Charlotte Louise Dolan

by Three Lords for Lady Anne

  Bah, marriage was nothing but a trap. The whole idea of shackling himself to a woman for life was ridiculous—was madness—was the first step toward self-destruction. Demetrius was a case in point, saved only by a stroke of unexpected luck. With his friend’s experience as a horrible example, how could he even for a moment contemplate following such a course?

  What he needed was an early morning ride—alone—to clear his brain of such foggy, illogical notions as marriage. Without bothering to wake Daws, he dressed quickly in his riding clothes, except for his newest pair of boots, which he was unable to find. Finally he settled for an older pair, which, although comfortable, had lost forever their perfect shine.

  Holding them in his hands, he walked quietly in stockinged feet out of his room and along the corridor of the sleeping house. As soon as he judged himself far enough away from the occupied bedrooms, he balanced on one foot and pulled on his boot. He had just gotten the second one on when a small shadow came hurtling out of the darkness at the end of the corridor and crashed into him.

  Together, they went down in a tangle of limbs large and small, and in the resulting confusion it took him a moment to realize that the boy, whichever twin it was, was crying. Not whimpering as one might do because of a bumped head or a banged knee, but sobbing as if wracked by desperate grief.

  More than likely a nightmare, Bronson thought. “There, there,” he soothed, wishing Anne were at hand. She undoubtedly had more experience at chasing away the demons that lurked in the dark hours of the night. “‘Twill be all right.”

  Instead of having a calming effect, his words only produced more hysteria. “No, no, you don’t understand. Anne, Anne,” the boy wailed, struggling to get out of Bronson’s arms.

  “Shhh, shhh, you will wake everyone,” Bronson murmured, rising to his feet.

  With a sudden desperate lunge, the boy broke free and darted down the corridor in the direction of Miss Hemsworth’s room. Blast it all, thought Bronson. He stood where he was, still longing for his solitary ride, but feeling he should do something to help.

  Which was ridiculous. Miss Hemsworth was perfectly capable of handling bad dreams. Besides, the boy had already rejected his attempt to help, obviously preferring his governess’s attentions.

  Bronson took a step in the direction of freedom, but he could not ignore his feelings of responsibility—not the responsibility he had accepted years previous, to see that the twins’ estate was properly managed and their funds prudently invested, but a personal responsibility, which he was feeling for the first time in his life.

  He discovered he could no more walk away from the desperately unhappy boy than he could have a few weeks earlier abandoned Demetrius in his hour of need.

  Retracing his steps, he hurried back to Miss Hemsworth’s room. The door was ajar, and he pushed it the rest of the way open, expecting to find that the governess had handled everything in her usual competent manner. In that he was wrong.

  Looking up, she saw him standing in the doorway. “Andrew says that Anthony has disappeared out of his bed.”

  She was so beautiful sitting on the edge of her bed. Wearing something white and gauzy, her hair in tumbled curls around her shoulders, she was cradling the boy in her arms. Bronson felt his stomach clench in unexpected jealousy at the sight.

  Then the meaning of her words sank in. “More than likely he is just hiding again,” he said calmly.

  “No, no, he is not!” Like a whirlwind Andrew flew at him and began beating him with his fists. “He is not hiding, he’s not! He would never go off without me, never! He would not, he would not!”

  Bronson caught the fists that were ineffectually striking him, and Andrew collapsed against him. “Very well,” Bronson said, lifting the sobbing boy into his arms and crossing the room to sit beside Miss Hemsworth. “Then if Anthony is truly lost, we shall just have to find him. What do you think, Miss Hemsworth?”

  For a moment she did not speak, then amazingly her head came down to rest wearily on his shoulder, and in a voice that quavered in a very un-Miss-Hemsworth fashion, she said softly, “I am thinking of the shot that was fired, my lord.”

  “Nonsense,” Bronson said, although he knew very well it was not nonsense. “More than likely we will find Anthony in the kitchen eating a slice of bread and jam. Or he might even be back in his own room by now, wondering what has happened to Andrew.”

