Chapter Twenty-Six

A t midday, Caroline ate a meager dinner with Yves and Hetty, no doubt each of them, like her, wondering in silence what might have become of Nat. Only, for obvious reasons, she probably had darker thoughts about this than her two charges did. The day was creeping past, and still the search parties had come back with nothing.

When Patience had cleared away the dinner things from the schoolroom, Caroline suddenly remembered she’d told Sir Hugh she’d return to see him that day. The trouble now was that she was supposed to be taking care of Yves and Hetty, who, if she left them alone, would probably set out to stage their own rescue party and get into difficulties themselves. She couldn’t abandon them to Patience, as neither were likely to do as she said, and the more threatening Bridget, whom they might not have dared to cross, had been co-opted into the search. There was nothing for it, they’d have to come with her.

Rodgers had not been included in the search party, and although unwilling to allow three people in at once to visit Sir Hugh, fell back under their combined onslaught. Sir Hugh shouting at her to let his grandchildren in or he’d have her fired, preferably out of an upstairs window, no doubt helped.

“You can go,” he snapped at Rodgers. “And take that bowl of pap you brought up for my lunch with you. I need beef and ale, and a bottle of port. No. Brandy. You can go and find some for me and bring it back with you later. Be off.” He waved his hands at her in dismissal.

Glowering like a storm cloud, Rodgers departed, muttering under her breath about ungratefulness, but no one, especially not her patient, cared. Hetty slammed the door shut behind her.

“Hetty, Yves, Miss Fairfield,” the old man said, his face changing instantly from irritated wrath to friendly smiles. “I didn’t think you’d come. There seems to be something going on downstairs, but that bloody woman wouldn’t tell me about it. She said it might give me palpitations. Well, if anything’s enough to give me those, it’s not being told. So, you three can tell me or take the consequences.” He folded his thin arms, a mulish expression on his heavily lined face.

Oh dear. In all likelihood the truth was indeed enough to give an old man like him palpitations. Caroline wasn’t sure she should be disclosing anything to him.

She didn’t have long to wrestle with her conscience though. Hetty stepped in. “Nat is missing. He rode out this morning on Mama’s horse, Duchess, and she came back without him and without her saddle.”

“We saw it from the schoolroom window,” Yves put in. “She was all lathered up as though she’d been galloping, and her eyes were rolling.” He demonstrated what he thought a horse with rolling eyes might look like, tossing his curly head.

Sir Hugh’s anxious gaze met Caroline’s. “Is this true?”

Yves and Hetty both opened their mouths, no doubt to object to him suspecting they might be fabricating, but this time Caroline got in first. “I’m afraid it is. Mrs. Treloar and Mr. Trefusis have organized a search party. They’ve been gone about three hours. We haven’t heard any news though. Not yet.”

“The horse came back without her saddle?” Sir Hugh grimaced. “Something must have gone amiss with the tack—the girth, most likely. But Old Pascoe is such a stickler for maintenance. I can’t believe he’d have let anyone ride out on a saddle that was unsafe.”

Hetty gave a sniff.

Oh no, was she going to resort to the vapors again?

Hetty sniffed a second time, more dramatically. “It’s like fate. Every man in this family dies in an accident and not in their beds. It’s as if there’s a curse on this family.”

Yves shook his head. “Not Grandpapa. He’s going to die in his bed because he can’t get out of it.”

Caroline frowned at him. “Yves. Don’t say things like that. It’s not polite.”

But Sir Hugh greeted it with a loud guffaw. “The boy’s right. Although both my sons were carried off in accidents, ’tis true. And my father.”

Yves leaned forwards from the position he’d assumed on the end of the bed. “Will you tell me about them? No one ever speaks of them here, and I want to know.”

Caroline glanced at the window. She felt impotent and powerless sitting here looking after these three, but they’d surely hear if the search party returned. Where she wanted to be was out there, on the moors, searching for Nat. Her heart, which had not slowed down much since Duchess’s return, ached in a way she couldn’t quite fathom. And her stomach twisted, threatening to give her a second view of her meager dinner.

