LITMIR.BIZ

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go chasing after him, now can I? Even if I wanted to,’ she added doubtfully. ‘But the complicating factor is that Pru seems to have fallen for his groom—in fact, quite literally fallen, and I may find myself having to do something about that before very long.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Henry did not seem to have anything much to contribute to that problem. ‘You need something to take your mind off this, Des…sorry, Decima. Mama’s going to open up the London house for the Season to fire off Caroline into society. I will be going up as well—why don’t you come too and stay with us? Mama would appreciate your company. We are going up at the end of February to get all Caro’s gowns and fallals sorted out early. What do you say?’

      It was very tempting. She had already thought about going up for the Season, if only to horrify Charlton, who would be scandalised at the thought of her under any chaperonage other than that provided by one of their aunts or cousins. Decima gave herself a little shake. If she was going to do things only in reaction to her half-brother, then she was just as much in his thrall as she had ever been. She must do what she wanted, for herself. And she wanted to go to London, and find out if what Henry said was true. Could it be that if she was not shy and did not think about being odd, then other people wouldn’t think it either?

      And then there was a very good chance that Adam would be in town for the Season as well. Not that she wanted to see him for herself, of course, but if Pru needed help with her improbable romance, then she had to do her best to assist her.

      ‘Yes, Henry, thank you very much. I would love to come to London and stay with your mama.’

      ‘What the hell do you mean, you can’t find them?’ Adam Grantham glowered at his agent who stood the other side of the broad desk, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hands. ‘How hard can it be to trace one English gentleman and his family? You have been looking for three weeks, damn it.’

      The man went red, but kept his composure. Adam reined in his temper. He had never found Franklin negligent in his duties and had no reason to suspect he was not applying himself now. ‘Sit down, man, show me what you have done so far.’

      The agent took the proffered chair and spread out his papers. ‘You told me the gentleman was called Charlton Ross, my lord, but you did not know whether he has a title. His wife’s name is Hermione and he has a sister Decima. He has a house somewhere near enough to Whissendine for his sister’s carriage to have reached the point where you met in one morning in poor travelling conditions. Miss Ross said it was in Leicestershire.

      ‘So I searched the Peerage, the Landed Gentry and even Crockford’s Clerical Directory just in case he was a clergyman. Nothing. Then I tried the various county directories—including Nottinghamshire to be on the safe side. There is not a sign of a Charlton Ross. There are plenty of entries for Ross, and I checked second names where they were given. Nothing that matches. The carriage appears to have been owned by the family as there is no record of it being hired at any livery stable I can find.

      ‘Then I tried the Norfolk end of things, but I couldn’t find any single ladies or widows by the name of Ross who might match—and, of course, the lady’s cousin might easily be a widow, or a maiden lady of a different surname. The only trace I have is of a party that matched your description taking luncheon at the Rising Sun just outside Wisbech. After that, they vanish. The number of carriages on the post roads that day was considerable, what with people getting themselves back home after being held up by the bad weather. We tried the turnpikes in all directions, but no one recalled them. I am sorry, my lord.’

      ‘Thank you, Franklin. I’m sure you have been extremely thorough.’ The man bowed himself out, leaving Adam brooding at the desk he had borrowed in his host’s study. He poured himself a large brandy and thought.

      Longminster House, the rural seat of the Earl of Minster, Adam’s uncle by marriage, was en fête for the christening of the first of the Minster grandchildren and Adam had resigned himself to a week of baby-worshipping, dancing attendance on numerous relatives and avoiding lectures on his unwed state.

      One of the few avenues of escape he had found was in trying to cheer up a distant relative of his Aunt Minster’s, Olivia Channing. He remembered her from her schoolroom days as tiny and shy. Now she was a little beauty—still tiny, but with all the blonde loveliness of a fairy. Add to that the best of good breeding and exquisite manners and one had the perfect eligible, albeit desperately shy, young lady. But Olivia’s problem was that her family was extremely hard up. Adam suspected that if her dowry amounted to a few hundred, that was all it was.

      And she was being dragged about, pushed into society by her desperate mama, when she believed all she could expect was to be snubbed, despite her looks and her sweetness. A month ago he would have shrugged and taken no notice of her. Now, with Decima’s bitter words about matchmakers still ringing in his ears, he regarded her with sympathy and tried to make up to her for the fact that she found herself constantly on the outside of things.

      She was a funny little thing, he thought. Even now she was used to him and had begun to chat to him with less constraint, he always had the feeling that she was glancing over his shoulder, checking for something.

      He refilled his glass, dismissing Olivia as an insoluble problem. The presence of Peregrine Grantham, the son of his father’s late younger brother, was another matter altogether—both the silver lining to the visit and a heartening reminder that lectures on his duty to produce an heir could be met by pointing out young Perry’s numerous admirable qualities. Not that Perry, or his mother, were holding their breath at the thought of him stepping into his cousin’s shoes.

      ‘I do wish you’d get married, Adam,’ Perry had complained the day before as they trudged across a muddy field, retrievers at their heels and a dozen pigeons hanging from their shot belts. ‘Here I am, wanting to join up, and all I get from my guardians is lectures on how the heir to a viscounty doesn’t go risking his neck in the army.’

      Adam had grinned at him and informed him that he had no intention of getting leg-shackled for his sake and he would just have to wait another couple of years until he could do as he chose.

      ‘The war’ll be over by then,’ Perry had retorted with good humour. ‘No, the answer is to get you married off, Adam.’

      That evening, stretching long legs in front of a blazing fire and sipping Minster’s best liqueur brandy, Adam found himself contemplating matrimony seriously for perhaps the first time.

      He was not staying single for Perry’s sake; the lad had too much intelligence and ambition to wait around for dead men’s shoes. No, Adam was unwed simply because no lady had ever piqued his interest enough to give up his independence and privacy. Except one.

      He had set Franklin on Decima’s trail as soon as he had realised he could not find any mention of her brother in any of his reference books and that the polite note of thanks he had received three days after her departure gave no address. At the time he had not asked himself why he wanted to find her, only that he needed to make sure she was all right. The fact that her note left him in no doubt of that was beside the point.

      Now Adam reluctantly faced the fact that he missed her. It was not just that his body ached for her, although it certainly did. He wanted to get to know her better, to hear that rich, wicked chuckle again, to dance a waltz with her and tease her about her cookery. He wanted to make her blush and cajole her out of her sudden fits of shyness. And he wanted to find out whether this unfamiliar ache around his heart was love.

      And now, with the paperwork spread out before him detailing false trail after false trail, it seemed she had vanished. The only thing he could think was that she had not given him her true surname and, if that was the case, even setting the Bow Street Runners on her was not likely to be productive. It seemed that she was not as interested in resuming their strange friendship as he was himself.

      He roused himself at the sound of the changing gong and made his way upstairs, only to remember that tonight was the occasion of the dance Aunt Minster was throwing to celebrate not only the arrival of her first grandchild, but also the betrothal of her last and youngest daughter, Sylvia.

      There

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