A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (4 page)

A word about the dowager duchess.

Or perhaps you've already heard of her? I understand the marriage was something of a sensation, a dozen years ago, covered in breathless detail by all the newspapers, though little of that detail actually arose from the couple themselves. They are—
were
—private, by nature. Still, the editors turned somersaults at the news. If
American Heiress Weds English Duke!
never fails to set the blood racing in the veins, then
Penniless American Nobody Weds English Duke!
rings even better. Who was she? How had they met? What cunning American trap had she laid, in the manner of those infamous ladies of the wild western frontier, to get her man and his coronet, too?

At the time I walked into the Aldermere library, on the evening of the Duke of Olympia's funeral, I had few more answers to these burning questions than the general public. Her Grace was then about sixty years old: quiet, elegant, seemly. She had good bones and excellent skin—bones and skin go so far in a woman her age—and her hair, rich as treacle, had only recently begun to take on gray. I had never heard her raise her voice, not once. She read extensively, walked or rode every morning, nursed a small but loyal circle of friends, and took a keen enjoyment in travel. Of her previous life, I knew nothing, only that the couple had met on board an ocean liner and married shortly thereafter. The duke,
insofar as he expressed any sentiment whatever, had worshiped the air that fell from her mouth.

She was not alone in the library. An unknown man occupied the enormous wing chair, upholstered in forest-green damask, in which the duke used to read during the winter evenings. His arms were folded across his chest as he watched Her Grace arrange the coals with a long gold-handled poker, and I thought how odd that was, that he should be sitting while the duchess stood, until I realized that his hair was quite white, and his skin made one think of a piece of finely crumpled tissue, stretched back out over his bones. He turned a pair of rheumy eyes in my direction and said, as if I couldn't hear him, “
This
is the girl?”

Nobody had called me a girl for many years. I pushed back my shoulders and looked at the duchess, who returned the poker to the stand and straightened to face me. “Miss Truelove. Thank you so much for attending us. May I present Sir John Worthington, a very old friend of the duke.”

I inclined my head. “Sir John.”

“How are you holding up, my dear?” she said. “Is everybody behaving themselves out there? Is the punch bowl empty yet?”

“Not yet, but I doubt it will hold out much longer.”

“Well, let them enjoy themselves. It's how he would have wanted it. He always hated maudlin displays. Do sit down. You must be exhausted.”

No more than a trace of sadness darkened her words. She had gathered herself together with remarkable dignity, for an American. I lowered myself into the indicated armchair and sat at the very edge, back upright, ankles crossed, as I had been taught from childhood, and as I did so I recalled—not that the thought had
ever really left my mind all day—last night's extraordinary visitor to my bedroom.

The
imaginary
visitor, I reminded myself, and as if to disprove her existence, I opened my mouth and said firmly: “No more than you, Duchess. I hope you are bearing up, under such a burden.”

“One hasn't much choice, has one? Life marches on. I knew we hadn't much time on this earth together, so I made sure to make the most of it. But one is never quite prepared when the ax falls.” She placed her hand on the mantel and attempted a smile. “Who would believe the vital spark could possibly be extinguished from such a man?”

“Indeed. I haven't had the chance to think about it, really. I was gratified to see everyone so affected by the service. How comforted you must feel, to see how deeply His Grace was loved among all who knew him.”

She allowed a dry little laugh. “Oh, I'm sure that half of them were only there to make certain he was really dead.”

“Surely not.”

“But never mind. There was one rather glaring absence among the assembled mourners, which has happily given our guests a convenient subject for gossip to go along with their wine. No doubt you know what I mean.”

“Mr. Haywood?”

“Yes. Or the Duke of Olympia, as I suppose he's properly styled now. Have you still heard nothing from our peripatetic heir?”

“No reply at all yet, I'm afraid, either to the telegram sent to his business office in London, or to the letter dispatched to his last known address.”

“In Crete, isn't that right?”

