“Headstrong,” Gawain repeated. “Always does what she wants, which isn’t always what she ought.”
Ewan remembered their kiss and suspected Gawain was correct in his analysis. “Then that leads me to another question. Could there be another lover?”
“Of this Gipsy girl?” Gawain asked.
“No, of your sister. If she’s as headstrong as you say, could there be some secret lover who might have taken the child, perhaps to persuade Matilda to marry him, or just to extort funds? No one intimate to her could fail to see she’s wealthy.”
“I don’t know of any lover, but I don’t live in Bristol any longer. I think she’s too busy.”
Ewan lifted an eyebrow. “We’re both men of the world. Everyone has time for that kind of thing, if they really want it.”
The parlor door opened. Ewan had his back to it.
Gawain grinned. “You’re right. Maybe she has a dozen lovers. Maybe there is a brothel catering to women. I don’t know.”
“What on earth?”
Ewan turned to see Matilda, her freckles stark on a paper-white face, her hands on her hips.
Gawain lifted his hands. “Look, Matilda, cards on the table. Is there anyone else you’ve let get as close to you as Bliven did?”
“How dare you!” she shrieked, lifting her arms as if to strike.
Ewan went to her and took her hands. They were icy cold.
“We have to know,” Gawain said, sounding irritatingly reasonable even to Ewan’s ears. “It’s a fair question, and Jacob’s well-being has to come before your privacy, repugnant as that is.”
“There is no one,” she hissed, not looking at Ewan, even though he still held her hands. “How could you think that?”
Gawain shook his head. Matilda turned blazing eyes on Ewan. “You?”
Ewan pressed his lips together. “I am just trying to be thorough.”
“Leave,” she said. “Go back to London, deal with the flour. You’re the best person for it anyway because that factory will be yours someday.” She wrenched her hands away from his and flew back through the door.
“What?” Gawain said, his tone flat.
“I’ve discovered I’m the new heir to the Earl of Fitzwalter,” Ewan said.
Gawain put his hands on his hips. “Are you Lord Ritten’s son?”
“No, I’m the son of another, younger son. Both of my parents have been dead for years.”
“How unusual,” Gawain said. “She’s right, you know. This is a family matter and you aren’t family. Go keep Alys’s business from falling apart.”
Ewan swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He was never anyone’s family, not really. Anger filled him when he remembered his high birth and prospects compared to Gawain’s factory worker past, his army days. He shouldn’t let Gawain talk to him like this, treat him like this. Yet this was a terrible time for them, and he’d soon be free of the Redcakes forever. “Very well, if you think it is more important than having another pair of eyes searching for your nephew.”
Gawain huffed out a breath, clearly offended. “You’ve upset her. What do you want me to do?”
Ewan pushed his fingers through his hair. “I suppose there is no one I need take my leave of.”
Gawain shook his hand, then went back into the parlor, leaving Ewan alone in the hall. He couldn’t decide if the Redcakes were a cold lot or simply distracted. A man in his position had never been close enough to find out. His conversation and kiss with Matilda Redcake had been the first time he’d felt like any Redcake’s equal. The thought of her in distress had shocked him like a physical pain. He’d wanted to help find the child, not deal with business back in London. But he wasn’t a friend of the family, merely an employee, so he might as well leave now.
Ewan went to Redcake’s two hours earlier than usual the next day. He straightened his desk and packed away the few personal items that had accumulated over the years. Ewan wondered when he’d be able to leave his position. He had too much pride to simply walk out and never return, and he didn’t want to anger the Marquess of Hatbrook and his family.
When he deemed the solicitor’s office to be open for business, he abandoned his box of possessions and walked to Chancery Lane, his brain churning with thoughts of the abduction rather than the flour issue. Could it be that the horse dealer had intended to kidnap Izabela the nanny to be his bride, and Jacob had merely been in the way? It didn’t matter what he thought because no one cared about his opinion. He hoped Greggory had found the tavern the night before and someone had told him where the Gipsy camp lay.
At Norwich’s office, he found the man staring dolefully into his teacup, the brown bottle back at the edge of his desk. “Come in,” he said as Ewan rapped on his door.
