by Mira Stables
On leaving the lawyer’s office Jervase weighed the choice between leaving at once for Stapleford, which would mean an overnight stop at Basingstoke, and the alternative course of setting out at first light next day which should bring him home by nightfall. The first course was the more sensible. The second would permit him time to call in Bond Street where he had selected a charming bonbonnière in Chelsea ware, a gift which he felt that he might, with perfect propriety, bestow upon Lissa. He had been on the point of concluding its purchase on the previous day when two of his friends had strolled into the shop and he had hastily asked the proprietor to put it aside for him and made pretence of being deeply engrossed in selecting a snuff-box. He had already endured sufficient roasting over his unexplained dalliance in the wilds of Wiltshire.
He now set out purposefully in the direction of Bond Street, only to be halted within sight of his goal by recognition of a lady coming out of the library. Surely that was the Comtesse de Valmeuse whom he had left in charge of the schoolroom at the Place? He crossed the street, her bow and smile assuring him that his eyes had not deceived him.
He enquired politely how she went on in London, offering his services if he could be of use to her in any way. This she gracefully declined, saying that, her business in Town being happily concluded, she planned to set out for Stapleford next day. She added that his little sister had taken joyously to London life and was already quite attached to her Goldsborough cousins. He stared and she realised that he had not been aware of his sister’s presence in Town. The explanation that followed left him thoroughly uneasy. Certainly it was the Marquis’s right to direct Mary’s movements, but when they had talked together there had been no mention of any visit to these maternal relatives. Yet no sooner was he safely out of the way than Mary had been set to packing her trunks. And why had Lissa been left behind? The Viscount was no fool and past experience had shown that his grandfather was entirely without scruples where the interest of Wrelf was concerned. There was a grim set to his jaw and a hint of pallor about the tight-pressed lips.
“You will forgive me, Madame,” he said curtly. “I ride tonight for Stapleford. I am anxious for Lissa. Oh, no!” for she had paled perceptibly. “Not for her physical safety. My grandfather would not harm her. But I was trusting enough to inform him of my wish to make her my wife, and I would not put it past him to have contrived her disappearance during my absence—or even, so to have worked upon her feelings that she might hide herself away where I could never find her. What a fool! What a blind, crass fool, to think that he would so easily accept—But I waste time. Only tell me your direction and my chaise shall be at your disposal for your journey tomorrow. For myself, I leave at once.”
Chapter Fifteen
“She has been gone for five days with no more than a few paltry coins in her purse—and you have no idea where she may be.”
The tone was impersonal, certainly not vindictive—and the Marquis felt like a murderer. He had scarcely recognised his grandson when the boy had ridden in at dawn, grey-faced with fatigue and grimed from head to heel with the dust of the roads. There had been no word of apology for his unceremonious irruption into his grandfather’s bedchamber at five o’clock in the morning, or for his filthy condition. He simply demanded to know the details of Lissa’s going, for the sleepy groom who had stabled his exhausted mount had acquainted him with the bald fact of her disappearance. And the Marquis had nothing to tell him.
He had been miserably uneasy himself since the child had gone. If only she had taken the money he might have been at peace. As it was he stood self-convicted of having cast an innocent girl penniless upon the world. He could not forgive himself—far less expect Jervase to forgive him.
In fact the Viscount was not concerned with blame or forgiveness. He had listened with fierce concentration while the Marquis set forth with complete honesty the account of his dealings with Lissa, and had spoken only once. When the Marquis had handed him the note that she had left he read it through slowly, as though to extract the last shred of evidence that it offered, his eyes unnaturally bright in that grey mask of a face. Then he picked up the packet of money and broke it open. Several guineas fell and rolled unheeded on the floor. He unfolded two fifty-pound bills. “Generous,” he said softly.
The Marquis took the blow without flinching. “I did what I thought right and made adequate provision,” he said steadily, a statement of fact rather than an apology.
“And when you found her gone?”
