Page 56 of His Duchess in Disguise
Leastwise he hadn’t ended up like Matthew Blank. Blank had been sent to work at the farthest farm under his father’s stern eye. Mr. Blank had a heavy hand and took a dim view of his son’s most recent escapade. Still, Henry wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have done the same as Blank had done, had that man from out of town offered him a reward for finding Miss Hoskins.
Henry longed for adventure, for money, and he wanted to be the one to win all the girls. He could see it now…he would have a whole bevy of them clustered around him, feeling his muscles and maybe even a few other things. Henry had a very high opinion of himself and was sure that all he needed was to meet a few more girls, and he could make his dream come true.
* * *
John Goodkind rode slowly along the Bath Road. Goodkind had been a footman in the Earl of Cleweme’s household for half a year. He didn’t much like the Earl, but he had to admit that his gold spent nice. The Earl paid quarterly, on time and regular, but he was a hard man to work for.
Today was harder than usual. Goodkind had been sent out along the Bath road to see if anyone remembered seeing a girl riding a pony and carrying a shaggy lapdog. Out here in the country, it wasn’t like looking for information in London. People saw his livery, and they clammed right up. One man even asked him if it was his whore that had escaped his brothel.
No, John Goodkind was not having a good day, and he was beginning to regret having taken a position in the Cleweme household. He would like to quit, but staff members who quit had a way of disappearing. He did not want to disappear.
At the first inn along the Bath Road, he had found one person who remembered seeing a girl with a sorrel pony that had a blond mane and tail, and a fluffy little lap dog. But when he followed up on the lead, it was one of the farmers’ daughter, and she was training horse and dog to be sold in London.
Frustrated, Goodkind bought a bowl of stew and a ration of oats and hay for his horse and sat down in the shade of the inn to think. It was almost as if the young lady had simply disappeared. If he weren’t too old to believe in such things, he would think that the fairies had done away with her. Or that she had been grabbed by some local madame for her brothel. Or that she had been set upon by footpads and her bones now lay in a ditch somewhere.
Ditch.What if the fool girl had turned off the main road for some reason? The locals said that there were many places where she could fall in an old barrow or otherwise come to harm.Maybe he was looking too close to the main thoroughfare.
John Goodkind finished up his lunch, collected his horse, and turned southward on the first farm track he came to. Perhaps he would have better luck looking in this direction.
He had not ridden too far when he came upon a tidy little farmhouse. In the field behind the house, there grazed a lovely little sorrel mare with a blond mane and tail, alongside an ugly-looking little donkey.
John Goodkind was thirsty and tired, and so was his horse. The inn had been a ways back, and he was mortally tired of riding through landscapes that were liberally dotted with sheep and cattle, but rather short on human habitation.
He knocked on the door, and when the farmwife answered it, he asked, “I’ve ridden out from London to look for a young woman. She would have been riding a small horse, and she would have had a little dog with her. She’s run away from home, and her father is anxious about her. Might you have seen such a girl?”
The farmwife looked at him as if he were daft, but she replied, “We’uns don’t get many such as that ridin’ out this way. She’d been on the main road, most like. But there was a girl that turned down the lane back yonder and rode out toward the chalk. You might find such, if yer lucky.”
Mr. Goodkind thanked the woman, then dickered with her for a bit of water for his horse and a morsel or two for himself. Feeling better about his quest, he rode back to the recommended lane and set out to ride across the chalk.
* * *
It was some hours after the coach and its occupants had left that Henry spotted the stranger riding slowly into the courtyard. He was dressed in the livery of some house or other. It was perfectly clear from the way the horse was limping that rider and horse had fallen or something somewhere along their way.
Henry set down the heavy tub he was carrying and walked over to the man. “Hey! What happened to you?”
John Goodkind dismounted from his horse and leaned against him. “Bloody nag slid down an embankment into some sort of old burial tomb. Can I get help? My horse is lame, and I am not doing so well myself.”
“Let me tell the cook so she can tell the housekeeper. But the Duke is well known for helping travelers.”
By the time word worked its way up the chain to Captain Arnault and the Honorable Reginald Stencombing, Goodkind was ensconced in the kitchen being fussed over by Mary Lou and Mrs. Chambers. He was sorry to leave the good meal Mrs. Chambers had placed before him and their jolly company, but when he was summoned to the great hall above, he went.
Captain Arnault looked him over, then did a bit of a double-take as he recognized the livery. “A bit of a distance from home, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m here on business,” Goodkind replied. “My master asked that I look for his fiancée, who has gone missing. He and her father are rather anxious about her. I slid down an embankment, following directions of one of the locals. I thought perhaps that she might have left the main road since no one seemed to remember her. Or that she might have come upon footpads and been left for dead.”
“What does she look like?” Captain Arnault asked.
“A little over five-foot-tall, slender, blond hair. She would have probably been riding a pony and had a little dog with her. Don’t guess you’ve seen anyone like that?”
Before the Captain could say anything, Mr. Stencombing said, “Why, yes. I have seen a young woman like that. She left here by coach, traveling with the Duke himself. I believe they plan to get married in Gretna Green.”
Captain Arnault scowled at Mr. Stencombing. “We have no way of knowing if the Duke’s fiancée is the same young woman. In fact, it is very likely that she is not.” Then, feigning ignorance of the livery that Goodkind was wearing, the captain added, “Who was it you said you were working for?”
After being grilled by the captain, Mr. Goodkind was glad to escape back to the kitchen. His dinner was cold by then, but at least it was food. He had also been offered a small room in the servant’s quarters to spend the night before pushing on to look for the missing girl.
Had he remained above stairs or even gone out to the courtyard, he might have seen a man in civilian garb riding posthaste on the road toward Bristol.
Reginald Stencombing did see the rider galloping away from the manor. In the back of his head, the wheels of thought began to turn. If the rider was headed out toward Bristol, what were the chances that the Duke had not yet gone far on his journey toward Gretna Green? A fast rider could easily overtake a slow coach, especially with opportunities to change horses along the way.
