She repeated what she’d said earlier, only this time more slowly, as if better enunciation could make Arnaud comprehend. “Mr. Seaton packed a bag and headed for the post chaise yesterday, a little before noon. Didn’t say where he was going, or when he’d be back. Tis nothing to my mind what these young blades get up to, long as they pay the rent on time.” She stuck out her chin and pushed an escaped gray curl back beneath her mob cap.
A strong odor of cooking cabbage and onions assailed his nose. For all the gentlemanly airs Teddy Seaton put on, his boarding house, though respectable, had the rundown look and smell of having seen better times.
Arnaud turned over and over in his mind where he’d seen the landlady before. She seemed so familiar. She had unusual gray eyes. The color turned with every shift of light through the cracked mullion windows.
And then he remembered. Captain Charles Lambert. That bloody night in the Bay of Algiers. Arnaud saw him fall, his life draining from a gaping wound in his side. In better times he’d met the captain’s lady at one of Admiral Pellew’s dinners.
“Mrs. Lambert?” Arnaud asked. “Captain Lambert’s widow?”
She bowed her head and when she looked back up, there were tears glistening in her eyes.
“You served with Charlie.” Her voice conveyed a certainty.
Ah. She remembered him as well. The high color flooding her face betrayed embarrassment for her circumstances.
“We regret your loss, Madame.”
At that moment, a tall young man swung into the shabby drawing room. “Do you require assistance, Mother?” He gave him and Cullen suspicious looks.
“This is my son Charles,” she said. “These men served with your father and were asking after Mr. Seaton. Did he say anything to you about where he was bound?”
The youth looked askance at the two strangers in his mother’s parlor before answering. “He spent a lot of time at the Dog and Partridge. Maybe someone down there knows.”
Arnaud moved close to the young man. “Is there anyone else in the neighborhood who might know where he was headed?”
“He doesn’t have many friends, at least none that I know of.” Young Charles shifted his eyes away from Arnaud’s questioning look.
“Thank you for your help,” Arnaud said, and privately determined to give Mrs. Lambert’s name and address to his mother for inclusion in her fund for widows and orphans of sailors lost at sea. Captain Lambert’s little family certainly deserved as much assistance as any of the others she helped. He would have to ensure the Lamberts never discovered the source.
Before they took their leave of Mrs. Lambert, Arnaud gave her son his address and a few coins to continue to look to Mr. Seaton’s whereabouts and to notify him as soon as their boarder returned. The young man stared at the money for a few seconds before nodding and extending his hand.
“Lady Howick’s lackwit nephew apparently has disappeared without a trace,” Arnaud said, and made a quick step to the side once they emerged onto Duke Street to avoid a loaded brewer’s dray thundering by, drawn by two powerful horses.
After the noisy dray clattered on down the block toward the pub,Cullen offered an observation. “Don’t you think young Charles seemed a bit uneasy when we asked about Seaton?”
“Yes, my thoughts exactly.” Arnaud’s years of command in the Royal Navy had made him bristle at the hesitation in the young man’s voice and actions when they questioned him. Arnaud was all too familiar with young recruits evading questions they did not want to answer.
Chapter Seven
Sophiebent deep over the latest volume of “Ackerman’s Repository.” She and Lydia had cleared off a table in the Howick family drawing room and were hard at work, intent on finding suitable styles for the coming Season before their excursion the next day with Mrs. Bellingham to her mantua-maker.
A crackling fire had been set in the fireplace to offset the raw, early March weather outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. St. James Square had turned into a white blur with tree branches hanging low with heavy, wet snow.
Sophie feared the light slippers and frothy hemlines that currently seemed the fashion would be the death of them if the fierce winter winds and snows continued through Easter, a little over a month away.
“You need two of these, one in cashmere, and one in velvet,” Lydia said, and pointed to a long pelisse that swept to the illustrated lady’s ankles. “Four or five of these…” Her finger hovered over a page of extravagantly trimmed bonnets.
“Stop,” Sophie said, and held out a hand. “Stop and please listen. I cannot put such a burden on your grandmother.”
“But it’s not a burden. She said she wants to help you.” Lydia made a slight moue as if she’d mistaken Sophie for one of her easily misled beaux.
Lydia had already had a Season the year before, but none of the suitors who were ready to come up to scratch had created so much as a ripple on the stream of her never ending whirl of balls and events. Sophie knew because even when she had lived in her father’s household, she and Lydia had exchanged letters almost every day. Sophie suspected her friend was having too much fun to be bothered with capitulating to an engagement and limiting her social possibilities to just one man.
“What doyouthink you need?” Lydia extended her pout with a deeper frown. “You’re no fun anymore.”
“I need just enough of a wardrobe to get a proposal from a ‘proper gentleman,’ whatever that entails.” Sophie turned back to the hefty volume and turned a page. “Let’s apply our minds to this puzzle. Easter is April 2, and everyone will go back to the country by the end of July. That’s only four months, a total of sixteen weeks at the most.
“If I attend an average of two events a week, that should be enough to find someone who is interested in my inheritance. Of course, no one will take much notice of what I wear, so it doesn’t matter if I wear each ensemble twice. That’s no more than thirty-two events. I know I could make do with ten gowns and an assortment of modifications. I’ll add in one cape, a spencer, a pelisse, and maybe two bonnets we can change out with different trims.”
