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“I certainly shall when there is something to tell.” She gave a strained chuckle. “Don’t fret, Mr. Fremont. I will do nothing to put my baby in harm’s way. If I feel there is an issue, I will call for the doctor straight away. He is usually close by.”
“I have your word on that?”
She gave a succinct nod before covering a yawn with long, slender fingers.
Charles got to his feet. “I will leave you now. It was good to see you in such good health, Mrs. Halpert.”
She returned his farewell, and he let himself out, eyeing the maid as he went. She was watching her mistress with keen concentration, and Charles’s shoulders relaxed. Mrs. Halpert would be well—she had a watchful maid who would assuredly inform her mistress if needs be. And besides, she had another month before it was time for the baby to come.
He walked down the bright corridor, the white walls covered in gilt-framed paintings and punctuated with wide, open windows. Pausing at the end of the corridor before he reached the staircase, Charles leaned closer to the window, making out a lone rider on a horse coming toward Falbrooke. It was a man in a cap, far too short to be Andrew.
Surely it was Boyle.
Charles watched him ride in, coming to a stop in the front gravel drive and dismounting. He hurried down the stairs just as the door opened to Boyle and heard the butler inform the small man that both his master and mistress were away from home at present.
Boyle grunted. “Never around when I need ‘em, eh?”
“I am here,” Charles said. “Perhaps I can be of assistance? I was with Mrs. Fawn when she lost her horse.”
“I know,” he said brusquely. He rubbed his jaw then made an unintelligible sound. Was he arguing quietly with himself? All Charles could make out were grunts and muttering.
He had the distinct urge to recommend himself in some way to this man. But why he wanted a shabby character such as Boyle to grant his approval was anyone’s guess. Including Charles’s.
“Fine. Yes. You can help.” Boyle turned on his heel through the front door and started down the steps back toward his patient horse. How had he trained the animal to stay put? It was brilliant.
Stunned, it took Charles a moment to realize he was meant to follow. He took his hat and riding gloves from the butler—who had seemed to take Boyle’s measure well enough, for he had them at the ready—and hurried down the steps.
“What can you tell me about Melbury?” Boyle asked.
“Wait a minute, sir,” Charles said, stalling him with a hand before he could mount and ride away. “What about Melbury, exactly?”
“Anything. What do you know?”
Charles had grown up in Graton. He’d neighbored Melbury his entire life. He knew quite a lot. “Might you be a little more specific?” He straightened. “Did the gypsies go there?”
“Gyps—” Boyle screwed up his face and made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a cough. “The gypsies aren’t your problem, mate. You’ve been looking in the wrong place the whole time.”
His neck burned, heat rising up toward his ears. He turned away and noticed one of Falbrooke’s grooms leading his horse from the stables on the far end of the house. “If it wasn’t them, then who was it?”
Boyle shrugged. “Don’t know yet. But you weren’t the only ones to lose some horses. Got wind a couple are missing from Melbury, too.”
“And how do you know it wasn’t gypsies?”
Boyle mounted his horse, looking down at Charles with a wide, gap-toothed smile. “Because these horses went missing last night, and the gypsies ain’t nowhere to be seen.”
* * *
It took some time, but Charles had managed to convince Boyle to allow him to accompany him to Melbury. But regardless of what he said, he could not engage Boyle in conversation. The man was infuriatingly tight-lipped, and it was both a comfort and an irritant. A comfort because he was likely someone to trust in important matters, and an irritant because Charles wanted to learn everything he had picked up in his week in Graton thus far.
“It was kind of you to travel here to help Mrs. Fawn,” he said.
“This is no act of charity. I’m getting paid.”
Charles gritted his teeth, inhaling slowly and begging the heavens to lend him some patience. “Of course you are, but you could have refused.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No,” Charles agreed. “You didn’t.”
