After that experience, he’d lost his taste for cheroots.
But through what had followed, he’d seen more of his cousin Barnaby Adair and his wife, Penelope. Both were, each in their own way, decidedly eccentric, yet they’d found purpose in their lives, and through being in their company, Hugo had realized that that—purpose—was what he lacked and what he needed to find.
He’d left town and retreated to his family’s estate in Wiltshire. Enfolded in the peace of the country, he’d set his mind to the task of defining what he wanted to do—to achieve with his life.
Long walks and talks with his father had helped, and he’d realized that his answer lay in the one thing he was especially good at and that he truly enjoyed.
Breeding hounds.
His father had always bred hounds, and during his earlier years, Hugo had helped and had nudged their dogs into a higher category of quality. His father had continued the work while Hugo had been in the army, and the breeding kennels had advanced to a point where their name was well known, and gentlemen and hunt masters came to buy dogs for their packs.
Hugo had spoken for hours with his father, discussing the prospects, the ins and outs, and had ultimately won his sire’s agreement that he could take over the fledgling enterprise. He was eager to do so, but his father had made one non-negotiable stipulation—that Hugo allow his mother to have one last try at finding him a suitable bride.
That stipulation was the only reason Hugo was in town—the only reason he’d been there to fall under Cara Di Abaccio’s spell.
He knew he was handsome, dashing, and all the rest. He was well born, well-connected, and despite being a second son, would be no pauper. Yet even over the few short weeks she’d been in town, from watching Cara discourage other would-be suitors, Hugo already knew such considerations were of no importance to her.
She was a rebel like him—a free spirit who, while acknowledging the tenets of society, allowed them no real purchase.
He’d discovered she was an artist—that she had an artist’s soul—and she loved animals, all animals, as he did.
He didn’t yet know if she felt for him in the same way he was already willing to admit—at least to himself—that he felt for her. He hadn’t yet reached the point of speaking—of seeking the consent of her uncle and asking her to marry him—but day by day, he was edging closer to that precipice.
He was almost at the point of looking forward to falling over it.
To falling irrevocably in love.
That had worked for Barnaby; Hugo couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work for him.
Indeed, just as his inherently reckless nature had made him perfect for dealing with the potential risks faced by any cavalryman, those same traits paved the way for him to take the biggest risk of all and venture his heart on love.
That was one life gamble that, hour by hour, he was drawing closer to taking.
Finally, his patience well-nigh exhausted, he slid between two older matrons into a gap behind Lady Carisbrook. He concentrated on her, and as the surrounding chatter faded, her voice reached him clearly. She was declaiming to an audience of her cronies; usually, Hugo judged that most of her ladyship’s toadies were secretly bored by her diatribes, but today, all gave the appearance of hanging on her ladyship’s every word.
“Of course,” she stated, “I always knew she wasn’t to be trusted, but not even I would have dreamed that the wretched girl would steal my emeralds!”
Her ladyship paused, allowing the expected oohs, aahs, and sycophantic murmurings to run their course before continuing, “Naturally, I had no alternative but to summon Scotland Yard, and they came and took the wretched ingrate away.”
Hugo’s instincts flared, not just prodding but screaming. His blood ran cold. She couldn’t mean Cara?
He listened to the responses from the other ladies, but comments such as “after all you’d done for her,” “after taking her in,” and “a viper under your own roof” could have applied to a favored maid as much as to Cara.
Suddenly desperate, Hugo turned and searched the crowd again. Franklin and Julia were usually found within feet of their mother, but not today. “Where are they?” he muttered.
Then he spotted the pair. They were clinging to the edge of the crowd, and neither looked the least bit happy.
Hugo all but barged his way to them.
He planted himself directly before the pair, making their eyes go wide. “Cara,” he rapped out, using his captain’s voice. “Where is she?”
Julia looked stricken and wrung her hands, but volunteered nothing.
Hugo shifted his gaze to Franklin, who apparently understood the threat in his eyes.
Franklin swallowed and said, “This morning, Mama accused Cara of stealing the Carisbrook emeralds. Mama had them last night, and this morning, they were gone, and she said Cara had taken them.”
