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“Aye at Pitman Pool,” Elly explained. “He went to get more and the blackguard must have found him there and shot him.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I’ll see him hanged now, I will. I hid the diary there with Jack…under his body. Came to fetch the viscount and tell him…”
“Does the diary name Celia’s…the father of…?” Mandy asked gently.
“Aye, and more. It says that he threatened her. It says he told her to trick Lord Sherborne into bed with her and then say the baby was his, but she couldn’t get his lordship into bed, so she hatched up a plan to seduce him by the pond and invited the squire to meet her there so he could witness it. She didn’t care that eventually Lord Sherborne would know it wasn’t his baby. She needed to trick him into marriage before she was any further foregone.” She sighed sadly. “She wrote it all in the diary.”
“Can you show me where this waterfall is? We’ll go on horseback…you won’t have to walk.”
“Aye, that I can and I would walk to the ends of the earth to see Jack’s killer hung,” Elly said staunchly.
Mandy bade Elly eat, insisted on it and ran upstairs to change into her riding clothes. A few moments later, they both rode astride as Elly led them through the woods to Pitman Pool and the waterfall cave.
* * *
The duke rose from the table at the Cock Pit decisively, and said, “Well then, Mr. Fowler, you have now in your possession enough facts to go and question the scoundrel.”
“Aye and make it soon, while you know he is out of sorts because Hawkins spent some of the gold…” the viscount added also getting to his feet.
Fowler pushed his tankard aside and considered them, “Aye, but it do be touchy. After all, what we have is conjecture, not facts and he isn’t the one that spent the gold, is he?”
“No, but I gave you the testimony of a respectable shopkeeper who says he saw them together a month ago…what would a man like that have to do with a man of Hawkins’s cut?” the duke said quietly. One of the viscount’s servants had come forward to give Skip this piece of gossip and the duke had looked into it the day before, even as Ned and Chauncey had escaped his uncle’s yeoman.
“Still, it don’t prove nothing, do it?” Fowler sighed heavily.
The duke and the viscount left Fowler at their backs as they proceeded outdoors and Skip waited only until they were well away to say, “Egad, Brock…you were in a fidget to get out of there? Why?”
“I don’t know Skip, but I got this uncomfortable sensation that something ain’t what it should be. Besides, leave Mandy to her own devices for too long is asking for trouble.”
A few moments later saw them mounted and riding at a heady pace. They arrived at Wharfdale Manor in good time, but even as they entered and were met by Sticwell, the duke knew. He saw it on the old retainer’s face and immediately asked, “What is it, man, what has overset you?”
“Well, I…I am not…certain…it is my place…”
The viscount glanced sharply at him and said sharply, “Demme, Sticwell, if you’ve got something stuck in your track go and drop some firewater in it. Don’t stand about giving us rubbish.”
“’Tis Miss Sherborne,” Sticwell managed to croak out. “She has gone out with a very questionable young woman.”
“What?” the duke tensed.
“A Miss Elly Bonner…” the butler added and found himself clasped by the duke’s strong hands and bodily shaken.
“Devil you say! Where have they gone?”
“Miss Bonner arrived on foot, but they went to the stables to get a pair of horses. Miss Sherborne said something about the Abbey as she left…but she didn’t say it to me, she said it to the young lady.”
“The Abbey? Why?” the viscount repeated with a shake of his head.
“I really couldn’t say,” Sticwell looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but under the scrutiny of the duke.
“Did she not leave a message?” the duke demanded.
“Yes, she said to tell you that they were going to get the diary right and tight.”
“Did she, by God!” the duke said in a thunderous voice.
It was at th
at moment that the front door at their back which was still opened slightly opened further and all heads turned.
A tall and lovely woman in an exquisitely designed white Spencer over a white muslin gown stepped inside. Her dark ringlets framed her pretty face under a straw bonnet embellished with a white ribbon and she held her hands out and in a tearful voice cried, “John.”
