“Eunice Norton is a gossip, but she has sharp eyes. She doesn’t miss much. Eunice overheard a stranger asking questions about the hall.”
“That’s the worry?” Fanny pursed her lips to keep from laughing.
“Don’t dismiss it. We don’t get many strangers going up and down the coaching road, asking questions!” Emma’s grim expression told Fanny the concern ran deep.
“What do you mean, ‘up and down’?”
“Eunice says that Bessie Griggs, the butcher’s wife, told her something similar. Then this morning the man turned up at our stables, claiming his horse threw a shoe. Said he needed it right fast. Asked similar questions. My Ellis came to tell me to come up here to warn you.”
Fanny pinched the skin at her throat, mulling that over. “What did this stranger look like? Was he quality?”
“You mean like peerage? No. Nothing like Clarion or Glenmoor. Dressed in black but good quality, Eunice said. Very tall. Black hair.”
“It wasn’t the Earl of Grimsley,” Fanny murmured, immensely relieved. The earl—all blond, sleek elegance—who closely resembled her fictional hero, had fallen so short he had become the villain in her mind. Thank goodness he hadn’t followed her to Ashmead.
Emma shrugged. “He rode off, and with luck, he left the area. He could be lurking, though. After what happened last year with that awful American, folks around here don’t take anything for granted.”
Fanny had heard the story of Maddy’s stepsons and the boy being held as a hostage by a deranged American. She dismissed it as irrelevant to her situation. “Don’t invent worries, Emma. Some random stranger passing through is no threat. People are bound to be curious about the major houses in a neighborhood.”
“Still, I’ll pass it on to Corporal Goodfellow while I’m here,” Emma said.
Fanny didn’t argue. “Did I hear your children have been invited for nursery tea?”
The rest of the conversation moved smoothly to children and their antics.
