Once they reached Bexhill-on-Sea, or Bexhill as it was known familiarly, a brief stop at the local tavern was enough to give them direction to the Miller farm, where Lady Celeste’s erstwhile steward Mr. Renfrew lived with his daughter and son-in-law.
It was a pretty-enough area, with the town itself situated on an elevation that allowed for a clear view in every direction. It was said that William the Conqueror had eaten his first meal in England near here, though Dalton had heard all sorts of tales relating to the King since it was so near the site of the Battle of Hastings. As boys, he and Kerr had come to Bexhill on any number of occasions, to watch the German soldiers who’d come here to escape Napoleon’s occupation at the invitation of the Hanoverian, George III.
“It is convenient that Mr. Renfrew was able to retire so near to where he lived and worked for so many years,” Daphne remarked as they turned onto a country lane not far from the town proper. “He must be able to keep in close contact with his friends, I think.”
“I imagine that is correct,” Dalton said as they came nearer to a rather impressive farm house with what appeared to be an extensive husbandry operation attached. “His daughter appears to have done well for herself, at any rate.”
“Or rather, her husband has done well,” Daphne said dryly. “Unless Renfrew’s daughter runs this farm all by herself. It is rare, I think that a woman should be able to do so. Even with the assistance of someone as influential as your aunt.”
“I suppose that’s correct,” he said ruefully. He forgot at times how much women were forced to rely upon their fathers and husbands for their subsistence. Daphne was helping to remind him.
As they neared the front door, a stable lad approached Dalton’s side of the curricle to take the reins from him, and as soon as Maitland had helped Daphne to the ground, the entrance of the farm house was opened by a curtsying, mob-capped maid.
“Milord, milady,” she said as she bowed and scraped, “how may I help ye?”
“The Duke of Maitland and Lady Daphne Forsyth to see Mr. Renfrew,” said Maitland in an amused tone. He had become accustomed to the people around Beauchamp House, who, if they did not precisely treat him like just another resident of the neighborhood, at the very least didn’t look as if they were somewhere between a faint and a seizure on greeting him, as this maid seemed to be.
At the mention of Renfrew, however she looked nonplussed.
Fortunately, a pretty woman of middle years entered the hallway and on seeing her visitors, gave an elegant curtsy. “That will be all, Molly,” she said to the blushing maid, who looked half-relieved, half-disappointed to be supplanted by her mistress.
“Your grace,” said the lady, whom Dalton assumed was Mrs. Miller, “my lady, I’m afraid my father is indisposed at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dalton’s heart sank at the news. Had they driven all this way on a fool’s errand?
“But we need to speak to him most urgently,” Daphne said in a brusque tone that revealed her nervousness.
Looking surprised, but not particularly conciliatory, Mrs. Miller said, “Perhaps we can step into the parlor for a moment and discuss this. I shall ring for some tea.”
Giving the woman his most charming smile, Dalton took Daphne’s arm. “That would be most appreciated, Mrs. Miller.”
The farmer’s wife ushered them into a small but well-furnished parlor, which seemed to serve the dual purposes of comfort and illustration of prosperity.
Once there, he waited for Daphne to take a seat on a low sofa, while Mrs. Miller sat calmly in an armchair. He remained standing, taking up a position before the handsome marble fireplace.
“Now, perhaps you can tell me what it is you wish to speak to my father about?” Mrs. Miller appeared to be wholly unruffled by their appearance in her drawing room.
Before Dalton could answer, Daphne said, “It is a confidential matter. Having to do with his former employer, Lady Celeste Beauchamp.”
“Perhaps you could tell us something about the nature of your father’s illness, Mrs. Miller?” Dalton asked hurriedly, before the other lady could respond to Daphne’s admission. “My aunt was quite fond of him as I recall, and I know she would wish me to inquire after his health. If there is anything we can do…”
The tense line between the matron’s eyes eased at Dalton’s words. “That is kind of you to ask, your grace. My father was fond of Lady Celeste as well. But I’m afraid he would not even remember her existence if I were to tell him you called.” Her eyes grew shiny with unshed tears. “His mind has gone, you see. And he is not the man he once was.”
At the news Mr. Renfrew was suffering from senility, Daphne emitted a distressed sound.
“We are quite sad to hear it, ma’am,” Dalton said, not sure where to proceed from here. “Is he able to receive visitors at all, or does that distress him too much?” He could at the very least find out the degree to which the man suffered from his mental ailment.
“He has good days and bad days,” Mrs. Miller said with a sad smile. “Unfortunately, today is not a good day. Though I know if he were well enough he would love to receive a visit from you, your grace. You were always one of his favorites. You and Lord Kerr.”
“But we’ve come all this way,” Daphne said in a weak voice. Clearly, she was not taking the news of their man’s indisposition well.
Moving to take a seat beside her, Dalton hoped that his nearness would give her comfort as it had done in the curricle.
Aloud, he said, “Mrs. Miller, perhaps you will be able to help us after all.”
