“For Rockford? A few bits and pieces. He’s worried about some mess in Gibraltar. About Isaiah Jessop, not one thing. The man has disappeared without a trace.” Brynn drank deeply. The Willow’s ale truly was fine. He glanced up to find a line of grim expressions across the table. Kendrick studied his mug, and Rhys shifted uncomfortably. Neither of the Benson brothers met his eyes.
“What? Has he been bothering the duchess again?” He looked from one to the other. “Rob? Eli? What happened?”
“Madelyn is fine,” Benson said, peering at his father. “Da, tell him what you heard.”
The older gentleman drew breath. “Farley—you may remember him, Morgan, the doc who patched me up last year—reliable man—was called to visit an elderly patient in Nottingham a week ago. He saw Jessop swagger down the market street, haughty as you please. Like he owned the town. Odd after what Farley found out.”
“Where has he been and what the devil was he up to?” Brynn glanced uneasily at Glenmoor, still happily conversing with the earl, and back at Gideon Kendrick.
“Farley recognized him from when he was here, boasting and asking impertinent questions about some Gideon Jessop. So Farley did some asking of his own,” Mr. Benson said.
Kendrick’s grimace sent fear up Brynn’s neck. What lay between Glenmoor and Kendrick was fraught with pain. Jessop could rain misery down on all of them—including Madelyn.
“He hasn’t been near Ashmead, at least not the past few days, and we don’t know what he’s up to, but we know where he’s been,” Eli said.
Brynn turned to old Mr. Benson, brows raised. “Where?”
“Jail. Arrested for brawling and public drunkenness in Nottingham. Kept him a while, but he got off. They let him go a week ago.”
“That sounds like the Isaiah Jessop I remember,” Kendrick muttered. “We’ve seen no sign of him, but I expect he’ll turn up if he hears Glenmoor is visiting. Gossip about a duke is bound to spread.”
“He won’t know Kendrick here is Gideon Jessop,” Eli suggested.
At least the Bensons know that much. Brynn sighed in relief.
“He’ll figure it out soon enough. I never should have come,” Kendrick said.
“And have him show up in Wales? Better to face him here,” Rhys spoke for the first time, eyeing his brother with obvious concern.
Brynn didn’t care at that moment. Only one concern filled his mind. “Madelyn…”
“We tried to talk her into staying with Lucy and me at Willowbrook,” Rob Benson said, “but she’s a stubborn woman. I have Goodfellow and some Willowbrook folk watching the dower house. Remember, Morgan, we don’t actually know that he’s any kind of threat.” He spoke with authority. He nodded to the bar.
Brynn spun around and peered more closely at the cluster there. Corporal Goodfellow stood among them. He ought to have recognized him when he’d come in.
“Maybe not a physical threat, but he’ll come,” Brynn said. “What is the plan when he does?”
“I’ll talk to him and send him on his way,” Kendrick replied. “If I’m here when he shows.”
“But what—” Kendrick’s closed expression cut off the thought. Brynn doubted the Bensons knew about the former Duke of Glenmoor’s bigamy or the state of the title. He also doubted anything had been settled between the brothers as yet. He sympathized with Kendrick’s urge to cut and run.
“Enough,” the Benson patriarch said. “It’ll keep for another day. The ladies approach with pudding and expect celebration. Let’s not disappoint.”
“Papa, it is simply scrumptious,” Helen, Kendrick’s oldest daughter, declared, leaning her head on her father’s shoulder. Her brother, Daniel, bounced up and down next to her.
“Eat some, Papa. It is really good!” the little boy exclaimed.
And so it was. Almost, Brynn thought, enough to drive worries from their minds. Almost.
He rose and left the children plying the men with pudding and made straight for the woman serving it.
“Do you have something for me, Madelyn? I could use something sweet?”
The promise in her smile and the color, rising up her neck and giving her cheeks a rosy glow, drove Jessop and the Glenmoor muddle out of his head.
*
At the soundof Brynn’s voice, the chaos of the room receded from Maddy’s consciousness, and for a moment, she felt as if they were enveloped in a private bower. His eyes heated her blood; his voice soothed her heart. He had come as he’d promised. Maddy leaned toward him, drawn by the warm scents of sandalwood, of male, and yes, of horse. He reached toward her.
