But she didn’t dare have the law on him, because she knew she didn’t have a scrap of real evidence against him.
She’d persecuted him, and it was the old man’s fault, for letting her do as she pleased. He let her run roughshod over people who knew more than her, never caring if it was almost the same as sending a man to the workhouse.
This was Caleb’s thinking, and the more he stewed about it, the less he liked the idea of traveling all the way to Northumberland, nursing the old dodo and looking after him like he was royalty.
If Jackson had only gone away, like he was supposed to, Caleb could have poured some more cordial down the crackbrain’s gullet early last night and dropped him into the nearest abandoned mine. The hill was honeycombed with old mines and shafts. Accidents happened all the time. People would think Mr. O took a tumble, like he was bound to do, sooner or later, with his wandering the hills like he did, in every kind of weather. No one would be surprised when they found his body. If they ever found it.
But Jackson wouldn’t go, and now they were stuck, the three of them, in this smoky little hovel—and Mr. O, being a gentleman, got the one bed, and all the best victuals, and even wine, if you please.
Wednesday night passed into Thursday morning, and the cordial’s effects having worn off, the old man tried to give them the slip. After that, they had to start dosing him regular with the laudanum Caleb happened to have on hand—in case of mining accidents, he said.
But Jackson was the one who dosed their prisoner, and he was almighty stingy with the drug—only enough to keep Mr. O smiling and dreamy and happy to sit in one place, looking at an old twig or a feather for hours on end.
As the morning wore on, Caleb’s patience wore down, too. “The day’s wasting, and Northumberland ain’t getting any closer,” he told Jackson.
“I’ll see about hiring a carriage,” Jackson said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He soon left, taking their one horse and, to Caleb’s vexation, the laudanum bottle.
ALISTAIR did not reach Oldridge Hall until well into afternoon. He found the place nearly deserted, most of the staff being out assisting with the search for Mr. Oldridge.
Three separate parties were out combing the botanist’s usual haunts. Sir Roger Tolbert had organized a party to search the area about Matlock and Matlock Bath. Captain Hughes and his group were covering the southeasterly portion of Longledge Hill. Mirabel and her servants were working their way over the vast estate itself.
Mrs. Entwhistle remained at Oldridge Hall as search coordinator, receiving and dispatching messages from the various parties. When Alistair was shown into the library, he found her at the writing desk.
She did not waste time with social niceties but promptly apprised him of the situation.
Mr. Oldridge never missed dinner, she reminded him. It was only very rarely that he could be prevailed upon to dine away from home. When he failed to appear Wednesday evening, Benton immediately surmised a mishap. Mr. Oldridge never became so lost as to fail to return home in time for dinner. He was never hindered by inclement weather, and yesterday had not become inclement until well past the appointed dinner hour. The only possible explanation was that he had met with an accident. This was why Benton instantly sent word to his mistress. As he reasoned, if Mr. Oldridge turned up in the interval, it would be easy enough to send another messenger to intercept Miss Oldridge as she was returning.
Mr. Oldridge did not, however, turn up in the interval. He had not dined elsewhere.
“Consequently, one can only hope the mishap was a minor one,” Mrs. Entwhistle said.
Alistair remembered his own tumble into the Briar Brook. A sprained ankle. A minor concussion. He might have broken his neck.
“Mr. Oldridge has been wandering the countryside most of his life,” he said. “He is nimbler than I—really, he is as nimble as a boy, I think. Who knows these hills and dales better than he? It cannot be anything but a minor accident. And with so many engaged in the search, he is sure to be found before the day is out. Please tell me how I can help.”
“You’d better go to Mirabel,” the lady said. “She knows what she’s about, but she could do with moral support.” The ex-governess fixed him with a steely stare, which was a disconcerting contrast to her plumply feminine appearance. “You are capable of providing that, I trust?”
