Harper let himself into Joseph’s farmhouse with all of the determination that had driven him from his bed that morning. Although the hour was still early, he was unsurprised to find Joseph seated before the fire with his working dogs at his feet.
“How are you today?” He asked as he entered the large kitchen without bothering to knock.
“What brings you by here at this time of the day?” Joseph replied grumpily. “I didn’t think city boys were up this early.” He glanced outside at the early morning sunrise that was still too young to break through the fine mist that hovered over the ground.
“Ha! Where I come from you are the city boy, Joseph,” Harper countered with a frown. “Don’t ever make assumptions about people.” He gave his watchful brother a warning look. “You are less likely to be tripped up.”
Joseph merely stared back defiantly. “I have got work to do,” he replied but made no attempt to get out of the chair.
“So do I,” Harper sighed. He saw no reason to prevaricate and took a seat at the kitchen table. “I need a few facts from you.”
When Joseph tried to stand, Harper propped a booted foot on the dresser next to him, effectively blocking Joseph in. Joseph eyed Harper’s long leg derisively but seemed to realise that if he wanted to get past he was going to have a confrontation on his hands. Still, he didn’t seem inclined to lose his belligerence and shot Harper a challenging look.
“Getting chatty all of a sudden, aren’t we? First we don’t see you for years, now I have two visits in the space of a week. My, aren’t we lucky?”
“What’s your problem, Joseph?” Harper sighed. He knew now that Joseph definitely did have a problem and he rather suspected that he knew what it was.
“I don’t have a problem.” Joseph leaned forward to drop two more logs onto the fire and seemed oblivious to Harper’s presence for a several long moments. Eventually, he turned and looked Harper straight in the eye. “Don’t take liberties with Arrabella.”
Harper ignored the annoyance that swept through him. Why did everyone assume that he was some sort of lothario? “Jesus, not you too,” he sighed anyway.
“What do you mean?” Joseph frowned at him.
“I have not spent the last several years without female company, I don’t mind admitting. However, I am not so avaricious that I cannot go without female company for several years more. Why does everyone assume that I have lecherous intentions?”
“Because you usually do?” Joseph smiled. “Who else has accused you of being a lothario?”
“Arrabella.” Harper winced when Joseph’s brows lifted. “She simply doesn’t seem to believe that any man could be interested in furthering an acquaintance with her. Last night she told me, quite tartly, that she was not the kind of person to encourage a man’s attentions.” He held his hands up in a placating gesture when Joseph frowned at him, and he mentally winced as he realised he had inadvertently made it sound as though he had tried to mark Arrabella’s card, and been told where to put it; which he had really. That thought was enough to make him frown.
“Don’t hurt her,” Joseph warned gently. “She is a country miss, and innocent. If you are planning to go back to the bright lights of the big city, don’t encourage her affections while you are here. It isn’t fair, Harper.”
Harper knew then that Joseph held the vicar’s daughter in high regard. “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, Joseph. I am not dallying with her. I like her a lot. I want you to know that.” He studied Joseph’s face once he had made the statement and read the defeated look in his brother’s eyes with a frown. “If you like her, why have you not done something about it?” He asked after several moments of stilted silence.
Joseph waved a hand around the kitchen. “Look around you, Harper. This place is in the middle of nowhere. Although we are only a couple of miles away from the village, in the middle of winter the farm may as well be a hundred miles away. It is hardly fair to expect any woman to live all the way out here, especially someone like Arrabella. She is a vicar’s daughter. The entire village see her practically every other day. Most of the village seem to go to her with their queries and their problems and forget about the vicar altogether. He is a nice man, but a bit absent, if you know what I mean.” He tapped the side of his head meaningfully. “If Arrabella didn’t lead him into the church and stand him before the bible, and he didn’t have the words there ready to read out, I am sure that we would all get a lecture on flora and fauna rather than a reading from the King James text.”
