Chapter Six

Graham had, of course, been to Marlborough before. Everyone had been to Marlborough. It was a convenient and easy stop on the way from London to practically anywhere to the west.

He just couldn’t remember hearing of anyone going there with the intention of staying more than a single night.

It felt odd to be riding into a town with just Oliver. Normally Aaron would be on his right, reminding them all to take proper care of their horses when riding them long distances.

His admonishments were ingrained in their brains, though, so Oliver and Graham spread the relatively easy distance to Marlborough from London over three days in the saddle. Now Graham was more than ready to relax in an inn’s public rooms.

They plodded down the abnormally wide cobbled expanse of High Street. Several inns off the main road were bustling with people in fine traveling clothes and stacks of luggage. In silent agreement, Oliver and Graham rode right past. Oliver’s problem was a family matter, so the last thing they wanted to do was bump into someone they knew who’d want to know why on earth they were staying in Marlborough instead of simply passing through it.

A bit farther down on a side street, they found a clean and respectable-looking inn that appeared to cater to a more middle-class clientele. Graham’s stomach grumbled as the smell of food drifted over the inn’s courtyard. He was more than happy to turn over Dogberry’s reins to a waiting stableboy. The fact that the horse nearly pulled the lad into the stable instead of the other way around was a sure sign that he was as ready to be done traveling as Graham.

With the horses cared for and rooms secured, the men settled into the inn’s tavern area with fragrant bowls of hearty stew.

“Is it too late to pay a visit to Mr. Banfield, do you think?” Oliver asked as he pushed a bit of carrot around with his spoon.

Graham paused, his bowl of stew not even half empty. “I should think so. It won’t hurt anything to wait until morning. She’s not in any danger.”

“That we know of,” Oliver grumbled.

“You know she’s not. If either one of us thought there was a chance of that, we’d have thrown discretion to the wind and come in a carriage. We’d have been here two days ago.” They’d discussed it at length, debating the merits of having their own horses available versus the speed of taking a stage. In the end, they’d decided that discretion was more important. For all of Lord Trenting’s gruffness, Oliver’s father would have been distraught if Priscilla had actually come to physical harm.

“I know.” Oliver chopped a carrot in half with his spoon. “But now I’m reconsidering.”

“You’re simply anxious now that you don’t have traveling to occupy your mind.” Graham pushed his bowl away. “We can walk down that way and see if he’s in his office.”

Oliver shoveled a few more bites of stew into his mouth and dropped a coin on the table for the serving lass before heading for the door. Now that Graham had been off his horse for a while, he was actually glad for the excuse to stretch his legs a bit before bed.

The town looked different in the early evening, the street quiet but still interesting. They’d seen Mr. Banfield’s office sign on the way into town, so they knew where they were going, even if the chances of the man being in his office were somewhere between unlikely and nonexistent.

As they passed a store bearing the name Lancaster’s, Graham paused to look over the odd assortment of items in the window display. An array of food items sat side by side with, well, stuff. What sort of grocer also sold decoratively tooled saddlebags and rag dolls?

“Look at that.” Graham pointed to a box covered in rolled paper filigree. He’d seen similar ones in some of the homes he’d been in for soirees and dinners. His mother had once deliberated for days on end whether or not to purchase a table covered in the paper curls, but then her friend Lady Mitchum had beaten her to it. This box was exceptionally detailed. Maybe he’d buy it and take it home to his mother. It wasn’t a table, but it was pretty.

Several shadows passed by the window, proving the store was still open for business. Graham took a step toward the door.

Oliver frowned. “The solicitor.”

Graham nodded and started walking toward the solicitor’s again. They’d be in town for a while yet. He’d stop into the store on another day.

If he were honest, Graham would have to admit that Oliver’s single-minded fixation on finding his sister was stirring up a bit of jealousy. Aside from his parents, Graham didn’t really have anyone in his life whom he cared about like Oliver cared for Priscilla. Oh, he supposed he’d go to great lengths if Oliver or Aaron needed something, but that was rather different. He couldn’t see either of them needing him to ride across the country following slim clues about small-town solicitors.

