Chapter 28
“Itold you she was going to The Iris, so why are we here at her father’s town house?” Violet demanded as the carriage pulled to a halt before the elegant pale stone facade.
“She may have returned, and I want to ask her parents if Howard has called. If he has, he may have taken Tilly driving.” The desperation inside Ambrose was rising.
Tilly was in danger again. He could feel it.
“Bloody woman. When she’s my wife, I will have two servants on her heels at all times,” he muttered, jumping out when the door opened and leaving his sisters to fend for themselves.
“Ooh, so you’re still going to marry her?” Cissa said, the first to follow.
“Yes. After I find out why she said no the first time I asked her.”
He heard a loud clapping, and then Violet said, “Tilly will be my sister!” and squealed.
“Settle down now. We must find her first,” Tavi said.
He knocked on the front door, using the brass lion’s ring. It was answered by a butler, stern-faced as they often were.
“Please tell Miss Wilson that Lord Talbot has called to speak with her.”
“She is from home, my lord.”
His heart gave a jolt. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it.
“Do you know her location?”
“Step aside, Croft. I will talk with Lord Talbot.”
These words came from Mr. Wilson, who stood with his wife behind the butler. Both wore polite smiles that didn’t reach their eyes. Ambrose didn’t know them well, but even so, he could see the strain on their faces.
“Hello,” Violet said, elbowing him to one side. “We have come to visit with Tilly.”
Mr. Wilson looked at his wife, and Ambrose thought something passed between them, and then they were stepping back.
“Please, come this way, and we shall take tea,” Mr. Wilson said.
“We will not keep you long,” Mrs. Wilson added when Ambrose hesitated.
They followed them to a parlor, and all settled in seats.
Mr. Wilson was the first to speak. “Our daughter told us of your offer for her hand, my lord.”
That surprised him. He’d thought Tilly would keep that to herself.
“She has no wish to marry me,” he said. But she will.
The Wilsons looked at each other again.
“She has a valid reason, but I can assure you, it is not because of her lack of feeling toward you, Lord Talbot.”
Ambrose looked at Mrs. Wilson, whose hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her knuckles pale.
“Then I wish she had shared it with me,” he said carefully, “so I could have addressed it.”
“It is not something that can be addressed,” Mr. Wilson said. “Or so she believes.”
“Harrison.” Mrs. Wilson said her husband’s name quietly, a note of warning in it.
“Do you love our daughter, my lord?”
“I do, Mr. Wilson, very much,” Ambrose said.
His sisters all sighed in unison at his confession.
Mr. Wilson set down his teacup then and looked directly at Ambrose.
“We will not tell you the reason, my lord. It is Tilly’s secret to share, or not, as she chooses.
But I will tell you this. When she refused you, it was not because she wished to.
It was because she felt she had no other honorable course. ”
“She was protecting you,” Mrs. Wilson added softly and then pressed her lips together as though she had said more than she intended.
Ambrose sat with that for a moment. Protecting him. That was so entirely Tilly that he almost wanted to laugh, except that nothing about this day felt remotely close to humorous.
“I see,” he said.
“Do you?” Mr. Wilson asked.
“I see that she has made a decision on my behalf that was mine to make. And I see that whatever her reason is, she has decided it matters more than what either of us wants.” He paused. “She is wrong.”
Mrs. Wilson made a small sound that was almost a sigh of relief.
“You will not find it easy to tell her so,” Mr. Wilson said with the particular expression of a man who had spent many years being wrong in the vicinity of a very determined woman and had made his peace with it.
“I am aware.” Ambrose set down his own cup and rose. “I am sorry to have called without notice, and I am grateful for your candor. I intend to find her, and when I do, I intend to ask her again. I wanted you to know that.”
The Wilsons rose with him. Something in their posture had shifted, a tension going out of them both, replaced with relief.
“She is at The Iris Club,” Mrs. Wilson said. “She went this morning and had not returned when Mr. Howard called.”
“Did you tell him where she’d gone?” he asked.
They nodded.
Ambrose turned to his sisters. Violet and Cissa were wide-eyed. Tavi had already stood and was moving toward the door.
“Then I will go to The Iris now and find her. Good day,” he said and followed his sisters from the house. He would not alert the Wilsons as to what he’d learned about Howard. Doing so would merely frighten them and serve no purpose.
He had to find Tilly before Howard did because Ambrose knew he wanted to harm her. Knew it deep inside, just as he now understood that the man was involved in what was happening in that room below their clubs.
“I’m worried Howard has found her,” Violet said, her voice tight with fear.
