The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster #20) - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,131

here, from Axford, and I think you need to hear what he has to say.”

Frowning, Ryder straightened from the maps he’d been poring over. “Dixon?”

“The fishmonger.” Mrs. Pritchard stepped across the threshold and beckoned someone in.

Ryder tried to blank his expression—the best he could do in the circumstances—as a boy peeked around the door, then immediately ducked his head. Ryder struggled to find an unthreatening tone. “Dixon, the younger, is it?”

The boy ducked his head again. “Aye, m’lord.” He glanced up at Mrs. Pritchard, who waved him on toward the desk.

Clearly unsure, the boy advanced three steps, then halted.

Ryder looked at Mrs. Pritchard.

“Davy here brought our delivery just now and happened to mention delivering to the Dower House yesterday.”

“The Dower House.” Instantly, Ryder focused on the boy. “Who was in residence—who was there? Do you know?”

The boy shook his head. “Don’t know who. Didn’t see anyone but Cook and her two girls, but I can tell you what was ordered?”

When Ryder nodded encouragingly, the boy rattled off a list of fishes. Ryder had no way of interpreting the significance; he looked to Mrs. Pritchard for translation.

Her expression severe, his housekeeper obliged. “The turbot, my lord, wouldn’t be for the staff, nor yet the sturgeon.”

“I’ll say!” Davy Dixon snorted. “Top of the slate, they are.”

For an instant, Ryder’s mind reeled with the wild possibility whipping through it, but then he shook aside the fanciful notion and refocused on Davy Dixon. “Thank you. Mrs. Pritchard, I’m sure we should reward such a useful report.”

Mrs. Pritchard nodded. “Come along, Davy. There’s some cake and a shilling with your name on it in the kitchen.”

Steering the boy out, Mrs. Pritchard closed the door. Ryder stood staring at the panels for several moments, then he glanced at the maps, then at the deepening dusk outside, debated for a second longer, then headed for the door and the stairs.

Mrs. Pritchard was waiting in the front hall when he came quickly down, having thrown on his riding clothes and hauled on his boots. “You’re riding over there?”

Pulling on his gloves, he nodded. “At the very least, I should ask if anyone there has seen anything of her ladyship. If they haven’t . . . when Forsythe returns, tell him to take over organizing the searchers, and that I’ll work my way through the Dower House woods. We haven’t sent anyone over that way yet, and if I’m there anyway, I might as well check.”

Mrs. Pritchard grimaced. “I would say you should stay here and let someone else go, but there’s no one left but myself and Cook.”

“No point.” Ryder turned to the corridor that was the fastest way to the stables. “If my stepmother’s in residence, as it seems she is, I’m the only one here to whom she’ll consent to grant an audience.”

Mrs. Pritchard humphed and watched him go. He felt the concern in her gaze as he headed down the corridor, striding increasingly swiftly as, despite all rational arguments, premonition took hold.

Chapter Fifteen

“Lavinia wouldn’t have dared.” He muttered the words as he rode into the band of woodland that formed the eastern border of the home farm fields. There were no lanes through the woods, only the bridle path along which he was riding.

The trees there grew thickly, old stands of oak and beech shading the path and shrouding the woods in deep shadow.

The Dower House was as old as the original part of the abbey and had been one of the original ecclesiastical buildings attached to the holy house. His paternal grandmother had been living at the Dower House when he’d been born, but she’d died soon after, and subsequently the house had been lived in only by caretakers, until he’d effectively banished Lavinia there.

As none of the locals wished to work in her household, she’d been forced to seek staff from further afield. Consequently, unlike what generally occurred in the country, especially in a well-populated county like Wiltshire, the household at the Dower House had little contact and less connection with the staffs of the surrounding houses. More, although Lavinia insisted on living in the country for a decent part of the year, even while she’d reigned at the abbey, she had never put herself out to court the local gentry, had largely shunned them and their entertainments as beneath her, so she now had little truck with their neighbors.

Which meant the household at the Dower House was isolated, and something of an unknown world.

Ryder rode steadily on, Julius’s hoofbeats an echo of