While disconcerting, the stare—which had surely reduced erring children to terrified obedience—was nothing to the Gorgon glare his paternal grandmother could administer. “Certainly ma’am,” he said, quite uncowed, “that and whatever else the lady requires.”
Nearly an hour later he found Mirabel at the outlook where, he now realized, his perceptions of Longledge had first begun to change. She was mounted upon the imperturbable gelding rather than the high-strung Sophy, but she was alone, and in a very short time it would grow dark.
He had come in the nick of time.
She heard his advancing hoofbeats and turned his way.
“You are vexed with me,” she said, reading his countenance all too easily.
“Of course I’m vexed,” he said. “You’re alone, the ground is still slippery from last night’s storm, and I know you hadn’t much sleep. It is a dangerous combination.”
“Have you come to look after me?” she said.
“I am your betrothed, not your nursemaid,” he said.
“I’ve come to help you look for your father. You should have sent word to me before you left this morning. But you were too upset to think of it, I daresay. Come, you cannot remain here staring at the moors and making yourself heartsick. We shall find him.”
“I didn’t want to wake you so early,” she said. “You never get enough sleep. And I’d hoped it was a mistake: that Papa had appointed to dine with one of the neighbors, and as usual forgot to tell anybody. All the way home, I was expecting to meet with a messenger telling me he’d dined with the Dunnets, for instance, and ended up spending the night because of the storm. I kept telling myself, ‘Any minute now, I shall turn back, and go to London, where I shall cause Mr. Carsington no end of aggravation.’ ” Her voice wobbled. “Alistair, I mean. It will take me a while to get used to provoking you by your Christian name.”
“You may provoke me by any name you like,” he said.
“Only come away from this place. It is desperately romantic, but at present not conducive to optimistic thinking.
One ought to come here to brood, Mirabel, not to plan how best to run a missing parent to ground.”
She turned away from the moors and started with him down the path.
“He cannot be in any danger,” Alistair told her. “He knows the place too well, every last twig, moss, and lichen of it. You must not make yourself anxious.”
“Yes, he is somewhere safe at this moment, no doubt,” she said. “Perhaps in one of the hamlets he likes to visit. He is probably quite comfortable in someone’s parlor or the local inn, talking about Sumatran camphor trees and reducing everyone in hearing range to a helpless stupor.”
MR. Oldridge was far from safe, though he was reducing his lone listener to a helpless stupor.
The sun was setting, the laudanum was wearing off, and the old dodo was lecturing Caleb Finch about Egyptians and poppies.
It had started out in Greek, which Caleb couldn’t understand a word of, and didn’t see any reason to, he said, as it was a heathen language, made to worship false gods.
“In eastern parts,” said his aggravating prisoner, “it is the language of the Christian church, and no more a pagan tongue than Latin.”
“Popery is as good as paganism,” said Finch.
Mr. O sighed and said, “In his great work, the Odyssey, Homer tells of Helen, a daughter of Zeus, who poured nepenthe into the wine the men were drinking at the feast, to make them forget all evil. She learned of this medicine, Homer tells us, from the wife of Thos of Egypt, where the fertile land produces so many balms, some good, and some dangerous. The men at the feast were gr
ieving for their friends and family lost in the Trojan War, you see, and the opium mixture she put into their wine gave them temporary forgetfulness. A respite. That is all I meant,” he said, half to himself. “A way to think of terrible things with less distress. I thought he might sleep better, poor boy. Virgil wrote of the poppy, as did Pliny the Elder.”
“I wish I had some of that elderberry cordial,” Caleb said under his breath. “That and the bottle Jackson took. I’d help you forget, all right.”
He walked to the door—the hovel was windowless—and looked out. As soon as it was dark, he promised himself, he’d lead the old man out. A blow to the head, a long drop into a mine shaft, and that’d be the end of his preaching and rubbing it in how he was an educated gentleman who knew Latin and Greek. That’d be the end of his prattling on and on about mosses, poppies, and heathens.