Harper snorted at that and crossed his booted feet. “Is he likely to be the vicar for long, do you think?” He felt that he was asking the wrong person, but he couldn’t actually ask Arrabella if her father had all of his marbles.
“I don’t know. That mother of hers is poorly and has struggled to get around for a long time now. She has gone to see some cousin of hers, I think, but in all reality nobody is expecting her to come back. It isn’t that anyone thinks she is going to pass on or anything like that. It is just that the sea air seems to draw people as sickly as her and they don’t usually come back. It is wonderful here, but you know how blessedly cold it can be in the winter-time. Someone like Arrabella’s mother would be better where the climate isn’t as harsh.”
“What about her father?”
“He is a little ‘bats in the belfry’. Has wandered off to York, or something, I don’t know. I have no doubt that when he comes back, he will be just as absent as he was before he left.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “It doesn’t bode well for Arrabella having a secure future. Although the villagers wouldn’t see her cast out into the street, I understand that she doesn’t have many relatives, so there wouldn’t be anyone she could turn to if her father was unable to deal with his biblical duties. The vicarage comes with the job.”
“She would be homeless.” Harper watched the flames in the fire for several moments. “So, were you going to offer for her when the time came?”
“I like Arrabella, Harper. I don’t mind admitting it, but I am hardly in a position to offer a wife anything of note. Although the farm is doing well and I have money to buy more than I do, it is just too darned remote here to keep a woman happy.”
“Why don’t you consider moving closer to the village then?” He challenged and thought about the house he had been left by his blood-father.
“I like it, but the village is too full of gossips.”
It struck Harper then that his brother was lonely. The fleeting hint of sadness that had darkened Joseph’s handsome face bespoke of a far deeper emotion than he had admitted to, but Harper didn’t pry.
“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he whispered gently and took a deep breath. “I like Arrabella too, but I have to tell you that I just don’t know if I have what it takes to settle down. I have spent far too many years living in the shadows.”
“What do you mean?”
Harper studied his brother for a minute. He had already told Joseph about his experiences in the army followed by his dark and dangerous work with the Star Elite on his first day in the village. “I have spent far too long hiding in the shadows throughout the night waiting for danger to creep up on me. Although a couple of my colleagues have settled down, they have been forced into a sort-of, well, partial retirement. I don’t want that for my life. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether I can stop looking for danger where there is none. I don’t think I could ever stop searching the shadows as I pass and assessing the people I walk by in the street for guns and hidden knives.”
Joseph snorted. “You won’t get anything like that in this sleepy little place. The last thing that happened of any reputable note was old man Morley knocking himself out with his retiring screen last Christmas.” He shifted and studied his brother. “If you don’t know what you want then don’t spend too much time with Arrabella. With very little else to think about in this place, the gossips turn to anything and everything. All it is going to take is for someone to see you at the vicarage with her too many times and you are going to ruin her. I don’t mind stepping into the breach and offering for her if her reputation is blighted, but I think that Arrabella would have something to say about it.”
“Is that why you have been so grumpy lately?”
“I see you with her everywhere I look,” he warned darkly. “I don’t know if you can remember how this place operates. As a young lad I was never aware of the amount of gossip that was exchanged over the garden fences. Now that I am a fully grown up member of society, I have heard more than enough tawdry laundry being aired over the bar in the tavern to know when to watch my step. I would strongly recommend that you be very careful if you don’t want to be forced into making decisions you aren’t ready for.”
Harper knew that his brother was right. Gossip was often unfair and exchanged before the facts were ascertained. If he didn’t want the scandal of being pushed into marriage he had to tread carefully. Not that it was a problem at the moment. The fierce anger on Arrabella’s face swam before his mind and he wondered if it was late enough in the morning for him to call around and ask if she had found the missing keys yet. On his way to Joseph’s, he had undertaken another search of the graveyard, but found nothing so knew that it was time to widen the search.
“Can you tell me if you know where the spare set of keys to the church is kept?”
