The Bridal Quest

by Candace Camp

  If their reception at Owenby's cottage had been cool, it was more than made up for by the rush of pleasure that appeared on the face of his mother's maid when they arrived at her cottage and she saw Gideon.

  "My lord! Oh, my!" She reached out to touch his arm, then remembered herself, blushed, and curtsied instead.

  "Lord Radbourne, it's so wonderful to see you! Please, come in, come in."

  The maid, whose name was Nancy Bonham, whisked them into the single large room of her tiny row cottage, quickly picking up a basket of sewing and stowing it behind a sofa and in the same motion directing Gideon toward the comfortable-looking chair beside the fireplace.

  "Please, sit down. Could I get you a cup of tea? I'm so happy, so happy, you came," she chattered, beaming and wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "You must excuse me. I'm not usually so easily overcome, but to see my lady's boy ..." She stopped, choking up.

  "No, don't apologize," Gideon told her, smiling back at her. "I should have come to see you earlier. I am afraid I did not realize—I have no memory of my life here before."

  "You do not remember your mother?" Nancy exclaimed in a shocked tone. "Oh, my, how terrible for you. She was such a sweet, kind woman. A fine lady, so good to me. And she loved you so very much. You were the light of her life, you know. There are some ladies as don't pay much mind to their children, leaving them to the nurse or governess, but not her ladyship. Whenever you were sick, she was right there at your bedside. And she would tuck you into bed each night and read you a little story. You loved that, you did."

  "Tell me about my mother," Gideon said.

  The woman needed no urging. She launched into a long paean to the Lady Selene's temperament, looks and character. "Her eyes were much like yours, you know. That same clear green. People always said you favored Lord Radbourne, but I thought you had more the look of Lady Selene. Her hair was dark, too, and she was tall. So refined she was, a true lady in every sense of the word. His lordship was lucky to have married her, I'll tell you that, though he never would have admitted it. The Bankeses were always a proud lot. And, of course, his mother was a Lilles, and we all know how they are. But your mother was a Walbridge, and her line went back as far in Norfolk as ever the Bankeses were here."

  She went on at some length about Lady Selene's family and her own family's long tradition of serving them, from there launching into a description of her ladyship's many kindnesses, not only to Nancy herself, but to the poor of the village.

  Finally, when she paused, Gideon said quickly, "Nancy, can you tell me about that day she left. What happened?"

  "Oh, that horrid, horrid day!" She teared up again, bringing her handkerchief back out of her pocket and dabbing at her eyes. "I never dreamed ... I saw she wasn't in her bed, of course, as soon as I went into her room. The bed was turned down, just as I'd left it the evening before. She hadn't slept in it at all. I didn't know what to do. I—" Nancy looked down at her hands "—I didn't want to tell Lord Radbourne. I didn't want to ... get her in trouble with him. He—" She glanced up at Gideon a little uncertainly.

  "Go ahead," he said calmly. "It does not matter what you say about him or my mother. They are ... I have no attachment to them. I did not know either of them, so I do not feel as one would normally feel about a parent. You will neither please nor offend me with what you say. I simply want to know the truth."

  "Your father was a man with a quick temper. He was not always kind. And she— She was not happy." Again she looked away.

  Irene leaned toward the woman. "You said you did not want her to get in trouble with him. Why did you think that she would? Why would he have been angry? Why wouldn't he simply have been worried because she had gone missing?"

  The older woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and this time her eyes went to Irene. "She was a good woman. You have to understand that."

  Irene nodded. "I am sure that she was. Was— Had there been other mornings when she was not there?"

  "No," Nancy replied slowly, shaking her head. "But sometimes, well, there was a time or two when, earlier in the night, she was not in her bed. She was always there the next morning, though."

  Irene kept her gaze on the woman so reluctantly answering her question. She knew that the maid would be more willing to communicate what she knew about Lady Selene to another woman, and she wanted her to forget as much as possible that Lady Selene's son was sitting right there.

  "Was she meeting a lover?"

  Nancy's chewed at her lip nervously, and her hands twisted in her lap. "Yes. I mean—I think she was. I fell asleep sitting in her room one time, waiting for her so I could help her undress. I woke up when she came in. It must have been four o'clock in the morning. Why would she have been up that late? And there was something about her face—so flushed and happy. And there were other times when—she would just seem so much happier for a bit. She would come in from the garden, her arms full of flowers, and she would be humming and smiling. There were periods when she was happier for weeks at a time. And then she would be sad—I would catch her sitting, looking out a window, and there would be tears in her eyes."

  "Do you know who the man was?"

  Nancy shook her head. "No. She never talked to me about him. She wouldn't have wanted to burden me with it, for fear his lordship might question me. But she needn't have worried." The woman set her jaw defiantly. "I would never have told him anything."

  "Of course you wouldn't," Irene agreed. "So that morning, you thought that perhaps she had just been out late with someone."

  Nancy nodded. "I couldn't think of any other reason for her not to have gone to bed—though I thought she had stopped seeing him. It had been a long time since she had ... acted so happy."

  This time Irene could not help breaking contact with the woman to glance at Gideon. It seemed likely that the signs Nancy had seen had been when Lady Selene was having an affair with Jasper.

