She smiled. She stuffed the blanket into the now empty hamper and picked it up and hooked her other hand around his elbow. “All I want for you is a speedy recovery. Let us not overtax you. I can keep myself busy until dinner.”
“That is quite agreeable of you.”
She chuckled. “I wonder at the women in your real life if you think I am so agreeable.”
Chapter Five
Lark walked throughthe club and found Fletcher Basildon, Baron Fowler, and Owen Thomas, the Earl of Caernarfon, seated near a fireplace sipping whisky. To Lark—and to Hugh—these two gentlemen were Fletcher and Owen, schoolmates from Eton and thus lifelong friends.
“Cheers, mate,” Owen said when he spotted Lark.
“Where is Swynford?” Fletcher asked. “We haven’t seen him in days.”
“That is actually why I’ve come to find you,” said Lark, sitting in an empty chair. One of the club’s attendants appeared with a snifter of whisky, which Lark took gratefully. “Hugh is missing.”
Fletcher and Owen glanced at each other. “What do you mean he’s missing?” asked Owen in his Welsh accent.
“He left the Rutherford ball three nights ago and hasn’t been seen since.” Lark quickly caught them up on what he knew so far and added, “Yesterday, I called on Hugh’s solicitor, Matthew Hogarth, who was anxious to help, although he had no information about Hugh’s whereabouts.”
“Is Hugh tangled up in something right now?” asked Fletcher.
“Not really. Hugh recently came into possession of a new plot of land after some distant relative died, but I can’t see how that would explain Hugh’s whereabouts. If he’d gone out to see it, hewould have told his mother he was leaving town, but she also has no idea where he is.”
Owen frowned, finally catching on. “In other words, some menace may have befallen him. He could be in peril somewhere.”
“Yes, that is what I’m saying,” said Lark. He took a healthy sip of whisky. “I’d like to enlist your help.”
“Of course,” said Fletcher. “So he just… vanished?”
“It seems that way,” said Lark. “Mr. Hogarth is making some discreet inquiries with hospitals for injured men and with Bow Street to see if any, er, unidentified bodies have turned up, but if Hugh were dead, I believe we would know that by now. Surely he’d be recognized.”
“Do you suspect some other sort of foul play?” asked Fletcher. “Kidnapping?”
“I just don’t know,” said Lark. “I’ve been thinking on this problem for days and I honestly have no idea where he could have gone, if he went somewhere of his own volition.”
Fletcher frowned and set his whisky aside. “What do we do?”
“If none of Mr. Hogarth’s inquiries pan out, I was thinking we might let a newspaperman know. That was why I wanted to speak with you, specifically, Fletcher.”
Fletcher nodded. One of his business ventures was a print shop in London, so he had connections to newspapers and could easily find someone to print something about Hugh’s disappearance and let Lark have control over the message.
“Is Hugh courting some young lady he could have eloped with?” asked Owen.
Fletcher burst out laughing. “If that were the case, he was definitely abducted.”
“Where do you think he went?” asked Owen, elbowing Fletcher.
Lark sipped his whisky. “Part of me hoped one of you might know. When I last saw him, he was on his way home. Something happened on his walk from Rutherford’s to his house. That is a short distance, but the dowager duchess says he never came home after leaving for the ball.”
Lark was momentarily distracted when Anthony, the Marquess of Beresford, walked over to greet them. Lark had made a decision that he would not alert anyone but those he trusted most that anything was amiss with Hugh, and he glanced at both Owen and Fletcher, who both nodded almost imperceptibly. Lark had a certain… fondness for Beresford, but didn’t trust him entirely. Beresford was as bold and alluring as he was annoying sometimes and he gave off an air like he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, something Lark found simultaneously attractive and terrifying.
Beresford said, “Your little quartet is missing a member.”
“Swynford is under the weather,” said Lark.
Beresford appeared to find this information of little interest and stood there posing, his hip cocked, as he examined his nails. “Pity. Nothing fatal, I hope.”
“A few sniffles.”
