Lord Shellingham held up his hands. “I’m not responsible for the actions of those two. But if you’re talking about the money Fergusson was gambling with at the Assembly Rooms last week, that came from a wager he won with Mr. Radcliffe. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Radcliffe yourself. I’m sure he’d love to grumble about it some more.”
I lifted my hand to my temples, rubbing them with my thumb and forefinger to suppress the massive headache beginning to build behind my eyes. Here we’d thought we’d finally caught the men responsible for setting these snatching-ransoms in motion, and we’d uncovered nothing. Sure, we’d answered some of our questions, but none of these answers had brought us closer to finding the culprits, only farther away.
Of course, Shellingham and Young could be lying, but I didn’t think so. The scheme was too elaborate to be a ruse, and it would be far too easy to find them out. I intended to verify their story, but I didn’t expect to discover they’d lied.
Anyway, in Shellingham’s case, there were far easier ways to replenish his coffers.
“Why don’t you marry an heiress,” I couldn’t resist asking him. It was sadly the most common solution to such a predicament.
He flushed and frowned. “I’d rather not have to resort to that. It hardly seems fair to marry a girl just for her money. But . . .” He sighed. “I soon may have no choice.”
I glanced around the room at all the fine furnishings. If the other rooms in the house were decorated in the same way . . .
“Why don’t you sell some of the artwork and furnishings? Surely they’re worth a great deal.”
“I’ve been contemplating it.” His face screwed up into a nasty smirk. “But my grandfather went to such an effort to build a lavish abode for his Prussian heiress, bankrupting the estate when she didn’t marry him, it seems like a sacrilege to break up his shrine.”
Gage ignored this display of resentment, justified though it might be, to return to the matter at hand. “Well, since you’ve finally told us the truth, can you think of anything else we should know? Anything perhaps you should have told us earlier?”
Shellingham and Young glanced at each other and then shook their heads.
“You didn’t see anyone else leaving the ball? Encounter anyone else at or near the abbey?” Gage pressed.
Mr. Young frowned. “Well, several of the guests who stayed at Clintmains visited the abbey. But that doesn’t make them guilty of anything.”
“Who?”
He rattled off a few names, none of whom meant anything except Mr. Stuart.
Gage’s eyes sought mine out, telling me he’d noticed as well.
So Mr. Stuart had visited Dryburgh Abbey sometime during the days prior to Lord Buchan’s snatching. As Mr. Young said, that didn’t make him guilty, but it was worth noting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Isn’t that Miss Musgrave’s maid, Peggy?” I asked as the carriage rounded a corner in St. Boswells the next morning. She was bustling down the walk, her head lowered against the wind, with a package clutched under her arm.
Gage leaned over to see out the window. “Why, I think it is. How fortuitous,” he said with a smirk. He began to reach toward the ceiling with his cane, but I stopped him.
“Wait until we reach those hedges before stopping the carriage. She won’t wish to be seen speaking to us.”
He complied, timing it so that the carriage stopped within the shade of two hedgerows, sheltering us from any prying eyes that might be watching from the houses nearby. I opened the carriage door and climbed out, waiting for Peggy to notice me.
She was nearly upon us before she looked up. Her eyes flared wide and then darted from side to side nervously.
“Peggy, I’m sorry to bother you. But we really must speak with you again. We thought it best do so away from the Musgrave house.”
Her eyes searched mine and quickly came to the realization that I was not going to let the matter go. She could either speak to us here and hope to keep the discussion private, or face us in front of Mr. Musgrave later. I had no desire to put her in that situation, particularly since it would likely mean her position, but we needed to confirm Mr. Young and Lord Shellingham’s story, and we could better gain access to Peggy than Miss Musgrave.
She sighed in resignation. I gestured for her to climb into the carriage and then followed after, closing the door behind us. She clutched her brown-paper-wrapped package before her like a shield and eyed Gage and me warily.
“We wish you no harm,” I told her. “And we know you’ve been placed in an untenable position. But we need to know the truth about what happened on Hogmanay.”
Her gaze continued to bounce back and forth between us, but she did not speak, forcing me to elaborate.
“We know about Mr. Young and Miss Musgrave. We also know about their plan to elope.”
She seemed to shrink before our eyes, her shoulders crumpling inward and her head dropping. “Aye.” She sighed again. “I didna ken aboot it at the time, but I was suspicious when Miss Alice suddenly declared she was too ill to attend the ball.” Her mouth screwed up in a frown. “Right disappointed, too. You’d the right of it. I’d been lookin’ forward to goin’. But Miss Alice pays no mind to that.”