What she needed to do was get Hetty and Yves away from Sir Hugh so she could talk to him in private.

But he was already settled in to telling them the stories of how their respective fathers had died. “Your father, Hetty, he went first. 1802 it was. I was quite a young man then, by present standards, and I’d been intending to go down Wheal True and take young Nat with me. But something came up, and my boy, Kenver, went with Nat instead. Nat was about fifteen, I think, no more, but used to going down the mines with me and his father. A good boy, wanting to learn the business from the bottom up.”

“How old was Hetty?” Yves asked. “Do you remember your papa, Hetty?”

“Only a little.”

“She was a little slip of a thing of five years old, pretty as a picture with her grandmother’s red hair. The only one to inherit it out of all my children and grandchildren.”

Hetty patted her curls.

Caroline’s ears pricked at the sound of voices outside.

Yves bounced off the bed and ran to the window. “Nothing. Just Old Pascoe and Dickon.”

Caroline, throwing all thoughts of etiquette aside, joined him at the window. “Perhaps they’ve found him?” She undid the catch, slid the window up and leaned out. “Pascoe!”

Old Pascoe squinted up at her. “Yes, Miss?”

“Have they found Mr. Nathaniel?”

Yves shouldered his way in beside her. “Is he dead?”

What a question. How typical of a small boy.

Old Pascoe shook his head. “Not found him yet, Miss, but they sent me back to fetch a flat cart from the farm in case when they finds him, he can’t walk nor get back on a horse.”

Or if he were dead. But at least Pascoe sounded optimistic. Caroline withdrew her head and pulled Yves away from the window as he was leaning too far out. She didn’t want him accomplishing what his aunt wanted all by himself.

“Leave the window open,” Sir Hugh said. “We can hear better what’s going on, and it’s nice to get a bit of fresh air. I don’t get much of that because Rodgers thinks I’ll catch a chill.”

They returned to his bed.

Hetty, who hadn’t moved and was now chewing her nails, patted her grandfather’s hand. “Go on. Tell me what happened to Papa. I’ve never dared to ask Mama.”

The distraction would be good for her.

Sir Hugh covered her hand with his wrinkled, age-spotted one. “Nat and Kenver, your papa, went down the mine in the cage. Wheal True’s a deeper mine than Wheal Jenny and the main shaft runs straight, not like the ziggy-zaggy the miners have to do to get down Jenny’s ladder shaft.”

Yves scrambled back onto the end of the bed. “Maybe I should go and get Dash from the kitchens.”

Caroline shook her head. “He’s fine down there with Mrs. Teague.”

“He could be a search dog and follow Cousin Nat’s trail. He’s really good at sniffing out rabbits.”

“No, he couldn’t,” Hetty said. “And shut up. I want to hear this story.”

Despite herself, Caroline did too.

Sir Hugh sighed. “There was a roof fall when they were down the mine. The miners shore up the roofs with wood, you see, and there’s a lot of broken rock down there, lying about loose, that has to be held back out of the way. The miners have to follow the line the ore takes, and that’s never straight. They dig out stopes, which are like steps, and pile the rock up behind them as they go. A mine’s not a safe place at the best of times.” His eyes took on a faraway expression, as if he was remembering what it had been like down Wheal True, and what had happened to his younger son.

“Were they buried under the rocks?” Yves, typically tactless, asked.

Sir Hugh nodded. “Most of the miners in that adit were. By chance and good luck, Nat wasn’t. But his father was. And the fall let water into the mine from an abandoned working. They were at such a depth it was below high tide mark. The roof fall coincided with high water and it all came rushing in. The few miners who survived got Nat to the cage just in time, and the winding engine took them up to the surface.” He sighed. “Nat wanted to go back down to get his father straightaway, but we couldn’t, because of the water. We could only work down there when the tide was out. It took a week to clear the roof fall and fetch out the bodies.”

Hetty’s expression had not improved. This was not a cheery tale for a day when they were awaiting news of Nat.

“And my father?” Yves, ever the ghoul, asked.

“Your father went out one day in his little sailboat, for some fishing, and never came back. Simple as that. We never found his body, nor the boat.”

