Chapter Three

 

Haven, having escaped from the Court and its pervasive atmosphere of blame, found refuge at the Tippling Swan and sat in a corner of the smoky, low-beamed drinking room of the inn. It was very late, past midnight or later, and yet all around him the raucous voices of men eddied and flowed like a muddy stream, swelling on the tide of a joke to a boozy wave of laughter. Joseph Barker, the innkeeper, brewed a dark lager that was the pride of the parish, and most of the men present gulped back great draughts from hammered metal tankards.

As he scanned the crowd Haven wondered, was one of them a kidnapper, maybe worse? He cast his piercing blue gaze around, lingering on Burt Connor, Georgie Robertson, Artie Davies, each man in turn, but there was not a one of them he thought would descend to such depths as kidnapping a female. It just did not seem possible that one of these men, or more perhaps, for abduction was rarely a solitary crime, had strayed so far from the law as to take an innocent girl of good birth for ransom, a demand that had not yet been followed up. The note had said a demand would follow, but so far, nothing.

He motioned through the thick air for the landlord; Joseph Barker was a bulky, surly sort who gave him an unpleasant look but, grumbling, joined him. The man turned one of the sturdy wooden chairs around and straddled it, rolling his shirtsleeves up over meaty forearms.

Haven leaned across the battered wooden table and said, “Are you certain, Joseph, that you neither saw nor heard anything the day Miss Dresden disappeared?”

“I towd ya, me lord, I hain’t seen nuthin’.” Barker narrowed his eyes, squinting through the smoky air. “An’ I’d be beholden to ya if ya wouldna’ make like I did.”

“I didn’t, Joseph. I am just trying to get to the bottom of this. She and her aunt were here, and then the girl disappeared. Do you remember Miss Dresden?” Haven raised his voice over another wave of laughter.

With a leer, the landlord said, “Right enough, me lord. Never forget a pair like ’ers.”

Haven frowned. What the hell did that mean? “But you never saw her come down?”

“Not arter her an’ the auld besom, her auntie, went up t’stairs, nup.”

“So you have no idea what happened to her? You saw no one suspicious, nor—”

With a sigh of exasperation the landlord grunted, “Don’t rightly know, me lord, what I ken tell ya that I h’ain’t already tol’ ya!” His words were muttered with a belligerent tone. “An’ anutter thing, me lord. Yer makin’ the fellas a mite anxious, like, an’ . . .”

Haven sighed deeply as he listened to Joseph’s unhappy reproaches. The landlord’s words held some merit. The viscount was being cast unpleasant looks in a place where he had been used to be honored. The men around Lesleydale might hold he had little to say for himself, but what little he did say was accounted to be sensible and just. Now, after his insistent questioning, they were grumbling that he was casting them all in a suspicious light. Not a man among them would stoop to snatching an innocent maiden, they muttered, and for the lord of the manor to be saying they would—

In short, it was making for an unpleasant time. And yet what else could he do? Miss Dresden was in his part of the county and he felt a duty toward her, though she had disappeared before ever she got to his own door. Even if he did not feel that tug of responsibility, a young woman missing, in his parish? He was bound, by all his ties to the land and the people, to set this right. She had gone somewhere, for he had no belief in the supernatural. Flesh-and-blood women did not just disappear. “I know, Joseph,” he replied, cutting off the innkeeper’s litany of complaints. “But think—have you seen any strangers, even anyone who was vouched for by someone else?”

The man frowned, scrubbing his scruffy chin and folding his meaty arms over the back of the chair. “Yuh ast me that afore, me lord. Carn’t say as I hev. I’ll ast the missus. Again. But seems ta me yer lookin’ in the wrong place. I don’t ’low that kind o’ foolishness at my inn, you know. P’raps at the Dog’s Hind Leg,” he said, naming an infamous hedge tavern on a back road.

“But she disappeared from here, Joseph, we cannot get past that.”

The landlord grunted and stood. “Don’t mean ’twere someone from here who done it! Could ha bin summat as follered her from London!” He turned and retreated to the bar, where a barmaid stood waiting for him to draw her a tankard of his dark and bitter brew.

“Haven! How goes it, my friend?”