“In the drawer in the study at the vicarage,” Joseph replied. “The entire village knows that. Although the church is open most of the time, there are occasions when it is locked, say when Arrabella and her father are at Moldton. If anyone needs to get to the church and Mrs Able isn’t around, they know that the keys are kept in the drawer in the vicar’s study. Everyone helps themselves and puts them back when they are done. It’s no secret.”
“Everyone in the village?”
“Yes, why?”
“Jesus,” Harper whispered. He now had the entire village on his list of suspects. For one brief moment he wondered whether he could call upon his boss, Sir Hugo, to ask him to send men to lend a hand but then immediately discounted the idea as ridiculous. Hambley Wood was a sleepy little backwater where nothing happened; except Mr Morley knocking himself out with his retiring screen. A missing parish register was hardly sinister crime which required the input of the highly skilled men in the Star Elite. He could manage this on his own – couldn’t he? He turned toward Joseph with a frown and quickly made a decision.
“I found the register, but it was stolen before I could look inside it.” His words landed like pebbles on smooth water. The dumbfounded expression that appeared in his brother’s eyes assured Harper that he was looking at an innocent man.
“Pardon?”
“We found the register that had the details of my birth in, but it was stolen before I got to look in it.”
“You didn’t see who took it?”
Harper shook his head and explained what had happened. “It was at the same time that the keys were stolen. I had hoped that you had a yearning for Arrabella, and had taken them for some reason to get her attention, but –” he held his hands up in a placating gesture when his brother’s brows lifted, “- but it appears that anyone in the entire bloody village could have helped themselves to the keys.”
“I haven’t seen anyone unusual in the village but I will keep an eye out,” Joseph assured him. “Look, I like Arrabella, she is nice, but I don’t have a yearning for her. I just don’t want you to consider her fair game for a dalliance while you are here.”
“I like Arrabella too much to use her like that. She is sweet and gentle but has an inner fire that is captivating. It makes me wonder –” He fell silent when he caught Joseph’s grin. His mouth closed with a snap when he realised that he had waxed lyrical and revealed far more than he was comfortable with. “Will you do something for me?”
“If I can.”
“Keep an eye out for strangers, but see if you get wind of any gossip with regards to anything unusual happening around the church. You know, things going missing or being moved, that kind of thing.” Harper briefly went through everything that had happened to him since he had been in the village. When he got to the part where he and Arrabella had been locked in the crypt, Joseph began to frown. By the time he got to the keys, Joseph was looking more alarmed than Harper had ever seen him.
“I think you need to tread carefully, Harper. Someone doesn’t want you to get hold of that register for some reason and they sound dangerous. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Me neither. I just don’t understand why someone is so determined to bury the truth. I mean, what significance would it have to anyone outside of the Lawton family? The people who raised us are both dead. I don’t intend to tell everyone what I find. Quite the opposite is true in fact. It is private and personal to me and the least amount people who know about it the better as far as I am concerned. The Cavendish brothers came to me with the information so are not likely to prevent me from finding evidence to prove their claims are right. Unfortunately, I just don’t know what to do about Arrabella now. I feel that I have drawn her right into the middle of this. Although she was only helping me out as the verger, whoever is after that register didn’t care that she was locked down there as well. They didn’t care one bit that her reputation was at stake, and they didn’t give a damn that she was scared.”
“Who needs the register?”
“Me.
“And?”
“Well, neither you or Robert or Angus are interested, so it is just me,” Harper frowned.
“What about your father?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, what about the man who claims to be your father?”
“Johnson?”
“He may be a solicitor but that doesn’t mean that he is unable to resort to a little subterfuge if the occasion requires it.”
“He must be in his sixties or seventies at least,” Harper sighed. “But he has already told the Cavendish brothers the story of when he and this Alice woman came together and admitted to having a child with her. If he didn’t want me to know he was my father, he could have just denied everything.”
