Chapter Six

 

“Have you found anything out?”

Gerry had no sooner walked through the front door of the Court than Lady Mortimer pounced on him.

“Have you found anything out?” she repeated, her dark eyes fixed on his face and her hand clutching at his arm, wrapping around his wrist, vise-like. “Have you found what happened to her yet? Where she is?”

“No, Lady Mortimer, I have not,” he said, feeling terribly guilty. He could still feel the imprint of Jenny’s small warm hand in his palm; for a few hours he had completely forgotten about the poor girl who had disappeared. The weight settled back on his shoulders and he gently said, “I will be just having my tea and then will go out again. A neighbor heard something from one of his men and I’m going over to his estate to talk to the fellow myself.”

“If I was a man, I would beat him until he told me.”

“Until he told you what?” Haven snapped, jerking his arm out of her grasp and slipping effortlessly back into his role as Lord Haven, viscount and landowner. “Until he told you what you wanted to hear? That is a brilliant way of conducting yourself, madam, if you only want to hear lies! I happen to want the truth about Miss Dresden’s whereabouts and I was under the assumption that you did too!”

His voice had thundered through the great hall, and his grandmother limped out of her chamber, her cane tap-tap-tapping on the flagstone floor.

“What are you roaring about, Haven?” she said, but there was an appreciative glint in her eyes.

“I am attempting to reassure Lady Mortimer that I am doing my utmost to find out what has happened to her niece.”

“Well, of course you are! Only an imbecile would think otherwise.”

The baroness’s face had frozen into an icy glare, and with a muttered imprecation she swooped out of the hall and strode up the carpeted staircase that curved upward to the gallery overhead.

The dowager Lady Haven chuckled. “Fubsy-faced old turnip,” she said, making a face after the retreating baroness. “Come have tea with me, Haven. Tell me what you have been up to today, for I’ll warrant it was not completely taken up with searching for poor Miss Dresden. I saw you coming up the walk just now, and you had a look of moon-dreams on your face.” She turned, assuming he would follow, and he did.

The dowager, though her home was nominally at Haven Wood, the dower house behind the manor house, had a room on the main floor of the Court, carved out of a section of the great hall. It was decorated in the heavy, ornate style of her youth, with large carved furniture and brocade-covered walls. An enormous screen portioned off an area near the fire for her bedchamber, but she had a sitting area near the window, and it was there that she retreated, pulling a bell-cord and ordering tea from the footman who answered the summons.

“Who is she?” the dowager said the moment the door closed behind the footman.

“She who?” Haven said irritably. He paced to the window and scrubbed his face with one hand, suddenly weary. He stared out at the leaden sky, but remembered the celestial blue overhead while he walked with Jenny.

“‘She who’! Do not try to cozen me, Haven. Is she a new barmaid at the Swan? You had the same look on your face as the first time you came home from a tomcat expedition to town. Tupping a lightskirt behind the inn? Eh?”

Haven flushed as he always did at his grandmother’s earthy wit. “No, I was not. I wish you would not speak that way, Grand. It’s crude and not befitting a lady.”

The dowager made a rude noise. “Not befitting a lady! Humph. So, not a lightskirt, and not one of our maids. You never were one to break in the girls. You leave that up to the footmen. No little by-blows of yours running around that we know of, eh?”

Haven flushed deeper and gave his grandmother a quelling look. She laughed, sputtering and gurgling as a footman brought in a tray, setting it on the table in front of her. She dismissed him and poured herself a cup, dumping some in her saucer to cool it and drinking directly from the saucer.

“I’ll not embarrass you more, lad,” she said kindly, sitting ramrod straight in her chair, her white hair dressed in the elaborate style she favored, even though in the country there were few to see it. “Your wenching shall remain a secret.” Her smile died. “I was glad to see you put that horrible Lady Mortimer in her place, Haven, but she has a right to be worried about her niece, for all she is a fussy old cod. The aunt, not the niece. What have you learned?”

Haven sat down across the ornate gilt and enamel table from his grandmother. She poured tea for him with a barely quavering hand and he sipped it, finding solace in the smoky depths of the cup. He could wish it were stiffened with a good shot of brandy but would not quibble, especially since her tea was many times stronger and better than the anemic brew his mother served.

“I have found a puzzling lack of information, Grand. Miss Dresden seems to have started down the stairs toward the kitchen of the Swan and never arrived at the other end. I have heard not a single scrap of information to suggest that anyone saw a well-dressed young lady being seized or assaulted anywhere near the Swan. And I cannot believe that she would have been hauled away without a soul seeing anything!”

The dowager frowned. “Almost as if she wanted to disappear,” she murmured.