Twisting in his seat, Haven was relieved to see Colin Varens, a local baronet who, though a few years younger than he, was a sensible man with a cool head. Sensible except that he was in love with Rachel and had been for four years. Haven thought the man could do much better than his contrary, flirtatious, impetuous sister. In fact, Haven suspected that Pamela, younger than her sister by three years, was well along in the way of being head over ears for the baronet, who was not accounted a handsome man, nor fashionable, but had an open countenance and pleasing expression. But Colin only ever saw Pammy as a child; her slight frame and boyish, slim figure made her look more thirteen than almost twenty, though her thoughts were often surprisingly deep and her spirit gallant.

“Colin, good to see you. Didn’t expect to, this late of an evening.” Haven stuck out his hand and the two men shook.

Varens turned the chair around and sat in the seat vacated by the innkeeper, frowning. “What is this nonsense I hear about someone being kidnapped from the Tippling Swan? My estate manager was full of some wild tale. I told him he was out of his mind, but he insisted.”

“It is true, unfortunately,” Haven said. He glanced around and lowered his voice, for with the meeting of the two most prominent men of the parish the room had grown quieter, and there was an uneasy feel of resentment in the very air they breathed. It was damn uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do about it at this juncture. Once the mystery was solved things would return to their normal even tone.

He explained about the disappearance of Miss Dresden, and the measures he had taken to recover the young lady. “I have searched my own property—most of it, anyway—and ridden over every back road I know of these past thirty-six hours or more. No one has seen her, nor anyone who could have kidnapped her.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and dug at his raw eyes. He was exhausted and would need some sleep soon. “It is a mystery and I am not overfond of mysteries, especially when they concern me or my family.”

“And do you think everyone is telling you the truth?” Varens asked. He glanced around the room, and some of the men who had been staring at them with menacing expressions resumed their determined drinking. Varens was known to be handy with his fists and not above a fight with the yeoman class.

“I have no reason to think otherwise,” Haven said. He stared at his younger friend, wondering if he was intimating that there was deception in their midst, and then glanced around the room, relieved to see that the men were now ignoring them. “What are you saying, Colin?”

“Nothing, truly, Haven. I am just casting around for explanations. It all seems so . . . unlikely. Kidnapping, here? I have heard something you ought to know, though,” he said, his plain face set in a grim expression and his eyes serious. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “I don’t know if this has any bearing on your case, but my stable manager said that the other day, the very day you say this Miss Dresden disappeared, I believe, he was coming out of the back door of the Swan to relieve himself and he saw two men jostling with a barmaid or some such female. When he shouted, they let go of her and she ran off.”

“She was a barmaid? How did your man know?”

Varens shrugged. “I assume it was the way she was dressed. He said ‘barmaid,’ not ‘lady,’ so it must have been her clothing that led him to presume her status.”

Haven shook his head. “I am not looking for a barmaid, Varens, though I thank you for the thought.” He was disappointed that after the buildup it should turn out to be something so mundane as a barmaid being roughly handled. That happened all too often. “Miss Dresden is a young lady of the gentry, Varens, granddaughter of an earl. She would hardly be mistaken for a barmaid.” He thought of the miniature he had seen of the lady, her face pinched, her expression haughty, and added, “No, most definitely Miss Dresden could not be mistaken for a barmaid. And, too, Lady Mortimer was very clear about her clothing. She was wearing a coach dress of brown sarcenet and a pelisse of the same fabric. And the situation is different, too. Miss Dresden was abducted; she would hardly be grappling with a drunkard in the stable yard.”

“You’re right, of course,” the younger man said, leaning back in his chair, at his ease. The barmaid brought him a tankard of ale with a flirtatious swish of her skirts, but Varens did not seem to notice. He never had been in the petticoat line, saving all of his adoration for Rachel. “But I hate to think of any one of our neighboring men doing something so base as to kidnap a lady! How is your sister taking this?”

Haven shook his head. Always, Sir Colin thought of everything in relation to how Rachel was faring. “My dear sister is made of sterner stuff than you would think, Varens.” He did not need to ask which sister his friend meant. Varens never considered Pamela unless he thought to buy her a sweetmeat in the village, or talk to her about horses. “But why do you not come over tomorrow and see for yourself?”

Gloomily, Varens sighed. “I would, but Miss Neville would likely hide away in her room, as she has done the last three times that I have called.”

“I can order her to come down and greet you,” Haven said, anger rising at Rachel’s obdurate refusal to see that Varens was eating his heart out for love of her. Why was it women did not know how to value an honest heart, even if it beat in the chest of a man with a homely face, but would rather see a dandy in canary overcoats and no heart to speak of? “But,” he said, forced to honesty, “she likely would not comply.”

