“As have I,” Lady Blodgett said with a weak smile. “Charles always intended to take me, but somehow, the opportune time never arose. My friend Persephone speaks quite fondly of it. Of course, it’s been years since she’s been there.”
“I spent some time there as a student,” the professor added. “I doubt it’s changed much. Paris never does.”
“Paris?” India glared at Mr. Saunders. This was not what they had discussed.
“We, too, have some final arrangements to make.” Professor Greer stood and offered his hand to his wife. “Come along, Estelle.”
“Oh my, yes.” Mrs. Greer took his hand and rose to her feet. Mr. Saunders stood at once. The man was at least cognizant of polite behavior. “This has all happened so quickly. There is a great deal to do before we can leave. Why, we have to pack our bags and confer with the servants and arrange for—”
“Then we won’t keep you a moment longer.” Lady Blodgett stood, as well. “Allow me to see you out.” She glanced at her nephew. “I suspect you and Miss Prendergast have much to discuss before your departure.”
Mr. Saunders glanced at India. “I would think so.”
The older lady’s gaze shifted from her nephew to India and back. “I will leave you to it then.” She took Mrs. Greer’s arm and herded the couple toward the hall. “I can’t tell you how envious I am. Perhaps, one day, I, too...”
Mr. Saunders closed the doors behind them.
India stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “Paris?”
“I believe that’s the third time you’ve said that.”
“It bears repeating. If I recall correctly, you originally suggested following in Heloise’s footsteps. And I agreed.” She drew her brows together. “Her footsteps did not begin in Paris.”
“No, they did not,” he said mildly, crossing the room to a cabinet and opening the doors. “Would you care for a brandy or whisky? Or perhaps sherry would be more to your liking.”
“I have tea.” She waved impatiently at her cup.
“Ah yes, well, so you do.”
“I have never been one for overindulgence in spirits.”
“Imagine my surprise.”
“Besides, it’s entirely too early in the day for spirits.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” He poured himself a glass of something amber and probably horribly inebriating.
She ignored the question. “I do hope indulging in alcohol at all hours is not something you plan to make a habit of during our travels.”
“As long as my habits do not interfere in our purposes, I would say they are none of your concern.”
She paused to summon a measure of calm. She couldn’t find Heloise without this beastly creature, and, as much as she disapproved of nearly everything about him, it made no sense not to attempt to get along with him. Still...
“Mr. Saunders.” She drew a calming breath. “I do not appreciate you changing our plans without informing me.”
He glanced at her, took a deep swallow of his drink, then refilled his glass. As if dealing with her required strong spirits.
“First of all, Miss Prendergast, they are not our plans.” He returned to his chair, gestured for her to sit, then resumed his seat. “They are my plans. You insisted upon coming. It’s only because my aunt agreed that you should that I am allowing you to do so.”
She gasped. “Allowing me?”
“Yes,” he said in a hard tone. “Allowing you.”
“Whether you allow me to accompany you or not, I was not about to allow you to look for my cousin without supervision.”
“Supervision?” His brow rose as if she had just made the most amusing comment.
“I daresay someone needs to keep an eye on you.”
“You don’t trust me, do you, Miss Prendergast?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” He leaned forward in what appeared to be genuine curiosity. “You don’t even know me.”
“Your reputation does not foster trust, Mr. Saunders.”
“I see.” He studied her curiously. “I would have thought you were the type of woman who judged people on their own merits rather than what gossips have had to say about them.”
Heat washed up her face. “I am indeed, but I am not a fool. When one person says a piece of fruit is a plum, there’s a possibility it may not be a plum. However, when dozens of people identify it as a plum, the chances are very good that it is indeed a plum.”
“I see.” He continued his perusal of her as if she were an insect in a glass case. “You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’ve never had any reason to doubt myself or my judgment.”
“Oh, this will be an enjoyable trip,” he said under his breath.
“I am not here to enjoy myself,” she said staunchly.
“Understandable, of course.”
“I am very concerned about my cousin.” The oddest lump formed in her throat, and she cleared it. “Indeed, she is my only concern.”
“Do not mistake my words, Miss Prendergast,” he said in a serious manner. “I, too, am concerned that we find Lady Heloise safe and well. However, it has been my observation that even the most serious of ventures progresses more easily when one attempts to appreciate new experiences.”
“I have no intention of appreciating anything.”
“No, I didn’t think you would.”
She ignored him. “I do wish you would answer my question. Why are we starting in Paris?”
“Because the last letter you received from her came from Paris.”
“How did you know that?”
“Good God, Miss Prendergast, you needn’t look at me as if I were some sort of nefarious villain intent on doing you and your cousin harm.”
Admittedly, she had little more than gossip and her suspicions as to his character. Not that he probably didn’t deserve it.
“Until you prove otherwise, Mr. Saunders...” She shrugged.
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed.
“This is not amusing.”
“On the contrary, it—you—” he raised his glass to her “—are most amusing.”
“Imagine my delight in your assessment of me,” she snapped. “Now, once again—how did you know her last letter was from Paris?”