He nodded. “I must say I have considered that, but still, Grand, even if that were true, where would she have gone? A well-dressed young lady just walks out of the inn? Someone would have noticed her. I would like to think she left of her own volition but I don’t think that’s possible. And we cannot discount the note that was found in the stable.”

“I suppose not,” the old woman said. “D’you have the note?”

Haven took it out of the pocket of the disreputable jacket he always wore when out walking his own land and smoothed it out on the tabletop, sliding it across to his grandmother.

A more incongruous setting for the dirty, stained, almost illegible note there could not be, for the tabletop was an enameled painting of a lady with panniered skirts, sitting on a bench with an amorous swain at her feet, gazing up at her adoringly. Around the edge of the table was a series of smaller vignettes featuring ladies and gentlemen in much the same attitudes of pastoral love.

The dowager read the note and then pushed it back to her grandson. “Something odd about that,” she said, frowning and chewing on her lip. “For one thing, the handwriting is far too good.”

“That was what I thought,” Haven said, glaring down at it as if it could offer new answers if only it would, though he had stared at it so much it was virtually imprinted on his mind.

“And I do not think,” the dowager said slowly, “that the same fellow who would misspell so many simple words, like ‘to’ or ‘you,’ would be able to spell perfectly when it came to the words ‘we’ll’ and ‘contact.’”

Haven stared at the note. “You’re right, Grand. But . . .” He stopped and thought. “What that means is that this was meant to look like the work of an uneducated worker, but was more likely the work of someone of a much higher class.”

The old woman nodded. “So, not one of the local laborers. Perhaps not someone from around here at all. But that gets us not a single step closer,” she said.

He refolded the paper and put it back in his pocket, moving awkwardly on the dainty chair. “I’m not so sure of that; it at least gives me something to look for. I will go out to Varens’s place. He has heard a story from his stable manager that I think I ought to investigate, even though it would seem to have no bearing on this case, merely the attack of a barmaid from the Swan. From what I understand he saw this girl being attacked and then the girl ran off. But if the girl was unwilling, and the men were at her anyway, it might indicate men who were willing to do that sort of thing to a female. I’ll go and see.”

The dowager nodded. She glanced at her grandson and then away, choosing her words with great care. “If you find the poor girl—Miss Dresden, I mean, not the barmaid—her reputation may well be in ruins, you know,” she said slowly, moving things about on the table as she expressed her concerns. “I feel we owe her something, for after all, she would not have been at the inn if she was not coming to meet you, Haven.”

“I never wanted the damn match. It was Mother!” he protested. “I know I must marry sometime, and I admit that I did not stop her from inviting this girl.” He ran one hand over his thick sandy brown hair and sighed deeply. “But I do see what you mean. I feel for the poor girl; who knows what she is going through right now. But does that mean I have to marry her?”

“Would that be so terrible?” the dowager asked. She frowned over at her grandson and continued, carefully, as if treading on ice. “She is of good birth, Haven, her dowry is excellent, the family females are said to be decent childbearers, and from her miniature, she is tolerable.”

“Tolerable?” he snorted. “Your eyesight is failing, Grand. She looks like butter would not melt in her mouth. She looks prim and ill-tempered and as though my lips would freeze if I dared kiss her.”

“But she is handsome enough and has no visible defects.”

“Is that all I should want?” he asked, standing and pacing to the end of the room. It was a corner suite, so there were windows overlooking both the south terrace and the west gardens. “No visible defects? Sounds like I’m testing a horse’s teeth or wind, not a young lady’s qualifications for marriage. I could stand any defects at all. I wouldn’t care if she was lame, or without hearing, or plain, or even ugly; none of that would matter if I saw a single trace of warmth in her eyes, or—”

“What do you want?” the dowager asked, an acerbic edge to her voice.

“Damn it, Grand, I want a girl I can . . . can care for at least, if not love. I don’t want some frivolous belle of the ball who will demand a new wardrobe every season and will hate Yorkshire.” He swore and slammed has hand against the window frame.

“Haven,” his grandmother said sternly. “Look at me.” He turned toward her. “You are thirty-one. It’s time for you to marry and past time that you got over this ridiculous prejudice against girls of your own class. Just because you were an awkward country gent in a sea of town tulips does not mean every girl who has had a London Season will look at you with scorn.”

He turned back to the window, folded his arms over his broad chest, and stared out bleakly over his land, his eyes traveling the well-known hills. “You have no idea the depths of their scorn, nor the vitriol of their sneering, Grand. You were not there. There is not a one of them I would be able to stand to bed, if you want the bare truth. Prim, prudish little ‘prunes and prisms’ misses, all of ’em.” He spat out the last words.

“Then marry one of them anyway,” his grandmother, exasperated, cried. “And spread her legs in the dark where you can pretend she is a bar wench!”

