As Gregory settled in his seat, he caught Patrick’s eye and nodded down the table, at the unruly, happy, laughing company, which now included three of his sons. “This,” Gregory said, “is the reality of Bellamy Hall.”
Patrick’s lips pursed, but his expression plainly stated that he appreciated the togetherness that was so much on show and that despite the misgivings he must have entertained on his journey down from Scotland, he was quietly reassured.
Gregory caught Rory’s eye, and Hamish’s as well, and saw that Patrick’s elder sons were reading their father’s reaction to the Hall’s residents much as Gregory was. Their relief and the nascent hope it birthed was clear, at least to Gregory.
He waited while the footmen charged their wine glasses and Cromwell dispensed the first course—a hearty partridge and pigeon soup—then as Cromwell drew back, Gregory raised his glass. “Today, the residents of Bellamy Hall—those here tonight and also those who live elsewhere on the estate—saw off a major threat to our collective welfare. We did that by sticking together, by being prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder and confront our enemy. As the owner of Bellamy Hall, I applaud our collective effort and thank you all for your help and support.”
Glasses were raised, and “Hear, hear!” and “To Bellamy Hall!” rang out around the table.
Then with excellent appetites, they settled to consume what Nessie clearly intended to be a celebratory meal complete with roast venison, roasted kid, and stuffed piglet. The vegetables were succulent and plentiful, and Patrick, with an appetite as hearty as that of any of his sons, was patently impressed.
Dabbing his lips with his napkin, he reached for his wine glass and, with his other hand, gestured to the sumptuous spread. “You…” He paused, then amended, “All of you here live very well.”
Gregory smiled. “We try, and business by business, improvement by improvement, I believe we’re succeeding”
Patrick humphed and took a long swallow of the wine.
From the other end of the table, Caitlin viewed her uncle’s expression with well-concealed surprise. His attitude to all that was Bellamy Hall seemed far more interested and even accepting than she’d imagined would ever be possible.
Somehow—in just a few short hours, no less—Gregory had performed an eye-opening miracle, meaning he’d succeeded in opening her uncle’s usually heavily blinkered eyes to the notion that other ways of doing things, ways that weren’t his, might actually work and, more, be advantageous.
Watching with wary hope, she prayed that would auger well for the revelations and confrontation that, now Patrick was there, had to come.
To distract herself from that looming reality, she glanced at Rory, seated beside her. “No one has yet told me what happened after Ecton kidnapped me.” She looked questioningly around the table. “I now know Ecton put me in the crypt and pulled the stones down to block the door, but how did you find me so quickly?”
She listened as, while they steadily consumed their feast, Rory, Hamish, Joshua, and Julia between them explained how, from a distance, Hattie had witnessed the abduction and told William what she’d seen and sent him racing to the Hall, and how, after Hattie and Gregory between them identified Ecton as the villain of the piece, the residents of the estate—all those who could hoist arms at a moment’s notice—had gone en masse to Ecton Hall. There, they’d waited while Gregory, assisted by her uncle and her cousins, had dealt with Ecton, who had refused to divulge where he’d put her. They’d eventually locked him in a cellar storeroom and scoured the old house and grounds for any sign of her, to no avail.
“Then,” Joshua said, “Cynster realized how tight the time was, which meant that Ecton had to have hidden you somewhere along the riverbank.”
“Blackie remembered the old track leading from the river to the ruins and suggested that, had he been in Ecton’s shoes, he would have put you in the crypt,” Julia explained. “So we hurried over there, and then Millie”—she smiled at the younger woman—“found your handkerchief, so we knew we were on the right track.”
“I’d forgotten about dropping my handkerchief,” Caitlin said. “Thanks to that wretched hood, I was completely disoriented and had no idea where he was taking me. The handkerchief was all I could think of that might mark the place.”
“It gave us heart.” Millie beamed at her. “And after finding it and then the stones tumbled over the crypt door, we knew we were right, and you had to be inside.”
Caitlin listened as the group explained what had been done to free her, and in turn, she described how little she’d been able to hear from inside the crypt. “Gregory mentioned that Ecton is now in Lord Loxton’s hands.”
“Yes, indeed.” Joshua looked up the table. “And I haven’t yet reported what his lordship said to me when I rode to Loxton Park to tell him about us finding you and how Ecton had sealed the crypt, possibly in an attempt to permanently silence you.”
At the other end of the table, Gregory arched a dark brow. “What did Lord Loxton say?”
Joshua grinned. “That he was very glad to hear Miss Fergusson had been retrieved unharmed and that he intended to keep Ecton in the local cells and bind him over for trial at the next assizes on charges of attempted fraud and attempted blackmail and was now of a mind to add attempted murder to the list of the blackguard’s crimes. He said to tell you he’d taken the prepared contract as evidence and will call tomorrow to take statements from all who were in the drawing room and heard Ecton explain his scheme.”
Smiling delightedly, Joshua looked around the table. “His lordship is confident that at the very least, Ecton will be transported.”
While Caitlin wasn’t surprised by the relief she felt, she saw the feeling mirrored in many eyes. Ecton had threatened not just her but everyone there—everyone who had become a part of Bellamy Hall.
Joshua’s tale had reminded many there, including Caitlin, that she didn’t actually know what Ecton’s plan had been. When she posed the question, Gregory explained Ecton’s demand that Gregory sign over ownership of Bellamy Hall in order to learn Caitlin’s whereabouts, then added the information that he’d received that day from his brother in London. He then turned to Patrick and invited her uncle to explain what he’d deduced through questioning Ecton.
Patrick readily complied, to the general fascination of all those about the table. “He was a fraud through and through,” her uncle concluded. “Not only was he no real gentleman, but he wasn’t and never would be the owner of land with genuine deposits of ironstone sands. First to last, his scheme was a fabrication with the sole purpose of cheating some mining company and their investors out of a very large sum.”
“Well, I, for one,” Vernon declared, “am exceedingly grateful that, through this incident, we’ve rid not just ourselves but this district of the fiend.”
“Hear, hear,” Percy said. “And might I suggest that, now we’ve successfully removed Ecton from our orbit, we should celebrate that achievement with suitable gusto?”
“And thankfulness,” Julia declared and held up her glass in a toast. “To Bellamy Hall!”
The words were echoed up and down the table, and as one with the company, Caitlin raised her glass and drank.
