Page 71 of The Bridal Quest

She said the words with a touch of amazement in her voice. "I'd never seen him look like that before. Usually he as a hard, cold man, but he looked scared that day. I could see his hands trembling. And then I realized that he must have loved her, even with the way he was. He told me that her ladyship and Master Gideon had been taken, stolen away and held for ransom." She sighed. "He sent that Owenby fellow out to give them the ransom, but then they didn't give you back. And I knew she must be dead."

"Did you ever think that perhaps she had not been taken?" Irene asked. "That she might have run away?"

Lady Selene's former maid looked at her a trifle guiltily. "I—I did, my lady. Right at first I did. It seemed odd, you know, that kidnappers could have come into the house and taken her and the boy without waking anyone up. I thought maybe she had deceived the earl, though it seemed too cruel a trick for her to play. But she had been so unhappy, and I thought it must have been because she had broken it off with the man, whoever he was, and I thought maybe she could not bear it anymore and decided to just run away and go to him. She would have taken you with her, sir, if she had left, for I know she could not have borne to leave you behind. So I— Well, I didn't tell his lordship, but I went to her room checked her clothes, just to see if there were any missing."

"And were there?" Irene prompted when the woman fell silent.

"No. The only missing dress was the one she had been wearing the night before. But there was a nightgown gone, the one I'd laid out on her bed, and I couldn't find her dressing gown. And it seemed to me that one or two of her petticoats were not there. I couldn't be sure. She had a number of them, and there were some in the laundry to be washed."

"It doesn't seem like much to take with her if she had run away."

"No, ma'am. But that would have been like her. She wouldn't have wanted to take anything from him. She wouldn't have thought it was right."

"None of her jewelry was gone? Her hairbrush? Perfume?"

Nancy shook her head. "That was why I thought she must have been abducted after all. She wouldn't have wanted anything of his, but she would have needed her brush and mirror, wouldn't she? And what use would her perfume be to him? So I knew it must have been true—that they came in and took her and the boy. They must have just grabbed up the nightgown and dressing gown because they would have been lying right there, wouldn't they?" She frowned, started to speak, then stopped.

"What?" Irene asked quickly. "Was there something else?"

"Only ... her little clock was missing."

"Her clock?"

Nancy nodded. "It's odd, isn't it? Doesn't seem like something someone would take if they were abducting someone, does it?"

"No, not really," Irene agreed.

"But neither does it seem the sort of thing someone would take if she were running away," Gideon added.

"That's true, sir, except it was something special to her. It was her mother's, a French ormolu clock. Pretty, it was, and not too big. You could hold it in your hand. She kept it on her dresser. It made me wonder, because it was something she might have wanted to take—it was hers, after all, not his, and she treasured it because it was her mother's. Her mother died when she was but a girl, you see," she added in explanation. "So I thought it might show she did run away, but ..." Her voice hitched, and she paused to regain control, then went on. "But I think maybe it was just that I wanted so much to think that she wasn't dead. That somebody hadn't taken you and her, and then killed you both." She shook her head. "Hope's a powerful thing, can make you think things that aren't true. More likely one those ruffians just figured that clock was small and easy to snatch, and would bring a few pounds."

Nancy lapsed into silence then.

"Are you sure that the times when she was late to bed had been some months prior to when she was abducted?" Irene asked.

The woman nodded. "Oh, yes, my lady. She had been sad for some time."

After that Nancy had little else to say, beyond a few more reiterations of how glad she was that Gideon had come home and how happy his mother would have been that he had survived. Gideon and Irene soon took their leave of her and returned to their carriage.

For the first part of the ride back to the Park, Gideon was silent, and Irene remained so, as well, suspecting that he needed some time in silence to come to terms with what Nancy had told them.

Finally, when they were well away from the village, he broke the silence, saying, "She was right about hope. You want to believe so much that eventually you do. I don't suppose we will ever know the truth of what happened."

"No, probably not," Irene agreed. There was a sadness in his eyes that made her want to lean across and take his hand, but she refrained.

"The thing is—if my uncle is correct and my mother did not run off with a lover, it raises a difficult question."

Irene looked over at him. "What actually did happen to Lady Selene?"

He nodded. "Yes. Was she killed? Did someone steal her from her bedroom?"

"But we know that your father made up the story about her being abducted. So that is not a possibility. He told his valet—if we are to believe him—that Lady Selene left him a letter telling him that she was taking you and running away."

"A letter that only he read," Gideon put in. "He told my grandmother about it, too, but I did not get the impression that she actually read it, only saw him waving it about. Convenient."

"Are you saying ... do you think that your father ... murdered her?" Irene's voice grew hushed as she said the words, as though saying them aloud would give reality to the events.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I—the maid seemed frightened of him. Even his mother agreed that he was quicktempered. It is not something I like to consider, the possibility that I was sired by a murderer. But what other options are there, if she did not run away? Are we to believe that someone else crept into the house, stole her from it and killed her? After forcing her to write a note to my father, of course, making it look as though she had left voluntarily?"