“Agreed,” Cissa added.
“I can’t believe he is involved in such horrid things and perhaps had a hand in those women going missing,” Tavi said.
“I’m killing that bastard if he’s touched a hair on Tilly’s head.”
“Agreed,” Cissa said again.
When the carriage stopped, they jumped out and ran to The Iris. Ruby answered the door quickly after he knocked.
“Is Miss Wilson here?” he demanded.
“She has not returned.” She stepped back to let them all inside.
“She went out with that man, Mr. Howard, and I watched from the window. She told me she would not be long and then would take tea with the knitting club. I saw them go down the steps at the side of the building, the ones that go to the lower level. I haven’t seen them come up again, and it’s been”—her voice cracked slightly—“it’s been a long time, my lord. ”
“Stay here, all of you,” he said before stepping back outside.
Ambrose hurried to the stairs and then crept down silently. He saw two men were now standing guard outside the door that led into the rooms below, both held shotguns. Retreating, he went back to The Iris Club, where his sisters, Ruby, and now the stern-faced Margaret stood.
Barnaby rushed forward to greet him.
“Why is there a man in this fine establishment? I thought they were banned.”
These words were spoken by Ellen Nightingale. With her was Mavis Johns, and Tabitha, who winked at him.
“We have reason to believe Tilly is in the room below, being held against her will,” Violet said quickly. “We have to make haste to get her back.”
“She has been taken again? Good Lord, you people should really keep a better eye on that woman,” Ellen said.
“I plan to,” Ambrose gritted out.
“What room?” Mavis demanded.
Violet quickly explained what she knew.
“Right, then. What is to be done?” Mavis said when she was finished.
He looked around the faces before him. All women.
“If you’re thinking that because we do not wear trousers and stride about the place, demanding things, we are not capable of helping you, then let me disabuse you of that notion,” Ellen said.
“Amen,” his sisters agreed.
“Are any of you armed?” Ambrose could not afford to wait because he had no idea what they were doing to Tilly down there. He had to get her back now, and to do that, he would have to rely on these women.
“I am,” Mavis and Tabitha both said.
“I can defend myself, as you know,” Ellen added.
“As can we,” Cissa said.
“No, you can’t,” Ambrose snapped.
“Actually, Ellen has been giving us lessons upstairs in one of the larger rooms here. I can now take a man to the floor before he realizes what I’m about.”
“God save us all,” Ambrose muttered.
“Send word to 11 Crabbett Close that there is trouble at The Iris Club at once, Margaret,” Ellen ordered. “Then to Detective Grayson Fletcher at Scotland Yard. Tell him he is needed here immediately.”
“Of course,” she said, hurrying into the office.
“Ruby, you and Margaret watch the door until we return and ensure no one breaches it,” he said.
“Of course, my lord.”
“Right, then. Let’s go.”
They headed downstairs. When Ambrose reached the room, he and Violet removed the books, and soon they were inside.
“If I wasn’t so worried for Tilly, I’d be excited,” he heard Cissa whisper.
“You will do exactly what I tell you from this moment onward,” he said softly.
No one argued which was a miracle.
They walked down the hall and reached the stairs leading down. Ambrose stopped at the top.
“Down there is a room, and, likely, men inside. Dangerous men. Stay behind me, as I have a gun. Next is Mavis, then Tabitha, and Ellen. You three”—he pointed at his sisters—“come last.”
They clearly wanted to disagree but one look at his face stopped them.
Ambrose tiptoed down with the women at his back. Raising his pistol, he approached the room after noting the robes were now missing.
A voice raised in anger reached him as he drew closer.
“Tell me the names, or I will inflict more pain on you!”
He heard female laughter then. “I do not fear you.”
Tilly. He’d know her voice anywhere.
He heard the low moan of pain seconds later and charged into the room, pistol raised.
“Release her!”
Tilly’s arms were bound to a chair, and men in robes stood behind her. But it was the man above her that caught his attention. He held a knife, the tip bloodied, after he’d just plunged it into Tilly’s hand. Blood was flowing from the wound, and she was biting her lip, clearly in pain.
Rage flooded Ambrose. “Bastard!”
The women at his back had fanned out to his right. Mavis and Tabitha raised their pistols alongside him, Ellen and his sisters their fists.
“No!” Howard roared, dropping the knife and reaching for something inside his jacket.
Ambrose fired his pistol, and the man fell, slumping to the ground. The other men were immediately on them. He heard the thud of a fist hitting flesh, and before he could check on his sisters, one of the robed men flew across the room. Another followed seconds later.