“But would they have just accepted his word, or would they have gone after the proof themselves?”
Harper knew that Joseph was right. The Cavendish brothers would never have just acted on a man’s word. They first received the information from their aunt, who had wanted to clear the air before her death. Then they went to the solicitor ‘father’ for confirmation. If he had denied everything, the Cavendish brothers would have undoubtedly continued their hunt for the truth.
“The Cavendish brothers are not the kind of men to action something like this on a whim. They seemed convinced that they had the facts right when they accosted me but acknowledged they didn’t have proof.”
“Accosted you?” Joseph lifted his brows, clearly intrigued.
Harper rolled his eyes and told him what had happened when had first met the Cavendish brothers. Joseph was clutching his sides with laughter by the time Harper had finished.
“It’s not funny,” Harper drawled. “I still have the lump on my head.”
“You are right. Entitled men are arrogant fops who think that they are above the law most of the time,” Joseph sighed. “But this lot sound like a lively bunch.” He studied the floor beneath his boots for several long moments before he looked at Harper. “What makes you think that they weren’t trying to put you off?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they could have arranged to meet you somewhere. Knocking you out cold and kidnapping you seems an extreme way of breaking such news to anyone. If Dominic Cavendish is friends with Sir Hugo, surely he would have felt that he could tell his friend and ask him to help arrange a meeting? It all seems rather odd, if you ask me, and that is before you even get here and things really do start to get strange.”
“I know. It all started when I got knocked on the head. Nothing has seemed the same ever since.”
“I cannot tell you what to do, Harper, but I think that because people use the spare set of keys to the church on a daily basis, and think nothing of having free access to the vicarage in the same way as they do with the church, you need to focus your efforts a bit more on finding that parish register. Forget the keys. Their disappearance could be just circumstance.”
“I suppose.”
“Look, nobody new can really stay in this village without people noticing them. We are not on a main through-road to a major town. Anyone who comes here does so for a reason, so you need to look further afield,” Joseph reasoned.
“You could be right. We got locked into the church at Moldton.”
“Arrabella knows the cleaning ladies and has been the verger there for several years,” Joseph added. “If anyone can ask around for you, she can. This is a parish register that has gone missing, not some personal papers. It is a vital piece of the church equipment that contains private details of a lot of people; most of whom are still in the area.”
“I know. It is also really heavy and not something you would tuck under your arm without attracting the attention of several people. He could have been noticed walking around with a heavy book.”
“So you can conclude that the person who is trying to stop you getting the information is not from Hambley Wood, is not Arrabella, or any of us. You need to look to Moldton. I think that there will have been a stranger sighted by someone, you just need to find out who he is and where he is.”
“I need Arrabella’s help, don’t I?”
Joseph nodded. “But remember that Moldton is just like Hambley Wood. Gossips rule, so if you don’t want to attract it; don’t do it.”
Harper also knew that if the person who had the register now was prepared to steal it, they would also be prepared to do whatever it took to keep it. Arrabella could be in significant danger. “God, what a mess,” he whispered.
“If you need me, you know where I am.”
Harper nodded and watched the dogs walk toward the door. They had clearly had enough of sitting beside the fire and were eager to get some work done. He knew that Joseph probably had a million jobs to do and so made his own way toward the door.
“Can I ask you if you were in the vicarage garden the night before last?”
“Pardon?” The blank look on Joseph’s face told Harper everything he needed to know and waved his brother goodbye.
As he left the farmyard, he thought about what Joseph had said. Although his brother could be right in that the disappearance of the keys could be mere circumstance, Harper had learned from his time with the Star Elite that it was ever wise to leave questions unanswered. Something about those keys plagued him, only he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. On the surface, it all seemed very innocent; someone had borrowed the keys to get into the church and had simply forgotten to return them. It was a reasonable enough explanation. But, there was something about the timing of the keys going missing at the same time as the register that he just couldn’t ignore.