“Did you too voice an objection to smuggling after he had gone?” Percy asked. “Because you admired him so much?”
“I wanted to go with him,” Bains told him. “I wanted to be his batman, to look after his things and him. My dad wouldn’t let me go. He was afraid I would get hurt.”
“Ironic, that,” Percy said. “You liked Viscount Barclay?”
“Everyone liked him,” Bains said.
“And admired him?”
“He was a fine gentleman. He ought to have been—”
“—the earl after his father’s passing?” Percy said. “Yes, indeed he ought. But he died instead.”
“That Mawgan went with him instead,” Bains said. “Just because he was Mr. Ratchett’s niece’s boy and had pull and was eighteen years old. But he was no good. He ran away in the end. Said he was foraging for firewood up in them foreign hills when the frogs came and took his lordship and her ladyship. But I would bet anything he was hiding among the rocks scared as anything and then ran away. I would have saved them if I had been there. But I wasn’t. There is nothing wrong with this horse’s leg, m’lord.”
“I must have just imagined that he was favoring it on the way back up from the village, then,” Percy said. “It is always as well to check, though, is it not? Did you try to stop the smuggling here so that Lord Barclay would be proud of you?”
“There is some smuggling going on up the Bristol Channel way, or so they say,” Bains said, straightening up again. “And some over Devon way. But I never been farther from home than ten miles, if that, so I wouldn’t know for sure.”
“Or did you flatly refuse to join the gang?” Percy asked. “Or threaten to expose them to the revenue men? No, don’t answer. There is no need. Take one last look down at that leg. I will do so as well. One never knows who is watching, does one, even if we cannot be heard. Nothing? I am glad to hear it. Off with you, then. You might as well take the horse with you.”
Bains made his way back to the stables, leading the horse. It was obvious that every step was painful to him. Percy wondered if the old earl had hired a reputable physician to set his broken legs. Soames? He wondered too just how badly they had been broken.
He was going to have to stop all this, he thought as he made his way back to the house. He must be very bored indeed if he was starting to fancy himself as some sort of Bow Street Runner. He was going to be getting himself into trouble if he was not careful. And he really did not want to be thinking about smashed legs and dark coves on moonless nights and weighty kegs being carried up that cliff path and shady characters breaking into the cellar of the dower house beneath the very feet of the marble lady.
Or of himself dashing to her rescue, sword flashing in one hand, pistol brandished in the other.
Did he owe her an apology? She had been a full participant in that kiss last night. But what gentleman asked a lady with barefaced cheek if she had been raped? The very thought that he had done just that was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.
*
Imogen was kneeling in the grass the following morning, looking at what was definitely a snowdrop, though there was no blossom yet. Even the frail shoot, though, was a welcome harbinger of spring. And surely the air was marginally warmer today. The sun was shining.
The work on her roof was finished. Mr. Tidmouth had been paid, and he and his men had gone away. He had assured her that the roof was good for the next two hundred years at the very least. She hoped it would not leak the next time there was rain.
She ought to walk down into the village and call upon Mrs. Park to see if she had taken any harm from her outing to the assembly. She ought to call at the vicarage and let the girls twitter at her about the dance and their conquests there—their parents always discouraged frivolous talk, but girls sometimes needed someone to whom they could twitter to their hearts’ content. She ought to go up to the hall to assure Aunt Lavinia that the dower house was perfectly comfortable again. She ought to write an answering letter to Gwen, Lady Trentham, Hugo’s wife, who had written to inform her that young Melody, their new daughter, appeared to have recovered from her colicky, crotchety start to life before Christmas and was eagerly anticipating her journey to Penderris Hall with her mama and papa in March. She ought to . . .
Well, there were numerous things she ought to do. But she could settle to nothing even though she kept telling herself that it was sheer heaven to be back in her own home. Alone.
And lonely.
She must be feeling depressed. She never admitted to loneliness—simply because there was no loneliness to admit to.
And then she was alone no longer. A shadow fell across her from the direction of the garden gate, and she looked up, desperately hoping it was Aunt Lavinia or Tilly or even Mr. Wenzel or Mr. Alton. Anyone but . . .
“Saying your prayers in the brisk outdoors, Cousin Imogen?” the Earl of Hardford asked.