Page 1 of Taken to the Grave
Chapter
One
May 1821
The steady ticking of the long-case clock was the only sound inside the study at 19 Bedford Street. Hugh Marsden sat at his desk, wishing to be anywhere but where he presently was.
Two women in the chairs opposite his stared at him, each of them shifting anxiously. Their visit had been unexpected, and now he wished he’d given some excuse to turn them away. However, as one of the ladies was Lady Rebecca Poston, the beloved wife of Bow Street Chief Magistrate Sir Gabriel Poston, he had not. Hugh’s curiosity as to why the magistrate’s wife had come calling at such a late afternoon hour had influenced him to welcome her and her companion into his study.
Not exactly a Trojan Horse situation, but close enough.
He drummed his fingers upon the desk and sighed. “I’m not sure I can be of any assistance, Lady Rebecca.”
She was several years younger than her husband, but just as formidable. The way she glared down the slope of her nose at Hugh now, reminded him of when he’d been a young rapscallionand his own mother had managed to give him a proper dressing down with only a heavy, piercing look.
He sat forward, unwilling to fold as he might have back then. “You must understand—I respect Sir Gabriel too much to go behind his back in anything.”
“My niece is missing, Lord Neatham,” she replied.
“And yet Sir Gabriel does not believe that to be the case,” he replied. “Not only that, but you’ve admitted he did not want you coming here to ask me to investigate.”
A request she had roundly ignored.
Lady Rebecca’s sister, Mrs. Caroline Silas, beat her scalloped hand fan rapidly to cool her face. She was not as self-possessed as her sister, and when she spoke, it was with a tremulous warble.
“My lord, please.” The gusts from her fan tossed the ringlets framing her face. “My daughter is in trouble. Mr. Silas and Sir Gabriel believe she has merely eloped, but Iknowshe has not.”
Hugh clenched his back teeth.Hell.
“Why do they believe she has eloped?” he asked.
The sisters exchanged a look. Lady Rebecca urged Mrs. Silas on with nod.
“There is a man,” she said. “Bethany is a bit wild, and she has not kept the finest company, I will admit to that. But to elope with no word, no note, leaving me to worry… No, she would not do such a thing.”
Hugh kept his expression neutral, even though he wanted to groan and throw back his head in frustration. No doting mother would ever wish to believe their daughter, raised to be a perfect society lady, would fall in love with an unsuitable man, let alone run off to Gretna Green with him.
“Does Mr. Silas know you are here, requesting that I investigate?” He presumed he did not, just as Sir Gabriel did not, and when Mrs. Silas shook her head, he stood from his chair.
He needed to move. To think. Hugh didn’t want to offend Lady Rebecca, but even more so, he didn’t need to anger his last connection to his former life at Bow Street. After he’d been foisted from his role as principal officer and given instead the mantle of Viscount Neatham, Sir Gabriel had continued to involve him in several cases. However, after a handful of months last autumn, when Hugh had become somewhat of a distracted wastrel, Sir Gabriel had ceased approaching him. It had been all Hugh’s own doing.
When the Dowager Duchess of Fournier, Audrey Sinclair, had gone to the Continent to spend the bulk of her required mourning period traveling, her letters to Hugh, and his to her, had been intercepted and collected by another private inquiry agent—one who had been hired to follow Audrey. In waylaying their correspondence, the inquiry agent had caused them both a great deal of confusion and hurt, each of them worrying that the other had fallen out of love. Hugh had not handled it well, and Sir Gabriel had not overlooked his shoddy performance.
However, after the events in January, in which he’d been beckoned to the port of Dover to help lift Audrey from suspicion of murder, everything had settled again. He was no longer in any doubt of her love for him, and he’d made sure that she was confident in his. For the last few months in London, he’d taken every opportunity—few though they’d been—to get her alone and remind her of it.
He came to a stop in front of a window that overlooked Bedford Street. It wasn’t a street devoted to fine residences befitting a lord, but to a mix of businesses and middle-class homes. As such, the arrival of the ladies seated at his desk would have gone unnoticed by fashionable society.
“My husband would be quite cross if he knew we’d come to see you,” Mrs. Silas admitted. “He would prefer to keep Bethany’s absence hushed up.”
“Only because Caro’s husband is convinced that she has run off with this cad, this Mr. Comstock,” Lady Rebecca put in. “And he cares more for a pristine reputation in Parliament than he does for his own daughter.”
“Now, sister, that isn’t true.” But Mrs. Silas winced and added more softly, “Not entirely.”
Hugh had met John Silas once. He was with the House of Commons, and Hugh, the House of Lords. Still, he knew the man was a serious, well-respected member of the Tories. To have rumors swirling about that his daughter had ruined herself would be detrimental to his standing, and Silas did not have a title to fall back onto.
“Tell me about this Mr. Comstock,” Hugh said, giving in to his curiosity.
Mrs. Silas beat her fan faster. “He is the most disgraceful of blackguards.”
