Spending the previous day in the village had been oddly pleasant. I’d toddled around at Hyperia’s side while she’d pretended to dither over which length of ribbon best matched her eyes—none of them succeeded, in my opinion—and how sturdy a ladies’ set of gardening gloves should be.
The shopkeepers all knew me, and the innkeeper’s mother had even referred to me as Master Julian. The vicar had dropped a casual my boy into our chat. I might have temporarily forgotten these folk, but they would not forget me, and in that realization lay comfort.
The weather brought the opposite of comfort. A proper hot spell had got under way as Hyperia and I let the horses walk back to Caldicott Hall. No obliging thunderstorms had arrived at sunset to break the heat, and I’d passed the night dozing on the balcony and recalling many sweltering nights spent bivouacking in Spain.
I began my second full day at Caldicott Hall tending to the correspondence that had come down from my Town residence. A few polite notes acknowledged the pleasure of seeing me at the Makepeace gathering—one did not snub a ducal heir lightly, even if he was rumored to be a traitor—and others were invoices for goods and services.
I disliked the custom of paying the trades for a year’s service in December. I lacked the optimism for such an approach and disapproved of living on credit in principle. For the average man, credit was a trap that could land him in jail. For the moneyed classes, credit amounted to an interest-free, unsecured loan, often carried from year to year by the humble tailor and tobacconist.
Arthur took the same view of credit that I did and that our father had: Bills were payable when received. Services were paid for when rendered. The Caldicotts endeared themselves to the mercantile and laboring folk with that philosophy, but came in for more than our share of sidelong glances and muttered asides in the clubs.
“Ye gods, it’s hot.” Lady Ophelia wafted into my sitting room through the open door. The windows were open as well, and through the blessed effects of a high ceiling and a slight breeze, the room was fairly comfortable.
“Godmama.” I stood and bowed, though I did not put on my jacket. Ophelia had seen me as God made me, albeit not for at least a quarter century. “Good morning.”
“You missed me at breakfast, I know.” She subsided onto the divan, her morning gown drifting about her. “One prefers a tray to start the day. Social breakfasts are a waste of the best meal of the day. What news from Town?”
Ophelia likely knew all the news from Town, the shires, Paris, and north of the Tweed as well. “I owe my cobbler for new shoes for the indoor male staff. I am running low on claret, which is odd when I’ve become the next thing to a teetotaler. Ginny sends greetings and warns me against parenthood.”
“Your sister is an involved mother,” Ophelia said. “After another baby or two, she’ll get over that nonsense. Why hasn’t Arthur married?”
“That is none of our business.” Though, as I’d tossed and turned on my balcony pallet, the same question had bothered me. Arthur was attractive, wealthy, titled, as loyal as an old dog to those he cared for, and utterly responsible.
Women would find that list vastly appealing. A romantic hero he was not—despite looking the part—but a dependable partner and father he would be.
“Don’t be a noddycock,” Ophelia snapped. “If His Grace doesn’t marry, you will have to, and thus it becomes your business. Is he rolled up?”
“No. I reviewed the books with him when I mustered out. Besides, if he were rolled up, that would be all the more reason to make an advantageous match. You will please drop this subject, Ophelia. Waltham deserves your respect, and that means even you should accord him his privacy.”
Ophelia’s eyes narrowed, and I prepared for her sights to turn on me. Hyperia would say nothing to anybody about my lapse of memory yesterday, but Ophelia knew of my condition. She dismissed it—everybody’s memory became dodgy if they lived long enough—and my mind always righted itself.
Hyperia rapped on my doorjamb. “Sorry to interrupt, but, Jules, Lady Clarissa is downstairs demanding to see His Grace. Something to do with the magistrate being off at the quarter sessions? The duke has gone to the home farm, so I said I’d fetch you. Her ladyship seems genuinely distressed.”
Clarissa excelled at seeming genuinely distressed. Also genuinely charmed. Genuinely hurt. Genuinely enamored.
I rose and shrugged into my jacket, despite the heat, because I was genuinely a gentleman. “If her concern is of a legal nature, she’ll want to convey it confidentially.”
