“But I don’t know anything,” Lydia shrugged.
“He thinks you do, and that is enough to consider yourself in danger,” he told her. “He is a perilous man, Lydia. You must stay away from him at all costs.” She seemed to consider his advice then nodded. “All right then. I shall take you both home now before you get yourself in more trouble. My carriage is that way.”
He pointed at the other end of the alley, opposite the one where the Baron and his men disappeared off to. He allowed the girls to go first then, keeping the distance between them as small as possible, he followed them. He was still feeling that strange concoction of emotions. Joy at seeing Lydia. Fear at what could have happened. Anger that she consciously placed herself in such a dangerous situation. She was naïve if she thought that she had that situation under control. She wasn’t thinking. All it took was one second of not thinking for someone’s life to change drastically, for something terrible to happen.
He knew that well. He was certain that was what happened to his sister. One moment of carelessness. One moment of trusting the wrong person. One moment of deciding to go to the wrong place and being there at the wrong time. That was all it took for someone’s life to become tragic.
CHAPTER5
Lydia could not believe that she was in the Duke’s carriage, being taken home. All the events of this evening seemed like something out of a novel, something that could never happen in real life. Yet, they did. She was almost hurt in unimaginable ways by those brutes. It would surely have happened if this man hadn’t come when he did and rescued both her and Susannah.
That same man was now sitting across from her. Susannah’s head slumped on Lydia’s shoulder. It was far too much excitement for the poor girl, and after just a few streets, she allowed sleep to overpower her. The Duke was looking out of the window as the carriage gently rocked while taking them back to her home. Despite the fear which was still gripping her, Lydia realized that she did not wish this night to end. Perhaps it did not have to end just yet.
“Do you have any new leads in your investigation?” she asked.
He looked away from the window and at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, and he was now wondering what on earth she was doing in his carriage. It took him a few moments to gather his thoughts and provide a response to a question he was obviously not expecting.
“Some, yes,” he nodded, surprised that she would be asking such a question. He was obviously unwilling to discuss it in more detail which she could understand. However, her curiosity was insatiable.
“What are they?” she inquired, realizing very well how rude that question sounded. However, her curiosity recognized no lack of manners. It simply desired to be satisfied.
He tilted his head a little as he spoke. “Why do you want to know? So, you can ruin more of my leads?”
For a moment, she thought he was serious, but a flicker of a smile on his face revealed that he asked that question in good humor. There was a wall between them, some sort of a barrier which he had kept up, but she was determined to take it down, especially now that she could see a soft spot.
“So, I can help you,” she corrected him.
“Help me?” He laughed aloud at her comment.
“Yes,” she nodded, remaining serious.
“My dear lady, you are not even able to help yourself, let alone someone else,” he explained, still laughing.
She endured it then continued by remaining on the same subject, only endeavoring to approach it differently this time. “How long did you say your sister has been missing? Two years?”
“Yes,” he confirmed more gravely this time.
“And the constables have stopped looking for her?” She was merely repeating what he had already stated, or what she could infer from the snippets he had told her that evening in the garden. Hopefully, by restating these questions and getting him to open up more, she would be able to piece together the entire story and prove to him that she could be a valuable ally.
This seemed to be the perfect mystery, the kind Lydia had always been looking for: helping a duke find his lost sister. The mere thought titillated her far more than she was willing to admit, even to herself. No longer would she be dressing up as a commoner. That was mere child’s play. Compared to this newfound mystery, her old ways of satiating her curiosity were now pale in comparison.
“Everyone has stopped looking for her,” he said with a heavy, melancholic sigh.
She could immediately tell the amount of love he had for his sister. He wasn’t in search for her out of some familial obligation. It was far deeper than that. He loved her. It was noticeable in the way he responded to questions about her and the way his eyes took on a veil of sadness and grief when asked about her. Lydia herself could feel his pain.
“I feel like they have all given up on her,” he continued without being asked to. She listened to him intently, carefully not taking her eyes off of him.
As he spoke about what he knew regarding his siter’s disappearance, which was very little, she realized how strikingly handsome he was. She thought that upon seeing him for the first time in the garden. His eyes struck her the most. Now, they seemed even more remarkable. He himself seemed even more handsome, his physical appearance of a Greek god paired up with his heartfelt story of a lost sister and his utter unwillingness to give up.
For a moment, she didn’t know whether this desire to take part in this mystery was entirely innocent. Was she so eager to take part in it because of her curiosity and love for mysteries or was it because of something else, rather someone else? She banished the thought from her mind, assuring herself that it had nothing to do with the devilishly handsome duke. It was all her infatuation with mysteries. She had always been interested in them. This time was no different. Just because there was a strikingly handsome duke involved in the story, that didn’t change anything. Absolutely not. This was all about the mystery, not the handsome duke.
Well, perhaps a little. It washissister after all, was it not? It had to be about him as well, at least a little.
When he finished the entire story, she realized that he knew devastatingly little. There was barely anything to go on. Rachel, his sister, simply vanished one night, never to be seen again. No one could understand why or even how. She was not being courted by anyone. All of her friends were contacted immediately, but as it turned out, no one had seen her, no one had heard from her. It was as if she vanished into thin air which was of course a physical impossibility. She had to be somewhere.
Worst of all, she had to be with someone. That was another thing her brother was certain of. While the constables kept pushing onto him their theory that she simply decided to disappear of her own accord, maybe even with a paramour, he was certain that was not the case.
“Our parents were always traveling a lot,” he explained, “for Father’s business. That was during the time that he was alive. After his death, Mother remained mostly at home. But it was during those years that we were growing up that we were left mostly to ourselves and to the care of servants. That didn’t mean our parents didn’t love us. On the contrary, everything they did, they did for us. However, we still lacked their presence and found solace in each other. We were inseparable as children. Then, when we grew up, our interests separated us somewhat, but I feel as if we still remained close. That is why I believe that if she had any sort of a problem, any fear, any predicament, she would come to me.”