Page 89 of Miss Dignified
The kitchen maid paused in her kneading of a large, pale batch of dough. “Mrs. Lovelace is gone two days now, Captain. I thought she told you. She left me menus, all recipes I know how to cook.”
“Gone?”
The kittens were curled up in their basket, the air was redolent of bacon and toast, and morning sunshine poured through the window. Dylan noted those details with the part of his mind that was always on alert, while another part of him howled in despair.
“Gone where?”
“Bowen might know. Something about a family matter. She left London, I know that much. Took a valise and left two days past at the crack of doom.” Betty went back to her kneading. “She would scold you for being in the kitchen, sir.”
Don’t be insubordinate.Dylan kept that retort behind his teeth, because first, Betty was right, and second, she was not a recruit new to her uniform such that an accurate, factual observation should earn her a rebuke.
Dylan did an about-face, took the stairs two at a time, and shouted for Bowen, who emerged from his office with a cup of tea in his hand.
“What’s amiss, sir?”
“Lydia—Mrs. Lovelace—has deserted the regiment.” Or had she mustered out? Sold her commission? Put aside her caps and aprons once and for all? “Do you have any idea where she’s gone?”
Bowen beckoned Dylan into his office. “I keep an eye on the post, because I hope to hear from Will. I almost hope he finds a good position in Portsmouth, sir, but you asked about Mrs. Lovelace.”
“She’s been gone two days,” Dylan said, kicking himself for thinking Lydia was merely keeping her distance. She would not blow retreat merely to gather her composure. She seldom lost her composure, though Dylan was fast losing his. “How could I not realize she’d left the house?”
“Your sisters have kept you busy,” Bowen observed. “All I can tell you about Mrs. Lovelace is that she sent a note to Mr. Dorning at the start of the week.”
Dorning? WhyDorning? “Can you be more precise?”
“You’d come back from seeing Lord Tremont, I believe, and she asked me to post the letter for her. She has so little correspondence that I found her request somewhat unusual.”
Dylan paced the small confines of Bowen’s office, a cheery space, Lydia’s touch evident in the bouquet of tulips on the mantel and in some flowery, golden and green embroidery along the hem of the lacy curtains.
“You are certain she did not correspond with Mrs. Dorning?”
“I know of only one gent named Sycamore in the whole of England, sir. The note was for Mr. Dorning.”
Profanity came to mind in at least two languages. “Thank you for telling me. If my sisters ask, please inform them urgent business has demanded my immediate attention.”
Bowen gave him the same look Dylan had often received from soldiers assigned to Dunacre’s personal escort, equal parts resentment and resignation.
“Perhaps you can tell them that yourself.” He pointed to the doorway, where Bronwen stood, a bonnet in one hand and a parasol in the other.
“We’re walking in the park this morning,” she said. “The day is too fine to spend cooped up inside, and Tegan and Marged are talking about a picnic at Richmond later in the day. You will escort us, of course.”
Bowen maintained a diplomatic silence, while Dylan’s internal stream of invective threatened to become audible.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I am not available to squire you ladies about today. Bowen will be happy to fulfill that office, I’m sure.”
Bronwen advanced into the small office. “You are our brother. You are our host. Whatever gossip at the club, whatever damned horse auction, or—”
“Bronnie, Lydia has left.”
Bronwen’s ire deflated into an expression of consternation. “Of course she left. She’s an earl’s daughter, and she should never have been in service here in the first place. I gather you don’t get on with her brother, and she loves her brother, so off she goes.Somepeople grasp the concept of sibling loyalty.”
Dylan stared at his baby sister, who was spoiling for a fight, spoiling for a rousing set-to, when Lydia had all but gone missing.
Bronwen glowered at him, her parasol clutched in a tight grip. She’d whack him with it at the least provocation, but Dylan hadn’t the time to indulge her.
“You wanted for nothing,” he said. “You visit Town when you please to do so, and you fire off your disappointments at me as if they could not be put into a letter or conveyed by message. You are not cut off from all supply lines in Wales, Bronnie. You know where I am, and you know that I bide in London for reasons that matter.”
“To carouse with Goddard and MacKay,” she sniffed. “To gossip at Horse Guards, to—”
