Page 12 of Hold Me Fast
Jowan wanted to run all the way back to Cornwall, but he stopped on the street and forced himself to take the paper that Bran thrust at him.
“First paragraph, she is worried about you. She still cares. Second paragraph. She wants you to remember her as she was. She is ashamed of who she is now, from the sound of it.”
Bran stabbed at the page. “There’s nothing there about not wanting you, about having outgrown you. ‘You are my sweetest memory.’ ‘Please remember me.’ Up to you to change her ‘no’ to a ‘yes’, I would say. If you want to. Maybe she is right, and she has changed too much for you to swallow.”
“Never,” Jowan replied, fervently.
“We need to find out what has happened to her,” Bran mused. “Treat it like the rest. We’ve solved the problem of Thatcher and the investors, or nearly. We’ll look for your father’s solicitor tomorrow and figure out whether we can recover anything there. This is just one more problem to solve. What has become of Tamsyn Roskilly, and does she need a knight in shining armor, or to be left alone?”
Jowan took a breath and then another. Perhaps the letter hadn’t killed him, after all. And Bran had made a good point. Several in fact. “We don’t have enough information,” he said. “I wonder what Drew knows about the Earl of Coombe?”
“Or his friends,” Bran commented. “If you don’t mind involving them.”
“A barrister and a viscount,” Jowan mused. “They could be useful, but I have no claim on them, Bran.” Drew had taken them to his meeting with Mr. Fullerton and Lord Snowden after they left Thatcher’s rooms. Drew’s men had found nothing incriminating, but Beckleston had been less careful. Both Fullerton, who had overseen the search of the office, and Snowden, whose group had searched Beckleston’s home, arrived at the meeting very pleased with what they had found.
“I’d be better pleased,” Snowden had complained, “if we had also found our miscreants.”
Drew had introduced Jowan and Bran as former students and possibly future partners. “Trethewey owns the mine Thatcher sucked us into, and he and his brother are in London to find out why the money Thatcher was collecting has not yet arrived.”
“I let them think we were only in London to investigate Thatcher,” Jowan said to Bran now, referring to Drew’s friends.
“Drew told them that,” Bran pointed out. “Or implied it, at least. And wearehere for that purpose, at least in part. It can’t hurt to raise the topic of Miss Lind and Coombe.”
“When? When we are presenting our credentials and the progress on the mine to persuade their investment group to give us their money despite my poor judgment in agents?”
“Perhaps not,” Bran acknowledged, but I daresay we can find an opportunity.”
Shortly after the brothers arrived back at their rooms in the hotel, the manager brought Jowan a small pile of mail.
“We have been invited to amusicaletomorrow night,” Jowan told Bran. “Invitation only. For the benefit of a hospital apparently. The hostess is the Duchess of Winshire. Isn’t the Duke of Winshire Drew’s father? I thought he was a widower.”
Bran, who had a far greater interest in the London news than Jowan, knew the answer. “He married again several years ago—to the widow of the Duke of Haverford. According to the papers, the pair were sweethearts before they both married elsewhere. I imagine we have Drew to thank for the invitation.”
Jowan nodded. “We had better go, then.” He could not find any enthusiasm for the evening. The last thing he wanted to do was meet a lot of aristocrats at a fancy party when all his heart wanted was to storm Coombe’s house or alternately flee back to Cornwall and hide himself away.
Bran shrugged. “Perhaps the subject of your lady will come up tomorrow since music is the entertainment for the evening.”
*
The next daywas frustrating. The solicitor their father had been dealing with was no longer at the address Jowan had for him. Their father’s papers had been in such a mess that it had taken Jowan and Bran three months after they took over the office to realize certain irregular receipts were probably profits from investments handled by someone in London, and possibly connected to a couple of large payments that had left a substantial hole in the accounts a couple of years before the payments started to arrive.
Another three months had passed before they tracked down the name of the man, by which time the receipts had stopped and none of Jowan’s letters received a reply. And now, they discovered, he was not where he was supposed to be anymore.
No one in the building knew where he had gone, either. They went from office to office seeking someone who might have been in the place for more than four years, but without success. “I suppose your letters finished up in somebody’s bin,” Bran said. They proceeded to visit the buildings on either side of the address, but no one they interviewed claimed any knowledge of the man.
They also called on the Earl of Coombe and were denied at the door.
“Let’s go back to the hotel, and I shall buy you a drink before dinner,” Bran said.
Jowan would prefer the drink without the dinner. He was doing his best to remain positive, but the word “no” kept echoing in his mind and, somehow, in his gut, too.
Still, Bran wasn’t about to let him stew in his own misery. Besides, Jowan knew he could not turn up drunk to the musicale. He owed it to his people to make a good impression on these Londoners, especially those who were going to decide whether the new mine went ahead.
They had brought evening wear with them—Jowan had Bran to thank for that, too. He had insisted they should be prepared for all eventualities. They had both been outfitted by a Plymouth tailor and were—or so the man had assured them—elegant enough for London Society.
Certainly, Bran looked good in his, and Jowan could have been his twin but for one inch more in height and hair that was a lighter shade of brown. They had both chosen black for breeches and coats. Jowan had a green waistcoat embroidered in copper and Bran’s was blue with silver embroidery. The clocking on their stockings matched the embroidery, as did the buckles on their black shoes. A pin on their white cravats added another spot of color—green for Jowan and blue for Bran.
From what he’d seen on his way around London, Jowan wondered if many of the gentlemen would fill their garments to as much advantage. He and Bran both lived active lives, turning their hands to anything needed on the estate’s farms, in the mines, or on the fishing fleet.
