Seducing Mr. Heywood

by Jo Manning

  Simply, quietly, with great restraint, the vicar replied, “I love her.”

  “This will not do!” Ashley’s frustration with his son was clear. He took Charles’s arm and shook it, hard. The gesture barely registered with Charles; he was oblivious, his attention riveted on Sophia, who now laughed aloud with Lord Brent. Brent, a more appropriate suitor for the beautiful widow than he, a poor cleric, would ever be.

  He sighed. “It matters little, as Lady Sophia is not interested in wedding me. But I tell you, sir, with respect”—his tone was adamant—“I will not marry anyone simply in order to be wed. Charlotte Anne Mainwaring and I do not suit, and that is the end of it. I am truly sorry if I have disappointed you, and Mother, and the Mainwarings, but Charlotte Anne would be happier with another man.”

  “I beg you to think upon this, Charles. You should marry soon and set up your nursery. It is expected of you. And your rise in the church—” Ashley left the last unsaid, but implied. A proper wife would aid a young man desiring higher office in his chosen calling.

  Charles shook his head. “I doubt that I shall ever wed, Father.”

  Still the older man persisted, shaking his head. “This is but a temporary infatuation! You will soon forget her, my son. Trust me on this! Women such as Lady Rowley—”

  Charles’s face twisted in pain. “I beg you, Father, not to further disparage the lady in my hearing. I hold her dear, whatever the future may bring to either of us.”

  Both men knew that the conversation was at an end. Viscount Ashley had run out of arguments. There was nothing that he could say to sway his stubborn son.

  The Rowley family lawyer, Stokes Norton, had been waiting for a chance to speak to Charles. Now he approached the vicar of St. Mortrud’s.

  Charles hid his distress over the unhappy conversation with his father and greeted the bluff, jolly lawyer in kind. “Mr. Norton, how do you do, sir? I am happy to see you here.”

  Norton indicated the gentleman at his side. “Mr. Jarley, here, is a Bow Street investigator. He was visiting me on other business when I learned of the kidnapping and called on Lady Rowley to see if we could be of assistance. We are indeed fortunate that you and Lord Brent came upon the lads.” The lawyer shook his head. “At a fair! Was it true those rascals were performing at a country fair?”

  Charles grinned. “They are rare children, indeed.”

  Norton sighed. “Ah, youth!”

  “Indeed,” Charles agreed. “But young John was somewhat logical in thinking it best not to reveal their identities to any stranger, in light of their recent experience. He hoped to find a local farmer to bring them home.”

  A passing footman served champagne from a silver tray. Refreshed, the trio walked to a bench set under a spreading oak tree and continued their conversation. Jarley, it seemed, was the investigator Norton had hired to look into the background of the Earl of Dunhaven at the baron’s request, before his marriage to Sophia.

  “A bad ’un, that one, sir,” Jarley commented. “Bad to the bone.”

  Norton nodded. “This latest escapade! What could the heartless man have been thinking? His own grandsons! And absconding with Lady Rowley’s jewelry! But the sad truth may be that he has done even worse—”

  Charles’s ears perked up. “Worse?”

  Jarley elaborated. “The death of his young wife, sir, Lady Rowley’s mother.…It were suspicious from the first. The earl was the last person to see her, and he left the house afore her body was found tangled in the weeds at the far side of that lake.” He shook his head, as if soured by the evil in the world, adding, “And he did not return for the good lady’s funeral. When he did come back, several years later, he was a right devil to the staff.”

  Charles frowned. “What did he do?”

  “He had his way with the maids. There’s more than one bastard in Kent with those distinctive blue eyes and light blond hair like the Eliots,” Lawyer Norton replied, his disgust clear. “And the governess, Miss Bane—” He spread his hands wide. “She disappeared, vanished into the air. That was just before the earl took his daughter to London for the season, before he married her off to that vile cur, Rushton.”

  “Did she meet the same fate as the Countess of Dunhaven?” Charles asked. “Lady Rowley remembers her very fondly, and I am certain that she would like to know.”