  His voice was carefully nonchalant, and it had a soothing effect on the boy in his arms, whose crying gradually died down into deep shuddering breaths.

  But when Miss Hemsworth lifted her head from his shoulder, he turned and met her gaze, and his eyes silently acknowledged the truth of her fears. Like her, he suspected a second attempt had been made to injure or kill one of the twins. He could only pray to God it had not been successful.

  * * * *

  “It is probably a prank, my lord, intended to keep all of us from our rightful duties.” Chorley was not to be budged in his convictions, and the rest of the servants were equally unobliging, all of them having at one time or another been the victims of the twins’ ingenuity.

  Anne could not really blame them, but she decided then and there that as soon as she had both boys safely together again, she would sit them down and tell them the story of the little boy who cried wolf.

  “I really have no interest in your opinion,” Lord Leatham said in a soft voice that was surprisingly full of menace. “You will do as you are instructed and organize a search of the house and grounds, and you will do it at once,” his voice suddenly rang out, and the servants’ attempted rebellion died before it had been properly born.

  “I want to help search, too,” Andrew tugged at the hand restraining him, but Lord Leatham refused to release him.

  “We have one lost boy already,” he said, “and I see absolutely no reason to have two lost boys. You will stay right by my side where I can see you.”

  And where no one can hurt you or kill you, too, Anne thought. Again her eyes met Lord Leatham’s, and she could read the same thought in his.

  * * * *

  Wishing someone would come and find him, Anthony stood up and surveyed the area around him. Nothing he saw changed his earlier estimate of where he was. The landscape was too desolate to lie anywhere except to the south of Wylington Manor. Perhaps a bit to the east, but in general south.

  He was rather disgusted with his situation. Anne had taught them such useful things, such as how to start a fire with two sticks—except he had no sticks. He could, of course, unravel the rope and make snares out of the fibers, but he was not sure there were even any rabbits in the area, so sparse was the vegetation. Besides which, he would rather go home and eat a regular breakfast.

  It was all very well for Anne to say he should stay in one place if he was lost, but she hadn’t told him what he was supposed to do to avoid suffering from excruciating boredom. The next time he was lost, he decided, he would make sure Drew was with him.

  But since he wasn’t, there was no sense staying lost any longer, not when it was now light enough that he could be sure he would not inadvertently step in a bog.

  He carefully coiled the rope and folded the blanket, then with one over his shoulder and the other tucked under his arm, he looked to the north. Selecting a particular outcropping of rock, he headed toward it. Not only was he careful to glance down frequently to check his footing, but he also paused now and again and turned around to look back the way he had come, in case he found it necessary to retrace his footsteps.

  About halfway to the rocks, he saw something that encouraged him in his belief that he was headed in the right direction. At the edge of a boggy place were some footprints in the damp ground. He walked over to look at them more closely.

  They were large. No one he knew wore boots quite that large except Uncle Bronson. How ridiculous, Anthony thought. As if anyone would believe Uncle Bronson had had a hand in this affair.

  Checking his direction again with the rocks he had picked out, Anthony
continued along the route he had chosen. To begin with, if Uncle Bronson had tied him up, he would have done it properly. But then, Uncle Bronson would never have gone off and left him in the middle of the moor, and especially not the moor south of the house.

  Anthony could still remember the day when he and Drew had decided to explore the moor south of the house. Although they had only been five or six years old, they had known perfectly well that they were forbidden to go in that direction.

  Uncle Bronson had found them after about half an hour and he had not scolded them, he had simply paddled their bottoms all the way back to the house. Hard enough to hurt. Hard enough that the next time they were bored they did not even consider going off in the forbidden direction, even though Uncle Bronson was away on one of his journeys again and could have done nothing to stop them.

  But Uncle Bronson was here in Devon now, and Anthony amused himself while he walked by considering with bloodthirsty relish how his guardian would punish whoever had done such a stupid, stupid thing.