“When we first met, you said her last letter was from France and you specifically said it was from Paris in each and every letter you sent to the Travelers Society.”
She stared at him. “You actually read them?”
“Of course I did.” He sipped his drink. “If you recall, I had already begun an effort to locate her before you so politely introduced yourself.”
“I will grant you that,” she said reluctantly. Perhaps on this one point she was not being fair.
“Thank you.” He thought for a moment. “It simply seemed to me it was logical to begin our search in the last place we know Lady Heloise to have visited, rather than going back to where she was previously. Don’t you agree?”
“That does make sense.” She nodded slowly.
“Then I’m right?”
She clenched her teeth. “Yes, I suppose you are.”
“Excellent.” He grinned.
“Don’t be smug, Mr. Saunders. It’s most unbecoming.”
“Nonetheless, I find it hard to resist. I can’t imagine you admitting that I may be right about something to be more than an infrequent occurrence. I intend to savor it when it happens.”
“As well you should, as I, too, am fairly certain it will be extremely rare.”
He grinned another most disarming grin. It was all she could do to ignore it.
“Did you bring your cousin’s letters?” he said, abruptly changing the subject.
She nodded.
“May I read them?”
She started to refuse, then realized it was not an unreasonable request. And while he might not have her trust, a little cooperation between them might be beneficial. “May I ask why?”
“There may be something in them that could prove of value. Something you might have overlooked.”
“That’s possible I suppose.” She grabbed her bag and rummaged through it.
“And I am right once again,” he murmured. She pretended not to hear him. “If these are of a personal nature—”
“No, not at all.” She pulled out a packet of letters and handed it to him. “Heloise wrote of the sights, where she was staying and assorted travel details. Nothing especially personal at all.”
He shuffled through the letters. “Is that unusual? For them to be so impersonal, that is?”
“I didn’t say they were impersonal, although I suppose they might be construed as such. As for whether or not that’s unusual, I can’t really say.” She thought for a moment. “Heloise and I haven’t corresponded since my school years. If I recall correctly, those letters were about the details of her day-to-day life. Her letters now are about travel and the sights she’s seeing. This is very new to her, and she was extremely excited about her travels. It simply stands to reason that detailing what she sees would be what she’d write about.”
“Of course.” He nodded. “May I return these to you in the morning?”
“Certainly, and I should take my leave, as well.” She rose to her feet, Mr. Saunders standing at once. She could not fault the man’s grasp of manners. “I, too, have a great many details to attend to before our departure.” She nodded and started toward the door.
India was the first to admit her greatest flaw was impatience. Now that arrangements were made, she was almost as eager as the Greers to begin their travels. Eager and possibly even a bit excited. The thought pulled her up short. There was nothing to be excited about. This was Heloise’s adventure, not hers.
“One more thing, Miss Prendergast, before you go.”
She turned back to him. “Yes?”
“As we are to be traveling companions, and will be spending a considerable amount of time in each other’s company, I would appreciate it if you would give the slightest bit of consideration to the possibility that I am not as wicked as you apparently think.” He smiled in a most engaging way. She ignored it.
“That remains to be seen, Mr. Saunders. Although I should warn you—” she flicked her gaze over him in a dismissive manner “—I have never been fond of plums.”
CHAPTER SIX
“AND HOW LONG do you expect this endeavor to take?” Uncle Edward studied Derek from behind the massive desk in the library in his London house. Now in his sixty-first year, the Earl of Danby was still a fine figure of a man with graying hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to notice all sorts of things one wished they wouldn’t. Derek had been the recipient of that look before. He resisted the urge to squirm in his chair like a guilty schoolboy.
“Quite honestly, sir—” Derek braced himself “—I have no idea.”
Derek would have liked nothing better than to have avoided this conversation altogether, but in the months since Uncle Edward’s mandate that he reform his carefree ways, he’d been working with the earl’s estate, property and business managers. No one had been more surprised than Derek to discover he not only had a knack for numbers and business; he enjoyed it. Abandoning his new duties for as long as it took to find Lady Heloise would not sit well with his uncle. At least not without an explanation.
“I see.” Uncle Edward considered him in a noncommittal manner.
“Frankly, sir—” Derek leaned forward and met his uncle’s gaze firmly “—I don’t see that I have a choice. While I did look into hiring private investigators to locate Lady Heloise, such efforts will take funding beyond my resources and a great deal of time.”
“You could have asked me for the money,” Uncle Edward said, his tone deceptively mild.
“I could have, and I did consider it.” Derek chose his words with care. The earl was a clever man, and now was not the time for anything other than complete honesty. “But Lady Blodgett is my mother’s aunt and not a relation of yours.”
“As much as I haven’t seen her in years, I have always been fond of Guinevere. She helped me with an awkward situation once. I wish she had come to me with her financial problems.”
“She would never do that, sir. Indeed, as far as I am aware, she never mentioned any difficulties to my mother.” Without question, Mother would have insisted Aunt Guinevere accept her help. “But as a member of my family she is my responsibility.”
