Chapter 16

16

She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;

She is a woman, therefore to be won.

Henry VI, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 3

Bridger sat studying the puddle of wine on the table for as long as his pride allowed him to. It was shaped sort of like a badger, but from another angle, a longish dog. He rearranged the cups, and then his napkin, convinced that if he just kept his hands busy enough, it would somehow keep the self-loathing from consuming him whole.

He had called their kiss a mistake, when to him it was anything but. It had been the rightest possible thing in that moment, that moment when her eyes drew him in like a ship coaxed to harbor on a fair breeze. But damn her, damn Margaret Arden, she had turned him into an enemy spy with her relentless questions.

If he told her the extent of it, if he told her the truth—that he had allowed his rat bastard of a father to convince him Regina was beneath him, and that he had insulted her and played the villain until she cut off their correspondence—Margaret might hate him for it.

Instead, you chased her off, too, and here is your father's legacy, likely your only inheritance—once more you are alone.

Alone with the half-finished bottle of wine, he pressed it to his lips and guzzled, propriety be damned. It was time to acknowledge his error, time to apologize and tell her openly about the humiliating depths of his bad behavior where Regina was concerned. And it was bad, so bad she had abandoned all pursuit of her writing, all passion for her interests, because of his nasty remarks. He had called her taste childish and even disparaged Maria Edgeworth and Castle Rackrent, which he knew to be excellent. Like a coward, he couldn't simply tell Regina his father disapproved, and their engagement could not move forward, and instead forced her to be the one to withdraw.

No, like a coward you listened to your father at all.

Bridger thought of Margaret up in the room by herself and gathered the courage to go to her, fling open the door, and promise her that the kiss they had shared was not a mistake. And if he had his way, if he could turn things around, there would be many such kisses in their future, when he was a proper husband to a proper wife. As soon as he stood, the little blond boy, who had been sweeping and seeing to the rooms upstairs and suffering the proprietor's abuse, appeared at his side. He had noticed a strange ring on the innkeeper's hand, and now he saw a similar one wedged above the boy's knuckle. It was too refined a piece of jewelry for a lad of his station, and though he was not one to care much for another man's fashion, it seemed wrought for a lady's finger.

"More wine, sir?" asked the boy. He had a noticeable fidget to him, peering around like a peevish hare.

"No, thank you, I should like to know which room is mine."

"I could fetch you another bottle, sir, no cost to you, sir!"

"I'm not interested in more drink, lad," Bridger replied sternly. The boy's ring was a garnet, red as a glob of congealed blood. The brain itch that had bothered him when they first arrived returned, war-honed senses asserting something just wasn't right. A similarly slithering feeling had assailed him before the ambush that had cost Lane his arm. Bridger pushed the boy aside and strode to the stairs, then climbed them quickly.

"Sir? Sir!" The boy called after him. Bridger ignored it.

He arrived in the upstairs corridor to find eight identical doors. The lad had scuttled up the steps behind him, and Bridger took him by the scruff, whirling him around and kneeling until they were nose to nose. "What is your name?"

"A-Alfred, sir, but I—"

"Alfred, which room is meant to be ours and what is waiting for me inside?"

"You weren't supposed to come up so soon," Alfred muttered, quaking. "The wine is all paid for, you's welcome to it—"

"Which. Door."

"That 'un, sir." Alfred gingerly lifted a hand and pointed.

"The man who paid for the wine and told you to delay me, did he also give you that fine ring?" Bridger eased his grip on the boy, but just a little.

"N-no, that was the lady."

Bridger's eyes blew wide open. "The lady? And how would you describe her?"

"Thin as a reed, curly hair, real shy-like, pretty, but scared of the man, I think," said Alfred, gaining confidence. "Not from here, sir. India, maybe, like the ladies up at Pressmore. She didn't want to give up her rings, but the man made 'er."

Not Ann, surely? It had to be one of her relations.

"And where did this man and his lady go?" He was growing impatient. "Or are they still present?"

The boy shook his head and pointed to a door a bit to the left and down the hall. "I was just to say if anyone took the room, and if so, what they looked like and what name they answered to, sir. The man, he was big, sir, rough and big. He gave me the lady's ring for my help. Your wife went in and when I came back with a brick for 'er she was gone." Then, he pointed in the other direction, over Bridger's shoulder. "They're all gone. That way, sir, down the back stairs the maids use."

The innkeeper and the boy had nearly matching rings. Pimm had used the woman's jewels to buy their complicity and silence. The name Racburn wouldn't fool his brother, and he or the relation would easily recognize Miss Margaret from the estate. As he let the boy go, he went directly toward the door that had been theirs for the evening. How long had he sat stewing in the lower dining room while Margaret was missing? An hour, perhaps? More?

"And you were given no further instructions? No indication of where they might be going?"

A shake of the head, a tremble, and all the while the lad played nervously with the ring that wouldn't even fit all the way over his finger.

"Go and fetch my coat and cane."

There was nothing more to be said. He shouldered open the door, finding the slant-ceilinged room empty save for the bed, a small table, two worn chairs, a threadbare rug, and a crooked painting of a bear in a meadow at dusk. A discolored bundle of fabric lay on the windowsill, and Bridger gathered it up, finding they were Miss Arden's discarded gloves. They were pulled inside out, the inner fingertips lightly blackened with ink. He squeezed the gloves in his hands, then slipped them inside his coat pocket.

Bridger felt empty, cored, and then immediately filled with a white-hot fire. Margaret simply had to be found, there was nothing else to contemplate. The storm raged on as the boy reappeared with his walking stick, coat half-dried from proximity to a fire, and Bridger shrugged it on, a stab of guilt sinking deep as the scent of Margaret's hair came to him, fresh on the wool. He gripped the cane halfway up the shaft and pushed down the corridor, down a set of rickety steps, past a greasy door protecting the sounds of pots and pans clanging, and out the back side of the inn, into a sheltered courtyard adjacent to the stables. A smattering of dust and hay trickled out into the fenced yard, marking a light path to a gate leading to a side street. Shrieking gusts brought the rain pouring under the lip of thatch, but it was shelter enough to preserve a deep boot tread in the mud and hay. It was a single set of tracks, but deeper than one might expect, as if weighted down by a load.

The wind stilled for a blissful interval, and in the void left behind, the church bells rang out. The Angelus chimed, originating from the east, the storm sending a blaze of lightning to illuminate the horizon and the church tower spearing toward the heavens.

It was as good a place as any to start hunting.