The jealous feeling didn’t sit well with Graham, like a coat that had been retailored an inch too small for his shoulders.

It was impossible to miss the solicitor’s office, with its large, multi-paned window overlooking High Street.

It was also impossible to miss the rather startling mess inside. Newspapers and books covered nearly every available surface. It didn’t look dirty so much as it looked full. Well, full of everything except an actual solicitor.

“The door’s locked.” Oliver ran a hand over his face and looked out across the town. “We’ll have to wait until morning.”

Graham threw an arm across Oliver’s shoulders and directed him back down the pavement toward the inn. “Remember what we discussed on the way here, Oliver. Your father would not do anything to put his daughter or the earldom in danger. There is an explanation he simply didn’t want to give to you.”

Beneath Graham’s arm, Oliver’s shoulders slumped. “Prissy has never been what he wanted her to be.”

It was true. But then again, Oliver hadn’t ever been quite what the earl wanted either. There wasn’t a man with a finer heart than Oliver’s, but Graham knew the earl would have preferred a son with a bit more gumption. Perhaps, if Graham were being brutally honest, a son with a few more brains. How to remind Oliver of that without making him feel worse, though?

“Prissy may not be everything an earl’s daughter should be,” Graham said slowly, “but she’s not the one who had a row with him in the middle of a dinner party.”

As intended, the memory made Oliver grin. He was oddly proud of that moment, when he’d shown his father that he could actually stand up to someone if the matter was personal enough. It had resulted in Aaron being allowed to make several changes to the family’s stable of racehorses, but not before the earl had turned nearly purple in shame.

Oliver straightened his shoulders and nodded. “I suppose it’s entirely possible Father cares more for her well-being than for mine.”

Graham’s mouth dropped open but he snapped it shut. That hadn’t been the conclusion he’d thought Oliver would make, but it served the purpose of easing his fears for a while, so Graham would let it be. “And yet, here you are, alive and healthy.”

With the urgency of finding the solicitor set temporarily aside, Oliver deflated. “I think I’ll retire. It’s been a long week.”

The last thing Graham felt like doing at that moment was returning to the inn. What would he do there? Sit in his room and listen for Oliver to fall back into fretting about his sister? They were far enough from London that Graham wasn’t worried the man would lose his grip on sanity and threaten to knock his father over the head with his brass bust of Henry V, and there really wasn’t anything he could do.

So he bid his friend a good evening and went in the direction of the interesting little grocer.

The inside was as equally charming as the outside. Near the front of the store stood bins of foodstuffs and shelves of herbs and tins of candy. The normal items to be found in any small grocer.

The back of the store, however, was a veritable treasure trove of odds and ends, waiting to marvel a potential buyer.

At the front counter, a short, older woman with a round face and a wide smile helped a dark-haired woman and a young girl.

Neither the women nor the items behind the counter were of much interest to Graham, but the assortment of goods in the back was fascinating. He wandered through the shelves until he stumbled upon an assortment of wooden toys on a low shelf in the very back.

A soft laugh escaped as he lowered himself to one knee and looked at the toys. Who sold such a thing at a food store?

He slid a Shut the Box game forward and flicked numbered panels back and forth, recalling the game he hadn’t played in years.

“Are you going to buy that?”

Graham looked up to see a little boy standing next to him with wide blue eyes and dark hair that stuck up in a strange tuft on the back of his head. One front tooth was larger than the rest of his teeth, so the boy couldn’t be that young. When had Graham started getting new teeth in? Six? Seven? How did parents not constantly go a bit touched in the head trying to remember details like that?

With a shake of his head, Graham angled the box so the boy could see it better. “No, I was simply remembering playing the game as a child.”

The little boy nodded earnestly. “Good. I like to play with my friend Henry when he comes to visit Mrs. Lancaster. She’s the shop owner. When I come to visit her, she gives me peppermints, which I like, but she always hands them over with this funny little laugh saying that my father met my mother over a tin of peppermints. I don’t particularly like that part.”

