Chapter 49
A s Frankie followed Lady Evelyn’s rattling carriage, her fear manifested into a single prayer: Please let Jasper be all right. Please let Jasper be all right. Please let Jasper be all right.
She did not know if Lady Evelyn would take her to Jasper; all she knew was that Evelyn had been the last person to see him, and with the revelation that Evelyn was Devon’s murderer, Frankie was terrified that Jasper would be next.
The night air was scented with a bouquet of the day’s lingering odors: the sweet smell of newly cut hay, the floral of honeysuckle and jasmine, and the heat-ripened richness of wild blackberries. Grasshoppers competed for attention with the rattle of carriage wheels and the heavy fall of hooves. Even though it had been a warm day, Frankie shivered from the chill of the night—or perhaps it was from fear.
If something should happen to Jasper she would never recover. In a short time he had become everything to her: confidant, partnering detective, lover, and friend. If that generous, dangerous, and loving soul were wiped from existence—
Frankie could not even bear to finish the thought. She had not told him any of those things when she’d had the chance. She had been too afraid to be vulnerable, too scared to open her heart and give someone the power to hurt her. Too self-absorbed to believe that someone could truly love her for who she was.
Jasper had had a hard life devoid of even basic human comforts, and still he’d been willing to take a gamble and tell her what was in his heart even when she did not have the courage to hear it. And what had she done to return his love? She’d said thank you.
Frankie grimaced at the memory.
A vise squeezed her heart as she shadowed Lady Evelyn’s carriage to an intersecting road. She had to be in love with Jasper, because if she was not, then what was this crushing, all-consuming feeling seeping into every fiber of her soul? This feeling that if Jasper were taken away from her before she had the chance to tell him how much he meant to her, she might as well curl into a ball and cease to function? This feeling that she wanted only the best for him, forever, and that she would do anything to be by his side during his hardships and sickness, during his happiness and celebrations?
Shame prickled hotly beneath her skin. When she found Jasper, she was going to bare her soul to him and tell him the truest thing she knew: She loved him. She loved him with everything she had.
Lady Evelyn’s carriage trundled up the drive to a dark estate with an abandoned feel to it. Frankie guided her mount to the side of the drive where the hedges grew thick, and dismounted. She tied the reins to a branch before creeping silently across the grass to one of the darkened windows.
Frankie’s palms were damp in her gloves and her pulse was in her mouth when she cautiously peeked through the glass. The room was empty.
Frustrated, she snuck around the side of the house and peered into one dark window after the other. The furniture in the rooms was draped with white sheets, and the only movement came from the occasionally startled mouse. The house appeared to be abandoned, so why had Lady Evelyn come here?
After a full circuit she made her way to the carriage house where Lady Evelyn had parked her carriage, not bothering to unhitch the horses. Did that mean she did not intend to stay long?
Frankie crept up to the carriage and looked inside. It was empty. No Jasper.
With a surge of desperation, she turned back to the house and noted a soft glow coming from one of the windows now. She hurried toward it and cautiously peered in. At first she saw nothing, but when she craned her neck her breath snagged in her lungs. He was there, her future husband, trussed to a chair with his head hanging down. Was he dead? Did he still breathe? What had Evelyn done to him? In the shadows of the room she spotted two figures speaking to one another, but she could not make out either of them, although she knew one had to be Lady Evelyn.
Frankie had no weapon with her. She had not even thought to sneak a knife from the kitchens. She closed her eyes in despair. She’d been in such a rush she had not thought what she would do if there was an altercation.
Her eyes snapped open and she pressed her lips together in determination, her brain leaping into action, considering and discarding a dozen different ways to free him. Lady Evelyn was a bitch, but Frankie was fighting for the man she loved. If it came to it, she could best Evelyn.
The variable was the other person in the room. Who was he, and how was he involved with the Dowry Thieves?
She was backing away from the window to return to the stables to search for a weapon of some sort, when a hand closed over her mouth and a voice whispered in her ear, “Do not scream.”
The hand muffled Frankie’s involuntary shriek, and then it dropped away and Frankie spun around and threw herself into the woman’s arms.
Fidelia was sturdier than she’d ever been, and she smelled of expensive soap and perfume. Frankie held tightly to her sister and tried hard not to cry. “You are all right! You are here!” She pulled back so that she could study what little of her sister’s face she could see in the moonlight. “You look healthy, Fidelia. You look… happy.”
