Lord Cavendish Returns (17 page)

He
hadn’t been in the Star Elite for as long as he had not to know
when to beat a strategic retreat, and he coughed around the
question that hovered on his lips.

“
I will drop by tomorrow when you are in a more affable mood.”
At once, he knew he had said the wrong thing – again, and watched
the flash of fury in her eyes. Although he was intrigued, and
didn’t want to leave the house on an argument, he knew that she was
best left alone for the night. “Good night Arrabella,” he drawled
quietly and winced when the door slammed behind him as soon as his
booted feet hit the top step.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Harper
let himself into Joseph’s farmhouse with all of the determination
that had driven him from his bed that morning. Although the hour
was still early, he was unsurprised to find Joseph seated before
the fire with his working dogs at his feet.

“
How are you today?” He asked as he entered the large kitchen
without bothering to knock.

“
What brings you by here at this time of the day?” Joseph
replied grumpily. “I didn’t think city boys were up this early.” He
glanced outside at the early morning sunrise that was still too
young to break through the fine mist that hovered over the
ground.

“
Ha! Where I come from
you
are the city boy, Joseph,” Harper countered with
a frown. “Don’t ever make assumptions about people.” He gave his
watchful brother a warning look. “You are less likely to be tripped
up.”

Joseph
merely stared back defiantly. “I have got work to do,” he replied
but made no attempt to get out of the chair.

“
So do I,” Harper sighed. He saw no reason to prevaricate and
took a seat at the kitchen table. “I need a few facts from
you.”

When
Joseph tried to stand, Harper propped a booted foot on the dresser
next to him, effectively blocking Joseph in. Joseph eyed Harper’s
long leg derisively but seemed to realise that if he wanted to get
past he was going to have a confrontation on his hands. Still, he
didn’t seem inclined to lose his belligerence and shot Harper a
challenging look.

“
Getting chatty all of a sudden, aren’t we? First we don’t see
you for years, now I have two visits in the space of a week. My,
aren’t we lucky?”

“
What’s your problem, Joseph?” Harper sighed. He knew now that
Joseph definitely did have a problem and he rather suspected that
he knew what it was.

“
I don’t have a problem.” Joseph leaned forward to drop two
more logs onto the fire and seemed oblivious to Harper’s presence
for a several long moments. Eventually, he turned and looked Harper
straight in the eye. “Don’t take liberties with
Arrabella.”

Harper
ignored the annoyance that swept through him. Why did everyone
assume that he was some sort of lothario? “Jesus, not you too,” he
sighed anyway.

“
What do you mean?” Joseph frowned at him.

“
I have not spent the last several years without female
company, I don’t mind admitting. However, I am not so avaricious
that I cannot go without female company for several years more. Why
does everyone assume that I have lecherous intentions?”

“
Because you usually do?” Joseph smiled. “Who else has accused
you of being a lothario?”

“
Arrabella.” Harper winced when Joseph’s brows lifted. “She
simply doesn’t seem to believe that any man could be interested in
furthering an acquaintance with her. Last night she told me, quite
tartly, that she was not the kind of person to encourage a man’s
attentions.” He held his hands up in a placating gesture when
Joseph frowned at him, and he mentally winced as he realised he had
inadvertently made it sound as though he had tried to mark
Arrabella’s card, and been told where to put it; which he had
really. That thought was enough to make him frown.

“
Don’t hurt her,” Joseph warned gently. “She is a country
miss, and innocent. If you are planning to go back to the bright
lights of the big city, don’t encourage her affections while you
are here. It isn’t fair, Harper.”

Harper
knew then that Joseph held the vicar’s daughter in high regard. “I
don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, Joseph. I am not dallying with
her. I like her a lot. I want you to know that.” He studied
Joseph’s face once he had made the statement and read the defeated
look in his brother’s eyes with a frown. “If you like her, why have
you not done something about it?” He asked after several moments of
stilted silence.

Joseph
waved a hand around the kitchen. “Look around you, Harper. This
place is in the middle of nowhere. Although we are only a couple of
miles away from the village, in the middle of winter the farm may
as well be a hundred miles away. It is hardly fair to expect any
woman to live all the way out here, especially someone like
Arrabella. She is a vicar’s daughter. The entire village see her
practically every other day. Most of the village seem to go to her
with their queries and their problems and forget about the vicar
altogether. He is a nice man, but a bit absent, if you know what I
mean.” He tapped the side of his head meaningfully. “If Arrabella
didn’t lead him into the church and stand him before the bible, and
he didn’t have the words there ready to read out, I am sure that we
would all get a lecture on flora and fauna rather than a reading
from the King James text.”

Harper
snorted at that and crossed his booted feet. “Is he likely to be
the vicar for long, do you think?” He felt that he was asking the
wrong person, but he couldn’t actually ask Arrabella if her father
had all of his marbles.

“
I don’t know. That mother of hers is poorly and has struggled
to get around for a long time now. She has gone to see some cousin
of hers, I think, but in all reality nobody is expecting her to
come back. It isn’t that anyone thinks she is going to pass on or
anything like that. It is just that the sea air seems to draw
people as sickly as her and they don’t usually come back. It is
wonderful here, but you know how blessedly cold it can be in the
winter-time. Someone like Arrabella’s mother would be better where
the climate isn’t as harsh.”

“
What about her father?”

“
He is a little ‘bats in the belfry’. Has wandered off to
York, or something, I don’t know. I have no doubt that when he
comes back, he will be just as absent as he was before he left.” He
sighed and leaned back in his chair. “It doesn’t bode well for
Arrabella having a secure future. Although the villagers wouldn’t
see her cast out into the street, I understand that she doesn’t
have many relatives, so there wouldn’t be anyone she could turn to
if her father was unable to deal with his biblical duties. The
vicarage comes with the job.”