The boy’s face held such sincerity that Graham had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling too broadly. He’d never had much to do with children, assuming they were annoying and messy, but this precocious little boy was rather entertaining.

Especially when he kept talking after barely taking a breath. “It’s not that I’m not happy my mother and father met, you understand, but more that I’d rather not have to hear the story every time she sneaks me a free peppermint.”

Graham released the grin. He couldn’t help it. He was definitely going to have to start giving more attention to his friends’ children. Were all children this adorable? “You’d rather get your free candy and run, hmm?”

“Yes!” The boy’s eyes widened. “Do you want to play?”

Without waiting for an answer, the boy plopped himself on the floor between two rows of shelves and set the box down in front of him. He fished a pair of dice from the bottom of the box and set all of the numbers to one side so they could be flipped. Then he rolled the dice.

Fascinated, Graham lowered himself to the floor. Apparently the people who came to the store were just as eclectic as the items inside. The boy had said he was visiting Mrs. Lancaster, not shopping or coming to the store. Was the old woman the child’s grandmother? He certainly looked comfortable playing with the merchandise.

As the little boy rolled the dice and flicked the number panels accordingly, he talked. “Mother always says she’s only stopping in to pick up a few things, but if no one else is here she ends up talking for hours. It’s not so bad when Henry is here, but he doesn’t come into town very often.”

Graham raised one knee and propped his arm on it, trying to settle himself between the shelves. He was a good bit larger than his companion and didn’t fit quite as easily. “Where does Henry live?”

“Out in the trees.” The little boy rolled an eight and flipped the tabs on the seven and the one before looking up at Graham with an earnest gaze. “No, really. We have to go through so many trees to get there. Papa takes me with him sometimes when he goes, and I have to help push the limbs away from the wagon. That’s fun. Not as fun as playing with Henry, though. Sometimes Papa lets me drop sticks on one side of the bridge and then watch them come out the other side. We can only do it when we go over the north bridge. There’s too much traffic on the London Road bridge.”

Graham felt out of breath just listening to the boy. How did he possibly have that much air?

The boy sighed and slumped his shoulders as he rolled a number he couldn’t play. He flipped all the tabs back to their starting position and passed Graham the dice.

Was he really about to play Shut the Box on the floor of a grocer in Marlborough? With a shrug, Graham cast his dice and flipped his first numbers. If he were honest, this conversation was more interesting than most of the ones he’d had in the past few months, even if he didn’t know the script. Perhaps that was what made it interesting. He latched on to the last thing the boy had said. “You like the bridge?”

The boy popped up on his knees and leaned over so he could see which numbers Graham was playing. “Yes. We have to be careful when we go, though, because when it rains a lot the river floods the bridge. Henry likes coming over the bridge, too, but he doesn’t get to do it very often. I wish we could play more together, but Father says that if you visit hidden treasure too often it doesn’t stay hidden. So I play with the boys in town. I like them, but Henry’s more fun.”

Graham’s turn finished so he passed the dice back to the boy. Was there some sort of trick to understanding the speech of children? Half of what the boy was saying didn’t make any sense. Perhaps his friend was imaginary. That was something children did, wasn’t it? His father might take him for walks in the woods to visit this imaginary friend. Graham couldn’t blame a man for not wanting to do that too often. “Why don’t you like playing with the boys in town?”

The little boy tossed the dice from hand to hand. “They think I talk too much. Henry is used to it because he said there’s always someone talking in his house because there’s so many children there. Sometimes we both talk at the same time to see which of us can tell a story faster than the other.”

Graham bit his cheek again to keep from smiling. He hated that the little boy was having trouble with the other children, but they might have a point about the amount of talking he did. His little mouth hadn’t stopped moving the entire time Graham had known him, which, granted, was only about ten minutes, but it was more than he’d heard some of his acquaintances say in ten years.