“Hullo, Norwich.”
“Have you given notice? Decided on Lancashire or Hampshire?”
“You sound raspy this morning. I thought you were going to try to keep me here.”
“I am always miserable in the spring. The earl said no to London.” The man blew his nose in an already stained handkerchief.
“You aren’t as miserable as the Redcake family.”
Or me.
“Do I care?”
“It’s good gossip, what with a son of the family being kidnapped shortly after someone sold us—I mean, Redcake’s—adulterated flour.”
Norwich raised a fluffy eyebrow. “Redcake’s prides itself on selling the best. It’s the one emporium where it’s said even a newborn would be safe eating its goods.”
“Exactly. And guess who sold Redcake’s the adulterated flour?”
“Who?”
Ewan made a fist and pounded it once on the solicitor’s desk. “Douglas Flour.”
The man’s half-mast eyes widened. “How dreadful. I hadn’t realized Douglas Flour was known to be the best flour purveyor, but it is one of those smooth-running businesses. Steady profit. No involvement on my part.”
“I’d suggest you send me there, rather than to Lancashire or Hampshire. It must be worth a great deal of money, the prestige of supplying Redcake’s. With the family distracted by the kidnapping, I might be able to turn things around before Douglas Flour loses its best customer.”
Norwich abraded his nostrils with the handkerchief again. “Yes, yes. I see your point.”
“How do we make it happen?”
“The earl left for his country seat last night, so he put me in charge. I think under the circumstances, temporarily at least, you make a fine point.”
Ewan sat still. A position in London, or at least nearby in Southwark? He could not have done better for himself under the circumstances.
Norwich straightened in his chair. “I will write a letter to Corwin Vare, the present manager of Douglas Flour. He will report to you now.”
“I’ll need to draw a salary,” Ewan said. “I don’t have funds of my own.”
Norwich turned away and opened a file cabinet with a key on his watch chain, then paged through some files. “We pay Vare three hundred a year. I’ll give you four.”
Ewan blinked. He wouldn’t live like a lord on it, but at least he could live like a factory manager. “Very well. I should take on authority for all the associated businesses as well. Can you draw up a list and notify me, and them, of the details?”
“Of course. I’ll have it to you next week.” Norwich called to the outer office for a secretary and, when the man came in, dictated a letter to Corwin Vare with all the details.
Ewan was gratified to hear himself called regional director of Douglas Industries. He had come up in the world.
When the secretary was gone, Norwich poured a dram of the brown bottle’s contents into his teacup and leaned back. “There, you’ve got what you wanted, at least until Fitzwalter returns. Now, tell me about this kidnapping.”
Matilda paced her breakfast room floor, alone for a moment, too exhausted and nervy to eat any of the contents of the covered dishes her servants had put out. Everyone she’d seen so far that day had red-rimmed eyes and the air of a sleepwalker.
Her mother, who heretofore had been more focused on Rose’s wedding than her grandson’s disappearance, came into the room and immediately opened her arms to offer a hug. Matilda accepted the embrace but pulled back when tears welled in her eyes.
“I need to go upstairs,” she said. She shook her head firmly and turned to flee the room, almost colliding with her father as he entered.
“Kippers?” he asked.
“Yes.” The mere scent of them would turn her stomach when he lifted the dish cover, so she trotted out before he reached the sideboard.
She climbed the stairs, blinded by tears, until she found herself in the nursery. Tucked under the eaves, it wasn’t the most cheerful of rooms in its natural state. It had a sensible cork linoleum floor and plain, hygienic white walls. The furniture had been old when Matilda was a baby, though she had a new modern chair for Jacob and the latest perambulator.
Where had that gone? It hadn’t turned up in the park or on the street anywhere. If Izabela had abandoned it, the expensive, useful item had probably been stolen before any of the family searchers saw it. She wished she could believe the nanny was a victim, too, that she was cuddling Jacob, that Izabela and her son were in this together, that she was protecting the child. But it made no sense that some stranger would kidnap Jacob from a private park, that he would even know to do so without the nanny’s help.