“
She would be homeless.” Harper watched the flames in the fire
for several moments. “So, were you going to offer for her when the
time came?”

“
I like Arrabella, Harper. I don’t mind admitting it, but I am
hardly in a position to offer a wife anything of note. Although the
farm is doing well and I have money to buy more than I do, it is
just too darned remote here to keep a woman happy.”

“
Why don’t you consider moving closer to the village then?” He
challenged and thought about the house he had been left by his
blood-father.

“
I like it, but the village is too full of
gossips.”

It
struck Harper then that his brother was lonely. The fleeting hint
of sadness that had darkened Joseph’s handsome face bespoke of a
far deeper emotion than he had admitted to, but Harper didn’t
pry.

“
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he whispered
gently and took a deep breath. “I like Arrabella too, but I have to
tell you that I just don’t know if I have what it takes to settle
down. I have spent far too many years living in the
shadows.”

“
What do you mean?”

Harper
studied his brother for a minute. He had already told Joseph about
his experiences in the army followed by his dark and dangerous work
with the Star Elite on his first day in the village. “I have spent
far too long hiding in the shadows throughout the night waiting for
danger to creep up on me. Although a couple of my colleagues have
settled down, they have been forced into a sort-of, well, partial
retirement. I don’t want that for my life. Unfortunately, I don’t
know whether I can stop looking for danger where there is none. I
don’t think I could ever stop searching the shadows as I pass and
assessing the people I walk by in the street for guns and hidden
knives.”

Joseph
snorted. “You won’t get anything like that in this sleepy little
place. The last thing that happened of any reputable note was old
man Morley knocking himself out with his retiring screen last
Christmas.” He shifted and studied his brother. “If you don’t know
what you want then don’t spend too much time with Arrabella. With
very little else to think about in this place, the gossips turn to
anything and everything. All it is going to take is for someone to
see you at the vicarage with her too many times and you are going
to ruin her. I don’t mind stepping into the breach and offering for
her if her reputation is blighted, but I think that Arrabella would
have something to say about it.”

“
Is that why you have been so grumpy lately?”

“
I see you with her everywhere I look,” he warned darkly. “I
don’t know if you can remember how this place operates. As a young
lad I was never aware of the amount of gossip that was exchanged
over the garden fences. Now that I am a fully grown up member of
society, I have heard more than enough tawdry laundry being aired
over the bar in the tavern to know when to watch my step. I would
strongly recommend that you be very careful if you don’t want to be
forced into making decisions you aren’t ready for.”

Harper
knew that his brother was right. Gossip was often unfair and
exchanged before the facts were ascertained. If he didn’t want the
scandal of being pushed into marriage he had to tread carefully.
Not that it was a problem at the moment. The fierce anger on
Arrabella’s face swam before his mind and he wondered if it was
late enough in the morning for him to call around and ask if she
had found the missing keys yet. On his way to Joseph’s, he had
undertaken another search of the graveyard, but found nothing so
knew that it was time to widen the search.

“
Can you tell me if you know where the spare set of keys to
the church is kept?”

“
In the drawer in the study at the vicarage,” Joseph replied.
“The entire village knows that. Although the church is open most of
the time, there are occasions when it is locked, say when Arrabella
and her father are at Moldton. If anyone needs to get to the church
and Mrs Able isn’t around, they know that the keys are kept in the
drawer in the vicar’s study. Everyone helps themselves and puts
them back when they are done. It’s no secret.”

“
Everyone
in the village?”

“
Yes, why?”

“
Jesus,” Harper whispered. He now had the entire village on
his list of suspects. For one brief moment he wondered whether he
could call upon his boss, Sir Hugo, to ask him to send men to lend
a hand but then immediately discounted the idea as ridiculous.
Hambley Wood was a sleepy little backwater where nothing happened;
except Mr Morley knocking himself out with his retiring screen. A
missing parish register was hardly sinister crime which required
the input of the highly skilled men in the Star Elite. He could
manage this on his own – couldn’t he? He turned toward Joseph with
a frown and quickly made a decision.

“
I found the register, but it was stolen before I could look
inside it.” His words landed like pebbles on smooth water. The
dumbfounded expression that appeared in his brother’s eyes assured
Harper that he was looking at an innocent man.

“
Pardon?”

“
We found the register that had the details of my birth in,
but it was stolen before I got to look in it.”

“
You didn’t see who took it?”

Harper
shook his head and explained what had happened. “It was at the same
time that the keys were stolen. I had hoped that you had a yearning
for Arrabella, and had taken them for some reason to get her
attention, but –” he held his hands up in a placating gesture when
his brother’s brows lifted, “- but it appears that anyone in the
entire bloody village could have helped themselves to the
keys.”

“
I haven’t seen anyone unusual in the village but I will keep
an eye out,” Joseph assured him. “Look, I like Arrabella, she is
nice, but I don’t have a yearning for her. I just don’t want you to
consider her fair game for a dalliance while you are
here.”

“
I like Arrabella too much to use her like that. She is sweet
and gentle but has an inner fire that is captivating. It makes me
wonder –” He fell silent when he caught Joseph’s grin. His mouth
closed with a snap when he realised that he had waxed lyrical and
revealed far more than he was comfortable with. “Will you do
something for me?”

“
If I can.”

“
Keep an eye out for strangers, but see if you get wind of any
gossip with regards to anything unusual happening around the
church. You know, things going missing or being moved, that kind of
thing.” Harper briefly went through everything that had happened to
him since he had been in the village. When he got to the part where
he and Arrabella had been locked in the crypt, Joseph began to
frown. By the time he got to the keys, Joseph was looking more
alarmed than Harper had ever seen him.