“What are
you
doing here?”
“Protecting the women, sir. The way you commanded me.”
“Do you stay on guard all night? You took my words most literally. No wonder your last letter did not complain of bedbugs.”
He pushed past Edwards and strode into the house. He paced to the back sitting room and peered through the panes to the greenhouse to see if anyone was in there. Especially anyone with very fair hair, maybe wearing extremely expensive diamonds.
Curiosity and anger had battled all the way down here. As he approached, anger had won out again.
A small noise to his right made him pivot. The sound had been a woman’s step on the floorboards, he was sure.
“Come out now. There will be no running away any longer,” he said. “I’ll be damned before I allow this farce to continue one more day.”
A little gasp sounded. A feminine foot appeared. She stepped into view at the doorway to the dining room.
It was not Daphne, but Miss Johnson.
“Where is Mrs. Joyes?” he demanded.
She shrank away, terrified. Mr. Edwards hurried over to reassure her with some whispered words.
“It would help if you did not yell like that, sir. She has a very delicate constitution,” Mr. Edwards had the temerity to say.
“I may do more than yell if she does not answer me. I have reason to think Mrs. Joyes is here, or was recently.”
“She was here, that is true,” Edwards said, yelling a bit himself. In fact, he dared to act piqued. “I saw her. She stayed one night, then left in the morning. She did not say where she was going.”
Castleford kept his attention on Miss Johnson. “She did not give her destination to you, Edwards, but I think she did to her dear friend here. Miss Johnson would need to know where to write to Mrs. Joyes, in the event there were a problem with the business.”
Edwards frowned over that. He turned to Miss Johnson. “Did she leave such information, Katherine?”
Katherine?
Castleford suddenly noticed the gentle way Edwards spoke to Miss Johnson. He finally became aware of the nice dress Miss Johnson wore. He assessed the total absence of Mrs. Hill from these chambers.
Miss Johnson appeared distraught. She turned those dark, limpid eyes on Edwards. “She said she was going north, to her first sister.”
Edwards turned to Castleford. “There you have it, Your Grace. She went to visit her sister,” he said defensively.
“A lot of good that does me, since she
has no sister
. An address, Miss Johnson. I will have it now, please.”
“She only said I could write if I had to, to the town of Failsworth, in Lancashire. She would get the letter.”
Failsworth. She was not just going north, but far north. The woman was traveling right into the heart of the danger up there.
Castleford turned on his heel. “Come with me, Mr. Edwards. That front sitting room will do, I think.”
Once they got there, Castleford made himself comfortable on a chair. He did not invite Edwards to do the same. He gave his secretary a good examination.
Country air suited Edwards. He did not appear so pale now. He even held himself differently, as if he found his body more comfortable than before.
“Enjoying your sojourn amid the blooms, are you, Edwards?”
Edwards gazed straight ahead at nothing in particular. “I do not mind the country as much as you do, if that is what you mean, Your Grace.”
“I was very surprised to find you here and not at the inn.”
“You told me to stay here, sir. In your last letter. You said it would be best if I stayed with the ladies.”
“I did not mean at night, Edwards.”
“Then perhaps you should have been explicit, sir. I always do as you order, and your letter ordered me to—”
“Have there been any more trespassers?”
“Several. Two near the men examining the land, that they reported to me. One on the property next to this, peering over the garden wall. I pursued the last, but he lost me in the woods.” He looked at Castleford. “I do not think he was with the others. I think the one who is so bold regarding this house is less interested in your affairs than in the house itself.”
“Why do you think this?”
“We would not be mining for minerals in the garden, would we? I am fairly sure he was the same one as the first time too, not that I saw clearly enough either time to be certain.”
Castleford stored away that observation. He would have many hours in his saddle to contemplate it later.
He gave Edwards another good look. The secretary’s gaze settled elsewhere again.
“Mr. Edwards.”
“Your Grace?”
“I trust that you are being a gentleman with Miss Johnson.”
Edwards swallowed hard.
“Because, Edwards, I gave instructions that you were to protect the women here and see they were not bothered. I do not remember giving you permission to seduce her.”
“I have not seduced her.”
There had been a peculiar emphasis on the word
seduced
. “You wouldn’t be parsing words with me, would you, Edwards?”
Edwards ignored that. “If I had seduced her, which I have not, is it common to request permission first, the way you imply? I mean, do you? Request permission of anyone, that is?”
“Your time in the country has emboldened you. It must be all that pistol wielding you are doing.”
Edwards flushed. “Perhaps so, sir.”
“On a different day I might find it amusing. Today I do not. As to your impertinent question, no, I do not ask permission first. But then I have never seduced a woman I was charged with protecting either. It does matter, you know.”
Edwards nodded. “I see, sir. It is a fine line, of course.”
“Not too fine to miss, I hope.”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Good. Then do not cross it while you are here. Other than that, are you comfortable? Do you require the servants to send you anything?”
“I am very comfortable. I am in a chamber full of blue and yellow flowers. It is much like the garden coming indoors. I found it silly and feminine at first, but I have grown somewhat fond of it.”
Castleford knew that chamber too well. He hated it.
