Michael dropped back beside me as we turned off the main road and back onto Dalmay land, shaking his head at the trio in front of us. Seeing my look of query, he explained. “Lord Damien is trying to impress the worldly Miss Remmington with tales of his exploits.” I could hear the sarcasm in his voice. “And, unfortunately, Gage is only egging him on.”
“But Damien hasn’t had any exploits.”
“And Miss Remmington is not in the least worldly, though she likes to pretend it.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured.
His eyebrows arched in agreement. “This can only end badly.”
“Should we try to separate them?”
He sighed. “I doubt it would do any good.”
I stared at the back of Gage’s evergreen coat. It was fairly quivering with suppressed humor. “Then perhaps we should trust Gage to handle it.”
Michael glanced at me, a gleam of levity entering his eyes as he comprehended my meaning. Pulling on his reins, he checked his stallion’s pace.
I smiled and directed my mare to follow suit, allowing an even larger gap to open between us and the trio of riders. The mare seemed perfectly happy to have the stallion all to herself and tossed her mane playfully.
“You are rather vain, aren’t you?” I scolded her with a chuckle.
“Don’t be too hard on her. All the ladies preen for Puck.” Michael patted his horse’s shoulder. “Don’t they, boy?”
I shook my head. “That name.”
“I know. Blame the stable master. I jokingly told him that this horse was going to be ‘quite the buck,’ but he misheard me. Quite deliberately, I might add,” he said, speaking louder to be heard over my laughter. “I found out later that Laura had been reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and described it to one of the stable lads one day when he accompanied her on her ride. The lad told the tale to the others in the stable, including the stable master.”
“Well, at least Puck doesn’t seem to mind his name,” I offered.
“Yes, happily he doesn’t know what it means.”
“Just please don’t tell me this mare’s name is Titania.”
A smile quirked his lips. “No. That is Dewdrop.”
I reached out to brush a hand over her dappled coat. “Quite fitting.”
“I thought you would appreciate her.”
We fell silent as we crossed beneath the bower of one of the forests, losing sight of the others for a moment around a curve in the road. A few birds still twittered in the gloom of late afternoon under the trees, but the predominant sound was the clopping of our horses’ hooves on the smooth dirt track. The closer the calendar crept toward the end of the year, the swifter the sun set, and I knew by the time we reached Dalmay House the sun would already be approaching the horizon.
I’d been reluctant to bring up the scene in Mr. Wallace’s drawing room, but I decided it was necessary if we were ever to discover the truth.
“I take it you’ve never met Mr. Paxton before.”
Michael turned to look at me. “No. But I’ve heard of him.”
“And today’s actions only confirmed what you’d heard?”
He nodded.
“Which is another reason why you would not want the authorities involved should Will become suspected in Miss Wallace’s disappearance.” I could only imagine how Cramond’s constable would behave in such a circumstance. He would be out of his depth, but refuse to admit it.
“Do you place any credence in his proposition that Miss Wallace was swept out to sea while crossing back to the mainland from Cramond Island?” He was careful not to appear too eager to accept such a possibility, particularly as it almost certainly meant the girl’s death, but nonetheless I could hear the ring of hope in his voice.
I had been too distracted by Mr. Paxton’s provoking attitude and Mr. Wallace’s obvious frustration to contemplate what the constable’s theory meant for Will. If it were true, then Will could be cleared of all suspicion in her disappearance. The problem was there was no way of proving it. What if she had made it back to the mainland and walked west to the trails leading onto the Dalmay estate?
Of course, that would necessitate her taking the ferry across the River Almond to reach it, and I would have supposed that Mr. Paxton had questioned the ferrymen. What were the chances that those men had forgotten they’d helped her across that afternoon? They couldn’t shepherd across more than a few dozen people each day, and I was willing to wager they would remember someone as highborn as Miss Wallace. So, if she didn’t take the ferry, then the odds of Will having gotten to her were infinitesimal, and that was supposing he wanted to do her harm.
Yes, the odds were looking more and more in favor of Will’s innocence. But without finding Miss Wallace there would always be that small sliver of doubt, and I would prefer not to leave that to fester.