Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah Mallister sat on the edge of her bed and waited to be surprised.
As much as she would have preferred to be dressed in her finest gown with her hair pulled up and blush on her cheeks, the sun hadn’t yet shown the merest sliver over the eastern hills. Under normal circumstances she and Sean would have remained in bed for at least another hour.
“Sean, don’t pace,” she whispered.
Her husband stopped halfway between the bed and the door. “Have you considered that perhaps we should be hiding ourselves behind that wall?”
“They’ve known for nineteen years where to find us. And frankly, I’m more looking forward to this than I’m worried about it.”
Stepping more quietly, he moved over to sit beside her. “If we can manage it, I’d like to punch Fendarrow in the nose, myself.”
She smiled, nervous anticipation running through her. “I don’t think a little suspicious hostility would be out of place. He’s never bothered to come calling before, after all.” Sarah took her husband’s hand. “Just remember that this isn’t about us. It’s about protecting our young guests.”
Of course her niece had only come calling because their coach had overturned and Lord Arran had been injured.
They had literally had nowhere else to go.
But they had come instead of waiting about to be caught, and she’d made the acquaintance of a brave young lady she would otherwise never have met.
And a MacLawry. For goodness’ sake, she wasn’t certain even she would have had the courage to fall not just for a member of clan MacLawry, but for the MacLawry’s younger brother.
Susan’s knock came at the door, more strident than usual. “Come in,” Sarah called, and the door cracked open.
“Mrs. Mallister,” the housekeeper said a trifle unsteadily, “you have a caller.”
“At this hour?” she asked, sending the servant an encouraging smile.
She wasn’t certain whether they could be overheard or not, but it was a small and quiet cottage, and so she would assume a visitor could make out every word she spoke.
“Is it Mrs. Lester? I asked her to send me word when Sally went into labor.”
“No, ma’am. It’s … It’s Lord Fendarrow.”
“What?”
“That’s the name he gave me. And there are at least a dozen men with him.”
“Good heavens!”
“Fendarrow? What the devil does your brother want of us?” Sean demanded.
“I have no idea,” Sarah returned, not having to feign the trepidation in her voice. “Do you think something’s happened to my father? Why else would he come here, Sean? It’s been nineteen years!”
“We’d best go find out. Tell him we’ll be down in a moment, Susan. I’m not meeting him in my nightshirt.”
The maid curtsied. “Should Levitt offer them tea?”
“Not until I find out what he wants,” Sean said loudly, offering her a reassuring smile.
Susan shut the door again, and Sarah let out her breath. “I’d nearly forgotten that I don’t actually want to see him,” she muttered, standing and hurrying for her wardrobe.
Her husband strode over to take her arm, turning her to face him. “Just keep in mind why he’s here,” he whispered, and kissed her. “I, for one, have no intention of allowing him to do to someone else what he did to you.”
With a smile she kissed him back. “What he did to me doesn’t matter, because he couldn’t separate us. Now stomp angrily into your boots, and let’s get this over with.”
They hadn’t had a chance to warn their guests that trouble had arrived, but Sarah hadn’t heard as much as a squeak coming from down the short hallway. All she could do was presume that they knew, and that they’d closed themselves into the hidden room. The rest would be up to her and Sean.
Her hands shook a little as she shed her night rail and donned a plain green and yellow muslin, then brushed out her hair and pinned it into a simple knot. Sean dressed in his dark, conservative banker’s clothes, and then together they left the bedchamber and descended the stairs.
Levitt hovered in the front entry, looking annoyed that he’d only had time to don his trousers with his night shirt hastily tucked into the waist. If given the choice the butler would have remained dressed all night, poised to greet their visitors.
That, though, would have raised far too many suspicions, at a moment when they couldn’t afford any at all.
“Mrs. Mallister, Lord Fendarrow is in the front room,” he said. “Two other gentlemen are in there with him. Another nine are in front of the house, watering their horses.”
“Horses?” Sarah repeated, frowning. “He didn’t come in a coach?”
“Not that I could see, ma’am.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well. Let’s go see what’s brought Walter Campbell all the way to Manchester on horseback, then.”
When she stepped into the sitting room her gaze went to the sharp-faced man with the slicked black hair who stood by the far window.
The resemblance to a young Walter was striking.