“Damn it, Grand, I want more!” Haven thundered, whirling and planting his hands on the table. “I—want—more!”

“Then tell me what you do want!” she shrieked back in his face, thoroughly enjoying the turbulent confrontation.

“I want Jenny!” He could not believe he had said it. His words echoed in the high-ceilinged room, seeming to take on a mocking life of their own. Jenny. The name whispered back at him from the windows and paneled walls.

The dowager sat back, looking like a cream-filled cat. “And just who is Jenny?”

Haven slumped down into a chair. “Mary Cooper’s cousin. She’s visiting.”

“What’s she like?”

“Lovely.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “So very lovely. Skin like Devon cream and lips like rose petals. Laugh like a bell; sweet, though, not clanging. Unaffected. Intelligent. Good-natured.”

“And clearly not of our class. Not if she is Mary’s cousin.”

He shrugged. “Does that matter?”

“Of course it does! Not to me.” The dowager snorted. “Good Lord, Haven, I only have another two or three years on this earth if I am lucky. I will not waste any of it bemoaning your wife’s lack of birth.”

When the viscount stole a glance at his grandmother’s face, he saw only compassion. As always, there was an empathy between them. She understood him in ways no other person on earth did.

“But to her, it will,” she said. “I will not say that an unequal marriage cannot work. When there are only the two involved, it can. But you have a mother, two sisters who will marry in time, and a position to uphold. Is it fair to ask her to join you in a marriage in which—”

“God, Grand, I did not say I wanted to marry her!” He could not bear to hear all of her reasons why Jenny would not suit.

“Ah. You only want a poke at her?”

“No!” he shouted. “Well, yes, but not just that!” He was revolted, for once, by his grandmother’s forthright, old-fashioned crudeness. In the normal course of things he might rail at her unseemly language though he would laugh as well, but there was no laughter in his heart just then.

He sat down across from her and looked her in the eye. She was getting old, was his Grand, and there was no disputing that. The once taut and smooth skin was a fine net of wrinkles and her eyes, though still blue, were rheumy and watering. Grand was always the one he could talk to over his own mother or even his father. She had to understand, he had to make her understand this one thing. He had caught a glimpse that afternoon of all that he had ever wanted, all that would make his life bearable—more than bearable. It would make his life complete to have someone like Jenny to love. “I want to just talk to her. I want to sit by the fire with her while she sews. I want to watch our baby grow in her, and be there when she—or he—is born. I—” He put his head down, feeling the enameled panels cool under his overheated skin. He felt his grandmother’s hand on his head smoothing back his ruffled hair, and he smelled her rose perfume, as familiar as his own scent.

“You want someone to love.” There was a deep sympathy and understanding in her voice. “That is no mystery. And you have this fairy-tale romance in your mind of a cottage in the woods and you and some plump little wench filling it with children.” She sighed. “But you are Geraint Walcott Haven . . . Viscount Haven,” she continued, her voice taking on a bracing, stirring tone. “Lord and master of a grand inheritance. Your wife must be someone who can fill the position required of her with grace and elegance. That is for her own comfort, Haven, not for yours. Does this girl even know who you are, holder of an old and illustrious title in your own right and noble descendant of the earl of Warwick—Warwick the kingmaker—and the largest landholder in the North Riding?”

He sat up and gave her a rueful smile and shook his head.

“I thought not,” she said dryly. “Do not think she would be impressed, Haven. She would likely think you were just another nobleman looking to jump into her bed for a cuddle and a poke.”

“Grandmother!”

“Grandson!” Her tone was mocking.

He could not stay angry at her. She only told him what she knew to be right, after all. Or what she believed to be right. “You, old dear, are incorrigible.” He grinned at her and caught her hand in his own and kissed the palm, feeling the silk-soft skin under his lips.

“When you smile like that you are almost as charming as your grandfather,” she said with a twinkle that changed to a rueful look. “He liked maids too, and bar wenches, and being married to me did not always stop him from indulging his tastes.” Her expression grew more serious. “Do nothing until we find this poor girl. I feel we are committed to helping her and making what reparation we can for her terrible kidnapping. And do not put so much store in Miss Dresden’s painting. After all, perhaps the day the portrait was made she had just eaten a rotten quince and had an upset stomach.”

Haven nodded and chuckled. “Thank you, Grand,” he said, cupping her cheek. “Thank you for listening. If I had told Mother about Jenny she would have thrown one of her more memorable fits, I am sure.” He stood and walked toward the door. “I’ll find Miss Dresden. If she has been kidnapped and is out there somewhere, I will find her. I promise I will not let myself become distracted again.”

“I know you’ll find her, Haven,” the dowager said. “I have faith in you.”

Haven left, closing the door behind him, but the dowager sat where she was for at least half an hour staring blankly at the teapot.