The Captain by Lynn Collum

Author:Lynn Collum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

“Lord Rowland wishes to see you at once, sir.” Clark, the valet, bowed and left the dining room.

Drew, lost in thought about having discovered Jacinda Blanchett under his very nose, blinked and looked about. He’d barely touched his supper. Lady Rowland had dined and left without so much as a word to him. Despite his efforts to try and be polite, theirs was not a friendly relationship. Perhaps she’d taken offence at all the missed meals but, in truth, he’d been too busy with estate matters to think about food. She’d resorted to a rather frosty silence, which he couldn’t deny he preferred to her incessant criticism.

Much of his evening had been spent pondering how he’d been so blind. There had been moments over the course of the past week that he’d though “Jack” a rather delicate boy, but never had he questioned the lad’s gender. Perhaps it was because there were too many such fragile lads in the teeming masses of most large cities, who were ill-fed or sickly to make one suspect a willowy boy with a pretty face was anything other than what he professed to be.

That, and the fact that Miss Blanchett made a rather plucky lad. She’d helped with their rescue from the Press Gang, endured the mad dash through the streets of London, and survived the terrors of the warehouse roof. Who would have ever suspected game young Jack to be the fragile child they’d all last seen eight years earlier?

The problem was what to do with her while they figured out the mystery of who wanted her dead. Logic told him that the murderer had to be someone after her fortune; this was why so many people suspected him and his father. He knew himself innocent and was fairly certain his father was as well, for there was no profit for them with Blanchett and his daughter gone. Which meant he could concentrate on her relatives. His thoughts returned to the tea he’d attended that afternoon.

Mrs. Devere, Giles, Mrs. Tyne, and the cousin, Miss Markham, had been present. Mrs. Tyne had been polite but openly flirtatious while her mother questioned him about his successes in Calcutta. Devere had been sullen and resentful, but whether because of his sister’s immodest conduct or some grievance with Drew was uncertain. Only Miss Markham had greeted him with hostility. She seemed to blame him for the catastrophe that had befallen the family, and she’d barely spoken with him throughout his visit. She’d even rebuffed his request for information on the search for her missing cousin. Somehow he couldn’t see sending Jack—no, Miss Blanchett—back into that house.

But he couldn’t leave her out in the gardener’s cottage while they searched for the truth. That could take months and, like Ben, Drew knew she deserved to be back in her rightful place or at least someplace safe and appropriate—which the gardener’s cottage wasn’t. But bringing her into the manor house here at the Park might cause even more speculation about his father and him if the truth were discovered.

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