The Gentleman's Quest

by Camille Elliot

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Dear Reader

  The Trail Boss’s Bride Sample

  Want More?

  The Gentleman’s Quest

  Camille Elliot

  Chapter 1

  Somersetshire, England

  Autumn, 1810

  Nothing could ruin the flavour of coddled eggs quite like the presence of her uncle, Mr. John Chabautt.

  Miss Honoria Dunbar's pleasant breakfast with her mother was broken when her uncle entered the morning room. His face and his mood were like black storm clouds hovering low, making the air heavy and hard to breathe.

  He was silent as he settled at his spot at the head of the breakfast table. The servant set a plate of ham before him and poured his coffee. He dismissed the man with an irritated wave of his hand and speared Honoria with his pale brown eyes. In the light from the windows, they looked almost the same colour as his frizzy red hair, which stuck out of his head at all angles, so that he looked like a squat hedgehog.

  "I've invited Mr. Criddle to dinner on Thursday," he announced. "This time, you will behave as befits my niece and entertain our guest."

  The muffin Honoria was buttering crumbled as her fingers spasmed. She set her knife down and stared at the marmalade jar in the centre of the white linen tablecloth.

  "I'll have no more missish behaviour from you," her uncle continued. "There's nothing wrong with a man stealing a kiss from a woman he's courting."

  Honoria grit her teeth. Mr. Criddle had had more than kissing on his mind when he'd walked with Honoria out in the gardens after dinner last night. She had gone with him because her uncle had wanted her to, and because her mother had needed her to.

  "You will do your duty," her uncle continued. "I will not allow you to remain forever under my roof, eating my food, ordering my servants about. You should be grateful a man would even consider an ageing spinster with no face to speak of."

  In actuality, Mr. Criddle was only interested in a woman willing to take on the care of his twelve children, and that didn't include his illegitimate children rumored to be scattered around the county.

  "Surely, brother, if Honoria does not care for Mr. Criddle …" her mother said.

  "A proper girl would have obliged me by marrying herself off my hands long ago," he snapped.

  "No, mother," Honoria said quietly. "Uncle is correct. I shall be on my best behaviour, sir."

  Her mother's eyes across the table were troubled.

  The rest of the meal passed in silence. The sight of the eggs on her plate turned Honoria's stomach, but she forced them down. She would have left the table, but in the past, her uncle had been insistent she eat everything and not waste his food. When Honoria had defied him, he had not punished her. Instead, he'd sent the back of his hand into her mother's face.

  Finally her uncle rose. "I must see my solicitor in Bath. I will return in the evening."

  Honoria kept her face impassive so he wouldn't suspect her inward sigh of relief. Her mother had the same neutral expression. Only when they saw his carriage speeding down the drive did Honoria allow her stiff spine to relax back against her chair.

  "Oh, Honoria, you said Mr. Criddle was quite insistent in his attentions in the garden last night," her mother said.

  "And so he was." She swallowed. "But he is our best means of escape."

  She had rebuffed his attempt to fondle her with a sharp jab to his midsection. He'd not taken her seriously and become more insistent, so she sent a knee to his groin, just as her brother and Christopher had taught her years ago. But it had also been a test to see if Mr. Criddle would respond with physical violence as her uncle would have.

  Mr. Criddle had been surprised and in pain, but there had been none of the raging anger she saw in her uncle.

  Mr. Criddle had accepted her explanation that she would not allow any man to touch her prior to marriage, although he grumbled as he sat on a bench in the garden to recover. He was not a bad-looking man, and apparently many women in addition to his two deceased wives had fallen for his charms. But his years of dissipation showed on his ageing face.

  "I do not wish you to sell yourself," her mother said in a low voice.

  "Mr. Criddle is not like Uncle." Honoria knew her mother would understand her meaning. "We are not attached to each other, and we are each aware this is merely a business arrangement."

  "I did not want a marriage of convenience for you."

  But Honoria did. Now more than ever, after all she had endured in her uncle's home, she only wanted an indifferent relationship with any man she chose to marry. Someone safe. Someone boring. Someone she would never care for.

  But she did not confess these things to her mother. "I have no choice. No other eligible man has come to our neighbourhood in years."

  "You should find a position as a companion, or a governess."

  Honoria gave her mother a fierce look. "I will not leave you. Uncle has resented being forced to take us in from the day we arrived seven years ago. If I alone leave, it will not improve his temper."

  Everything had changed seven years ago when her brother, Stephen, died. Her cousin Aubrey, who had become the new Lord Merritt, had been almost scandalous in the haste with which he threw them out of their home, Merritton. It was his right, and with only a handful of females comprising the extended Dunbar family, there had been no one to take him to task.

  The only way for two impoverished women to escape her uncle's house was for Honoria to marry and provide for her mother under her husband's roof. Mr. Criddle had been the only bachelor in such need of a wife that he'd consider a spinster with no dowry and her mother in addition.

