"I beg pardon?"
"Am I to understand you think I ran him down deliberately?"
"I was under that impression, yes."
"May I ask," his lordship drawled, "what possible reason I could have for such a deed?"
"I assume your reason had something to do… er, was directly related to… er… the presence of a certain young lady who is not permitted to leave your… ah… bedchambers."
The earl gave a sharp crack of laughter that had a rusty sound to it, as if laughter were foreign to him.
"Of course," Stephen said, "how foolish of me. What other conclusion could you have reached?" Straightening in his chair, he spoke in a brisk, businesslike tone. "Last week, the young woman upstairs-Charise Lancaster-arrived in England from America. She was betrothed to Burleton, and their marriage was to take place the following day by special license. Since I was responsible for his death, and since there was no one else to tell her what had happened, I naturally met her ship and gave her the sad news. I was talking to her on the dock when some idiot lost control of a loaded cargo net and it struck her in the head. Since her only travelling companion was a ladies' maid, and since Miss Lancaster is too ill to leave England for a while, I'll have to depend upon you to notify her family of all this and to escort any family member who wishes to come back here to England. In addition, I want to settle Burleton's affairs. Put together as complete a dossier on him as you can so I can see where to begin. The least I can do is make sure his name is cleared of debts that he didn't have time to settle before he died."
"Oh, I see!" Matthew said with a smile of relief that he was happy to see the earl return.
"Good."
Reaching for a quill and paper on the desk, Matthew said with pen poised, "Where does her family reside and what are her relatives' names?"
"I don't know."
"You don't… know?"
"No."
"Perhaps," Matthew suggested, very cautiously, and very respectfully, "we might make inquiries of the young lady?"
"We might," Stephen said dryly, "but she will have precious little to tell you." Taking pity on the solicitor, he added, "Her injury was to the head and severe enough to cause a loss of memory, which Dr. Whitticomb believes is a temporary condition. Unfortunately, although her health is mostly restored, her memory isn't."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Matthew said sincerely. Thinking that concern for the young woman had somewhat diminished the earl's usual perspicacity, he suggested diplomatically, "Perhaps her maid could be of help?"
"I'm certain she could. If I knew where she was." With veiled amusement, Stephen watched the solicitor struggle to keep his face from showing any emotion whatsoever. "I sent someone to her cabin within minutes after the accident, but the maid was nowhere to be found. One of the crew members thought she might have been English, so perhaps she went home to her family."
"I see," Matthew replied, but he still wasn't overly concerned. "In that case, we'll begin our inquiry on the ship."
"It sailed the following morning."
"Oh. Well, what about her trunks? Was there anything in them to give us a clue as to her family's direction?"
"There might have been. Unfortunately, her trunks sailed with the ship."
"You're certain?"
"Quite. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, my only concern was to get her medical attention at once. The following morning, I sent for her trunks, but the Morning Starhad already sailed."
"Then we'll begin our search at the ship's Office. There's bound to be a passenger manifest and a cargo manifest, and they'll be able to tell us what her ports of call were in America."
"Start with the shipping office," Stephen agreed. He stood up, concluding the interview, and Matthew promptly arose, his mind already on the search he was about to instigate.
"I've only been to the Colonies once," he said. "I shan't mind another visit."
"I'm sorry to have cut your holiday short," Stephen repeated. "However, there's another reason for urgency, beyond the obvious one. Whitticomb is becoming concerned that her memory hasn't shown the slightest sign of returning. I'm hoping that seeing people from her past may help."
12
As he'd promised, Stephen went upstairs to see her later that evening. He'd made it a practice to visit her twice each day, and although he kept them very brief and impersonal, he found himself nevertheless looking forward to them. He knocked on her door, and when there was no response, he hesitated then knocked again. Still no reply. Evidently his instructions that a maid was to be with her at all times had not been followed. Either that or the servant had fallen asleep on duty. Both possibilities angered him, but his primary emotion was alarm for his houseguest. She'd wanted to leave her bed. If she'd decided to try it, despite his instructions, and then collapsed with no one there to help her or sound an alarm… Or if she'd lapsed back into unconsciousness…
He shoved the door open and strode into the chambers. The emptychambers. Baffled and annoyed, he looked at the bed, which had been neatly made up. Evidently the little idiot had not seen fit to follow his orders, and neither had the maid!
A soft sound made him swing around. And stop cold.
"I didn't hear you come in," his houseguest said, walking out of the dressing room. Clad in a white dressing gown that was too large for her, with a hairbrush in one hand and a blue towel loosely draped over her head, she stood before him barefoot, unselfconscious, and completely unrepentant for ignoring his instructions.
Having just been needlessly subjected to several awful moments of fear, Stephen reacted with a flash of annoyance, followed by relief, and then helpless amusement. She'd borrowed a gold cord from the draperies and tied it around her waist to hold the white dressing robe closed, and with her bare toes peeping out from beneath the long robe and that light blue towel over her head like a veil, she reminded him of the barefoot Madonna. Instead of the real Madonna's serenely sweet smile, however, this madonna was wearing an expression that looked bewildered, accusing, and distinctly unhappy, all at once. She did not make him wait to find out the cause.
"Either you're extremely unobservant, my lord, or else your eyesight is afflicted."
Caught completely off-guard, Stephen said cautiously, "I'm not certain what you mean."
"I mean my hair," she said miserably, pointing an accusing finger to whatever was concealed beneath the towel.
He remembered that her hair had been matted with blood, and assumed the wound to her scalp had bled even after Whitticomb had stitched it. "It will wash right out," he assured her.
"Oh, I don't think so," she said ominously. "I already tried that."
"I don't understand…" he began.