“There could be no hiding it. I enquired at the Vicarage and Mrs. Hetherston undertook to question Mrs. Wayburn. She, too, had received a note. The girl bade her not to be anxious for she had taken refuge with friends.”
“And you accepted that?”
“I enquired who the friends might be. So far as is known the child had no acquaintances outside the village.”
The Viscount began to pace slowly up and down the room, his step heavy and springless with the fatigue of his night-long ride. The Marquis rang for his valet and demanded brandy and hot coffee.
“And then?” said the deadly, weary monotone.
The Marquis shrugged. “What could I do? To enquire further was to provoke the very scandal I had been at pains to avoid.”
The heavy pacing was resumed. The Marquis poured brandy into a glass and proffered it. It was ignored.
“There are only two people I can think of,” said his lordship. “She may have gone to Miss Parminter in London. Heaven send that that be so. But there is also the Hetherston boy. A long-standing childhood friendship there, and a marked degree of attachment. What word of him?”
The Marquis stared. “That young whipper-snapper? Hetherston’s nephew? No! Never tell me he’s in the petticoat line. Besides he was away. Staying with friends—where was it, now? West-bury? No; Warminster. And devilish put about, by all accounts, when he heard the girl had gone off like that. Said she must have been the victim of odious persecution to have served us such a trick. Infernal impudence!” But the voice lacked its former masterful ring.
“Then I am for London again. Miss Parminter is my last hope.”
“For God’s sake, boy! It will do the girl no good if you kill yourself. Here—” He pushed his grandson roughly into a chair—“Drink this.” He had added a generous measure of brandy to the hot coffee and Jervase drank it mechanically. The Marquis refilled the cup.
“Get you to bed, lad. Since nothing else will serve, I’ll go myself. It’s not a business to be entrusted to underlings, however discreet.” Then, with a hint of appeal, “For the girl’s sake, as well as ours, the less noise the better.”
Jervase nodded wearily. He was too spent to think clearly and the brandy was having its effect. “You’ll bring her back?”
The Marquis answered the question that had not been put into words. “Yes. No trickery. You have my word. If I can trace her I will bring her back.”
It did not occur to either of them that Lissa might refuse to come. Nor did they dwell on the horrid possibility that she might not, after all, be safe under Miss Parminter’s wing. While the Marquis made rapid preparations for his journey, Jervase forced his weary mind to concentrate on reporting his interview with the lawyer, though now it seemed distant and unimportant, set against his new anxiety.
It was noon before he woke from the heavy sleep into which he had fallen as soon as he had yielded the initiative to his grandfather, woke to another period of anxious waiting with no prospect of action to relieve the strain. The Marquis should reach Town by evening and he would send word back as soon as there was news, though it was not to be expected that he himself would attempt the return journey immediately, however successful his mission. So two more days at least must pass before he could hope to see Lissa safely home again, and in its present bereft state that home seemed to him no better than a mausoleum. He would go and see Hetherston, the only man who was fully acquainted with all the circumstances. At least he could then enjoy the privilege of speaking freely.
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But Mr. Hetherston had been called to a sick parishioner and only his wife and nephew were at home. He accepted the lady’s invitation to take tea with them, hoping that her husband would not be long delayed, but the atmosphere was far from comfortable. In Mrs. Hetherston’s enquiries for news of Lissa there was a note of reproach which he resented. He really could not be expected to go around assuring all his acquaintance that his intentions were strictly honourable. Christopher Whitehead had been a different matter, a man of good understanding and one with whom he was unlikely to come in contact save in the way of business. Briefly he explained the present position. Mrs. Hetherston looked relieved and agreed that it was very likely that Lissa had fled to Miss Parminter. Jervase turned thankfully to young Ned, asking his opinion of the matched greys that he had chosen to drive that afternoon. The choice had been deliberate. Though perfectly well-mannered the greys were high spirited and gave their handler no time to indulge in gloomy reflections. Ned was generous with his admiration. His private opinion of Lord Stapleford could not affect his judgement of such a splendid pair and an invitation to try them out went some way towards suggesting that his lordship might not be such a bad fellow as Ned had first imagined. Certainly he had seemed genuinely concerned for Lissa’s safety.
