“Poor Ricky,” he said. “Ah, poor Ricky. He is the sweetest person I have ever known, Estelle. I hate the thought of his beingtracked down.Like an animal.”
She pressed his arm to her side again and turned her head to smile at him while a footman opened the doors of the drawing room for them. Justin sent him to extinguish the candles in the gallery before they turned to enter.
***
When Estelle stopped to think about it the next day, she was amazed at how the plight of one simpleminded man of no social significance whatsoever could animate a wholegathering of both gently born and middle-class guests at an aristocratic home, as well as all the indoor and outdoor servants there.
Nobody lingered over breakfast—and no one was late for breakfast either except Lady Maple, who rarely put in an appearance before noon. Even she was up before half past ten, however. She wished to find Mr.Chandler, her niece’s husband, before he went off to have his posters printed and distributed. She wanted to make sure he worded them correctly and effectively, and she wanted to offer to help with the cost of them.
“He owns abank,” Doris Haig murmured to Estelle before rolling her eyes. “He is probably as rich as Croesus. But it is good of her to offer, I suppose. The decision has already been made, however, to hold off for a couple of days before hanging up posters or sending out leaflets or dashing off to London to engage the services of the Bow Street Runners.”
The guests fanned out through the neighborhood, calling upon people who had paid their respects to them at church on Sunday and those who had called at Everleigh to welcome Maria back and greet the earl’s guests. Coachmen and footmen who conveyed them undertook to mingle with their fellow servants and engage in unrestrained gossip. Bertrand went with Mr.and Mrs.Peter Ormsbury to call upon the vicar and his wife. Several of the young people went off riding in a largish group, though they did intend to split off into smaller pairings as they stopped at inns and taverns to imbibe ale or lemonade or tea while talking with landlords and other patrons.
Estelle and a number of others settled at desks and tables in various rooms, writing letters to everyone of any significance from Hertfordshire whom the Earl of Brandonhad been able to think of yesterday when Bertrand started the list in the library. That list grew during the day as other suggestions came from the vicar and a few of the neighbors, some of them people who lived farther west in bordering counties.
The earl went to call upon the local magistrate, who might have had something to suggest by way of help from law enforcement officers.
“Though I do hate to set the law on Ricky, as though he were a common criminal,” Estelle overheard him saying to his uncle, Mr.Sharpe. “I really do not know if he would look upon constables and sheriffs as friends or see them as threats.”
“If they can but find him, Justin,” his uncle said, patting his shoulder and then squeezing it, “we or his brother will soon be able to reassure him.”
At the end of a busy day they were all weary. Nevertheless, everyone at the dinner table wanted to tell one another about their experiences, about what they had said and what the people to whom they had said it had had to say in return.
“I was very proud of Wallace, I must say, even if heismy brother and a whole sixteen months younger than I am,” Gillian Chandler told them all, grinning impishly at that young man. “Even when a few men at one tavern where we stopped jeered at him for ordering lemonade, he was not bothered.‘I am seventeen,’he told them. And when they laughed and nudged one another after we had told them about Ricky because we spoke in Yorkshire accents and were all upset over a man from the lowest of low classes who was also simple in his head—those weretheirwords—Wallace stood up and looked them all in the eye, including the landlord himself, and said,‘Do those facts make himless of a human being? Do they make him less worthy of love and care?’And they did not knowwhatto say.”
“Gill!” Her brother blushed mottled shades of scarlet. “They werelaughingat me.”
“But they did not know what to say,” she said.
“Thank you both,” the Earl of Brandon said. “Thank you especially, Wallace. It was brave of you to speak up in the face of ridicule. But you can be sure that if any of those men should by chance set eyes upon Ricky, they will know instantly who he is and see to it that he is brought here. People are not always as heedless or as heartless as they pretend to be.”
“I am proud of you too, son,” Mr.Chandler said, beaming. “That lad will not be able to set one toe over the border into Hertfordshire without being spotted.”
“My main fear, though,” the earl said, “is that he is not headed this way. There could be nothing rational about his travel plans, after all, assuming that his desire to find me really is the reason for his disappearance. He might well be wandering about Wales at this moment or heading for the Lake Country or merely moving in circles, unable to find his way forward or back.”
He looked directly at Estelle for a moment and she saw utter bleakness in his eyes.Or he might well be dead,that look seemed to say.
“He will find his way,” she said. “Either back to his brother’s house or here.”
Soon after, Maria got to her feet to lead the ladies from the dining room and leave the men to their port.
“Brandon,” she said before she went. “May I have a word with you later? In my sitting room? Perhaps Lady Estelle will come there with me. Perhaps Viscount Watley will come with you.”
There was an unnatural silence for a few moments while everyone looked at her in collective surprise, the earl included.
“Of course,” he said then. “Aunt Augusta, perhaps you would preside over tea in the drawing room after the men join you there? Maria, perhaps you would give the order to have a tea tray delivered to your sitting room in... half an hour’s time?”
She inclined her head and swept from the room, trailed by all the ladies.
Seventeen
I spoke with the Cornish aunts and uncles this afternoon after we had all returned from our visits,” Maria told Estelle while they waited in her sitting room for the two men to join them.
“Yes,” Estelle said. “You were even laughing with them when I saw you. I do admire the way you are going about getting to know all your relatives. You are forcing the issue with each group of them and showing a strength of character I always knew you had. Bertrand and I are happy to be here, but you really do notneedus, I have been happy to observe.”
Maria was fussing with the folds of the curtains, which had already been drawn across the window when they came here. She turned to look at Estelle.
“Oh, there you are wrong,” she said. “You have no idea how lonely and even frightened I have been feeling, Estelle. Although I am related to almost everyone here, they are all strangers. They all hated my mother—or so she believed. Iassumed they all hated me too, or at least were not interested in claiming me as one of their own. Yet they all came here when they were invited. Even Aunt Sarah, who might have used her plans to go to Scotland as an excuse to avoid me, wishes to come later. The others have all come and have been... amiable. Just as I have been in return. But amiability was not going to be enough.”
