Enola POV, Autumn 1889

From the moment Enola and Tewkesbury stepped into the Earl of Cawdor's office after breakfast, time flew by as if they were on board a train speeding towards unexpected levels of danger and intrigue. It hadn't been the Earl's limited information that had led them to the truth, but gossip they had heard from a maid they had simply been walking past in the village.

The maid worked for the local vicar and was telling the butcher's son about having to clean up a nasty gash on his hand after an encounter with a nasty man who wanted a special licence for a wedding.

"Whit sort o' brute attacks an auld vicar in his ain hame?" She exclaimed in thick Scots, loud enough to prick up Enola's ears and rouse her curiosity.

Enola found the run-down vicarage with practised ease and continued to question the old man on his attacker.

"I don't remember his name, but he showed me a curious letter and I knew then and there that marrying him and the lass mentioned in the letter was not doing the work of God." The vicar, who had obviously been educated in Edinburgh, had explained wearily.

"What did the letter say, Father?" Tewkesbury interjected before Enola had the chance.

"Only that the lass was betrothed to him in exchange for her brother's debts being excused." He answered slowly and thoughtfully.

Through more explanation, the vicar revealed more information that led to more questions than answers, except that his attacker's betrothed was the daughter of a English baronet.

Two days later they had found Adelaide a few villages away, being guarded by a large, unpleasant-looking man with a loaded pistol. They stole her away thanks to some devious thinking and a chair to the head from Tewkesbury when Enola found herself at the wrong end of the pistol. While she maintained that she had the situation in hand, she was graciously thankful that she hadn't needed to fight the man who was almost twice her size.

Adelaide, while shaken out of the confident and flirtatious manner Tewkesbury explained that she usually held, was unhurt aside from some bruising around her wrists from the rope she was held with. She explained that she was kidnapped from her flat by this man, with permission from her brother, and that the pair had found her while they were waiting for a special licence from the fifth priest they had asked.

Enola's first question to Tewkesbury when they had taken Adelaide back to Cawdor castle had been whether it was legal for the Baronet to sell his sister's hand in marriage.

"It is legal, yes, but the only time I have heard of it happening, the man was labelled an ungentlemanly brute and turned away from his club." Tewkesbury told her as she worried her lip.

"Tewkey, did my brother..?" Enola stopped in the middle of her question.

"Mycroft was just as much in the dark about my mother's schemes as you and I were." He reminded her, "I would never have said yes if he had tried that."

On the train back to London, Enola had chatted and gossiped with Adelaide, earning curious and dubious looks from Tewkesbury and Julia respectively. As two young women on the outskirts of polite society, they had more in common than they thought.

"May I ask whether it is true that you are carrying the Duke of Montagu's child?" Enola asked.

"I am," Adelaide smiled, glancing down at her still unnoticeable bump, "Francis says that he intends to legitimise him; if he's a boy of course."

"Do you think it will be?"

"I hope so, there is a lot higher standing for mistresses who bear an heir."

"I see."

"Now tell me about you and Adam, I've heard he's very taken with you." Adelaide asked with a twinkle of mischief in her eye.

"I forget that not everyone calls him Tewkey." Enola laughed, taken by surprise, "I think the nincompoop is all too taken with me, he never seems to take his eyes off me."

"So you don't need my advice then." Adelaide raised an eyebrow conspiratorially.

Enola tried to school her voice to hide her curiosity, "What sort of advice are you offering?"

"Well, I'm an infamous mistress and I happen to have heard your fiancé say far too much under the influence of multiple brandies." Adelaide replied, with a teasing but kind intonation. "You're the detective, you tell me."