Never to Part (25 page)

After Gunby left, Richard picked up his glass and trudged out of the library. His shoulders bowed down beneath the weight of his questions, his fear.

The news from the runner had eased it a bit. Richard now understood why Daphne was desperate to find the treasure. Who wouldn’t be if confronted with the prospect of Wardick for husband. He shuddered and downed what brandy remained in his glass.

Lady Laurel watched Richard, shoulders bowed as if under the weight of the world, leave the library. “Poor man,” she murmured. She shook her head then set to work.

“Ricman,” she called softly a few minutes later. “Ricman, come hither.”

A glimmer of light appeared beneath the door. Lord Ricman stalked through it a moment later. “Thou callst, my dear?”

“Where hast thou been?” she asked. “Oh, never mind. I have everything ready for thee.” Lady Laurel motioned to the table where paper, pen, and ink awaited.

Lord Ricman grinned mischievously as he strolled up to his wife. “What will thou have me do now, wench?” he asked nibbling her ear.

“Later, Ricman,” Lady Laurel said pushing against his chest.

“Nay,” he replied firmly and raised the piece of parchment in his hand.

Lady Laurel grabbed it and read. She tsked and shook her head. “It shall have to be rewritten.”

“Why?” Lord Ricman demanded.

“Because she won’t know where ‘Blaine’s house’ is,” she explained. “Thou must write ‘Blanchard’s so she’ll guess Heart Haven.” When her husband scowled Lady Laurel smiled coquettishly. “And add that last verse thou didst not write for Richard.”

“After thou insisted I not?”

“He’d pay no need to it, but Daphne—” She raised her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “It will mean much more to a woman. It’ll prod her mind the direction we wish it to go.”

“If the wench chooses the treasure over Richard, she’s not the one for him,” Lord Ricman blustered.

“Worry not on that head,” Lady Laurel told him. She pursed her lips. “But how to deliver it? Ahh, yes, the baroness will post it.”

“Are thou certain thou knowest where the wench hied off to?”

“As certain as I am of thy love.”

Lord Ricman drew her close and kissed his wife thoroughly.

 * * * *

Eldridge drank deeply. Would Stratton never leave?

“But what if she’s hurt?” worried Geoffrey.

“You needn’t fret about your sister,” snarled Eldridge. He put down his glass and began to pace back and forth.

“We’ve got to find her—”

Eldridge glared at him.

“For the marriage with Wardick,” Geoffrey hedged. “He complains about the delay. Without the marriage settlement I— I dare not forfeit on my vowels.”

“That’s your problem,” Eldridge snapped, his back to the young man. “I have trouble enough.”

“Then we shall help each other,” he told Blanchard earnestly.

Eldridge’s lip curled into a sneer but a manipulative smile graced them when he faced Geoffrey. “That is most generous.” He clapped an arm about the younger man’s shoulders.

“Your sister spoke of Dremore the last time I visited with her. In fact,” he said, his brow furrowed as if in deep thought. “Yes,” Eldridge exclaimed. “The answer to both our problems can be solved if we keep watch on Dremore at all times.”

“I don’t see how that answers—”

“Dremore is smitten with your sister,” Eldridge answered.
But I put paid to that with all the innuendo. Leaving that handkerchief behind was brilliant on my part
. Even greater certainty of the rightness of his plan gripped Eldridge. “Think on it,” he urged with barely restrained anger, “Daphne, Miss Stratton,” he corrected when Geoffrey looked to object, “may have gone to Dremore for help.”

“After what happened at Heart Haven last June?” Geoffrey shrugged. “Dremore has made it clear he despises her. Me too for that matter,” he added morosely. “Never understood that.”

“Despises you? That is your answer. That’s why he hides your sister from you.”

“Hides her?” Geoffrey said dubiously.

Eldridge nodded. “Don’t you see? He’s purchased those bothersome vowels of yours. If you can’t pay them—”

“He’ll have Trotter House and . . . and everything.” Geoffrey wilted under the realization.

“When he’s done with Miss Stratton—” Eldridge shrugged and leered until he saw horror dawn in Geoffrey’s eyes.

