Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"W HAT NONSENSE IS THIS ?" Mr. Douglas asked in a nettled voice. "Who's an imposter?"

"The man who came to me in London, sir," Nathan answered. "He told me he was Malcolm Douglas, and he claimed to be my father's legitimate heir."

"That's ridiculous," Douglas said crisply. "Malcolm is my heir."

Nathan glanced at Verity and she shrugged. There seemed little point in continuing that argument right now. The entire case had been turned on its head.

Nathan clearly thought the same, for he said only, "Nevertheless, a man approached me, making that claim. Clearly, he was not actually your son." Nathan gestured toward the portrait. "But I had no way of knowing that. In tracking down his claim, we wound up here."

"The devil you say," the older man blurted.

"It's true. I was there," Verity told him.

"And who are you?" Mr. Douglas frowned at Verity.

"I'm Verity Cole, and I am an investigator."

"A female? I never heard of such a thing." This statement seemed to nonplus John Douglas as much as the rest of their news.

"Why would anyone pretend to be Malcolm?" Flora Douglas asked in a bewildered tone.

"Our thought was that he was trying to get Mr. Dunbridge to pay him in order to avoid a scandal," Verity explained. "If your son was taken, then perhaps the imposter did it to keep the real Malcolm Douglas from showing up and ruining his scheme." She paused. "Have you received a demand for ransom?"

"No." Flora Douglas began to twist her handkerchief into knots again. "And it's been weeks."

"If you'd tell us exactly what happened, perhaps we could try to help you find him," Nathan offered.

Both the Douglases stiffened, and Verity suspected they would have liked to refuse anything from a Dunbridge. But then the woman sagged, leaning against her husband, and Mr. Douglas sighed and said, "Come in, then." He looked across the entryway to the servant who still hovered there. The servant's expression was placid, but Verity had spent enough time pretending to be a maid in Lady Lockwood's household that she knew there would be much gossip in the staff's quarters tonight. "Bring us a pot of tea and send Cummings to us."

Mr. Douglas ushered Nathan and Verity into the drawing room and gestured toward a sofa. "What is it you want to know?"

"Where exactly was your son taken, Mr. Douglas?"

"In Delbourne, Cummings said. Malcolm was on his way to London."

"I knew he should never have gone to London," Mrs. Douglas put in bitterly.

"He was going to visit his uncle?" Nathan asked. At the other couple's surprised looks, he added, "We talked to Mr. Robert Douglas after the imposter came to me with his claim."

"And Robert said that was Malcolm?" Douglas asked in amazement. "He didn't set you straight?"

"He never saw the man, and we didn't ask him about the claims the man made. It was rather a delicate subject, you see. We merely wanted to find out if he knew Malcolm. He told us that he hadn't seen Malcolm, but he assumed it was simply because his nephew was a young man who wanted to see London without an uncle hanging about."

Flora snorted. "He would think that. I knew he wouldn't look after Malcolm properly."

Her husband smiled at her indulgently. "Malcolm is thirty-four, my dear, hardly a child. He's been on his own for some time."

"Yes, but he was in Edinburgh then," Flora retorted. "Look what happened as soon as he left Scotland."

A man walked into the room and said diffidently, "Sir, you wished to see me?"

"Ah, Cummings. Yes." Mr. Douglas turned to Nathan and Verity. "Cummings is Malcolm's valet. He was traveling with Malcolm when he was abducted." He looked back at the valet. "Tell them what happened, Cummings."

"Yes, sir. Master Malcolm and I took the Great Road. We spent the night in Delbourne—that's a village just before Stevenage. It was going to be our last stop before the city. And then..." He swallowed. "The next morning Master Malcolm walked down the road a bit, just to stretch his legs, you see, as he gets restless in the coach. I took his things to the carriage and when I turned back and looked for him, I saw these...these two scoundrels jump out and grab him." He looked over at Mr. Douglas and said earnestly, "There was nothing I could do, sir. I tried—"

"Yes, yes, Cummings, we understand. I know you wanted to help him."

The valet swung back to face Nathan. "There were two of them, and they were so quick. They knocked him over the head and threw him into a carriage, then took off. I shouted at them to stop and ran after them. By the time I got back to our coach, they were nowhere in sight. We followed, but when we reached Stevenage, well, there was no way to know where they'd gone. We didn't know what else to do, so we came back." Cummings sent Mr. Douglas another apologetic glance. "I'm so sorry, sir."

"I know. No one blames you, Cummings," Douglas said. His kind words raised him a little in Verity's view.

"Where exactly did these men come at him?" Nathan asked.

The valet stopped and cast his eyes up, thinking. "They charged out from a hedge at the edge of the village, just past the tavern on the right. Um, the Bull and Bear, I think? Or maybe that was the one by our inn. The Green Lion?"

