Strike at Midnight(22)

We hadn’t just been employers to them. Or at least that’s what I had foolishly thought.

The pain of the beatings seemed nothing compared to their treachery, even if part of me had understood that some of them had done it because they had mouths to feed. They hadn’t wanted to risk my stepmother’s wrath, so they had ignored me and called me “dog” at her bequest. But it had hurt me how normal it had become for them, how eventually it had become as easy as breathing.

The memories faded as I made my way around the side of the house. There should be a servant’s entrance around here somewhere and—yep, there it was. In front of me was a bright green door that was emitting a smell revealing it to be the entrance to the kitchens. The door rumbled when I banged on it with my fist.

“Good morning,” I said as a harried-looking maid with flushed cheeks came to open the door to me.

“Can I help you?” she asked while rubbing her hands on the apron she wore.

“I need to ask a few questions to the duke’s driver. Do you know where I can find him?”

“John?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“His regular driver’s name is John. You can find him working in the stables.”

“Thank you—” I said, but she had already shut the door in my face. Charming.

The stables were housed around back, and this time I was assailed by the smell of horse shit. The bacon that had been cooking in the kitchens would have been preferable right about now.

“Excuse me,” I said to the guy who was shoveling out the horse manure. He turned to look at me and did a double-take when he saw who was disturbing him. I didn’t know if he was intrigued or bemused. “Can you tell me where to find John?”

“He’s at the other end of the stable, with the horses.”

“Thanks.”

The stables were of a modest size for the only occupant of the manor to be the duke, but that wasn’t to say that all the stalls were used. It was another sign of how lonely the duke must have been with all of this, and maybe it was a reason for his philandering ways. But then it also made me wonder why he hadn’t wed yet.

The man was in his early thirties and owned all of this. Surely he would want to secure an heir of his own and have someone to share all of this with? But then I also knew a lot of people who avoided the ball and chain of marriage as if it were diseased—like me, for one—so who was I to judge?

An older man feeding a carrot to a black stallion in a larger stall came into view as I followed the younger man’s directions. The horse he was feeding was a beauty, and it made me pine for one of my own. Not that we couldn’t house one at the inn, seeing as Marcel kept his own horse out back, but a horse meant extra responsibility and coin: two things that I was in short supply of.

The man with the tired eyes and a weathered look on his face peered back at me when he realized he had been disturbed.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Are you John?” He nodded, and I walked closer. “I just wanted to ask a few questions about your employer. We fear he’s missing.”

“Really?” he asked, his face full of concern. “We hadn’t heard anything—”

“That’s because it isn’t common knowledge yet. But it will be. Sir Raymond—a friend of the duke’s—has hired me to try and find him.”

“Sir Raymond’s a good man,” he said, nodding again as he absentmindedly rubbed the stallion on the nose. “How can I help you?”

“Did you drive him the night of the card game at The Tamed Wolf? It was the night before he apparently fell ill or disappeared the first time. Depending on the story.”

“I remembered the night before he disappeared. We didn’t see him for a bit after that. The staff figured he was staying with one of his lady friends, which he was prone to do on occasion.”

“What happened that night? Did you drive him?”

“No,” he replied with a shake of his head. “I must have eaten something off that night because I felt unwell. I felt awful because I couldn’t go out with him as planned, but he said not to worry. I figured one of the footmen or stable hands took my place.”

“You don’t know who?”

“I never questioned it. None of us did. We all step up to help out when one of us isn’t able.”

“Even when he didn’t turn up back home?”

“Like I said. It was the norm for him. I mean, maybe not that long, but we had no reason to suspect something bad had happened.”

“May I question your staff and see if anyone replaced you that night?” I asked, starting to put the pieces together of when the duke may have been abducted.

“You would be better off asking Mrs. Muffet. The housekeeper. She would have been the one to reassign someone else to drive for me.”

“Where can I find her?” I asked, and he pointed back towards the house.

“If you go through the kitchens, they will point you in her direction.”

“Thank you. I’ll do that.”

“You really think he’s missing?”

“We have concerns.”

“Please try and find him, ma’am,” he said, his face looking even sadder. “He is a good man.”