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Chapter 26
“What are you expecting to find?” Nick asked once they left the Pepper land and moved onto the main road toward Graton.
“Hopefully a dead man holding a gun,” Robert replied in a low, threatening tone.
Nick lifted his eyebrows.
“Well, it would solve our problems.”
“One of them, perhaps.” Nick chuckled. He scanned the rolling green hills as they rode, watching for anything that seemed out of place. “Care to tell me about Giulia’s mother now?”
Robert stared straight ahead. “There is nothing to tell.”
The afternoon sky dimmed when clouds moved over the sun, casting a dull light over the earth and eerily coating the ground with orange and pink hues.
“I’m not buying it.”
Robert grunted, his long, untamed hair moving in the wind. “Suit yourself.”
They moved along in silence for a few more minutes before Nick broke it. “I see you have taken a liking to Giulia.”
“Ha!” Robert chuckled. “You sure are fishing for information, aren’t you, boy?”
Nick grinned.
Shaking his head, the earl let out a long breath. “I like her. She is nothing like her mother. She is like my mother, if you want the truth.”
“That’s what your brother said.” Nick cringed after the words unwittingly left his mouth. He could feel the shift in the atmosphere and wished for a moment he could retract his statement.
“Is that so?” Robert asked through his teeth. He did not sound angry, exactly, but there was a significant taint of forced exertion in his words.
“Jules let me read his journal, actually. You know of the letters she received from her mother asking for the key?”
“Yes,” Robert said.
“Well, I hoped to find some clue of the key in Patrick’s journal.”
“Any luck?”
“None. But I did get a good idea of the childhood that Giulia led, as well as Patrick’s regret that she never could know her kindred spirit, your mother. Also,” Nick forged ahead, figuring that it was all or nothing at this point. Besides, they were nearing the town so he would have to stop soon anyway. “Patrick regretted the choices he made that estranged him from his family.”
They rode in silence the remainder of the road into town and then stopped off near the inn. A young boy came out and took their horses and Robert led the way inside, straight to the bar. A large man with a wide mustache and a round belly stepped forward, his face betraying the typical smile that dubbed his nickname.
“Jolly, can I have a word?”
“Always, my lord.”
Jolly kinked his neck, indicating the gentlemen follow him into his private quarters behind the bar. They trailed behind him down a few shallow steps and into the cellar where Jolly’s rooms were located and sat at the table he indicated.
“I think you know why we’ve come,” Robert said. “There was a woman found on the Greens’ property.”
Jolly nodded, his smile never wavering. It made Nick wonder if he was in on a joke or the victim of one.
“She came and left, my lord. Stopped in for a bite and was gone in a snap.” Jolly snapped his fingers to reiterate his point.
“Where to?”
Jolly lifted his shoulders and stuck out his bottom lip in an exaggerated shrug. “Beats me. I told my man, Digger, to keep his ear to the ground, but he ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
