Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Ginger
“No, I will not calm myself.” Victoria’s voice rang out across the vastness of the parlor and Ginger stood, setting a steely-eyed gaze on the police inspector.
In the posh London home of her Aunt Madeline, Ginger could almost recall a time when both she and Victoria had belonged to the upper-class world—where police inspectors would expect them to show complete decorum even in the midst of despair.
“Constable Jones, you must understand. Our children have been missing for five days. We’re well past the point of false alarm.” Ginger crossed the room toward where the man stood by an end table near a sofa. Victoria hadn’t invited him to sit when he’d come into the room.
“That may be true, madam, but Lady Fisher does not have to shout, either.”
If Gran were still alive, she’d have insisted someone get Victoria a cup of tea by now, to stop her pacing.
Ginger swallowed the wave of emotion that always followed with the thought of Gran’s death four years earlier, her sadness particularly strong in light of her fears about Alex and Ivy.
For three days, they’d scoured the countryside before coming to London.
The only tip they’d received was from a porter who thought he’d spotted a boy and girl who looked suspiciously like them on a train bound for the city.
If he was right, they’d left Somerset hours before Jack and Noah had gone.
After that, the trail went cold.
“Thank you, Constable, that will be all,” Ginger’s mother said as she rose from her chair. She held her hand out, indicating the door. “Thank you for coming. We continue to appreciate your help and discretion.”
“Of course, my lady.” The man frowned under a dark handlebar moustache, then nodded. “Good day.”
As he left them, Ginger rolled her shoulders, her eyes burning with lack of sleep.
Her mother wore deep wrinkles on her forehead, her face a similar mask of worry.
Her once-red hair, now more white than red, even looked messy—which was saying a lot for Mama.
But Alex and Clara were the center of Lady Elizabeth Braddock’s universe.
“I don’t see how he can say nothing more can be done at this point,” Victoria said, pausing only long enough to glance out the window. She resumed her pacing. “They’ve barely searched for them.”
“What a terrible time for Noah to have decided to take a trip to Egypt,” Mama said unhelpfully from the sofa. She shook her head at Ginger. “Still no word from him, darling?”
Ginger shook her head. Not that it was surprising.
Travel to Cairo would take several days—and she had no way to be certain that the frantic message she’d sent to Alastair Taylor had even reached him.
If anything, Noah’s silence seemed to suggest that Alastair hadn’t been in touch with Noah or Jack.
Noah would have found a way to contact her by now if he’d heard the news.
“I still can’t help but feel Alex and Ivy may have tried to follow Noah and Jack,” Ginger said, sitting on the sofa. A headache pulsed at her temples, and she rubbed them gently.
“But—how? They left by sea, didn’t they?
” Victoria wore her distress in every feature.
“Besides, if they left for London beforehand, that doesn’t at all suggest they intended to follow them.
And why not contact us in the meantime? Surely they must know we’re worried sick. They must have been taken.”
Cold and clammy fear clamped down on Ginger’s gut despite her best efforts to remain hopeful. “If they’d been taken, they wouldn’t have been seen traveling alone on a train for London, though. And they aren’t small children. They would have known to alert someone if they were under duress.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Victoria set her hands on her hips. “But if this gets back to the Fishers, they’ll be infuriated. Every day that passes without me informing them of the situation is already a risk. I can’t afford to give them any more ammunition to declare me an unfit mother.”
Ginger gave her a measured look. She understood Victoria’s fears.
The Fishers had never been happy allowing the heir to their family’s fortune—Ivy—go without their influence.
And though Ivy wasn’t actually Stephen’s daughter, Lord and Lady Knotley didn’t know that.
Couldn’t know that. Ivy would lose everything.
Ginger and Noah were the only people whom Victoria had confirmed that fact to, though she hadn’t told either of them who Ivy’s real father was.
However underhanded Victoria’s reasons for silence were in theory, Ginger couldn’t fault Victoria for them.
Stephen Fisher had been a monster, and Victoria’s father marrying her off to him had been one last, cruel punishment that had nearly ruined Victoria’s life.
She’d accepted her fate because she’d been secretly pregnant and had passed Ivy off as Stephen’s daughter.
Victoria had dealt with enough—in Ginger’s mind, Ivy inheriting Stephen’s fortune was just recompense. But it came with the downside of continued contact with the Fishers.
“Perhaps it’s best that you return to the country and wait for news,” Ginger’s mother said softly. “When they turn up, they’re most likely to go back home. And the hospital—”
“No,” Victoria said, paling further. “I’m not going home without my daughter.” She appealed to Ginger with wide eyes. “I know the needs of the hospital, but Dr. Turner said she could handle things without us. Maybe you can have Beatrice and James come out and help too?”
Ginger hesitated. Dr. Patricia Turner—a friend from medical school who’d come to live and work at the hospital a few years earlier—was experienced and competent, but the workload would be too much for her alone.
If they remained away from Penmore for too long—Victoria was right—they’d need to call in more help.
Her old nursing friend, Beatrice Thornton, had ended up unexpectedly marrying Dr. James Clark, Ginger’s former fiancé, nearly a decade earlier.
They’d come to help with the administration of the hospital during the times Ginger traveled with her family to Egypt—but that was always with extended planning in advance.
