Chapter 17

Mrs. Emelia Probinger was in her garden, where she and I had conversed on occasions related to previous investigations. She was a thirtyish military widow who had followed the drum, and we shared a natural sympathy based on that common experience. She was practical, attractive, self-assured, and given to going her own way, deeming that a widow’s right.

“Have you and Miss West been introduced?” I asked.

“We have,” Mrs. Probinger said, smiling at Hyperia. “We’ve admired each other’s bonnets in the churchyard. Miss West, a pleasure to see you. Will you have lemonade, cider, or tea? Meadow tea for you, my lord, if I recall correctly.”

“I will join you ladies in your drink of choice.”

“Cider,” Hyperia said. “His lordship and I have spent considerable time in the traveling coach today, and I have a thirst for a cool glass of cider.”

Much of that time had been in a pleasant, dozing cuddle, and when I’d asked Hyperia if she had the stamina for one more call, she’d answered in the affirmative.

Mrs. Probinger set her secateurs in her trug, pulled off her gloves, and led us to a wrought-iron grouping on her back terrace. When last I’d been here, the trellised roses had been in vigorous form. Now, the best display was from a potted morning glory climbing to the second story on a lattice of twine. Given the late afternoon hour, some of the blooms were closing, but the display was still a lovely riot of blue-violet flowers.

“We’d like to talk to you about John Tait,” I said when the drinks were before us. “We’re searching for his errant wife at his request.”

“Good,” Mrs. Probinger said, pale green eyes narrowing. “That man has been lovesick for years, and time is not improving his situation.” She was a petite woman with strawberry-blond hair and piquant, angular features. One would not expect such a dainty creature to indulge in blunt speech and hearty laughter, but Mrs. Probinger did. She was a particular kind of military widow—tougher and more pragmatic than many of the civilian variety, hard to shock, and willing to enjoy life’s fleeting pleasures where she found them.

Her company was bracing, her cider excellent.

“Lovesick for Evelyn?” Hyperia asked.

“Of course for Evelyn. He maundered on at tiresome length about how he’d fallen from her favor, he did not understand his wife, he had no idea what troubled her and knew not how to woo her back. This was all years ago, but never was a widow less entertained by a gentleman’s company. I recall the interlude clearly. I suspect he thought we were both bereaved in a sense, and I’d be sympathetic to his situation. I am sympathetic. A sullen wife is a problem. A broken heart is a problem, but those were Tait’s problems, not mine.”

Her pity for Tait came through in her words, as did a certain bewilderment. Mrs. Probinger’s union, I had reason to know, had been no bed of rose petals. She’d mourned for her husband properly, and that was that. A husband in perpetual mourning for an extant wife would have made no sense to her.

“What exactly were John’s intentions toward you?” Hyperia asked.

“To bore me silly?”

“To make Evelyn jealous?” I suggested.

Mrs. Probinger’s gaze ranged over her garden, gone overgrown with the advanced season. “Possibly.”

“How exactly,” Hyperia asked, “did you and John tryst?”

“Tryst?” Mrs. Probinger laughed. “Heaven defend poor Evelyn if that is her husband’s idea of a tryst. He fell in step beside me a few times on my way home from church. Evelyn preferred to take the coach when wearing her Sunday finest. He offered me his arm, and I took it, though I am quite capable of walking unassisted. Mr. Tait struck me as considering himself something of a gallant, the squire with some Town bronze generously bestowing his handsome company on the rural widow.”

“He’s charming,” Hyperia said.

“Charming?” Miss Probinger pushed the pitcher of cider across the table. “Wellington is charming, Miss West. He likes women and treats them as friends. I’m fairly certain His Grace considers his best friends to be women, in fact. Lord Julian is charming. I suspect his sisters put the manners on him, and being the youngest brother, he was smart enough to acquire a few airs and graces too. John Tait is… tedious.”

What a delightful woman, and yet, I was honor-bound to pursue the truth wherever it led. “Was Tait tedious on purpose?” I asked.

Hyperia poured me more cider while Mrs. Probinger stared at me hard.

“Yes,” she said at length, “I think he was, now that you put it like that. He knew my reputation would stand up to a bit of flirtation, or the appearance of a bit of flirtation, but he had no more interest in me than I have in once again trudging across Spain in high summer. I tried to kiss him, if you must know.