He studied Edwards one more time to see if there were any smugness or hiding merriment that indicated he was indeed enjoying this sojourn more than he ought. When he caught up with Daphne, he did not want any guilt about Miss Johnson interfering with his righteous annoyance with her.
He rose to his feet. “I will leave now. Go to the village every day to see if I send any letters.” He paused after a few strides. “When Mrs. Joyes left here, do you know if she took her pistol?”
“I believe Katherine mentioned that she did, sir.”
Castleford was untying his horse when he realized Edwards had called Miss Johnson by her given name again. He looked at the house. No wonder Edwards had grown fond of that flowered chamber.
He shook his head in exasperation. If Daphne Joyes found out about the bliss being enjoyed in that house, Edwards would be lucky to survive with his manhood intact.
Chapter Seventeen
C
astleford was almost in Lancashire before he took more than an hour’s rest. He stopped at a staging inn, handed his mount over to the grooms to rub down and feed, then went to find food for himself.
The inn proved crowded. A glance at the women and children identified them as gentry or better. Servants attended them, and the coaches outside were burdened with boxes and portmanteaus. It appeared a scene from a war, when refugees flee the city before the enemy takes it.
With the threatened demonstration tomorrow, that was probably what it was too. Alarmed, the better people, the ones who thought themselves at risk, were streaming away. He suspected that those who stayed had fortified their properties.
While he ate the watery stew at a private table procured by his title, the inn instantly became more crowded yet. Redcoats streamed in the door, looking for spots to sit and calling for beer. The public room could not hold them all, and the proprietor waved them to another chamber in the back.
The officers entered last. Castleford spoke to the inn’s owner and sent an invitation for the officers to join him.
They did so gladly, perhaps grateful that at least the bad stew would not hurt their purses.
Colonel Markins, a man of suitable military bearing and a serious, stony face, accepted the hospitality with reserved politeness. As the ranking officer, he also felt obligated to make conversation that his younger officers seemed too hungry to engage in just yet.
“Are you aiming south with the others, Your Grace?”
“No, north. And you?”
“I’m not to say, but considering it will be no news to yourself—” He leaned across the table confidentially. “We’ve been sent to Manchester. To keep the peace. Requested by the magistrates up there, we were.”
So it had been done. Albrighton’s information that day in Bedford Square had not been corroborated by anyone else, and Castleford had hoped Liverpool and the other ministers had thought better of involving the army.
“I trust you will not parade the colors in front of the speakers,” he said.
“Remains to be seen what will be required.”
“Are you in command?”
“Of these men here, yes. But I’m to heed the demands from magistrates. Order must be maintained and property protected—those were the instructions I received.”
“There’s word already of thousands on the move,” one of his junior officers interjected. “Maybe tens of thousands, from all over the county and region.”
“There may not be enough of us, then,” another man said.
“Order will be maintained, one way or another,” Colonel Markins said.
The conversation moved on to more pleasant subjects. One officer asked if Castleford had attended the Ascot races this year. A major, whose father was a baron, found the opportunity to allude to the new syndicate Castleford was said to be forming, to mine gold from some land in Kent.
The soldiers did not rest long. A half hour later their red coats filed down the road. Castleford claimed his own horse an hour after that. He decided to ride on for a while before he bought a bed for the night.
He fished in the saddlebag for his map and found the village of Failsworth, to plot the fastest route through Lancashire. He cursed when he saw that Failsworth was at most five miles from the outskirts of Manchester and north of the city.
What was Daphne thinking, going there at such a time? Not running away from him, he guessed. She could go anywhere for that.
He would be the one to scold this time, about her recklessness.
Ill ease replaced his anger. His heart might have thickened, the sensation became so physical. He was not accustomed to worrying about people, and he did not know how to accommodate his growing concern. He took some comfort in knowing that at least she had Summerhays’s coachman with her.
He stuffed the map back in his bag and mounted. Then he paused and pictured that map again. There had been something familiar to it. He now realized what it had been.
He reached into the bag once more, fished down, and withdrew some loose papers. They were four pages from a pocket map, torn out for reference. Mr. Edwards had handed them over some weeks ago.
Each one had a neat circle penned on it, and some notations and directions. One showed how to reach a property near Cumberworth in Middlesex.
Another showed the region around Manchester, with the village of Failsworth circled.
He cursed himself for not realizing the connection sooner. Of course he had been foxed when Edwards gave him these map pages, so it was a wonder he remembered them at all.
That circle indicated the location of another spot he had just inherited. One where another tenant lived, in whose welfare Becksbridge had committed interest.
Daphne had gone north to visit one of Becksbridge’s other mistresses.
Chapter Eighteen
D
aphne sipped some tea while the low fire toasted her feet. Another pair of slippers poked the air beside her own. Margaret’s arm kept moving up and down in a slow movement, while she brushed her long red hair.
“Are you less worried, Daphne? Now that you visited Mrs. Forester, and have seen that the village of Eccles is calm?”
“Much less worried.” It was a lie, but there would be little point in making Margaret know the sickness in her heart. Oh, visiting the Foresters had been wonderful. Those two hours had been sweet and joyful and full of nostalgia. The nearby village had indeed been calm, and she thanked God for that.