The rector brought his hand down, slapping the table, his voice turning sharp. “I’ve told you, your father is to blame. He treated Piers as if he was his own son. Once you were thought to be dead, there was nothing ill in Piers trying for the title. He is next in line.”
Bitterness rose up in Giff. “No doubt my father would have been glad of my death.”
“You have no reason to say so. Do you suppose Henry took your disappearance tamely? Searches were made. Enquiries pursued. Agents sent hither and yon. He spared no pains. Not to recover Flora, but to find his heir. She had no right to take you with her, and that even I could not forgive.”
“Well, I’m glad she did.” Defiant, Giff stared his great-uncle out. “If I fail, I have a life in India. I may return there and pursue my stepfather’s business interests. Indeed, I am not sure but what I’d prefer it. I am not enamoured of what I’ve seen of this England of yours.”
“Yours too, Giffard. This is your home.”
“Never.” A stray memory of a mad ride through a forest caused him to amend this. “At least, not yet.”
The rector forced his attention back. “But will you remain, Giffard? You are safe here, for a time at least.”
Giff took another swallow of his coffee and set down the cup, pushing away his plate and throwing the cook a grin. “To be fattened up by Aggy? You’ll have an idle pig on your hands.”
Aggy simpered and chuckled, the frills on her mob cap wobbling. “Never fear, young sir. You’ll not easily empty my larder.”
“Giffard, attend to me, I beg of you! This is serious.”
He gave his great-uncle a wry look. “I’m not likely to forget.”
“At least promise you will await your man. If he discovers where your pursuers are quartered, as he said he would, you will be better placed to evade them.”
So much was true. But nothing had been seen of Sattar for several days and Giff was beginning to be anxious, if he was honest. If those rogues had spotted him, or realised his connection to their quarry…
Shying away from the possible consequences, Giff told himself his elderly Indian henchman was too fly to be taken unawares. None knew better than he how to vanish into his surroundings. He’d taken to wearing European clothes so as to remain inconspicuous, hiding his brown complexion under a battered slouch hat with a broad brim. Sattar would return.
Giff looked back at his great-uncle’s anxious features, surprised to find affection within himself as well as gratitude. “Very well, sir. I’ll trespass upon your hospitality a little longer, since you insist.”
Unless he was driven to go hunting down his henchman instead. Where the deuce was he?
Sattar surprised him late the same evening, sliding into the Reverend Gaunt’s study where both men were closeted, engaged in a game of chess. With the windows and doors shuttered against the night, it was secure enough, his great-uncle decided, for Giff to emerge from his hidey-hole and give him the pleasure of his company, as he put it. Giff suspected the rector hoped a glass of brandy and a diverting game would hold him sufficiently entertained not to be fidgeted into leaving.
Concentrated on the board set between the two chairs by the fire, Giff did not hear the door nor notice his servant’s presence until a shadow fell across the pool of light falling from the candelabrum on the mantel.
He jerked upright, startling his uncle into turning his head. “Sattar!”
“It is indeed I, sahib,” came the deep voice.
Giff glanced towards the closed door. “How the devil did you get in?”
“The woman let me in by the kitchen. She said you were in here.”
The Reverend Gaunt found his tongue. “Gracious me, I thought Aggy had gone to bed!”
Sattar had no answer to this. His eyes strayed to Giff’s left leg. “Your wound, sahib?”
“Much better, thanks to my uncle.”
Sattar turned to the rector and executed a bow, setting his palms together. “My thanks to you, reverend sir.”
“None are needed,” returned his uncle, smiling.
“This boy needs such a one as you. It is good you have succeeded in holding him in this place. I feared to find him gone, reckless boy as he is.”
“That’s right. Abuse me to my uncle, old sobersides.”
But the rector was laughing. “A worthy guardian, my dear boy. Sattar, is it? You are very welcome here. Will you take a seat? Brandy?”