The Scarred Earl (7 page)

‘We won’t have to, but someone clearly wants us to panic and I intend to plan our response rationally, if only to spite him.’

‘Please don’t delay until there’s no hope of us finding a trace of Master Marcus though, will you, Miss Perry?’

‘I hope I have more Seaborne blood in my veins than that, Givage,’ she said and let her steady gaze hold his so he would see how serious she was.

Her instincts had been proved right, Persephone reflected without satisfaction as she resorted to Jack’s bookroom to prowl, as he was on his way to the Lakes with his new Duchess. If only she’d raised the alarm yesterday, this calamity might have been prevented. Impatient with herself for dwelling on yesterday, which couldn’t be altered, she felt panic threaten after all. Perhaps the magistrates should be informed and their constables, maybe even the Bow Street Runners, set on the trail of Marcus and his abductor? She shuddered at the idea of whoever had
left her father’s ring and Marcus’s hat for them find. It spoke of a cold and calculating mind to leave objects the family would know were removed against their owners’ will and imply a threat she couldn’t let herself explore completely just now.

‘What else can you tell me?’ she asked those objects.

She set them on Jack’s desk to puzzle over and stopped pacing at last, still with the long skirts of her riding dress draped over her arm to free her feet for action.

Chapter Five

‘W
hat’s to do?’ an irritated male voice demanded before she could say anything else to a pair of inanimate objects and seem even more of a fool.

‘What the devil are you doing in here?’ she asked, glaring at Alexander Forthin for interrupting her thoughts at such a crucial time.

‘I was invited, remember?’ he replied brusquely and she recalled that Jack had given his groomsman the run of his own apartments for the duration of his stay a little too late.

Jack wouldn’t need them himself after the wedding, so he had invited Lord Calvercombe to use them and pretend he was
alone in his Welsh eyrie, if that made him more resigned to leaving it. She knew her cousin was sensitive to his friend’s desire to avoid the eyes of the curious whenever possible. Jack didn’t usually pander to the foibles of his acquaintance, but she grudgingly accepted that his lordship’s aversion to being stared at or pitied went deeper than a mere whim.

‘So you were,’ she agreed absently and wished he would go away so she could think without him looming over her like some battle-scarred Roman general.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s happened?’ he demanded as if he’d taken on Jack’s authority along with his private rooms.

‘Why do you think anything has?’ she challenged irritably.

‘How could I not? First Jack’s head groom’s son rode hell for leather to the steward’s house, then his steward ran into the house on some urgent business that couldn’t wait,’ he replied, refusing to pretend it wasn’t his business as a more accommodating guest might.

‘Well, I’m busy,’ she excused her ill manners brusquely.

She didn’t have time or inclination to tread
on eggshells round her cousin’s most prickly and disturbing guest this morning, she decided impatiently, squashing an impulse to confide the whole terrifying story. He raised his eyebrows at her bunched skirts and the riding boots revealed in what she supposed was an unladylike fashion. But she refused to let her long skirts drop and risk tangling her feet in them just to reassure him she was a proper young lady.

‘If you’re going to pace Jack’s bookroom and wring your hands, I suggest you change out of your habit before you trip,’ he said as if she were a slow-top.

‘And I suggest you play the gentleman for once and leave,’ she snapped.

‘Not until you’ve told me what’s to do,’ he said, leaning on Jack’s desk as if he had all day set aside.

‘It’s none of your business. And why should you care? You thought Jack was involved in abducting your precious cousin when you came here so furtively in June, didn’t you? I really don’t care what you think of the rest of us, my lord, but Jack is far too honourable to kidnap or imprison any lady against her will.’

‘A little brutal and lacking finesse, but it’s
a fair question, I suppose,’ he allowed as if talking to himself.

‘Thank you. So what is the answer?’

‘My family is caught up with yours, somehow, and I know I was mistaken,’ he conceded gruffly.

‘I’m sure Jack would be deeply gratified to hear it.’

‘He already has heard it, and a lot more gracious about forgiving me he was, too. So are you finally going to tell me what’s to do, Miss Seaborne? Time is clearly a-wasting and you must be keeping some sort of crisis from your mother, since nobody is rushing about in response to Brandt’s news and Givage’s urgent mission to consult whoever is in charge in Jack’s absence.’

