Chapter 22 #3
"I wrote to the magistrate in York," Roman said, his voice sounding like dry gravel. "I sent a courier directly to the Earl of Harworth, demanding an accounting of his daughter’s movements and the carriages in his livery. Nothing. Not a single response."
"Lady Daphne has vanished as well," Orson reminded him quietly.
"She left Langley within two hours of the carriage taking Thelma and the child.
She knew the moment you went looking for the truth, she could not remain here.
She is likely hiding behind her father's gates, refusing all correspondence. "
"She didn't just send them away, Orson," Roman said, turning his head to look at his friend.
The cold, sick dread that had settled in his stomach three days ago twisted tighter.
"She told me she was sending them to the coaching inn.
But the innkeeper swore no carriage arrived.
She sent them somewhere else. She sent them to disappear. "
Orson rubbed a hand over his tired face. "We will find the carriage, Roman. We have men riding every track..."
A sharp, rapid knocking at the study door cut Orson off.
Before Roman could speak, the door was shoved open.
Earnest stood in the threshold. The butler, a man who had not run a single step in thirty years of service, was actively breathless, his chest heaving beneath his black coat.
He carried a silver salver, but his hands were trembling so badly the tray rattled.
"Your Grace," Earnest gasped, stepping into the room. "A rider... a boy from the village. He said a man on a black horse threw this at him on the road and told him to ride it to the Hall. He gave the boy a silver crown to see it directly into your hands."
Roman crossed the room in three strides, snatching the folded piece of coarse, cheap paper from the silver tray. There was no wax seal, only a crude, heavy fold.
If they are dead, I will tear Daphne Vane apart with my bare hands.
He ripped the paper open. The handwriting was jagged, the letters slashed across the page with thick, uneven strokes of dark ink.
To the Duke of Langley,
The lady who sleeps in your house did not pay her debts. Daphne Vane hired us to take the trash from your nursery and bury it where it wouldn't ruin her wedding dress. She promised a heavy purse. The purse did not arrive. We do not work for free.
We have the woman. We have the baby. They are breathing.
If you want the lady's mess cleaned up, and if you want the merchandise back alive, you will send five hundred pounds to the drop beneath the bridge at the old Farnham crossing.
Do not send the law. If we see a magistrate, the woman stays in the cellar until she rots.
Silas.
Roman stared at the ink. The words seemed to detach themselves from the paper, floating in the air before him, heavy and dripping with a dark, violent truth.
She hired thugs. She sold them to mercenaries.
A sound escaped Roman’s throat, a low, feral noise that had nothing to do with the polished manners of a duke. It was pure, unadulterated rage. He thrust the letter at Orson, his hands shaking with the sudden, violent surge of adrenaline.
"Farnham," Roman choked out, turning back toward the desk to grab his riding crop. "It is an old stone house outside the eastern moors. Abandoned years ago. That is where she sent them. Orson, get the horses!"
The library doors flew open before either of them reached the corridor.
Nicolette Upperton stood in the threshold, breathless, her dark green riding habit splashed with mud, her hair escaping its pins in wild, windblown strands. In her gloved hand she clutched a crumpled piece of paper.
"Daphne Vane is a remarkably efficient snake," she announced, striding in without waiting to be invited.
"Not now, Nicolette," Roman said, already moving for the door. "Thelma and the baby are…"
"I know precisely what has happened, because my father's courier rode through the same rain you're about to ride into," Nicolette snapped, planting herself directly in his path.
"And I am not here to delay your rescue.
I am here so you do not have to think about this on top of everything else once you have her back.
Lady Daphne has already sent a letter to the editor of The Morning Post. She is painting Miss Preston as a fraud who used a stolen infant to worm her way into your nursery.
She sent advance copies to half the north to make certain her version sets before yours can. "
Roman's jaw tightened. For one suspended moment the rage of the ransom letter and this fresh insult tried to occupy the same space in his chest.
"I cannot fight a newspaper today," he said. "Today I am going to Farnham."
"Then go," Nicolette said, "and let me fight the newspaper.
I know three families in Somerset who have done business with Albert Preston for decades.
I am already sending riders to ask for written statements confirming Thelma's identity and her sister's death.
