Page 76 of A Lady in Name

Lucy sighed. “Perhaps it was out of the county altogether.”

“Unlikely, I think. Alice would not have ended in Upledon, and as it seems clear my uncle abandoned her soon after the ceremony, there can be little doubt it took place within a not unreasonable distance of Mr Graydene’s vicarage.”

“Begging your pardon, my lord, but seems to me as there’s one place as you might try miss ain’t said nothing about.”

Stefan looked to where the groom was holding the horses’ heads. “Where’s that, Cobbold?”

“Much Marcle.”

“Much Marcle!” exclaimed Lucy. “I never even thought of Much Marcle. It is outside the county.”

“Aye, miss. It’s what you said made me think of it. I bent the ear of the landlord at Preston, in hopes of turning up a place where we might get a change of horses, and he said as the nearest were the Rose and Crown at Much Marcle as might be able to hire out at need.”

“In that case,” said Stefan decisively, “we’d best head off there. Let’s hope they have rooms enough to put us up. How far is it?”

“You’ll have to go back to Kempley,” Lucy put in. “I imagine it is not much above six miles. But it must be nearly as far to Corse.”

“Up with you, then. We can take in Corse tomorrow.”

Bundled into the curricle, but with little hope of discovering anything at this journey’s end, Lucy’s thoughts turned again upon the trials of her birth mother. “I cannot help wondering how Alice survived.”

Stefan was gathering up the reins. “I imagine my uncle paid her off. Clearly she had found the means to live until the very end. Let ’em go, Cobbold.”

The curricle started off, the groom swinging up behind as it passed him. Lucy contemplated her mother’s plight with growing distress.

“I have been so wrapped up in my own concerns in the case, I have not previously thought of her sufferings. She must have run out of money. Why did she not send to him for more?”

Stefan’s response was curt and forthright. “I doubt she knew where to send. Did she not rely upon your adoptive father to make the application on your behalf?”

“Yes, but she did not tell him they had been married. Or perhaps she tried to and was too ill to make herself understood.” Lucy clenched her fists and shook her head vehemently. “I cannot but dread we are come upon a wild goose chase. Why should we suppose a man as unprincipled as your uncle would have troubled himself to make an honest woman of poor Alice?”

“You have me there,” Stefan conceded. “Had it not come from Aunt Dorothea, I should have been inclined to dismiss the whole tale as a fantasy.”

Lucy continued to brood, not noticing much of the way and oblivious to the increasing chill and the gradually fading light, until Cobbold announced there was a spire up ahead. “That’ll be Much Marcle, my lord.”

Within a few moments, the village hove into sight. It was a pretty place, with evidence of more dwellings in the chimneys behind the ones within the immediate environs. The church was set off to one side of the green, and the curricle passed the Rose and Crown as Stefan looked for the lane that would lead them to it.

He found it and the carriage turned in. Lucy stared at the squat shape ahead of her, prey to an inexplicable presentiment of discovery.