“I don’t think it would be possible for Beatrice and James to uproot their lives so quickly,” Ginger said, sinking back against the sofa.
“But I agree with Victoria, Mama. We can’t simply go back and wait.
If Alex and Ivy left of their own accord, I doubt they could have got too far.
They don’t have any money or travel papers.
Or experience. But, more importantly—we don’t know where they were going. ”
“But we do know what may have triggered this entire disaster—and that’s Jack’s arrival and Alex’s suspicions about his parentage. If he’s looking for answers, there are only a handful of people he might go to.”
“Which is why I think he may have gone after Jack,” Ginger said flatly.
She folded her hands on her lap, her heart heavy.
How could she have known this would happen?
Could she have avoided this by telling Alex about the tumultuous years of her life when he’d been born?
She had never intended to keep it a secret, but his hurt was understandable.
“If he thinks Jack is his father, he might not have given up trying to find out the ‘truth’ so easily.”
“Has he never looked in the mirror? He’s identical to his father,” Mama muttered.
Despite the weightiness of the conversation, a smile curled at Ginger’s lips.
True enough. “Despite his intelligence, Alex still uses the logic of a child. If one fact about his past was thrown into question, it may put his certainty about anything into chaos. And you know how Alex is when he fixates on a subject. There’s no distracting him from getting the answers he’s seeking. ”
“But why on earth would Ivy have gone with him?” Mama asked helplessly. “And if he has gone after Jack, then we should have an answer from Noah soon enough.”
Ginger swallowed a breath, her throat thick.
Neither Victoria nor Mama seemed to understand that Noah had warned her he might not be able to contact her for some time—and he had no certainty about where he was going.
The Middle East wasn’t a small geographical area, and Jack barely knew anything about his sister’s disappearance.
“I don’t know why Ivy would have gone. Maybe she saw it as a romantic adventure, though I hope not.
And I’ll have to punish Alex thoroughly if he allowed her to accompany him if it’s just a whim of iron.
But that’s neither here nor there at this point.
” Ginger pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and gave her mother a determined look.
“Can Clara stay here in London with you, Mama? I think Victoria and I both might feel better if we travel to Egypt ourselves and see if we can find a trail, wouldn’t you agree, Victoria? ”
Her friend nodded. “It beats sitting here idly and doing nothing.”
Mama’s eyes flared with alarm. “Go to Egypt? Ginger, you can’t possibly think the children have managed to find their way to Cairo—”
“I think five days of silence is alarming enough that we should explore every possible avenue.” Despite the space between them, Ginger felt the warmth of Victoria’s relieved gaze.
“We’ll go to the consulate today—make the travel arrangements.
And I’ll call Beatrice and James. They may not be able to help immediately, but any assistance they can give Dr. Turner would be helpful, and there’s no one I trust more.
” Clara would be upset by everything, but there wasn’t any avoiding that, unfortunately.
Ginger wouldn’t risk whisking her away to Egypt in the midst of something like this.
If Mama had any inclination to argue further with Ginger, she stifled it and nodded stiffly. “I’ll send a message to Lucy. See if she can receive you in Cairo.”
“Thank you, Mama.” Ginger glanced at Victoria. “Why don’t you get ready to go and meet me out on the street in five minutes? We can fetch a cab from there.”
Ginger left her mother and Victoria, hurrying out of the parlor.
She made a quick trip up to the guest room where she’d spent the night, grabbed her handbag, hat, and gloves, then left the house.
Thank goodness Madeline had taken Clara out for the morning to visit an art exhibit.
She needed to prepare a bit better before she told her daughter about leaving without her.
Clara would want to go and that was impossible.
The streets of London were dense with fog, even in the expensive area of town in which Madeline and her husband lived.
Coal fires filled the air with the odor of smoke, and the preponderance of motorcars on the streets now made for a smoggy, unpleasant stench in the air.
Ginger cleared her throat and fished a handkerchief out of her handbag, then covered her nose and mouth, looking up.
A grey sky, thick with clouds, added to the grim mood of the day.
She had always preferred the country, even as a girl, and had disliked coming to her family’s London house for the season.
But now that she’d lived away from the city for so long, each time she returned here she liked it a little less.
Something about the combination of the dense fog, the crowded streets, and the feeling of grime lent an ominous air to everything here.
The glare of yellow headlamps caught her attention, and she stepped closer to the street, preparing to wave down the car if it was a cab. The long black car slowed, and Ginger got a better look at it—not a cab. A Bugatti, if she wasn’t mistaken, and one for only the ultra-wealthy.
Her heart skipped a beat as the car stopped a few feet from her.
The door opened, and a man stepped out. Tall and handsome—but considerably older than she—the man had slicked-back white hair and a piercing blue-eyed gaze. He tilted his head, looking at her with an unnerving intensity that made her skin crawl. “Mrs. Virginia Benson?” he said at last.
Ginger felt the blood draining from her face, a terrible, anxious feeling spiraling through her. “Yes?”
The man smiled, pleasantly enough. “You’re even more striking than your photograph, Mrs. Benson.”
What?
Her breath caught, pulse pounding in her ears as he continued speaking.
“My name is Prescott Federline. I’m looking for Lady Victoria Fisher. I have news. About her daughter.”