I will have sworn testimonies on a mail coach to London before you are back with her. "
Orson, halfway into his greatcoat, stopped to stare at her. "That is remarkably reckless, Miss Upperton."
"Reckless is allowing a liar to control the narrative," Nicolette said, meeting his gaze with a fire of her own. "I prefer to control it myself."
"Do it," Roman said. "Whatever you need from this house, Earnest will provide it. Orson… now."
He was already moving for the door. Nicolette caught Orson's sleeve as he passed her.
"Try not to die in a ditch, Lord Ashmore," she said. "I should hate to have done all that work for nothing."
"Your concern is touching," Orson said, and was gone.
"Your Grace!"
The shout came not from Earnest, but from the corridor behind him.
The sound of heavy, frantic boots struck the polished wood of the gallery. A moment later, two footmen appeared in the doorway, bodily trying to hold back a man who was fighting them with the desperate, wild strength of a cornered animal.
The man was older; his silver hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain.
His riding coat was soaked through, stained with mud from the road, his boots leaving thick, wet tracks across the Persian rug.
He wrenched his arm free from the first footman, stumbling into the study, his chest heaving as he locked eyes with Roman.
In his trembling, mud-stained hand, he clutched a piece of folded, coarse paper. It was identical to the one resting on Roman’s desk.
"Where is she?" the man roared, his voice cracking with a raw, bleeding grief that shattered the remaining silence in the room. "Where is my daughter?"
Roman froze, his hand tightening around the leather grip of his crop. He looked at the man’s face, at the warm brown eyes that were so strikingly, painfully familiar. The shape of the jaw, the slope of the brow.
Preston.
"Release him," Roman commanded, his voice slicing through the chaos.
The footmen stepped back instantly, hovering nervously in the doorway. Roman gave a sharp nod, and Earnest quickly ushered the servants out, closing the heavy oak doors behind them.
Albert Preston stood in the center of the study, swaying slightly on his feet. He looked at Roman, then at Orson, before throwing his crumpled letter onto the maps covering the desk.
"They sent it to Somerset," Preston gasped, his breath hitching. "A fast rider dropped it at the magistrate’s office. They want five hundred pounds. They say they took her from the turnpike near your gates. They say a lady hired them."
Preston took a staggering step forward, his hands reaching out as if to grab Roman by the lapels. "What did you do to her? I sent the child to you to keep Thelma safe, to keep her from throwing her life away, and you let them take her!"
Roman stared at the old man. The anger in his chest collided violently with a sudden, freezing confusion.
"You sent the child," Roman repeated, the words feeling thick on his tongue. He stepped closer to Preston; his gray eyes locked onto the older man’s face.
"You left Liliana on my steps. You abandoned an infant in the freezing night, wrapped in a thirty-year-old shawl that belonged to my family. Why?"
Preston’s knees buckled. Orson moved quickly, catching the older man by the arm and steering him into one of the heavy leather chairs.
Preston collapsed into it, covering his face with his mud-stained hands.
His shoulders shook, a deep, wracking tremor that spoke of days spent in the saddle, driven by pure terror.
"You don't know," Preston whispered through his fingers. He slowly lowered his hands, looking up at Roman with eyes that were utterly broken. "You truly don't know. They never told you."
"Told me what?" Roman demanded, his voice dangerously low.
He planted both hands on the arms of Preston's chair, leaning in until he was mere inches from the man's face.
"Tell me everything. Right now. Because the woman you call your daughter and the child you abandoned are locked in a cellar with violent men, and I need to know exactly what I am riding into. "
Preston swallowed hard. He looked around the opulent, cedar-paneled study, his eyes lingering on the crest carved into the mantelpiece.
"Thirty years ago," Preston began, his voice raspy and thin. "I was a young solicitor. I handled the quiet affairs for families who needed things kept out of the public ledger. Your father... the late duke... came to me in secret."
Roman stood up slowly, the blood roaring in his ears. Thirty years. The exact age of the wool shawl.
"Your mother, the duchess, had just given birth," Preston continued, his gaze dropping to the floor.
"A girl. But there was... a complication.
The child was not what they expected. She was born with hair as white as driven snow.
Her eyes were so pale they looked like glass, shifting pink in the light. Albinism, the physicians called it."
Albinism.