that William was ready to attend public school, and Hal would follow in a year or two, but George should attach himself to a steward and learn that trade. In the alternative, a bookish and sickly lad like my George might make a decent clerk if he could be articled to a London firm.”
Banter paused in the midst of unwrapping the bandage from his hand, his usually genial expression turning thunderous.
“George is not in the least sickly, he’s smarter than Hal and William put together, and some of those London firms drive their clerks like donkeys. Lizzie, why didn’t you tell me?”
“What could you have done?”
“He’d have got out his dueling pistols,” Lady Ophelia said, “and created a great scandal even if both fellows deloped, though I cannot see Silforth being that brave or that honorable. Why take the dog, Lizzie? You were concerned for George, your sister, and even yourself—as well you should have been—but what on earth possessed you to steal that hound?”
I could guess why Lizzie had taken the creature who meant the most in the whole world to Nax Silforth, why she’d taken a cricket bat to her husband’s sense of himself as the petty dictator of Bloomfield, but this part of the tale was hers to tell.
“I hadn’t planned to steal Thales,” Lizzie said, “not with the part of my mind that makes sense, but I was in the woods that morning, close enough to overhear Nax subtly bullying old Sir Rupert. Implying that the village needed new blood on the aldermen’s board and that unflattering talk might arise if Sir Rupert proved too stubborn to accommodate needed change. Nax maundered on about the expense involved in bringing in a crop, though I doubt he had the slightest notion of what it costs to complete a harvest, and I just… My temper got away from me.
“Sir Rupert is a prosy old bore,” she went on more quietly, “but he’s harmless and means well, and Lady Giddings is outspoken when she tipples, but never malicious. As Thales came sniffing around the briar patch, I realized that I wasn’t likely to survive to be a prosy old bore. I’d never be that gruff older lady whom everybody holds in cautious affection. If the next lying-in went any worse than the last two, I’d never see my children grow up…”
She fell silent, and a discussion I’d had with Hyperia in London came back to me. Hyperia viewed motherhood as more a curse than a blessing. When the subject was viewed through Lizzie Silforth’s experiences, Hyperia was at least half right.
“I took the dog,” Lizzie said, “initially out of some fit of pique. Thales is a fine fellow, I bear him no malice, but Nax was more concerned for his dog than he was for me. I was a convenience to my husband, a source of funds and comfort, and I married the man, so perhaps he has a point. But to hear him shaming Sir Rupert, to know that Eleanora was not safe from his machinations, that George was being pulled into the affray… and Nax went after Osgood, who has been blameless and generous and a true friend, despite all. I had to do something.”
Lady Ophelia took the tray of fruit tarts from the sideboard, helped herself, and sent the dish around the table.
“What did you hope to accomplish by stealing the hound?” she asked.
Arthur took three tarts and offered the dish to Eleanora. The dish came to me last, with one plum tart left, and that only because Hyperia had taken only one for herself.
Clearly, I broke bread with heathens.
“I wasn’t thinking when I led Thales from the woods to the dower house,” Lizzie said. “I was in a temper, and even when my temper cooled, I was still angry. Lady Patience has puppies, and Mac is there to soothe her fevered brow, but Nax has to attend the birth as well. After Hal was born—the spare, I suppose, in Nax’s mind—Nax made it a point to be off in the Midlands or up in Town when I was in childbed. Women’s business, he claimed, when it gets to the messy, painful, and dangerous part.”
Her anger came through her words—her disgust.
“Nax threatened George,” Hyperia said gently, “and Banter, Sir Rupert, Eleanora, the village… So you threatened his prize hound. A kind of revenge?”
“Not revenge,” I said. “Justice. Did you intend to use Thales as a bargaining chip?”
“Oh, vaguely.” Lizzie broke a corner off her tart and considered it. “I’ll show you, sort of reasoning. I wanted the great huntsman to look a fool when his loyal hound deserted him, nowhere to be found. I wanted Nax to realize that he, too, had weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I thought perhaps I could wrangle an agreement with Nax that George would have the same advantages as his brothers, or that Nax and I could have separate apartments. To possess Thales, to have control over him, let me ponder what I wanted, with a hope of somehow getting some of it. Heady business, rather like the initial phases of inebriation.”
Banter set aside his bandage and made a fist of a right hand sporting the smallest cut across the back.
“Oh, Lizzie,” Eleanora murmured. “I want to do Silforth an injury when I hear you talk like that. A serious, personal injury.”
“As do I,” Hyperia said, “but then, Lizzie, you had second thoughts, I take it?”
“Reality must be faced,” Lizzie said. “I did a rash, stupid thing, hiding the dog, but then I had to find a way to unhide him. One cannot strike a bargain with a scoundrel, and in many ways, Nax is simply that. A handsome, sometimes charming or even doting scoundrel, and the doting is always temporary, in aid of his schemes and pleasures. He is fundamentally lazy, greedy, and arrogant. I realized that somebody else would have to find the dog, and I must continue to be Nax’s biddable, sweet, slightly stupid foundation mare. That’s why, when Osgood mentioned Lord Julian, I seized on the notion.”
“I seized on the notion,” Banter said. “I wanted to see somebody best Nax, and he was behaving… oddly, even for him. Making wild accusations, trespassing at will—”
“Offending the neighbors,” Lizzie said. “I have never been so mortified. Over a missing dog, when forty more are eating their heads off and wagging their tails in Mac’s kennels.”
“So why not drop me a few hints where to look for the hound?” I asked. “Or simply turn Thales loose to come home on his own? Why, when Zeus and I went searching, did you instead have Eleanora pass me an old horse blanket that Thales had never so much as sniffed?” Hence Zeus’s failure to give notice even when we passed by Thales’s usual haunts.
