Finding McBroom seated at a small, untidy desk in an alcove off the entry hall, Sebastian asked first about Samuel Atwater.
“Ah. Saw his name on the list, I did,” said the innkeeper, shuffling papers around on his desktop.
“So who is he?”
“Could’ve told you before if you’d asked.” McBroom kept his focus on his papers in a way that told Sebastian just how deeply he had offended the innkeeper earlier by not indulging the man’s desire for a good gossip. “Happens he’s steward out at Northcott Abbey. Some sort of cousin to her ladyship. From Yorkshire,” he added in the faintly disparaging tone typically used by villagers when referring to “outsiders.”
“How long has he been in Ayleswick?”
The landlord picked up his quill and inspected the tip. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five years, I suppose.”
“And Jude Lowe?”
“Proprietor of the Ship, he is.”
“And where might the Ship be?”
McBroom set about mending his quill with a knife. “At the crossroads to the east of here. Just beyond the old gibbet.” He raised his bushy eyebrows and threw Sebastian a sideways look over the tops of his spectacles. “Fitting, ain’t it?”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Rather than answer, McBroom returned his gaze to his quill. “You gonna be talking to him?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, well. Then you’ll see, won’t you?”
“And Major Weston?” asked Sebastian, fighting the urge to grit his teeth. “What can you tell me about him?”
According to the innkeeper, Eugene Weston, too, had arrived in the area some twenty to twenty-five years before, when his militia unit was billeted in the village. “Quite splendid to look at, he was in those days. Leastways, all the young women thought so—and more’n a few of the older ones who should’ve known better.” McBroom sniffed. “Him and his scarlet regimentals and great flowing mustache. Course, he had eyes only for Liv Irving.”
“Liv Irving?”
“Daughter of them took over Maplethorpe Hall.”
“Oh?”
McBroom lowered his pen, his lips working silently over his teeth, the impulse to continue punishing the Viscount for his earlier snub warring with the urge to divulge the lurid past of one he obviously disliked.
The lure of the lurid won.
The main house had still been standing in those days, explained the innkeeper. It was a grand Palladian villa dating to the early eighteenth century, and the Irvings were unabashedly proud of their fine new estate. From the very beginning, they took to throwing large house parties to which they invited as many representatives of old or titled families as they could entice to come. The origins of the family’s wealth were in trade, but they were determined to erase the stigma of having earned rather than inherited their fortune.
As a cousin of Lord Weston of Somersfield Park, the handsome young major was enthusiastically welcomed to the Irvings’ endless round of dinners, rout parties, picnics, and balls. So eager were the Irvings to cultivate the well-bred and well-connected young officer that they failed to inquire too closely into his antecedents. By the time they discovered that the handsome young major’s kinship to Lord Weston was distant and his father no more than an impoverished country vicar, the major had convinced sixteen-year-old Liv to elope. It was nearly a week before the couple returned, at which point the girl was hopelessly ruined.
There was nothing the Irvings could do at that point except put a brave face on it and hope for the best.
The Dower House lay at the end of a short drive that wound away from the main Ludlow road just beyond the crossroads. Built in 1789 for the late Mr. Irving’s widowed mother, it was of moderate size, with symmetrically placed windows, a paneled central door, dentil-work cornices, and a dormered, hipped roof. The garden was small but exquisite, with both a formal section enclosed by a high yew hedge and a more natural area given over to wild roses and Leucojums and Camassias. When Sebastian reined in his chestnuts before the steps, he could see the blackened brick chimneys of Maplethorpe Hall itself just visible above the tops of the trees in a small spinney.
He dropped to the ground. “See if you can find a talkative groom,” he told Tom. “I’d be interested to hear the servants’ opinion of their master.”
Tom grinned. “Aye, gov’nor!”
The front door opened, and Sebastian turned to find the major himself bounding down the shallow front steps toward him.
“Lord Devlin? It is Lord Devlin, yes?”
He was dressed quite nattily in a striped silk waistcoat, fine doeskin breeches, gleaming high-top boots, and a well-cut navy blue coat. He still sported a flowing, military-style mustache, although its once rich auburn was now beginning to fade to gray. In one hand he carried a crop, as if he had been on the verge of going out riding.