She had walked around the dancers, one eye on Edlyn, the other on the contest. But then Edlyn disappeared into the rotunda. The duke had removed his frock coat to join the competition. Harriet smiled as she pictured his muscular shoulder drawn back, elbow bent against the sleeve of his fine linen shirt. When he’d hit the target dead center, Harriet had almost clapped in pride, not that he would have noticed her praise amid the audience of admiring young ladies cheering his skills and begging for another display.
The rotunda. She turned toward the domed retreat at the bottom of the garden. Edlyn had climbed the steps and vanished between the ivy-draped columns a moment or so before the duke had taken aim. Harriet had hastened to join her, intent on thwarting an impromptu tryst with some wayward rake who might be waiting for a lonely girl. But Edlyn had emerged from the other side, alone. And Harriet had noticed that she looked considerably brighter than she had in days.
The only other person in the vicinity had been a modestly attired woman in a bonnet. And if Harriet concentrated hard enough, she might be able to grasp at another detail-
“I can’t remember a blessed thing,” the duke said over her shoulder, not only startling the daylights out of her but yanking her straight back to the present time.
She gave a groan of frustration. The images in her mind dissolved like mist. She willed them back, to no avail. A lady in a bonnet that overshadowed her face was hardly enough for Sir Daniel to go on.
“It can’t be a coincidence.” She shook her head. “We both saw a woman talking to Edlyn at the party. You thought you might have seen her standing beside a woman in the park. And I am almost positive that it was this same person who met Edlyn in the rotunda.”
Griffin nodded, avoiding her gaze.
“Well, say something, please. Tell me that this is not suspicious.”
“Everything is suspicious. Primrose thinks she was deliberately poisoned that day. I don’t believe that for an instant, but then, I still cannot believe that anyone would hold Edlyn for ransom.”
Harriet frowned. “Try to think back to when you won the archery contest. The woman in the bonnet must have walked around the target at some point.”
“She might well have.”
She waited. He stared past her at the rotunda. “And?” she prompted, following the path of his gaze until he looked back rather blankly at her. “You don’t remember seeing her at all? You lowered your bow. The crowd cheered. You went to the sidelines and watched the next contestant-”
“No.” He shook his head ruefully. “I went to the sidelines and watched you. In fact, I was watching you all day long. I wanted you to see me shoot. And that is the truth of it. I have noticed no other woman since I met you, Harriet. And-” He broke off.
“Go on,” she whispered, her throat closing.
He glanced up at the sky. “Dear God. Unless I am mistaken, that was lightning I saw above the trees.”
A little thing like lightning would not have stopped Harriet from listening to the rest of his confession. She gave him her hand as they recrossed the bridge. The week had almost come to an end. He had not mentioned his promise to find her another position, and she was certainly not of a mood to remind him until the crisis they faced was solved.
Chapter Thirty
Thy look of love has power to calm The stormiest passion of my soul.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To Harriet (Thy Look of Love…)
A small box had arrived for the duke while they were gone. Griffin handed it absentmindedly to Lady Powlis, who took it upstairs to open while waiting for her tea. She enjoyed admiring the little gifts that Lady Hermia Dalrymple liked to send her. Griffin peeled off his wet greatcoat and helped Harriet remove her cloak. Butler took the damp garments away to dry. A maidservant efficiently mopped up the puddles that glistened on the marble floor.
The front door, not properly on the latch, flew open. Harriet closed it before a restless spirit could sneak in with the wind. She didn’t actually believe in ghosts, but sometimes she liked to give herself a scare. Either way, there was no point in risking a cold.
“How will Sir Daniel conduct a search in this weather?” the duke asked in frustration. He began to sort through the post on the hall stand salver. Harriet knew by his terse expression that he was half expecting to come upon a letter from Edlyn and that it was a discouraging sign that no one had heard from her.
“Sir Daniel could find a lost kitten in the London fog,” she said quietly. “I hate to tell you all the times he hunted down certain people who shall remain nameless, if you take my meaning. You wouldn’t believe the man’s instincts, the places he could find a person.”
He turned and regarded her with an inscrutable look that closed her throat. She forgot that the maid was mopping circles around them, that another waited patiently to ask whether the duke preferred tea and brandy in the upstairs drawing room with her ladyship or in the library by himself.
“You,” he said, in a clear, grateful voice that everyone in the hall could hear, “are good for the soul, Miss Gardner. I’m very much afraid, therefore, that I have reconsidered your request to leave and cannot allow it. You will just have to trust me a little longer to arrange the particulars. But you are not to leave this house, ever.”
It was a tribute to her academy training that Harriet did not overstep the boundary between her position and what her instincts urged her to do. If she had, she would have asked the servants for a moment’s privacy so that she could force him into explaining exactly what it was he intended to do.
And just as she smiled at him, and he smiled back at her, there arose an anguished cry from above stairs that sent every thought of romancing the duke straight out of her head.
Edlyn was going to make her captors sorry for what they had done. Spite had fired her blood for as long as she could remember. She had made everyone in Castle Glenmorgan as miserable as she could. But it had always been Griffin who came to her defense against her father during their frequent arguments in the great hall.
Would he defend her now?
She remembered the day Griffin and her great-aunts had stood up to her father in the great hall. After she had stormed away, she watched them from the music gallery above, giggling through her tears and promising that they’d be sorry when she found her mother, although maybe, maybe, she’d forgive them later on.
She loved them. And they had loved her.
The same could not be said of the amoral man and woman who had imprisoned her in this dark, moldy attic that stank of steak and fish. She stared down into the dripping street, the cat preening at her feet. She’d never be found once they got her out of London, and she had heard them making plans to buy passage on the Thames.
“There’s someone lying in that wheelbarrow down there,” she whispered, straining to see through the rain. “I wonder if he’s dead.”
Mrs. Porter walked in to the room. The cat disappeared. “Who were you talking to?” she asked, staring out the barred window.
“I was saying my prayers,” Edlyn said meekly.
“Then you’d better pray a little harder.”
“Has my uncle agreed to your terms?”
“He has one day left before we tell him where to bring the money. I daresay he shall no doubt know that we are serious when he sees your headband.”
“Oh, dear,” Edlyn said, crossing her closed hands over her heart. “I very much doubt he’ll want me back at all. You see, I haven’t always been a nice girl.”
Mrs. Porter studied her carefully. “What are you holding in your hands?” “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Show me.”
Mrs. Porter called to the man hovering in the door. “Get over here. Make sure she hasn’t gotten hold of a weapon.”