“I think it’s going to rain tonight,” the boy continued as he rolled the dice. “It’s rained every day for three days. That’s why Mother brought us to visit Mrs. Lancaster today. She said we had to get out of the house before she sewed us all up into the bedsheets just to get a little peace. Have you had to sit inside because of the rain? Father’s still gone to work, so I don’t think men have to worry about the rain as much as women and children do.”

“I came in from London today. We didn’t get any rain on our trip,” Graham said with a smile, reaching over to point out a number combination the boy had missed.

But the boy wasn’t interested in the game right then. His mouth dropped open a bit as he looked up at Graham. “You mean it doesn’t rain everywhere at the same time?”

There was no more keeping it in. Graham chuckled. The whole of London had it wrong, shutting their children away in the nurseries. They should be trotted out as the evening’s entertainment, along with tables full of childhood games.

“Daniel!”

Man and boy looked up to see the dark-haired woman with her fists propped on her hips. She looked vaguely familiar, but Graham couldn’t place her. A tired sigh sifted through her lips. “What are you doing, Daniel?”

The boy glanced at Graham, then tilted his head back until he was looking at his mother upside down. “Playing Shut the Box with my new friend.”

One side of the woman’s mouth kicked up in a grin she couldn’t seem to help. “New friend? Did you remember to introduce yourself this time?”

The boy froze and very carefully placed the dice on the floor beside the box before standing to his feet and straightening his clothes. He pushed his shoulders back and cleared his throat before looking back at Graham.

From his position on the ground, Graham was eye to eye with the little boy. He took a deep breath himself and schooled his features to look as serious as the little boy.

The boy stuck his hand forward. “My name is Mr. Daniel Banfield. Pleased to meet you.”

Graham blinked and was very glad that he’d already cleared the smile from his face. Wasn’t the solicitor’s name Banfield? Graham cleared his throat and shook the boy’s hand. “Graham, Viscount of Wharton.”

The boy’s eyes widened, and beyond his shoulder Graham could see the woman stiffen. She’d had no problem with his presence until she’d learned his title. Did she know him? Or was it that he had a title at all? Assuming she was the boy’s mother and assuming the boy’s father was the solicitor Oliver had come to meet . . . well, Graham couldn’t imagine why she’d be bothered by his name. He wasn’t connected to anyone who’d had dealings with Mr. Banfield. At least, not that he knew of.

“A real viscount?” Daniel asked.

“No,” Graham couldn’t help but say teasingly. “A fake one.”

The boy crossed his arms and frowned while the small smile returned to his mother’s lips. “You can be arrested for impersonating a peer. I know. My father’s a solster.”

A solster? Graham grinned. It probably was rather difficult for little mouths to learn to say the word solicitor. “My father is an earl, so I think he’ll vouch for me.”

The boy considered this for a moment. “Probably. Father says that the aristocracy gets away with—”

“And I think it’s time we were going.” The mother surged forward and wrapped an arm around Daniel, covering his mouth with one of her hands. “Please allow me to apologize. I had no idea anyone else was in the store or I wouldn’t have let him wander around.”

Graham pushed himself to his feet and brushed off his breeches. “Please don’t apologize. It’s been a pleasure.” He leaned down. “Mr. Banfield, thank you for making my first evening in Marlborough an enjoyable one.”

The boy pulled his mother’s hand away from his mouth and grinned. “You’re welcome!”

Graham found himself smiling as he slid the game back into its position on the lowest shelf, pushing it all the way back so that it was harder to see. He had a feeling the game wasn’t truly for sale if the little boy came in and played it often.

When he stood back up, the mother and son had been replaced by a smiling old woman. “Welcome to Marlborough.” She held out a tin. “Would you like a peppermint?”

As he took the candy, Graham couldn’t help but send a little prayer of gratitude up to God for bringing him on this trip. Tomorrow he would help Oliver get his answers and make sure Priscilla was safe, but for today at least, Graham had been reminded that life was a rather wonderful thing.