Chapter 18
Inside Castel-a-Mare, Benedict was counting exits.
He’d been doing so, with increasing urgency, for the past two minutes, ever since Sir Charles Drayton's face had been revealed in the lamplight and the full devastating scope of his problem had made itself apparent…
A Chief Commissioner who was not merely negligent but actively criminal. Ben felt as if the ground had just fallen away from under his very feet. What bloody chance did he stand of bringing someone like Drayton down? And if the Chief Commissioner was involved, how far up did the organisation go?
Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. He had to get Rhys, Henry, and Charlotte away – not to mention eight terrified children. He could only hope that Bella and Alex had remained in the carriage with Billy as he’d instructed. If Drayton even suspected he’d been rumbled…
He looked at Rhys, whose face in the faint light revealed a full understanding of the stakes involved.
Forcing down the flood of fear, Ben leaned closer, breathing, ‘Get them out,’ against his companion’s ear.
The Baron nodded and moved without hesitation back towards the front door.
After watching him go, Benedict turned back to watch the three men in the kitchen.
In the few seconds he’d taken his eyes off them, they’d moved closer to the lamp, but Jacob's face remained angled away from the light — whether deliberately or by chance, Ben couldn’t tell, but his back remained partially turned and the frustration of it was nearly physical.
Thorpe stood closest to him, arms folded, his expression containing nothing as warm as boredom. It was more the blank patience of a spider. Drayton, for his part, stood next to Jacob, apprising him of the progress made on their current inquiries.
Ben gritted his teeth, listening to the Chief Commissioner’s obsequious tone as the bastard revealed everything he knew about the ongoing investigations into both the jewellery thefts and Margaret Finch’s death.
The only thing keeping Ben from punching the wall was knowing that Drayton was unaware they’d connected the dots between the two crimes…
Even before Muriel was swallowed up by the encroaching darkness, Alexandra was pulling at her sister’s sleeve. ‘Take us to Castel-a-Mare,’ she hissed to Billy. ‘You can get us there without us being seen, I know you can.’
‘The Chief Inspector said I wos ter keep you safe.’ Billy blanched. ‘If I take yer to that ‘ouse, ‘e’ll ‘ave me guts for bloody garters.’
‘And I’ll do the same if you don’t,’ growled Alex. ‘Jacob White’s in there right now. What if they’ve been caught?’
‘It’s four against one,’ Billy protested. ‘The Chief Inspector an’ ‘is ludship know ‘ow ter look after ‘emselves.’
‘It’s likely Thorpe’s there too,’ Bella interjected, ‘and goodness knows who else.’
Billy wrung his hands, flooded by indecision – an entirely unfamiliar emotion. He was accustomed to acting first and thinking later, but the Chief Inspector had looked him in the eye and made him promise to keep Miss Alex and Miss Bella safe.
‘If you don’t take us, we’ll go without you,’ Alex told him bluntly.
‘Wot if I fetch Evans an’ Albert to ‘elp?’ Billy countered desperately. ‘An’ you stay in the carriage?’
‘We can’t just sit in the carriage and do nothing, Billy,’ Bella answered, her voice much more conciliatory than her twin’s. ‘And we can’t in all conscience put Evans and Albert in danger. Surely you can see that?’
‘We have to do this, Billy,’ Alex added quietly.
Billy felt a furry head bump against his leg, along with a low whine.
He looked down at Aggie, her swishing tail just visible, and gave a sigh of surrender.
‘I ain’t takin’ you unless you swear not do do anythin’ stupid,’ he warned, starting back towards the path.
‘Make sure you tell me ma it wos your fault when ‘is ludship strings me up…’
A mere five minutes later, they were approaching the house from the wooded area that now appeared as an extension of the garden.
Before stepping through the remnants of the fence, the two women paused, staring at the surreal landscape revealed by the light of the moon.
The gardens of Castel-a-Mare had been, at some point in the previous century, moderately charming.
Now it was a wilderness of overgrown box hedges and collapsed ornamental features. A death trap for the unwary.
Billy stepped in front of them to create a bigger opening than the one he and Aggie had been squeezing through. A climbing rose bush had almost completely blocked the makeshift path into the woods, and Billy was carefully forcing the barbed branches away from the opening.
As soon as the gap was wide enough to prevent their skirts from getting caught on the thorns, Arabella stepped through, despite Billy’s hissed, ‘Wait.’