"That's fine. As long as it's the last tavern going toward Stevenage, I'm sure we can find it."

Nathan turned to the Douglases as the servant slipped out of the room. "We'll inquire in that village and do whatever we can to find Malcolm. I think our best hope will lie in finding the man who is impersonating him." He cast a glance at Verity, perhaps remembering that she was the detective, but she merely nodded. Normally, with Sloane or some other man she would feel the need to wrest control of the investigation back. But it was nice seeing Nathan work—he really did have a head for this.

"Mrs. Douglas," Verity spoke up, "it would help us a good deal if you had a likeness of Malcolm that we could show people when we inquire about him. Perhaps you have a small portrait of him?"

The other woman closed her hand protectively on the locket she wore around her neck. "I..." She cast a pained look at her husband. "No. John..."

"I promise we will give it back to you when we find him," Nathan told her, and apparently the woman could see past his father's name enough to recognize the honesty in Nathan's face.

Flora took in a short breath and lifted the chain over her head. She rubbed her thumb over it once, then handed it to Nathan. He and Verity made their brief farewells and exited the room quickly.

Verity was surprised to see the butler standing by the door, a basket in his hands. He held it out to them, saying, "Here's a bit of food for the road. We hope and pray you will find the young master."

There was a glimmer of moisture in his eyes, and it touched Verity. The true Malcolm must be a decent sort for the servants to truly care. She took the basket from his hands and hooked it over her arm. "We will do our best. Thank you."

Outside Nathan draped the locket around Verity's neck, then took the basket and opened the carriage door, giving her a hand into the vehicle. It struck Verity that this was another thing that ruffled her feathers with other men, but she didn't mind when Nathan did it. It was simply a part of Nathan's good nature. Or maybe I have changed , she thought .

It made her a little uneasy to think that Nathan might have such influence over her, so she started to talk about business as soon as Nathan sat down beside her. "I knew there was something off about him. I should have thought of the possibility that he was impersonating Malcolm Douglas."

"I don't see how you could have figured that out," Nathan replied. "We'd never seen the real Malcolm."

"Well, we certainly should have been more specific with his uncle than saying Malcolm was tall, blond, and blue-eyed. That could fit any number of men." She paused. "But his impersonation makes sense of several oddities in the matter." She began to count them off on her fingers. "He didn't arrive at his uncle's, as he had said he would. The idea of scandal staining his name—either one—didn't bother him. He didn't pursue the matter in court because he knew he couldn't even prove he was Malcolm, let alone prove that Malcolm was your father's heir. All he wanted was to get some blackmail money from you."

"And leaving his inn, that always bothered me. But the imposter wouldn't want to make it easy to find him. I could have brought someone with me who knew the real Malcolm. His uncle, say. Or even if I just told his Uncle Robert where he was, that would have been disastrous for him."

Verity nodded, then straightened. "Those men. The ones who attacked us. He could have sent them."

"The imposter? Why? It wouldn't have benefitted him to have us harmed."

"Maybe he grew alarmed because we met Malcolm's uncle at that Scottish party. He was afraid Robert Douglas would look for him." Verity chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. "Or he may not have expected us to investigate his claim. But when we did, he realized that we might discover that he wasn't really Malcolm . Consider the timing. The attack on us was after we'd talked to his uncle and after we'd tried to track Malcolm down at his inn."

"True. But that doesn't explain why they were asking us ‘where.' Still, we have not been set upon again, so I will not complain. The most important thing to me is that you are safe."

Verity slid over to snuggle against his side and Nathan's arm went around her shoulders.

This was so very nice. She didn't want it to ever end. Verity had never had permanence, nothing to make her stay. There was nothing in her life she could not change just as easily as she slid from one role to another. Even her house, satisfying as it was to have a home, was something that she could sell and leave. But Nathan... Nathan anchored her. Whatever flight of fancy she pursued, Nathan was still there, so sure, so even, so very much himself, and her heart quailed inside to think of him not being there, of living a life without him.

It was dangerous to want something so much. Verity tried never to do it. But she wanted this life with Nathan. And she would continue to ignore the knowledge that sat darkly in the back of her mind: the truth that their time together would end, that Nathan could never be hers.

"We'll have to look in the village where the real Malcolm was abducted, of course—Delbourne. But it's been some time, and I can't imagine we'll find anything helpful there," Nathan mused. "I think the surest way to locate Malcolm is to find the imposter and make him take us to Malcolm."

"You are very set on finding him, aren't you?"

"Yes, of course. He's my brother." Nathan turned his head to look down at her.

"Half brother. One you've never known, from a household that despises your name."

"That doesn't change the fact that he's family."

Verity sat up and looked Nathan in the face. "You do realize that he may not be imprisoned."

"You mean the imposter might have killed Malcolm."

