He missed Imogen with an ache of longing that was almost welcome. He deserved every pang and worse.
His determination to get to the bottom of things in response to that letter had met with some frustration. James Mawgan had a cottage up behind the stables, in a little cluster of such houses. He had not been home when Percy called there with Knorr on the Saturday afternoon. It was Mr. Mawgan’s half day, a neighbor had explained after curtsying to Percy, and he sometimes went to see his mam.
He was not there on Sunday either, a full day off for most of the outdoor workers. And on Monday he rode off early with another of the gardeners to see about getting some new bulbs and seedlings for the flower beds and kitchen gardens.
“Finally,” Knorr commented dryly, “the man is doing something to earn his salary. I’ll collar him when he gets back, my lord.”
After luncheon, Percy and a group of the younger cousins, including Meredith and Geoffrey, climbed to the top of the rocks behind the house, where they were rewarded with a brisk wind and scudding clouds across a blue expanse of sky and a magnificent view in all four directions. It would not have surprised Percy if someone had told him that on a really clear day one could see Wales to the north and Ireland to the west and France to the south.
And it had grabbed at something in him. His heart? Should it not be turning his knees to jelly?
Geoffrey was running along the top, his arms stretched to the sides, a racing yacht screeching into the wind. Gregory was in hot pursuit.
Evil could not be allowed to continue thriving here, Percy thought, like a cancerous growth upon the body of his own people. It would not be allowed.
Mr. Knorr was awaiting him in the visitors’ salon, Crutchley informed him when they returned to the house.
Mawgan was in there too.
“Ah,” Percy said as the butler closed the door behind him, “I trust you will soon have the flower beds blazing with splendor, Mawgan?”
“It is my plan, my lord,” Mawgan said.
“Good,” Percy said. “I shall look forward to seeing it through spring and summer and autumn.”
There! That was a gauntlet flung down between them. Whether he really would stay was uncertain. But it was as well that those who wanted him gone believe that he was planning to stay, that his resolve had not been shaken by any threat.
“Tell me, Mawgan,” Percy said, “Are you a strong swimmer?”
The man looked a bit mystified. “You have to be if you are a fisherman,” he said.
“But you could not save one man who fell overboard?” Percy asked. “I do not imagine the sea was particularly rough. As an experienced fisherman you would not have been out if it had been, would you? Certainly not with an inexperienced guest.”
“He fought me,” Mawgan said. “The silly bugger. He panicked.”
Knorr cleared his throat.
“And then he went under the boat, and hit his head,” Mawgan added.
“I thought that was you.” Percy looked closely at him.
“We both did,” Mawgan said. “I was trying to get him.”
“Who else was in the boat?” Percy asked him.
“My father, a few others,” Mawgan said vaguely. “I can’t remember.”
“I would have thought,” Percy said, “that every detail concerning that tragic incident would be seared upon your memory.”
“I hit my head,” Mawgan said.
“And while you were recovering,” Percy said, “Colin Bains volunteered to take the valet’s place and his father was first puffed up with pride at the prospect of having a son as batman to a viscount, heir to an earldom, and then suddenly, in a peculiar reversal of attitude, flatly refused to allow his son to go.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” Mawgan said.
“Then Mr. Ratchett got you the job,” Percy said.
“He spoke for me,” Mawgan replied. “And Lord Barclay come to see me.”
“And when you returned from the Peninsula,” Percy said, “you were rewarded for your service with your present senior position on my outdoor staff.”
“It weren’t my fault, what happened to his lordship,” Mawgan said.
“Was it not?” Percy asked softly, and the man’s eyes met his for the first time. “Or were you sent to make sure that somehow, by fair means or foul, Viscount Barclay did not come home?”
And there went another gauntlet. There was really no going back now, was there?
They stared at each other. Percy expected incredulity, shock, outrage, some look of strong denial. Instead he got only the squinted stare, which finally slid away from him, and then the oldest answer known to man.