The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster #20) - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,168

in the world, contacts us and we visit and make arrangements. The child usually stays with their guardian until the last, then, on the guardian’s death, we’re informed, usually by helpful neighbors, and we return and fetch the orphan and take him or her to the Foundling House.”

He nodded, signifying all to that point was clear.

Drawing breath, she went on, feeling her lungs tighten, her diction growing crisp as anger resurged, “Over the last month, on four separate occasions we’ve arrived to fetch away a boy, only to discover some man has been before us. He told the neighbors he was a local official, but there is no central authority that collects orphans. If there were, we’d know.”

Adair’s blue gaze had grown razor-sharp. “Is it always the same man?”

“From all I’ve heard, it could be. But equally, it might not be.”

She waited while he mulled over that. She bit her tongue, forced herself to sit still and not fidget, and instead watch the concentration in his face.

Her inclination was to forge ahead, to demand he act and tell him how. She was used to directing, to taking charge and ordering all as she deemed fit. She was usually right in her thinking, and generally people were a great deal better off if they simply did as she said. But . . . she needed Barnaby Adair’s help, and instinct was warning her, stridently, to tread carefully. To guide rather than push.

To persuade rather than dictate.

His gaze had grown distant, but now abruptly refocused on her face. “You take boys and girls. Is it only boys who’ve gone missing?”

“Yes.” She nodded for emphasis. “We’ve accepted more girls than boys in recent months, but it’s only boys this man has taken.”

A moment passed. “He’s taken four—tell me about each. Start from the first—everything you know, every detail, no matter how apparently inconsequential.”

Barnaby watched as she delved into her memory; her dark gaze turned inward, her features smoothed, losing some of their characteristic vitality.

She drew breath; her gaze fixed on the fire as if she were reading from the flames. “The first was from Chicksand Street in Spitalfields, off Brick Lane north of the Whitechapel Road. He was eight years old, or so his uncle told us. He, the uncle, was dying, and . . .”

Barnaby listened as she, not entirely to his surprise, did precisely as he’d requested and recited the details of each occurrence, chapter and verse. Other than an occasional minor query, he didn’t have to prod her or her memory.

He was accustomed to dealing with ladies of the ton, to interrogating young ladies whose minds skittered and wandered around subjects, and flitted and danced around facts, so that it took the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job to gain any understanding of what they actually knew.

Penelope Ashford was a different breed. He’d heard that she was something of a firebrand, one who paid scant attention to social restraints if said restraints stood in her way. He’d heard her described as too intelligent for her own good, and direct and forthright to a fault, that combination of traits being popularly held to account for her unmarried state.

As she was remarkably attractive in an unusual way—not pretty or beautiful but so vividly alive she effortlessly drew men’s eyes—as well as being extremely well-connected, the daughter of a viscount, and with her brother Luc, the current title holder, eminently wealthy and able to dower her more than appropriately, that popular judgment might well be correct. Yet her sister Portia had recently married Simon Cynster, and while Portia might perhaps be more subtle in her dealings, Barnaby recalled that the Cynster ladies, judges he trusted in such matters, saw little difference between Portia and Penelope beyond Penelope’s directness.

And, if he was remembering aright, her utterly implacable will.

From what little he’d seen of the sisters, he, too, would have said that Portia would bend, or at least agree to negotiate, far earlier than Penelope.

“And just as with the others, when we went to Herb Lane to fetch Dick this morning, he was gone. He’d been collected by this mystery man at seven o’clock, barely after dawn.”

Her story concluded, she shifted her dark, compelling eyes from the flames to his face.

Barnaby held her gaze for a moment, then slowly nodded. “So somehow these people—let’s assume it’s one group collecting these boys—”

“I can’t see it being more than one group. We’ve never had this happen before, and now four instances in less than a