Then the red-haired hussy would be sorry. And in time she’d be sorrier still. Pretty soon Lord Gordmor’s canal would cut right through her fine meadows and farms and precious trees. Every day, all the rest of her life, she’d have to look at it.
Caleb stood in the doorway and watched the sky darken.
ALISTAIR, too, was studying the sky, as the horizon began swallowing the sun.
Mirabel watched him. At a respectful distance, her search party waited. She had told them to rejoin her here at sunset. At the time, she’d assumed they would have found Papa long before now. At present, she saw no choice but to give up for the day and let everyone go home. They were all tired and hungry. The others would be able to eat and sleep. She would try to do so, for her father’s sake. She would try to wake tomorrow refreshed and hopeful.
Alistair turned to her. “The sky has cleared considerably,” he said. “The moon will be up in a few hours. It isn’t quite full, but it will give some light. I suggest we use the interval to eat and rest. An hour’s nap will do a world of good. I asked Mrs. Entwhistle to prepare provisions. Someone should be here soon with baskets of food. Those who choose to return to their homes may at least do so on a full stomach.”
“You mean to continue?” Mirabel said. “To search through the night?”
“Yes, since we shall have some moonlight,” he said.
Then she remembered: his friend had searched for him at night. Had Gordmor not done so, Alistair would not be here at this moment, so sure and confident. While she listened to him, her own flagging spirits lifted.
He was so certain, it was impossible to doubt.
He rode over to the group of men and told them the nighttime strategy. They would divide into two groups. One group would remain. The others would return home, get a good night’s rest, and rejoin them as the sun came up. At that time—if Mr. Oldridge had not yet been found—those who’d searched through the night would return home and get their rest.
The provisions arrived as he finished his short speech. He rejoined Mirabel. The men made quick work of their food, then divided themselves into two groups.
Mirabel watched from where she sat with him, upon a large, flattish rock. “They are so orderly,” she said, watching the mysteriously chosen half depart. “Like soldiers. I could not believe it when you left it to them.”
“Why are you surprised?” he said. “You know I am irresistibly charming.”
“I think it is something greater and deeper than charm,” she said. “I think you are a born leader.”
He withdrew a sandwich from the heavy basket, cut it in half, and gave half to her. “Yes, that, too.” His voice dropped to the lowest rumble as he added, “I led you astray with very little difficulty.”
“I beg to differ,” she said. “It was I who led you astray. Pray do not forget who made the first move. Pray recollect who was first to disrobe. On more than one occasion.” She bit into the half sandwich.
“That was all part of my diabolical plan,” he said.
“I can almost believe that,” she said. “You are a gifted planner. I hadn’t considered whether we’d have moonlight or not. I didn’t think of ordering provisions. I didn’t think of dividing up our search party.”
“I had plenty of time to work out a strategy on the way here,” he said. “I hadn’t an army of attendants to deal with. I did not have to work out how to coddle the vanity of both Captain Hughes and Sir Roger—two men accustomed to ordering others about—and try to guess which assignment would best please them. Furthermore, as much as I like Mr. Oldridge, he is not my father. I have not your attachment and cannot feel as deeply as you do. It is easier for me to view the situation with a degree of objectivity impossible for you. Do stop criticizing yourself and eat your sandwich.”
Mirabel ate, though she didn’t want to. Later, when he put down blankets for her, she rested, though she couldn’t sleep. She closed her eyes and listened to his voice as he talked quietly to some of the men. She could not hear what he said, but the sound of his deep voice comforted her.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next she knew, he was rumbling her name. She opened her eyes and saw first the moon, not quite full, but bright, then him.
His expression was very grave.
She came full awake then, and was up and upon her feet in an instant. “What’s wrong?” she said. “What’s happened?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “What do you know of a man named Caleb Finch?”
Nineteen
CALEB Finch considered himself a peaceable man, who never raised a hand against his fellows. He’d much rather outwit his fellows or trade favors.