By the time that he had tooled the curricle about the lanes for an hour and had enjoyed an animated discussion with its owner on the finer points of driving a pair, a tandem and a four-in-hand, he was fast coming round to the belief that he had misjudged his lordship on first acquaintance and that he was, in fact, a capital fellow. It then occurred to him that if this was indeed the case he was doing the capital fellow a great disservice by concealing Lissa’s whereabouts and causing him a degree of anxiety quite disproportionate to the true state of affairs. But he had given his word to Lissa. He fell into uneasy silence, then mumbled that perhaps his uncle might be returned by now, and drove very soberly home. His lordship, too preoccupied to pay more than courtesy attention to his young companion, thought him a lad of odd moods. Doubtless he would grow out of them.
Since the Vicar was not yet back there was nothing for it but to drive home to the prospect of a long solitary evening. But he had scarcely seen the greys properly bestowed when there were sounds of a fresh arrival in the stable yard.
He strode out eagerly, even though reason told him it could not possibly be Lissa, and was amazed to see that it was his own light travelling chaise that was being wheeled into the coach house. Yes, they had set out from London only yesterday, the lads told him, and had lain overnight at Brookwood. The Comtesse had sent for them less than an hour after his own departure and had seemed in an uncommon hurry. His lordship, in a fresh surge of apprehension, for what could have caused this unexpected start, made his way to the house.
The Comtesse was just coming downstairs as he entered. She had taken off her hat but had not yet changed her travelling dress and she looked so white and ill that he exclaimed upon it and took her arm to support her to a chair.
“It is nothing,” she said faintly. “I am always queasy when travelling. But I had to know—” She broke off, seemed to make an effort to gather her forces, and then, ignoring the chair that he had pulled forward, clasped his sleeve and looked up anxiously into his face. “Mrs. Graham tells me that Lissa left this house a week ago and that no one knows where she has gone. I beg of you, my lord, where is the child?”
Only the truth would serve. He told it as gently as possible. “My grandfather has gone in search of her, Madame. We hope that she has sought shelter with Miss Parminter in London.”
The Comtesse looked dazed. She put a wavering hand to her head, said vaguely, “But Miss Parminter is not—” and crumpled in a dead faint at his feet.
Chapter Sixteen
The weeks that followed held a nightmare quality that Jervase, in after years, preferred to forget. There being no doctor resident in the village, they began with a breakneck ride into Wilton to summon one, for, in falling, Madame had struck her head against the corner of a heavy oak bench and now lay deeply unconscious. However, on examining his patient, the doctor’s report was reassuring. The lady might not recover her senses for several hours and when she did come round her memory of the events immediately preceding her fall might be a little hazy, but there was no cause for alarm. The servants had told him that she had taken nothing but a cup of coffee on the long and tiring journey from Town and doubtless it was the lack of proper nourishment that had caused her to faint, for apart from the blow on the head he could find nothing much amiss with her.
But this relief only freed Jervase to swell with increasing uneasiness on the Comtesse’s remarks. The more he thought of it the odder it seemed that she should have been so desperately anxious for Lissa, unless she suspected him of having abducted the girl and hidden her away. And those last words before she fainted—“But Miss Parminter is not—” Not what? Not the safe and suitable refuge that they had imagined? But that was too ridiculous. He had known her for years and a more honest and upright woman did not walk the earth. He was allowing his own anxiety to delude him into foolish fancies. Best give up the puzzle and trust that the Comtesse would be sufficiently recovered by morning to explain herself.
But she was still unconscious when an exhausted groom limped stiffly into the library next morning with a billet from his grandfather. The news was the worst possible. The Marquis had gone immediately to General Carnforth’s house, only to find it closed—the windows shuttered, the knocker off the door. Moreover no one seemed to know his present whereabouts. Because of his long illness it was months since he had been seen at his club, and being, as the Marquis succinctly expressed it, “such a cantankerous old curmudgeon,” he was not on such terms with his neighbors as to encourage intimate knowledge of his movements. The Marquis proposed to make further enquiries, but in the meanwhile he suggested that his grandson should check on any passengers who had joined vehicles passing within walking distance of Stapleford at the vital time. Surely someone would recall seeing the child?