“To the best of my understanding, he was investigating the lost maze of the Minotaur.”

“Very laudable. And when did you last hear from him?”

“A letter and parcel arrived just before Christmas.” I folded my hands in my lap and glanced at Sir John, for whose benefit these details were no doubt being rehearsed. The duchess, after all, knew very well where her husband's grandnephew was indulging his latest obsession, and when his last letter had arrived. She and her husband had pored over the missive inside the glow of this very fireplace, if my memory served, laughing and beaming and shaking their heads. The duke and duchess had been unaccountably proud of young Mr. Haywood and his dusty adventures, which took him so far from England that I doubted he even knew the names of half the estates he had just inherited, let alone the tenants and business managers for whose livelihoods he was now responsible. During the six years I had been employed by the duke, and the thirteen additional years I had lived beneath his roof, I had never once met Maximilian Haywood.

At least, so far as I remembered.

Her Grace turned to the man in the chair. “Well, John? What do you think?”

“What do
I
think? By God, I think someone had better head out there straightaway and sort this business out.” Sir John lifted the sherry glass resting on the table next to his elbow and drained it without a quiver.

“Head
out there
? Do you mean to Crete?” I said. “Now? In February?”

“Hmm. Yes.” The duchess was still watching Sir John, who returned her gaze with his watery own, as if communicating some
important idea through the ether, quite outside the limit of my understanding.

Except that it wasn't outside my understanding. Of course not. I hadn't spent a lifetime balanced on the sharp outer edge of what we call Society without developing a sapient sense for the unspoken. For the current of a conversation, independent of the waves rippling its surface.

After all, it is not what's actually
said
that matters. Heavens, no. What matters is what one means.

“There exist a number of private agencies specializing in the search for missing relatives,” I said desperately. “I should be pleased to find a suitable candidate. Though I understand there is often some difficulty at the Alps crossings at this time of—”

“My dear,” said the duchess, “that won't be necessary. At least, I hope not.”

She wore a small suggestion of a smile as she took a seat on the sofa opposite, bringing her face exactly on the level of mine. Her eyes were dark blue, although you couldn't properly see their color except in bright light, and quite large. The funerary black dress only encouraged the opalescent whiteness of her skin.

The smile, I realized, was not happy or even friendly, but expectant.

An imperious voice appeared in my head:
You must refuse her.

“You wish me to go to Crete?”

“That is our hope.”

“But I've never traveled beyond Paris.”

She waved her hand. “It's nothing, in this modern age. We'll supply you with all the necessary letters of credit and introduction. You are a clever, capable young lady. And of course you shall have a companion to assist you.”

“But why is it necessary? Surely word will reach Mr. Haywood shortly, long before I can reach him myself. It's only a matter of these inefficient Continental mails, or the poor state of the roads, or the lack of telegraph wire . . .”

The duchess was exchanging another of those telling glances with Sir John, and I allowed my words to trail away, waiting instead with an odd crawling sensation in my stomach—dread? anticipation?—for what was to come. The rising current that was about to engulf me.

It is only a simple journey, I told myself. After all, these were modern times. By train perhaps to Venice—first class, yes, I would
insist
on a first-class wagon-lit—and then by steamship to Athens, where Mr. Haywood kept a small flat, largely to collect his post and store his collections. Then, if absolutely necessary, the passage to Crete. A few days spent inconveniently on unpaved roads, eating unwholesome food, traveling perhaps by mule train—here I suppressed an inward shudder—and then I would enjoy the immense moral satisfaction of telling Mr. Haywood just how much trouble he had occasioned by his idiosyncratic habits.

A week or two, then, at the outmost, barring complication.

I looked back and forth between the duchess's inquisitive eyebrows and the frown that deepened the lines of Sir John's face, until Her Grace rose from her place on the sofa and walked to the graceful little cabinet by the window, where a multitude of crystal decanters reflected the light from the guttering candelabrum. She lifted one, removed the stopper, and returned to refill Sir John's glass.