His jaw clenching, Hugo ground out, “I heard your mother mention Scotland Yard.”
Julia nodded frantically. “It was horrible. Two policemen came and took Cara away.”
For one instant, Hugo told himself he’d misheard. In the next, that part of him that had made his commanders beg him to remain in the army surfaced, pushing through the accumulated layers of sophisticated-gentleman-about-town camouflage.
“Right.” Hugo didn’t know what his face looked like, but both Franklin and Julia straightened and lost some of their irritating vagueness.
Franklin looked at him with blatant hope, while Julia put a hand on his sleeve and ventured, “Please, can you think of any way to get her out of there—wherever they’ve taken her?”
He would do that or die trying. But…he searched Franklin’s and Julia’s faces. “You don’t believe Cara’s guilty.”
“Of course not,” Franklin muttered, his features growing grim. He stared at Hugo. “Do you?”
Hugo blinked, then spoke what he realized was the truth. “It didn’t even occur to me.”
With that, he swung around and scanned the carriages drawn up by the curbs on both sides of the street. He spotted his mother’s and quit the church porch and strode for it.
He found his mother’s footman, Jenks, waiting in the carriage’s shade. “Find my mother and tell her I’ve been called away. I’ll see her at home later.”
Jenks tipped him a salute.
Hugo spun on his heel and stalked off toward Scotland Yard.
Chapter 2
Senior Inspector Basil Stokes climbed the steps of Scotland Yard with heavy boots. He was not in a good mood. Why the ton couldn’t observe the Sabbath quietly without screeching about some crime, thus allowing him to enjoy his day off, was beyond his ability to understand.
At that very moment, he should have been sitting down to a Sunday dinner of roast capon in the smiling company of his wife and his young daughter. And every Sunday, he looked forward to the hours of the early afternoon, when he took Megan to the park to play. It was the only time during the week that he got to spend solely with her, and she with him.
Scowling blackly, he reached the entrance, pushed open the swinging door, and marched inside. Spotting Wilkes, who had summoned him, leaning on the counter at the end of the hall, Stokes growled, “Why can’t the nobs take Sunday off like normal people?”
Wilkes grimaced and straightened, but held his ground. “Nothing for it, I’m afraid, sir. This one’s got your moniker all over it.”
Stokes halted before the desk—just as the doors behind him were flung open with such force that the handles hit the walls.
Shock colored the face of the sergeant behind the desk, and Wilkes stiffened. Stokes whirled to confront the threat.
A gentleman Stokes recognized but couldn’t immediately place came stalking down the hall. The man’s features were grim, his dark hair sweeping across a lowered, decidedly pugnacious, and—yes—threatening brow.
In one comprehensive glance, Stokes took in the man’s large fists—clenched—and that, after one swift raking glance about the
hall, the man’s dark-blue eyes had fixed on him.
It was the eyes that jolted Stokes’s memory into dredging up the connection.
Stokes relaxed, the tension that had invested his muscles draining. He nodded to the gentleman as he halted—still openly belligerent—before him. “Adair. What can we do for you?”
Wilkes blinked. “There’s more of them?”
Both Adair and Stokes shot Wilkes a glance—Adair’s glowering with incipient menace, Stokes’s amused—then Adair returned his gaze to Stokes. “I understand two of your men attended the Carisbrook residence this morning and, at Lady Carisbrook’s direction, removed Miss Cara Di Abaccio.” Hugo paused, then demanded, “Where is she?”
Stokes managed not to blink; his previous interactions with Barnaby Adair’s cousin had left him viewing Hugo as not precisely weak but perhaps not as strong and forceful a character as others of Barnaby’s family.
Rapidly realigning his thoughts with the reality standing, all but vibrating with the potential for violent action, before him, Stokes looked at Wilkes, who now appeared both interested and concerned. When Stokes arched a brow, Wilkes, his gaze shifting to Hugo, nodded.