Another step and Bella fancied she saw movement along the side of the house. Frowning, she narrowed her eyes, trying to pierce the darkness, wondering if her mind was playing tricks. After a second, she turned back to warn Alex and Billy, who hadn’t yet left the safety of the trees.
But before she could speak, a hand suddenly grabbed hold of her arm. Stifling a scream, she turned her head, only to be faced with a grinning face. To her overheated imagination it resembled that of a demon.
‘Wot we got ‘ere then?’ A blast of fetid breath almost made her gag, and she jerked back, desperately trying to free her arm.
Still under the cover of the woods, Billy had the presence of mind to haul Alex and Aggie back into the darkness as soon as he caught sight of the figure looming up next to Bella.
The boy’s heart slammed against his skinny ribs as he watched Bella fight her captor. Instinctively, he rose to his knees, intending to rush to her aid, but Alex gripped his arm, holding him back.
‘Wait,’ she murmured. ‘We can’t help her by getting caught ourselves. The only advantage we have is that he doesn’t know we’re here.’
‘You ain’t bein’ very friendly,’ the man muttered, dragging her around in front of him, arms like bands of steel keeping her still.
‘You escaped from the cellar little petal?’ he crooned into her ear, ‘Jacob’s not goin’ ter be ‘appy wi you now is ‘e?
Good thing I ‘ad another little errand ter do afore comin’ ‘ere, else I might ‘ave missed yer.’
Billy felt sick. He’d heard that voice before. How the devil could he have forgotten about the bone picker he’d heard tell John Thorpe about the meeting? It was Mrs Blackthorne’s footman.
When Rhys unexpectedly loomed up, right next to their hiding place, it was Charlotte who saw him first, and in a feat worthy of a special mention, given that she’d been sitting bolt upright in a damp hedge for several hours, she picked up a small boulder and lurched to her feet.
Holding the rock over her head, she hissed, ‘Take that, you murdering varmint.’
Fortunately, before she actually hurled it, Henry managed to get hold of her arm and whisper, ‘It’s Rhys, you muttonhead.’
It was likely her brother’s less than complimentary comments that ultimately led her to drop the rock on his foot instead, though of course she later insisted she’d been perfectly aware that Henry was wearing his hobnailed boots…
‘We need to get the children out now,’ Rhys declared softly, already moving stealthily towards the cellar grate in the shadow of the house. Wordlessly, Henry and Charlotte followed behind, trusting that the time for questions would come at some point.
Minutes later Rhys and Henry were using the metal files to finish sawing through the bars while Charlotte spoke softly to the children, warning them to be ready as soon as the hole was big enough.
‘Are we taking them straight to the carriage?’ she murmured to Rhys.
The Baron nodded. ‘However you manage it, take them all in one carriage,’ he told her. ‘And get them away as soon as possible.’
As he freed the second to last bar, Henry finally asked the question that was burning in both his and Charlotte’s minds. ‘What’s happened?’
Rhys grimaced, glancing around anxiously. ‘Sir Charles Drayton is inside,’ he answered shortly. ‘The bastard’s working for Jacob.’
‘God’s teeth,’ Henry bit out. ‘I should have seen it coming.’ As he spoke, the last bar was finally freed and passed down to small hands waiting below. Without hesitation, Rhys thrust his arm into the hole.
‘Who’s first?’ he asked.
Arabella’s first instinct as she was dragged out of the shadows was to look back to where she’d last seen her twin.
Alex was nowhere to be seen, but she could just make out Billy’s small form watching in helpless horror.
As her captor pulled her against his body, she almost choked at the appalling smell, desperately holding her breath as he muttered in her ear.
Seconds later, he swung around and dragged her along the path towards the house. As she stumbled along, she looked around wildly. Were her father and aunt close by? Did they know she was in trouble? Where were Ben and Rhys?
Sobbing under her breath, she found herself getting inexorably closer to the walls of the house when her captor suddenly changed direction, hauling her round to the side.
Ridiculously, she found herself wanting to tell him that wasn’t where the front door was…
Instead, she desperately dug her heels into the soft loam, only succeeding in losing her shoes.
Then, just as he turned the corner, he collided with someone coming the other way.
Swearing, her captor shoved her backwards before swinging round to see who they’d bumped into. ‘Look who I found lurkin’ in…’ He started… then, ‘What the bloody ‘ell?’
From his back, Bella tried to prise her hand free, but her fingers were held in a vice-like grip. As his words trailed off, he suddenly yanked her so forcefully that she fell to her knees, only to be pulled up by her hair. Seconds later, she felt something cold press into her temple.