Verity nodded. "It's easier to simply get rid of a man than to hide him somewhere and bring him food and water. Less risky."

"I know." Nathan sighed. "And believe me, I don't want to be the one who carries that news back to his mother."

"Grandmother." Verity nestled back against his side. After a moment she said, "Do you think Malcolm knows?"

"That he is really Margaret's son? Or that his father was George Dunbridge? That he has a brother?"

"Any. All of it."

"I think—the way his mother said he would not have come to me and claimed to be my father's son, I think he must know the truth and he's been raised to despise my father. But however much he knows or doesn't know, I think that to him and Flora, they are mother and son."

"It will devastate her if we don't find him. Even if he's dead, it would be better to know than to spend the rest of her years wondering."

"We'll find him," Nathan said firmly. "We could learn something in this village. I doubt his valet investigated—his thought, of course, was to chase after the other vehicle."

"Perhaps we will," Verity agreed, though she doubted it. Even if there had been some evidence, after all this time, it wasn't likely to still be there.

*

W HEN THEY REACHED Delbourne two days later, her doubts were justified. They asked first at the inn where Cummings had said he and Malcolm had stayed. No one in the inn remembered Malcolm, even after they showed them the miniature portrait in the locket.

"Good-looking chap, in't he?" the girl at the tavern said, but shook her head. "But I don't remember him. It gets terrible busy in here some nights."

The ostler in the stables said, "Oh, aye, I remember his valet running in, all upset and shouting that someone had been kidnapped," the ostler said. "Don't remember his name."

"Was this the man who was kidnapped?" Verity showed him the locket.

"I don't know, miss. I didn't see him. The fancy folk don't come in the stables, just the drivers or post boys."

They walked down the street to the tavern Cummings had mentioned, the Bull and Bear. A hedge grew just past the inn, and they followed it to a narrow break in the shrubbery. Verity walked through the break with Nathan behind her, and they looked over the ground behind it. There were scuff marks and footprints, but no way to tell whether the marks were old or new.

"Look." Verity's voice rose a little bit in excitement, and she bent to pick up a small crumpled bag caught in the tangled branches at the bottom of the hedge. Straightening out the bag, she showed it to Nathan.

"Fairborn's Confectionary," Nathan read, and he glanced up sharply at Verity. "Just like the bag of lemon drops that fell out of our friend Hill's pocket during the fight."

"Curious, isn't it?"

"Very. Let's check inside the tavern next door. Surely these two didn't spend all their time out here in the bushes eating lemon drops."

Inside the tavern, the barkeep raised his eyebrows. "Two men who were here a month ago? Nay, how could I remember that?"

"They were from London," Verity said in an attempt to prod his memory. "Dark-haired. One short and square and one tall and thin."

Nathan held up the small bag. "The tall one was fond of these sweets."

The man still shook his head, but a customer sitting beside the bar spoke up. "I remember those two. He was fair devoted to those lemon drops." He nodded toward the bag in Nathan's hand. "Not sure when that was, though. At least a fortnight ago."

The tavern owner gave his customer a skeptical glance. "And how do you remember that, Walt? You're foxed by nine o'clock every night."

"Because that short one bumped into me and spilled half my glass," Walt answered, his voice filling with indignation at the memory. "I would've drawn his cork, I'll tell you." He pantomimed a punch, then added candidly, "Only he looked like a bruiser." He turned to the barkeep. "Don't you remember?"

"Oh, aye, I remember you whinging on about somebody spilling your ale. Didn't know it was them."

"Well, they were just here that once," Walt said generously.

"Did you speak to them?" Verity asked the customer.

Walt snorted. "Are you daft? He gave me such a black look when I told him to watch where he was going—I wasn't likely to chat with 'em."

"Did you happen to hear anything they said to each other?"

"Nay." Walt looked disappointed. "They were too far away. They sat in that corner by themselves all evening." He pointed across the room. "And then they left. Haven't seen them since."

"So you've no idea where they went afterward? An inn, perhaps?"

The other man shook his head. "But that's worth something, isn't it?"

"Yes, you've been very helpful." Nathan dug out some coins. "This should see you through this evening."

"I think we can be certain now that Malcolm—the real Malcolm—was abducted by the same men who attacked us," Verity said to Nathan as they walked out the door.

"Yes, I think it's unlikely there are two sets of ruffians who fit the same description involved."

"This means they must have been working for the false Malcolm," Verity said.

"Yes, I have to admit I was wrong. It seems unlikely that Lord Arden would have hired the exact same ruffians that kidnapped Malcolm Douglas," Nathan agreed.

"It makes our task easier. We at least know their names, which is more than we have for Imitation Malcolm. All we have to do now is track down Shoemaker and Hill."

Nathan let out a groan. "Not another visit to the catacombs."

Verity laughed. "This time we'll take a ladder."