The Runaway Countess (17 page)

He snorted. Trouble, yes.

Mazie did not sit but wandered off into another room again.

“How goes your search for the highwayman, then?”

Of course the old woman would be concerned for her own safety, living alone as she did. Not that the man preyed on older ladies tucked away in bed.

“We are well on the way to apprehending the fellow,” he assured. “He may even be in custody as we speak.”

“I see,” The older woman’s face creased with worry. Worry for her safety or worry for the Midnight Rider, he couldn’t be sure.

“There is no need for concern, madam. Justice will be served.”

She must have read something in his expression, for she said, “There are some things more important than justice. There can be no justice without compassion.”

Hadn’t Mazie said something similar? His insides felt scrambled. Somehow, he’d lost control of the conversation yet again.

“And there can be no justice with leniency,” he muttered.

The purpose of laws and prosecuting lawbreakers was to ensure a safe and organized community where hardworking men were rewarded and children could flourish out of harm’s way. It was his place as lord lieutenant to enforce those laws. It made him unpopular, but that was the way of things. He was less free than the lawbreakers really.

He was less free than the lawbreakers.

The thought dug into his mind like a burr, multifaceted and tenacious.

He decided the interview was over. He had heard all he needed for today. “Thank you ever so much for tea, Mrs. Pearl, and the delicious cakes. Lady Margaret is relieved to see you are well, I am sure.” He stood. “I will have a food basket brought ’round on Saturday since I have detained Lady Margaret from your service.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Mrs. Pearl stood as well.

“It has been a singular pleasure.” He bowed over the older woman’s hand.

“I’ll be here anytime you need to find me,” she said, as if she expected him to seek her out. She opened her arms when Mazie came back into the room and wrapped her in a long embrace. “The good Lord will show the way, dear.”

Mazie drew back and rolled her eyes.

“Now, no more of that nonsense.” Mrs. Pearl swatted her playfully as they left the room. “He is good and He loves you more than you deserve.”

Mazie threw the older woman a wan smile before she stepped out of the cottage.

Trent walked outside after Mazie and breathed a lungful of fresh air. He felt bound and agitated by their conversation, as if he were lost in the twists and turns of a hedge maze. It was simply that Mrs. Pearl’s cottage was cluttered and cramped, he told himself. Any man would feel uncomfortable there. He looked forward to the mild exertion of their ride home.

“An interesting woman,” he murmured to Mazie as they walked to the stables. “I can only imagine the trouble she was as a girl.”

Mazie laughed. “I was beyond relieved when she took me in.”

“Yes, I can easily imagine the two of you settling in for a cozy chat.” He looked out over the open meadow. Dusk had begun to settle and the birds were swooping and diving for their dinner. “What would you tell her about me?”

He did not just ask that.

“You did not just ask that.” She chuckled.

“I’m serious,” he smiled.

“Very well, if you must know, I would say that you are arrogant and foolish, too handsome for your own good and far too cognizant of your own intellect. Unbending, unsympathetic, dogmatic, pig-headed—”

“Handsome?” he interrupted, unable to keep the smile from his face. “And intelligent?”

“Don’t forget arrogant.”

Still smiling, he stopped outside the stables. “Wait here, by the window. Please.” He winked.

She huffed, but waited for him in the shade.

He stepped into the cool building and again noticed how well kept it was. He stood in the middle and swept his gaze in a circle. Something knocked at the back door of his mind, some intuition that took form in the slanting sunlight.

Words and ideas swirled like the dust motes as he walked around the small structure, kicking at piles of hay and checking inside and behind the random objects hanging from pegs on the wall. Buckets and horse brushes and a wool horse blanket. Scissors, sponges, cloth and hoof ointment. Nothing out of the ordinary if one was to take good care of grooming one’s horse.

He climbed the ladder leading to the small loft and found nothing except bits of hay and mouse droppings. He scanned the stable from his high vantage point.

There was something here, some clue about the Midnight Rider, something the women weren’t telling him. He felt certain of it.

Unbending and unsympathetic as he was, he would enjoy uncovering their secrets.

He’d found nothing. Not a single clue.

Trent closed the secretaire with a muttered curse.

He’d been angry and out of sorts since returning from Mrs. Pearl’s. A correspondence from the prime minister’s office—sent special messenger and requiring an immediate response about the investigation—did not help matters. Other than the supposed picture of the Midnight Rider, he hadn’t much to report, being that the victims would share nothing more than the chosen details of their robberies. Trent couldn’t expel the feeling that something terrible was looming, that some dark cloud was roiling and frothing in the distance.

And so he’d come to his father’s office to search for something, anything. But there was not one mention of the Midnight Rider’s victims among his father’s papers. Odd, considering all of the victims had been intimate friends of his father’s. He dusted his hands and sat in the chair behind his desk.

His father’s chair. His father’s desk.

Actually, it was his great-great-great-grandfather’s desk, but that did not make it feel any less imposing. The massive hunk of wood, hewn from Radford timber centuries ago, gleamed with the toil of his ancestors and innumerable passes of a waxed cloth. Just like his father’s lectures, it served to remind Trent of all that lay on his shoulders, of his duties as the twelfth Earl of Radford and the generations of men who had held his title before him. And the generations to come after.

The Midnight Rider’s antics did not just threaten Trent, but every Radford, past and future. As Trent’ luck and good fortune were not his own, neither were his mistakes. He found comfort in this connection, this sense of belonging to something larger, something meaningful.