For a moment she felt like the eighteen-year-old girl who’d begged her older brother not to allow her to be cast out of the family.
Sarah shook herself. This man might resemble the Walter she’d last known, but he wasn’t her brother.
A nephew, more likely. Perhaps the nasty Calder that her niece had described. She turned her head.
“You look older,” a dry, precise voice said. Seated in Sean’s favorite chair, a lean, gray-haired man crossed his ankles and gazed at her over steepled fingers.
So much for niceties. “What’s happened?” she asked, facing him directly. “Is it Father?”
A muscle in his cheek jumped. “No. The last I heard, His Grace was well.”
She nodded, swallowing. That couldn’t have been sympathy she fleetingly saw on his face.
More likely he was worried that perhaps he’d guessed wrong about his daughter’s whereabouts and he’d come here for nothing.
“Then why are you here? I’ve kept my word; I haven’t left Manchester since we purchased this house, and Sean only went to London last year for business. ”
“Stop prattling on, will you?” Walter pushed to his feet. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you are going to answer me completely and truthfully. If you lie, if you keep anything from me, I will know—and I will burn this house to the ground.”
“I will not be threatened in my own house,” Sean growled, taking a step forward.
“I’m not speaking to you,” Walter commented, his gaze remaining on his sister.
Sarah was fairly certain this scene would have played the same way even if they hadn’t been hiding runaways in their closet, even if they had been genuinely surprised to see a dozen Campbell clansmen milling around her house.
She put a hand out, stopping her husband’s advance even as the two younger men in the room moved up to flank her brother.
“Ask your question, then,” she said, her voice unsteady.
“I have no reason to lie to you about anything.”
“I don’t know about that, Aunt Mòrag,” the one who looked like a younger version of Walter said.
“Whose boy are you, then?” she asked.
“Your sister Bearnas’s.” He sketched a lazy bow. “Charles Calder, at your service.”
“Don’t bother introducing yourself, Charles,” Walter broke in, his scowl deepening. “You won’t be meeting her again.”
“For heaven’s sake, Walter, stop threatening us and ask your question!”
“Very well.” For a bare moment he clenched his jaw, but she had no idea if it was anger or embarrassment or worry.
Given her own experience with him, she tended to believe it was embarrassment.
“A week ago my daughter, Mary, was kidnapped by Lord Arran MacLawry. We came across their wrecked coach last night, not five miles from here. And so my question to you, Sarah, is: have you seen them?”
She put a hand to her chest. “Mary? Oh, no! That’s horrible! I—No, of course I haven’t seen her.”
“How would you know?” Charles Calder asked slyly. “You haven’t seen her since she was two years old.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sean broke in. “We’ve spent nineteen years here, looking at the same neighbors.
The last stranger to come through here was that fellow selling Paris silks.
What was his name? Something Chambers. And that was three months ago.
And so yes, we would know if we saw a strange woman about. ”
“For the last damned time, banker, I am not talking to you.”
Sarah stepped between her husband and her brother. “Sean is telling you the truth. If we’d seen anyone being dragged about by some man, I would certainly remember it.”
“So she didn’t come to find you and ask for aid?”
“If she did, I certainly would have done what I could to help her. Whatever’s happened between us, I have nothing against your daughter. And to be taken against her will—she must be terrified. Have you gone to see Robert Daily?”
“No, I haven’t. The difficulty I have with this,” her brother said after a moment, “is that I don’t see where else she could go but here.
I daresay Mary would find it irresistible, especially after their coach rolled over.
She would hope to find you sympathetic to her plight, and that you would harbor them until they could find other transportation. ”
“And then there was the blood we found there. One of them is injured.”
She looked at her nephew, using every bit of wit she possessed to follow only the clues they gave her, to reach the conclusions she would logically come to given what they were saying.
“I—This doesn’t sound precisely like a kidnapping,” she said hesitantly.
“I thought you meant she would come here to ask for my help in getting back home.”
Walter closed the distance between them and put a finger under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “It is precisely what I say it is. Now. Are they here?”
Sarah met his gaze squarely. “They are not,” she enunciated the same way he had, not having to pretend the uneasy quaver at the end.
“Then you won’t mind if we look for ourselves.” Releasing her, he angled his chin toward the depths of the house.