Page 53 of The Vanished Sister

“A little bit, yes.” Carlisle took hold of his hand again. “But Papa, aren’t you lonely?”

His heart melted. He embraced the boy with his free arm. “Not particularly. I have you, I have Lucinda, I have very good friends, and I have many things to look forward to. Your papa is a very fortunate man.”

At the end of their long walk, Lucinda and Carlisle reunited with their beloved cousins and showed them the handful of additional seeds that they’d gathered for young Harry. Lord Ingram conferred with Miss Potter, the children’s governess, then rode out to the nearest village.

On the outskirts of the village he dismounted before a pretty little house surrounded by a lush rose garden. Late-blooming lilac roses proliferated on arbors, trellises, and a pergola that lined an entire walkway.

An exceptionally handsome older gentleman opened the door. “Do come in, my lord. A pleasure to see you again.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” said Lord Ingram, thinking wryly of all the women of his acquaintance whose pleasure would have outweighed his own had they been the ones welcomed into Mr. Gregory’s house on this fine August morning.

Lord Ingram had known of the former agent of the crown for years. But he’d learned only after they’d worked together on the RMS Provence that Mr. Gregory lived on the doorstep of Eastleigh Park. Since then, he’d called whenever he was in the neighborhood: The older man might be mostly retired, but he still had his ear to the ground and often received interesting tidbits from unusual sources.

As they passed the console table by the door, he saw a thick stack of circulars and newspapers. “Have you been away recently?”

“Came back only yesterday. I took a look at that pile and responded to your letter right away—everything else can wait,” said Mr. Gregory, showing Lord Ingram into a neat parlor. “I’ve the teapot already warmed. Ceylon or Darjeeling?”

“Ceylon will do very nicely, thank you. Did you have a pleasant trip?”

“An excellent visit with my sister—though I had not anticipated that I would accompany her to a congress full of admirable Christian ladies.”

The two men looked at each other. It was rather difficult to overstate the irony—and humor—of Mr. Gregory, a legendary seducer of both men and women, in the midst of a gaggle of God-fearing ladies, being looked over as a late-in-life marriage prospect.

Lord Ingram managed to suppress his mirth. “And were Miss Gregory’s matchmaking efforts successful?”

Mr. Gregory chortled. “She has an exaggerated idea of my suitability for matrimony.”

“I hope you did not leave too many eligible ladies heartb—” Lord Ingram stopped. What had Holmes said in her latest cable? “The congress you mentioned, it didn’t take place in Ludlow, did it?”

“It did indeed.” Mr. Gregory, testing the temperature of his teapot, looked surprised but not that surprised. “Was the event in the papers?”

“Not that I’d read, but Miss Charlotte Holmes is in Shropshire seeking clues in a case alongside Inspector Treadles of Scotland Yard. And the congress of Christian ladies might prove pivotal to their investigation.”

“You don’t say. I was there for all three days of the congress.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have met a woman by the name of Mrs. Whitehill, would you?”

“Whitehill?” Mr. Gregory frowned slightly. “The name fails to ring a bell.”

“She was fifty-seven—”

“Was?”

“She is unfortunately no more. But she was brunette, green-eyed, and about five feet four inches in height. And I believe she was married to three men of the cloth—not at the same time, of course.”

Mr. Gregory frowned more deeply. Behind him, an open window gave onto the rear garden, with its hedge of bright pink rhododendrons and two espaliered apple trees bearing small green fruits.

“There was one lady,” he began quietly. “I have no idea how many times she’d been married—she never volunteered that information. Nor did she introduce herself. But she did meet the physical description you gave, though I’d have put her age as closer to forty-eight than fifty-seven. She said she lived only fifteen miles from Ludlow. Does that sound about correct?”

Lord Ingram’s heart thumped. He’d asked about Mrs. Whitehill because he might as well, but he hadn’t expected to receive any useful information. “That is extremely correct.”

A breeze meandered in, but even that flower-scented air could not leaven the mood in the parlor. “What happened?”

“She was found beneath the bluffs near my cottage in Devon.”

“In the sea?” Mr. Gregory’s eyes widened. It must not be easy to shock a man such as he but he appeared sincerely confounded.

“In the sea,” Lord Ingram confirmed, he who was frankly no less staggered by the turn Mrs. Whitehill’s fate had taken. “Did she mention Devon, by any chance?”