Chapter 3
The shabby carriage had barely rolled to a stop when Isadore Fitz-Wilton leapt to the pavement before her London townhouse and scurried up the brief walk as if the hounds of hell nipped at her heels.
To be perfectly accurate 'twas only one hound of some sixty years.
His age and lack of interest likely kept him from pursuing her.
Though he did shout her name a few times, which she ignored.
Still, as she pushed past the startled butler, Cribbs, and headed across the parquet foyer floor to climb the stairs without removing her cloak Isadore wanted only to escape the cloying presence of the man her brother-in-law expected her to marry.
"Did you have a pleasant evening, Missus Fitz-Wilton?" Cribbs called after her.
"Bugger off," Isadore muttered under her breath as she continued up the stairs without pausing for a moment. Laughably, she heard her late mother's voice in her head.
"One does not tell one's butler to bugger off, my dear. Most unladylike." Mama was certain to have punctuated her pronouncement with a disdainful sniff.
But Cribbs wasn't Isadore's butler. He ran her household.
He told anyone who asked that she was his employer.
The last thing Isadore considered herself was his employer.
Cribbs was her brother-in-law's creature.
They all were. The butler, the housekeeper, Cook, the footmen, and the maids were all hired by George Fitz-Wilton for one purpose and one purpose only.
To report Isadore's every move back to the man who held the purse strings and all of their lives in his cold, clammy hands.
Even Horace Sutton, the hound whose carriage and company she'd escaped with such alacrity, owed his sole allegiance to the man her late husband had handed her over to in his will like a prize horse or an expensive painting.
George Fitz-Wilton fully intended to keep his late brother's widow firmly under his thumb.
"Did you have a pleasant evening, my lady?"
"What?" Isadore all but shrieked.
Giselle, her lady's maid, appeared out of Isadore's dressing room the moment she stepped into her bedchamber. She'd been so lost in her thoughts as she stormed up stairs and down corridors to her second-floor chambers, she'd arrived in her rooms without realizing where she was.
"My apologies, my lady." Giselle dipped a shallow curtsy. Her knowing smile made Isadore want to smack her. "I did not mean to startle you. I only wished to inquire after your evening. Was your dinner with Mister Fitz-Wilton and his friends a pleasant one?"
"Decidedly not," Isadore replied. She tossed her gloves and her hooded cloak onto the chair closest to the door out of her bedchamber.
"You may go to bed. I will undress myself.
" With deft fingers she reached around to unbutton the first two buttons at the back of her black kerseymere gown.
She was out of the gown and petticoats in moments.
When she bent to pick them up, she discovered Giselle still there, a disapproving frown fixed on her pinched features.
"Mister Fitz-Wilton hired me to see to your needs, my lady. A wealthy lady such as yourself should not--"
"Mister Fitz-Wilton hired you to report my days and nights back to him. I see no reason to make your task any easier by complying like a tamed spaniel. And a wealthy lady such as myself should not have to dismiss a servant twice." She folded her arms across her chest and tapped a slipper-shod foot.
Giselle marched to the door and flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Isadore smiled for the first time that evening.
She admitted 'twas a bit of madness to take such pleasure in putting the unflappable maid out of curl.
Then again, after the year she'd had Isadore considered herself due a bit of madness.
She finished stripping herself of her clothes, stockings, and shoes and stepped behind the four-fold tapestried screen to make use of the flannel and basin of tepid water Giselle had left her.
She swept up the sheer muslin nightgown the maid had left on the bed for her and returned the garment to the drawer of the highboy from which she pulled her favorite flannel nightgown.
Perhaps the maid thought to prepare her for a wedding night that, if Isadore had anything to do with it, would never happen.
Not bloody likely. She shoved her feet into the wool slippers next to the highboy.
Damn Gregory Fitz-Wilton to hell. Even in death his incompetence and lack of concern plagued her.
With a quick furtive look about the room, she went to the hearth and tapped at a section of the ornately carved mantelpiece.
The section that depicted Mars, the god of war, in his chariot sprang open to reveal a hidden compartment from which she drew a leather-bound journal and a worn stuffed fabric dog.
She subsided into a blue and green flowered chintz chair before the fire.
With the toy dog in her lap, she flipped to the last page in the journal, picked up the flat pencil she'd left as a place marker, and made some notes.
During the interminable dinner party at her brother-in-law's townhouse, she'd managed to slip away long enough to search two more rooms for evidence of her husband's real will and any hint as to where George had hidden her son.
Jeremy. The mere thought of him caused tears to burn her eyes and her heart to shrivel in her chest.
How the devil had her very existence come to this?
She shook her head and began to flip absently back through her journal.
Nothing in her life had ever been of her choosing, but she'd managed somehow to survive and to be reasonably content.
Had Gregory not succumbed to a sudden heart seizure nearly a year ago she might have gone on that way.
She'd had Jeremy after all, and he'd brought all the joy to her life she'd needed.
Now? In six weeks, her year of mourning would be over.
Her brother-in-law expected her to marry his friend, Horace Sutton, in order to secure control of the only thing her husband had not been able to will away to his brother.
Only then would George allow her to see her son.
Unable to sit still with her thoughts she pushed to her feet and wandered over to the delicate French commode next to the long window that looked out over small but elegant back gardens.
She plucked a glass and a bottle of brandy from the tray on the commode.
Cold night air blew into the room from the open window.
Isadore often left at least one window open in her bedchamber at night.
This house in the dark often seemed to close in on her.
An open window reminded her she was not quite in prison.
Not yet. She started to pour herself a brandy.
A series of thumps and creaks drew her attention to something or someone in the garden below her chamber. As quietly as possible she returned her glass and the bottle to the tray and crept closer to peer out the window. A shadowy figure stood at the window into the drawing room just off the foyer.
"What the devil?" she murmured. She hurried to the hidden compartment in the mantelpiece and retrieved the small pistol she kept there.
Donning her heavy wool cloak at the door, Isadore glanced up and down the corridor.
No one was about this late at night. Isadore often wandered the house long after midnight because she could do so without the ever-present eyes of footmen and maids.
She made her way down the stairs and crossed the foyer to the doors into the drawing room.
She pressed her ear to the doors and heard voices--two, no three voices.
Two sounded like children of all things.
Fortunately, the servants were as efficient as they were duplicitous.
The door she gently pushed open did not creak at all.
With her hand on the pistol in her cloak pocket, she moved across the drawing room.
The moon shone in through an open window at the far side of the room.
Two children, a boy and a girl in ragged clothes, stood next to the drawn heavy drapes.
A tall, dark-haired man in a long black coat lifted the children, one at the time, and set them outside into the garden.
Suddenly he glanced up and back toward where Isadore stood.
Shite! She ducked behind one of the large wing-backed chairs.
After a count to ten, she raised up and saw him clamber out the window behind the children.
Thieves! She'd heard rumors about a band of thieves robbing homes in Mayfair using helpless children to slip into and out of the various townhouses and mansions.
If the children were caught, they were abandoned to their fates by their unscrupulous masters.
An icy rage suffused her. Without a great deal of thought, she quit the drawing room and ran to the back of the house where a set of French windows opened out into the gardens.
She crossed the gardens and arrived at the mews in time to see the gate into the lane behind the row of townhouses open and close.
She sprinted to the gate and peered out into the narrow cobblestone lane.
The man in the long coat fairly tossed the children into a waiting carriage.
He turned to look over his shoulder, and his face was lit by the full moon as it slid from behind the clouds.