  It was better by far to think about that than to think about how alone he was for the first time in his life. He was not so much worried about himself, of course, as he was worried about his brother. Drew might be safe back at Wylington Manor ... but then again, someone might have abducted him, too.

  * * * *

  Anne wiped the dust from her hands and gazed around the low-ceilinged attic. There appeared to be no nook or cranny she had not checked. For the moment, she was alone. Lord Leatham had joined the men who were searching the grounds outside, taking Andrew along only when the boy swore an oath “on the egg” that he would not leave his uncle’s side.

  The female servants were all helping her conduct a very thorough and methodical search inside the house, and the grooms, gardeners, and farm workers had divided up to search in ever widening circles around the house.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am.” Sally came up the narrow stairs into the attic, followed by another of the maids and a footman. “We haven’t found hide nor hair of the boy, but we found some things we thought you ought to know about.”

  She handed Anne a man’s handkerchief. “‘Tis Lord Leatham’s. It has his monogram embroidered there in one corner. I found it by Lord Andrew’s pillow.”

  The other maid then handed Anne a small bottle of cobalt blue glass. “And I found this under Lord Wylington’s bed. I ain’t never seen it in this house before. It’s got something writ on it.”

  Ether, Anne read with a sinking heart. Any last hopes she might have had, no matter how faint, now died. This was not a childish prank. Whoever had taken the boy had carefully planned the abduction.

  “And I found these tucked behind a bush by the little side door that is usually kept locked.” The footman held up a pair of muddy boots. “His lordship’s new pair. It appears they’ve been worn in a bog. And there’s no bogs here about, except if you go south, and no one in this house has any business going in that direction.”

  From the size of them, Anne could not doubt that they did in truth belong to Lord Leatham. Nor could she doubt the condemnation that was written on the servants’ faces as plainly as the word ether was written on the label.

  With a feeling of revulsion, she set the blue bottle down on the windowsill, where it sparkled prettily in the sunlight, its evilness disguised as completely as the evilness of whoever had thought up this plot.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anne was feeling very discouraged. She and the servants had searched the entire house from cellars to attics, and the only result of the search was that she now had cobwebs in her hair, smudges on her face, grubby hands, and an extremely long mental list of housekeeping jobs that should be undertaken.

  But of Anthony, the object of their search, there was no sign nor had they found any other clues to his disappearance other than the monogrammed handkerchief, the ether bottle, and the muddy boots.

  Unfortunately, checking the house was a minor task compared to checking the endless moor around them. She decided to wash the dirt from her face and hands, then join the men searching the moor.

  The unwelcome presence of Mrs. Pierce-Smythe in Anne’s room was an unexpected inconvenience, but a very minor one. With only a glance at her cousin, Anne poured some water from the pitcher into the basin and began to wash her hands.

  “So, my dear Lady Gloriana, it is indeed you. When my servants reported there was a giantess living here, I thought it could be no one but you, and see, I was correct in my assumption, for here you are in truth. How very propitious to find you here.”

  Mrs. Pierce-Smythe’s feline smile indicated she thought it was more than propitious, that it was a veritable stroke of good fortune, and the cold and calculating look in her eyes made it a sure thing that she would do her best to take full advantage of said luck.

  With her mind full of anxiety for the missing child, Anne was unwilling to devote proper attention to Dear Aunt Rosemary’s social ambitions. “Propitious? In what way?” Actually, Anne had not the slightest doubt what Mrs. Pierce-Smythe had in mind, but she wondered to herself just how blatant her cousin’s attempt at manipulation would be.

  “I am afraid I do not know a delicate way to put it, but have you perhaps kept your identity a deep, dark secret here? The servants refer to you simply as Miss Hemsworth, rather than as Lady Gloriana.”

  Anne was suddenly tired of all the assumed coyness, and she decided that even if Dear Aunt Rosemary were determined to hint around, she herself was equally determined to come right to the point. “If you intend to blackmail me by threatening to reveal my ‘deep, dark secret,’ feel free. I care not one way or another who knows that my father was the Earl of Faussley.”