At the moment, though, he had a powerful urge to dash Mr. Oldridge’s skull against a rock.
He’d been rattling on for the last hour about some tree that grew in some cannibal country in Africa or China or one of them godless places, and didn’t seem like he was anywhere near the end of it.
Caleb couldn’t put an end to it, because Jackson was there. He’d come back minutes before the inky blue sky blotted out the last streaks of sunset.
“Kœmpfer said, ‘Sed hœc arbor ex Daphneo sanguine non est,’ ” Mr. Oldridge said. “It is most definitely not of the Laurus genus, but Dryobalanops, as Gœrtner declared. However, Mr. Colebrook proposes to name it Dryobalanops camphora, rather than D. aromatica. The trouble is, he is not a botanist, and his description is not altogether satisfactory. Furthermore, the specimens he received did not survive the cold weather, and he had only the seeds upon which to base his conclusions.”
Caleb turned his scowl upon Jackson. “I been listening to that the livelong day. You going to give him some medicine or let him turn us both into drooling bedlamites, like him?”
Jackson poured a glass of wine and added a stingy dose of laudanum to it. He set it down on the table in front of the prisoner. “Best drink it down, sir,” Jackson said. “We’re going to be traveling, and it’ll make you more comfortable.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Oldridge. “We shall be dining soon, I trust?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve ordered a hamper for the carriage.”
“A hamper.” Caleb rolled his eyes. “And gold plates for him to eat off of, I suppose.”
Mr. Oldridge raised the glass and mumbled something about old friends and sons-in-law, and drank it down.
When the glass was empty, Jackson turned a narrow look on Caleb. “Don’t be making those martyr faces at me,” the agent said in a low voice. “You’ve caused enough trouble, with not waiting for orders, and rushing everything. I said you were too hasty, didn’t I? Do you know they’re already looking for him?”
“She started out for London straight after the meeting, you told me,” Caleb said. “They couldn’t’ve got word to her so quick. Not to mention that no one there’d sneeze without she said so.”
It was almost a hundred fifty miles to London, a fifteenhour journey at least—and that was mail coach style: pushing the horses, and quick changes en route, and hardly a stop to drink or eat or empty your bladder. A private carriage bearing ladies—and them with a train of servants and baggage—would need days.
By the time the household took alarm, Miss Hussy would be in Town. Caleb had worked it all out beforehand.
“Mr. Oldridge is like clockwork, I’m told,” Jackson said. “When he missed his dinner, the butler took fright and straightaway sent for the mistress.”
The messenger caught up with her before dawn at the inn where she stopped for the night, Jackson went on. Meanwhile, the whole neighborhood started searching for Mr. Oldridge at daybreak.
“If you’d waited, the way master wanted, until she reached London, we’d have time,” Jackson said. “But you didn’t wait, and now we’ve barely half a day’s start of them. Thanks to you, half of Derbyshire knows he’s gone. We’ll have to set out right away and travel this fiendish mountain in the dead of night—and pray they’re too cautious to try the same. And if we end up in pieces at the bottom of a ravine, we’ll have you to thank for it.”
Caleb pretended to look chastened. The truth was, Longledge Hill didn’t frighten him, even though this was the steepest and rockiest part of it. He’d grown up in the Peak and wasn’t afraid of its hills and dales, summer or winter, day or night. There’d be an accident, all right, he thought. But he wasn’t the one who’d end up in pieces.
MIRABEL told Alistair about her experience with Caleb Finch as they slowly made their way to the far end of Longledge Hill, toward Lord Gordmor’s coal mines.
Their destination was the result of conjecture, which in turn was based largely on rumors—one article the dry limestone hills produced in abundance. One of the women who’d helped carry provisions from Oldridge Hall said she’d seen a tall scarecrowlike fellow, who looked like Caleb Finch, skulking near her neighbor’s milk shed early Wednesday morning.
Miss Wonderful Page 29
