The Duchess Hunt (27 page)

“That perhaps you’d made a terrible
investment and had suddenly found yourself insolvent and you faced ruin if you
didn’t marry a lady with a sizeable dowry immediately.”

“Me? A terrible investment?”

“I was desperate for answers, as you can
see very well.” A smile twitched at her lips. “I thought also that Lord Luke
had perhaps debauched Miss Stanley, and her father caught them
in flagrante delicto
and was demanding his blood, but you offered your bachelorhood up
as payment instead.”

“Well, that one is closer to the truth of
it, at least,” Simon said.

“Still a rather great distance from it, though.”

They sat in quiet, companionable silence
for another few moments before Simon said in a voice so quiet she could hardly
hear him, “I want to make love to you again, Sarah.”

She stiffened. With great effort, she
turned to him and looked him in the eye. “But you won’t.”

“I can’t.”

She knew he couldn’t. His loyalty was one
of the reasons why she loved him. Why she’d always love him.

She rose from the bench. “Take me home,
Your Grace.”

“Of course.”

Side by side, they walked back to her
father’s cottage in silence.

Chapter
Seventeen

Sarah sat straight up in bed. She hadn’t
had the time to speak with Mrs. Hope about Bordesley Green yesterday. But now,
on some edge of her fractured sleep, a dormant part of her mind had awakened
and remembered what Bordesley Green was.

Her blanket had dipped around her hips,
and she was wearing her lightest nightgown, but the morning wasn’t cold.
Vestiges of dawn seeped in through her curtains, bathing her room in a shadowy
gray light. All was silent; even the birds had not yet begun their morning
song.

Bordesley Green was a private asylum.
James, the duchess’s manservant who’d disappeared when she had, had supported
his mother who lived there.

Sarah had never spoken to him about it.
She’d overheard him talking to Binnie one day, had heard only the fringes of
their conversation. She’d gathered from the bits and pieces of information that
he sent funds monthly to Bordesley Green for the care of his mother, who’d
forgotten who she was… and who her son was. It had been his day off that day,
and he was leaving to visit her.

“So that’s where you go every month,”
Binnie had exclaimed, as if that solved some great mystery.

“Aye, it is. Even if she doesn’t remember
me… she’s still blood,” he’d said gravely.

Sarah dressed herself hurriedly, ate a
quick breakfast despite the rumbling in her belly, left a note for her father,
and headed to the stables.

As she’d expected, Robert Johnston was
already awake. She found him in a stall where he was saddling one of the mares
for a morning ride.

“Robert?”

She’d startled him. His head jerked up to
her, but then his lips spread into a grin, and the tension seeped out of his
shoulders. “Sarah! Good morning. What are you doing up so early?”

She glanced around to make sure no one was
listening – surely the stable boy wasn’t – he was humming as he shoveled muck
out of a stall at the far end of the stables.

“I need to ask you a favor,” she told him,
slipping into the stall. “A rather enormous favor, I’m afraid.”

“Anything for you,” Robert said, his voice
warm.

“It’s Thursday. It’s my day off today. I
believe it’s yours, too?”

“Aye, it is.”

“Did you have important plans for the
day?”

“None but a bit of riding.” He gestured to
the horse he’d been saddling.

“Would you mind…” She took a deep breath,
then plowed on. “Would you mind taking me somewhere?”

“Be happy to.”

“It’s a place called Bordesley Green. I
don’t know where it is, exactly – Mrs. Hope would probably know. But…” She gave
him a cringing look. “… I have heard it’s about ten miles away.”

“Of course. I’ll ready the old duke’s
phaeton.”

She released a relieved breath. He’d
agreed readily, and with no questions asked. He turned back to the horse
standing beside him to unsaddle it, and then he went to ready the phaeton while
Sarah hurried to the house to ask the way to Bordesley Green. Though Mrs. Hope
looked at her askance, she told Sarah where the asylum was located, and by the
time Sarah had returned from the kitchen where she’d packed a luncheon they
could eat, Robert was ready to go.