Looking from Daphne to Dalton and then back again, Mr. Renfrew’s daughter said finally, “I will do what I can, your grace. Your aunt was quite good to my father.”
He smiled at that concession. Aunt Celeste had also been fond of Renfrew.
“Did Mr. Renfrew ever make mention of a letter or a note that my aunt asked him to hold for her?” he asked, hoping that the old man had done something to safeguard the clue to the location of the cipher before he lapsed fully into madness.
Mrs. Miller frowned, thinking. “I’m not quite sure, your grace. He gave me a great many items to put up in the attics, but I can have no notion of whether or not the missive your aunt entrusted to him is there. I did not go through them myself, you understand. And he keeps very few things in his bedchamber with him. Papa has always been a man with few needs for creature comforts.”
“Mrs. Miller,” Daphne began, and Dalton was almost afraid of what she would say. He was growing fonder of her by the minute, but he’d be blind not to notice that she had a way of setting up people’s backs with her words. “Do you suppose we could search through his things?”
Already he could see that Mrs. Miller was opening her mouth to deny them, but then Daphne continued, “It’s just that a man was murdered in Beauchamp House, and we think that something Lady Celeste gave your father could help us find what the killer was looking for.”
At the mention of murder, the other lady blanched, bringing a hand up to her throat. “How awful,” she said on a gasp. “Who would do such a thing? And why?”
“The man who was murdered was searching for something we think the killer has already found,” Daphne said, cleverly dancing around the truth of just what it was that Sommersby’s murderer had been looking for. “And Lady Celeste, being as brilliant as she was, left a clue with your father to the location of this artifact. If we find the artifact, we will, hopefully, find the killer.”
“I do not pretend to understand all that you just said, Lady Daphne,” Mrs. Miller said with a shake of her head. “But if I understand the gist of it, you need this paper in my father’s things in order to apprehend a murderer. In which case, I will be happy to let you look through his things. Though in his right mind, poor Papa would have been most put out to know you were doing so. Still, he was fond of Lady Celeste, and I should think he would be willing to help find the man bold enough to commit murder in her home.”
Dalton bit back a sigh of relief, thanking Mrs. Miller profusely for her cooperation.
As she led them upstairs to the third floor, where the attics were located, he said under his breath to Daphne, who walked beside him, “Well done, my dear. You knew exactly what to say.”
Her pleased smile told him that he, in turn, had known just what to say to her.
“I spoke from the heart,” she said, “just as Ivy told me to do when trying to persuade someone. I never guessed that it would actually work.” She sounded both surprised and pleased at her discovery.
They reached the door leading into the attic then. Handing a lit lamp to Dalton, then turning a large key in the antiquated lock, Mrs. Miller opened the door into the storage area. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said with a brisk nod. “Papa’s things are just to the left, near the chimney. I’ll send up a maid in an hour or so to see if you need any other help.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Miller,” Daphne told her with a smile that lit up her entire face. For a moment, Dalton was stunned by her beauty.
“I am happy to help, my dear,” said the other woman, with a smile. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
When she was gone, Dalton turned to see Daphne staring after her.
“What is it?” he asked, concerned.
“It’s nothing,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “It’s just that I usually do not get on with people so well. It felt…”
“Nice?” he asked with a grin.
“Yes,” she said. “Nice.” Which sounded like the most wonderful feeling in the world when she said it just so.
Then her eyes cleared and she turned to indicate that he should lead the way.
No fool, Dalton followed her orders, and lifting the lamp to shed light on their path, he stepped into the musty attic room.
* * *
Unfortunately for Daphne and the duke, Mr. Renfrew had been a man who did not like to throw things away. So the number of crates and trunks they were forced to wade through was more than they had at first thought.
Mixed in amongst a few decades worth of The Farmers Journal, Daphne found stacks of letters exchanged between the steward and friends who appeared to be fellow stewards with interests in farming. Not to mention all the correspondence between the man and his eleven (Daphne counted) siblings and four children.
“For a man who didn’t speak much,” Dalton remarked wryly, as he removed another stack of letters from the trunk he was examining, “Renfrew had much to say when he put pen to paper. I don’t know how he found time to work Aunt Celeste’s farmland given the number of letters he wrote.”
Daphne had wondered the same thing.
She also felt a pang of sympathy for the old man, who must have craved interaction with his peers if he was willing to put so much effort into writing them. Since she’d spent her whole life feeling as if she didn’t quite fit in, not only because of her intellectual pursuits, but also because of her odd nature, she could relate. She wondered, suddenly, if when she was gone someone would find her own saved letters from her mathematician colleagues equally as pathetic.
Aloud she said, “I should think if your aunt had found fault with his work she would have done something about it.”
She glanced over at him and saw that in his concentration on the task at hand, he’d disarranged his slightly overlong hair so that a golden lock of it fell onto his brow. He really was more handsome than a man should be allowed to be. What with his wide shoulders, trim waist, and face that might have been a Greek statue come to life, he was really more than she could have ever conjured from her imagination.
He must have felt her scrutiny then, because he looked up with a question in his eyes. “What is it? Did you find something?”