  “Ah, Mr. Heywood,” Norton turned to the investigator, the Bow Street Runner Jarley. “That is where this man comes in.”

  The trail had grown cold by the time Jarley was set upon it by Stokes Norton, acting on the orders of Baron Rowley. The pretty young governess had last been seen just after luncheon on the day of her disappearance. Young Sophia was in the library all afternoon working on her lessons. Her father, the earl, had been drinking heavily since the noon meal. The servants all remembered his particularly foul humor, and that a loud argument had erupted between him and the governess in the upper hallway, some distance from the library.

  Miss Bane and her employer had clashed several times, but the earl’s frequent absences from the estate enabled her to remain in her post, as he’d taken little interest in his daughter’s education except to rail against the teaching of Greek and other subjects he deemed unsuitable for a woman. On that fateful day, however, the earl had been heard to shout that the governess was no longer in his employ and that she would not be accompanying her charge to London for the Season. He told her that he intended to marry the girl to the highest bidder. Sophia’s youth and beauty would command a very high price.

  Miss Bane objected vociferously to his plans for her charge, and the earl had backed her into a corner, shoving her hard. She slapped his face. This scene was witnessed by a timid serving girl who’d slipped hastily down the back stairs, fearing for her own safety if the master should notice her cowering nearby. The servant had been the unwilling object of the earl’s brutish attentions herself and knew what he was capable of doing to anyone who thwarted his wishes. Years later, the girl tearfully remembered what had occurred in those minutes in the hallway in detail, telling all to Jarley, but she had not lingered to see more of what had transpired.

  The staff did not know what followed next, as they dared not venture upstairs until hours later when the earl reappeared, demanding his dinner. The governess was never seen again; she had vanished. Her clothing and personal effects, including her Bible (a gift from her vicar father), remained in her bedchamber. When young Sophia questioned the earl, he would only say that Miss Bane had been discharged and had left straightaway. Sophia could not believe that the governess would leave without saying goodbye, but she was powerless to do anything else but accept her father’s version of the events.

  Though the suspicious menservants, fearing foul play, quietly searched the grounds near the lake, and even dragged the lake itself, remembering what had happened to their late mistress, no trace of Miss Bane was ever found on the Dunhaven estate.

  Lady Sophia later told her husband, Baron Rowley, that preoccupied as she was with her own unhappy circumstances, trapped in marriage to the brute her father had chosen, she never had the opportunity to pursue the case of the missing governess. If Miss Bane were alive, she would have sent for her belongings, but Jarley learned that no instructions had ever arrived at the earl’s home concerning their disposition. They were eventually packed away by the servants and stored in an attic.

  At about this time, coincidentally, the governess’s father passed away. Word was sent to Miss Bane at the estate, her last known address, but she had already been absent some weeks. The staff thought it a blessing that the old vicar did not know his daughter was missing. As the deceased clergyman had no family save his missing daughter, all his possessions were donated to the poor of his parish, while her belongings continued to be stored in the attic.

  Jarley’s dogged perseverance produced no new evidence. Eerily like the case of the earl’s late wife, Dunhaven was the last person to have seen Miss Bane alive. Suspicion ran deep that he had something to do with th
e matter or knew more than he was telling everyone, but, as the years passed, the cold trail grew even colder. If the governess was still alive, where was she? Why had she never sent for her belongings? Why had she never contacted Sophia? They had been so close!

  The baron kept Jarley on retainer for years, desperate to find an answer to the mystery. Though he himself began to lose hope that Miss Bane was alive, he encouraged the Bow Street investigator to keep the search active. George Rowley had wanted to put his young wife’s mind at ease, to give her the gift of knowing her governess was alive and well, but he was never able to accomplish this.

  Now, Norton wanted to know, should Jarley continue his so far failed, futile quest? What, he wondered, was Charles Heywood’s opinion? Should the Bow Street Runner continue to search for Miss Bane? It was now over fifteen years since she had disappeared.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Journeys end in lovers meeting,

  Every wise man’s son doth know…

  —William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3

  “In what parish did the Reverend Bane serve as vicar?” Charles asked Jarley.