  If she had been beautiful … but she was not. Her father had died before her come-out in London could be arranged, and then eighteen months later, on the eve of their journey to town, her brother had died in a carriage accident. Everything had gone to Aubrey, and with no money, they'd been forced to live with her mother's brother. Despite her uncle's vitriol, in many ways he had been kinder to them than her cousin, who had not cared that he was casting his kinswomen out of their home.

  It had, perhaps, been her fault that Aubrey drove them away, but she could not undo her youthful mistakes.

  Later that morning, Honoria was in the kitchen gardens with Cook selecting vegetables to include in baskets for her visits to her uncle's tenants when her mother came rushing from the house.

  "Goodness, Honoria, you must change your dress immediately." She began swatting at the dirt that stained Honoria's skirt along the edge of her apron. "Of all days for you to be mucking around in the garden …"

  "What is it?"

  "We have a visitor—"

  "Not Mr. Criddle?" Despite her steely resolve to accept him if he offered for her, she was not prepared to see him now, to pretend interest in his conversation.

  "No, you will never guess. It is Christopher Creager."

  Honoria actually dropped her basket of carrots and cabbages. "Christopher?" Her gloveless hands were filthy with dirt under her nails, her gown was the oldest she owned, and she'd only twisted her brown hair into a quick knot out of her face. "What in the world is he doing here? After all these years?"

  Her mother threw her hands up. "How should I know? I left him in the drawing room only a minute after the butler announced him so that I could fetch you."

  Honoria washed her hands in the kitchen as best she could, then went to her bedroom to change into her best morning gown of
blue cambric. She hadn't time to tame her unruly hair, so the severe knot would have to do. She thrust on her gloves to hide the telltale stains on her nails before hurrying to the drawing room.

  He stood when she entered, as tall and handsome as she remembered him. No, more handsome, for in the intervening years, his shoulders had become broader, his face more rugged. He was no longer the schoolboy neighbour who had been best friends with her brother.

  "Christopher." Her voice wobbled embarrassingly.

  And then he smiled, and he was her childhood friend once more, although with more smile lines along the edges of his dark eyes. "Hello, Honoria."

  She automatically reached her hands out for him, and he took them, his hands warm through her gloves. Up close, she saw that his black hair was longer than it had been, the straight locks falling into his eyes and brushing the collar of his coat.

  Then he released her hands and stepped back, and she was reminded of who she was now. Whatever his reason for coming, they were no longer social equals, no longer neighbours and friends.

  She sat next to her mother on the sofa. "What has brought you so far from Heathcliffe Manor?"

  "I am no longer living in my father's house." There was a slight hardness to his voice, like the edge of a blunted knife, and she remembered his difficult relationship with his cold father, who had never understood his quiet, studious son. "I have taken over a farm in Northumbria that I inherited from an uncle."

  "Northumbria? That is even farther away than Heathcliffe."

  "I have been visiting my mother and sister for the past month."

  "How is Lady Heathcliffe and Miss Creager?" her mother asked gently. Honoria wondered if that were a subtle hint that she was being too curious, but that had always been her nature.

  At least, it had been her nature when she had lived in Merritton. Those days seemed even further away now, with Christopher sitting in her uncle's drawing room, and the two of them strangers.

  "They are well. Felicity's schoolfriend will be married in a few weeks, and she will stay with the family for a few days before the wedding."

  "How excited she must be," Honoria's mother said.

  "It seemed only yesterday when I last saw her," Honoria said. "She was barely twelve."

  "Did she have her come-out in London last season?" her mother asked.

  "Yes." His flashing smile reminded her of when they had gotten into mischief as children. "Felicity nearly fainted when she was presented to the queen. She had forgotten to eat breakfast and almost fell forward onto her face."

  "Good gracious." Honoria's mother sounded both concerned and reluctantly amused.

  "My mother caught her—and nearly fell over herself—and all was well."

  There was a moment of silence, and Honoria was about to ask about old friends from the neighbourhood when Christopher said, "I beg your pardon, Lady Merritt, but I am afraid my visit concerns something that may upset you."

  Her mother tensed. In this house, troubles seemed to disturb her gentle mother's emotions more deeply now than they had before.

  Christopher brought out a bundle wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it and laid it on the low table before her mother.

  It was Honoria's brother's puzzle box.

  "Where did you find this?" Honoria picked it up with eager hands. "I haven't seen this in years. I wasn't aware it wasn't with Stephen's other things in the attic."

  "I found it two days ago in my father's stables, hidden in the straw," Christopher said slowly. "Next to the body of a man who had been murdered there."

  Honoria dropped the box—the second item she'd dropped in less than an hour—and it hit the edge of the table, then fell to the floor.

  Her mother's face paled. Honoria reached for her icy hands, chafing them between her own.

  "I do apologize," Christopher said in a rush. "I have never been good at … speaking," he ended lamely.

  Despite the situation, his awkwardness made Honoria want to laugh. She caught his eye, and a look of understanding passed between them, like when they could read each other's thoughts as children.

  Then her mother took a deep breath, and the moment was broken. "Murdered?" she said between short breaths. "Who was he? Why did it happen?"