Ophelia waggled her fingers at me. “Go play gallant knight, but you never did answer my question.”
“You ought not to be asking it.” I ran a comb through my hair—I had a spare, of course—and left Ophelia to rifle my belongings or read my correspondence. She’d find nothing of any interest, but she’d enjoy the exercise, and it would keep her occupied for an hour or so.
“Clarissa is distraught,” Hyperia said, striding along beside me. “She would not say what the problem is.”
“The problem is she wants to marry Waltham.” I jogged down the guest wing steps, Hyperia at my side.
“Unkind, Jules.”
“But plausible. Arthur is Lord Lieutenant and thus has some say over the justices of the peace, who are all off drinking their way through the quarter sessions. A missing hatpin would be a pretext to intrude on his day.” And to lure him into Clarissa’s bedroom.
“Whatever has upset Clarissa, it’s not a missing hatpin. She’s in the family parlor. I’ll see to a tray.”
I put a hand on Hyperia’s arm at the foot of the steps. “You will stay with me, please. I truly do not want to be alone with that woman.”
Hyperia patted my knuckles. “As far as I know, Jules, you’ve never had memory lapses on successive days. You can go for months without having one.”
We were alone in the corridor, and yet, I leaned closer. “Harry warned me against Clarissa, Perry. Said she is not to be trusted, and I’d best keep my distance, no matter what lures she cast. When Harry joined up, she did indeed cast lures in my direction, though she’d been swanning about with my brother a fortnight earlier. A gentleman isn’t supposed to think poorly of a lady, but that was not ladylike behavior.”
Hyperia stepped back. “Are you pouting because she chose Harry over you?”
“She unchose Harry the moment he bought his colors. I took longer to get together the money and find a commission in the same regiment as Harry. In those weeks… Very well, don’t believe me. I’m making it all up, and she has no designs on Waltham. I hope you’re right, and I’m wrong. I certainly have been before.”
The truth was, Harry had conveyed an aspect of his relationship with Clarissa that baffled me. Money had been involved—money paid by him to her—and I was as bewildered by Harry’s behavior as I was bewildered by Clarissa’s. They were titled, wealthy, unattached… Clarissa was a lady and a Lady.
Why had Harry thought to offer her money for services? Why had she allowed it?
Did she think to somehow blackmail Arthur into marriage on the strength of that arrangement? Blackmail me?
I took a moment to calm my mind and mentally put aside my prejudices. Hyperia expected better of me, and thus I demanded it of myself.
“My lady.” I bowed upon entering the family parlor. “Miss West tells me that you are most grievously upset and in need of the duke when His Grace is from home. Can I be of any assistance?”
“Julian!” She rose on a rustle of silk and lace and seized me by the arm. “Oh, Julian. You will think me ridiculous, but I’m his sister, and I know something is amiss. Lord Reardon did not come home last night.”
Her distress certainly looked and felt sincere. She wore no earrings, her dress was as plain as any I’d seen on her, and her complexion was pale. Clarissa could produce tears or laughter with equal ease, but she could not make herself pale, could not manufacture unbecoming shadows beneath her eyes.
“The viscount has never stayed out all night before?”
“Not like this. Of course, he might tarry overnight after a dinner party if the weather turns foul. He stays the night with Squire Huber when their chess games run late, but he always sends a groom with a note. I know Reardon is an adult, and I’m not his nanny, but there’s more.”
Hyperia discreetly tugged the bell-pull twice—tray with all the trimmings—and wrestled a window open.
“Perhaps I should fetch paper and pencil?” she asked, moving to a second window. “If this is an abduction or foul play, somebody should take notes on what her ladyship has to say.”
For God’s sake, we were not dealing with an abduction or foul play, but neither did the situation have the ring of a stunt. Clarissa was genuinely beside herself.
I extracted the pencil and small notebook I kept in my breast pocket from long habit. “My lady, let us sit and review matters logically. When was the last time you saw Lord Reardon? What was he wearing? How were his spirits?”
