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Hunter placed his own barely touched cup on the table beside him as a thought occurred to him. “Why was it necessary for you to take public transport here when you have a perfectly comfortable carriage in the stables at Lincoln Grange?”
“Evie took the carriage with her when she left.”
His brows rose. “She has not returned with it?”
“Obviously not.”
Hunter once again felt stung by the disapproval in Lady Margaret’s tone. “Then what has become of my ward?”
“Impossible child!” The elderly lady immediately became agitated again. “I have done all that I could to keep her educated and amused, but at nineteen, she has grown restless and dissatisfied with the quiet life we necessarily live together in Yorkshire.”
In all honesty, Hunter was surprised it had taken five years for the girl to reach this juncture. He personally found Yorkshire to be a cold and barren place, with little decent social life to speak of. The perfect place, he had thought, to send a fourteen-year-old girl he had no idea what else to do with.
He had thought—hoped—that perhaps once she was old enough, she might meet some local boy and fall in love with him. At which time he would have received a request for his permission for her to marry.
No such request had been made.
Which did not mean there wasn’t a man involved. “Is it possible Evelyn has eloped?”
“Absolutely not.” Lady Margaret looked scandalized at the very idea of it. “She is headstrong and willful, but she is not so much either of those things as to throw away her future on a whim.”
Hunter frowned. “But you are saying she has not returned from her…escapade?”
The elderly lady appeared scandalized by his question. “Running away from the only home she has known for the past five years cannot be referred to as anything so slight as anescapade!”
He gave a nod in acknowledgment of his lack of gravitas. “I apologize if I have seemed…less than invested in this situation until now. I had thought my ward’s behavior to be nothing more than a bid for attention.” The idea of an elopement had, he admitted, only just occurred to him. Possibly because he still remembered Evelyn as being a gangly child with a rebellious expression upon her angrily flushed face.
If he had been displeased at becoming her guardian, then Evelyn had been equally unhappy at becoming his ward. A displeasure she had not hesitated in revealing to him.
Hunter frowned his puzzlement. “If not an elopement, then where was she going?”
“To London, I believe.”
“Why?”
“To see you, of course.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“I believe you must ask her that yourself.”
What possible reason could Hunter have for engaging in conversation with this rebellious and ill-mannered brat? “Lady Margaret, are you aware of the tenuousness of my…connection to Evelyn?”
“I am.”
He nodded. “Then it is to your credit, considering how fond I know you were of my mother, that you show no resentment toward Evelyn.”
Lady Hathaway’s expression softened. “A child is not to blame for the misdeeds of her elders. Evie is innocent of any wrongdoing, then and now.”
Hunter wished he could claim to feel that same forgiveness toward Jane Gardener and her daughter. Unfortunately, the estrangement between his parents meant that Hunter had a similar lack of a relationship with them.
As a consequence, an irrational part of him felt resentment toward the young daughter of the woman his father had spent the last four years of life in a relationship with. Happily so, if the duke’s financial arrangement for them after his death was any indication.
“Never mind that for now,” Lady Margaret dismissed impatiently. She removed her reticule from her wrist to loosen the top and search through the contents. She made a triumphant sound as she pulled out a dirty, crumpled scrap of paper. “This was delivered to me five days ago. I had, of course, expected you to hasten to Yorkshire when you received my letter telling you Evie had run away.” She frowned her disapproval of the omission. “Indeed, I waited patiently at Lincoln Grange for you to do so. When you did not appear, I knew I had to come to London and give you this in person.” She held out the rather grimy-looking piece of paper to him.
Hunter took it before smoothing out the creases and reading the words written there.
One thousand pounds if you want your ward back alive and unharmed. Leave the money in the hollow of the old oak tree next to your stables.