“He acted surprised,” she went on, “and gave me a pretty speech about neighborly friendliness, and ‘aren’t friends life’s greatest blessing?’ He didn’t happen upon me on the way home from church again after that, and I counted myself relieved.” She took a biscuit from the plate in the center of the table. “Men are so odd. The shy ones can be full of hidden fire, the accomplished flirts are usually capable of little else, and the exquisites turn up exquisitely selfish when consideration would most be appreciated. Don’t you find it so, Miss West?”

Hyperia’s smile was the embodiment of mischief. “Precisely, but watch the quiet ones, and your vigilance is often rewarded.”

Whatever did she mean by that? The ladies were in perfect accord on some matter that escaped the understanding of a mere adult male. I stuffed a biscuit into my mouth and took refuge in lordly silence.

“He loved Evelyn,” Mrs. Probinger said. “His sentiments struck me as a combination of calf-love and genuine bewilderment at a spouse turned cold. Not a pretty sight. I hope he finds his wife and can arrange a resolution with her. John Tait is not a bad man, and no marriage is perfect.”

She spoke with the voice of experience.

“I don’t think Evelyn had access to such wise counsel as you offer.” I was coming to suspect just the opposite.

“If you were hiding from your husband,” Hyperia asked, “where would you go?”

“Interesting question. I often hid parts of myself from Dewey, and he returned the courtesy. But the whole of me? London, I suppose, but London is expensive, and I would eventually be recognized by some old acquaintance from the regiment. Where would you hide, Miss West?”

“If I were Evelyn,” Hyperia said, “I’d masquerade as another man’s wife. Nobody would give me a second look then.”

“Miss West, you have an interesting grasp of the protections of matrimony. Many a rogue will only poach on another man’s preserves in hopes that the resulting cuckoos are born into some other fellow’s well-feathered nest. Such men prefer experienced partners, and wifehood confers at least that dubious blessing. I have shocked myself with these observations. I have doubtless shocked you. I do apologize.”

She did seem a bit chagrined, while I was glad to see the assumption that wifehood equated to invisibility questioned. How many negative associations could Hyperia have with one conventionally venerated institution?

Even as that question occurred to me, I also realized that John Tait had known where he could credibly appear to stray. Petty of me, but that was not the tactic of a paragon. That was the tactic of a fool in love, but a fool all the same.

We made our farewells and, having sent the coach back to the Hall, walked the final distance across the fields.

“Where could Evelyn be, Jules? I asked you to undertake this inquiry because I thought John needed to move on, but now… I hope she’s alive.”

“Only a living woman could arrange to sell that farm, Hyperia, but if we don’t find her in the next few days, she will have all the means she needs to live in comfort on the Continent, assuming her sisters won’t steal the proceeds from her. In either case, Tait will be left to wander in a purgatory of Evelyn’s making forever.” Not entirely of Evelyn’s making, but Evelyn was certainly the party perpetuating the separation.

“We won’t allow that.”

Hyperia’s faith was reassuring, but not until we reached the Hall, and I was leafing through the day’s correspondence, did I acquire a smidgeon of hope that we might find Evelyn in time.

* * *

True to her word, Mrs. Ingersoll had accepted a second invitation to bring Merri to the Hall to meet Leander. The occasion was set for the afternoon following the excursion to Chiddingstone, and thus I had an evening to ponder my battle plan. I acquainted nobody with my suspicions, but sent a note to Tait asking him to attend me at the Hall at two of the clock.

And if my note was a bit mysterious, well, I’d earned the right to some minor theatrics. More were to follow, I hoped, if all went well.

“You look as if you’re home on leave again,” Arthur said at the noon meal. “Watchful and distracted while you exchange pleasantries in all directions.”

We dined on the terrace, though the day had that heavy, humid feel of a gathering storm. The sky was a cottony expanse of white batting and the air unusually still.

“Leander is expecting a guest this afternoon,” I said. “A young lady. He was full of questions about whether girls can have ponies and speak French.”

“Yes to both,” Lady Ophelia said, selecting a profiterole from the epergne in the middle of the table. “We can also shoot, swear, and tell naughty jokes. If you fail to inform that lad of the foregoing, I will provide him demonstrations when he’s a bit closer to his majority.”