Clarissa paused in her sniffling long enough to send me a bewildered look. “He would not take his own life, my lord. I’m insulted that you’d even imply that.”
I handed Clarissa into a wing chair and took the seat facing her. Hyperia bustled about, pulling back drapes and generally impersonating a parlormaid. Chaperoning without being truly present.
“In the army,” I said, “every officer became adept at locating missing persons. Desertion from both sides was a regular fact of life. The French deserted for the sake of British bread. The English deserted over rumors of good French brandy. Double deserting wasn’t unheard of, and because both sides were short of seasoned soldiers, even that was often overlooked.”
“What has this to do with my brother?”
“The penalty for desertion was death, but if a fellow voluntarily turned himself in, he could count on merely being sent to the West Indies or possibly India. Temporary banishment was considered preferable to a firing squad. If the deserter had any friends among his fellow soldiers, they’d make every effort to find him and bring him back. I was good at reconnaissance and a skilled tracker, so I was frequently called upon to locate the prodigal before the military police got wind of his wanderings.”
And I’d often been successful, though my efforts hadn’t always been appreciated by my quarry.
“My brother isn’t an unhappy apprentice gone to join a traveling troupe of actors, my lord.”
“Then perhaps he suffered a bump on the head and has temporarily lost his bearings. In which case, you need somebody who can track him down.”
The tea tray arrived, and I asked Lady Clarissa to pour out in hopes the routine would soothe her. Hyperia took a seat on the end of the sofa and retired with her tea into silence.
“Was Reardon unhappy?” I asked when the footman had withdrawn. “The coming exhibition had to have put a lot of pressure on him.”
“He was looking forward to it, Julian. I vow he was. That show was to be the culmination of a life’s work and the means to fund a protracted stay in Rome. Nobody paints frescoes like the Italians, you know, and the Mediterranean light is marvelous. No dark, dreary winter where we go weeks without seeing the sun. Reardon longed for that joy, that freedom.”
Did Clarissa long for it too?
“Very well,” I said. “His lordship was in good spirits and had much to look forward to. What was he wearing?”
“Clothing.” Clarissa took a sip of her tea. “How should I know? I take a tray in my room for breakfast, and when I came down, I was told he was out sketching. He is always out sketching. He has a little easel, and the legs are in a tube, and they screw into the easel-part. Very clever. He tosses that into a knapsack with his sketchbook and charcoal, collects a flask and some bread and butter. He whistles for his dog, and they are gone for hours.”
“The dog came home without him?”
Clarissa stirred her tea. “I don’t know. I assume so. I’m not sure.”
I made a note to follow up. “Does his lordship have any favorite vistas, paths, or views?”
Clarissa shook her head. “Reardon’s talent is so vast… He might be captivated by a cat sleeping in the sun outside the livery one day and fixate on a precise architectural elevation of the church bell tower the next. Last week, he did a sketch of Old Mrs. Forester, the granny, and before that, he was keen on memorializing the view above Caldicott Hall.”
From the back of my mind came the usual litany of excuses: He fell asleep in the shade of some cow byre and decided to walk home in the morning. He’s even now in his own bed, dreaming of Rome, but nobody saw him sneak in by moonlight. He indulged in a farewell tryst with some local widow…
The matter could not be dismissed so easily, however. Lord Reardon was Valloise’s only son, the heir to an earldom. Kidnapping was a possibility. He was also a young man struggling for recognition in a field rarely frequented by peers-in-waiting, and he was on the verge of fame—or failure.
The artistic temperament had claimed more than one life and instigated tragedies aplenty.
Suicide was a possibility, as was—if I was to entertain even implausible theories—some jealous lesser talent pulling a prank in very bad taste.
More to the point, Waltham was not on hand to deal with the problem, and thus I would take Reardon’s absence as seriously as I would a royal disappearance.
I questioned Lady Clarissa for more than an hour, trying to build a picture of Lord Reardon’s usual movements and his most recent activities. For the whole of that hour, her ladyship did not so much as brush her fingers over my knuckles. She sipped two cups of tea and eschewed every other offering on the tray.
