Charles shifted until he could see the front steps. Penny appeared, followed by two other ladies of similar age, vaguely familiar. The Essington brothers’ wives? They climbed into the gig. Penny was assisted back into her saddle. He went to fetch Domino.

He reached the junction of the Essington lane and the Fowey road in time to confirm that the ladies were, indeed, on their way south. Presumably to Fowey, presumably shopping.

Charles sat atop Domino and debated. At this point, Penny was his surest and most immediate link to the situation he’d been sent to investigate.

She was concerned enough to follow men about the countryside at night, concerned enough to refuse to tell him what she’d discovered, not without thinking and considering carefully first. Yet there she was, blithely going off to indulge in a morning’s shopping with such concerns unresolved, circling her head.

She might be female, but he’d grown up with four sisters; he wasn’t that gullible.

Penny stayed with Millie and Julia Essington for the first hour and a half of their prearranged foray through Fowey’s shops-two milliners, the haberdasherer’s, the old glove-maker’s, and two drapers. As they left the second draper’s establishment, she halted on the pavement. “I must pay my duty call-why don’t you two go on to the apothecary’s, then I’ll meet you at the Pelican for lunch?”

She’d warned them before they set out that morning that one of the retired servants from Wallingham had fallen gravely ill and she felt honor-bound to call.

“Right-oh!” Julia, rosy-cheeked and forever sunny-tempered, linked her arm in Millie’s.

Quieter and more sensitive, Millie fixed Penny with an inquiring gaze. “If you’re sure you don’t need support? We wouldn’t mind coming with you, truly.”

“No-there’s no need, I assure you.” She smiled. “There’s no question of them dying, not yet.” She’d managed not to mention any name; both Millie and Julia were local landowners’ daughters, had married and continued to live locally-it was perfectly possible anyone she might mention would have relatives working at Essington Manor.