Something about the odd weather, or perhaps my acquaintance with Evelyn’s bickering, backbiting sisters, produced a wave of affection for her ladyship. She made it possible for Hyperia and me to be together, she was a font of knowledge useful to my investigations, and she kept an eye on the nursery and on Arthur while I went gadding about.

All the while pretending that fresh country air was her reason for biding at the Hall.

“Thank goodness,” I said, “that somebody’s on hand to show the boy how to go on. I wonder if he has an extant godmother.”

Hyperia patted my hand. “He does now.” She popped a petit four into her mouth.

Had Leander been baptized? A question for Millicent, who was preparing to leave the Hall and still unwilling to join even family meals.

“Anything interesting in the post, Julian?” Arthur asked, taking the last raspberry tart from the epergne.

“You should have turned the post over to me as soon as I mustered out. I needed rest above all else at that juncture, and the mail is a reliable soporific. Three reports on the progress of harvests on the properties in Surrey and Kent. A half-dozen invitations you will not be on hand to accept, as polite society well knows. Some invoices from Bond Street. You will be the best-dressed traveler on the Continent.”

The post had also included some good wishes for Arthur’s safe travel from his cronies in the Lords, and I was reminded that His Grace had a large and demanding life. Holding the reins for him would be a challenge for any brother, especially one prone to lapses of memory and regarded poorly by much of Society.

“Banter is more fashionable than I am,” Arthur said. “The dignity of my office and all that.” He smiled self-consciously, a happy man contemplating a dream come true. Perhaps it was a day for sentiment, but as much as I’d miss Arthur, I was also—for the first time—fiercely glad he and Banter were going abroad.

Their dream was simple—a shared life, with all the ups, downs, delights, and doldrums attendant thereto—and for a time they could have that dream.

“Be outrageously fashionable on the Continent,” I said. “Cast Banter into the shade. Paris will fall at your feet. Miss West, might you join me for a postprandial stroll about the garden?”

“I’d best, as much as I’ve eaten. Mrs. Gwinnett is a treasure.”

Our cook was indeed a treasure, and she made the most scrumptious meadow tea too.

Hyperia and I wandered down into the garden and were soon by the three-tiered fountain at the center of the formal parterres.

“Keep me moving, Jules, or I will find a convenient bench and commence basking in the sun like an old tabby cat. How do you find taking on the ducal responsibilities?”

“I’m not taking them on, really. I’ll be more of a house steward. The parliamentary rigamarole, the occasions of state, the commission of the peace—all that will simply muddle on without His Grace. It’s a testament to Arthur’s integrity that he makes the time to ensure the Hall prospers as well as it does.”

“But he attends to the Hall in part because it’s the family legacy, and the only fellow who can inherit it is you.”

“And I have no intention of inheriting anything for a good long while. The very idea gives me the collywobbles. Will you do me a favor this afternoon, Hyperia?”

“Of course.” The herbaceous borders had been chopped back, the potted citrus moved into the conservatory. The garden had the feel of a lady stripped down to chemise and petticoats. Not conventionally attractive when shorn of her finery.

“I’ve invited John Tait over for a briefing, which will occur in the library. I’d like you to keep Mrs. Ingersoll company on the mezzanine while Tait and I converse.”

“You want me to eavesdrop with a guest? A guest whose presence will cause John some embarrassment?”

“She can’t cause him any more embarrassment than he has already caused himself, and she—like Mrs. Probinger—is in a position to hold Tait accountable in ways you and I cannot.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Thatwas my Perry. Able to leap where angels feared to tread and to land precisely on the truth. “I have a theory,” I said, “and at first it struck me as outlandish, but my theory fits all the facts. Hear me out.”

I explained, and when I expected Hyperia to laugh, she looked pensive. “I’ll do it, Jules, but you’d better be right. John has been through enough.”

I quite agreed, and thus when my caller arrived, I had him shown to the library. Tait did not notice the quiet click of the door latch when company joined us on the mezzanine, but I did. The allies and opposing forces had arrived, and so, I hoped, had the end of Tait’s purgatory.

Whether his next destination was heaven, hell, or the prosaic joys of married life would be to some extent up to him.