The younger man headed for the door. “I’ll call him out.”

Eldridge caught his arm. “That is what he wants you to do. Everything is his, and you can do nothing to save your sister.”

Geoffrey went limp, nodded.

“All we need to do is remain calm,” he assured Geoffrey. “Dremore will lead us to Miss Stratton. All we have to do is watch him. You take the days. I shall take the nights. He will make his move and then we’ll have him.”

He waited impatiently while Geoffrey considered this and then decided he didn’t need to let the fool reach a decision on his own. “Come for me the moment he appears to be leaving London,” Eldridge ordered. “Now be off. Set a watch on him at once.”

After the young man had left Eldridge poured a glass of port. “’Tis almost the last time I’ll have to drink inferior spirits,” he swore. “The Dremore cellars are excellent.” He quaffed the drink.

At least I’ll be done with that fool Stratton
. Eldridge rubbed his chin. “The gel will be wherever the treasure is. Dremore will be on her heels.” He chuckled. “Little do they know I shall also be there.”

 * * * *

“Are you rested from your journey?” Richard asked his mother as they left the dining room.

“Since when is four hours in a coach so tiring?” she quipped. “I am in perfect health and spirits. You, on the other hand, look rather worn. Was your visit to The Hound the reason you had me close up Heart Haven?” she asked quietly.

“I found another verse. Verses actually,” he corrected tiredly. Richard removed the parchment from his jacket and handed it to her.

She read it through and then sat and stared at it.

“There is more on the other side,” Richard told her. He watched as Lady Laurissa turned it over. She sighed, wiped a tear from an eye with her index finger. Laying the parchment in her lap, she tugged free a handkerchief and blew her nose.

“What is wrong?” he asked and came to stand before her.

“Nothing,” the baroness sniffed. “Nothing that the passage of time can’t cure.” Lady Laurissa motioned him away. “Do sit down over there. It displeases me when you hover.”

Richard waited until she had collected herself. “Mother, do you know about this
Blaine’s House
?”

“Ricman Blaine Blanchard, first Baron Dremore,” she said.

“Blaine.” He gasped in disbelief at having forgotten this piece of his education and the ridiculousness of it. “Heart Haven? If the treasure were there, you’d have already found it years ago.”

“That is not what I looked for,” the baroness said softly.

“Never looked for it?” Richard surged to his feet. “Since I was in leading strings you have spoken of little else. You have become even more obsessed with it since Father died.”

“You are exaggerating my dear.” Lady Laurissa fingered the folds of her skirt.

Richard did not speak. He waited until his mother met his gaze. “I think not,” he said kindly. “Could you explain it again. I shall listen this time.”

“The legend must never die,” Lady Laurissa said softly. “You must teach it to your children.”

Losing the hold on his patience, Richard blurted, “Dear God, Mother. ‘Tis a hoax.”

“Never say that,” she reprimanded sternly. The baroness handed back the parchment. “Consider the words carefully. Especially the last verse.

“
If they but triumph over invidious lure and loves bloodied pride;

Great joy will be Branch’d of long ago;

Happy knight himself did once possess;

His lady’s laurel crown unspoiled;

And ever when he did her behold;

His heart did melt in pleasures far richer than gems and gold
.”

Richard gazed out the window. A blustering wind rattled its panes. The bare shrubs and nude branches in the garden danced to the wind’s piping.

Despite the numerous guests in Sir Joshua Overton’s salon and the plethora of burning candles, a piercing cold fear chilled Richard. Daphne still had not been found. She preferred marriage to Wardick rather than confiding in him. Rather than taking his help.

The fervour of her kisses Richard could not forget, but now he desperately sought to do so. He couldn’t admit it but hurt pride drove him now.

That damnable marriage scheme of young Stratton
. It made him sick to think of Daphne under such a despicable man like Wardick’s power.
Wouldn’t her fear of that make me preferable? Why does she run from me?

Richard blinked but the reflection that had formed on the window remained. The bright smiling face topped by luxuriant brown hair and the sweetest lips on earth shimmered before him. Despite himself, his heart leapt. He turned; raked his gaze across the throng but could not find her.

