A Duke for Christmas (22 page)

“A pity Broderick Banner didn’t understand that. Even so, she stays loyal to his memory.”

“Loyal to his poetry, yes, but not to him. She didn’t love him anymore. He had no excuse, you know. I told him the same thing I’ve just told you. The difference is ... I don’t know if he didn’t believe me or he just didn’t understand. He stood there, his chin raised above a ridiculously high cravat, and told me that a woman had not the wit to hold moral precepts; they were able only to follow the mouthings of propriety. I could have struck him for it, but I didn’t want to embarrass Sophie by marrying her to a groom with a black eye. Now I wish I’d put him to sleep.”

“A pity these modern houses don’t run to oubliettes and lye pits,” Dominic said, slicing viciously into some ham. “I don’t care if he found the Ark of the Covenant, I’d blot him out before I’d let him marry her, if I knew then what I know now.”

“It’s unchristian to say it, but I can’t regret not having to introduce him as my brother-in-law. Not to mention I’ve probably saved thousands of pounds. If he wasn’t the sort to
run
into debt and apply to family to be extricated, then I’m a Dutchman.” He opened the book again.

“It’s a good thing we both have alibis, isn’t it?” Dominic said with grin. “Have you ever been to Sicily?”

“No. Have you?”

“No. But I’m going.”

“Are you indeed? Following your letter to the consulate?”

“I’m not writing. I’m carrying the message in person. I’ll take Sophie with me, if she’ll have me. I want her to see his grave and know that the son of a—”

“Here you are,” Mrs. Lindel said. “Maris not up yet?” The two men stood up as she came in. “Never mind, never mind. Go on with your breakfast.”

“Maris had a busy night,” Kenton said. “The baby seems to be hungry all the time.”

“That’s as it should be. He’ll grow up fine and strong. I’m glad to see Sophie is sleeping in as well. I didn’t like the way her color kept coming and going all evening. I do hope she doesn’t have a fever.”

Kenton cleared his throat and shot an amused glance at Dominic. “What do you care to do today, old man?” he asked. “Not riding, I fancy.”

“No. I’ll go for a walk. I have some matters to think over.”

His dreams of a wonderful future kept him company as he walked in the woods. Despite it being not far off the shortest day, the temperature had risen several degrees. Everywhere came the drip of water off leaves and the trickle of small courses running under the snow and down hills. Dominic took off his coat and walked with it over his arm. The trees looked clean and expectant, buds waiting for the spring, of which this day was a foreshadowing. Snow would come again in January, but the trees waited in hope.

Walking back to the house, Dominic saw that Sophie’s window curtains were still closed. He entered the library from the rear of the house. Maris had come downstairs. Though neat in her dress as always, her pretty eyes were puffy and her lids seemed almost too heavy for her to hold them open. She sat with her mother, leaning her head on her hand, hardly able to conceal her yawns.

“Honestly, Maris, you should go back to bed,” Mrs. Lindel said, taking another stitch in the sampler she was embroidering.

“I was too hungry to sleep anymore.”

“That’s all well and good. You’ve eaten now. Go back to sleep. Sophie’s still sleeping.”

“She is?” Dominic glanced at the clock. The hands stood straight up. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“I think her journey and all the excitement we’ve had recently have finally caught up with her. You can only go for so long on sheer force of will. She’ll feel all the better for a long sleep.” Mrs. Lindel also glanced at the clock. “I shall take her a tray at two. That will give her sufficient time to eat and dress for this evening. Such a pretty dress,” she said with seeming inconsequence, nodding at Maris.

“Miss Bowles has outdone herself,” she answered between yawns. “Oh, dear. I think you are right, Mother. I had better lie down for a little. I’m so glad I’m not going with you tonight. Kenton would have to hide me among the potted palms like Sleeping Beauty in her wood.”

Dominic sat down to write a letter, not to Augustine Baird in Rome but to Philip, explaining the family’s reaction to his theory and outlining his own plan to travel to Italy after Christmas to investigate the matter personally. After that, since there was more than an hour to wait for Sophie’s appearance, he sat down in the armchair, put his feet on the fire’s fender and went to sleep.

He was awakened by a frenzied shaking. Mrs. Lindel bent over him, shaken out of her habitual calm. “I can’t find Sophie. She’s not in her room, and those maids are gone, too.”

