Page 17 of The Vanished Sister

After a few minutes, Mr. Gables hung everything up, not forgetting to give each item a final brush. “Will you be needing anything else, my lord?”

“I want for nothing at the moment. Thank you, Mr. Gables.”

“Very good, my lord.” Mr. Gables went to the door, only to turn around. “If I may be so forward, sir, I greatly enjoyed your monograph on Celtic Britain.”

Lord Ingram looked up, surprised again. “Thank you.”

“I hope I may trouble you to inscribe the volume in my possession before you leave?”

“Certainly.”

Mr. Gables half bowed. “Before that, if I may take up another moment of your time, my lord?”

Lord Ingram gestured for him to continue.

“You must know quite well, sir, being a resident here at least part of the year, that there was Roman influence in the area.”

Lord Ingram nodded.

“I haven’t your erudition or experience,” continued Mr. Gables, reddening somewhat, “but I’ve long been interested in the relics of the past. Recently we found a few Roman coins in one of the pastures that belong to High Burrow. Mrs. Carstairs kindly granted me permission to dig deeper. No more old coins were unearthed, I’m afraid, but they were of very low denomination to begin with, mere quadrantes and badly notched around the edges. We did, however, discover this.”

He took out a handkerchief bundle from his pocket, unwrapped it carefully, and came forward so that Lord Ingram could have a better look.

Upon the snowy handkerchief were several slender bronze implements about two inches in length attached to the same ring. They had been carefully cleaned, but the alloy was still dark with age.

“This looks like a pair of tweezers to me, but I can’t tell what the other two are,” said the butler. “It’s been suggested that it might be a sewing kit but perhaps you could better settle the question, my lord?”

Lord Ingram accepted the implements and went to the window for a better look. “You are correct that it’s not a sewing kit. But its discovery should bolster the view that there was once a Roman fort in the area: This appears to be a grooming kit of the Roman legionnaire, with a pair of tweezers which you recognized, a nail cleaner”—he pointed at the middle tool with a bifurcated end—“and an ear pick that has lost its scoop.”

That would be the needlelike length of bronze that was broken off at the end.

“But despite the damage, the set is in decent condition. It may not be worth much, but for someone interested in relics, it is certainly a relic of many centuries and certainly worth keeping.”

Mr. Gables’s delight could barely be contained. There wasn’t much more Lord Ingram could say about a simple grooming kit, but to gratify the man, he discussed the leather pouch that would have contained the kit, and even speculated on its approximate age.

The butler departed amid profuse gratitude. Lord Ingram still had a little time before he was due to meet with Miss Olivia and Mrs. Watson. He left his room to familiarize himself with the lay of the land, only to be pulled up short by an argument issuing from behind a door that had been left ajar.

Under normal circumstances, he’d have made himself scarce. He did not want to be privy to a personal quarrel any more than the parties involved wanted to be overheard.

But these were not normal circumstances.

Seascapes and landscapes hung on the walls of the corridor; he considered pretending to admire them. But instead he lowered himself to one knee and made as if to retie his shoelaces.

“I could tolerate your general inattention, but this?” came a woman’s heated voice. “I told you on two distinct occasions that I cannot ingest chocolate: Even a small amount will cause allergic reactions that are injurious to my health. Yet you presented me with a box of chocolates?”

A man replied at a much lower volume, “I already apologized repeatedly, Emaline. What do you wish me to do?”

They must be the only other married couple at the house, Reginald and Emaline Carstairs.

“What do I wish you to do?” Emaline Carstairs laughed, a brittle sound. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy with pain. “I wish you were the kind of man who listened when his wife spoke. I wish I hadn’t seen your arrival in Birmingham as a sign from above. And I wish I’d heeded your rival when he told me that he loved only me whereas you would have married anyone who satisfied your parents’ requirements for a daughter-in-law.”

“Emaline, please, not so loud and not—” Weary footsteps approached the door; it was pushed shut from inside.

The death of hopes and dreams in a marriage would never not affect Lord Ingram, aspirations of a lifetime worn down to a grim determination to carry on. Or perhaps not even that, in Reginald Carstairs’s case. He sounded as if he only wished to withdraw into himself, not to be exposed to any of the realities of his choices.

Lord Ingram felt bad for him, but he felt worse for Emaline Carstairs whose disappointment remained potent and hard-edged, possibly because she’d cared more in the first place.

Dear Charlotte,