Page 6 of Never a Duke
“Do you?”
He put the book atop the shelf. “If Miss Cadwallader asks, you may assure her I do. Can you tell me anything else about Miss Arbuckle? What did she do on her half days?”
“Came here, went to the park, wrote letters to her family in Somerset. She is a decent young woman, Mr. Wentworth. Her home village is a place called Cowdown.”
An older couple descended the stairs arm in arm. Mr. Wentworth bent closer before they came too near.
“The decent young women,” he said, “are the ones who don’t see trouble coming, which is why most of Mayfair’s belles aren’t permitted to set foot outside the house unescorted. Shall I meet you here again next week?”
His scent changed up close, becoming more complicated and sweeter. “Why not Friday? I don’t want to wait a week.”
“Very well, Friday.” He bowed and would have left, but Rosalind presumed to lay a hand on his sleeve.
“You should know that my last lady’s maid also disappeared, Mr. Wentworth. I’ll have a sketch of her for you on Friday.”
The older couple was coming closer, and any minute, Rosalind expected to see Mrs. Barnstable parading down the steps with a new travelogue in hand.
“Until Friday, my lady.”
He was halfway to the steps before Rosalind spoke again. “Be careful, Mr. Wentworth.”
He saluted with his walking stick. “You may depend upon it.”
He mounted the steps briskly, and Rosalind was left amid tales of the illustrious dead, wondering if Ned Wentworth truly did want a big family. She suspected he did, which was puzzling to say the least.
Chapter Two
“This woman wants you to find a missing lady’s maid?” Stephen took a glass from the waiter’s tray. “My dear Abigail might have some ideas about how to proceed with such a task.”
Ned accepted a brandy for himself and passed the third drink to Quinton, Duke of Walden. When the waiter had bowed and withdrawn, His Grace set the brandy on the sideboard. For His Grace, the club’s best private dining room was always available, while Ned had to make reservations well in advance.
“Does the lady’s maid want to be found?” Walden murmured. “If she has eloped, then your efforts will be for naught.”
“If she eloped,” Ned replied, “she took nothing. Not a spare dress, not her hairbrush, not an extra pair of stockings.” Ned moved to the fireplace, for the spring evening had a chill. “People who have little tend to value their possessions. Miss Arbuckle’s greatest treasure was a locket with miniatures of her parents painted inside. She left that behind.”
Stephen settled into an armchair. “Could she be the victim of a robbery gone awry?”
“In Mayfair? She carried no money, not even a parasol. She never reached the cobbler’s shop, so she didn’t have so much as a parcel to steal.”
His Grace propped an elbow on the mantel and gazed into the fire. Quinton Wentworth had become of a piece with elegant surrounds like this room. He’d shed the trappings of poverty to fit in with Axminster carpets, staid portraiture, and fine brandy served in crystal glasses.
He did not simply play the part of a duke, hewasa duke. How had he transformed himself to that degree?
“Thieves have been known to strip their victims naked simply to sell the clothes,” Walden said. “A lady’s maid in an earl’s house would have decent boots, a bonnet, a cloak. That’s all worth stealing, to some. If she fought against her attackers, she might well have been injured.”
“Not likely, not seriously injured in any case,” Ned said. “Theft usually merits transportation. Injury to the person in the course of a theft is more likely to get a fellow the noose.” As could using any sort of weapon while committing a crime. English law was curiously sporting in that regard.
If a thief depended on only light fingers and quick wits, the law showed him a hint of clemency. Bring force or a weapon into the picture, and the clemency vanished.
Walden and his brother exchanged a glance.Neddy knows of what he speaks.
And not because Ned had studied law at university, though he had.
“You’ll have a word with the abbesses?” Walden asked.
“I’ll start that round of inquiries tonight.” Though Ned dreaded anything to do with brothels and their denizens. If asked, he cited the disease rampant in such environs as his reason for abstaining, but disease wasn’t the half of it.
“I can accompany you,” Stephen said. “The ladies doubtless miss me now that I’m a happily married fellow. I will chat them up to aid your cause.”