“Could Reardon’s weak lungs have anything to do with him not coming home?” I asked as I escorted Clarissa to the north foyer. “Is he asthmatic? Might he have had some sort of rising of the lights?” Lord Reardon had not appeared consumptive to me. Not especially pale, no coughing, no hectic pink blush on his cheeks, but one did not mention fatal illness lightly to an upset woman.
“He does have weak lungs, but I’ve never known him to suffer any sort of seizure.” Clarissa accepted her bonnet from me, while Cheadle hovered a discreet two yards away. “But you know how young men are. He could be expiring of an ague, and he’d claim he was right as a trivet.”
Some young men were like that. I hadn’t taken Reardon for a stoic. “I’m sure Waltham will want to interview your staff and have a look around Reardon’s rooms. Until His Grace can make that inspection, please leave Reardon’s effects absolutely undisturbed.”
I certainly wanted to take those steps.
For the first time, Clarissa smiled. “What do a lot of wrinkled cravats or muddy boots have to say about an artist known to ramble the countryside by the hour?”
“The nature of the mud on those boots can tell me where he’s wandered. Pond mud is different from bog mud, which is different from stable mud. Some plants are blooming now, while others have gone to seed. If I find spent blossoms of lady’s-mantle on his coattails, for example, then I can look for tracks through the patch that’s gone to seed nearest the house. We leave evidence of our passing on our surroundings, and our surroundings often do likewise with us.”
Her smile faded. “You learned these skills in Spain?”
“I learned much about tracking right here at the Hall, rambling the home wood, playing along William’s Creek, and pestering the gamekeepers.” I’d also learned how to spot the signs of poaching. My father’s tacit orders had been to ignore the occasional snare or patch of blood, unless evidence pointed to the presence of a poaching ring.
No Caldicott tenant family was to go hungry in a lean year while the woods teemed with game and the creek abounded with fish. The local folk reciprocated by stoutly repelling any overtures made by the professional poaching gangs.
Did Arthur still honor that approach, or might Lord Reardon have fallen afoul of the more violent game thieves plaguing half the realm?
I assisted Lady Clarissa into her cloak and escorted her down the steps to a waiting gig. No coach and four today and no chaperone or groom. The gelding in the traces was a venerable bay. He might not have the flashiest gaits, but a darting rabbit wouldn’t unnerve him.
“I could escort you home,” I said, assisting her ladyship onto the bench. “Have a look around Lord Reardon’s apartment. He has a studio, too, doesn’t he?”
Clarissa pulled on driving gloves and took up the reins. “I’d rather you informed His Grace of the morning’s developments so I don’t have to deal with the duke opening every cupboard you’ve just closed. Might I expect him this afternoon?”
“You can expect me, and His Grace if I can locate him. Try not to worry, my lady. Many a young fellow met with a batch of bad ale and needed a day or two to get back on his feet.” Many a soldier had excused his absence without leave on those terms.
“I am worried,” she said. “For Reardon to disappear a fortnight before he’s due in London… that’s not like him.”
I stepped clear of the gig, and a final question occurred to me. “How did you know he was missing?”
Clarissa peered down at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“What made you realize that his lordship wasn’t merely having a lie-in, or absorbed with a particularly challenging painting behind the door of his studio? It’s not yet luncheon, and most ladies would take a tray in this heat rather than dress for breakfast. Something alerted you to the fact that Reardon disappeared into the undergrowth.”
She stared hard at the horse’s rump. “A feeling, mostly. Reardon does wander for hours at a time, but yesterday grew so warm, and he hadn’t sent any notes, and… You will think me silly, but Valmond House feels different when Reardon isn’t there. It feels different when Mama and Papa are on hand. The house has moods, and the mood now is, ‘Where’s Lord Reardon?’ As if the very dwelling is concerned for him.”
An interesting answer. What Lady Clarissa called a feeling might well be her eyes, ears, and nose noticing details that her mind had yet to build into a pattern.
