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Encountering her at the breakfast table on Wednesday morning after his return to town the previous night, Delagarde found Maidie apparently disinclined to converse with him beyond the commonplace. He had been tempted to inquire about her progress. Beginning perhaps with how she was so far enjoying the Season, and—because her looked-for departure must depend upon the question—whether she had yet acquired any beaux. But somehow the words stuck in his throat. Maidie did not linger, and the opportunity was lost. Delagarde sought his answers of Aunt Hes.
“She is doing very much better, Laurie, now you are not there to tease her into saying and doing the wrong thing. She is determined not to gain a reputation for ill breeding, and she tries very hard to think before she speaks. I am excessively proud of her efforts, and I believe she is settling down quite nicely. The best thing you can do, Laurie, is to leave well alone.”
“I need not ask, then, whether she has gathered around her a bevy of admirers?”
Lady Hester looked mischievous. “As to that, it would be difficult to judge. She is certainly regarded as something of an oddity, but—”
“That does not surprise me!”
“But,” continued his great-aunt airily, “it is too early to say whether any gentleman is growing particular in his attentions.”
“But there are attentions?” asked Delagarde, despising himself for his interest, and conceiving a most disagreeable feeling of animosity towards some unknown young man. He dismissed it, realising that, in the role of guardian thrust upon him, he would wish to assure himself of the worth of any pretender to Maidie’s hand.
To his intense annoyance, Lady Hester chose not to answer this, instead reiterating her desire he should maintain his distance for a further period, possibly until their own upcoming party at the Charles Street house.
“But that is in April! Am I to hold aloof for yet two weeks more?”
Lady Hester’s brows rose. “But you said positively you don’t wish to dance attendance on Maidie day after day.”
“Of course I don’t,” Delagarde snapped, irrationally annoyed by this reminder. “But I am her sponsor. People will think it excessively odd.”
His great-aunt regarded him with a disquieting glint which savoured strongly to Delagarde of amusement. “Dear me. We seem to be destined to make tongues wag, whatever we do. Let us leave matters as they are until next week, then.”
With this mitigation Delagarde opted to express content, and was irritated to find himself still irked by the restriction.
Early on Friday evening, however, while engaged with Corringham and Riseley at Boodle’s, he received a summons from his great-aunt, asking him to return home at once on a matter of extreme urgency. Beset by a number of hideous possibilities as he walked swiftly from St James’s Street to his house, Delagarde was annoyed to realise they all involved Maidie in trouble. His pace hastening unconsciously, he arrived in Charles Street, and ran up the steps.
The door opened as he reached the top. Lowick had evidently been on the watch for him. It must certainly be serious.
“Lady Hester is awaiting you in the downstairs drawing-room, my lord.”
Delagarde crossed the hall and thrust open the door to the large apartment in which it was the custom to foregather before dinner, a room done out in straw-coloured furnishings upon which several sets of candelabra threw brightness. He swept a glance around and took in one salient fact. Maidie was not there. He looked from Miss Wormley’s agitated countenance to that of Lady Hester, both ladies having risen on his entrance and started towards him.
“What in the world is amiss, Aunt Hes?”
Lady Hester put out her hands and he grasped them strongly. “Maidie is missing!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She is missing, Laurie!”
“Good God! How can she be missing? What in Hades can you mean? You have not mislaid her, I suppose?”
She disengaged her hands. “This is serious, Laurie. We are engaged at the theatre tonight, and she knows it. But she has not been seen since early this morning.”
Taken aback, Delagarde stared at her. He took in that she was in evening dress, a light blue silk crossed at the bosom, and a flowing lace cap on her greying locks. For a moment, he was conscious of a rise of anxiety. But common sense reasserted itself immediately.
“This must be nonsense. There might be any number of reasons why she has not been seen. Are you certain she is not in the house?”
“We have searched everywhere. Yet no one saw her leave, and she has not taken her maid, or a footman.”
“But does she know she must do so in London? Knowing Maidie, it would not surprise me if she had not even thought of it.”
He had forgotten Miss Wormley, but she broke in all at once, wringing her hands painfully. “That is nothing to the purpose, my lord. I am dreadfully afraid that the worst has happened.”
“What worst?” Delagarde asked, unimpressed.
“Mr Silsoe has kidnapped her, I am sure of it!”