“Something wrong?” Gunby asked at his elbow. “Looking for someone in particular?” When Richard didn’t reply Christopher put a hand on his sleeve.

Richard glanced at the appendage and grimaced. “What is it?” He turned his gaze back to the window in a fruitless endeavour to catch the reflection again.

“People are beginning to gossip about you.”

“Gossip?” Richard repeated blankly.

His friend’s grimace prodded Gunby. “Why don’t you just go look for her?”

“Do not dare go there,” Richard clipped. He was too on the brink of throwing his pride to the wind and doing just that to listen to another say it.

“You’ve been at daggers’ drawn with everyone since you returned from that jaunt to The Hound. ‘Tis past time to do something about it.”

Richard strode away. Without a word of farewell to anyone, he claimed his cloak and left the house.

“Whatever are we to do with him?” Lady Laurel mused as she and Lord Ricman watched Richard down another glass of brandy.

“Reeks of disappointment,” Lord Ricman observed.

“He can’t seriously believe sweet Daphne would cosh him over the head,” protested Lady Laurel.

“Why ever not? I still have the knot thou raised on my noggin,” her husband replied archly.

“Thou knowest that was the veriest accident,” Lady Laurel replied primly.

“A very convenient mishap,” Lord Ricman blustered.

“Doest thou wish Eldridge to inherit thy title,” she neatly turned the conversation.

“Hells teeth woman,” he swore.

“Then think how we can get Richard out of the doldrums.” She tapped her foot impatiently. “I was so certain mimicking her reflection at Overton’s would do it.”

“Drove him to the bottle. Female ideas,” scoffed Lord Ricman. “Been better if she’d been seen to shiver in the cold rather than so bonny an image.”

Lady Laurel slowly circled Richard. “Why is he so stubborn?”

“Men don’t like to be made a fool.”

Lady Laurel rolled her eyes. “She’ll have the verse today. We’ve got to nudge him toward Heart Haven.”

Lord Ricman shook his head. “She won’t find it without him—not if we ain’t helping her.”

“That matters not.” Lady Laurel tapped her chin with her index finger.

Her husband stroked his beard. He strolled to the chair where Richard sat with his head against the back, eyes closed. “If he loves her
—

“We know he doest,” Lady Laurel cut in.

Lord Ricman silenced her with a look. “Then he could not bear to see her in distress.”

Lady Laurel eyed him dubiously. “What would thou have me do?”

“He half dozes,” her husband answered with a gesture at their recumbent descendant. “They’ve all been receptive in such a state.”

“Just what do suggest he ‘dream?’”

“Of Miss Stratton in the direst need of course. With,” he pointed a finger at his wife, “a very clear suggestion that the solution be found at Heart Haven.”

“And when he finds her there hale and hearty?” she threw back with a sniff.

“He’s a man,” Lord Ricman said drawing her into his arms. “Finding her should be enough.”

 * * * *

Daphne stared at the letter which had been delivered to Nanny’s cottage moments earlier.

“We’d best be away,” Saddie said at her shoulder.

“Geoffrey would ne’er write,” Daphne told her. “He’d more likely be at the door with Mr. Wardick,” she added bitterly.

“Break the seal,” Nanny Hayley advised from her rocking chair.

“The script ‘tis very odd,” said Daphne. She took a seat in a chair beside the nanny and handed the old woman the missive. “Does the script remind you of anything?”

After studying the writing Nanny Hayley frowned. “’Tis somewhat like the scrawl on my many-great-grandda’s letters,” she answered with a perplexed frown. “My father once showed me the deed that gave our family farmland. In the great queen’s time it was. Open it child, I’m that curious.”

Daphne’s breath stilled when she turned over the letter. The seal in the green wax was the Dremore crest but different from any design of it she had ever seen.
Richard wrote to me?

His kisses still burned Daphne’s lips. The mere thought of his arms about her sparked spirals of warmth. Her blood began to flow warm and heavy. Daphne drew in a shuddering breath and broke the seal. She unfolded the parchment and saw the same scrawl. A glance at the bottom revealed no signature. She hurriedly read the lines.