“Dear God! I had no notion it was so bad as this! But what has been done — what is being attempted, to recover him?”

“A stable lad detected limestone in the horse’s hooves, such as is prevalent upon the White Moor, not far from the village of Hartington. The Duke has organised a body of men to work over the ground.”

I studied his lordship’s countenance; he had held somewhat in reserve. “What is it that troubles you? What do you fail to say?”

He hesitated; then bowed his head in submission. “The limestone of the White Moor has long been quarried, Jane, for a legion of purposes. There are, as a result, any number of pits and eroded cliffs that might do mischief to a wandering lad — particularly if he were not entirely himself, and darkness were coming on. Melancholy — rage — even a guilty conscience, Jane — might drive Hart to recklessness.”

“Are you suggesting, Lord Harold,” I slowly replied, “that the Marquess of Hartington has done away with himself?”

Lord Harold’s eyelids flickered, but he did not directly reply. “I know I may depend upon your discretion. Not a word of this has been uttered by the Duke or myself; but the thought hangs heavy in the air of the Great House. The Danforths have exchanged idleness for action at last, and are gone out on horseback; the Morpeths are disposed to be anxious, and talk overmuch; Lady Elizabeth is insensible to everything that does not directly affect her; but Hary-O is afraid, Jane. She knows Hart better than anyone in his family — and Hary-O is afraid.”

Lord Harold looked at me, all his feeling speaking in his face. “It is this that causes me to wonder what Lady Harriot fears — and just how much in Lord Hartington’s confidence she has been.”

“But surely, my lord, if she knew something that might assist in her brother’s recovery — surely she would speak it without reserve!”

He turned away. “Such a thought is obvious to someone like yourself, Jane, who has never been schooled in any but the severest honesty. Deception — particularly the deceit of divided loyalty — is as foreign to you as French bread. But that is not Hary-O’s case. She was raised in a house where the most simple exchange of daily pleasantries is fraught with several meanings, and where those she should naturally trust — her closest relations — have always formed a shifting alliance. Hary-O learned from birth to guard her soul, and display nothing like its true self to the world, lest it be trampled.”

“You believe she is protecting the Marquess? — Against whom?”

“—the influence of Lady Elizabeth, perhaps — the violence of the Law — possibly she even protects him from me.” Lord Harold paced towards the parlour window in an agony of frustration. “I am the truest friend that Hary-O possesses, Jane, but she will not trust me with her brother’s life, if she fears him guilty of some horror. She learned the lesson of reserve from her mother — an open-hearted, laughing beauty of a woman who paid too deeply the price of innocence.”

“Her Grace had better have taught her daughter to hold the world in contempt, than to purchase it at such a cost.”

Lord Harold’s head lashed swiftly around, and for the first time in my life, I glimpsed the full force of his power for love and hate. “Before you would judge Georgiana too harshly, Jane, know this: at seventeen she was a Duchess, a toast, and a beauty — and wholly neglected by her husband. Whatever occurred in her life from that point, must be laid entirely at Devonshire’s account.”

I was silenced.

Lord Harold drew breath; he reached for his gloves and hat; he drew on the former and settled the latter over his eye. Only then did he look at me.

“I shall end by driving my last friend away with my bitter tongue. Forgive me, Jane.”

“That is something I should never presume to do, my lord. It might justly make you hate me.”

He touched my chin with his gloved hand, and would have stepped out into the passage — but that I clutched at his wrist.

“Take me with you.”

“You cannot expect to do anything in Hart’s case.”

I reached for the stillroom book and held it before his eyes. “But I know why his lordship exulted in the maid’s death. If you would prove he did not kill her, we must ensnare her true murderer. Nothing else will end this folly of guilt and mutual suspicion.”

For an instant he said nothing; then he took the book from my hands.

“Leave word for your mother where you are gone, Jane. And do not neglect of your sunbonnet. Having disappointed Mrs. Austen in so much else, I owe her this small gesture of attention.”

Chapter 26

Death Among the Rocks

31 August 1806, cont.

BEING A GENTLEMAN OF SOME DESPATCH, LORD HAROLD undertook to pen a note to His Grace at Chatsworth, informing the Duke of his intelligence regarding the Marquess, and instructing a party of men to turn their efforts towards Miller’s Dale. He suffered the Duke to know that we should proceed thence ourselves, in an effort to locate Lord Hartington without delay; and that if the search were unavailing, we should await assistance in the miller’s cottage.

“Now tell me all you know, Jane — or all you suspect,” he commanded, when we were settled in the Devonshire equipage.

For this once, despite the heat of August, I must own I valued the discretion of a closed carriage; no one should overlisten my conversation with Lord Harold.

“Lord Hartington was acquainted with the stillroom maid,” I said, “for nearly a twelvemonth. He first undertook to ride over to Penfolds Hall, in secret; and as Tess Arnold’s notations are entirely concerned with remedies for deafness, I must imagine him to have been preoccupied with these.”

“Deafness? But surely he is not so very troubled by the impairment to his hearing?” Lord Harold remarked.

“I suspect that few are privileged to know just how far the difficulty extends. A person such as Lord Hartington — the sole heir to a princely realm, with all the burdens of wealth and birth, all the expectations of Society placed upon him — cannot admit to infirmity. He must struggle against it from a boy; and disguise what he cannot help. From the little I observed him, I should say that he is an adept at the reading of speech. Though he cannot hear, he may often comprehend, provided the speaker’s face is turned towards him.”

“I see. And yet he was troubled enough by infirmity that he sought help from the stillroom maid.”

“She makes no reference to the success or failure of her remedies; but certainly his lordship continued to seek them. Whether he eventually met with Tess Arnold from other motives, I cannot say; but I presume as much, from the place of the meeting having changed.”

“He no longer rode to Penfolds?”

“Last winter, he began to meet his witch in the rocks above Miller’s Dale. The meetings, from this date, grow less frequent — you will recollect that he was often from Derbyshire during that period, Her Grace the Duchess having been in Town for most of the winter.”

“Georgiana fell ill there in March,” Lord Harold said soberly. “Lord Hartington, I believe, was much by her side. He did not return to Derbyshire until she was interred at Chatsworth, in early April.”

“He met with Tess infrequently during the course of the summer, and always in secret; though once, at least, he appears to have been accompanied by a tutor. Perhaps he could not throw that gentleman off.”