And he was determined to protect it.

He scrubbed his hand through his hair then took a burning sip of whisky. With a sigh, he opened a side drawer and riffled through the contents. The desk hadn’t been touched since his father’s death and still held traces of the man’s presence—the quill pens that he favored, a tin of aniseed, a handkerchief stained with ink. Nothing related to the highwayman.

He closed the drawer, oddly disquieted. Of course there were no clues hidden among his father’s things. It was ridiculous to assume otherwise. Simply because the victim’s were his father’s friends didn’t signify a connection.

But he turned and opened the other drawer anyway. It contained sticks of wax, sheaves of paper.

Nothing.

A warm breeze blew in the open widow and the candles on the desk flickered and sputtered. He glanced at the paper lying on the tabletop, its words shimmering and distorted by the dancing candlelight. It was a list, written in his own hand, of men who had been robbed by the Midnight Rider.

Aristocrats, each one. Upstanding in the community and heads of large families. These men had mourned the death of Trent’s father and offered to take Trent under their wing as he accepted his seat in the House of Lords.

But, despite their help in the past, he was certain there was something they weren’t telling him. There was a reason the Midnight Rider had chosen this group. The robberies had been planned out, staged so that the men were found alone in their carriages at night. Never once had a family member been present.

If it was money the highwayman was after he would have stopped them after a public assembly or dinner party and targeted the ladies and their jewels. But it was the men he wanted, the men he preyed upon.

Trent tapped his fingers on his knee. Memories called at the back of his consciousness. Memories of these same men gathered together in this same room. What had they been doing? He had always assumed they were of an age, comrades, Tories and land owners in the same valley. Plagued with the same crops and the same weather. But now he had to wonder. Was something else going on that he did not know about? Had his father been involved?

Mazie’s earlier words echoed through his mind.

“Do you even know what goes on in Radford while you are away in London?”

The truth was, he did not know. He hadn’t kept as close a watch on his family seat as he should have. The people of Radford were strangers to him. As was, it seemed, his own father. Trent looked like his sire, shared his same name, but other than such trivial matters, he did not truly know the man. Couldn’t say what occupied him the years before his death.

Would his father have been robbed by the Midnight Rider, were he still alive?

He took another swallow of whisky. His eyes stayed locked on the paper and its list of names. Perhaps he was just being paranoid, seeing deceit where it did not exist. Perhaps he was looking too hard for answers when the motive was simple greed.

It wasn’t a son’s place to question his father. What was he doing, going through his father’s desk anyway? Had he truly expected to find something useful? Guilt pulled downward with cold hands.

Mazie. It was her fault. He’d saved her from gaol and this was how she repaid him, by planting these seeds of doubt in his mind. Before her arrival, never had he thought to question the man who sired him.

Certainly his father had been a hard man, and Harrington was a lummox if there ever was one. But kindness and governance were beasts of a different nature. He would prove this to Mazie. Certainly it was not for himself.

Irritated, he pulled out his quill and wrote his secretary a note, asking him to gather court recordings and any other information about the man his father appointed magistrate. He would go through every damn letter and every damn file on Harrington if he had to. He would prove to Mazie that she was wrong, that
she
was the criminal here.

It was best she remember her place in this blasted situation.

It was intolerable, the power she had over him. She held his future in her hands. And she was locked in her bedroom right now, where she’d been all evening. Hiding from him.

Playing the coward to his dragon.

In fact, she was probably upstairs concocting a fraudulent scheme at this very moment.

He glanced at the correspondence on his desk. Beneath the prime minister’s missive lay a stack of letters from his colleagues in London demanding his attention. There was an important discussion in the Lords about trade duties and the Corn Laws. His opinion was needed to bolster the Tory party and yet he had no time to consider it.

He drained his glass of whisky and stood. Mazie had chosen this path for herself. She had decided to risk her life, her freedom.

Why?

She would tell him. He was not playing games here. This was not some twisted version of a house party. This was his life. This was his family honor, his future, his ambition, his pride.

The bloody prime minister was watching his every move.

He marched down the hallway with long, determined strides. He would prove to Mazie that she could not unnerve him, could not deceive him and would not waste his time. He would prove that he would see through her lies. That she was the one who stood to lose.

To begin with, he would remind her that it was futile to stay in her room and hide.

Mazie stared at the ugly brown travel book she had borrowed from the library that afternoon, her pulse pounding. Was this the worst idea? Should she give it up?

She bit her lip, considering. Oh, what a fool idea, but it was a good way to lead Trent astray. And, after successfully blustering through their afternoon at Mrs. Pearl’s, she dared to hope they might all get out of this alive.

She would send Trent to the far corners of the country on a wild goose chase. Roane would never go to Tyneside on the north coast of England. It was a town for sailors and fishermen. Roane was a horse lover, a midlander. Even in hiding, he would choose some other destination.

Or so she hoped. Truly, she had no idea where he was.

She flipped through the book, committing details about Tyneside to memory, the thrill of daring ringing through her.

A knock on the door sent her heart plummeting, and the thrill turned to a sickening fear of being caught. She closed the book and shoved it inside her dressing table drawer just as her chamber door opened.

She looked up and froze in her chair. Her heart drummed a distracting rhythm of nervousness and, it couldn’t be, but it did seem…

She was excited to see him.

Trent stood there, just inside the shadowed doorway, his gaze fixed on her. He was wearing evening clothes, fancy without being overly elaborate. Black and white, clean lines, devastating in his handsomeness.