“Thank you,” she told him with feeling as
soon as they were underway. “This was so important to me. I cannot thank you
enough for taking your day off to help me.”

“It is my pleasure,” he told her.

The journey took two hours. During that
time, she kept talking, as if engaging him in conversation about mundane things
like the weather and the breeding of horses at Ironwood Park would prevent him
from asking her too many questions.

When they finally arrived at the high
gates that marked the entrance to Bordesley Green, the sun had peeked out from
behind gray-toned clouds that had threatened rain all morning.

She’d given Robert a highly abridged
explanation of why they were coming here, focusing on the fact that it might
help in the investigation regarding the duchess, and now he gave her a sidelong
glance. She said nothing, just watched the scene unfolding before them.

He stopped the phaeton outside the tall
iron fence. While Sarah held the horses, Robert stepped out to inspect the
closed gate, and he glanced back at her. “It’s not locked, but I imagine we are
expected to leave the horses and phaeton here.”

“All right.”

He came back to take the reins from her,
and he secured the horses while she descended from the phaeton to take a good
look at Bordesley Green. The brick building stood about a quarter-mile from the
gate, three stories rising in dark, gothic lines from the center of a vast
green lawn. There was no one out and about on that lawn. The place just stood
there, still and haunting and quiet under the looming clouds.

Determinedly, Sarah began to walk down the
long, straight path that led to the front door. And then she saw that Robert
had hurried to her side.

She slowed. “Robert, I’m sorry. Will you
wait for me out here?”

He glanced at the quiet, imposing
structure ahead of them and then back at her. “Sarah —”

“I’ll be all right. I just need to ask
after the man I was telling you about. It’ll only be a few minutes.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Very well. I’m
remaining right here, though. And if you are gone longer than an hour, I’m
coming after you.”

“Thank you.” On impulse, she squeezed his
forearm in thanks.

The air was growing warm and thick around
her, and she glanced up at the sky. It really was possible that it would rain.
She hoped Robert didn’t get soaked waiting for her.

She reached the tall, heavy wooden front
door. It loomed up dark and silent in the gloom, and with seemingly no other
option, she knocked.

After a long moment, a swarthy woman
dressed all in black with her hair pinned back severely at her nape opened the
door. “How might I help thee?”

“Good morning,” Sarah said with the
brightest smile she could muster. “I am here to visit one of your residents.”

“Which patient wouldst thou like to see?”
The woman’s manner of speaking and her sternness of dress marked her as a
Quaker.

“Bertram Smith,” Sarah asked
automatically. And then she did something rare for her – she outright lied. “He
is my cousin.”

The woman raised her brows. “Friend
Bertram doesn’t receive many visitors.”

Sarah nodded. “I haven’t seen him in
years. I’ve come from London, you see, and I’ve never had the opportunity to
travel to Worcester before now.” When the woman was silent, she added yet
another lie. “We often played together when I was a child. It has been a very
long time.”

She hoped the woman would not try to
verify all this information with Bertram Smith. She’d no idea even if he was
able to understand the concept of a cousin. Or if he’d ever played.

“Your name?”

“Sarah. Sarah Stanley.”

Recognition flared in the woman’s eyes.
Interesting. So the lady did possess knowledge of the link between Bertram and
the Stanleys.

“I am Hannah Mills, the matron here. It is
a pleasure to meet thee. However, I am afraid today is not a visiting day. The
second Friday of the month – tomorrow – is the day we accept visits from family
members. On the day before such encounters, we provide a calm and serene
atmosphere for the idiots so that they might be in a proper state of mind to
see their loved ones.”

“But I am only passing through —”

The woman raised her hand, and with a
small smile on her face, added, “However, since Friend Bertram sees visitors so
infrequently, it’ll do him good to see someone from his childhood. I shall do
my best. Please, follow me.”