  Christopher shook his head. "I don't know why he was killed. The man was Jem Rauser. Do you remember him?"

  Honoria pressed her lips together briefly. "He was the biggest bully in the neighbourhood, and a thief, although no one ever caught him at it."

  "He was killed with an ivory-handled hunting knife, which had been stolen from my father's gun room several weeks ago."

  "Ivory." Honoria remembered tagging along when Stephen and Christopher went shooting, and the ivory-handled knife he'd sometimes used. "It was yours?"

  He nodded grimly. "I'd left it in my father's gunroom when I moved to Northumbria. I intended to retrieve it when I next went to Heathcliffe Manor but always forgot until I'd returned home again."

  "Were other things taken from the manor?" Honoria asked.

  "Only the knife was taken from the gunroom, but my mother said that other things have been missing from the house in the past several months."

  "So Jem Rauser could have stolen your knife, and then …" Honoria glanced at her mother and did not complete her thought—that the murderer had killed Rauser with his own knife, or rather, Christopher's knife.

  "Certainly no one would believe you had anything to do with it," her mother said.

  Christopher looked down at his lightly clasped hands, his fingers long and strong. "I have never been … popular in the neighbourhood. Not as Stephen was."

  He'd been shy as a child, and as an adult, he'd been cool—not as cold as his father, but emotionless. Unapproachable. Much like Honoria's father had been. All Honoria's love had been from her mother, and she'd watched her mother search for warmth from her spouse, to no avail. Honoria had not wanted a marriage like that, which was why she had tried so hard not to fall in love with Christopher Creager.

  Until she saw him again, she thought she had accomplished it.

  "You have always kept to yourself," Honoria said, "but surely that does not make people believe you a murderer?"

  "There are ugly rumors going about, likely from Rauser's friends." His dark brows drew down over his eyes. "The rumors have cast a slur upon the family name, and my mother fears that the gossip will affect my sister when she goes to the wedding."

  Yes, Honoria could see how spiteful girls would not hesitate to spread such slander in a gossip-laden atmosphere like that. Felicity had been beautiful, even at twelve, and now would be a lovely young woman with a substantial dowry, the object of some envy.

  "The inquest will clear you of all involvement, will it not?" Honoria asked.

  "It is scheduled for two weeks' time, because the magistrate is out of the county. But I want to solve the mystery before the inquest and the wedding, if only for my sister's sake."

  "Yes, of course," her mother said. "But how can we help you? This is Stephen's puzzle box, but we hadn't realized it was not in his trunk."

  Honoria retrieved the box from where she'd dropped it. The surface had the same nicks and scratches, and she fingered the carved symbol on the front, a flower with five wide petals, each ending in a curious point like an archery bow with an arrow notched in it.

  "After the body had been taken away, I found the box in the straw," Christopher said. "I recognized it immediately as Stephen's because of that long scratch from when Aubrey threw it."

  "I remember." Honoria drew a finger down the long gash. Her cousin had been eleven when he'd tried to open the box—and failed. He'd lost his temper and hurled the box to the ground while Honoria, just a year younger, had watched in horror.

  "I believe that one of the men in the stable had the box in his possession and lost it in the fight, which means that it was important to him. I opened it, and there was nothing inside, but I was suspicious. And so I'm afraid that I … broke it apart. Inside."

&
nbsp; Her fingers remembered the trick to opening the complex box, and in a moment she slid open the lid. Over the inside bottom, a thin layer of wood looked to have been glued, but was now cracked and half peeled away.

  "Under that thin layer of wood was this." Christopher handed her a delicate yellowed parchment.

  The paper was very old, thinner than an onion skin. Over a third of it had been badly damaged by water at some point, and any writing had been reduced to grey smudges. But the other part of the paper was covered by drawings of trees, two hills, a meandering river, and a small pond.

  "A map," Honoria said. "But I don't recognise these landmarks."

  Christopher sighed. "I had hoped you would."

  "Let me see it." Her mother took the paper and studied it. Then she shook her head. "I don't recognise this, either. If it depicts a location on Merritton land, it is from before I went to live there."

  "Do you have any old maps of the estate?"

  "They would all be at Merritton."

  "Do you think this is a treasure map?" Excitement blossomed in her heart, a feeling she had forgotten, a feeling that recalled summers playing pirates with Stephen and Christopher.

  There was an answering gleam in his eye, making him look thirteen years old again, rescuing her from the Dread Pirate Stephen. "It probably isn't, but …"

  "Your father did mention a few privateers in the Dunbar family line," her mother said with a smile.

  "If only this portion were not obscured by water damage," Honoria said. "I do not recall ever dropping the box in water, but Stephen was a few years older than I."

  "I remember when your father gave the box to Stephen, when you were still a babe," Christopher said. "But in all the time we were boys, I don't recall any incidents involving water."

  "Father said that although the box was not included in the entail, it had traditionally been passed down from father to son, so perhaps a previous Lord Merritt had caused it to become wet."