I trusted feelings like that, for the most part. “Then you were right to bring the problem to His Grace, but I’d advise you against setting up a hue and cry, my lady. If Reardon does come home complaining of the effects of bad ale, or having slipped on some muddy bank and conked his noggin, you don’t want to make a fool of him.”
I expected an argument and got only a single nod. “So long as you find him, my lord. Tell the duke that. I don’t care what it takes. I want my brother found.”
She tooled off, and the gig created a plume of dust that hung in the sultry morning air. I did not like or trust Lady Clarissa, but I sympathized with her plight. Harry had gone missing from camp, and I had been compelled by fraternal loyalty, concern, curiosity, and instinct to follow him and bring him safely home.
If Clarissa’s sentiments were a tenth as fierce as my own, then the hardest demands I could have made of her were for patience and inaction. I, however, had much to do. I sent word to the stable to have Atlas saddled and went up to my room, intent upon changing into riding attire.
Lady Ophelia had decamped, and Atticus was rifling the drawer at the foot of my wardrobe.
“Looking for something?”
“Who unpacked yer trunk?” He kept right on working his way down through rolls of stockings, neatly pressed handkerchiefs and sets of gloves.
I thought for a moment. “The first footman is Norse—that’s his name, Norse. Big, blond fellow, looks like he could split you in two with his battle-ax, but he’s actually quite merry.”
“Did he do it right?” Atticus whipped dark hair from his eyes and sat back. “Is this how you like yer things stashed?”
Was Atticus covering for a bout of snooping, or genuinely trying to educate himself? “That arrangement will do, though in London, I have a whole dressing closet rather than just a wardrobe.”
Atticus fished in a pocket and held my comb out to me. “Thanks for the loan.”
The delicate comb looked incongruous in his calloused little mitt. “Not a loan. I cannot have a fellow in my employ going about unkempt. I have other combs. That one is yours. When we get to London, we’ll see to your wardrobe.”
Atticus rose, and his chin jutted disagreeably. “I ain’t wearing no damned livery.”
Ducal livery was nothing to be ashamed of. “Why not? You’ll be taking my coin.”
“Because you’ll dock me wages for six months to pay for duds that aren’t mine. Can’t wear ’em anywhere but on the job, and if they get stained or wrecked because some fool spilled his tea on me, I have to pay for a new set, and there’s another six months with no coin for honest work.”
I shrugged out of my morning coat and retrieved my notebook and pencil from the breast pocket. “Get Helms to show you how to brush this jacket out and touch it up with an iron. Tell him I asked, and I will inquire of him before the day’s out if you saw to the matter.”
“He’s the duke’s man? Everybody calls him Your Grace and milord duke belowstairs. Everyone ’cept Cook.”
“Helms is His Grace’s valet. His uncle was my father’s valet, and you can have no better tutor in the art of being a gentleman’s gentleman.” I took the time to wash off thoroughly, the morning having left me sticky as well as tired. “I’ll need riding breeches—the oldest pair, please—and any shirt will do. The older the better.”
“Why old?”
“Because my first stop is the home farm, and impressing the sows in their wallows is not on my schedule. In this heat, the less finery I’m wearing, the better. From the home farm, I will have a quiet word with the gamekeepers, some tenants, Granny Forester, Vicar, and if there’s time, the grooms at Valmond House. No, you are not coming with me. I’ll be on horseback, and time is of the essence.”
“His Grace ain’t on horseback.”
I pulled on the worn breeches, which fit me like the old and dear friends they were. Not as loose as they had been a few months ago either.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the duke left on foot at first light, and he weren’t wearing no fin-er-y either. Did the same thing yesterday. I thought he was you, ’cept he took off his hat, and his hair was the wrong color.”
“Was he alone?”
“Aye, and moving at a good clip. Right up the hill behind the house.”
That was the opposite direction from the home farm and away from the village, but perhaps Arthur had meant to call on a tenant before the morning grew too warm.
Or perhaps he’d gone a-trysting?
I did up my falls and chose a shirt going a bit frayed around the cuffs. “I’ll find him at the home farm, I’m told, and you will stay here, keeping your eyes and ears open.”
