Initially, they walked briskly—he tried to be surreptitious about constantly scanning the woods to either side—but once they left the trees’ shade, he eased the pace and turned his mind to assessing possibilities and options.
Stacie withdrew her arm, but promptly laced her fingers with his. Looking ahead, she asked, “Do you think this was about the book?”
He frowned. “I don’t see how that could be.”
“Well”—she tipped her head in that considering way she had—“if you were killed, then it’s possible—indeed, many would see it as likely—that your library would be auctioned off.” He met her gaze as she said, “Someone wanting to get their hands on that book might be unscrupulous enough to consider murder as a viable means of gaining access to it.”
He blinked and refrained from pointing out that anyone who had watched to see who drove around the lanes in recent weeks would have seen her and not him. He rarely drove about the estate; in fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last done so. And that was the cause of the ice in his gut; the accident had been aimed squarely at her.
Combined with the incident two nights before… He had to accept that the “burglar” might well have been sent to harm her, and entirely unintentionally, she’d walked into the man’s arms in the kitchen. If the man had been sent to kill her, he wouldn’t have expected to come across her there but to find her asleep in her bed in the marchioness’s bedchamber. If whoever was directing the man held to the old and still generally accepted ways of married noble life, that’s where he would have directed his henchman to look for her.
Regardless, at that moment, the images dominating his mind were of her flung lifeless from the wrecked gig or possibly crushed beneath its weight…
He shoved the images aside and looked ahead. He felt his jaw firm, and he forced himself to nod. “I suppose that’s a possible motive.” Not a complete lie; it was just an option both his rational mind and his instincts rejected as unlikely.
Indeed, his rational mind questioned whether he was overreacting and the two incidents were, in fact, entirely unrelated—that the intruder had merely been some non-local chancing his luck in the hope of picking up a few choice valuables, while the rocks had been some idiot-children’s prank—but his instincts were having none of it.
As they neared the rear of the house and veered toward the stable yard, he found himself pondering a prospect he’d had no inkling might ever hove on his horizon. Was someone trying to kill Stacie? And if so, who and why?
Later that evening, when, after dinner, he and Stacie had retired, as they now usually did, to the room she’d chosen as her private parlor, after they’d spent ten minutes or so reading—he his latest acquisition and she a novel culled from the library shelves—he set his finger on the page to note his place, looked up, and with every indication that he’d just thought of the matter, said, “I’ve just remembered—I’ll need to go up to London tomorrow. I have to attend a meeting of historical scholars at the museum tomorrow afternoon.”
She raised her head and opened her eyes wide. “Oh?”
When she appeared to fall into thought and didn’t say anything more, he grimaced. “I’ll most likely remain there overnight, and given I’ll be there, I might as well clear the business that’s built up since we’ve been down here. I might end remaining for a few days—perhaps as long as a week.”
He wanted her to accompany him, but didn’t want to order her to do so. The meeting was real enough, but regardless of it being very much in his academic bailiwick, too enamored of the contentment he’d found with her at the Hall, he hadn’t intended to attend. Now, however, he needed an excuse to return with her to London. Once he had her back in the capital, surrounding her with unobtrusive guards would be easy, in addition to Ernestine, who had moved to Albury House, as well as his mother and Emily, all three of whom he felt sure he could count on to keep Stacie amused and accompanied wherever she went.
His emotions, his instincts, would no longer allow him to countenance her roaming alone, as she’d been doing on the estate, but conversely, the very last thing he wanted to do was to make her feel under constant guard, and in the country, concealing watchers was well-nigh impossible. The only alternative would be to restrict her movements, effectively caging her—and that would be even worse. Consequently, London was his—their—best option.
He also felt reasonably certain that whoever was behind the attacks lived in town and had sent someone into Surrey to do their dirty work. The principal business he expected to pursue while in the capital would be to search out the blackguard behind the deeds and, one way or another, nullify the threat to her.
In that respect, London at present also contained Ryder, Rand, Kit, and Godfrey; Frederick felt confident he would have their unqualified support in hunting down the man who had dared to threaten their sister. They might even have some inkling of who it might be.
Her gaze distant, Stacie remained silent, apparently inwardly debating.
Frederick compressed his lips against an almost-overpowering urge to blurt out that he needed her to go with him, that in the circumstances, with her under threat, he couldn’t function if they were separated by miles…
But it was too soon—still too early in their marriage. Caution insisted he hold his tongue and do nothing precipitous to give his game away. He needed to wait and let her grow not just comfortable but rooted in the position of his marchioness before he confessed to sliding around the promise he’d given her not to fall in love with her.
Finally—although the wait was probably less than a minute—she refocused on his face and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’ll come to town with you.”
Don’t cheer. Making sure no hint of relief or triumph showed, he inclined his head and returned her smile with an easy one of his own. “In that case, perhaps we can catch up with your brothers and sisters-in-law while we’re there.”
Stacie nodded eagerly, glad of having a perfectly valid excuse to cling to her husband’s company. “Felicia’s close to her time, and I’d like to be near—or at least, nearer. And I would also like to check in on Protheroe, our three protégés, and the music school in general. If we’re going to hold another musical evening—perhaps at the end of this month, before the ton quits the capital—then it would be wise, I suspect, to give Protheroe and the lads fair warning, especially if we decide to include an additional string performance.”
Frederick agreed and declared the matter settled, and they decided to leave after breakfast.
While Frederick crossed to the bellpull and, when Hughes responded, informed him of their intentions, and Hughes assured them all the necessary arrangements would be set in train, Stacie’s thoughts returned to her primary concern—protecting her arrogant husband from further harm. Her first step in that regard had to be separating Frederick from the book he currently held in his hands. She was counting on him not taking the tome to London; she’d discovered that there was a hidden room off the Hall’s library—probably originally a priest’s hole—in which the most prized of Frederick’s acquisitions were stored.
If the blasted book was left at the Hall, that would potentially create two targets for whoever was after it, and hopefully, the tome itself would prove the more attractive. Certainly, murdering its owner seemed a less-direct way of laying hands on the book, when a well-planned burglary would achieve a quicker result with, surely, less risk to the villain. Not that any burglar was likely to discover the priest’s hole, but if there was another attempted burglary while they were away, then that the book was the villain’s objective would be beyond doubt.
The notion that she might be the true target of the attacks had occurred to her, but she couldn’t imagine why anyone with the wherewithal let alone the knowledge to hire a thug to commit violent deeds would have her in their sights. That she’d walked into the kitchen in the middle of the night and surprised the villain’s henchman had to have been mere accident, and she doubted the sort of thug a villainous would-be thief hired would know that sometimes ladies drove gigs and not just gentlemen.
While Frederick gave orders as to which team of horses he wanted harnessed to his curricle the following day, and that Elliot and Kitty should follow with their luggage in the larger carriage as before, Stacie studied Frederick’s face.
Whoever the villain was, he most likely resided in London. Finding and exposing the blackguard would undoubtedly be their surest way forward, and in terms of ferreting out the villain, Frederick would have access to greater resources in town. Eyes narrowing fractionally, she scanned his—as always—uninformative countenance. Despite the lack of any evidence therein, she strongly suspected that, on his list of “business to be accomplished while in town,” the top spot was taken by: Find the blackguard and deal with him.
Or words to that effect.