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“Aye at Pituard must have found him there and shot hied noill I hid the diary there with Jack…under his body Came to fetch the viscount and tell him…”

“Does the diary naently

“Aye, and more It says that he threatened her It says he told her to trick Lord Sherborne into bed with her and then say the baby was his, but she couldn’t get his lordship into bed, so she hatched up a plan to seduce him by the pond and invited the squire to meet her there so he could witness it She didn’t care that eventually Lord Sherborne would knoasn’t his baby She needed to trick hihed sadly “She wrote it all in the diary”

“Can you shohere this waterfall is? We’ll go on horseback…you won’t have to walk”

“Aye, that I can and I would walk to the ends of the earth to see Jack’s killer hung,” Elly said staunchly

Mandy bade Elly eat, insisted on it and ran upstairs to change into her riding clothes A few h the woods to Pitman Pool and the waterfall cave

The duke rose from the table at the Cock Pit decisively, and said, “Well then, Mr Fowler, you have now in your possession enough facts to go and question the scoundrel”

“Aye and make it soon, while you know he is out of sorts because Hawkins spent so to his feet

Fowler pushed his tankard aside and considered them, “Aye, but it do be touchy After all, e have is conjecture, not facts and he isn’t the one that spent the gold, is he?”

“No, but I gave you the testiether a o…ould a man like that have to do with a man of Hawkins’s cut?” the duke said quietly One of the viscount’s servants had coossip and the duke had looked into it the day before, even as Ned and Chauncey had escaped his uncle’s yeoman

“Still, it don’t prove nothing, do it?” Fowler sighed heavily

The duke and the viscount left Fowler at their backs as they proceeded outdoors and Skip waited only until they ell away to say, “Egad, Brock…you were in a fidget to get out of there? Why?”

“I don’t know Skip, but I got this unco ain’t what it should be Besides, leave Mandy to her own devices for too long is asking for trouble”

A fewat a heady pace They arrived at Wharfdale Manor in good time, but even as they entered and were met by Sticwell, the duke knew He saw it on the old retainer’s face and immediately asked, “What is it, man, what has overset you?”

“Well, I…I am not…certain…it is my place…”