  “For many years, sir, he had a living on the Duke of Weymouth’s estate in Shropshire,” the investigator replied.

  Charles nodded. He saw an avenue that Jarley had not explored. “A vicar’s daughter would likely have become acquainted with other clerical families. There is a network, as it were, of people with whom she would be at ease. If she were in danger, fleeing for her life, perhaps she would seek these people out.”

  Jarley stroked his chin whiskers. “I made a circle, sir, around the Dunhaven estate, and I went to the nearby villages and asked questions. No one remembered a young lady in distress, seeking aid, but I did not particularly question clerics when I made my investigations in Kent and Shropshire; I spoke to whoever would speak to me. I did make a trip to see the Reverend Bane’s successor, but he didn’t know Miss Bane, he said.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Do you think a clergyman would have hidden her, at her request and would have kept it secret when I was making my rounds?”

  “If Miss Bane were fleeing from a man who, it now seems clear, had no compunctions concerning the committing of murder, a ruthless man who assaulted young women at will, it would seem natural that she would seek a man of the cloth, tell him all, and ask for his help,” Charles replied.

  “You, sir, could have easily been hired by the Earl of Dunhaven as by anyone else. The person or persons in whom Miss Bane had confided would not have taken any chances on your character. If she had asked for pledges from these people that her whereabouts never be disclosed…Those confidences would never have been betrayed to a stranger,” Charles averred.

  “So I could have been lied to, then, by those men of God to whom I spoke?” Jarley wondered.

  “The circumstances—a matter of life or death, perhaps, for Miss Bane—would have warranted such lies, sir, in my opinion.”

  “Then, Mr. Heywood, what can we do? They would not answer me honestly at that time, so why would they answer me now, after a lapse of several years?” Jarley asked.

  “Because this time, Jarley, I will accompany you. We will go to Kent and to Shropshire. The clergy will talk to me. Especially when I inform them of what has just occurred here, and when I assure them that the earl has permanently left these shores, never to return, and no longer a threat to any honest Englishman—or woman.”

  It was decided, Charles thought. This was the last matter he had to tie up for George, and it would be his parting gift to Sophia. For it was clear to him now that he could not linger in the lady’s vicinity, a lovelorn suitor. Better to make a clean break before Sophia and Brent married and his heart was torn to shreds. Lady Sophia had flirted with him, kissed him, teased him, much as she teased and flirted with Brent. Whether she had kissed Brent or exchanged any other gestures of mutual affection with him, Charles preferred not to consider, for the sake of his sanity.

  He and Sophia would not suit; his father was correct. Brent was the kind of man she should marry, a man of the beau monde. They would be happy together, and the boys liked him. He, Charles, was the odd man out. But this matter of Miss Bane was unfinished business, and he had promised George he would do all in his power for Sophia and the boys. He would discover what happened to the missing governess. Then, he could get on with his life.

  Marriage to Charlotte Anne Mainwaring, however, was not part of the equation. If he could not marry Sophia Rowley, he would never marry. That was a vow he intended to keep.

  “Charles! What is this nonsense?” Much to the amusement of Mrs. Chipcheese (who was watching from the kitchen window), Lady Sophia accosted the vicar as he was loading his saddlebag onto his horse shortly after daybreak. Lancashire Lad snorted at her sudden intrusion, his hooves beating an impatient tattoo on the hard-packed earth.

  “My lady,” Charles said in greeting, noting her high color. She had arrived on her mare, Jezebel; both were lathered with the haste of their ride.

  “Where are you going? Lawyer Norton said that you and Jarley would be journeying together today. What business do you have with a Bow Street investigator?” She leaned down toward him. Tendrils of pale blond hair had escaped from her coiffure and her riding hat was askew. She had dressed in a hurry.

