had included it in the papers by accident. Lord Fenner had declared on his deathbed that none of his daughters should have sight of it and it had remained with Mr. Churchward ever since. Merryn had assumed that her father had been so ashamed of the poverty of the estate that he had not wanted to distress them with it. She read the dry legal language. There had been so little for Lord Fenner to leave because by now the estate had been bankrupt. It was why all Stephen’s possessions had been disposed of, why Merryn had not a single memento to remember him by.
“To my daughters …” A few sticks of furniture, the ugly little table that Joanna, for all her elegance and style, still kept in the hallway.
“To the servants …” A few shillings scraped together in return for a lifetime’s service.
“To Lord Scott of Shipham Hall in the County of Somerset, the miniature of my son Stephen …”
Merryn gave a little gasp of pure shock and pressed a hand to her mouth. Why would her father have left his daughters not one item to remember their brother by and yet give the precious miniature of Stephen to a man they barely knew? It was extraordinary. It made no sense at all.
She stared at the words until they danced before her eyes. Why had her father given away so cherished a keepsake as Stephen’s miniature? Lord Scott must surely have hated Stephen for ruining his daughter. What possible reason could there be to give him so precious a token? Merryn rubbed her temples where a headache pounded. She would never be able to ask her father that question now. He was dead and gone, as was the Duke of Farne. Only Lord Scott remained of those three men who had met after Stephen’s death for whatever mysterious purpose. Lord Scott …
He was the only man who could help her now.
Merryn moved quickly and quietly after that, gathering together a few items for her journey, filling one small portmanteau since, unlike her sisters, she did not need a baggage train when she traveled. The house was quiet. Tess and Joanna, no doubt worn-out with discussions about her trousseau, were asleep. Merryn tiptoed down the stairs, passed the dozing night porter, closed the main door very softly after her and went out.
The streets were cold at this time of the morning. A very pale gray dawn was barely starting to creep in from the east, turning the clouds soft as a pearl. Merryn reached the White Lion in Holborn with barely five minutes to spare before the Bath Flyer departed. The coach was not full. It was too late in the year and the roads too bad. No one wanted to travel on the roof.
The guard was checking his watch. With profuse apologies Merryn wedged herself into a gap between a buxom lady and a stick thin girl and then they were away.
GARRICK HAD NOT SLEPT and when Pointer knocked softly on the door he was lying fully clothed on his bed staring up at the ceiling. He knew before the butler spoke exactly what he was going to say. Pointer’s long, thin face looked even more lugubrious than ever, his nose twitching with sympathy.
“Lord and Lady Grant are here to see you, your grace.” His nose twitched again, this time in disapproval, as he took in the frowsty room and Garrick’s unkempt appearance.
“Would you like to shave before you meet them, your grace?” Pointer’s voice implied that only the ill-bred would decline such an offer to make them look halfway presentable for company.
“No, thank you, Pointer,” Garrick said. He grabbed his jacket and shrugged himself into it. It was barely light. Lady Grant was known for keeping late hours, which was one of the reasons that the wedding had been set for the afternoon. Only the direst of emergencies could have impelled her from her bed at dawn.
Garrick knew exactly what that emergency must be.
He ran a hand over his hair to smooth it down and went out onto the landing. Farne House looked even more like a barracks at this time of day with the gloomy light barely wreathing the high ceilings and failing to reach the dark corners. Over the past week Pointer had employed a veritable army of servants to clean and scrub and polish in anticipation of the arrival of the new Duchess of Farne. The result had been to make a neglected Gothic horror of a house look like a shining Gothic horror of a house. Garrick felt a pang for the servants and for all their hard work. There would be no new Duchess to approve their industry now.
Alex and Joanna Grant were waiting for him in the library. Pointer had lit two branches of candles—Garrick doubted that his father had ever been so extravagant as to require more than one—but the effect was to give the huge barnlike room a quality of even greater gloom, the bookcases looming over the space in oppressive shadow, the speckled mirror only serving to make the room look twice as large and twice as lonely.
Joanna Grant, neat as a pin in a striped gown and matching spencer, was perched on the edge of vast armchair but she jumped up as soon as he entered the room. Her face was white and strained.
“Your grace—” she said, and her voice broke.
“It’s all right,” Garrick said. “I know. Merryn does not wish to wed me.”
His record was deteriorating, he thought. At least his first wife had waited a month before leaving him. This one had not even made it to the altar.
“I’m sorry, Farne,” Alex Grant said. He sounded, Garrick thought in vague surprise, as though he genuinely meant it. “It’s worse than that, though,” Alex added, as his wife shot him an anxious look. “Merryn has run away. She left no note. We do not know where she is.”
Garrick thought of Merryn alone in the dark on the streets of London and felt the fear grab his throat. This was his fault, he knew. He had callously rejected her love. He had told her the truth about her brother’s perfidy and she had been unable to accept it. It was little wonder that she had run rather than wed him.
“Oh, if only we had not forced her to marry!” Joanna said. One hand was pressed against her lips, the other held in Alex’s strong clasp.
“We did not,” Alex said. He gave his wife’s hand a squeeze. “Joanna, you told Merryn you would love and support her whatever she chose to do. You could not have done more.” He turned back to Garrick. “I do not think,” he said slowly, “that Merryn has run away to escape the wedding, Farne.”
Garrick looked up sharply.
“I am not saying that she wanted to marry you,” Alex continued, crushing the flare of hope that Garrick had felt for one brief moment, “merely that there is something else behind this.”
Joanna was staring at her husband, her eyes a bright vivid blue with both distress and surprise. “You did not say this to me earlier,” she accused.
“Yes, I did,” Alex said dryly. “You were not in a state to listen to me.”
Garrick could imagine how it might have been in Tavistock Square with both Joanna and Tess Darent in hysterics over their sister’s disappearance. He gave Alex a brief sympathetic grimace. Alex actually smiled.
“Well!” Joanna said. “If Merryn is not running away to escape an intolerable match—” she looked at Garrick “—I beg your pardon, your grace, but this is no time to beat about the bush—then what is she doing?”
“I think I might know,” Garrick said slowly.
They both looked at him.
“Before we were trapped together in the beer flood,” Garrick said, “Lady Merryn warned me