  "So I was a little surprised and worried," Nancy went on. "But I didn't dare tell his lordship." She let out a little moan of regret. "Oh, I wish I'd gone straight to him! Maybe if I had he could have tracked those terrible men down." She turned toward Gideon. "He could have found you and your lady mother safe and sound."

  "You must not blame yourself," Irene soothed her. "It was not your fault. You did the only thing you could do. And even if you had gone straight to him, obviously she had been gone for some time, since the bed had not been slept in. They would have been far away by then."

  "That's right," Gideon agreed, his voice kind. "You could have done nothing else."

  "Thank you, my lord," Nancy sniffed, giving him a grateful smile. She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes again, then went on with her story. "But then the governess came running down, babbling about the young master. She said he was gone when she got up, and she'd looked all over for him. And then Lord Radbourne came to me, and I had to tell him that my lady was gone, too. I thought he would be furious with me for not telling him sooner, but he wasn't. He didn't even ask why I hadn't said anything earlier. He was—he was scared."

  She said the words with a touch of amazement in her voice. "I'd never seen him look like that before. Usually he as a hard, cold man, but he looked scared that day. I could see his hands trembling. And then I realized that he must have loved her, even with the way he was. He told me that her ladyship and Master Gideon had been taken, stolen away and held for ransom." She sighed. "He sent that Owenby fellow out to give them the ransom, but then they didn't give you back. And I knew she must be dead."

  "Did you ever think that perhaps she had not been taken?" Irene asked. "That she might have run away?"

  Lady Selene's former maid looked at her a trifle guiltily. "I—I did, my lady. Right at first I did. It seemed odd, you know, that kidnappers could have come into the house and taken her and the boy without waking anyone up. I thought maybe she had deceived the earl, though it seemed too cruel a trick for her to play. But she had been so unhappy, and I thought it must have been becau
se she had broken it off with the man, whoever he was, and I thought maybe she could not bear it anymore and decided to just run away and go to him. She would have taken you with her, sir, if she had left, for I know she could not have borne to leave you behind. So I— Well, I didn't tell his lordship, but I went to her room checked her clothes, just to see if there were any missing."

  "And were there?" Irene prompted when the woman fell silent.

  "No. The only missing dress was the one she had been wearing the night before. But there was a nightgown gone, the one I'd laid out on her bed, and I couldn't find her dressing gown. And it seemed to me that one or two of her petticoats were not there. I couldn't be sure. She had a number of them, and there were some in the laundry to be washed."

  "It doesn't seem like much to take with her if she had run away."

  "No, ma'am. But that would have been like her. She wouldn't have wanted to take anything from him. She wouldn't have thought it was right."

  "None of her jewelry was gone? Her hairbrush? Perfume?"

  Nancy shook her head. "That was why I thought she must have been abducted after all. She wouldn't have wanted anything of his, but she would have needed her brush and mirror, wouldn't she? And what use would her perfume be to him? So I knew it must have been true—that they came in and took her and the boy. They must have just grabbed up the nightgown and dressing gown because they would have been lying right there, wouldn't they?" She frowned, started to speak, then stopped.

  "What?" Irene asked quickly. "Was there something else?"

  "Only ... her little clock was missing."

  "Her clock?"

  Nancy nodded. "It's odd, isn't it? Doesn't seem like something someone would take if they were abducting someone, does it?"

  "No, not really," Irene agreed.

  "But neither does it seem the sort of thing someone would take if she were running away," Gideon added.

  "That's true, sir, except it was something special to her. It was her mother's, a French ormolu clock. Pretty, it was, and not too big. You could hold it in your hand. She kept it on her dresser. It made me wonder, because it was something she might have wanted to take—it was hers, after all, not his, and she treasured it because it was her mother's. Her mother died when she was but a girl, you see," she added in explanation. "So I thought it might show she did run away, but ..." Her voice hitched, and she paused to regain control, then went on. "But I think maybe it was just that I wanted so much to think that she wasn't dead. That somebody hadn't taken you and her, and then killed you both." She shook her head. "Hope's a powerful thing, can make you think things that aren't true. More likely one those ruffians just figured that clock was small and easy to snatch, and would bring a few pounds."

  Nancy lapsed into silence then.

  "Are you sure that the times when she was late to bed had been some months prior to when she was abducted?" Irene asked.

  The woman nodded. "Oh, yes, my lady. She had been sad for some time."

  After that Nancy had little else to say, beyond a few more reiterations of how glad she was that Gideon had come home and how happy his mother would have been that he had survived. Gideon and Irene soon took their leave of her and returned to their carriage.

  For the first part of the ride back to the Park, Gideon was silent, and Irene remained so, as well, suspecting that he needed some time in silence to come to terms with what Nancy had told them.

  Finally, when they were well away from the village, he broke the silence, saying, "She was right about hope. You want to believe so much that eventually you do. I don't suppose we will ever know the truth of what happened."

  "No, probably not," Irene agreed. There was a sadness in his eyes that made her want to lean across and take his hand, but she refrained.