Sarah trailed after the woman into a dim,
quiet corridor and up a flight of stairs. They passed only one other person, a
young woman dressed in the same crisp black that Mrs. Mills wore, carrying a
tray of dirty dishes.

“Good day, Hannah,” she said to Mrs.
Mills.

“Good day, Prudence,” Mrs. Mills
responded, crisp and polite.

Prudence nodded at Sarah as they passed in
the corridor. Mrs. Mills led her into a stark, white-painted reception room
scattered with wooden chairs, a large brick fireplace on one wall and a row of
tall gothic windows on the other. The woman stopped by the door and gestured
inside. “Pray, be seated. I shall go inquire whether Friend Bertram is prepared
for a visit with a family member this morning.”

“Thank you very much.”

As Mrs. Mills exited from the room, Sarah
selected a chair with a good view of the doorway so she could see Mrs. Mills
and Bertram when they returned.

If they returned. That was a big “if.”

But Sarah couldn’t know. She sat there,
chewing her lip in nervousness. She didn’t have any experience with idiots, and
she didn’t know what to expect. Her plan had ended at gaining entrance to
Bordesley Green and convincing them to allow her to see Bertram. Since she
still didn’t have anything but guesses about who he was or why Georgina Stanley
wished for him to remain a secret, her plan had reached its limit.

The door opened, and Mrs. Mills entered,
followed by a man-sized boy.

Sarah looked up at him, slowly rising from
her seat, her heart pattering against her ribs. For the man-boy looked
unnervingly similar to Georgina Stanley.

A flattened-out, plumper, doughy version
of Georgina Stanley.

As soon as he saw her, he grinned. Two of
his teeth were missing. “It’s my birthday! For me!” he announced with a lisp so
marked, it sounded like he’d said, “Itsch my birfday.”

“Come inside, Friend Bertram,” Mrs. Mills
said patiently, and he obediently strode into the room, looking around with
interest, his cornflower blue eyes shining.

Although his white gown looked freshly
starched and had probably been snow white this morning, there were dribbles of
something – gravy, perhaps – spattered across its front.

He didn’t look quite right. It was like
looking at a male version of Georgina through drunken eyes. His face was too
round, his ears and teeth too small, his eyes too perfectly almond-shaped and
too close together.

Mrs. Mills looked up at Sarah and
shrugged. “Whenever something he considers to be a happy event occurs, he
believes it’s his birthday. Of course, we do not celebrate such things as
birthdays here, but that day must have been a special one for him when he was a
boy, and he hasn’t forgotten.”

Sarah nodded. She swallowed her fear.
Surely if the man were dangerous, Mrs. Mills would have taken precautions. And
in any case, fear wouldn’t help her in this situation.

She stepped forward. “Bertram,” she said,
“it is so good to see you.”

He stopped and stood still, his gown
fluttering over the floor, and looked at her with bright-eyed interest. His
eyes were the exact same color as Miss Stanley’s but contained none of the
malice Sarah had seen the last time she’d encountered the lady.

“You?”

“I’m Sarah,” she said quietly.

“I like cousins,” Bertram said. Mrs. Mills
must have told him his cousin had come to visit. And then he released his words
in a rattle so fast Sarah couldn’t keep up. Not only did he have a lisp, but he
also slurred his words. He said something about papas with a scowl, and
brothers and sisters. And people named Gertrude and Mary and William, and their
mamas and papas and cousins. Then, suddenly, he stopped cold, frowning as if
he’d lost his train of thought.

Mrs. Mills patted his arm. “Friend Bertram
has become something of a pet to many of our patients’ families.”

“Oh?” Sarah didn’t know what else to say.

“Indeed. Thou might recall his humble,
happy nature. He seldom requires restraints, he doesn’t complain or cry, and
his only ambition in life appears to be one of the simplest, yet one of the
most important for all of humankind: to be happy.”

“Oh,” Sarah said in some surprise. Bertram
grinned at her, showing his little gapped teeth.