“One does take responsibility for family.”
Derek started to say that was something he’d learned from his uncle but thought better of it. Uncle Edward took a dim view of those who curried favor too overtly, even with the truth. Instead he nodded. “Which is why I did not think it was appropriate to ask for your help in this.”
“So you intend to use your own resources?” The earl’s brow twitched.
“Such as they are.” Derek couldn’t resist a grin. “It seems in recent months, I haven’t been squandering my allowance in the manner I once did.”
Uncle Edward stared at him for an intense moment. “I am aware of that.”
Family money supported Derek, as it had his father before his death and his mother between her first and second husbands. Derek barely remembered his father, but Uncle Edward had said on more than one occasion how reliable and responsible Henry Saunders had been. How his twin brother had taken a significant role in the management of family affairs. As Uncle Edward always made such comments in an especially meaningful manner, the point was not lost on Derek.
“I would have preferred not to have told you about any of this at all.”
The earl nodded. “Understandable.”
Still, Derek hadn’t told his uncle everything. While he had admitted that Aunt Guinevere and her friends had started the Lady Travelers Society and had subsequently misplaced a member, he’d thought it best not to reveal his conviction that the elderly ladies were engaged in fraudulent activities. That would not sit well with the Earl of Danby. Nor would the scandal that would surely erupt if Lady Heloise was not located. He had no doubt Miss Prendergast would make the whole mess horribly public. And there was no reason why she shouldn’t.
“But I did not feel I could shirk the duties you have entrusted to me without telling you why I chose to do so.”
“Prudent of you.” Uncle Edward tapped his pen thoughtfully on his desk. “And you feel the need to take this upon yourself?”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t see any other option. I’m not sure I trust anyone else to do this with the expedience I think it warrants. And I do think time is of the essence.”
“Nor will anyone put the effort into it that you will, am I correct?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Then you have considered the possibility that something dire might have happened to Lady Heloise.”
“Frankly, that is my greatest fear.” Derek shook his head. “The responsibility would then fall fully on Aunt Guinevere and her friends. It would devastate them, sir, and destroy their organization’s reputation as well as their good names.”
“Without question.” Uncle Edward paused. “Do you think it’s wise to bring Lady Heloise’s niece along with you?”
“I think it’s a disaster in the making.” Derek shuddered. “But I have no choice in the matter. She threatened to follow if I did not permit her to accompany me, and Aunt Guinevere pointed out the blame would then be laid at my feet if anything happened to her.”
“She’s right there.”
“Oh, and it’s not Lady Heloise’s niece but her cousin. Second
cousin actually. She is Lady Heloise’s ward.” Derek had thought it wise to check into Miss Prendergast’s background and had called on the services of an old friend, Phineas Chapman, who had turned a brilliant mind to the art of investigation. It seemed there wasn’t much to uncover.
India Prendergast had been orphaned as a young girl when her missionary parents had died of some unknown tropical illness in the South Seas. She’d then made her home with Lady Heloise, apparently her only relative. She had graduated with honors from the prestigious Miss Bicklesham’s Academy for Accomplished Young Ladies. Derek knew quite a few women whose formative years had been spent at Miss Bicklesham’s. Fortunately, the lessons of propriety and decorum taught at the academy did not impress themselves upon those ladies in the way they obviously did Miss Prendergast. She’d been briefly employed as a governess and had an even shorter tenure as a teacher at Miss Bicklesham’s before becoming the secretarial assistant to Sir Martin Luckthorne. Derek had never heard of the man, but apparently he was well regarded in assorted intellectual, scientific and antiquarian circles. While only in his early forties, he was considered somewhat reclusive and a bit eccentric. There was no Lady Luckthorne, which one might think would cast a pall of impropriety over Miss Prendergast’s employment if, of course, one had not made Miss Prendergast’s acquaintance.
According to Chapman, Miss Prendergast had never been engaged, her name had never been linked to any man’s and, at the age of twenty-nine, she was considered a true spinster. Apparently there had been no effort to see her wed, either. Odd, as Chapman said—although Lady Heloise lived frugally—she did seem to have a surprisingly significant fortune. But Miss Prendergast had had no coming-out season, no introduction to society; indeed, society seemed to have no idea of her existence. Odder still, given Lady Heloise’s resources, that Miss Prendergast chose to be employed rather than work at charitable causes or those things with which most ladies occupied their time. Aside from her life with Lady Heloise and her work with Sir Martin, there was little to say about Miss India Prendergast.
“So you intend to wander aimlessly around Paris looking for this woman?”
“Not aimlessly,” Derek said. “I do have something of a plan. I intend to check with hotels and the embassy, make inquiries at the train station and wherever else she might have been and that sort of thing. If necessary, we will progress on to the next point in her itinerary.” It seemed quite clever when he’d first thought of it but, saying it aloud to his uncle, it did seem rather aimless at that.
The Lady Travelers Guide to Scoundrels and Other Gentlemen Page 7