Blushing at having been caught staring, she shook her head. “No, I was just wondering if you had,” she lied.
With a wry smile, he lifted a small painting and handed it to her. “Does this answer your question?”
She gazed down at the artist’s rendering of what looked to be an exaggeratedly large ox. She knew it was an ox—for she’d never actually seen such a thing in her whole life—because affixed to the bottom of the simple frame was a brass plate that read “Beauchamp House Ox—Live weight 464 stone.”
“Good heavens,” Daphne said, aghast. “It must have been enormous!”
“Indeed.” Dalton rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I cannot seem to have ever spoken to Mr. Renfrew about the cattle raised on the farms at Beauchamp House, but clearly there were some prize winners amongst them. My aunt certainly never spoke of it.”
“It must have meant something to Mr. Renfrew,” Daphne said handing the painting back to him, feeling a small jolt of electricity as their hands brushed. She couldn’t help but be aware of their enforced proximity in the attic. In the curricle, they could talk, but he was forced to keep his attention on the road so they could do little more than hold hands. But here, alone, she couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities. “For him to have kept the painting, I mean.”
“Oh, as opposed to the rest of his things, which he threw away?” Dalton gave her a sardonic look, and she laughed. Was she mistaking the light in his eyes for something it was not, she wondered as they shared a look? “Well, when you put it that way.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as flustered as she felt. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so nervous around a man. Leaning back on his haunches, Dalton sighed as he surveyed the piles of detritus around them. “I don’t know if we’re ever going to find this letter my aunt gave into his care. Not unless we spend the next month or so rooting around through agricultural artifacts and prize cow paintings.”
Moving from her kneeling position to sit on the trunk next to where he crouched, Daphne said, “Perhaps we’re not being methodical enough about our search. So far, we’ve gone through most of Mr. Renfrew’s correspondence and found nothing. But what if we look for items that are particular to his work for your aunt?”
“I thought that’s what this was?” Dalton gestured to the stack of journals and prizes.
“If he discarded so few of his things,” Daphne said, “then he must have also held onto his correspondence with your aunt, including records of payment, and so forth. But I’ve seen nothing like that thus far. Have you?”
“No,” he said with a nod of approval. “I have not. Well done, Daphne.”
“Don’t congratulate me yet,” she said, though she felt a burst of pride at his praise. Which was silly given that she’d always been a step ahead of most people she knew. But there was something about being lauded by Dalton that felt different. It mattered. And fed her soul in a way she hadn’t even realized she needed. “It’s simple logic. But at least we can surmise that it must be preserved somewhere.”
“You’re just being modest,” he said. Getting to his feet, he stretched a little, and Daphne couldn’t help but admire the way his muscles moved beneath his clothes.
Tearing her gaze away, she stood, too, and looked round the room for likely hiding places for documents. Her gaze lit on a crate against the wall and she moved toward it. “I believe you’re the first person ever to call me modest,” she said over her shoulder as she attempted to remove the crate’s lid.
“Oh, please,’ Dalton said with a wave of his hand. “You can be quite modest. It’s just that you’re so busy trying to prove yourself to most people that you don’t give anyone the chance to see your prowess for themselves.”
That stopped her in the process of lifting out a stack of books.
She’d never thought of it that way, but he was right. She did spend much of her life trying to prove herself to people.
“I suppose I don’t feel the need to do that with you,” she said, feeling suddenly shy. This extended period of proximity to him was wreaking havoc on her usual sense of aplomb.
When he touched her hand, she jumped a little, startled at the touch. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“I’m glad,” he said softly. “I want you to be comfortable with me. To be yourself.”
And then he moved back to the trunk beside her, which he’d apparently decided needed his attention, and left her to her thoughts.
Taking a deep breath, she looked down and noticed that the books she had before her were finely bound in leather. Far more expensive than even a prosperous steward would be able to afford. Flipping open the first one, she saw an inscription on the fly leaf. “To Mr. Renfrew, Christmas 1818.” Beneath it, was the signature she’d come to know so well, that of Lady Celeste Beauchamp.
Turning the book over, she saw that it was a title on cattle breeding.
Not wanting to raise Dalton’s hopes, she searched each of the books from the crate, which all seemed to be Christmas gifts from Lady Celeste to her steward. And it wasn’t until she reached the one at the bottom of the stack that she found what she was looking for.
Tucked neatly into the middle of a bound volume of The Sussex Herd Book, she found a wax-sealed note.
She must have gasped, though she had no awareness of it.
Dalton was by her side in an instant, kneeling beside her before the crate, staring down in the lamplight at the page in her hand.
“I knew you’d find it,” he said with a grin. “Clever girl.”
“I feel awkward opening it,” she admitted, not meeting his gaze. “What if it isn’t what we think it is?”
“Mrs. Miller has given us permission to go through his things with the expectation that we would find the note,” Dalton said. “And in his present state, I doubt Mr. Renfrew will object.”
With a nod, Daphne slid her finger beneath the upper fold of the page and broke the seal.