he’d even set foot in Bath. Not that he was fool enough to correct Lady Mainwaring’s assumption.
‘Did your friend happen to find out why they left?’
She shook her head. ‘You would think, with that parade-ground voice of his, that she would have been able to make out just the gist of it, wouldn’t you? But even the cook he hired with the house hadn’t been able to discover why they all left so suddenly. But then by the time she came into work on Thursday morning, the agent was there and the battle in full swing.’
Thursday morning. She’d left Bath the very day after the concert.
Was it a coincidence? Or could it be a result of his own behaviour? Could someone have seen him holding hands with her and told her grandfather?
That was the trouble with making a daring move. The rewards could be great, but sometimes the risks meant the end result could be catastrophic.
Though, in this case, he could see a way to come about. He’d simply adapt the plans Rawcliffe and Becconsall had drawn up. They’d instructed him to cajole Miss Hutton into inviting him to spend Christmas with her at Lesser Peeving. Instead, he would move his pursuit of Miss Hutton to the next level by going down to Peacombe, a little seaside town which boasted a hotel or two. And from where he could beat a path to her door.
‘Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to the Three Tuns,’ said an oily-looking man who put Harry in mind of an exceptionally crooked tavern keeper he’d had the misfortune to have dealings with in Naples. All smiles for paying customers, all double-dealing behind the scenes. ‘How may I help you?’
‘I want a room for myself and my manservant.’
‘A room?’ The landlord looked confused.
‘This is an hotel, is it not?’
‘Yes, of course it is, I just...’ The landlord replaced the confusion with an ingratiating smile. ‘We do not usually get many visitors so late in the year.’
‘Which means, I hope, that I can have my pick of rooms.’
The landlord ran an appraising eye over Harry, from the gold braid on his hat, to his battered and scuffed boots, judging the cost and age of everything he saw. Harry pretended not to notice.
‘Since I suffer from,’ Harry said, ‘that is, since I may have need of my manservant during the night, I will want a large room, in which you can place a truckle bed, or one with a dressing room in which one can be placed.’ Though Harry didn’t think whoever was responsible for Archie’s death was likely to try sneaking into his room and stabbing him while he lay sleeping, Dawkins had insisted they take no chances.
‘May I ask how long you are considering staying with us?’
‘A week to begin with. After that, it depends upon how my...business in the area progresses. I take it you require payment in advance? For the first week, that is.’
Harry didn’t wait for the landlord to answer, he just pulled out the roll of folding money Rawcliffe had handed him ‘for expenses’ before leaving London, peeled off one note and handed it over.
The landlord didn’t appear to even glance at it before palming it and making it disappear somewhere within the folds of his own coat.
‘I believe you would be most comfortable in our first-floor suite,’ he said. ‘It has a sea view, which some former occupants...’ he leaned in as though sharing a titbit of gossip ‘...a marquess and his new bride, remarked upon most favourably.’
Just as he’d thought. The man was a rogue. The marquess and bride to whom he’d referred had to be Lord and Lady Rawcliffe, who had come to Peacombe earlier that year. There couldn’t be any other marquess eccentric enough to have attempted to take his bride to such an unfashionable destination for her bride trip. But when Rawcliffe had stayed down here, he’d rented an entire lane full of cottages to house himself and his retinue, according to Becconsall, who’d found it highly amusing. Nevertheless, he could not let on that he knew. He wasn’t supposed to have any connection to Rawcliffe at all, let alone be so close to him that he knew where he’d spent his honeymoon. So he took the man up on the other part of his statement.
‘I have seen quite enough of the sea during my career to date,’ he said curtly, hoping the landlord would draw the correct conclusion about his background. Since he was not going to be a guest of the Colonel and Miss Hutton, he and Dawkins had come up with a revised plan to explain his presence in Peacombe. They’d then written to Rawcliffe to inform him that Harry would drop a steady stream of crumbs of information, as though unwittingly, in order to control the gossip that his arrival in the small seaside town would engender.
So far, he thought he’d done a fair job of announcing that he’d been in the navy and had more money than sense.
‘Very good, sir. My name is Mr Jeavons,’ said the landlord with a smug bow. ‘It will not take long to prepare our best suite, for you. Jones,’ he said, indicating a servant in a green apron, who’d been lounging against the doorframe of what appeared to be the entrance to a public taproom, ‘will take your luggage up.’ Jones pushed himself off his doorframe and made for the pile of cases Dawkins had just deposited on the stone flags. ‘If you would not mind just signing our guest book?’ He gestured to a leather-bound journal propped open on a shelf beneath the main staircase.
Harry obliged. Once Jeavons had glanced at the entry, which included his title and gave his estate in Scotland as his main address, the manager became even more obsequious.
‘Permit me to guide you to our reading room, where there is a fire by which you can warm yourself, my lord,’ he said, inching in the direction of a corridor which led into the bowels of the large, rambling building which occupied one entire side of the market square.
‘Captain Bretherton,’ Harry corrected him.
‘As you wish,’ said the landlord subserviently. ‘We have the London papers, as well as a large stock of books in our lending library. People—that is, the better sort of people—come from all over the locality to borrow books or simply to take coffee. In fact, I am not ashamed to confess that the Three Tuns has become the centre of the social life in this part of Dorset, since I made the improvements.’
Harry glanced round the deserted foyer, into which a little rain was gusting through the door which still stood open behind him.
‘Ah, if only you had been here during the summer months. Then you would have been able to enjoy concerts, and balls, as well as the very best of society.’
‘I was not up to dancing, during the summer,’ because he’d rarely been sober enough to know his left foot from his right. ‘Though my recent sojourn in Bath,’ he continued, hoping Jeavons would pick up on the fact he was posing as a semi-invalid, ‘has worked wonders.’
‘Ah,’ said Jeavons, with dawning comprehension. Finally. ‘You have been taking the waters. Did someone you met there recommend the health-giving properties of our own spring? Though it is not,’ he continued before Harry had a chance to make any sort of response, ‘as conveniently situated, I am sure that you will find the walk along the recently constructed promenade along the sea front, followed by the climb up through our beautiful cliffside gardens to reach the source, most beneficial to your health and well-being. And when you drink it—’
‘All I wish to drink, for the present, is some of that coffee you mentioned.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Jeavons with a deft bow. ‘Please follow me to the reading room, where I will serve you myself.’
He set off along the corridor he’d pointed out before and Harry followed, with Dawkins close on his heels.
The room to which Jeavons took them turned out to be far more appealing than Harry had expected from what he’d seen