Atticus perched on the sill of an open window. The drop behind him was a good twenty feet, and he could not have appeared more relaxed. Ah, youth.
“Somebody’s pretty watch go missing again?” he asked, referring to an apparent theft at the Makepeace house party.
“Somebody’s brother has gone missing. Viscount Reardon dwells on the estate just around the hill from us. He’s an artist preparing for his first big exhibition, and he’s the heir of a slightly eccentric earl. He did not come home last night.”
Atticus began to bounce a heel against the wainscoting. “He’s a grown feller, and he stayed out all night? Is he simple?”
“This is not London, where his lordship might have found a berth at his club, played cards all night with friends, or spent the hours with a ladybird. His sister is alarmed, and the duke is the closest thing to a justice of the peace in the neighborhood, so she sought His Grace’s aid.”
Atticus hopped off the windowsill. “You plan to find him?”
“Yes.” When had I come to that conclusion and why? True, Clarissa was a damsel in distress, but she wasn’t my damsel, and I wasn’t any sort of legal official. Though I had been a tracker, and a damned good one.
“What if he don’t want to be found? What if the bailiffs are on his tail, and you’ll ruin him if you find him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Lord Reardon would hardly plan a very public exhibition of his art if he was pockets to let and booked on a packet for Calais.”
Atticus passed me a starched cravat from the selection hanging in the wardrobe. I whipped it into a loose mathematical, though any sort of cravat was rank stupidity in the growing heat. Not as stupid as putting the British infantry in wool uniforms and shipping them off to march across the Spanish plain in high summer. Very little could compete with foolishness on that order. Men had regularly died of heat exhaustion, and died wearing those wretched uniforms.
Atticus opened my jewelry box and passed over a plain gold pin. “Most important part of any cutpurse’s rig is the distraction—the lady crying about her missing dog, the old man falling on the church steps.”
The boy had a point. If Lord Reardon was in dun territory, then scheduling an exhibition could be a way to assure his creditors that he’d be back in Town for much of the summer. But could an earl’s heir and only son be so deep into dun territory that he had to flee the family seat?
I jotted a few words on my notebook and shoved it into the pocket sewn into the tail of my riding jacket.
“Stay here, and stay alert.” I arranged the pin among the folds of my cravat. “Reardon is apparently of sound mind, has no enemies, and has every reason to live. Kidnapping and suicide are unlikely, but he might well be at the bottom of some old mine shaft with a broken ankle or a broken head. Any detail—his childhood haunts, the quickest way home from his old nurse’s cottage—could mean the difference between life and death, so keep a sharp ear in the servants’ hall. Where the devil are my—?”
Atticus passed me the sleeve buttons that went with the plain cravat pin. I slipped them onto my cuffs and shrugged into my riding coat, but left the buttons undone.
“You taking a flask with you?” Atticus asked. “You’ll miss your nooning, and it’s hotter than holy damned hell already.”
“Hotter than blazes,” I said. “Hotter than perdition, the pit, the inferno. Hotter than a smoking coach brake. ‘Hell’ pushes the limits of gentlemanly decorum.”
Atticus smiled and shook his head. “Hotter than fancy livery on a London summer day.”
“The livery I had in mind for you was a tiger-striped yellow jacket—which your employer would provide at no cost to you, of course—but I suppose not, if you’d rather sport about in ragged trousers and a frayed shirt.”
I had the satisfaction of seeing his mouth hang open, then snap shut. I made my exit before he could remonstrate with me—which the boy would do—and headed for the kitchen. The day was promising to be hotter than hell. I needed some sustenance and at least one flask full of lemonade, if not two.
I also had to uncover the answer to a question Atticus had pointed me to, but had not known to ask: Viscount Reardon was an only son and heir to the Valloise earldom. If Reardon’s earthly sojourn had ended, who was next in line for the title, and had that person had any opportunity to advance his interests at Lord Reardon’s expense?
I made another note to myself and took the footmen’s stairs down to the pantries.