Calmly, Stokes met Hugo’s eyes. “I’ve only just walked in, having been summoned to deal with what I suspect is the case in which you apparently hold an interest.” Just what interest that was, Stokes was keen to learn. When investigating in the ton, having someone on the inside made life much easier; if, in this case, Hugo was already in such a position, Stokes would be happy to enlist him.
And if Hugo’s interest was what Stokes suspected it might be, enlisting Hugo wouldn’t be difficult.
Wilkes, who had assisted Stokes on several ton cases, read the signs and volunteered, “I put the young lady in your office, sir.”
Stokes noted that the news that he was taking control of the case had lessened the dangerous tension gripping Hugo. Stokes tipped his head toward the stairs. “Why don’t you come with me, and we can see if we can straighten this out?”
Hugo inclined his head, still stiff, yet clearly accepting Stokes’s olive branch. “Thank you.”
Stokes gestured to the stairs, and Hugo fell in beside him. As they climbed, Stokes said, “I’ve yet to be briefed, so I’m coming into this blind. What have you heard of the case?”
Hugo was looking down, placing his large feet on the treads. “I escorted my mother to church at St. George’s. Lady Carisbrook, her son and daughter, and Miss Di Abaccio normally attend, but today, I didn’t see Miss Di Abaccio. After the service, while the congregation was mingling, I heard Lady Carisbrook exclaiming to her friends that a ‘wretched girl,’ an ‘ingrate,’ had stolen her emeralds. Lady Carisbrook didn’t name the girl in my hearing, but I found Franklin and Julia—her ladyship’s children—on the edge of the crowd, and they told me her ladyship had accused Cara of stealing the emeralds and summoned policemen from here, and two men came and took Cara away.” Hugo glanced back at Wilkes, who was following them up the stairs. “You haven’t charged her, have you?”
The words were calm and quiet, leaving the menace underlying them all the more evident.
“’Course not.” Wilkes sounded faintly offended.
A fact that, to Stokes, spoke volumes.
On reaching the top of the stairs, Stokes gestured Hugo and Wilkes into a small alcove off the corridor. “Right, then. Before I meet Miss Di Abaccio, perhaps you’d better tell me what’s happened so far.” He nodded at Wilkes. “You first.”
Wilkes straightened to attention and gave a succinct account of his unexpected foray into Mayfair. “We were told the household had apprehended a thief.” Wilkes dutifully detailed Lady Carisbrook’s allegations regarding Miss Di Abaccio stealing the Carisbrook emeralds and her ladyship’s insistence that he and Fitch remove the young lady from the house. “When we spoke with her, Miss Di Abaccio denied doing the deed. We searched her room and found no evidence to say she had.” Wilkes shifted his gaze to Hugo. “And Fitch and I got the distinct impression no one else in the house—staff or her cousins—thought Miss Di Abaccio guilty.”
Hugo snorted. “Of course she’s not guilty. Lady Carisbrook’s just seized on her emeralds being misplaced to throw Cara out of the house.” He paused, then frowned. “Was Lord Carisbrook at home?”
Wilkes tipped his head, acknowledging the point. “No, he wasn’t.”
Stokes studied Wilkes’s face, then Hugo’s. “Are you saying that if his lordship had been there, this wouldn’t have happened? Or, at least, that Miss Di Abaccio wouldn’t have been accused?”
Hugo nodded decisively. “Miss Di Abaccio is his lordship’s niece and also now his ward. He’s a reasonable man—an honorable older gent. In contrast, Lady Carisbrook is a pompous tartar. I don’t know that she cares for anyone or anything other than preserving what she sees as her position—her station in life.”
Stokes pulled a face. “I see. One of those.” As a scion of the gentry rather than the aristocracy, Stokes was well aware of the arrogant stances taken by some of the latter species. Stokes thought for a moment, then demanded of Hugo, “Tell me what you know of the Carisbrook emeralds.”
Hugo grimaced. “I’ve only seen them a few times—the stones are squarish and set in a heavily ornate gold necklace with matching earrings. Given the design, the parure probably hails from Elizabethan times—very showy, heavy, and large.”
“As they’re referred to as the Carisbrook emeralds, I take it they’re famous?” Stokes asked.