  Charles stood on his tiptoes and reached up to straighten Lady Sophia’s Hussar-style hat. It was most attractive, the black fur trim contrasting with her light locks. Her face was a perfect oval, forehead, cheeks, chin—

  Sophia slapped his hand with her riding crop. “Stop that!” she shouted, causing Lancashire Lad to step nervously to the side. “I want you to answer me, sir, now!”

  He smiled, loving her passionate nature, wanting to take that flushed, beautiful face between his hands, and—

  “Mr. Heywood!” The lady would not be put off.

  Charles sighed, unwillingly coming out of his reverie. The time was past for fantasies about Sophia; he would have to adjust to that fact. “My lady, the boys are off to the Mainwarings, Mr. Duncan is in charge of St. Mortrud’s, and I have church business to conduct elsewhere.”

  A look of irritation crossed Sophia Rowley’s exquisite face. She scowled. “I had looked forward to your company, sir. With all the excitement of these past weeks over, I was hoping—”

  “My lady, I am honored that you desire my company, but I have church matters to attend in York. Mr. Jarley is also riding that way, and I am simply riding with him for company.” Charles did not need to mention that there was safety in numbers on the highway; this was well known. As for his lie about this traveling on church business, in a manner of speaking, it was exactly that. He was planning to interview fellow churchmen to see if he could get their help in solving the fifteen-year-old mystery of Miss Bane’s disappearance.

  Sophia’s face fell. “Oh.” She twisted the crop in her gloved hands, pouting.

  The pouting lips and disappointed expression almost undid Charles. His knees buckled. No, he would be single-minded now. He had a quest to perform for his lady.

  In a small voice, Sophia pleaded, “Please take care of your business…and come back as soon as possible, Charles. I shall miss you, and we must talk of serious matters when you return.”

  Charles nodded. She wanted to tell him that she was marrying Brent. If, by staying away, he could delay hearing that unwelcome news, he would stay away as long as possible.

  Sophia bent from the saddle, swaying gracefully, and kissed him on the cheek. “Godspeed, then, my dear,” she whispered, and, turning Jezebel back toward the lane, left for home.

  Lancashire Lad butted him between his shoulder blades, reminding him sharply that ’twas time for his own departure.

  Sophia was suspicious, and restless. With the boys and Charles away, she had too much time to think. She had returned Chloe to the Browns and had no child over whom to fuss. Brent was still at the Hall, and good for occasional conversation, but he was curiously absent at times. He was a bruising
rider and she knew he enjoyed racing over the moors with his large, powerful horse. Was that how he was spending his days? No, there was something else, some other matter, occupying his time. What was it?

  Ever since he’d returned from aiding the farmers, she’d sensed a new caution in Brent, unlike his previous candor. There was something afoot with him. Her abigail Joan also seemed secretive of late. Sophia knew the girl well; Joan was hiding something. Should she confront her? Joan could not keep a secret from her mistress for long, that Sophia knew.

  A thought had taken root in Sophia’s brain, and she hoped she was wrong, but the looks she had intercepted between Joan and the handsome nobleman set off warning signals that could not be ignored. Had Brent and Joan, unlikely as it seemed, developed a tendre for each other in those few days of close contact on the farm? Was it possible?

  “Joan,” Sophia called to the young woman, who was brushing Sophia’s riding habit in the dressing room.

  “Yes, my lady?” Joan paused, clothesbrush in hand.

  “Lord Brent is a handsome gentleman, is he not?” Sophia remarked, watching the girl’s face closely. The red-haired abigail’s white complexion always betrayed any uneasiness in flaming blushes.

  Joan averted her face, absently picking long blond hairs from the dark blue wool of the riding habit. “Yes, my lady,” she responded in a low voice. “He is that.”

  “La,” Sophia continued, “but handsome is as handsome does or so the old saying would have it. I myself think Mr. Heywood is the better looking of the two gentlemen.”

  Joan shook her head, the bright red curls bouncing about her heart-shaped face. “You may find him so, my lady, but I think Lord Brent is by far the handsomer. She began to brush down the skirt of the habit vigorously.