As her uncle and Mr. Edgerton moved away, Julia let out the breath she’d been holding.
Their conversation was so strange. Something about getting a diary from Mr. Langdon. But what could her uncle want with a diary?
CHAPTER TWO
Nicholas sat in the sitting room facing east. This was his favorite room in the morning, as he liked to see the sun slanting in the windows. The rest of the family was still abed, and he had sent his valet, Smith, to ferret out the whereabouts of one Garrison Greenfield, the man to whom Beechum had bade him take the small leather diary. His only direction, besides the name Garrison Greenfield, was the Horse Guards in Whitehall. He must have meant the War Office. Whatever the case, Smith would find him.
Nicholas sat reading the newspaper, still catching up on all the political news since he had been away, when Foster announced that Hugh Edgerton was calling. So early in the morning?
“Show him in.”
Edgerton greeted him with a weak smile. His eyes were red and puffy.
“Must be something important to bring you out so early.” Nicholas nearly chuckled at the way Edgerton winced and shielded his eyes from the bright sunlight.
“Important?” Edgerton stood still a moment. “Not at all. What makes you say that? I wanted to call, as I know you may be off again soon.”
Edgerton proceeded to talk of the war, and he asked Nicholas several questions about his time in the Peninsula, about General Wellington, and what Nicholas thought the future position of the British army would be. It was beginning to strike Nicholas as very strange conversation, not at all what Edgerton usually talked of.
Edgerton wandered over to the small desk against the wall. “Have you caught up on your correspondence since you’ve been convalescing?” He leaned over the desk, and though Edgerton’s body was blocking his view, Nicholas believed he heard Edgerton open and close the desk drawer.
“Do you need something?” Nicholas walked toward him.
“No.” Edgerton straightened and took out his snuffbox, carefully taking a pinch of the brown powder. “I thought I saw some cigars in your desk, but I was mistaken.”
Soon afterward, Edgerton cordially bid Nicholas a good day and left, expressing a wish to meet him again before Nicholas sailed.
While Nicholas was still puzzling over why Edgerton had called on him so uncharacteristically early and then left so abruptly, Smith arrived back from his errand.
“Did you locate Greenfield?”
“No, sir. And there is something odd about it.”
“Odd?”
“When I inquired about him at the War Office, a clerk told me to wait, and he went and fetched another man with a colonel’s uniform, who asked me why I was looking for Garrison Greenfield. I told him my master had something to give him. He asked, ‘Who is your master?’ ‘The William Langdons of Lincolnshire and Mayfair,’ said I. ‘What would the Langdons of Lincolnshire want with Garrison Greenfield?’ he asked. I said, ‘I already told you, and if you cannot tell me where to find him, I shall be on my way.’ The man looked hard at me. I thought it best that I come and tell you what he said before I inquired any further.”
“Thank you, Smith. You did well. I shall investigate myself.”
Very odd. Nicholas tried to think who he knew at the War Office. His father would know someone. He’d go ask him and then send a letter today, requesting a meeting. And later . . . he should look and see what was in that diary.
Going upstairs, he remembered his brother had left the day before. Jonathan had told him that his wife, Isabella, planned to make some changes to the nursery and some of the other rooms at the Abbey before their first baby came.
The family estate, Glyncove Abbey in Lincolnshire, was where Nicholas, Jonathan, and their sister, Leorah, had grown up. But it was more his sister-in-law’s home now than his own. But that was as it should be. Jonathan was the eldest son and rightful heir.
Nicholas went into his father’s study to find him staring out the window.
“Ah, Nicholas. I suppose you will be going back with the next ship heading to the Peninsula, eh?”
He cringed inside, but army life was his fate, unless he were to sell his commission. He had thought to make the church his profession, but his father had pressured him since he was a small boy to become an army officer. A clergyman, he said, had no chance of making his fortune. He had joined the army more to please his father than anything else. Over the many days and weeks of his convalescence, he’d had plenty of time to ponder what a foolish reason that had been.
“Yes, Father. I leave in a week. But at present, I need to ask you—who do you know at the War Office?”