  "The thing is—if my uncle is correct and my mother did not run off with a lover, it raises a difficult question."

  Irene looked over at him. "What actually did happen to Lady Selene?"

  He nodded. "Yes. Was she killed? Did someone steal her from her bedroom?"

  "But we know that your father made up the story about her being abducted. So that is not a possibility. He told his valet—if we are to believe him—that Lady Selene left him a letter telling him that she was taking you and running away."

  "A letter that only he read," Gideon put in. "He told my grandmother about it, too, but I did not get the impression that she actually read it, only saw him waving it about. Convenient."

  "Are you saying ... do you think that your father ... murdered her?" Irene's voice grew hushed as she said the words, as though saying them aloud would give reality to the events.

  He shook his head. "I don't know. I—the maid seemed frightened of him. Even his mother agreed that he was quicktempered. It is not something I like to consider, the possibility that I was sired by a murderer. But what other options are there, if she did not run away? Are we to believe that someone else crept into the house, stole her from it and killed her? After forcing her to write a note to my father, of course, making it look as though she had left voluntarily?"

  Irene sighed. "It seems unlikely." She paused thoughtfully, then went on. "On the other hand, if your father killed her, what happened to you? How did you end up in London by yourself? It makes no sense. You were his only child, his heir. He would not have taken you to London and abandoned you there."

  He shrugged. "That is odd. Nothing seems to concern the aristocracy more than the succession of their title. The same is true if Owenby killed her. He would not have taken me away to London. But who else could it have been? Who would want my mother dead and me gone?"

  "Well, the likeliest candidate would have been your uncle," Irene pointed out. "He is the only one who would have benefited by your no longer being here. He was, after all, your father's heir after you. And if your father was grief-stricken enough, perhaps Jasper could have thought that Lord Cecil would not marry again."

  "Yes, except for a couple of minor points—the first being that Uncle Jasper loved my mother."

  "According to him," Irene countered.

  Gideon raised his eyebrows at her. "My, you are a suspicious one. All right, we have only his word for that. But the second objection is that he was in India at the time it all took place. And my grandmother confirms that."

  "He could have hired someone," Irene argued. "He might have sent a man to get rid of both of you, but the fellow wasn't able to bring himself to kill a child, so he simply abandoned you somewhere."

  Gideon gave her a long look. "You have a frighteningly vivid imagination."

  She grimaced at him. "Or—and this one sounds like an excellent candidate to me—Lady Teresa. Did you know that she and her family actually lived in this area?"

  "No." He looked surprised. "But wouldn't she have been a child then?"

  "She isn't that young. I think she said she was fifteen at the time." At his look, she went on. "Well, yes, it is a trifle young, but she could have had her sights set on being the Countess of Radbourne and eliminated the obstacles in her way—you and your mother."

  "If I were murdered now, I think she would be an excellent candidate for the crime. But it's a bit far-fetched that at fifteen she even hatched such a plot, let alone carried it out. And how would she have gotten me to London?"

  "All right. It was not a very viable idea," she conceded.

  "And don't forget the letter. Whoever killed her would have had to get my mother to write that letter beforehand."

  He was silent for a moment, then said, "Or maybe it simply was just as my father and Owenby said. My mother fled with a lover and took me with her. Perhaps Uncle Jasper simply cannot bear to believe that the woman he loved would have left with another man. She was unfaithful to my father with his brother. Why would she be so unlikely to be unfaithful again with someone else? And who is to say she did not want to be with the other man more than she had wanted to be with my uncle?"

  "Or she reached a point where she could not bear to be with Lord Ceci
l any longer," Irene added. "There is another possibility that I have thought of. She was very sad, her maid said. It might be possible that she would have ..."

  Gideon's eyes narrowed. "Taken her own life?"

  Irene nodded.

  "Then why all the secrecy? Why make up such a tale?"

  "There is a great deal of stigma attached to suicide," Irene pointed out. "The church ..."

  "You think the local church would not have bent to my family's influence? For that matter, that the coroner would not have conveniently found her death an accident?"

  "There is still the scandal."

  "Yes. But I cannot imagine it would outweigh what they would have had to do. What about her corpse?" he pointed out bluntly. "If she did not leave of her own free will, if she was murdered or took her own life, then they would have had to do something with her body. Hidden her somewhere."

  The thought made Irene feel a trifle queasy. "Yes. It seems unlikely that they would have done so because of a suicide."

  "And what else is there? That she went mad and was locked for years in the attic?"

  "I know. It is all rather ... unrealistic," she agreed.

  "I think perhaps my uncle's belief is based more on what he wants to believe than what was true," Gideon said.

  "But both Nancy and your uncle agree that you were the center of Lady Selene's life," Irene pointed out. "Whatever happened to her, I do not think she would have abandoned you. At least you have that."

  "True—if you accept Nancy's and Uncle Jasper's accounts of what Lady Selene was like. What about Owenby's? According to him, it was my father who was good and she was wicked. I suppose it does not matter, really, either way. Clearly my parentage was deficient. An unfaithful wife for a mother, one who conceivably would have taken her child away from his home, his heritage. And a father who did not care enough to try to get his own child back."