Hugo shrugged. “As such things go. Not as famous as the Cynster emeralds, but nearly as old.”
Stokes grunted and turned to Wilkes. “Clearly, the Carisbrook emeralds aren’t going to be easy to hide. So where did you search?”
Defensiveness crept into Wilkes’s expression. “We searched the girl’s—Miss Di Abaccio’s—room. Lady Carisbrook said the jewels were in a case and it was the whole case that was taken, but neither it nor any jewels were in Miss Di Abaccio’s room. And she couldn’t have been hiding them on her person, either.”
“Where else did you search?” Stokes asked.
Wilkes actually blushed. “We wanted to search the house, but her ladyship wouldn’t have it. She’d fixed it in her head that Miss Di Abaccio, who as you might expect from the name is a foreigner, had taken the jewels, and that was that. She—her ladyship—seemed to think it was just a matter of us taking Miss Di Abaccio away and browbeating the location of the emeralds out of her, then we’d get the jewels and return them to her ladyship. She wouldn’t even allow us to speak to the staff.”
Hugo gave vent to a low, angry growl.
Stokes knew exactly how Hugo felt. Stokes stared at Wilkes, but the sergeant didn’t quail, and to give him his due, the situation wasn’t his fault; dealing with the likes of Lady Carisbrook required bigger guns. “Right, then.” Stokes glanced at the large clock at the end of the corridor. “It’s now past midday, and the theft occurred sometime before…”
He looked at Wilkes, and the sergeant supplied, “Eight-thirty in the morning. That was when Lady Carisbrook noticed the case was gone.” Without waiting to be asked, Wilkes added, “She last saw the jewels when she took them off after coming in last night—about two in the morning, that was.”
“So our thief has had at least six hours, if not eight, to dispose of the emeralds.” Stokes exhaled in frustration. He looked down for a moment and gathered his thoughts. “It might be shutting the door after the horse has bolted”—he glanced at Wilkes—“but given that most thefts like these are carried out by someone in the household, living in the house, I want a cordon of men placed around the Carisbrook residence, front and back. If any member of the household leaves, they’re to be followed. If anyone calls and then leaves, once they’re on their way, intercept them and ask for their name and their business in the house.” He paused, then added, “And tell Gilbert downstairs that I want four men, yourself included, to accompany me to the house once I finish speaking with Miss Di Abaccio.”
/> “Yes, sir.” Wilkes saluted and, at Stokes’s nod, left to clatter back down the stairs.
Stokes glanced at Hugo. “I take it you would like to see Miss Di Abaccio.”
Hugo straightened; he was an inch or so taller than Stokes. “I intend to stand beside her through this ordeal.”
Stokes considered what he could read in Hugo’s face, then inclined his head. “Very well. Let’s see what she can tell me.”
He led the way down the corridor to his office.
The door stood ajar. Stokes paused on the threshold to see Constable Fitch, who Stokes had thought a hardened case, encouraging a black-haired young lady who was balancing a cup and saucer in one hand to make her selection from a plate of biscuits… Stokes recognized his own shortbread biscuits, made by his wife, Griselda.
Caught in the act, Fitch met Stokes’s eyes and colored, but didn’t straighten or remove the plate. “We thought to make Miss Di Abaccio comfortable, sir.”
Stokes snorted softly and waved the words aside. He focused on his supposed thief, sitting primly on a straight-backed chair to the side of his desk, and instantly understood Wilkes’s, Fitch’s, and most especially Hugo’s reactions. Miss Cara Di Abaccio was the sort of female guaranteed to provoke the protective instincts of any male who gazed upon her. It wasn’t the perfection of her features—indeed, her mouth was a trifle large for the current standard of beauty—but the innocence conveyed in those large green eyes that would compel any red-blooded male to instantly leap to her defense.
As a married man with a two-year-old daughter, Stokes considered himself largely immune from such compulsions, yet even he felt the weight of Cara Di Abaccio’s spell. The thing of it was, gazing at her widening eyes and sensing the trepidation pouring from her, Stokes seriously doubted Miss Di Abaccio had any notion of her innate power—which only made him more certain that her apparent innocence was no façade.