Page 6 of A Modest Independence

His regarded her steadily from behind his spectacles. “You are.”

“And whatever I tell you—”

“Anything you say to me will be kept in strict confidence.”

Jenny nodded. She’d thought as much. “You asked me why I wished to travel to India. It’s because I want adventure. To see the world and to live in far-off places. But I have another, far more compelling reason.” She bit her lip, fully aware of the folly of what she was about to confess. “I want to find Giles Reynolds, the missing Earl of Castleton.”

Mr. Finchley didn’t even blink. He knew as well as she that Giles’s body had never been recovered. To this day, Helena still clung to the hope that her brother was alive out there somewhere. “You and the private inquiry agent that Thornhill has already employed.”

“Oh, him.”

“Yes, him. What makes you think you’ll succeed where he hasn’t?”

“Because, unlike that unassuming fellow, I’ll actually be traveling to India forthwith. I won’t be delaying on every pretext, dithering here and there in England to absolutely no avail. Besides, I know Giles. And, if what I suspect is true, that agent will never be able to run him to ground.”

“If the inquiry agent can’t find him, Miss Holloway, it’s surely because he’s dead.”

“No,” Jenny said. “If he can’t find him, it’s because Giles doesn’t want to be found.”

Tom removed his spectacles so that he could massage the bridge of his nose. It was a reflexive action, one he performed multiple times per day without giving it a thought.

Only now did it occur to him how he must look without them.

He wasn’t an insecure man, merely a realistic one. He understood full well that his spectacles were more than an aid to his poor vision. They were a barrier between him and the rest of the world. A scholarly prop behind which he hid the plainness of his person.

And he was plain. If he ever had any doubt on that score, he need only consult the evidence of his shaving mirror. He was tall but not too tall. Broad-shouldered but lanky. His hair was a commonplace shade of brown, and his lean face was possessed of two nondescript blue eyes, a once broken nose, and bowed lips that were slightly thin.

None of which would matter if Jenny Holloway wasn’t sitting across from him.

He settled his spectacles back onto his nose. Miss Holloway’s face and figure once again shifted into focus. “Are you suggesting that the 6th Earl of Castleton has chosen to hide himself away somewhere in India?”

“It has occurred to me, yes.” She placed her teacup and saucer down on his desk. His gaze flicked to her hands. They were slim, with elegant, tapered fingers. He recalled how well they had fit in his when he’d danced with her. “You must understand something about Giles. He was ever moody and quiet. Never more so than after his and Helena’s mother died.”

Tom listened in silence. He knew of the tragic fate of the late Countess of Castleton. She’d suffered from acute melancholia after the birth of her children. Her husband had committed her to a private asylum, where she’d remained until her death some years later.

“Giles was never happy in England,” Miss Holloway said. “There are too many bad memories here. Too many reminders of what happened to his mother. Why do you think he didn’t return home and assume the title after his father passed away?”

“Happy or no, I hardly think he’d remain in India knowing that his sister was in peril.”

“How could he know? No one else did. Not until that editorial was printed last October. And if the inhabitants of London didn’t know, how was Giles to learn of it all the way in India?”

Tom opened his mouth to respond only to shut it again. She had a fair point. The editorial in the London Courant that revealed how Lady Helena’s uncle had tried to have her put away had only gone to press in October. How long before news of it reached India? A month? Two months? Longer?

“As far as he knew,” Miss Holloway continued, “Helena was safe and well. He’d arranged it so, don’t you see? He left her all of his fortune. Perhaps he never intended to come home at all.”

“This is so much conjecture.”

“I have reason to think it more than that.” She opened the little cloth reticule at her side and withdrew what appeared to be a crumpled piece of paper.

No. Not a paper.

A letter.

She held it tight in her hands. “Giles wrote to me a month before the siege of Jhansi.”

A surge of jealousy took Tom unaware. “You exchanged letters with him?”

“There’s nothing out of the ordinary in that.”