“We have a note,” she said.

“Not a
note
,” said Sir John.

She returned the decanter to its place. There was the clink of the base on the tray, the chime of the stopper. “A message, then.
It arrived two days ago at the house in London, and reached me yesterday.”

“From Mr. Haywood?” I said.

“No. From an official in the Greek government, with whom my nephew has apparently had dealings. It seems he's gone missing.”

“Missing? For how long?”

“Since Christmas, when he sent that letter. He had been sending regular updates of his progress to this man, and then he stopped.”

I looked at Sir John, whose frown remained exactly as it was, only parting long enough to take in another drink of sherry between his damp lips. He was dressed in an immaculate (if antiquated) black mourning suit, which he wore with such ease I supposed he required it frequently. His hand trembled a little as it balanced the sherry.

“Has this man gone in search of Mr. Haywood? Made any attempt to reach him?”

“No. And I doubt he will, which is why I feel it necessary to send someone myself.” The duchess returned to her seat on the sofa and threaded her fingers together on her lap. “Someone I trust, someone who is capable and exacting and has never yet failed us in any task.”

My throat had gone quite dry by now. “Madam, with great respect, this is not the sort of errand I am accustomed to performing. I write letters and take dictation and make trivial arrangements; I have never once tracked down a missing man to the far corners of the world.”

“Crete isn't that far.”

“It is well beyond the boundaries of
my
experience.”

Sir John made an elderly harrumphing noise over the top of his glass, starting the remaining sherry to shiver. “My point exactly,” he said to the duchess.

I turned to face him. “My good sir, I understand that eyesight is often weakened among the
very
old, but I beg leave to point out that I am actually
sitting
in this room, not five yards away, and demand the courtesy of being spoken to as if I were a living person, and not a cipher.”

A coal fell from the pile the duchess had earlier so neatly arranged, popping apart on impact against the grate in a starburst of sparks. From behind the massive library door came a roar of laughter, quickly hushed.

“
Well
,” said Sir John.

“Nicely said, Miss Truelove, and I believe he had it coming, as the saying goes. Sir John? Do you see what I mean?”

“She is not without defenses,” he said grudgingly, and finished off the sherry. A cane lay against the arm of his chair. He picked it up with his knobble-knuckled left hand and fondled the head, which was gold in color and shaped like a duck.

“You would do much better to send a professional,” I said. “In addition, there are so many letters of condolence to answer, to say nothing of the duke's business correspondence—”

“Anyone can do
that,
Miss Truelove, though perhaps not with your efficiency and single-mindedness. But I would not under any circumstances send a mere stranger, however
professional
, into the middle of a delicate family matter such as this.”

“A delicate family matter?”

“Imagine the fuss, Miss Truelove, if word of this little trouble reached the newspapers,” she said quietly. The pads of her thumbs pressed together.

Sir John banged his cane against the floor. “The girl doesn't want to do it, Penelope!”

“I am not a
girl,
Sir John.”

“Yes, quite right,” said Her Grace. “You are not a girl at all. Which is why I have asked
you
, of all people, Miss Truelove. You know our affairs intimately, and your discretion is above question.”

“Of course.”

“And you are aware, no doubt, into whose lap the dukedom falls, should Mr. Haywood fail to appear and claim his birthright? Since my husband is survived by no legitimate heirs of his own body, alas.”

“Mr. Haywood's younger brother, I believe.”

“Whose reputation for licentiousness and unrepentant irresponsibility is unmatched, even in London, and whose wit I sometimes doubt reaches even that of an average schoolboy.”

“The two brothers, I understand, could not be less alike.”

She rolled her eyes upward to study the neat geometry of the ceiling plasterwork. “I have often wondered whether they fully are. Brothers, I mean. Their parents' marriage was not a happy one, and Cici never could keep her legs together when a cavalry officer walked past. You will pardon my frankness.”