‘That is to say, damn. Quite.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘When I come from, women swear.’
His lordship looked a trifle shocked, but he did not comment on my language. ‘It would be much easier if she had been carrying on a correspondence with some man and run off with him,’ he said with a shrug. ‘At least we would know she had gone willingly. Although that would shatter Clem. Let us see what the gate can tell us.’
Not a lot as it turned out when we studied it. With no steps down to a service door at the front of the house, all the deliveries came in from the rear and the path was well-trodden. The gate was open but Lucian pointed out the heavy bar that would have been dropped across at night to secure it.
He lifted it and set it in place. ‘Arabella would not have been able to move that, it is far too heavy.’
I stripped off my delicate kid gloves, pushed back my cuffs and lifted the bar out of the sockets. When Lucian eyed me suspiciously I said, ‘I go to the gym and exercise.’
‘Gym?’
‘Gymnasium – for exercise to keep fit. Like you have fencing and boxing – salons, is it?’
He nodded, his face so carefully expressionless that I could guess what his imagination was doing with the idea of ladies exercising in gymnasia. ‘But Miss Trenton could not have managed that by herself. She is smaller and slighter than you and I doubt she does anything more strenuous than take strolling walks and dance.’ He took the bar from me, propped it back against the wall and opened the gate. ‘There is only a service alleyway behind.’
We walked up and down it but it was depressingly clean. No piles of mud or manure to take an incriminating foot or wheel print, no handkerchief marked with an abductor’s initials, no sharp-eyed urchin to screech, ‘She went that way, guv, with a bloke with a wooden leg and red hair!’
We went back to the bench. This time Lucian did drape his arm along the back of the seat. I did my best not to lean back against it. ‘Either Miss Trenton went willingly or she was abducted,’ he began.
‘And even if she went willingly we do not know that whoever she left with had not deceived her,’ I added.
‘So either she is happily eloping with her lover or she is a prisoner somewhere. Or dead.’
‘Or she never left the house.’ It had just occurred to me and I rather wished it hadn’t.
‘She might be hiding, you mean?’
‘No. Hidden. Either alive or dead.’
‘Hell.’ This time he made no attempt to control his language. ‘But who would do such a thing?’
‘One of the male staff who made advances, then killed her when she struggled,’ I suggested. ‘Or her brother.’ Lucian opened his mouth to protest. ‘The family are the prime suspects. Always. We should check for signs of digging in the garden and, if there are none, then we need to get back in the house and search it from top to bottom – attics and cellar in particular.’
The expression on Lucian’s face hardened from grim to bleak. ‘What have you seen that gives you this knowledge? What hell can life be like when you come from if a young lady knows of these things? No.’ He gestured abruptly. ‘No, do not tell me. We will look for freshly-turned earth and for the marks of a ladder now, then I will think how to go about how I can search.’
How we will search, I corrected mentally, but did not say so. Lucian had enough to adjust to as it was. I let myself lean back against the warm firmness of his arm and, for a second, his hand curled around the point of my shoulder. Then he stood up and walked briskly to the furthest flowerbed.
The garden showed signs of careful tending, but there was no fresh digging and all the slabs that made up a miniature terrace had moss between them. We could see no signs on the York stone of a ladder being used either.
‘Now I want to go and talk to the other staff,’ I said as we stood at the top of the area steps. ‘Coming?’
‘Of course.’
A child of about twelve answered my knock on the door. She looked far too young to be working, let alone at any kind of manual labour, but from her bedraggled apron and her red hands I guessed this was the lowest servant lifeform, a scullery maid, poor mite.
She gawped but stood back holding the door and we went through to the kitchen, Lucian keeping well behind me. I tapped on the door frame. ‘Might I come in?’
Chapter Seven
Cook turned from the hearth, ladle in hand. ‘Who’s that, Peggy? Oh! Ma’am?’
‘Good morning. My name is Lawrence and Lord Cottingham has asked me to help look into the worrying disappearance of Miss Trenton.’ To my own ears it sounded like the title of some Golden Age detective novel, but the cook nodded and pulled forward a big Windsor chair that I guessed was hers.
‘It will be a mercy if someone can find her, poor sweet lamb. If you would care to sit down, Miss, I’ll make a cup of tea and I’ve fresh scones –’ She broke off at the sight of Lucian in the doorway, but recovered herself with more aplomb than I would have shown if he had appeared in my kitchen unexpectedly. ‘Sir?’
He didn’t correct her. ‘I am with Miss Lawrence.’ He sat down on a hard chair in a corner. The shadows disguised the quality of his tailoring, so perhaps she thought he was my footman. I decided not to share that thought with him afterwards.
‘I wondered if any of the staff had any ideas about what might have happened to her,’ I asked as Cook put a plate of scones on the stool by my side. ‘Those do look delicious, Mrs – ?’ Cooks, I knew, were always Mrs, married or not.