“I would not have her ordered to see me,” Varens said. There was an expression of ineffable sadness on his face. “I know you think me a fool, Haven, for my feelings—”

Haven protested, but Varens put up one hand and continued speaking. “But I see something in her, something fine and noble and . . . I cannot explain. Someday, perhaps . . .” He fell silent for a moment, gloomily staring at the floor. “Why can women not be rational, like men?” he blurted out. “I do not understand them. Before she first went off to London, Miss Neville was very pleased to call me her friend, and I even thought there was a preference there, a . . . a softness. But ever since her first Season . . .” He broke off and stared through the smoke at the bar.

Haven sympathized, but thought it was wisest to remain silent. However much he believed that Varens was an excellent match and that Rachel was a fool to let him slip away, he could not help but think that it was best for both, if there was no preference there on her side, that they should not see each other. His sisters had both been exposed to London society, but their Seasons had been spotty due to a couple of deaths in the family that forced them to withdraw for a period of official mourning. Rachel had only had enough exposure to London society to know that she wanted more, much more, and would settle for no beau who did not share her enthusiasm for the ballrooms and parlors of the elite.

Varens despised London, and his means were not such that he could afford to indulge a wife who wished to make her home there. If only he could see Pamela’s preference for him and fall in love with her. She relished the country and horses and loved Sir Colin’s estate, Corleigh, as a second home. She had made a friend out of Colin’s odd sister, Andromeda, and ran tame in their house when she visited. It would please Haven greatly to have his favorite sister and his best friend make a match of it. Unfortunately, Pamela seemed destined to forever remind Colin of a particularly pleasing puppy. He liked her, found her amusing, but did not think of her as a flesh-and-blood woman.

“Why are women so very impossible to understand?” Varens said finally, after a period of brooding silence.

Haven shrugged. “Not all women are like Rachel.” He thought of Mary, and her calm goodness, her sweet-tempered naturalness. Then he thought of all he had heard of Miss Dresden, her perfection of genteel manners, her rigid propriety. It would not do. He had been seriously considering the match, knowing the duty he owed to his title and his ancestry. The title had descended directly through seven generations, with no oblique movements to sully the line. He must marry and produce a son. But surely Miss Dresden was not his only choice? He had thought he was resigned to it, but now he did not know.

“If only we could marry wherever our hearts took us, Varens. If only.”

The other man gazed at him shrewdly, and said, “You’re thinking of Mary Cooper, are you not, my friend?”

Haven frowned and shook his head, confused, as always, as to what he felt for Mary. Sometimes he thought he loved her, but she had told him on more than one occasion that what he felt was friendship and familiarity, mixed with male need. He respected her opinion and thought that she was quite likely right. It had been a long time since he had made love to a woman, and Mary was very pretty in a country fashion, but if he was in love with her, he would be sure of it. In any case, she evidently felt nothing more for him than friendship, so the point was moot.

“We are an unprosperous pair of lovers, are we not, Haven?” Varens rose from his chair and stretched his lean body. “I must be on my way. I will see what I can find out about Miss Dresden’s disappearance. I’m appalled that a lady would suffer such a fate as abduction in our neighborhood.”

“I thank you for your aid, my friend.” The two men clasped hands warmly and Varens left, the smoky air swirling about him as he strode through the taproom. Haven was about to follow him out but noticed the landlord berating a young potboy in the entrance to the kitchen. The youngster had something in his hand, but the landlord snatched it from him and shook him by the shoulder, then pushed him off toward the kitchen.

“What goes on, Joseph?” Haven said, approaching the landlord. It was very late. A youngster that age should not still have been working.

“I caught the wee wretch sneakin’ back in from outside; escapin’ his dooties, he were! Should be in his bed under the kitchen work table, restin’ up for his work on the morrow instead of out in th’moonlight. Prob’ly poachin’ rabbits, the scalawag! Won’t stand fer that, I won’t. An’ then . . .” Barker looked down at his meaty fist and what was clutched within it. “Me lord, look at whut he had! Sed as how ’e found it under a cart in the stable yard.”

The landlord held out his hand and glowing in the dull light from a lantern in the hallway was a double string of perfect pearls. They spilled from his grasp and hit the floor with a clatter.