‘Good of you to remind me,’ she said impatiently, so wanting to pace again she wondered about punching him in his stonewall of a chest, since he wouldn’t get out of the way and leave her be, but decided she would end up hurting only herself.

‘So what’s occurred, then? If you knew what to do about whatever it is, you would be out and busy doing it by now.’

‘How do you know I’m not? One wrong step could ruin everything,’ she added, feeling
the weight of her dilemma lie heavy on her shoulders once again.

‘Tell me?’ he urged softly, offering her his strength and experience of dealing with impossible situations and allowing her to glimpse the real man behind the façade of cynical indifference for once.

He was sure to snatch the whole business out of her hands if she did as he asked and confided the whole sorry tale though, wasn’t he?
Wondering if that wouldn’t be a very good thing, she reminded herself he had his own very strong motives in all this. He might chase after Rich and his cousin rather than helping to find Marcus if she revealed the whole story, but Givage or Joe Brandt would soon tell him about Rich’s ring if she left that bit out. He was a warrior, even if he sometimes looked as if he hated himself for it; it was his job to take on impossible odds and win.

‘Why on earth would I do that?’ she said to gain more time to think.

‘Because I have been a reconnaissance officer and will find out anyway. It will be much simpler if you save us both time and tell me the truth to start with.’

‘It’s not only my story.’

‘Ah, so your family are tangled up in some new escapade, are they?’ he asked cynically. And that was exactly why she hadn’t tumbled this affair into his lap and gone off to lie to her mother while he dealt with it.

‘No, my family have become entangled in
your
business, my lord. Why else should whoever is behind my elder brother’s disappearance endanger Marcus? He was content to let Rich and your cousin lie until you began asking questions.’

‘So whatever has happened to young Marcus is my fault as far as you are concerned?’ he asked incredulously.

‘How do you know anything happened to him?’ she demanded irrationally, resuming her pacing as frustration and anxiety demanded an outlet.

‘Because you just told me so and from the state of that questionable piece of headgear he insists on wearing when your august grandparent is not here to forbid it. The lad would not be willingly parted from his supposedly dashing and expensive favourite hat, so why not tell me the whole tale and see what two heads can make of it instead of only one, Miss Seaborne?’

‘I don’t know more than half of it,’ she informed
him as she did her best to unclench the fisted hands that seemed to have a will of their own this morning. ‘I have no idea who has kidnapped my little brother, but he left us a very strong hint that his true interest is in finding Rich. How can I be sure you won’t rush off after my elder brother instead of finding Marcus, who is certainly being held against his will?’

‘Enough!’ he snapped. He stood in front of her and had the temerity to physically stop her agitated pacing by grasping her wrist in his strong, supple fingers.

‘More than enough,’ she raged at him. ‘How dare you take such liberties with me, Lord Calvercombe?’

‘Because this shilly-shallying only helps our mutual enemy. Gather your wits and tell me about Marcus’s disappearance, before all traces disappear.’

Giving in to her baser side and doing her best to thump or kick him would cause an even more undignified struggle while he did his best to restrain her without hurting her.

‘Oh, very well,’ she agreed and felt contrarily bereft as he sighed and let her go, so he could stand a little further off and watch her warily.

‘Young Brandt and Givage believe your second brother has met with foul play of some sort, don’t they?’ he prompted gently and she knew she was more shaken than she’d realised when tears threatened.

‘Marcus keeps his lady-love somewhere close by. Please don’t expect me to pretend ignorance of such dealings when his life is at risk. I refuse to play the innocent whilst my brother is in such danger.’

‘Perish the thought,’ he muttered, then gave her a bland, blank look that set her at a distance and impatiently ordered her to get on with it.

‘I could easily learn to hate you, my lord,’ she told him, but finally decided to trust him with the whole story all the same. ‘Even so, you’re right and at least you have the experience to help me find him. Joe discovered Marcus’s favourite hat placed on the protruding roots of the forked oak tree you probably noticed in the outer reaches of the park. Whoever took my brother put it where it could be seen by anyone who passed that way. As well that it was not on the direct route the staff who live out usually take, so Joe found it and not one of the maids or gardeners,
otherwise the tale would have gone the rounds before any of us knew about it.’