She picked up the stuffed bear Gawain had given Jacob for Christmas. It had been taller than her son at the time, but now they were equal in height. She hugged it against her chest, pretending it was her little boy. Would she ever see him again in this life? She pressed her cheek against the bear’s head. It smelled like hair and stuffing, but it also smelled like spoiled milk and powder.
She took the bear to Jacob’s rocking horse, which had been Gawain’s during his boyhood, and bounced the bear on the horse’s saddle. She still loved to rock Jacob in the chair by the fireplace, the same chair where she’d been rocked to sleep, but her little boy loved the rocking horse best. Sometimes she was afraid he would break the springs, but they were free of rust and had held heavier children than he presently was. For a moment she stood there, allowing herself to pretend he was bouncing away on the horse, the springs squeaking in a headache-inducing ruckus, in counterpoint to the childish laughter that was an unending source of delight.
He’d shriek, “More, Mummy, more!” when Izabela went to remove him so he could eat his bread and milk. Sometimes she would send the nanny off to her mending and sit on the chair next to the horse while he played. But she hadn’t done that nearly enough.
And she had trusted the wrong person. She went to the wall and stared at the family portraits there. Her other lost boy, her brother Arthur, had died from a lung complaint at twenty.
He’d be thirty or even thirty-one now. Funny; she couldn’t remember his birthday. She’d been working so hard this past year, and sleeping so little as a result, that certain details of her childhood had slipped from her memory. Why hadn’t she named Jacob for Arthur?
His second name was Michael, named for Alys’s husband, who had allowed her to hide away at his farm while she waited for the shameful birth. Jacob Noble was her uncle, her mother’s brother, who had done precisely nothing for her then. She must have had hopes at the time that her mother’s Noble kin would be of use to her, more so than a dead brother. So practical after being so foolish.
“Watch over him, Arthur,” she whispered, staring at the picture of the solemn and much too thin youth staring so seriously out from his portrait. His hands were too large for his arms, and his coat in the photograph was slightly too short in the sleeves. Gawky and not full grown.
The thought that some other Redcake, a decade or two in the future, might look at the studio portrait of her own darling boy in the nursery on a day like this, and not know who he was or what he’d meant to her, made her head swim. The room spun around her. She sank to her knees in front of the trivet where Izabela had heated Jacob’s milk.
Someone had pulled the fender away from the fire. It was meant to protect Jacob from the flames. Had someone been hoping he would injure himself, or had a cleaning project been interrupted?
She put her hands to her head and let it sink to the floor. The cool linoleum felt good against her cheek. She closed her eyes, but the darkness behind her eyelids swirled with dizzying colored shapes. Not sleeping last night would cost her.
Time passed in a dull haze. She could hear the telephone ringing floors below, and wondered how the sound could carry, but couldn’t rouse herself enough to wonder if it was news about Jacob. It was likely to be Redcake’s business.
A couple of minutes later she heard footsteps on the stair. Mrs. Miller appeared in the open doorway. Matilda tilted her head slightly to see her housekeeper’s red face. Her chest heaved with the effort of hauling her bulk up all those stairs.
“Jacob?” she asked. Her voice sounded rough to her ears.
“Family news,” Mrs. Miller said. “I’m sorry, lamb.” She put her hand to her mouth.
Matilda pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Miller. I don’t mind you calling me ‘lamb,’ not today.”
“Such a special boy,” Mrs. Miller whispered. “And you all alone up here. You should allow your family to comfort you, but”—her gaze swept the room—“I understand why you would be happiest here. When my little Victoria died, I slept in the nursery for months, just to feel I was closer to her.”
Matilda knew Mrs. Miller had lost her entire family a decade before to tainted meat.
“I don’t want my family,” Matilda said. She knew she sounded petulant, but the only person who had comforted her at all was Ewan Hales, and he’d turned out to have feet of clay. How could he have gone from that demonstration of quiet competence and help in London—not to mention his show of attraction to her—to accusing her, behind her back no less, and to her own brother, of having a lover who had absconded with Jacob?