Page 77 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

“That would be my mother’s bloodline, I imagine. Where are we? This is not the Old Well.” Cerys lifted a shade to peer outside.

“No, it is the Royal Spa, once much admired but I’m told not much trafficked these days. I thought we might investigate for ourselves.”

“I do not think there is anything here.”

Bathsheba smoothed a hand over the fur lining her cap. “My lord is inside, waiting for us. He is ready to sign investment papers, and then I shall tell you what I wish you to do for me in return.”

“Why here?” Cerys gripped her small reticule. “Dorsey could have met him anywhere. The Great House, where you are staying, would be more comfortable.”

“But I won’t be happy until I have tried the waters that once pleased a King.” The door opened, and Bathsheba stepped down.

“This is Bayshill, miss,” the coachman said as Cerys descended the step. He was weathered from work and wear, with a black tooth prominent in his smile. “King George and the Queen stayed yonder, at Bayshill Lodge, that what was owned by the Earl of Fauconberg. The King had his own well dug, and the Queen and Prince George and the little princesses all drank here. His visit made our town, don’t you know.”

A local man, then. The Baeccons must have hired him when they came to town, rather than bringing their own coachman. “I thought the Royal Spa had closed,” Cerys said.

Indeed, there were no other people about on the gravel drive, no women promenading their daily costume, no men grouped around the pump room exchanging news. Many of the drinking places stood empty later in the day as the gentlefolk of Cheltenham prepared for their evening entertainments, but this had an air of abandonment. The buildings, once grand neoclassical designs, now looked as if they had not been used since the King departed. A large rectangular area was laid out in promenades lined with trees that had not seen care or tending in some time.

“Aye, miss, the well ran dry of water years ago, and everyone goes to the Orchard Well now, or to Alstone. Used to be cold baths, up by the river, but no one goes there anymore, neither.” The coachman pointed north. If the River Chelt lay in that direction, then the town lay beyond. She could walk that far if she must.

“Is the Earl not in residence?”

“Nay, the Earl died some years ago and the title went to cousins as live abroad. There’s a daughter living in London, and another as was divorced by the Duke of Norfolk, quite a scandal, so I suppose she was cut off from all. It’s not much kept up of late, and that’s why the waters have dried up, so they say.”

Odd that his lordship would want to meet at a place no longer frequented. Bathsheba must be planning to make the negotiations difficult.

“I don’t understand why Lady Baeccon would come here,” Cerys said to the coachman. He tugged the brim of his hat and sent a nervous look at Bathsheba.

“Well, I don’t know as to that neither, but her la’yship is the one as hired me, so I drive where she says.”

Bathsheba opened a door to the small brick pump room and stood waiting for Cerys. It was dark within.

“You can drive on a bit, Coachman, and leave us while we talk. Go inspect the Lodge. Circle back in a quarter hour, and we will be ready.”

Cerys was normally not a fool. In fact she tended to be the suspicious sort. She prided herself on her wits, on her canniness. But her curiosity had always been her curse, and her mother would say her vanity, too.

She wanted to know if she could best Bathsheba. And she wanted, more than anything, to be the one who bore in triumph the news that Lord Baeccon’s stinginess had been vanquished and the company could get their theater at last.

She paused while the coach creaked into motion behind her, and then she walked inside the building.

The door slammed shut between them.

For a moment, Cerys held perfectly still, breath stuck in her chest. The interior of the pump room was large but without light. Shutters sealed the windows, and the air smelled of must and damp earth and the sweet smell of molding plaster.

“Lady Baeccon!” Cerys called sharply. “Open that door.”

Bathsheba screamed.

Cerys ran to the door and pounded on the wooden panel. “Bathsheba! Let me out!”

She could make no sense of the sounds that followed. A muffled pounding. The scuff of gravel. A growl in a low voice, then another scream. “Help me! Thieves! Villains!”

Cerys caught her panic as if it were a flame leaping from branch to branch. She pulled at the door handle. It was locked.

“I’m in here!” she screamed. “Let me free!”

Silence.

Nothing. Not the beat of hooves, not the creak of a carriage wheel. Only muffled silence, and the thrum of blood in her head as her heart pounded.