“I couldn’t let you find Thales for two reasons,” Lizzie said. “First, anybody who saw Thales emerging from the dower house would suspect me. In the alternative, you might well have been able to read Thales’s back trail and trace him to the dower house. Nax has turned the staff against itself, paid some to inform on others, and so forth. I would never have thought him capable of such machinations, but neither would I have thought him capable of jeopardizing Eleanora’s reputation to spite me. Letting Thales go was too risky, for me and for you, my lord.”
“I really do think,” Lady Ophelia said, studying her wine, “that the wilds of Bavaria might not be far enough away if Silforth hopes to see his dotage. What was your second reason?”
“I can answer that,” I said. “Silforth tried to kill me.”
“Humiliate you, certainly,” Lizzie said. “Injure you, very possibly. I hope Nax isn’t a murderer, but two horses have had to be put down after coming to grief on the very pair of gates he led you over. Nax will only attempt it with his morning horse, a great beast with no manners and endless bottom. The guest horses aren’t expected to manage such heights in combination.”
Arthur appeared to focus on the middle distance, though I suspected he was mentally parsing the royal houses in southern Germany. Surely some obliging princeling… Hunting accidents happened all the time, particularly to arrogant Englishmen who didn’t bother to learn the German words for slow down, you fool or turn back now, before you regret it.
I did not intend to trouble my handsome head over ducal business. “Then Nax stopped looking for his hound,” I said, “and you became more concerned.”
“I often take the mail to the posting inn on my rambles,” Eleanora said. “I recalled that letter to the insurance company. I told Lizzie about it, and we grew alarmed.”
“You knew Silforth hadn’t killed his hound,” I said, moving puzzle pieces around in my mind, “because Eleanora was looking in on the dog and bringing him sustenance, but you also knew for Thales to reappear without explanation had become extraordinarily complicated and possibly fatal for Thales.”
“And thus your lordship had to be banished,” Banter said. “Though you apparently don’t banish easily. Thank you for the suggestion about injuring my hand. I made sure my valet saw a quantity of blood too. One cannot legibly sign away his property when his right hand is swathed in bandages. Simple, but it delayed Nax summoning the solicitors by a few days. I’m very grateful that you refused to stay gone, my lord.”
“One of his more endearing traits.” Hyperia smiled at me, and I knew a passing sense of pity for Nax Silforth.
Hyperia and I were at an odd crossroads, as friends and more than friends, but that she held me in high regard meant more to me than anything. More than Society’s good opinion of me, certainly. She was precious and irreplaceable, and the day I thought of her as my foundation mare, to get with child until the exercise wrecked her good health or worse, was the day I became unworthy of any woman’s company.
“I have a suggestion regarding young George,” Arthur said, doing a creditable job of sounding casual. “He might enjoy traveling with me and Banter on the Continent for a time. He’s a bit young to be leaving home and hearth for such an extended period, but he has a lively mind and common sense. We’d take the best care of him.”
His Grace spoke as if this notion was just now occurring to him, when, in fact, Arthur might well have been plotting to kidnap George, all unbeknownst to even Banter. Arthur could claim two spies among his siblings, after all.
“Travel broadens the mind,” Lady Ophelia observed. “I’m sure I could retrieve the boy from Paris later this autumn when you fellows continued your journey.”
What did she know, and how did she know it? The question was reflexive where Lady Ophelia was concerned. Meanwhile, Lizzie and Banter were regarding Arthur with different varieties of surprise.
“I want what’s best for George,” Lizzie said slowly. “He’s not meant for an obscure corner of a rural shire, and his brothers do pick on him endlessly. Nax allowed it and possibly encouraged it.”
Arthur looked about as if somebody ought to have rung for more tarts. “Banter, can you tolerate a young traveling companion for the first few weeks of our journey? The lad will get homesick, depend upon it, and we will have to distract him and jolly him along and keep straight faces when he attempts his schoolroom French.”
I busied myself with the last of my wine rather than gaze upon the naked joy in Banter’s eyes.
“I will bear up surprisingly well under those torments, Your Grace,” Banter said. “Surprisingly well. The lad will have memories to treasure for the rest of his days. I’ll make sure of it.”
Arthur consulted his pocket watch. “We will make sure of it, if Mrs. Silforth is willing?”
Hyperia rose unassisted. “Let’s leave His Grace, Mr. Banter, and Mrs. Silforth to discuss the details. I’ve a need to stretch my legs after all this good food.”
I got to my feet, glad for the excuse to quit the dining room. George’s situation was none of my affair—and none of Godmama’s either. I held her chair and performed the same courtesy for Eleanora.
“On such a lovely day, a stroll in the gardens beckons. Ladies, will you join me?”
“Heavens, no,” Lady Ophelia said. “That sun is much too strong. Miss Eleanora, you must introduce me to the children, who will doubtless delight in an interruption to their studies. And we must schedule a visit for you in Town once Parliament convenes. You can come up to London for some shopping, and I will introduce you to all of my eligible godsons. My other eligible godsons. The handsome ones who don’t risk their very necks searching for an odoriferous canine.”
Eleanora went with good grace to her fate. Arthur, Banter, and Lizzie were left to their discussion, and I—luckiest of men—had the pleasure of escorting Hyperia into the garden, where we sat in the sun, held hands, and said very little—with words.
As it happened, Hyperia and I were soon to have words of the contentious variety regarding an old friend of hers who’d apparently misplaced his wife. I longed for a quiet stretch of weeks at the Hall, bidding my brother farewell, and letting the world have its puzzles without me, but Hyperia is above all, a determined woman.
I went searching for the missing wife, and found much more vexation than I’d bargained for, but that, as they say, is a tale for another time!