It was only then that she saw her sister was not alone. Beside her stood another young woman, this one only two years older than Fidelia. In the moonlight she, too, was radiant, although dressed in a simpler manner than Frankie was used to seeing. “Lady Elizabeth Scarson, is that really you?”
Lady Elizabeth grinned, and Fidelia pushed at her spectacles, which had been inherited from their great-cousin Lucy. “Elizabeth has taken her jewels and run away from her horrid husband, and we have decided to live together on the Scottish coast. I shall be her companion.” A soft smile passed between them. “I meant to write home but… I was not sure how accepting mother would be of my decision not to come out to society. It was not until Elizabeth and I began to hear about other intelligent young ladies marrying absolute boors that we began to suspect something was afoot. In the beginning we had simply thought Elizabeth’s ‘compromising situation’ was a terrible misfortune, but later we began to wonder if the same thing was happening to the other women. The only problem was that we did not know where to start looking for answers.”
“Then we met someone,” Elizabeth interjected softly. “Well, then we met them .”
Fidelia nodded. “A man with ice-blue eyes and a woman with dark curls approached us outside the rooms we had temporarily rented. We had slowly been making our way to the Scottish shore, so I do not know how they found us with our constant movement, but they did. What were their names, Elizabeth?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Denholm.”
“Right. They said they’d been hired to find us because you were worried about me, Frankie.”
The Dove had come through after all, Frankie thought with some amazement. Frankie had thought her governess friend, Emily, was on her honeymoon, but it seemed the Dove had taken her end of the bargain seriously and engaged only the best detectives in England to find Fidelia, even though it had meant asking them to postpone the celebration of their wedding.
“I knew I had to swallow my worries about mother’s reaction and write home, but then I heard of the charitable dowry your employer had bestowed upon you, Frankie, and I was so frightened that you would end up in the same position as Elizabeth. I needed to warn you immediately.”
“We certainly could not sit around sipping tea while you became a target,” Elizabeth added. She pushed at her hair and gave Frankie the round-cheeked and dimpled smile she remembered from when they were children. “We had thought that as the ton ’s newest catch you might attend the Houndsbury ball, and so we have been traveling nonstop to reach you in time and warn you. We only just arrived when we spotted you leaving the stables. We tried to flag you down, but you were going so fast and wearing a ballgown while bareback, so we knew something must be amiss. That’s why we followed.”
Frankie shook her head with chagrin. Some spy she made. She had not even known she was being followed. “You were right to suspect there is more behind the marriages. Lady Evelyn has been arranging the compromising situations, although I do not have all the facts yet. I do know that she has killed a man already, and she is aware Jasper and I have discovered her scheme.”
Fidelia’s eyes widened at the mention of murder. “Who is Jasper?”
“Mr. Jasper Jones is the employer who gave me the charitable dowry, and he’s the man I am going to marry. He’s the man… I love.”
Elizabeth and Fidelia exchanged a look of surprise. Frankie could not blame them. It had sounded strange even to her, and yet simultaneously freeing.
Frankie continued. “Evelyn somehow spirited him from the ball, and I followed them here. When I looked inside, I saw Jasper bound to a chair. There is someone else with the lady, although I did not see who. I fear she has brought Jasper here to kill him.”
“Are you certain that is her intention?”
“I am positive. If Jasper is left alive, he will deliver retribution with a steady hand and he will not rest until she has paid for her crimes. If she has any sense at all she will murder him while she still has the chance.”
Fidelia gave a soft cry of dismay. “I do not know who this man is, but if you love him, then he is my brother. I should think the three of us could stop her.”
“Not if she has a pistol, and I have reason to believe she does. The person with her is another unknown variable.”
“We need a pistol, too,” Elizabeth declared. “We will have no chance otherwise. All we have is this.” She snapped open a wickedly sharp pocketknife.
“I was about to head to the stables to look for a weapon when…” Frankie inhaled sharply and clutched Fidelia’s arm as a brilliant idea took hold.
“You have a plan,” Fidelia said. It was not a question; she knew it for fact. She and Frankie had been best friends their entire lives.
“The stable is run-down, and whoever abandoned it left behind scattered supplies. There were buckets of moldy grain and a rotted box of what looked like sugar cubes for the horses.”
Something sparked in Fidelia’s eyes as she immediately caught on. “Perhaps there is saltpeter in there as well.”
“Am I missing something?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes darting between them. She sighed. “Of course I am.”
Frankie took her brave, and not-so-foolish, sister by the shoulders and they began to plan.