‘Why are you so convinced Rich is tangled up in the affair? Perhaps a poacher found the hat and considered it the only way to draw attention to Marcus Seaborne’s plight without betraying who he was and what he’d been up to.’

‘This was placed very deliberately under Marcus’s hat,’ she finally admitted, holding out the heavy, old-fashioned ring for his inspection.

‘Theatrical of whoever is behind this, since it clearly has great value and might easily have been purloined by whoever found it instead of being brought to you. He was lucky it worked, but our enemy shows himself up as being a little less clever than he thinks. By using such a grand gesture to draw your family into finding Rich to get Marcus back, he risked his whole enterprise,’ he said, weighing the expensive ring in his hand as he eyed it sceptically.

‘Maybe so, but it has served his purpose very well so far as I’m concerned,’ she agreed with a shudder. ‘It was my father’s ring and the last time any of us saw it was on the day my brother Richard rode away
from Seaborne House after our father’s funeral. Papa always wore it—I think it was some sort of private joke between him and my mother.’

‘I can see how it would be,’ he said absently, his attention obviously more on the significance of the ring than its sentimental value to Lord Henry Seaborne’s wife and family. ‘Could Rich have sold it or pawned it, do you suppose?’ he asked at last and she bit back an urge to ask if he’d known her brother at all during their schooldays and wild youth.

‘Not unless his life depended on obtaining the money.’

‘Or that of someone he cared very deeply about?’ he mused aloud. Perhaps he knew Rich after all.

‘Maybe,’ she said and wondered if he was right about Rich running off with his precious cousin Annabelle.

If he truly loved the girl, Rich might even part with this most tangible reminder of their father for her sake. Perhaps they needed money to make good their escape from their enemy. If this latest scheme of his was an indication of how ruthlessly he wanted to track
them down, maybe Rich and Annabelle had been wise to vanish so completely.

‘It’s very distinctive and, if they truly wanted to disappear, I suppose they would have to be utterly ruthless in ridding themselves of anything so traceable.’

‘Aye, and if they couldn’t rely on Rich’s acres or private fortune, they would realise as many assets as possible before they went.’

‘Maybe, although Jack did succeed in getting Rich’s bankers to reveal he withdrew an entire quarter’s rents from his account before visiting his lawyers to sign over control of all his property and income to Jack until further notice.’

‘Did the man not find such a move at all odd?’

‘Not really, Rich had done it before, when he intended going off on one of his rackety adventures and knew he would be out of touch for a long while. I was surprised he chose to go on one of his wild starts once he inherited my father’s rights and responsibilities. It meant landing Jack with a much greater burden, but none of us were unduly disturbed by his actions at the time. Rich resented the responsibility our father’s death left him with, but he wasn’t quite as irresponsible
as the wider world chose to believe him and, looking back, I should have been more suspicious about his last disappearance than I was at the time.’

‘If he was determined to fade out of public and private view, I suspect there was nothing you could have done to stop him,’ the Earl informed her coolly.

‘Why, thank you, I feel better now.’

‘So when
did
you realise there was something odd about your elder brother’s latest disappearance?’ he carried on as if she were irrelevant except as a means to find his cousin and ward. If he loved Annabelle de Morbaraye as sincerely as Persephone loved her big brother, she supposed he was right, but that didn’t make up for a sly nag of hurt that she was only an obstacle in his way.

‘We received no word from him for month after month. All the other times he went off, he would manage to snatch a few moments from his latest adventure to send Mama a terse note saying he was whole, hale and hearty and not to set the Runners on his trail. If he was trying to distract her from her grief for Papa he did a sterling job, since she had the task of playing hostess for Jack, as soon as he would allow her to take it up again, as
well as caring for the children and all the pensioners on the Seaborne House estate, since Jack could not do it all as well as control his own vast interests. You have no idea how often I have cursed Rich for his selfishness in riding away that day and turning his back on his responsibilities.’