“It was a very clever ruse—all of her references checked out perfectly,” Mr. Thornton said, his pale blue eyes narrowing on something in his field of vision out the window. “Though you blame your steward for not doing his due diligence before the lady entered your house, the truth is, therewasa Miss Sarah Hughes, lone daughter of a noble clergyman, from Wessex. Her father was the third son of the late Baron Farrows. Miss Hughes was well thought of—everyone I spoke to said she was intelligent and kind, and would have made an excellent governess.”
He swallowed deeply. “She’s dead, then?”
Dread churned in Bradford’s stomach. Perhaps it had been a mistake to go looking for Miss Hughes, if she was involved in something this dark. Perhaps he should have just been grateful she was out from beneath his roof and left things as they lay.
“Oh no,” Mr. Thornton said lightly. “She’s no longer a miss, is all. Her name is now Mrs. Colmby. She lives a tidy Christian life with her ferrier husband and their six children. I met her myself. She’s quite comfortable and happy, I assure you.”
Bradford was too relieved to speak; he nodded instead.
“You tracked your governess to Blyth, is that correct?”
Bradford nodded and frowned—if the man needed confirmation of such a basic fact after hearing the saga twice, then perhaps he should have taken notes, after all. “As I said,the trail grew cold there. The hounds could no longer track her—there were too many smells, too many people and horses andfish.”
Bradford only ate fish when it was exceedingly fresh—he couldn’t stand the smell, otherwise.
Mr. Thornton inclined his head toward the glass. “What further inquiry did you make in Blyth?”
“I checked all the taverns and inns near the docks, where it’s cheapest to stay. She was a governess and only had a month’s wages. I’m a fair employer, but that’s still not much money.”
Mr. Thornton cocked his head. “Did you check any of the more expensive inns?”
He shook his head. “There was no way she could have afforded to let a room?—”
“We can’t assume she didn’t meet someone at a more expensive lodging.”
In that moment, Bradford regretted ever sending for the man. In fact, he thought Mr. Thornton should leave immediately and never come back. He barely managed to retain his civility and said stiffly, “I don’t have much experience with ladies, sir, but I know an innocent when I meet one.”
Mr. Thornton waved the implications away lazily. “She said her brother had recently come into a fortune. You just told me as much. Twice. So what if it was him she was meeting?”
Bradford frowned and chewed on the thought, then promptly cursed himself an idiot.
Mr. Thornton continued, “I find it peculiar that a young lady—an innocent, as you say—would tromp a distance of nearly fifteen miles across the countryside, at night, past several villages, all the way to Blyth unless shewasmeeting someone. Besides, I think her story about her brother being in India was probably true. Or at the very least, she knew someone who was a sailor, who was close enough to her to give her a keepsake.”
“Why is that?”
Mr. Thornton smiled at the windowpane, his eyes tracking something that Bradford couldn’t see from his spot behind the desk. “Because she obviously had a compass.”
“Pardon?”
“It isn’t easy to navigate between two points without using roads or pathways, and yet by your description, the lady did it twice—once from Ballam Hall to the crossroads at Stannington, and yet again between Stannington and the crossroads at Blyth. Remember the route you tracked, Lord Hayes, if you can. If she headed due east from your back field, would it lead her to Stannington?”
“More or less.”
“And then by your own admission, she overheard that you were looking for her, that you had tipped off the townspeople. My guess is that the lady had originally planned on making it only to Stannington. There she could easily have rented an inexpensive, clean room, and sent a messenger into Blyth to tell her brother where to fetch her.”
“That’s quite a leap in imagination, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.” Mr. Thornton finally turned from the window. “It explains the carpetbag. If she’d wanted to leave all her belongings behind, she wouldn’t have packed them in the first place. I surmise that shedidoverhear you. That’s why she changed her gown and left the carpetbag behind—because her journey wasn’t over, as she’d thought, but only halfway completed.”
Bradford felt a creeping chill. “And the bag was only going to slow her down, now that she had further to walk and night had fallen.”
“Precisely. If it were simply a matter of Miss Hughes not being strong enough to carry it and ditching it as soon as it became cumbersome, that would have happened miles prior.For certainly, an old carpetbag filled with practical gowns is not a light load. No—if it were a matter of convenience or failing strength, you would have found the bag miles before that, in one of those muddy fields.”
Bradford closed his eyes. He had been poring over every moment he and Miss Hughes had shared together, especially those around her last days in the house. Certainly those surrounding her disappearance—the near miss of her tormented him day and night. Yet he had missed so many telling details it made his fingers curl into fists atop his polished desktop.
Though Mr. Thornton certainly noticed, he ignored the reaction and calmly said, “The carpetbag also supports her story about her brother coming into a fortune.”
Bradford shook his head with the realization. His voice sounded slightly dead when he said, “Because otherwise, she never would have abandoned all her worldly possessions, no matter how they slowed her travel.”