Jervase entered upon this assignment with fierce energy and a hopeful uplifting of his spirit. It was unfortunate that there was so wide a choice of practicable routes, but remembering Lissa’s conspicuous hair he, too, was convinced that she could not have escaped notice. By the end of a week, having extended his original “walking distance” from two miles to six and added carriers’ carts and farm tumbrils to the Mails and stage coaches with which he had begun, he had reached two firm conclusions. Unless all the people he had talked with went round with their eyes shut, Lissa had either left the neighbourhood in a private vehicle or she was still concealed somewhere close at hand. Since the first possibility gave rise to such horrid speculations as there was no enduring, he next embarked on a protracted search of any building that might conceivably shelter a fugitive, only to draw a complete blank. Lissa seemed to have vanished as completely as though she had been spirited away.
At this juncture the Marquis came back from London, a tired and anxious man, showing for once the burden of his years. An enquiry at a livery stable that General Carnforth occasionally patronised had elicited the information that there had been some mention of the old man’s going to Harrogate—or maybe it was Bath or Cheltenham—the fellow couldn’t be sure—but one of those places where sick folk could go, so they were sufficiently well breeched.
The Marquis had promptly sought out General Carnforth’s physician with the object of discovering which of the popular spas had been favoured with his patient’s patronage, only to be told that the doctor had gone on holiday—to Edinburgh, of all outlandish places, announced his housekeeper severely—to study the work of some other medical man. No, she didn’t know where Doctor Mansfield was staying. But he would be back in mid-August, because Lady—well, one of his patients, was expecting to be confined about then.
By the time that the Marquis had reached the end of this sorry tale, Jervase was more in sympathy with him than he had been since Lissa’s going. Both
of them seemed to have spent the time chasing phantoms, both were weary and anxious.
“What did you do then, Sir?”
“I went to Bow Street,” said the Marquis simply.
He said it as though it was a perfectly natural and commonplace action for the head of the house of Wrelf to go to Bow Street and submit his private problems to the eye of officialdom. Nothing could have so convinced Jervase of his grandfather’s sincerity. Indeed, from no other lips would he have accepted the truth of that simple statement.
“Were they helpful?” he asked, awkwardly, shyly, not knowing how to express his sense of the enormity of the sacrifice.
Lord Wrelf shrugged. “They did their best. They suggested that as no crime appeared to be involved I should engage the services of a man who used to be a Runner but who now undertakes private enquiry work. He will be here tomorrow. One or two points he wanted to follow up in Town, the fellow said, or I’d have brought him down with me.”
Mr. Smithers was not, at first sight, an impressive figure. Short in stature, lightly built, bow-legged, he looked, in well-worn riding dress, more like an ostler or a post boy than an official of the law. He later confided to the Viscount that these were roles that he had frequently played. “And werry ’andy, too, me lord, for the picking hup of hinformation, ’specially if it’s aught to do wiv the ‘gentlemen of the road’ as folks calls ’em.”
But the small blue eyes were remarkably shrewd, the brain behind them both keen and methodical. Though he shook his head sadly over the length of time that had elapsed before his expert services had been called in, he was not without hope. Moreover he was pleased to approve such measures as had already been taken. Before leaving Town he had consulted with the Watch and was prepared to give an exact date for the closing of General Carnforth’s house. Since this was four days before Lissa’s disappearance he thought there was little good to be got by further enquiry in London. “Hif so be as young Miss ’as joined up wiv the party, we’ll most likely find ’em in one o’ these ’ere spaws wot the nobs goes to when they’re out o’ frame. And seein’ as they’re the nearest to ’and, we’ll start wiv Barf and Chelt’n’am.