“Did they go for a walk?”

“No, why would they?”

“Did you ask Tremlow?”

“He doesn’t know anything. He muttered something about a ham and a parcel and half holidays, then hurried
away. Very unlike him.”

When they were all gathered together, Dominic addressed the household, with Kenton’s permission. “There are only two choices. One, that Mrs. Banner left this house of her own accord and without a word to anyone. Two, that she left under some sort of compulsion.”

Maris clung to her husband’s arm. “What are you saying?” she asked. “Do you believe she’s been abducted? By her maids? They didn’t seem to be that sort of girls.”

Parker, the upstairs maid, raised her hand hesitantly, egged on by some of her cronies. “Begging your pardon, your Grace ...” She faltered, looking about her for support.

“If you have anything of substance to add, Parker, pray do so,” Tremlow said in his old majestic way, though his face looked drawn and pale.

“I’m in the room next to those girls, and one night, about two days after they’d come, I thought I heard a man’s voice in their room.”

“Why didn’t you say something about this, Parker?”

“I did, Mr. Tremlow. I asked the one that spoke better English about it, just teasing like. She looked awful fierce and, having been dusting the desk which I was showing her how to do despite it not being my proper duty...”

“Go on, my dear,” Dominic said, forestalling Tremlow’s incipient outburst.

“She picked up the paper knife and stabbed the blotter, Your Grace. I was that frightened, she didn’t look hardly human.”

“That’s what she told me,” piped up the nursery maid.

“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Tremlow or Mrs. Lemon?” Maris asked.

For the first time, Parker looked abashed. “The other one, Lucia, gave me some ribbons and begged me not to say anything. And Mrs. Banner... well, she’d asked me to be kind to ‘em.”

“Thank you, Parker,” Dominic said. “If anyone has anything else to add? No?” He looked at Kenton, who started to dismiss them, when Mrs. Lindel spoke.

“Simms, the day after the baby was born, you said something to me about strange men in the halls.”

“Did I? Oh, yes, I did,” Simms said, cradling the heir of the house in her arms. “I saw a man, someone I didn’t know, in the upper hall a few days after Mrs. Banner arrived.”

“What did he look like?” Dominic demanded.

“Ever so strange, Your Grace. I said to myself, ‘You look ever so strange.’”

Mrs. Lindel spoke in a whisper to Dominic. “She’s making that up, now that she thinks there’s something wrong. She probably didn’t think he looked unusual at all. She just didn’t recognize him.”

“Thank you, Simms,” Dominic said. He glanced at Kenton, who dismissed the servants.

Tremlow stayed behind. He expanded upon the disappearances from the house, the ham, the manuscript, and the irritating way in which the Ferrara girls came and went at their own sweet will, now aggravated by this new mystification. “I don’t like mysteries,” Tremlow said firmly, quite forgetting honorifics. “They make for an unsettled household and I have always striven for calmness, serenity, and order. I will search out those responsible and I trust they will be instantly discharged. Your Grace, my lord, my lady, Mrs. Lindel, pray accept my apologies for these occurrences.”

“Not your fault, Tremlow,” Dominic said and the others echoed his sentiment.

“On the contrary, Your
Grace, a butler is like the captain of a ship. Anything that happens is ultimately his responsibility. We butlers accept this unquestioningly. I will wipe out this blot upon my honor,” He bowed and departed.

“I never realized Tremlow was such a
preux chavalier,”
Mrs. Lindel said in admiration.

Dominic paced up and down, his hands rucked behind his back. Somewhere in his mind a tiny voice was screaming out panic and alarm. He couldn’t silence it entirely, but he could refuse to listen. “She’s somewhere,” he said. “Somewhere nearby. Mrs. Lindel, go to Finchley. Ask everyone if there were any carriages passing through last night. It’s the only road they could have taken, correct?”

“Yes, they would have had to pass through town in anything heavier than a drag,” Kenton answered.

“I don’t need to ask everyone,” Mrs. Lindel said. “Just Miss Menthrip. I’ll tell her the whole tale. She may be able to suggest something.”

“I’ll come with you,” Maris said. “I care not a jot for the conventions.”