  Momentarily taken aback, the widow made a game recovery. “But surely it will cost you your job if Lord Leatham discovers you have deceived him. Surely you do not wish that, when I ask so little of you. Merely to use your influence on my behalf ...” Again Mrs. Pierce-Smythe let her voice trail off, rather than coming right out and saying what she had in mind.

  A wicked impulse tempted Anne, and such was her mood that she made no attempt to suppress it. “Oh, my dear cousin, I had no idea you wished for my help. Why of course, I shall be delighted to speak on your behalf. Blood is thicker than water, after all, and you did take me in when I was a penniless orphan.”

  “Why, my dear child, that is truly generous of you.” Mrs. Pierce-Smythe was at once all smiles. “I should have known you would not forget your dear cousins.”

  “I would have come forward sooner, but I had no idea you were fallen upon such hard times. But you need worry no longer. I am sure Mrs. Wiggins can find you a suitable position, perhaps as companion to some elderly lady? I am afraid you do not have the proper credentials to be a governess, but with me to vouch for you, I am sure Mrs. Wiggins can find you gainful employment.”

  “Mrs. Wiggins? Employment?” Mrs. Pierce-Smythe’s look of shock was rapidly replaced by hostility, which she no longer made any effort to disguise.

  “Why, yes. Did you not say you wished me to use my influence on your behalf?” Anne feigned confusion.

  Mrs. Pierce-Smythe was truly stunned speechless, but unfortunately for Anne, the condition was only temporary.

  “I have not fallen upon hard times, and I do not wish to have anything to do with your Mrs. Wiggins.”

  Anne finished washing up, and her towel was very convenient for hiding her smile. When she was fully recovered and no trace of amusement lingered on her face, she turned again toward her cousin.

  “But what else could you mean? Oh, surely you did not think I have any influence in society?” She allowed her jaw to drop open in pretended astonishment. “But my Dear Aunt Rosemary, you cannot have thought things through carefully. I have no ‘place’ in society other than as a mere governess—although ‘mere’ is perhaps not the best description for an overly large governess, do you not agree?” And then Anne gave in to laughter she could no longer suppress.

  It was indeed fortunate D
ear Aunt Rosemary had never been one to pay much note to other people’s feelings, except in so far as they related to herself and to her own ambitions, else she might have realized the laughter was caused more by Anne’s overset nerves than by the humor of the request, and indeed, it was only with great difficulty that Anne was able to keep the laughter from becoming tears.

  As soon as Mrs. Pierce-Smythe had left the room in a huff, however, Anne collapsed on the bed and allowed her tears for Anthony’s safety to surface. But a few minutes later, her practical nature and common sense reasserted themselves, and she rose, dried her eyes, and went to join the others.

  * * * *

  Anthony arrived at the rocks he was heading for, then scrambled up on the tallest one and surveyed his surroundings from that vantage point. Far off in the distance and slightly to the left a bit he saw some other rocks that looked vaguely familiar. There was a tall one at the west end, and three shorter ones to the east, and the last short one jutted out at an angle, rather than standing erect.

  From the window of the schoolroom he could, on a clear day, see a similar arrangement of rocks. If they were indeed the back side of the same formation, he was not all that far from home. And breakfast, his stomach reminded him.

  He was only halfway to the rocks when he became aware of several other figures on the moor, moving back and forth in sweeping patterns. One smaller figure suddenly began running toward him, and he realized it was Drew. All his anxieties vanished, now that they were together again.

  His brother stopped a few feet away and regarded him with a critical eye. “You were gone,” Andrew said in an accusing voice. “Without me.”

  “Somebody carried me out onto the moor and left me tied up.” Anthony held up the rope. “But they didn’t know anything about real knots, so I didn’t have much trouble getting untied.”

  “Whoever it was, they should have taken both of us.”

  “That’s what I thought. You want to carry the rope?” Anthony offered magnanimously.