“What was the weather like on the day it happened?” Caroline asked.

“A fine day with a stiff breeze blowing. Good for sailing. Stayed fine all day. I remember it like it was yesterday. Your guess would be as good as mine as to what caused his little boat to sink, for sink it must have.”

“I don’t remember him much,” Yves said. “I think I was very little when that happened.”

“But I was right, wasn’t I?” Hetty put in. “Accidents happen to Treloar men. You’ll have to watch out, Yves, because after Nat, it’ll be you.”

Sir Hugh’s eyes met Caroline’s over their heads. “Wouldn’t you children like to play a game?” he asked, sounding hopeful.

Yves bounced off the bed again. “Oh yes. Draughts. Shall we go and fetch it from the library?” He looked a question at Caroline, hopping from one foot to the other in impatience.

Should she let them go? “As long as you promise to come straight back here. I shall be timing you.”

“Come on, Hetty,” Yves said. “I’m going to beat you at this.”

“No running,” Caroline called, but it was already too late as they charged out of the door.

She turned back to Sir Hugh. “I think someone has tried to kill Nat.”

To do him credit, he didn’t look at all surprised. “What makes you think that?”

“The saddle. And I only found out yesterday that he’s not Mrs. Treloar’s real son. Trefusis is after the inheritance, I’m certain. Mrs. Treloar thinks he’s interested in her, but he’s not. It’s Hetty he’s after. And Hetty’s terrified of him.”

He did look surprised this time. “Good heavens, girl, what are you, some sort of detective? You sound like you’ve been very busy. How do you know this is all true?”

She glanced toward the door, still slightly ajar. “Firstly, Nat is a cavalryman. He wouldn’t just fall off a horse. And Old Pascoe is, as you say, a stickler for maintaining the saddlery.” Were that footsteps outside? “I’ve been at dinner with the family, and Trefusis was there too. When Mrs. Treloar isn’t looking, you should see the way he ogles Hetty. She hates it. He even ogled me a bit too. But I’m twenty-seven, and I know the difference between a simple ogle and one that means more. He intends to have Hetty for himself, and I’m sure he must want the estate and mines as well. He’s got Mrs. Treloar in his pocket because she fancies herself in love with him and thinks he loves her back. There’s no fool like an old fool, as my mother would say.” Frequently about her father, but she wasn’t going to add that bit.

“Slow down, slow down. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Caroline threw another glance at the door. She could now hear running footsteps and the scampering of paws.

“I think you could be in danger too,” she got out, just before Dash ran into the room and launched himself at the bed. No respecter of etiquette, he climbed into Sir Hugh’s lap and began licking his face with enthusiasm.

Yves and Hetty ran in.

Yves was clutching the draughts set to his chest. “We saw Old Pascoe take the cart out. Mrs. Teague wouldn’t let us go with him.”

Thank goodness for Mrs. Teague.

Hetty ran to the window. “There he goes now. I do hope they find Nat and nothing’s happened to him.”

Caroline suppressed a shiver. The longer the search went on, the more likely it seemed that something had befallen Nat to prevent him coming home on foot in pursuit of his horse.

“Use that table and those stools,” Sir Hugh said, waving a hand at the far side of the room. “Set your game up by the window, over there.”

They did as they were told, and Caroline moved her own chair closer to the head of Sir Hugh’s bed. “What are we going to do?” She kept her voice down but needn’t have bothered as Yves and Hetty were now arguing as to who should have which color.

“We don’t have any proof,” Sir Hugh muttered. “But if Nat’s found, he might be able to offer some.”

Caroline nodded. “And you shouldn’t take any medicines from Rodgers. Whoever is providing the laudanum must be getting it from her, I’m sure. She must know what they’re doing. And Nat and Yves aren’t the only ones standing in the way of Trefusis. You are too.”

He nodded. “I realize that. But I can’t do without my laudanum. I have to have it in order to sleep.”

Caroline glanced at Hetty and Yves. “Well, don’t let her give you too much. Try to take the minimum amount necessary, if you can.”

The old man’s eyes clouded. “That’ll be hard to do.”