“No,” Mrs. Lindel said in that motherly tone that admits no argument. “Your baby needs you. I can handle Miss Menthrip.”

“We’ll await events,” Dominic said “Then the guilty had better watch out.”

Sophie wanted to wake up. She wandered lost in a dream in which she walked among people she knew well, speaking to them, dealing with them in an ordinary way, yet fully aware all the time that each face was only a mask hiding some horror. Darkness seemed to follow her. Yet when she turned to confront it, there would be nothing there. She struggled as if in deep water, striving helplessly to rise through her dream to waking day.

She lay facedown with her head upon a pillow, her hair hanging over her face like a mat of ivy upon a wall. She lifted her head, reaching to paddle her hair away, but could not move her arms. She tried again and felt rope scratch her wrists. Her feet, too, were bound.

She fought to roll over and sit up on the bed. The quilt she lay on was pieced together from blue toile and flowered dimity, old bedroom curtains and dresses her mother had worn as a girl. She knew it well. It had covered her bed at Finchley Old Place for as long as she could remember. What was it doing here?

Rolling over made lights explode behind her eyes. She groaned without realizing it as she sat up slowly. Her hair was driving her mad, in her mouth and eyes, but to flip it aside meant bringing on the pain again. Nevertheless, she tossed her head, her hair flying back to lie in place again.

When she came to a second time, she lay on her back, looking at a ceiling she’d seen more mornings than she could count. The bulge in the far corner of the ceiling was as well-known to her as her own nose. What was she doing at Finchley Old Place and in such a condition?

Her hair was out of her face, thank heaven, but her hands and arms were all pins and needles. More cautiously this lime, Sophie sat up. The pain in her head seemed more localized, radiating out from a spot behind her right ear.

Sophie tried to draw her memory down to the present and failed. She remembered coming within a moment of kissing Dominic, the expression in his eyes as he leaned down, and then the sharp pang of disappointment as Kenton entered. She’d excused herself and retired to her room. She could remember with great vividness her hand resting on the doorknob as she paused, wondering if it would be terribly obvious for her to return downstairs, ostensibly searching for a book. Wouldn’t it be plain that she was hoping to be alone with Dominic again?

After that, everything else was blank.

Longcloth curtains hung over the east-facing windows, glowing with yellow light. Sophie struggled up and rested her sore head against the cool iron post of the bedstead. It was morning, by the looks of things, and she’d retired not much later than half-past ten on the previous night. At least, she hoped it was the previous night. At a minimum, she’d been missing from Finchley Place for eight hours.

Her mouth was parched. The tingling in her hands increased as circulation was restored. She flexed her fingers to encourage it as she gave her mind a problem to solve. Never mind who had abducted her. The question of escape came before all. One element was in her favor. She knew this house. She knew which stair riser creaked, which doors led to the exterior and which to rooms with no other exits, which windows slid up noiselessly and which shrilled like the souls of the dead.

Sophie drew her feet close to her thighs and tried to work her arms from behind her. If she couldn’t manage to slip the rope off, then she’d gnaw it, if that’s what it took to be free. Before she’d half begun to wiggle, she heard footsteps beyond the door and muffled voices speaking fast.

Sophie froze, unsure of whether to feign sleep, but the footsteps and the voices moved off. Perhaps she should have shouted. Perhaps they were looking for her. Then she wondered why she was not gagged. If she shouted, who would hear her? Who, for that matter, had brought her here?

Whoever it was hadn’t proved much of a hand at knots. The rope separated before she’d brought her hands under her feet. Sophie sat up, rubbing chafed wrists, and began working on the rope that held her feet. Though she broke nails picking at the knot, it took only a few minutes before she was upright and striding across the floor as quietly as possible to fully restore her cramped limbs.

With a lift of the heart, she found her shoes on the floor, just as if she’d slipped them off before getting into bed. Holding them in her hand, she listened carefully at the door. She heard nothing. To redouble precaution, she bent and peeped through the keyhole before venturing to open the door slowly and with great care.

She stepped out into the hall, keeping to the center of the boards. Three doors to pass and she would be at the head of the steps. A moment to hurry down them, avoiding the fifth step which groaned rather than creaked, and out the door. She might not even stop to put on her shoes until she reached the woods.

“I’m glad you’re awake, Sophie,” a man said from behind her.